he information I've
given you."

Trent nodded and watched him walk away. He followed the Englishman with
his eyes, a frown crossing his face. There was something too cocksure
about the man. His ridicule of American scientists could be ignored, but
the way he spoke about his theory, as if it had already been a proven
fact against the ideas of Mathieson....

A faint chill ran up Fred Trent's back. He couldn't explain it. But it
was there. An ominous note of foreboding.

He shrugged it off and left his car to walk toward the Administration
building.

* * * * *

The remaining hours of the afternoon dragged by in a monotony of idle
speculation. Trent listened to the gathered newspapermen discussing the
coming experiment at dusk, accompanied them as Dr. Mathieson, the head
of the project, conducted them on a tour of the project, to the
launching site, and then back to the central building.

The launching site itself had been an impressive sight. The huge
rockets, much in appearance like the famed V2 of World War II, but on a
much larger scale, were cradled in their launching platforms like some
huge monsters about to be unleashed into the unsuspecting heavens.

They had listened as Mathieson explained the various number of
instruments that were being included in the first rocket, to record its
hurtling trip through the atmosphere to the outermost layers of the
Earth's surface.

And they had been told of the other, and to the gathered newspapermen,
the most interesting part, the inclusion of a cat in the rocket, in a
large oxygen-fed chamber, to study the effects of the cosmic rays on a
living creature.

Then back to the central building. Back to wait. And the tension began
to mount. For the shadows were lengthening, the sun sinking behind the
horizon to the west. The moment was now close at hand.

* * * * *

A stocky figure detached itself from the shadows beside the huge bulk of
the laboratory building and slowly edged out into the dusk.

It paused momentarily, to survey the scene. Sharp eyes scanned the
looming rockets and their launching platforms, watchful, alert. They
finally settled upon the armed guard who walked a measured distance back
and forth in front of the rockets. Then the figure moved forward again,
cautiously, purposefully.

The distance from the giant rockets shortened gradually, and then the
guard, turning to retrace his steps, s