boratory," he said, "but we'll have better, you and I;
we'll have better--"

The room seemed bare with its meager equipment, but it was neat, as
became the best student of Professor Eddinger. Rows of reagent bottles
stood on the shelves, but the tables were a litter of misplaced
instruments and broken glassware where trembling hands had fumbled in
heedless excitement.

"Glad to see you again, Avery." The gentle voice of Professor Eddinger
had lost its tired tone. "It's been two years you've been working, I
judge. Now what is this great discovery, boy? What have you found?"

The younger man, in whose face the color came and went, and whose eyes
were shining from dark hollows that marked long days and sleepless
nights, still clung to the other's arm.

"It's real," he said; "it's great! It means fortune and fame, and you're
in on that, Professor. The old master," he said and clapped a hand
affectionately upon a thin shoulder; "I owe it all to you. And now I
have--I have learned.... No, you shall see for yourself. Wait--"

* * * * *

He crossed quickly to a table. On it was an apparatus; the eyes of the
older man widened as he saw it. It was intricate--a maze of tubing.
There was a glass bulb above--the generator of a cathode ray,
obviously--and electro-magnets below and on each side. Beneath was a
crude sphere of heavy lead--a retort, it might be--and from this there
passed two massive, insulated cables. The understanding eyes of the
Professor followed them, one to a terminal on a great insulating block
upon the floor, the other to a similarly protected terminal of carbon
some feet above it in the air.

The trembling fingers of the young man made some few adjustments, then
he left the instrument to take his place by an electric switch. "Stand
back," he warned, and closed the switch.

There was a gentle hissing from within glass tubes, the faint glow of a
blue-green light. And that was all, until--with a crash like the ripping
crackle of lightning, a white flame arced between the terminals of the
heavy cables. It hissed ceaselessly through the air where now the tang
of ozone was apparent. The carbon blocks glowed with a brilliant
incandescence when the flame ceased with the motion of a hand where
Avery pulled a switch.

The man's voice was quiet now. "You do not know, yet, what you have
seen, but there was a tremendous potential there--an amperage I can't
measure with my limited fac