in
detail. And it would not be wise for him to move openly to wreak
destruction on the enemies of his nation.

He used the moonlight for his approach by the least practical route to
the lake. When it dimmed and went behind the mountains, he continued
to climb, sliding dangerously, then descend and climb again as the
rough going demanded. His mind was absorbed with reflections upon what
he meant to do. The wrecks on the highway would have given notice to
the invaders that he could do damage. They would take every possible
precaution against him.

It was typical of Lockley that he painstakingly imagined every
obstacle that might be put in his way. During the last half hour of
his scrambling travel, for example, he was tormented by a measure his
enemies might have used to make him advertise his presence. If they
simply laid rifle cartridges on the ground at intervals of twenty-five
or fifty yards, he could not cross that line with his device in
operation without blowing up those shells. It was a possible
countermeasure that caused him to sweat with worry.

But it wasn't thought of by anyone else. To contrive it, a man would
have to know how the detonation field worked and how far it extended.
Nobody but Lockley knew. Therefore no one could contrive this defense
against him.

He worked his way to Boulder Lake's back door through brushwood and
over boulders. Presently he looked down upon his destination. To his
right and left rocky masses were silhouetted against the starry sky.
He gazed down on the lake and the shoreline where the hotel would be
built, and the places where roads came out of the wilderness.

There were changes since the time he'd looked down from Vale's survey
post and before the terror beam captured him. He catalogued them
mentally, but the sight before him was intolerable. Everything he saw,
here where space monsters were believed to hold sway, was in reality
the work of men. Rage filled him at the sight. Hatred. Fury....

In the rest of the world an entirely different sort of emotion was
felt about the subject of the invaders. The United States had
announced to all the world that American and other scientists, working
together, had solved the mystery of the alien weapon. They had
produced a duplicate of the terror beam. It was no less effective and
no less an absolute weapon than the invaders'. And a defense had been
found which was complete. It was being rushed into production. The
experimental