e official flyer landed them on the broad stage amid deep, soft snow.
It was night--a brief trip from the late afternoon, through dinner and
they were there. A night of clear shining stars--brilliant gems in deep
purple. Clear, crisp, rarefied air; a tumbling expanse of white, with
the stars stretched over it like a close-hung canopy.

They were ushered into the low, rambling building. The attempt was to be
made at once. Mars was mounting the eastern sky; and to the west, Venus
was setting. Both visible from direct helios at that moment--Red Mars,
from this mountain top, glowing like the tip of an arrant-cylinder up
there.

In the brief time since the party had left Washington, the worlds had
been notified. The eyes and ears of the millions of three planets were
waiting to see and hear this Georg Brende and this Princess Maida.

The sending room was small, circular, and crowded with apparatus. And
above its dome, opened to the sky, wherein the intensified helios shaded
so that no ray of them might blind the operators, were sputtering as
though eager to be away with their messages.

With a dozen officials around him, Georg prepared to enter the sending
room. He had parted from Maida a few moments before, when she had left
him to be shown to her apartment by the women attendants.

As she moved away, on impulse he had stopped her. "We shall succeed,
Maida."

Her hand touched his arm. A brave smile, a nod, and she had passed on,
leaving him standing there gazing after her with pounding heart.
Pounding, not with excitement at the task before him in that sending
room; pounding with the sudden knowledge that the welfare of this frail
little woman meant more to him than the safety of all these worlds.

At last Georg stood in the sending room. The officials sat grouped
around him. Maida had not yet arrived from her apartment. There was a
small platform, upon which she and Georg were to stand together. He took
his place upon it, waiting for her.

Before him was the sending disc; it glowed red as they turned the
current into it. Then they illumined the mirrors; a circle of them, each
with its image of Georg upon the platform. The white lights above him
flashed on, beating down upon him with their hot, dazzling glare. The
reflected beams from the mirrors, struck upward into the dome overhead.
The helios up there were humming and sputtering loudly.

Beyond the circle of intense white light in which Georg was standing,
the