murmured. "You and I, if we get this Xalite, it will make us independently rich, of course. Enough for our life's needs. But beyond that, the world will have it. Xalite, to be cheap as old-fashioned petroleum." His voice had risen with his excitement, but suddenly he lowered it again.

"But John, suppose we were unscrupulous. To keep the price of Xalite up—to deal it out, only to the rich—to make ourselves fabulously wealthy at the expense of the poor—"

"I see," I agreed. I wonder why my glance, like his, strayed idly to our moonlit window oval, here on the ground floor of his home? I am not the least bit psychic; there is, of course, no such thing anyway.

"We'll finish up the Planeteer now," Livingston was saying. "Pete Duroh and Carruthers—that's all you'll need. And as we agreed, we'll take them with us. Four of us—that's enough to man the little Planeteer. But nothing must be said of Xalite. You understand?"

"Yes, of course."

"So far as the world will know, the Planeteer is starting merely on a trial flight into Space. We don't want any publicity anyway. And Duroh and Carruthers—they must know only that we're hoping we might reach this wandering little asteroid. Nothing about Xalite. That can come later. We don't want to take the least chance of this thing leaking out—"

He checked himself suddenly. We both heard it—the sound of what seemed padding footsteps, retreating from our laboratory doorway. Someone furtively slinking away in the house corridor.

"Why—good Lord—!" I gasped.

I dashed into the dim corridor. There was nothing; and then I heard a distant outer door close. The intruder had escaped from the house. And then, from the laboratory, came Dr. Livingston's gasp: "John, look—"

I swung back to him. In the moonlight at the laboratory window a face showed behind the filmy curtains—a man's face peering in at us. It was just an instant glimpse.... Staring, wild, red-rimmed eyes—the face wearing a bluish stubble of beard. By no chance could it have been the person who had escaped me in the corridor.

In that second, I dashed for the window. The face had gone. I got there only in time to see a dark blob scurrying away into the shadows of the moonlit woods.

II

"All ready, Dr. 

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