to
an American battleship."

He lifted Dillon's two cameras by the carrying-straps. And the straps
pulled free. They'd held the cases safely enough during a long journey
on foot across the mountains. But they pulled clear now.

Coburn had a bitter thought. He struck a match. He saw the leather cases
on the floor of the staff car. He picked up one of them. He took it to
the light of the headlights, standing there in the resonant darkness of
a street in a city of stone houses.

* * * * *

The leather was brittle. It was friable, as if it had been in a fire.
Coburn plucked it open, and it came apart in his hands. Inside there was
the smell of scorched things. There was a gritty metallic powder.
Nothing else. The other carrying-case was in exactly the same condition.

Coburn muttered bitterly: "They were set to destroy themselves if they
got into other hands than Dillon's. We haven't a bit of proof that he
wasn't a human being. Not a shred of proof!"

He suddenly felt a sick rage, as if he had been played with and mocked.
The raid from Bulgaria was serious enough, of course. It would have
killed hundreds of people and possibly hundreds of others would have
been enslaved. But even that was secondary in Coburn's mind. The
important thing was that there were Invaders upon Earth. Non-human
monsters, who passed for humans through disguise. They had been able to
travel through space to land secretly upon Earth. They moved unknown
among men, learning the secrets of mankind, preparing for--what?

III

They got into Salonika early afternoon of the next day, after many hours
upon an antique railroad train that puffed and grunted and groaned among
interminable mountains. Coburn got a taxi to take Janice to the office
of the Breen Foundation which had sent her up to the north of Greece to
establish its philanthropic instruction courses. He hadn't much to say
to Janice as they rode. He was too disheartened.

In the cab, though, he saw great placards on which newspaper headlines
appeared in Greek. He could make out the gist of them. Essentially, they
shrieked that Bulgarians had invaded Greece and had been wiped out. He
made out the phrase for valiant Greek army. And the Greek army was
valiant enough, but it hadn't had anything to do with this.

From the police station in Serrai--he had been interviewed there until
dawn--he knew what action had been taken. Army planes had flown
northward in th