It was hard to tell. It was quite a distance off and it was clouded in a haze of light. From the parabolic reflector there converged a cone of the same-looking blue ionization. The intensity grew until it tortured the eye-ball. Above a small metal table was the focal point, a volume of blue-violet light so bright that its outlines could not be determined by the human eye.

"I should have provided dark glasses," said Peter apologetically. "But I didn't know it would be that bright."

Walter Higgins turned to one of his visitors. "Forsyth," he ordered, "Go out and get a dozen pair of dark sun-glasses. And hurry!"

"Yes, sir!"

Peter gulped. Higgins had just snapped an order to the executive vice-president of one of his companies. Not a request, a flat order. Forsyth disappeared in a hurry. Peter almost expected Higgins to take a hundred from his wallet for petty cash, but Higgins was obviously going to permit his executive vice-president to pay for the glasses himself.

Then the blue haze dimmed.

Down the laboratory the converging cone died. A bright yellow glow remained on the table and a curl of dirty smoke rose. Peter led the dash down the laboratory and got there just in time to see the last of a small dusty pile of gray-black dust turn to thin ash. He poked at the miserable pile with the end of a pencil and watched the dusty ash collapse. He spread the ash around on the metal plate.

"Where," asked Walter Higgins in a sharp voice, "is your metal cube?"

Peter poked at the spreading pile of ash. "Here," he said in a shaken voice. "This is—I don't—it must have—"

Mr. Harrison, the Vice-President In Charge Of Engineering and Research of the Higgins Development Company elbowed his way through the small group and picked up a pinch of the ash between thumb and forefinger. He abraded it gently, felt of the texture. He sniffed it gingerly, put a pinch in the palm of one hand and rubbed it with a forefinger.

"I would say offhand that this stuff is black iron oxide. Ferrous oxide, caused by exposing the pyrophoric powder of iron to the oxygen of the atmosphere," said the man, whose sometime engineering education had not been entirely lost in his later preoccupation with financial and administrative duties.

"Do go on," sneered Higgins.

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