d the messenger, which flew, with ever-increasing velocity, back
to the capital city of the Fenachrone, carrying with it a record of
everything that had happened.

"That's what I want," thought Seaton. "Those torpedoes went home, fast.
I want to know how far they have to go and how long it'll take them to
get there. You know what distance a parsec is, since it is purely a
mathematical concept; and you must have a watch or some similar
instrument with which we can translate your years into ours. I don't
want to have to kill you, fellow, and if you'll give up even now I'll
spare you. I'll get it anyway, you know--and you also know that a few
hundred volts more will kill you."

They saw the thought received, and saw its answer: "You shall learn no
more. This is the most important of all, and I shall hold it to
disintegration and beyond."

Seaton advanced the potentiometer still farther, and the brain picture
waxed and waned, strengthened and faded. Finally, however, it was
revealed by flashes that the torpedo had about a hundred and fifty-five
thousand parsecs to go and that it would take two-tenths of a year to
make the journey; that the warships which would come in answer to the
message were as fast as the torpedo; that he did indeed have in his suit
a watch--a device of seven dials, each turning ten times as fast as its
successor; and that one turn of the slowest dial measured one year of
his time. Seaton instantly threw off his headset and opened the power
switch.

"Grab a stopwatch quick, Mart!" he called, as he leaped to the discarded
vacuum suit and searched out the peculiar timepiece. They noted the
exact time consumed by one complete revolution of one of the dials, and
calculated rapidly.

"Better than I thought!" exclaimed Seaton. "That makes his year about
four hundred ten of our days. That gives us eighty-two days before the
torpedo gets there--longer than I'd dared hope. We've got to fight, too,
not run. They figure on getting the _Skylark_, then volatilizing our
world. Well, we can take time enough to grab off an absolutely complete
record of this guy's brain. We'll need it for what's coming, and I'm
going to get it, if I have to kill him to do it."

He resumed his place at the educator, turned on the power, and a shadow
passed over his face.

"Poor devil, he's conked out--couldn't stand the gaff," he remarked,
half-regretfully. "However that makes it easy to get what we want, and
we'd have had to ki