l the _Sirius_
gets here. Well, the quicker I get busy sending the dope, the sooner
they can get started."

"Tell them to be sure and bring me all my clothes they can find,
a gallon of perfume, a barrel of powder, and a carload of Delray's
Fantasie chocolates--I've been a savage so long that I want to wallow
in luxury for a while."

"I'll do that--and I want some real cigarettes!"

Stevens first sent a terse, but complete account of everything that had
happened to the _Arcturus_, and a brief summary of what he and Nadia
had done since the cutting up of the IPV. The narrative finished, he
launched into a prolonged and detailed scientific discussion of the
enemy and their offensive and defensive weapons. He dwelt precisely and
at length upon the functioning of everything he had seen. Though during
the long months of their isolation he had been too busy to do any actual
work upon the weapons of the supposed Jovians, yet his keen mind had
evolved many mathematical and physical deductions, hypotheses, and
theories, and these he sent out to the _Sirius_, concluding:

"There's all the dope I can give you. Figure it out, and don't come at
all until you can come loaded for bear; they're bad medicine. Call us
occasionally, to keep us informed as to when to expect you, but don't
call too often. We don't want them locating you, and if they should
locate us through your ray or ours, it would be just too bad. So-long.
Stevens and Newton."

Nadia had insisted upon staying up and had been brewing pot after pot
of her substitutes for coffee while he sat at the key; and it was
almost daylight when he finally shut off the power and arose, his
right arm practically paralyzed from the unaccustomed strain of hours
of telegraphing.

"Well, sweetheart, that's that!" he exclaimed in relief. "Brandon and
Westfall are on the job. Nothing to do now but wait, and study up on our
own account on those Jovians' rays. This has been one long day for us,
though, little ace, and I suggest that we sleep for about a week!"

CHAPTER VIII

Callisto to the Rescue

All humanity of Callisto, the fourth major satellite of Jupiter,
had for many years been waging a desperate and apparently hopeless
defense against invading hordes of six-limbed beings. Every city and
town had long since been reduced to level fields of lava by the rays
of the invaders. Every building and every trace of human civilization
had long since disappeared from the surface