s
most absorbing. You have hit upon a rather profound scientific
principle, yes?"

"Possibly," Kendrick admitted, quite conscious that he was being
patronized.

"Oh, don't be modest, my dear fellow!" smiled the dwarf. "I am the
last one to belittle your achievement. Indeed, it is because of it
that I have invited you here to-day. Permit me to introduce myself,
and to make clear one or two possibly perplexing matters. Then I am
sure we shall have a most agreeable chat."

* * * * *

His name was Cor, he said, and he was in truth the monarch of this
strange realm. His people had come from the one-time planet of Vada,
far distant in the universe. A thousand years ago, this planet had
been doomed by the approach of an alien star. Their great scientist,
Ravv, had met the emergency by inventing the disc, into whose
construction they had poured all their resources. The pick of their
populace had been salvaged on this giant life-raft. The rest had
perished when that destroying star had crashed down on the doomed
Vada.

Since then these survivors and their descendants had been voyaging
through space on their marvelous disc. For hundreds of years they had
given no thought to the future, content to drift on and on in the
interstellar void, breathing an atmosphere produced artificially. But
at length the inevitable had happened. This superb piece of mechanism
devised by their super-genius, Ravv, was beginning to show signs of
wear. Some of its mighty engines were nearing the exhaustion point.
Either they must soon find a planet comparable with the one they had
once known, where they could pause and rehabilitate their machinery,
or they must disintegrate and pass into oblivion.

Faced with that crisis, Cor had long been seeking such a planet. He
had found it, at last, in the earth--and had resolved that this was
where they were going to alight and transplant the civilization of
ancient Vada, pending such time as they could take to space again.

* * * * *

For some months now they had been hovering over various portions of
the earth, studying its geography and its peoples, with the result
that they had concluded the United States offered the most logical
point for launching the attack. Once this country was subdued, they
were in possession of the richest and most advanced section of the
planet. The conquest of the rest of it could await their leisure.

With suc