found no ready
reply to that. But he told the man of McGuire and the things that had
made him captive; he related what he, himself, had seen in the dark
night on Mount Lawson, and he told of the fragmentary message that
showed McGuire was still alive.

"There's only one way to save him," he urged. "If your ship is what
you claim it is--and I believe you one hundred per cent--it is all
that can save him from what will undoubtedly be a horrible death.
Those things were monsters--inhuman!--and they have bombarded the
earth. They will come back in less than a year and a half to destroy
us."

Captain Blake would have said he was no debater, but the argument and
persuasion that he used that night would have done credit to a
Socrates. His opponent was difficult to convince, and not till the
next day did the inventor show Blake his ship.

"Small," he said as he led the flyer toward it. "Designed just for the
moon trip, and I had meant to go alone. But it served; it took us
there and back again."

He threw open a door in the side of the metal cylinder. Blake stood
back for only a moment to size up the machine, to observe its smooth
duralumin shell and the rounded ends where portholes opened for the
expelling of its driving blast. The door opening showed a thick wall
that gave insulation. Blake followed the inventor to the interior of
the ship.

* * * * *

The man had seen Winslow examining the thick walls. "It's cold out
there, you know," he said, and smiled in recollection, "but the
generator kept us warm." He pointed to a simple cylindrical casting
aft of the ship's center part. It was massive, and braced to the
framework of the ship to distribute a thrust that Blake knew must be
tremendous. Heavy conduits took the blast that it produced and poured
it from ports at bow and stern. There were other outlets, too, above
and below and on the sides, and electric controls that were
manipulated from a central board.

"You've got a ship," Blake admitted, "and it's a beauty. I know
construction, and you've got it here. But what is the power? How do
you drive it? What throws it out through space?"

"Aside from one other, you will be the only man ever to know." The
bearded man was quiet now and earnest. The wild light had faded from
his eyes, and he pondered gravely in making the last and final
decision.

"Yes, you shall have it. It may be I have been mistaken. I have known
people--some few--wh