the end of the menace. He went toward the surface, and when within fifty feet of it, sent a blast of power into his jets.

The ship struck something, like a wall, hard, unyielding, and the pilot and his assistants were thrown against the instrument board. They recovered their senses.

The pilot looked at the other men.

"Ten tons of helio-hydrogen didn't do the trick," he said softly. "What will? You know, I almost forgot. The science of the Martians is way ahead of ours. Naturally, that ship wouldn't be exactly tender...."

He knew it was useless. He had no more explosives. He shoved every atom of power he had into his jets, but the ship could not move more than forty miles an hour under water. For a moment it seemed the blunt nose of the ship was going to penetrate the incredibly tough under-surface of that film, but no....

The pilot said, grinning crookedly, "Say your prayers, boys, and here's hoping they give the Old Duck what he wants—quick."

Two days passed. Three billion people stared into the face of eternity. Rivers, lakes, oceans were full. There were reservoirs of clear, sparkling water, from which laboring pumps could take water, pumping it to homes, making it accessible, forcing it out of faucets.

But it was untouchable. The water came out in impenetrable spheres.

They lay like jewels in the homes of most people. People stood around and stared at them, longingly, yet not daring to touch them. They had heard several stories about people who had touched them.

Within the spheres, the water was clearly visible for what it was; which made it all the harder to resist. The world now knew, by the word of scientists, that nothing but a thin surface of molecules, strengthened by a million times, lay between them and the water their bodies thirsted for. Surface tension, acted upon by a strange force, broadcasted from a mechanism ten miles beneath the surface of the Atlantic.

Another day passed. The mills of industry, working by steam, and the things that depended on water, came to a halt. Power was weak, for it was fed from fast depleting accumulators. The tide machines were useless, for the ocean no longer fell or rose more than a foot in any one place.

Numberless ships were stranded on the oceans, their screws able to turn, but their bows unable 

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