She hesitated for a moment. Then, carefully, "I am acting under orders, Captain O'Shea. They were supposed to be _secret_ orders. But in view of what has happened--" She made up her mind. "It would be better for more than one to know. In case--in case anything should happen to me. "You've heard of Dr. Mallory?" "Thomas Mallory?" I said. "The physicist? The one who pestered the daylights out of the government about some crack-brained invention during the early days of the war? Is he the one you mean?" "Yes. The government isn't too sure, now, that it acted wisely in refusing to listen to his plan. But you know how it was for a while. Miracle men flooded the War Department with fantastic ideas for 'smashing the enemy.' "Only, in this last extremity, the War Department decided to investigate Mallory's claim. As a last resort. I was commissioned to find him, bring him to Louisville. But now--" Uncertainly. "Now I don't know just what I ought to do. Even if he has a plan, and a good one, there is no one to whom we can communicate it." * * * * * Surprisingly, it was Danny Wilson who interrupted. "Except," he said suddenly, "us!" He turned to me. "Brian, it would be suicide for us to go on to Louisville--and there's no place else to go. We might as well make this our job. We have everything to gain, nothing to lose." "Do you," I asked the girl, "know where Mallory is?" "Only roughly. Somewhere in the hills of the upper Cumberland. I plan to comb the neighborhood--" The Kentuckian, Joe Sanders, edged forward. "Don't need to do no combin'," he drawled. "Reckon I c'n help. This yere Mall'ry--he a big man? White hair? Red complected?" "Why--why, yes. I believe so." "Mmm. Figgered it'd be the same one. I know him. Usta fish near his place when I was a colt. He come there in the summertime, big house in Cleft Canyon on Mount Rydell. I 'member we usta call him the 'devil Doc,' 'count of there was alluz queer goin's-on at his place. Well, Cap'n?" He squinted at me. I weighed the chances briefly. It was probably a wild goose chase. On the other hand, it was useless, as Danny had pointed out, to throw our little force against the might of the Toties who now held Fort Knox. And there was a faint, insane possibility that Dr. Mallory had a 'plan'--an invention, maybe--that would enable us to form the nucleus of a new army that, reorganized, would sweep the invaders from our land.... "We'll do it!" I said. "We'll march at dawn!" We had to leave the car there on the road and strike out across country. It was the shortest and safest way to Cleft Canyon. Now that the Toties had made a clean sweep of the East, the roads were no longer open to us. As in Mexico five years ago, as in Ontario, the Maritimes, the New England States year before last, as in Illinois last year, floods of Totie scavengers were pouring through the conquered land in a series of "mop up" operations.