He led her around the house. In the center of the backyard loomed the high, round dome of his amateur observatory. It was Ken's personal pride, as well as that of the members of the Mayfield High Science Club, who had helped build the shell and the mountings. The club used it every Thursday night when the seeing was good.

Ken had ground the precision mirror alone. He had ground his first one, a 4-inch glass, when he was a Boy Scout. Three years later he had tackled the tremendous job of producing a 12-inch one. Professor Douglas of the physics department at the college had pronounced it perfect.

Ken opened the door and switched on the light inside the dome. "Don't mind the mess," he said. "I've been taking photographs of the comet for the last month."

To Maria, who was used to the clutter of a laboratory, there was no mess. She admired the beauty of the instrument Ken and his friends had built. "Our university telescope isn't any better," she said.

"You can't tell by the plumbing," Ken laughed. "Better take a look at the image before you pass judgment."

Skilfully, he swung the long tube around to the direction of the comet. With the fine controls he centered the cross hairs of the eyepiece on the blazing object in the sky.

"It's moving too fast to stay in range very long," he said.

Maria stepped to the observer's position. She gasped suddenly at the image of the fiery monster hovering in the sky. Viewing the comet along the axis of the tail, as the Earth lay at the edge of it, an observer's vision was like that of a miniature, flaming sun with an offcenter halo of pulsing, golden light.

To Maria, the comet seemed like something living. Slow, almost imperceptible ripples in the glowing scarves of light made them sway as if before some mighty, cosmic wind in space.

"It's beautiful," Maria murmured, "but it's terrible, too. No wonder the ancients believed comets brought evil and death upon the Earth. I could almost believe it, myself!"

Chapter 2. _Breakdown_

Ken Maddox could not remember a time when he had not wanted to become a scientist. Maybe it started when his father first invited him to look through a microscope. That was when he was a very small boy, but he could still remember the revelation of that experience. He remembered 

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