Chief of Police Joe McCullough had settled back to a good fat cigar and the latest issue of the "Sports Digest." His long legs stretched lankily across a chair; his heavy red face wore an expression almost of contentment, except when now and then he mopped the sweat from his brow with a crimson-bordered handkerchief. "Damn this heat!" he finally muttered, glaring at the electric fan as if to accuse it of criminal conspiracy. And just then the door opened, and the sandy head of Sergeant Johannsen intruded. "Sorry to butt in, Chief, but a dame out here wants to see you." McCullough let out a low oath. "Didn't I tell you I don't want to be pestered? See her yourself, Johannsen. You're no slouch when it comes to dames." And, with a growl, he turned back to the "Sports Digest." "But she swears she's gotta see you, Chief. Just can't do a thing with her. Something damned important, she says." "Tell her to go to hell!" Even as he spoke, a woman's face poked itself through the doorway. It was a face naturally comely, with clear blue eyes, and handsomely chiselled chin and brow; but just now she looked like the victim of a cyclone. Her clothes were rumpled; her disordered hair hung far down her forehead; there were tear-stains beneath her eyes, which blazed with a wild, impatient light. "Chief McCullough?" she demanded. Had she been a man, she would have been ejected without debate. As it was, the Chief merely gaped at her, abashed, while awkwardly withdrawing his feet from their comfortable perch. "Yes, Ma'am. What can I do for you?" "Something nobody else can do, Mr. McCullough. I know of a plot, sir--the most fiendish plot ever imagined. You'll hardly believe it, but I've just come down--well, down from one of the Crystal Planetoids, where they've hatched a scheme to capture the earth." * * * * * McCullough gaped, and let the "Sports Digest" drop from his hands. He had had experience with crazy women before, but never with one who had dug out a scheme to capture the earth. The best thing to do with her kind was to let them rave on. If you tried to interrupt them, they were apt to get hysterical. And so it was with a polite but skeptical smile that he listened to her story of invaders as tall as a two-story house, who had enormous stinging tails and were invisible in ordinary light. Mid-way in her recital, he scowled reproof at Sergeant Johannsen, who seemed about to break out in open laughter; and, when she had finished, he thoughtfully took up his cigar, which he had put down for the moment, and remarked, with an attempt at courtesy, "Well, now that's all too bad, Sister. The thing I'd advise you to do is to go home and sleep it off. These are queer times, you know. Why, with all this heat and tension, it's surprising we're not all seeing rattlesnakes and tigers. So you just have a good sleep, and tomorrow you'll feel better." The girl stared at McCullough in dismay.