The War Secretary stopped before me. "I've radioed your father this morning, Peter. Told him to send that Xenephrene girl up here to us at once! We've got to do something. We must learn if we can what these unearthly enemies are like--do scientifically what we can to oppose them." He gestured at me vehemently. "You Hollanders are very stubborn, young Peter. Your father told me he was very busy--he'd have full information for me in a day or two! That's the scientist for you! Taking it methodically, with that damn scientific routine, when a day or two is an eternity just now!" I regarded Freddie. We did not smile; in these terrible days there was not a smile left in us. But Freddie nodded. "That's father's way," I said. "But--" "Well, I told him I was sending a special plane down there at once to get him and the girl. The Venezuelan Government is demanding details of us. Every thirty minutes Caracas calls me up. Makes a fool of us--a girl of this unknown enemy race right in our hands and we don't produce her! Your father said, 'Good! Send Peter and young Fred Smith--I want to see them anyway.'" There was nothing that could have pleased Freddie and myself better. The secretary offered us a pilot, but we did not want one. We started that morning, armed with legal papers, given us jocularly, but with serious intent, nevertheless, and commanding father's presence with Zetta in Miami the next day. * * * * * It was eleven o'clock when we got away in the big Arctic A plane. A black morning with swift, low clouds, and a wind from the north. Flying southeast, we had scarcely left the Bahamas behind us when the weather cleared. Cold starlight shone on a dark, cold ocean. Icebergs had been seen down this far, but we did not chance to pass any now. But we saw many scurrying steamships. In some four hours we raised the Morrow light of San Juan and I turned southwest, to strike the coast beyond Arecibo. Flying low, we headed in, over the line of breakers on the white beach. Columbus landed near here, not so many lifetimes ago. Yet how different was the world then! The tumbled mountains rising behind the sea which Columbus had described to Isabella rose before us now. The same shape; every tiny peak undoubtedly the same. But they were not the vivid warm green which had so enchanted the mariner. These were cold and blue gray, and the tops of them were white with snow. It was mid-afternoon when, in the darkness, we dropped with a roar upon Dan's landing stage at the foot of the knoll. We leaped from the plane and hurried up the hill, to see Dan and father, and Hulda and the Cains waving at us from the veranda, and a small, strange white figure of a girl standing among them.