rom his chair and paced up and down
the room. He stopped to bang the conference table with a knotted
fist.

"You can't do it," he bawled at them. "You can't kill the project.
I _know_ there's something to it. We can't give it up!"

"But it's been ten years, General," said the secretary of the
army. "If they were coming back, they'd be here by now."

The general stopped his pacing, stiffened. Who did that little
civilian squirt think he was, talking to the military in that tone
of voice!

"We know how you feel about it, General," said the chairman of the
joint chiefs of staff. "I think we all recognize how deeply you're
involved. You've blamed yourself all these years and there is no
need of it. After all, there may be nothing to it."

"Sir," said the general, "I _know_ there's something to it. I
thought so at the time, even when no one else did. And what we've
turned up since serves to bear me out. Let's take a look at these
three men of ours. We knew almost nothing of them at the time, but
we know them now. I've traced out their lives from the time that
they were born until they disappeared--and I might add that, on
the chance it might be all a hoax, we've searched for them for
years and we've found no trace at all.

"I've talked with those who knew them and I've studied their
scholastic and military records. I've arrived at the conclusion
that if any three men could do it, they were the ones who could.
Adams was the brains and the other two were the ones who carried
out the things that he dreamed up. Cooper was a bulldog sort of
man who could keep them going and it would be Hudson who would
figure out the angles.

"And they knew the angles, gentlemen. They had it all doped out.

"What Hudson tried here in Washington is substantial proof of
that. But even back in school, they were thinking of those angles.
I talked some years ago to a lawyer in New York, name of
Pritchard. He told me that even back in university, they talked
of the economic and political problems that they might face if
they ever cracked what they were working at.

"Wesley Adams was one of our brightest young scientific men. His
record at the university and his war work bears that out. After
the war, there were at least a dozen jobs he could have had. But
he wasn't interested. And I'll tell you why he wasn't. He had
something bigger--something he wanted to work on. So he and these
two others went off by themselves--"

"You think he was w