s genius have
died with him. He doesn't strike me as a man who left overmuch to
chance. Carnes, is your case completed?"

"Very satisfactorily, Doctor. I have both of the lost packets."

"All right, then, come back to the wreck and help me pack my burros. I
can make my way back to Fallon without a guide."

"Where are you going, Doctor?"

"That, Carnes, old dear, is none of your blankety blanked business.
Permit me to remind you that I am on my vacation. I haven't decided yet
just where I am going, but I can tell you one thing. It's going to be
some place where you can't call me on the telephone."

Brigands of the Moon

(The Book of Gregg Haljan)
BEGINNING A FOUR-PART NOVEL

_By Ray Cummings_

Black mutiny and brigandage stalk the Space-ship Planetara as
she speeds to the Moon to pick up a fabulously rich cache of
radium-ore.

[Illustration: _I stood on the turret-balcony of the Planetara with Dr.
Frank, watching the arriving passengers._]

_Foreword by Ray Cummings_

I have been thinking that if, during one of those long winter evenings
at Valley Forge, someone had placed in George Washington's hands one of
our present day best sellers, the illustrious Father of our Country
would have read it with considerable emotion. I do not mean what we call
a story of science, or fantasy--just a novel of action, adventure and
romance. The sort of thing you and I like to read, but do not find
amazing in any way at all.

But I fancy that George Washington would have found it amazing. Don't
you? It might picture, for instance, a factory girl at a sewing machine.
George Washington would be amazed at a sewing machine. And the girl,
journeying in the subway to and from her work! Stealing an opportunity
to telephone her lover at the noon hour; going to the movies in the
evening, or listening to a radio. And there might be a climax, perhaps,
with the girl and the villain in a transcontinental railway Pullman, and
the hero sending frantic telegrams, or telephoning the train, and then
chasing it in his airplane.

George Washington would have found it amazing!

And I am wondering how you and I would feel if someone were to give us
now a book of ordinary adventure of the sort which will be published a
hundred and fifty years hence. I have been trying to imagine such a book
and the nature of its contents.

Let us imagine it together. Suppose we walk down Fifth Avenue, a
pleasant spring morning of May, 20