Varez turned slowly. "It's all rather baffling. He talked at first only of something called 'It'. It had been born and It must grow. It needed strength."

He frowned. "When I tried to probe deeper, I just couldn't get anywhere. I tried hypnosis, but it didn't work. That amazed me, for Andersen seemed a susceptible type. I finally gave him a sedative and left him to sleep."

Marie was silent a moment. "Do you think there could be any connection—"

She was interrupted by feet pounding up the little steel stair. It was Carew, the gangling English youngster who was Zarias' assistant, who burst into the lookout. He looked upset.

"Doctor Varez, I thought I ought to tell you! I just saw Doctor Andersen going into Main Physics lab! Of course it's none of my business, but I heard about what happened today, and he looked so queer and dazed!"

All three of us were startled.

"We'd better get hold of him at once!" exclaimed Varez.

We ran down the stair, and Burris and Mathers, the chief mathematician of the Station, joined us as we hurried across the Dome to the main tunnel into the labs. Burris' face was taut as he ran.

"That cracked idea of his of bringing a lot of the transuranic elements together—if he tried that—"

"This way!" yelled Zarias, his voice from ahead of us sounding strangled. "Hurry!"

We burst into the big Main Physics lab. The first thing we saw was Zarias scrambling to his feet by one wall. His face was deathly white and he had blood on his forehead.

Across the big lab, Andersen was working like a madman with the remote-controls by which the transuranic elements could be mechanically brought from their safety chambers into the lab. The Dane had a blank, unseeing look on his face as he yanked conveyor-switches one after another.

Burris yelled as we ran forward. I heard the clash and grind of gears, and glimpsed lead trays sliding out of their conveyor tubes onto the racks, trays with a dozen different new transuranic elements in them.

The tray with the oval mass of Element One-forty-four in it popped out, as I ran forward. Instantly, that ovoid of tawny metal burst into a shimmering glow of light that seemed to reach toward the other 

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