"And then what?" sneered Kingston. "It seems to me that your suggestion is the beginning of the end." "Not at all. Once we establish the possibility beyond a doubt, we can so very easily rotate the hunk of atomic fire back into Earth Two again." Kingston thought for a moment. Then he nodded. "We must move lightning fast," he said sharply. "Because I will hazard a bet that Earth Two considered the idea of getting rid of their atomic fire by sending it through the space resonator. And rejected it because their own Earth Two was badly treated by the original fire. After all, there's no use in staying with a partly ruined, semi-radioactive Earth Two when Earth One, complete and unharmed, lies like a ripe apple for them to pluck." Maddox nodded. "It will have to be quick," he said. "For either one of them is quite capable of turning the stuff this way once they suspect." Kingston turned to the kinescope screen and scowled at Virginia and Bronson. "There," he said, "are two of the four or five people who have within their grasp the truth of the matter--and they are the two who have sufficient imagination to reason it out!" "And once she kills him that will leave only her!" Maddox nodded idly and began to set up equipment, saying, "No time like the present." "For what?" "I'm interested in knowing whether the atomic fire will burn Earth Three as well as Earth Two." Kingston shrugged. "Y'know," he said quietly, "if it does ruin Earth Three nothing says that you and I can't pass over ourselves anyway." Maddox smiled. "Indubitably," he agreed dryly. It was quite obvious that Leader Kingston had given him nothing new in ideas. * * * * * Unlike the slow space resonator of Earth Two, the ones used on Earth Three went with lightning swiftness. They were smaller, more efficient, showed a deeper grasp of the art and the principles involved. Maddox picked his collection of equipment up and headed for the door. "What are you going to use for a focal volume?" demanded Kingston. "You have no focal point." "Won't need one," smiled Maddox. "That's a true atomic flame. As in the sun there will be minute traces of all elements contained therein and all we need is a trace. For like the sun, Earth Two's atomic flame is both building up and tearing down all elements possible. Come on--I'll prove my point." For a brief time, Harry Maddox drove like a maniac through the air in his atom-powered speedster. Leaving behind it the whistling scream of its supersonic passage from Albuquerque to Alamogordo, the fleet craft made the passage in minutes. At the site of the original, Maddox landed. There on the desert was the steel tower that had held the Alamogordo Bomb before its trial. On Earth One there was but a shallow depression of broken green--glazed sand. On Earth Two there burned a pillar of atomic fire for miles in radius from this very spot. Here Maddox set up his space resonator.