ind any blotting out of stars by a
lightless mass.

Finally he returned to Morey and Wade who had been working on the
crystal plate. Wade had an expression of exasperation on his face, and
Morey was grinning broadly.

"Hello, Arcot--you missed all the fun! You should have seen Wade's
struggle with that plate!" The plate, during his absence, had been
twisted and bent, showing that it had undergone some terrific stresses.
Now Wade began to make a series of highly forceful comments about the
properties of the plate in language that was not exactly scientific. It
had value, though, in that it seemed to relieve his pent-up wrath.

"Why, Wade, you don't seem to like that stuff. Maybe the difficulty lies
in your treatment, rather than in the material itself. What have you
tried?"

"Everything! I took a coronium hack saw that will eat through molybdenum
steel like so much cheese, and it just wore its teeth off. I tried some
of those diamond rotary saws you have, attached to an electric motor,
and it wore out the diamonds. That got my goat, so I tried using a
little force. I put it in the tension testing machine, and clamped
it--the clamp was good for 10,000,000 pounds--but it began to bend, so I
had to quit. Then Morey held it with a molecular beam, and I tried
twisting it. Believe me, it gave me real pleasure to see that thing
yield under the pressure. But it's not brittle; it merely bends.

"And I can't cut it, or even get some shavings off the darned thing. You
said you wanted to make a Jolly balance determination of the specific
gravity, but the stuff is so dense you'd need only a tiny scrap--and I
can't break it loose!" Wade looked at the plate in thorough disgust.

Arcot smiled sympathetically; he could understand his feelings, for the
stuff certainly was stubborn. "I'm sorry I didn't warn you fellows about
what you'd run into, but I was so anxious to get that call through to
the Moon that I forgot to tell you how I expected to make it workable.
Now, Wade, if you'll get another of those diamond-tooth rotary saws,
I'll get something that may help. Put the saw on the air motor. Use the
one made of coronium."

Wade looked after the rapidly disappearing Arcot with raised eyebrows,
then, scratching his head, he turned and did as Arcot had asked.

Arcot returned in about five minutes with a small handling machine, and
a huge magnet. It must have weighed nearly half a ton. This he quickly
connected to the heavy duty pow