uard at this
station. They searched carefully, but there was no sign of life. Boulton
was doing a soldier's job, that was all.

While Boulton set up his photographic equipment, Burl made his way
around the shining globes and strange tubes that were the nerve center
of the station. He finally found the same type of control panel that he
had found in the Andes station.

He hesitated before it, wondering if, after all, this, the original
charge, would work. He hoped that there might be another charger globe
available, but saw none. It would be up to him.

He put a gloved hand on the control. Perhaps, he worried, the charge
would not conduct through the insulated, cooled material of his suit. He
pushed the levers, and knew then that it did.

The pulsing of the spheres halted. There was a sharp dip in the faint
vibration he had been feeling in his feet. He shoved the levers all the
way, and suddenly the station went dead. Above him, one of the great
discs atop its mast snapped and burst apart under what must have become
an impossible concentration of power without a channel for outlet.

"Sun-tap Station Mercury is dead," Burl said quietly into his helmet
phone.

At that very instant a distant globe, perched on a pedestal against the
wall away from the rest of the equipment, flared a brilliant red.

Chapter 8. _The Veil of Venus_

In an artificially constructed chamber somewhere in the solar system, an
intelligent being sat before a bank of instruments that was designed to
bring to his attention various factors concerning the things that
mattered to his species. This being had been on duty for the average
length of time such a duty entailed and had been paying little conscious
attention to the routine--for there had been nothing to report for some
time.

The drop in channeling from Planet III that had occurred some time ago
had thus far not caused too much concern. It was assumed by the other
intelligent beings involved that the matter was possibly a weather
condition, a volcanic discharge or quite simply that the planet was in
unfavorable orbit. Not all the stations ever worked simultaneously.
There were always some behind the Sun, or blocked in some other manner.
But the main channels were at work, and the different lines and shifts
continued to build up satisfactorily.

But now something occurred that focused the attention of the watcher
more closely on his instruments. A facet of his panel had flashed