be annihilated. Our present plans, however, are not efficient and must be changed. You all know of the mighty space-fleet which the nations of our enemies are maintaining to repel invasion from space. Were we to make a demonstration now—were we even to reveal the fact that we are alive here—that fleet would come to destroy us instantly.

"Therefore, it is our plan to accompany Earth's fleet when next it goes out into space to join those of the other Inner Planets in their war maneuvers, which they are undertaking for battle practice. Interception, alteration, and substitution of human signals and messages will be simple matters. We shall guide Earth's fleet, not to humanity's rendezvous in space, but to a destination of our own selection—the interior of the sun! Then, entirely defenseless, the mankind of Earth shall cease to exist.

"To that end we shall sink a shaft here; and, far enough underground to be secure against detection, we shall drive a tunnel to the field from which the space-fleet is to take its departure. We ten thinkers shall go, accompanied by four hundred of you doers, who are to bore the way and to perform such other duties as may from time to time arise. We shall return in due time. Our special instruments will prevent us from falling into the sun. During our absence allow no human to live who may by any chance learn of our presence here. And do not make any offensive move, however slight, until we return."

Efficiently, a shaft was sunk and the disintegrator corps began to drive the long tunnel. And along that hellish thoroughfare, through its searing heat, its raging back-blast of disintegrator-gas, the little army of robots moved steadily and relentlessly forward at an even speed of five miles per hour. On and on, each intelligent mechanism energized by its own tight beam from the power-plant.

Efficiently, a shaft was sunk and the disintegrator corps began to drive the long tunnel.

And through that blasting, withering inferno of frightful heat and of noxious vapor, in which no human life could have existed for a single minute, there rolled easily along upon massive wheels a close-coupled, flat-bodied truck. Upon this the ten thinkers constructed, as calmly undisturbed as though in the peace and quiet of a research laboratory, a domed and towering mechanism of coils, condensers, and fields of force—a mechanism equipped with hundreds of universally-mounted telescopic projectors.

On and on the procession moved, day after day; to pause finally 

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