ce of far wider scope than ever has existed
before.

"To you we have come, for your race is older by far than any race of our
alliance. Your science has advanced far higher. What weapons have you
discovered among those ancient documents, Taj Lamor? We have one weapon
that you no doubt need; a screen, which will stop the rays of the
molecule director apparatus. What have you to offer us?"

"We need your help badly," was the reply. "We have been able to keep
them from landing on our planets, but it has cost us much. They have
landed on a planet we brought with us when we left the black star, but
it is not inhabited. From this as a base they have made attacks on us.
We tried throwing the planet into Sirius. They merely left the planet
hurriedly as it fell toward the star, and broke free from our attractive
ray."

"The attractive ray! Then you have uncovered that secret?" asked Arcot
eagerly.

Taj Lamor had some of his men bring an attractive ray projector to the
ship. The apparatus turned out to be nearly a thousand tons in weight,
and some twenty feet long, ten feet wide and approximately twelve feet
high. It was impossible to load the huge machine into the _Ancient
Mariner_, so an examination was conducted on the spot, with instruments
whose reading was intelligible to the terrestrians operating it. Its
principal fault lay in the fact that, despite the enormous energy of
matter given out, the machine still gobbled up such titanic amounts of
energy before the attraction could be established, that a very large
machine was needed. The ray, so long as maintained, used no more power
than was actually expended in moving the planet or other body. The power
used while the ray was in action corresponded to the work done, but a
tremendous power was needed to establish it, and this power could never
be recovered.

Further, no reaction was produced in the machine, no matter what body it
was turned upon. In swinging a planet then, a spaceship could be used as
the base for the reaction was not exerted on the machine.

From such meager clues, and the instruments, Arcot got the hints that
led him to the solution of the problem, for the documents, from which
Taj Lamor had gotten his information, had been disastrously wiped out,
when one of their cities fell, and Taj Lamor had but copied the machines
of his ancestors.

The immense value of these machines was evident, for they would permit
Arcot to do many things that would have b