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may be bastards.”
    Light faded from the crystal. Old Huan Tsung smoked, considering the problem of human fallibility.
    * * *
    “This is stupendous!” Nayland Smith whispered.
    With Morris Craig, he stood under a dome which occupied one end of the Huston laboratory. It was opaque but contained four small openings. Set in it, rather as in an observatory, was an instrument closely resembling a huge telescope, except that it appeared to be composed of some dull black metal and had no lens.
    Through the four openings, Nayland Smith could see the stars.
    Like Craig, he wore green-tinted goggles.
    That part of the instrument where, in a real telescope, the eye-piece would be, rested directly over a solid table topped with a six-inch-thick sheet of a grey mineral substance. A massive portcullis of the same material enclosed the whole. It had just been raised. An acrid smell filled the air.
    “Some of the Manhattan rock below us is radioactive,” Craig had explained. “So, in a certain degree, are the buildings. Until I found that out, I got no results.”
    Complex machinery mounted on a concrete platform, machinery which emitted a sort of radiance and created vibrations which seemed to penetrate one’s spine, had been disconnected by Regan from its powerful motors.
    In a dazzling, crackling flash, Nayland Smith had seen a lump of solid steel not melt, but disperse, disintegrate, vanish! A pinch of greyish powder alone remained.
    “Keep the goggles on for a minute,” said Craig. “Of course, you understand that this is merely a model plant. I might explain that the final problem, which I think I have solved, is the transmuter.”
    “Nice word,” snapped Smith. “What does it mean?”
    “Well—it’s more than somewhat difficult to define. Sort of ring-a-ring of neutrons, pocket full of plutrons. It’s a method of controlling and directing the enormous power generated here.”
    Nayland Smith was silent for a moment He was dazed by the thing he had seen, appalled by its implications.
    “If I understand you, Craig,” he said rapidly, “this device enables you to tap the great belt of ultraviolet rays which, you tell me, encloses the earth’s atmosphere a hundred miles above the ionosphere—whatever that is.”
    “Roughly speaking—yes. The term, ultraviolet, is merely one of convenience. Like marmalade for a preparation containing no oranges.”
    “So far, so good. Now tell me—when your transmuter is completed, what can you
do
with this thing?”
    “Well”—Craig removed his goggles and brushed his hair back—“I could probably prevent any kind of projectile, or plane, from entering the earth’s atmosphere over a controlled area. That is, if I could direct my power upward and outward.”
    “Neutralizing the potential of atomic warfare?”
    “I suppose it would.”
    “What about directed downward and inward?” rapped Smith.
    “Well”—Craig smiled modestly—“that’s all I
can
do at the moment. And you have seen one result.”
    Nayland Smith snatched the goggles from his eyes.
    “Do you realize what this means?”
    “Clearly. What?”
    “It means that you’re a focus of interest for God knows how many trained agents. I know now why New York has become a hotbed of spies. You don’t appreciate your own danger.”
    Morris Craig began to feel bewildered.
    “Do try to be lucid, Smith.
What
danger? Why should
I
be in danger?”
    Nayland Smith’s expression grew almost savage. “Was
I
in danger today? Then tell me what became of Dr. Sven Helsen—inventor of the Helsen lamp?”
    “That’s easy. I don’t know.”
    “And of Professor Chiozza, in his stratoplane, in which he went up to pass out of the earth’s atmosphere?”
    “Probably passed out of same—and stayed out.”
    “Not a bit of it. Dr. Fu-Manchu
destroys
obstacles as we destroy flies. But he
collects
specialized brains as some men collect rare postage stamps. How do you get in and out of this place at night when the corporation