It struck Hulda with a guilty pang, hearing this after her own jealousy of Zetta; for Hulda was no more than human, and there had been days when secretly she hotly resented the strange and beautiful girl's presence in the house with Dan. But that was over. Hulda exclaimed impulsively, "I do love her!" The two girls' glances met affectionately. "Yes," Zetta said suddenly. "We do love ver' much." Father went on: "She is here--came here to help us. All this time, in her own way, she has been striving to learn our language that she might tell us. She has told me everything. Zetta, tell them--just what you told me--" Father stopped his nervous pacing and sat down abruptly. And without preface, quietly, sometimes haltingly, in her strangely small voice and curiously clipped syllables, Zetta began her amazing narrative. CHAPTER V CRIMSON SOUND! On the afternoon of March 3, Freddie and I, in Miami, were summoned by the War Department, which was installed here in temporary quarters after the flight from Washington. We were greeted by the secretary, who introduced us to a dozen or more grave-faced officials who were seated around a large table in a cold, badly illuminated room. They were under the impression that I had recently been to Porto Rico with my father; they wanted further details from me, as an eyewitness, to supplement the information which had been furnished them concerning the captive girl from Xenephrene. I had not been to Porto Rico; I could tell them nothing, but I remained at the conference with Freddie. Of him, they wanted a demonstration of his invention. The War Secretary laughed, but it was a very hollow, mirthless laugh. "You see, young man, we are almost in the position of grasping at straws." By the general public, who reads of war conferences and grave official decisions given with calm dignity in times of national crisis, the inner workings of a government are never understood. The people naturally picture men of great intellect, calmly, judicially weighing problems of international law, and quietly giving their decisions, as though the whole matter were controlled by some giant, insensate machine of precision, incapable of error, undisturbed by human feeling. It is not so. Or, at least, I can vouch for the fact that in the darkness of this afternoon of March 3, 1953, in the United States War Department at Miami, it most certainly was not so. These gray-haired men were very human. Most were unshaved, with rumpled hair and reddened eyes. Distraught, harassed; undecided; doubtful of everything; striving to do the best they could, with the welfare of millions of their people at stake. Conditions of unprecedented disaster had for weeks assailed them. Under this culminating blow--invaders from another world landing to attack what was once our greatest city--they were all but broken.