and the two older men looked at him, and at
Arcot who was grinning broadly now.

"Well, I suppose it must be funny," Morey began, then hesitated. "Oh--I
see--say, that _is_ good!" He turned to his father. "I see now what he's
been driving at. It's been right here under our noses all the time.

"The light-matter windows we found in the wrecked enemy ships contain
enough bound light-energy to run all the planes we could make in the
next ten years! We're going to have the enemy supply us with power we
can't get in any other way. I can't decide, Arcot, whether you deserve a
prize for ingenuity, or whether we should receive booby-prizes for our
stupidity."

Arcot Senior smiled at first, then looked dubiously at his son.

"There's definitely plenty of the right kind of energy stored there--but
as you suggested, the energy will need encouragement to break free. Any
ideas?"

"A couple. I don't know how they'll work, of course; but we can try."
Arcot puffed at his pipe, serious now as he thought of the problems
ahead.

Wade interposed a question. "How do you suppose they condense that light
energy in the first place, and, their sun being dead, whence all the
light? Back to the atom, I suppose."

"You know as much as I do, of course, but I'm sure they must break up
matter for its energy. As for the condensation problem, I think I have a
possible solution of that too--it's the key to the problem of release.
There's a lot we don't know now--but we'll have a bigger store of
knowledge before this war is over--if we have anything at all!" he added
grimly. "It's possible that man may lose knowledge, life, his planets
and sun--but there's still plenty of hope. We're not finished yet."

"How do you think they got their energy loose?" asked

Wade. "Do you think those big blocks of what appeared to be silver were
involved in the energy release?"

"Yes, I do. Those blocks were probably designed to carry away the power
once it was released. How the release was accomplished, though, I don't
know. They couldn't use material apparatus to start their release of
material energy; the material of the apparatus might 'catch fire' too.
They had to have the disintegrating matter held apart from all other
matter. This was quite impossible, if you are going to get the energy
away by any method other than by the use of fields of force. I don't
think that is the method. My guess is that a terrific current of
electricity would accomplish it if