re brought
over from the stack of material laid ready, and piled on a broad sheet
that had formed in the air, tons of it, tens of tons. Finally he
stopped. There was enough. The sheet wrapped itself into a sphere, and
contracted, slowly, steadily. It was rampant with energy, energy flowed
from it, and the air about was glowing with ionization. There was a
feeling of awful power that seeped into the minds of the watchers, and
held them spellbound before the glowing, opalescent sphere. The tons of
matter were compressed now to a tiny ball! Suddenly the energy flared
out violently, a terrific burst of energy, ionizing the air in the
entire room, and shooting it with tiny, burning sparks. Then it was
over. The ball split, and became two planes. Between them was a small
ball of a glistening solid. The planes moved slowly together, and the
ball flattened, and flowed. It was a sheet.

A clamp of artificial matter took it, and held the paper-thin sheet,
many feet square, in the air. It seemed it must bend under its own
enormous weight of tons, but thin as it was it did not.

"Cosmium," said Morey softly.

Arcot crumpled it, and pressed it once more between artificial matter
tools. It was a plate, thick as heavy cardboard, and two feet on a side.
He set it in a holder of artificial matter, a sort of frame, and caused
the controls to lock.

Taking off the headpiece he had worn, he explained, "As Morey said,
Cosmium. Briefly, density, 5007.89. Tensile strength, about two hundred
thousand times that of good steel!" The audience gasped. That seems
little to men who do not realize what it meant. An inch of this stuff
would be harder to penetrate than three miles of steel!

"Our new ship," continued Arcot, "will carry six-inch armor. Six inches
would be the equivalent of eighteen miles of solid steel, with the
enormous improvement that it will be concentrated, and so will have far
greater resistance than any amount of steel. Its tensile strength would
be the equivalent of an eighteen-mile wall of steel.

"But its most important properties are that it reflects everything we
know of. Cosmics, light, and even moleculars! It is made of cosmic ray
photons, as lux is made of light photons, but the inexpressibly tighter
bond makes the strength enormous. It cannot be handled by any means save
by artificial matter tools.

"And now I am going to give a demonstration of the theatrical
possibilities of this new agent. Hardly scientific--b