k-haired, dark-eyed Margaret Crane.

"Br-r-r, it's cold!" Dorothy shivered, wrapping her coat more closely
about her. "This must be the coldest day Washington has seen for years!"

"It is cold," Margaret agreed. "I wonder what they are going to do out
here, this kind of weather?"

* * * * *

As she spoke, the two men stepped out of the "testing shed"--the huge
structure that housed their Osnomian-built space-cruiser, "Skylark II."
Seaton waddled clumsily, wearing as he did a Crane vacuum-suit which,
built of fur, canvas, metal and transparent silica, braced by steel
netting and equipped with air-tanks and heaters, rendered its wearer
independent of outside conditions of temperature and pressure. Outside
this suit he wore a heavy harness of leather, buckled about his body,
shoulders, and legs, attached to which were numerous knobs, switches,
dials, bakelite cases, and other pieces of apparatus. Carried by a
strong aluminum framework in turn supported by the harness, the
universal bearing of a small power-bar rose directly above his
grotesque-looking helmet.

"What do you think you're going to do in that thing, Dickie?" Dorothy
called. Then, knowing that he could not hear her voice, she turned to
Crane. "What are you letting that precious husband of mine do now,
Martin? He looks as though he were up to something."

While she was speaking, Seaton had snapped the release of his face
plate.

"Nothing much, Dottie. Just going to show you-all the zone of force.
Mart wouldn't let me turn it on, unless I got all cocked and primed for
a year's journey into space."

"Dot, what is that zone of force, anyway?" asked Margaret.

"Oh, it's something Dick got into his head during that awful fight they
had on Osnome. He hasn't thought of anything else since we got back. You
know how the attractors and repellers work? Well, he found out something
funny about the way everything acted while the Mardonalians were
bombarding them with a certain kind of a wave-length. He finally figured
out the exact ray that did it, and found out that if it is made strongly
enough, it acts as if a repeller and attractor were working
together--only so much stronger that nothing can get through the
boundary, either way--in fact, it's so strong that it cuts anything in
two that's in the way. And the funny thing is that there's nothing there
at all, really; but Dick says that the forces meeting there, or
something, make i