rods, which
flared at blue-white temperature under the incessant impacts. Knowing
that this corona-loss was but an infinitesimal fraction of the power
being used, Seaton's very mind staggered as he strove to understand the
magnitude of the forces at work upon that stubborn sphere of energy.

The aged scientist used no tools whatever, as we understand the term.
His laboratory was a power-house; at his command were the stupendous
forces of a battery of planetoid accumulators, and added to these were
the fourth-order, ninth-magnitude forces of the disintegrating copper
bar. Electricity, protelectricity, and fourth-order rays, under millions
upon millions of kilovolts of pressure, leaped to do the bidding of that
wonderful brain, stored with the accumulated knowledge of countless
thousands of years of scientific research. Watching the ancient
physicist work, Seaton compared himself to a schoolboy mixing chemicals
indiscriminately and ignorantly, with no knowledge whatever of their
properties, occasionally obtaining a reaction by pure chance. Whereas he
had worked with intra-atomic energy schoolboy fashion, the master
craftsman before him knew every reagent, every reaction, and worked with
known and thoroughly familiar agencies to bring about his exactly
predetermined ends--just as calmly certain of the results as Seaton
himself would have been in his own laboratory, mixing equivalent
quantities of solutions of barium chloride and of sulphuric acid to
obtain a precipitate of barium sulphate.

[Illustration: _Hour after hour Rovol labored on, oblivious to the
passage of time in his zeal of accomplishment, the while carefully
instructing Seaton, who watched every step with intense interest...._]

Hour after hour Rovol labored on, oblivious to the passage of time in
his zeal of accomplishment, the while carefully instructing Seaton, who
watched every step with intense interest and did everything possible for
him to do. Bit by bit a towering structure arose in the middle of the
laboratory. A metal foundation supported a massive compound bearing,
which in turn carried a tubular network of latticed metal, mounted like
an immense telescope. Near the upper, outer end of this openwork tube a
group of nine forces held the field of force rigidly in place in its
axis; at the lower extremity were mounted seats for two operators and
the control panels necessary for the operation of the intricate system
of forces and motors which would a