swiftly again—this according to the radars.

Earth's great telescopes were turned to the position reported, and they saw the missing air-liner. It was then eight hundred miles up and twisting its great aluminum wings crazily as it went straining out into space. A second satellite was almost overhead. That passed on. The liner wavered again, and a third satellite hurtled into line and the upward journey recommenced.

The effect was exactly as if it had been snatched off the earth by the first and flung up for another to catch and draw higher in a ghastly team-work of murder. The passengers and crew of the plane were dead, of course. They could not live even for seconds in the absolute vacuum of space. The plane went wavering up and up, pathetically a tomb for its occupants, until it vanished abruptly some seven thousand miles from Earth, exactly where it would have met the fifth of the seven strange objects in its orbit.

Murfree felt rather sick. He had not expected exactly this, but something on this order. The newspaper accounts were hysterical, but they could offer no explanation. There was still no clue to the origin of the hurtling things in space. They might have come across the void from some distant sun, or they might be the work of men. A nation on earth equipped with such weapons as space-ships and atomic bombs might cherish notions of world conquest. But the fate of Germany and Japan was warning against too great ambition.

The seven objects might have been sent up as targets, as tests of the ability of other countries to combat such threats. If the rest of the world was helpless against them, why, then their makers might unmask themselves and attempt world rule. If they were vulnerable, their origin would remain a mystery.

Murfree drove back with the papers. As he reached the house, Bud Gregory came shambling out, yawning.

"The moons are space-ships, all right," said Murfree grimly.

Bud blinked sleepily. "Moons? What's that you say, suh?"

Murfree held out a glaring headline. "Don't you read the newspapers, man? This is why I came out here to see you!"

Bud took the paper. He sat down at ease on the porch.

"Mostly," he admitted, "I read the funnies, suh."

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