'Gee, what's happening to all those atoms?' So I grabbed him and ran like hell for the nearest sub-basement. When those compressed atoms let go it tore everything loose from the experimental station. When Dead-Eye and I crawled out, all it was was a desert. There wasn't a tree, a bush, a rock or a hill for ten miles around. It was the flattest place I ever saw, or hope to see again." He was staring blankly at the insentient visaplate.

"But, hell, I talk too much."

Jake Wilson, landing supervisor, pushed open the oval hatch, said: "Hang on, sir, we're volplaning in. It's lucky we got the vanes out before the power quit."

The shock spilled the chunky Wilson into the plotting room, clipped the legs out from under the three already there. There was a moment of lift, then another shock a little less severe. The ship lifted again, struck, lifted once more and settled with an audible groan of metal stress.

They hurried from the plotting room, heading for the exit lock.

It was a peculiar sort of night outside, a benevolent blue softening the blackness. Curt Wing stared at the blue haloed city off to the west. He was licking his dry lips.

"Gosh, Cap," Dead-Eye asked suddenly. "What if _that_ blows up?" A shudder quivered through his bulky frame.

Wing's dark eyes went blank. He put one hand on Dead-Eye's arm. He said nothing. He was standing there, staring at the pulsating blue flower that was spreading out from the city, his fingers quiescent on Dead-Eye's arm when the red-uniformed riot officer jockeyed his speedy rocket car up to them....

The building was still untouched by the force field's encroaching maw. Curt Wing stood by the window staring out at the blue night scene. Finally he answered the men who sat at the long narrow table behind him.

"I don't know what we can do. My experiments with such a field taught me only that I could not control it once it was set in motion," he said quietly.

He turned then to face the men--the governors of the seven divisions of earth. "You have flattered me because of an experiment that ended in failure," he went on. "But even if we had a solution, a way to overcome this impossibility, we must not forget that it is only one problem. We have this unknown to lick, yes; but meanwhile the Mercurians we left out by the moon can punch us to Stardust."Jan Eliel, senior governor, shook his 

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