ho had abundant blond hair and
steady steel-blue eyes.

"What do you make of that thing, Vanderpool?" he asked, almost ignoring
the presence of Inga.

"I don't know enough about it yet to be able to express an opinion,"
Dirk replied. "We will find out about it soon enough," he added, "so why
worry about it in the meantime?"

"It is well enough to affect such an attitude," said Stanton, with a
touch of sarcasm in his voice, "but let me tell you, Vanderpool, that
there is good reason to worry about it."

* * * * *

Dirk frowned at the statement as he saw a shadow pass over the fair face
of Inga.

"That thing up there," continued Stanton, with conviction in his voice,
"is not a natural phenomenon. I flew fairly close to it in my plane and
I know what I am speaking about. That thing is some sort of a monster,
Vanderpool, that is made of metal or of some composition that is an
unearthly equivalent of metal. It is a diabolical creation of some sort
that has come from out of the fathomless depths of the universe." He
shuddered at the fantasy that his feverish imagination was creating. "It
is metal, I tell you," he continued, "but it is metal that is endowed
with some sort of intelligence. I was up there," he breathed swiftly,
"and I saw it hanging there in the sky, quivering with heat and life."

"You are nervous, Stanton," said Vanderpool coolly. "Get a grip on
yourself, man, and look at the thing reasonably. If that thing has
intelligence," he added, "we will find some way to slay it."

"Slay it!" exclaimed Stanton. "How can you expect to slay a mad creation
that can leap through space, from world to world, like a wasp goes
darting from flower to flower? How can you kill a thing which not only
defies absolute zero but also the immeasurable heat which its friction
with the atmosphere generated when it plunged toward the earth? How can
you kill a thing that seems to have brains and nerves and bones and
flesh of some strange substance that is harder and tougher than any
earthly compound we have discovered?"

* * * * *

He stopped speaking for a moment. They listened to the voice that was
broadcasting from the Worldwide Tower.

"--our planes have approached to within a few thousand feet of it
and are playing their searchlights over the surface of the leviathan.
It is not a meteorite of any kind that scientists have heretofore
examined--its surface is smo