The fifth-order projector, with its almost infinitely complicated keyboard, must needs be studied until its every possible resource of integration, permutation, and combination held from him no more secrets than does his console from a master of the pipe organ. Thus it was that the Galaxy loomed ahead, a stupendous lens of flame, before DuQuesne had really realized that the long voyage was almost over. To his present mentality, working with his newly acquired fifth-order projector, the task of locating our Solar System was but the work of a moment; and to the power and speed of his new space ship the distance from the Galaxy's edge to the Earth was merely a longish jaunt. When they approached the Earth it appeared as a softly shining, greenish half moon. With fleecy wisps of cloud obscuring its surface here and there, with gleaming ice caps making of its poles two brilliant areas of white, it presented an arrestingly beautiful spectacle indeed; but DuQuesne was not interested in beauty. Driving down from the empty reaches of space north of the ecliptic, he observed that Washington was in the morning zone, and soon his great vessel was poised motionless, invisibly high above the city. His first act was to throw out an ultra-powered detector screen, with automatic trips and tighteners, around the entire Solar System; out far beyond the outermost point of the orbit of Pluto. Its every part remained unresponsive. No foreign radiation was present in all that vast volume of space, and DuQuesne turned to his henchman with cold satisfaction stamped upon his every hard lineament. "No interference at all, Doll. No ships, no projections, no spy rays, nothing," he said. "I can really get to work now. I won't be needing you for a while, and I imagine that, after being out in space so long, you would like to circulate around with the boys and girls for a couple of weeks or so. How are you fixed for money?" "Well, chief, I could do with a small binge and a few nights out among 'em, if it's all right with you," Loring admitted. "As for money, I've got only a couple of hundred on me, but I can get some at the office--we're quite a few pay days behind, you know." "Never mind about going to the office. I don't know exactly how well Brookings is going to like some of the things I'm going to tell him, and you're working for _me_, you know, not for the office. I've got plenty. Here's five thousand, and you can have three weeks to spend it in. Three weeks from to-day I'll call you on your wireless phone and tell you what to do. Until then, do as you please. Where do you want me to set you down? Perhaps the Perkins roof will be clear at this hour." "Good as any. Thanks, chief," and without even a glance to assure himself that DuQuesne was at the controls Loring made his way through the manifold airlocks and calmly stepped out into ten thousand feet of empty air. * * * * *