een a brick for financing me. Never asked a
question, either. But Bart, it'll all come back to you now. Know how
much that stone's worth?"

"Plenty, I guess. But, forget about the financing and all that.
Where's this laboratory of yours?" Madison had pushed his chair back
from his desk and was reaching for his hat.

"Over in the Ramapo Mountains, not far from Tuxedo. I'll have you
there in two hours. Sure you can spare the time to go out there now?"
Vanderventer was enthusiastically eager.

"Spare the time? You just try and keep me from going!"

Neither of them noticed the sinister figure that lurked outside the
door which led into the adjoining office. They chattered excitedly as
they passed into the outer hall and made for the elevator.

* * * * *

Vanderventer's laboratory was a small domed structure set in a
clearing atop the mountain and well hidden from the winding road which
was the only means of approach. Though Bart Madison, who had inherited
his father's prosperous brokerage business, had financed his friend's
research work ever since the two left college, this was his first
visit to the secluded workshop, and its wealth of equipment was
revealed to him as a complete surprise. He had always thought of Van's
experiments as something beyond his ken; something uncanny and
mysterious. Now he was convinced.

The most prominent single piece of apparatus in the laboratory was a
twelve-inch reflecting telescope which reared its latticed framework
to a slit in the dome overhead. Paralleling its axis and secured to
the same equatorial mounting was a shining tube of copper which
bristled with handwheels and levers and was connected by heavy
insulated cables to an amazing array of electrical machinery that
occupied an entire side of the single room.

"Regular young observatory you've got here, Van," Bart commented when
he had taken all this in in one sweeping glance of appraisal.

"Yeah, and then some. Not another like it in the world." Van was
busying himself with the controls of his electrical equipment, and a
powerful motor-generator started up with a click and a whirr as he
closed a starting switch.

Madison watched in silence as the swift-fingered scientist fussed with
the complicated adjustments of the apparatus and then turned to the
massive concrete pedestal on which his telescope was mounted. At his
touch of a button the instrument swung over on its polar axis to a new