expect of a woman?" "Kent Fanning and weird girl try to hoax scientists—"

Somehow as I thought of it, resentment sprang within me at what this would do to the gentle little Nereid. Allen and I, tomorrow when the storm was over, would have to take her to Tampa, of course. Or perhaps we would take her to some scientific Society, with less publicity. And an effort would be made to recover her cylinder, with its precious secret.

It was my swift flow of thoughts as for that moment the newscaster droned on. And suddenly his voice changed. He had been describing the mysterious falling of what quite evidently had been Nereid's little vehicle. And now another Press Bulletin had reached him.

"Mysterious airship descends from the stratosphere, lands in the Gulf near Palmetto Key, off west coast of Florida. At sunset tonight—"

Nereid gripped me with a little gasping cry as we listened. A gleaming metal thing, flatly oblong with a turret globe at bow and stern, had been distantly seen by a tramp freighter which was heading westward into the Gulf, bound for Mexico. A metal ship—blood-red with the sunset on it—slowly floating down; rotating slowly, weirdly on its horizontal axis.... It had been seen to land on the Gulf surface. And then slowly submerge, heading shoreward like a plunging submarine as it vanished!

Nereid murmured, "Tollgamo, he has a ship like that! But my father has none! Oh Kent—"

A spaceship from Venus! Was it that? Following Nereid here to seize her; to prevent her from giving the secret of Interplanetary transportation to Earth! The newscaster was saying something about U.S. Coast Guard Cutters being ordered from Tampa to investigate.

And from here on little Palmetto Key, young Allen had disappeared! The implication of that struck at me. For a second I stared at Nereid, the firelight gleaming soft and warm on her dripping little body; tinting her pink-coral face which now was stamped with terror.

But we had no more warning than that. The storm was at hand now, and the wind was lashing the upper fronds of the palms; purple darkness here on the island with a flash of lightning and almost simultaneous thunderclap. For that second the palmetto shrubs were whitely illumined by the electric glare. Fifty feet away a big, dark upright shape abruptly was visible. And another—and another! Men stalking us!

The glare died. There 

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