Very human indeed! The Secretary of the Navy sat savagely chewing on the stump of an old cigar, blowing on his hands, cursing the cold intervals. The Air Secretary was pouring hot coffee at the end of the table, shoving a litter of papers out of his way to make room for the cups. The stooped, middle-aged, haggard gentleman pacing the floor was our President. "Grasping at a straw," said the War Secretary. In a sudden silence, through an open doorway to the room adjoining, I could hear the clatter of the southern telegraphs, telephone bells, the hiss and splutter of the radio and television instruments. "Close that door," the secretary added querulously. "You've brought your model, Smith? Put it here on the table--tell us about it." * * * * * Freddie opened his apparatus and explained it briefly. His so-called thermodyne principle. Though ultimately he had hoped to adapt it into a motor of revolutionary design, his present model was merely a small projector. "Projector of what?" demanded the President irritably. "Of heat, sir," Freddie answered. "I'll show you. This is a very small model, of course, but it demonstrates the principle." They did not want any technicalities from Freddie. He explained only that his apparatus, in this present small form, took a tiny electric spark and built it up into a new form of radiant heat. "It is," said Freddie, "heat of totally different properties from the kind with which we commonly deal. It travels--radiates, by the diffusion of its electrons, more like light than heat. At a great speed--I think possibly, at over a hundred thousand miles a second." He opened his apparatus. It consisted of a small, flat, metallic box, curved to fit a man's chest. A disk, like a small electrode, to be pressed against the skin. Freddie bared his chest and strapped it on. "I use," he said, "the tiny electrical impulse which the human body itself furnishes. This, I amplify, build up and store in a battery." Wires from the generator led to a small box which he opened to show his audience--a box of coils, and a tiny row of amplifying tubes. He put this in his pocket, with wires leading to the battery and the projector. These were both in one piece--the projector a small metallic funnel, with a trigger; a grid of wires was across its opened end; it had a long metallic handle, in the hollow interior of which was the battery where the charge was concentrated. "Electrons of heat under pressure," said Freddie. "Show us," said some one. Freddie erected a screen across the room--an insulating screen to kill the heat-beam so that it could not injure the wall. The men moved aside. Freddie, after a moment to generate and concentrate the charge, raised the muzzle.