Reaching the fifth floor, Kir-Um placed a restraining hand on Harl's shoulder and pointed excitedly to a door at the far end of the hall. Light streamed from beneath it and glowed faintly through the frosted glass panel set in its upper half.

Scarcely daring to breathe, they approached the door and stood, regarding it with apprehensive eyes. Harl noted the gold-leaf lettering on the glass panel, but the cryptic legend had no meaning to his Martian mind. But, to an Earthly member of that rabid army known as scientification fans, the words would have brought a tinge of awe. For this was the room where far-flung systems were denied existence, by one shake of a firm, unyielding head; where the most expressive cuss-words of super villains were brutally censored with a fiendish swipe of a little, blue pencil—the editorial office of Galactic Adventures.

"Harl," Kir-Um whispered softly. "There's a creature in that room! Do you not detect its thought vibrations?"

Harl opened his mind to reception and stood a moment, as if in a trance. His eyes slowly dilated and he gasped in astonishment.

"Yes, Kir-Um, there is a creature in there. A strange, horrible creature, possessed of mad, meaningless thoughts. I—I wonder what it looks like?"

Kir-Um pointed to a small, oddly-shaped aperture, which undoubtedly was some sort of device for locking the door. Hesitantly he stepped forward and placed his eye to the hole.

Inside the room, Newt Jorgsen, the building's janitor, was hugely enjoying the contents of a letter he had retrieved from the wastebasket. Tears streamed from his blurry eyes and his bent, bony shoulders shook with spasms of laughter. His gunboat feet were planted firmly on the editor's desk and a tall bottle of beer, smuggled in by devious means and of which Newt was inordinately fond, sat on the floor at his side. The letter was from one Joe Carson and the mirth it provoked almost caused Newt to spill from his precarious perch and brought numerous, gleeful shouts of, "Oh, Yimminy!" from his foam-flecked lips.

Kir-Um stared in amazement at this tableau and uttered a quick, staccato, "Ickly-unc!" Luckily, Newt did not hear the Martian's expression of surprise, but continued his perusal of the letter.

Kir-Um drew back and silently motioned Harl to look. Harl sucked in his breath, but dutifully bent forward to the door. Newt had just placed the bottle to his lips and Harl 

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