ated spots on each of the charts. "Ever see anything like that
before?"

I shook my head slowly. I had seen instantly the phenomena he had
pointed out. Using again the most understandable terminology, to our
right, and somewhat above us, nearer by far than any of the charted
bodies, was something which registered on our charts, as a dim and
formless haze of pinkish light.

"Now the television, sir," said Kincaide gravely.

* * * * *

I bent over the huge, hooded disk, so unlike the brilliantly illuminated
instruments of to-day, and studied the scene reflected there.

Centered in the field was a group of thousands of strange things, moving
swiftly toward the ship. In shape they were not unlike crescents, with
the horns blunted, and pushed inward, towards each other. They glowed
with a reddish radiance which seemed to have its center in the thickest
portion of the crescents--and, despite their appearance, they gave me,
somehow, an uncanny impression that they were in some strange way,
_alive_! While they remained in a more or less compact group, their
relative positions changed from time to time, not aimlessly as would
insensate bodies drifting thus through the black void of space, but with
a sort of intelligent direction.

"What do you make of them, sir?" asked Kincaide, his eyes on may face.
"Can you place them?"

"No," I admitted, still staring with a fixed fascination at the strange
scene in the television disk. "Perhaps this is what we've been searching
for. Please call Mr. Correy and Mr. Hendricks, and ask them to report
here immediately."

Kincaide hastened to obey the order, while I watched the strange things
in the field of the television disk, trying to ascertain their nature.
They were not solid bodies, for even as I viewed them, one was
superimposed upon another, and I could see the second quite distinctly
through the substance of the first. Nor were they rigid, for now and
again one of the crescent arms would move searchingly, almost like a
thick, clumsy tentacle. There was something restless, _hungry_, in the
movement of the sharp arms of the things, that sent a chill trickling
down my spine.

Correy and Hendricks arrived together; their curiosity evident.

"I believe, gentlemen," I said, "that we're about to find out the reason
why two ships already have disappeared in this vicinity. Look first at
the charts, and then here."

* * * *