Dan was struggling on the floor with something. I could see his arms encircling it--something large. He rolled, fought. Freddie jumped for him. I dropped the letter, dashed to where both Freddie and Dan were rolling on the floor, gripping something in a glow of humming red sound. They both shouted: "Peter, watch out! Keep away! Watch him--grab him if he slips loose--" I was standing over them. From the red confusion a naked arm emerged for an instant. I seized it--a queerly light but solid arm of bone and flesh and muscle. But it jerked away. There was a crash as the table overturned. "Peter! Hold him! Peter--Freddie, let go of me--don't be a fool! Let go of me, I tell you!" Something caught me in the face with a burning blow like a fire-brand. I staggered back; my flailing arms hit nothing. The room was whining with sound. On the floor Dan and Freddie in a fog of red glow, now dissipating, were shouting and struggling to disentangle themselves from each other. I heard a thump; the sound of running, padding footsteps. Before I could recover my balance from the blow in the face the sound was gone. A clatter in the adjoining bedroom, then silence. Dan and Freddie stood erect. Panting, shaking and confused. In the bedroom, the window was again open. The intruder had gone. On the floor by the cylinder lay the white metal cube which had so nearly been stolen from us. We lifted it up. It seemed uninjured. On it was a tag, with father's inscription: "Reet catalyst concentrated--B Formula. Guard this well, Peter! Without it, your enterprise would be impossible!" CHAPTER IX PIONEERS INTO SPACE June 14, 1957, I set down the date with my recollection that it was for me the most momentous day of my life to that time. And I think, for Dan and Freddie also--the day upon which, after more than sixteen months of activity, we three were ready at last for the trip to Xenephrene. The events of those sixteen months were to me the mere bridging of an interval unimportant save in its consummation. There were times when we all thought we would fail. I am not of a scientific trend of mind; nor is Dan. Upon Freddie both he and I depended for a complete understanding of father's scientific data. Even so, there seemed to Dan and me in our impatience and futility at our own lack of scientific training a great deal about father's instructions that Freddie himself but half understood. And this Freddie admitted. We would have failed, I have no doubt, had our government disdained us. But it did not. From the first we had back of us not only government funds, but the full resources of the government's laboratories and technical staff.