to make them something like these; with Dunark's
permission. These instruments are wonders, Dick--vastly ahead of
anything I have ever seen. Come and look at them, if you want to see
something really beautiful."

"Coming up. But say, Mart, while I think of it, we mustn't forget to
install a zone-of-force apparatus on this boat, too. Even though we
can't use it intelligently, it certainly would be a winner as a defense.
We couldn't hurt anybody through it, of course, but if we should happen
to be getting licked anywhere, all we'd have to do would be to wrap
ourselves up in it. They couldn't touch us. Nothing in the ether
spectrum is corkscrewy enough to get through it."

"That's the second idea you've had since I've known you, Dicky," Dorothy
smiled at Crane. "Do you think he should be allowed to run at large,
Martin?"

"That is a real idea. We may need it--you never can tell. Even if we
never find any other use for the zone of force, that one is amply
sufficient to justify its installation."

"Yes, it would be, for you--and I'm getting to be a regular Safety-First
Simon myself, since they opened up on us. What about those instruments?"

* * * * *

The three men gathered around the instrument-board and Dunark explained
the changes he had made--and to such men as Seaton and Crane it was soon
evident that they were examining an installation embodying sheer
perfection of instrumental control--a system which only those wonder
instrument-makers, the Osnomians, could have devised. The new
object-compasses were housed in arenak cases after setting, and the
housings were then exhausted to the highest attainable vacuum.
Oscillation was set up by means of one carefully standardized electrical
impulse, instead of by the clumsy finger-touch Seaton had used. The
bearings, built of arenak and Osnomian jewels, were as strong as the
axles of a truck and yet were almost perfectly frictionless.

"I like them myself," admitted Dunark. "Without a load the needles will
rotate freely more than a thousand hours on the primary impulse, as
against a few minutes in the old type; and under load they are many
thousands of times as sensitive."

"You're a blinding flash and a deafening report, ace!" declared Seaton,
enthusiastically. "That compass is as far ahead of my model as the
_Skylark_ is ahead of Wright's first glider."

The other instruments were no less noteworthy. Dunark had adopted the
Perkins tel