ic charges were so
modulating ultra-waves that every detail of that calamitous battle of
the void was being screened and recorded in the innermost private
laboratory of the Triplanetary Service.

Eager though he naturally was to join his fellow-scientists, Cleveland
was not impatient during the long, but uneventful journey back to Earth.
There was much to study, many improvements to be made in his
comparatively crude first ultra-camera. Then, too, there were long
conferences with Samms, and particularly with Rodebush, the nuclear
physicist, who would have to do much of the work involved in solving the
riddles of the energies and weapons of the Nevians. Thus it did not seem
long before green Terra grew large beneath the flying sphere of the
_Chicago_.

"Going to have to circle it once, aren't you?" Cleveland asked the chief
pilot. He had been watching that officer closely for minutes, admiring
the delicacy and precision with which the great vessel was being
maneuvered preliminary to entering the Earth's atmosphere.

"Yes," the pilot replied. "We had to come in in the shortest possible
time, and that meant a velocity here that we can't check without a
spiral. However, even at that we saved a lot of time. You can save quite
a bit more, though, by having a rocket-plane come out to meet us
somewhere around fifteen or twenty thousand kilometers, depending upon
where you want to land. With their drives they can match our velocity
and still make the drop direct."

"Guess I'll do that--thanks," and the operative called his chief, only
to learn that his suggestion had already been acted upon.

"We beat you to it, Lyman," Samms smiled. "The _Silver Sliver_ is out
there now, looping to match your course, acceleraction, and velocity at
twenty two thousand kilometers. You'll be ready to transfer?"

"I'll be ready," and the Quartermaster's ex-clerk went to his quarters
and packed his dunnage-bag.

In due time the long, slender body of the rocket-plane came into view,
creeping "down" upon the space-ship from "above," and Cleveland bade his
friends goodbye. Donning a space-suit, he stationed himself in the
starboard airlock. Its atmosphere was withdrawn, the outer door opened,
and he glanced across a bare hundred feet of space at the rocket-plane
which, keel ports fiercely aflame, was braking her terrific speed to
match the slower pace of the gigantic sphere of war. Shaped like a
toothpick, needle-pointed fore and aft, with ultr