melted his way through walls of stone; and, like the stone, steel bars
and human flesh were as nothing before the invisible heat that come from
a slender rod!

His own voice, when he moved his dry tongue to speak, came huskily; it
was as if another person were speaking far off:

"I think you're wrong ... yes, I thing you're wrong, Chief. There's
one man who knows and 'tis myself is that one.... One man--and the
other is a beast like no livin' man on the face of the earth! _He_
knows--he and the devils he's brought with him!"

* * * * *

It was an unsatisfactory interview that Danny had with the Chief.
"You're crazy!" was the verdict of that A. F. F. official when Danny
had finished. "You're crazy, or else--or else--" His voice trailed
off; his eyes were on the moving letters that flashed their message of
disaster in an ever changing procession across the scanning screen on
the wall.

"... outbreaks have ceased ... tremendous destruction ... no rational
explanation ... meteors, perhaps ... thousands of lives ... no
estimate...."

There seemed no end to the tale of disaster, and the Chief's voice
died away into silence. If Danny was right he had no words to fit the
unbelievable truth.

"Get into your new ship," the Chief ordered brusquely, "and take the
Infant with you. I'll send a relief man to his station. Go east--lay
your course for Washington; you'll get other orders on the way!"

And a half hour later the first rocket ship of the A. F. F. was
blasting its way through the thin gases of the stratosphere eastward
bound. But by now Danny O'Rourke had a more sympathetic listener than
before.

"In big puddles it was, and lakes! 'Twas still melted, some of it, in
that valley."

"Why not?" asked the Infant casually. "Radiant heat moves with the
speed of light. We wouldn't think anything of focusing ten million
candle power of light energy into a spot like that. Why not heat? Just
because we haven't learned to generate it--focus it--shoot it out in a
stream like water from a hose--there's no use in denying that someone
else has beat us to the punch."

The Infant's calm blue eyes were upon the luminous plates of the
ship's microscope where the swift moving terrain beneath them was
pictured clearly. The mountains were behind them now; endless miles of
ripening grain made the land a sea of yellow and brown and, across
that ocean, like the lines of foam that mark the wake of ships,