rise silently about them. The sky, which
had been a dull luminous gray, a gray that rapidly grew brighter and
brighter, was now like molten silver, through which were filtering the
early rays of the intense sun. As the sun rose above the horizon, though
invisible for clouds, it still was traceable by the wondrous shell pink
that began to suffuse the ten mile layer of vapor. The tiny droplets
were, however, breaking the clear light into a million rainbows, and all
about the swiftly deepening pink were forming concentric circles of
blue, of green, orange, and all the colors of the rainbow, repeated time
after time--a wondrous halo of glowing color, which only the doubly
intense sun could create.

"It's almost worth missing the sun all day to see their sunrises and
sunsets," Fuller commented. The men were watching it, despite their
need for haste. It was a sight the like of which no Earthman had ever
before seen.

Immediately, then, they plunged into the extremely complex calculation
of the electrical apparatus to produce the necessary fields. To get the
effect they wanted, they must have two separate fields of the director
ray, and a third field of a slightly different nature, which would cause
the director ray to move in one direction only. It would be
disconcerting, to say the least, if the director ray, by some mistake,
should turn upon them!

The work went on more swiftly than they had considered possible, but
there was still much to be done on the theoretical end of the job alone
when the streets about them began to fill. They noticed that a large
crowd was assembling, and shortly after they had finished, after some of
these people had stood there for more than an hour and a half, the crowd
had grown to great size.

"From the looks of that collection, I should say we are about to become
the principals in some kind of a celebration that we know nothing about.
Well, we're here, and in case they want us, we're ready to come."

The guard that always surrounded the _Solarite_ had been doubled, and
was maintaining a fairly large clear area about the ship.

Shortly thereafter they saw one of the high officials of Lanor come down
the walk from the governmental building, walking toward the _Solarite_.

"Time for us to appear--and it may as well be all of us this time. I'll
tell you what they say afterward, Wade. They've evidently gone to
considerable trouble to get up this meeting, so let's cooperate. I hate
to slow u