what it was, were twelve chairs, above which were metal globes, or hoods, like hair dryers, the chairs set in a kind of semi-circle around three sides of the cyclotron. Each chair was just the right size to hold a human body.

I glanced past the chairs—nobody had yet asked me to sit down, and Marian Slade had disappeared somewhere behind me—and spotted the electric panel for the first time. But another minute passed, a minute during which the profound scrutiny of the "scientists" became deeper, more profound, before I connected the electric panel with the chairs.

Those seats arranged around the cyclotron were electric chairs! Each chair would be filled with a human being, and all could be electrocuted at one time, and if all were "vanishers," who would care?

"Gentlemen," I said, "you might ask me to be seated! Just which of the electric chairs has been assigned to me?"

There was a stir among the twelve men who had ranged themselves around the great room to await my coming. One of them, the eldest, now that I had discovered they were not dummies, but living men, bowed to me gravely and said:

"Welcome to the Lab, Mr. Hale, if that is your name. Allow me to introduce you to my colleagues. You will understand, later on, our reasons for failing to furnish correct names. I am Doctor A."

Then he gave me the initials of the others, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K and L. I never knew them by anything else. They varied in appearance as men usually do, and their ages ran from perhaps twenty-five to seventy-five, Doctor A being obviously the eldest and the dean of the Lab.

Even the fact that all were men in white did not serve to hide their differences. Their eyes were unusual, all of them. I think they held a coldness, a searching hard coldness, in common. They were men of science, by their appearance, and they were ruled by science.

Each would have given his life for science, if by so doing he did not slow the progress of science instead of advancing it. That is, he would have given his life if he had not realized that his death would be a great loss to his chosen field. By the same token, not one of them regarded the life of any individual as being important enough to fuss much about. Understand this is only my personal opinion, the personal opinion of a man lost in the utter depths of amnesia.

Those twelve men, however, struck 

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