Dr. Whitely's report, though rather obscured in interest by the central fact of the sun's increased speed of spin, was yet interesting enough to physical students, for in it he claimed to have discovered the existence of a new and unknown vibratory force, emanating apparently from the disturbed sun. This was, he claimed, a vibration whose frequency lay in the octaves between light and Hertzian or radio vibrations, an unexplored territory in the domain of etheric vibrations. Dr. Whitely himself had for some time been endeavoring to push his researches into that particular territory, but though he had striven with many methods, he had been able to produce or find no etheric vibrations of that frequency until the strange increase of the sun's rotatory speed had begun. Then, he stated, his instruments had recorded new vibrations somewhere out in space toward the sun, whose frequency lay between the light and Hertzian frequencies, and which seemed a force-vibration of some sort, weak reflections from it only being recorded by his instruments. It seemed possible, he stated, that this strange new force-vibration was being generated somewhere inside the disturbed sun itself, and he was studying it further to determine the truth of this theory. This discovery of Dr. Whitely's, however, interesting though it was, seemed to be but a side-issue of the real problem, the acceleration of the sun's rotation. After the sixth day, there were no further reports from Dr. Marlin and his fellow-astronomers. During all the seventh and eighth and ninth days there came no word to the Intelligence Bureau regarding it, from any of the astronomers who had formerly reported to us on it. And though we got into touch with Dr. Marlin and the others by communication-plate, none of them in those three days would make any statement whatever on the thing, saying only that it was being carefully studied by them and that a statement would be issued soon. It was evident from this universal sudden silence on their part that the astronomers of the world's observatories were acting in conjunction, but why they should want to withhold from an interested world the news on this strange acceleration of the sun's spin, we could not understand. The great electrical storms and temperature-changes that had prevailed over Earth continued, and we were anxious to know how much longer we might expect them to continue. "One would think that Dr. Marlin and the other astronomers had some great secret they were keeping from us," I remarked to Markham, the Intelligence Chief, and he shook his head. "Secret or not, Hunt, they're doing us out of the first unusual news-subject we've had for a year," he said. "Why don't they give us whatever they've learned about this change in the sun's rate of spin?"