Congressman, and arrest any found with firearms. You can bet the plotters will be armed. But the Congress will have to be suspended until every member is thoroughly investigated!"

He felt Almira stiffen in his arms, and heard McTavish exclaim: "Good, man!"

"Suspend the Congress—" Marshal Denton repeated, shocked. "Jon, you—"

"It's an emergency, Sir," McPartland urged. "It's war. You're the supreme military commander. You have the right to act on your own initiative whenever the Congress of Specialists cannot function. They can't function now! You can't let them be stampeded into surrender. There must be no surrender!"

For a long minute, there was silence in the blackness about him. "I'll do it, Jon!" Denton said at last. "Captain Wendall!"

A man answered somewhere beyond him. Denton gave swift orders, and the other moved away. "My men will be at the Congress in five minutes, Jon," the Marshal said. "Now, just how do you propose to fight this thing? We have to be right, now, you know. We must win—or be executed as traitors!"

"I want the Avenger loaded with space torpedoes, Sir. We have hundreds in the arsenal," McPartland explained. "I believe the logical place for the ether dissipating machinery would be on the far side of the moon. The outlaws and their Specialist friends could have worked there without fear of discovery."

Denton was already giving orders to another officer. "We'll have your ship loaded in minutes, Captain," he said. "You're right about the moon—we don't even patrol that side. You intend to—"

"To blast every square inch of its surface," Jon said fiercely, "from space. Once we destroy the machinery, and lift the blackness, we'll make short work of the plotters. The Avenger could do the job alone!"

"Good!" said the Marshal. "I hope your theory is sound. We haven't much time to experiment."

"No," said Almira suddenly. "Millions of people would die in rioting, accidents, from starvation—if light—if the ether isn't restored! We'd have to surrender before that happened."

"What would those millions gain," McPartland demanded savagely, "better than death—under the rule of outlaws and traitors?"

Almira pulled away from him. Her fingers slipped from his. "It is modern," she 

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