er dared to meet
his look.

"You mean--" he began, and fumbled for words to express an emotion
that was beyond words. "Chet said--why, he said--that you needed me--"

Her reply came mingled with a tremulous laugh.

"I have the greatest regard," she whispered, "for Chet's judgement.
But--do you--need me?"

Walt Harkness held the soft body close; bent nearer to catch the
words. And he answered them with his own lips in an ecstasy of emotion
that made nothing of the thrills to be found in that other
conquest--of a Dark Moon.

A SCIENTIFIC HELL

Science playing the role of an up-to-date Persephone, visiting the
underworld realm of Pluto to wrest from it hidden cosmic secrets, was
described recently at a meeting of the American Geographical Society
at the Engineering Building by Prof. Harlow Shapley, Harvard
astronomical wizard, who told of the ultra-modern scientific version
of Ulysses's descent into Hades or Dante's visit to hell.

Prof. Shapley, to whom 10,000,000 light-years are like a day to any
ordinary mortal, and whose astronomical investigations have led him to
the center of the cosmos, told the scientists present to descend to
the bowels of the earth and construct therein "Plutonic Laboratories,"
where a man could learn many things unknown about beginnings and
endings, and where, incidentally he may find a way of utilising the
tremendous heat energy stored up in the "scientific hell."

Under the general theme of the "Third Dimension in Geography," Prof.
Shapley talked about the past, present and future of the earth-moon
system; how in 50,000,000 years our days and months will be
forty-seven times as long as they are now; how after that the moon
will again approach the earth until it is broken up by tidal
disruption into ring fragments circulating around the earth like the
ring around Saturn; and of shooting stars coming from far-away solar
systems.

"The temperature under the surface of the earth," said Prof. Shapley,
"increases one degree Fahrenheit at every seventy-six feet, about
seventy degrees per mile. In some places in California we get the
temperature of boiling water at a depth of less than a mile. The
center of the earth is roughly 4,000 miles below the surface.

"Because of this intense internal heat of the earth it would probably
be impossible to maintain permanent laboratories at greater depths
than two miles," said the lecturer, "and, in addition, the
installation and maintenance of Pl