specialized form, if he was any judge, of the resonant cavity magnetrons with which he had worked often in the past. He said so, and Trace nodded. "Okay. Now we gimmick it."

"Can I help?" asked the midget, eager as a boy.

"You're damn right. My fingers are too big to get into all the crannies. You do what I tell you; get in behind the tube, like so, with your index finger...."

As Trace ordered and Slough obeyed, the others came round them, still alert for raiders, but eager to listen to the mysterious words which came, sharp and intense, from the sergeant's lips. Now and then Slough would disagree, and they'd argue; Bill began to fidget with apprehension. The words were Greek to him.

"But if we lead in the wire from this other thing, which has got to be the fuel feed—"

"Why must it be? We don't know it is. I say build up the frequency of oscillation until—"

"Well, then, stick your damn fingers over here and hold this steady while I—"

And so on. Bill was certain that it would never end, that they must be caught at sunrise by an investigating party of the green aliens; but suddenly the midget and the soldier were moving off from the control banks, looking at each other with expressions half smug and half fearful. "Let's get out," said Trace abruptly.

"What did you do?" asked Jane Kelly, as they hurried through the rooms toward the entrance port.

"Gimmicked it," said Trace. His hand fell on her arm and squeezed reassuringly. "The electronic device is now altered so it'll build up an intolerable frequency; it's also connected with the thing we think is the fuel feeder, and with a row of buttons we're almost certain connect with the blasting rays."

They reached the port. "In other words," prompted Jane, "what?"

"In other words, when the ships are set to zoom old Earth into the sub-space subways, this disk is going to blow sky-high; and since they're all connected in series electronically, the whole goddam fleet will explode simultaneously."

They wriggled through the short passage, dropped to the ground. It was very dark on the plain. Patches of snow on the ground showed dark shapes of tree and bush and boulder; after the green light of the saucer, this outer world was dim and full of 

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