was an airplane designer, remember? I have some knowledge.... Have you found the electronic device yet?"

Trace turned up a lined and agonized face. After a moment he said, "No. Not yet."

"Keep going, then. I'll start at the other end," said Slough.

The banks and panels were far more intricate even than they had first supposed. Slough believed that the device they were searching for would probably be a type of klystron, considering the ultrahigh-frequency application. Whatever turn the Graken science had taken, he felt the the principles of electronics, being universal, must be those involved in this sub-space travel; and it did not seem reasonable that an electronic mechanism could be very different on Chwosst or Terra or Mars or any where else.

Trace believed this too. He was a pretty fair student of electronics and he doubted that any race could disguise a high vacuum thermionic tube or an amplifying circuit or a thyratron so that he, Sergeant Trace Roscoe, couldn't identify it. The photoelectric cells that opened and closed the doors seemed to be of the same type as those used on this planet for the same function; Trace had taken two minutes off to pry off the cover of the cell in the left wall and inspect the construction. So he ought to know the "kidnap-device" when he came across it.

He glanced at his watch. More than half an hour had passed since they entered the ship.

The race of man hung on his fingers, which fumbled among a myriad esoteric gadgets in search of one which might be no more than a pair of resonant cavities, an anode, a cathode, and a grid. He felt his coolness departing, the sweat of terror stood on his face, he lost the tough-sergeant veneer and became a panting, panicked man.

Then he caught the eye of Jane Kelly, and he bit his lip and told himself off in Gaelic cuss words, and went to his job again with a firmer grip.

And in five minutes he found the device he was hunting.

"Slough!" he shouted, in the bull's roar that once had nearly drowned out the Red guns in Korea. "Slough, come here!" And the small man, who had been six steps away, bounded to his side with his blue eyes wide in astonishment. "Is this it?" asked Trace fiercely. "Am I right, is this it?"

Slough glared at the small recess, and said, "Aha!" It was an intricate and highly 

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