n by a noncommittal chauffeur, picked me up off a
street corner, whisked me to the airfield. I boarded a plane piloted by
a man I used to know as a fading stunt pilot--Harry Fredericks. The
plane lifted and took a southerly course which presently changed to an
easterly bearing. I looked below and saw we were over water.

We came down somewhere in South America and I got out of the plane as
mystified as I'd entered it. Secrecy? Fredericks wouldn't even discuss
the weather!

I had expected another Eden, hidden away from the world. But the land of
brobdignags I found staggered me. Grasses, trying to be trees, and
trees....

There were no words for the bigness, the health and vitality of Stegner
and the government bigwigs who had welcomed him here in South America.
But Stegner hustled me aside before I had time to do more than goggle at
the mammoth layout of this new Eden under government supervision. He
took me to his house, a huge thing built with huge hands, big enough to
accommodate a man ten feet tall! Yes, Stegner was a giant! _Everybody_
in that fantastic hideaway was a giant.

The second floor of the house overlooked a great, wide valley. Stegner
pointed one great finger to the horizon and I looked. There was an
endless fence out there. The same as in California, only more so. The
natives of the valley, the Indios, the rancheros, the more intelligent
animals, were trying to get in to the wonders they saw beyond that
fence. And some of them were dying against the killing electric charges
in its wires. Through a pair of glasses the Prof handed me, I saw that
some of the dead were human.

"That's murder!" I gasped.

Stegner's voice held the sadness of a great and sorrowful god. "I am in
a trap, my friend. I have pretended to acquiesce, but my cohorts are not
fully deluded as to my loyalty to the thing they plan. These government
men had gone mad with power. And the problem that now faces me seems
insurmountable. The peoples of this world are too small, morally, for so
big a life. I fear chaos. I thought that perhaps you, with your native
shrewdness, might help me unlock this prison I am in, reconcile this
Eden and its growth to the world that it must eventually overrun. It
_will_ overrun the planet, but I would prefer it not to be by violence
as these mad men plan it. They have selfishly taken my gift to mankind
to themselves, for their own aggrandizement."

I gulped. He thought I had the savvy to answer that o