emember, of course,
that the Kaxorians had great reservoirs for storing light-energy in a
bound state in their giant planes. They had bound light, light held by
the gravitational attraction for itself, after condensing it in their
apparatus, but they had what amounted to a gas--gaseous light. Now
suppose that someone makes a light condenser even more powerful than the
one the Kaxorians used, a condenser that forces the light so close to
itself, increases its density, till the photons hold each other
permanently, and the substance becomes solid. It will be matter, matter
made of light--light matter--and let us call it a metal. You know that
ordinary matter is electricity matter, and electricity matter metals
conduct electricity readily. Now why shouldn't our 'light matter' metal
conduct light? It would be a wonderful substance for windows."

"But now comes the question of moving it," Wade interposed. "We can't
lift it, and we certainly want to examine it. That means we must take it
to the laboratory. I believe we're about through here--the place is
clearly quite permanently demolished. I think we had better return to
the ship and start to that other machine we saw that didn't appear to be
so badly damaged. But--how can we move this?"

"I think a ray may do the trick." Arcot drew his ray pistol, and stepped
back a bit, holding the weapon so the ray would direct the plate
straight up. Slowly he applied the power, and as he gradually increased
it, the plate stirred, then moved into the air.

"It works! Now you can use your pistol, Morey, and direct it toward the
corridor. I'll send it up, and let it fall outside, where we can pick it
up later." Morey stepped forward, and while Arcot held it in the air
with his ray, Morey propelled it slowly with his, till it was directly
under the corridor leading upward. Then Arcot gave a sudden increase in
power, and the plate moved swiftly upward, sailing out of sight. Arcot
shut off his ray, and there came to their ears a sudden crash as the
plate fell to the floor above.

The three men regained their ropes and "double action parachutes" as
Arcot called them, and floated up to the next floor. Again they started
the process of moving the plate. All went well till they came to the
little car itself. They could not use the ray on the car, for fear of
damaging the machinery. They had to use some purely mechanical method of
hoisting it in.

Finally they solved the problem by using the m