reached into a drawer in a workbench beside him and drew
out two small, hollow hemispheres of glass. These he cupped over his
eyes.

"What are those for?" asked the Secretary.

"So my eyes can be covered with the film. If they weren't, I'd present
the somewhat remarkable spectacle of a pair of disembodied eyes walking
down the street."

Painfully, agonizingly, the hot film was applied to throat and face;
over the glass spheres that cupped around the eyes; over a tight leather
cap covering the scientist's hair; and over a sort of football
nose-guard which extended down an inch below the end of Thorn's nose in
a sort of overhanging offset that would allow him to breathe and still
keep his nostrils hidden. The Secretary stepped back.

Before him stood a figure that looked not unlike a glazed statue of a
man. The effect was that of a body encased in clear ice--and like clear
ice, the encasing shell sparkled and glittered radiantly in the sunlight
that poured in at the windows.

Thorn moved. His glazed arms and legs and torso glistened with all the
colors in the spectrum; while under the filmed bulges of glass his eyes
looked as large as apples. The Secretary felt a chill of superstitious
fear as he gazed at that weird and glittering figure with its enormous
glazed eyes.

"But you aren't invisible," he said at length.

"That comes now," said Thorn, walking ahead of the Secretary while on
the ceiling above him danced red and yellow and blue rainbows of
refracted light.

* * * * *

He stepped onto a big metal plate. Suspended above was a huge metal
ring, with its hole directly over the spot on which he stood.

"Soft magnets," explained Thorn. "As simply as I can put it, my process
for rendering an object invisible is this: I place the object, coated
with the film, on this plate. Then I start in motion the overhead ring,
creating an immensely powerful, rapidly rotating magnetic field. The
rotating field rearranges the atoms of this peculiarly susceptible film
of mine so that they will transmit light rays with the least possible
resistance. It combs the atoms into straight lines, you might say. With
that straight-line, least-resistance arrangement comes invisibility."

"I don't quite see--" began the Secretary.

"Refraction of light," said Thorn hurriedly. "The light rays strike this
film, hurtle around the object, it coats--at increased speed, probably,
but there are no instruments