s down.

Hanley's Wasp had landed: we saw its lights half a mile from us. And
then the lights of another ship--an X-flyer convoying Hanley--slowly
materializing nearby.

And then reunion. Jetta and I left De Boer's invisible vessel and
clambered over the rocks. And presently Hanley, staring at our
grotesque black forms, came rushing forward and greeted us.

We were an hour locating De Boer's flyer, for all that Jetta and I had
just left it and thought we could find our way back. But we stumbled
onto it at last. Hanley felt his way aboard and brought it to
visibility. It has since been returned to the Anti-War Department,
with the compliments of Hanley's Office.

The ransom money was restored to its proper source. Spawn's treasure
of radiumized quicksilver we shipped back to Nareda, where it was
checked and divided, and Jetta's share legally awarded to her.

De Boer was dead when Hanley found him that night on the rocks. Jetta
and I did not go to look at him....

The balloon basket landed safely. Hanley and his men were down there
in time to seize it. Hans was caught; and Gutierrez, within the sack,
was found to be uninjured. They are incarcerated now in Nareda. They
were willing to tell the location of the bandit stronghold. A raid
there the following day resulted in the capture of most of De Boer's
men.

All this is now public news. You have heard it, of course. Yet in my
narrative, setting down the events as I lived them, I have tried to
give more vivid details than the bare facts as they were blared
through the public audiphones.

An episode of the strange, romantic, fantastic Lowlands. A very
unimportant series of incidents mingled with the news of a busy
world--just a few minutes of the newscasters' time to tell how a band
of depth smugglers was caught.

But it was a very important episode to me. It changed, for me, a
clanking, thrumming machine-made world into a shining fairyland of
dreams come true. It gave me little Jetta.

(_The End_)

Vagabonds of Space

A COMPLETE NOVELETTE

_By Harl Vincent_

[Illustration: _Carr went mad with fury. There it was, looming close
in his vision._]

[Sidenote: From the depths of the Sargasso Sea of Space came the
thought-warning, "Turn back!" But Carr and his Martian friend found it
was too late!]

CHAPTER I

_The Nomad_

Gathered around a long table in a luxuriously furnished director's
room, a group of men listened in astonishment to the rapid