Alice interrupted him, explaining, “Grandfather has been making tests. We have several models; he saved one of them to show you. We can see it now?” She looked inquiringly at her grandfather. Dr. Weatherby rose to his feet. “We’ll try it now. I’ll show you the model and we’ll send it . . . away. “Come,” he added. “When you see it start, you will understand.” We left the house. Night had closed down, a soft, cloudless night. Never had I seen the stars so brilliant. Dr. Weatherby led us up a path, beneath spreading trees, past gardens of flowers, past his lake with its pool and a cascading brook for its outlet down the hillside to the Hudson; past the shadowy landing stage where high overhead my plane lay moored; up the slope of a hill to a long, narrow outbuilding. Jim and I had noticed this building when we landed at dawn. It was new to us, erected during the year or so since we had last been here. “My workshop,” Dr. Weatherby said as we approached it. * * * * * I gazed at it curiously. It was a single-story building, without windows, flat-roofed and no more than twenty feet high. In width, possibly thirty feet, but it was at least five times that long. It lay crosswise on the hill. At a glance I could not guess of what materials it might be constructed. Wood, stone, metal—it seemed none of these. Its aspect was whitish, not silvery, or milky; rather was it a dead flesh white, with a faintly lurid cast of green to it. In the starlight it lay silent and unlighted. But there seemed to it a glow, as though it were bathed in moonlight. And then I saw that the glow was inherent in it, almost a phosphorescence. Abruptly I felt that there was something uncanny, unnatural about this structure. I made no comment. But I saw surprise on Jim’s face, and at the lower end of the building where there appeared to be a door, he stopped, irresolute. “Is . . . is the projectile in here?” “Yes,” said Alice. “Inside. But we’re going to the test room first, aren’t we, Grandfather?” We went through a door and along a narrow passage. It was dimly illumined by small blue vacuum tubes overhead. I found myself with Dolores. “It’s very wonderful,” she said. “You will see, very soon. Oh, yes, where is Jim? I want Jim to see it.” “You’re not afraid, Dolores? Afraid of this voyage they talk about?” “Afraid? Oh, no!” The passageway widened. “Here is Jim,” I said. “Jim, stay with Dolores. She wants to show you this . . . this thing we’ve come to see.” We entered a room some thirty feet square. Dr. Weatherby switched on the lights. There were furniture, rugs, small tables of apparatus, instruments, and banks of vacuum tubes on tripods standing about, with wires in insulated cables connecting them. The cables littered the floor, like huge snakes.