ceiving, we judged that the American and Allied Caucasian
forces were more than holding their own.

General Sanford, the Chief of the Signal Corps, who stood by my side,
grasped my arm, and pointed to the west. Everyone crowded to our side in
excitement. Before we could gasp our amazement, the incandescent spot
which our Chief had mutely indicated on the distant horizon, zoomed in a
blazing arc across our zenith and plunged into the terrain of the
English forces which were occupying the little town of Ogallala about
six miles to our south. We held our breath. What next?

Only a faint throbbing seemed to pulse in the air above the spot where
the missile sank. I was about to pronounce the diagnosis of "a dud,"
when someone cried, "My God, General, they've turned hell loose this
time!" The whole atmosphere for a quarter of a mile radius about the
fatal bomb quivered as over a heated griddle. Even as we remarked this,
the area began to glow cherry red. A deafening thunder assaulted our
ears when to our horror the earth on which had stood the now burning
town of Ogallala, rose a gigantic incandescent ball and shot like a
meteor into the heavens. Our car was a feather tossed in the ensuing
hurricane, but even while we bobbed back and forth there was an
ear-splitting explosion as the land that was once an American village
burst into a blinding blue flare of hydrogen flame twenty-five miles
above us.

The swaying of the car gradually subsided in the tortured atmosphere,
and a gentle rain began to fall. Ogallala had been chemically "stepped
down" into the most primitive element, combined with the oxygen above
and was condensing back to earth again as a few globules of H{2}O. That
day was a sort of crisis; the enemy had discovered and turned upon us
the power of atomic degeneration! And I, as assistant chief chemist of
the American Army, felt my heart become heavy within me as I soared back
to the Central Laboratory.

* * * * *

Even as I watched the advent of the electronic detonator two days
previously the inspiration had come to me. What had happened to the
doomed Nebraskan town had been so obvious. Through some unexplained
agency discovered by the Orientals, the electronic restraint of the
normally stable elements had been removed. In a brief time Ogallala had
degenerated through all the steps of the periodic table until it became
hydrogen, at which point, owing to the terrific air current