"But they aren't," Shelby assured her. "They don't polarize the reflected light of the sun as space ships do. Besides, where could they have been built? Certainly not among the planetoids. And any place on the planets, the Taraal desert for instance, would be an almost equally impossible site for their construction. "Think of the enormous crews of men and the vast supplies of food and water and materials that would have to be taken out there into the wilderness. Undoubtedly Hekalu could back such a project financially, but he would be discovered before he had made a fair start, and the Martian Planet Patrol would wipe him out of existence. Still, though I don't think that the luminous specks are man-built vessels, I am equally certain that they aren't meteors either." "Then what are they?" The young man smiled and shrugged. "I don't know," he said. The intuitive feeling that unknown, and not too beneficient forces were at work in the ether about, was troubling him again, making his scalp muscles tingle. For a moment Shelby stared at the ground. "Jan," he said, "I didn't tell you what I saw on the liner. I didn't tell anyone because I don't want to be called a lunatic. But I guess it's all right to let you in on this now. Briefly, during the sleep period, I came upon Hekalu Selba prowling in a passageway aboard the _Ekova_, in the company of a vague thing that may have been similar to that shape in the photograph--long arms, big head, squat and muscular. If we knew what that thing was, and where it came from, the snarl might be half untangled." Janice Darell's face took on a sudden surprised look. "You actually saw what you say you saw?" she cried. When her companion nodded, she continued excitedly with wide-open eyes. "I still believe that Hekalu knows something about the meteor cluster. And the beast figures in somewhere too. Austin," she cried, "what if Hekki is trying something really great? I know you don't take stock in any such idea, but just supposing he is--what if--" "Let him try!" the young man cut in. "I almost wish he would! I'm afraid he would get the surprise of his life." He was staring straight at the unwinking, malignant eyes of the Sadu moth. "What do you mean?" Shelby drew a small black case from his sleeve pocket and opened it. He took from it a device which looked like a tiny pistol. There were several other odds and ends of mechanisms in the case. "For a year I have been working on a new weapon," he said. "All the parts are completed, and tonight I shall finish assembling them. This little gun is the projector for a new ray which I have discovered--an etheric vibration of extremely short wavelength. A portion of the atomic energy in any solid or liquid substance the ray touches is instantly released.