l curiosity among mankind, but as the Board's Official Reporter I am
bound to tell my tale.

At 9.30 A.M., August 26, A.D. 2065, the Board, sitting in London, was
informed by De Forest that the District of Northern Illinois had
riotously cut itself out of all systems and would remain disconnected
till the Board should take over and administer it direct.

Every Northern Illinois freight and passenger tower was, he reported,
out of action; all District main, local, and guiding lights had been
extinguished; all General Communications were dumb, and through traffic
had been diverted. No reason had been given, but he gathered
unofficially from the Mayor of Chicago that the District complained of
'crowd-making and invasion of privacy.'

As a matter of fact, it is of no importance whether Northern Illinois
stay in or out of planetary circuit; as a matter of policy, any
complaint of invasion of privacy needs immediate investigation, lest
worse follow.

By 9-45 A.M. De Forest, Dragomiroff (Russia), Takahira (Japan), and
Pirolo (Italy) were empowered to visit Illinois and 'to take such steps
as might be necessary for the resumption of traffic and _all that that
implies.'_ By 10 A.M. the Hall was empty, and the four Members and I
were aboard what Pirolo insisted on calling 'my leetle godchild'--that
is to say, the new _Victor Pirolo_. Our Planet prefers to know Victor
Pirolo as a gentle, grey-haired enthusiast who spends his time near
Foggia, inventing or creating new breeds of Spanish-Italian olive-trees;
but there is another side to his nature--the manufacture of quaint
inventions, of which the _Victor Pirolo_ is, perhaps, not the least
surprising. She and a few score sister-craft of the same type embody his
latest ideas. But she is not comfortable. An A.B.C. boat does not take
the air with the level-keeled lift of a liner, but shoots up
rocket-fashion like the 'aeroplane' of our ancestors, and makes her
height at top-speed from the first. That is why I found myself sitting
suddenly on the large lap of Eustace Arnott, who commands the A.B.C.
Fleet. One knows vaguely that there is such a thing as a Fleet somewhere
on the Planet, and that, theoretically, it exists for the purposes of
what used to be known as 'war.' Only a week before, while visiting a
glacier sanatorium behind Gothaven, I had seen some squadrons making
false auroras far to the north while they manoeuvred round the Pole;
but, naturally, it had never occurred to