intensity of
power, with every safeguard for complete invisibility and silence.
From where I sat I could make out the black form of Hans through the
ceiling grid, at his pilot controls in the overhead cubby. A queer
glow like an aura was around him. The same green radiance suffused the
control room. It could not penetrate the opened windows of the ship;
could not pass beyond the electro-magnetic field enveloping us. Nor
could the curious hum which permeated the ship's interior get past the
barrage barrier. From outside, I knew, we were invisible and
inaudible.

Strange unreality, here in the control room! The black-garbed figures
of De Boer and Jetta at their table were unreal, spectral. At the door
oval, which I could barely see, Gutierrez lurked like a shadow. All of
them, and Hans in the cubby above, were garbed in tight-fitting
dead-black suits of silklene fabric. Thin, elastic as sheer silk web,
opaque, lustreless. It covered their feet, legs and bodies; and their
arms and hands like black, silk gloves. Their heads were helmeted with
it. And they had black masks which as yet were flapped up and fastened
to the helmet above their foreheads. Their faces only were exposed,
tinted a ghastly, lurid green by this strange light. It glowed and
glistened like phosphorescence on their eyeballs, making them the eyes
of animals in a hunter's torchlight, at night.

* * * * *

De Boer moved upon an errand across the control room. He was a burly
black spectre in the skin-tight suit. His footfalls faintly sounded on
the metal floor. They were toneless footfalls. Unreal. They might
have been bells, or jangling thuds; they had lost their identity in
this soundless, vibrating hum.

And he spoke, "We are making good progress, Jetta. We will be on
time."

Ghastly voice! So devoid of every human timbre, every overtone shade
to give it meaning, that it might have been a man's voice, or a
woman's, the voice of something living, or something dead. Sepulchral.
A stripped shell of voice. Yet to me, inside here with it, it was
perfectly audible.

And Jetta said, "Yes, Hendrick, that is good."

A voice like his: no different.

Gruesome. Weird.

* * * * *

I try now to picture the scene in detail, for out of these strange
conditions Jetta and I were to make our opportunity.

9 P.M. De Boer was a methodical fellow. He checked his position on the
chart. He signalled th