Evidently, this was one of Jud’s choicest tapestries, for the noble emitted a howl of grief and rage, and leaped from his divan, scattering the reclining beauties in both directions. If he had interfered in time to prevent the burning, it would have spoiled the trick, but as it was, the confusion caused by his onrush played right into Cabot’s hands. Myles stepped back in apparent terror as Jud seized his precious curtain and hunted for the scorched hole. But there was no hole there; the curtain was intact. Jud looked up sheepishly into the triumphant face of his protégé, who thereupon stated: “You did not need to worry about your property in the hands of a true magician.” “Oh, I was not afraid,” Jud the Excuse-Maker explained. “I merely pretended fear, so as to try and confuse your magic.” “Please do not do it again,” the earth-man sternly admonished him. The Vairking noble seated himself again. His guests were enthralled. This was a fitting climax for the evening. The amateur conjurer bowed low and withdrew. Quivven was waiting for him at his house, and reported that some one had torn a small piece out of one of the tapestries. Several days later she found the piece, but alas, there was a hole burnt in the middle of it. The next morning Jud the Excuse-Maker called at the quarters of Cabot, the furless. It was a rare honor, so Cabot answered the door in person. Jud expressed his conviction that the earth-man really was a magician, after all, and that therefore he—Jud—was agreeable to an expedition to the mountains in search of rocks whose mystical properties would enable the performing of even greater magic. It was soon arranged that Cabot, with a bodyguard of some twenty Vairking soldiers and a low-ranking officer, should start on the morrow. Myles was thrilled. Now he was getting somewhere at last! The rest of the day he devoted to preparing a list of the materials for which he must hunt. To make a radio-telephone sending and receiving set, he would need dielectrics, copper wire, batteries, tubes, and iron. For dielectrics, wood and mica would suffice. Wood was common, and the Vairkings were skilled carpenters and carvers. For fine insulation, mica would be ideal; and this mineral ought to be procurable somewhere in the mountains, whose general nature he had observed to be granitic. To make copper wire, he would need copper ore—preferably pyrites—quartz, limestone, and fuel. The necessary furnaces he would built of brick; any one can bake clay into bricks. For cement, Myles finally hit upon using a baked and ground mixture of limestone and clay, both of which ingredients he would have at hand for other purposes. The Vairkings used charcoal in their open fires, and this would do nicely for his fuel.