he
approached the sacred precincts of the captain's own and inviolate room,
he was stopped in no uncertain fashion by no less a personage than the
Officer of the Day.

"... and report yourself under arrest immediately!" the O.D. concluded
his brief but pointed speech.

"You were right in stopping me, of course," the intruder conceded,
unmoved. "I wanted to get in there without giving everything away, if
possible, but it seems that I can't. Well, I've been ordered by Virgil
Samms to report to the Captain, at once. See this? Touch it!" He held
out a flat, insulated disk, cover thrown back to reveal a tiny golden
meteor, at the sight of which the officer's truculent manner altered
markedly.

"I've heard of them, of course, but I never saw one before," and the
officer touched the shining symbol lightly with his finger, jerking
backward as there shot through his whole body a thrilling surge of
power, shouting into his very bones an unpronounceable syllable--the
password of the Triplanetary Service. "Genuine or not, it gets you to
the Captain. He'll know, and if it's a fake you'll be breathing space in
five minutes."

Projector at the ready, the Officer of the Day followed Cleve into the
Holy of Holies. There the grizzled four-striper touched the golden
meteor lightly, then drove his piercing gaze deep into the unflinching
eyes of the younger man. But that captain had won his high rank neither
by accident nor by "pull"--he understood at once.

"It _must_ be an emergency," he growled, half-audibly, still staring at
his lowly Q-M clerk, "to make Samms uncover this way." He turned and
curtly dismissed the wondering O.D. Then: "All right! Out with it!"

"Serious enough so that every one of us afloat has just received orders
to reveal himself to his commanding officer and to anyone else, if
necessary to reach that officer at once--orders never before issued. The
enemy have been located. They have built a base, and have ships better
than our best. Base and ships cannot be seen or detected by any ether
wave. However, the Service has been experimenting for years with a new
type of communicator beam; and, while pretty crude yet, it was given to
us when the _Dione_ went out without leaving a trace. One of our men was
in the _Hyperion_, managed to stay alive, and has been sending data. I
am instructed to attach my new phone set to one of the universal plates
in your conning room, and to see what I can find."

"Go to it!" The c