breaking down the morale of the citizenry as a whole.

"Then this last thing. For two solid weeks the whole world was literally plastered with the announcement that at midnight on the thirty-fourth of Dreel—you're familiar with our calendar, I think?—President Renwood would disappear. Two weeks warning—daring us." Wainwright got that far and stopped.

"Well, go on. He disappeared, I know. How? What did you fellows do to prevent it? Why all the secrecy?"

"If you insist, I'll have to tell you, of course, but I'd rather not." Wainwright flushed uncomfortably. "You wouldn't believe it. Nobody could. I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't been there. I'd rather you'd wait, sir, and let the Vice President tell you, in the presence of the Treasurer and the others who were on duty that night."

"Um-m-m ... I see ... maybe." Kinnison's mind raced. "That's why nobody would give me details? Afraid I wouldn't believe it ... that I'd think they'd been—" He stopped. "Hypnotized" would have been the next word, but that would have been jumping at conclusions. Even if true, there was no sense in airing that hypothesis—yet.

"Not afraid, sir. They knew that you wouldn't believe it."

After entering Government Reservation they went, not to the president's private quarters, but into the Treasury and down into the subbasement housing the most massive, the most utterly impregnable vault of the planet. There the nation's most responsible officers told Kinnison, with their entire minds as well as their tongues, what had happened.

Upon that black day business had been suspended. No visitors of any sort had been permitted to enter the Reservation. No one had been allowed to approach the president except old and trusted officers about whose loyalty there could be no question. Airships and spaceships had filled the sky. Troops, armed with semiportables or manning fixed-mount heavy stuff, had covered the grounds. At five minutes before midnight Renwood, accompanied by four secret service men, had entered the vault, which was thereupon locked by the treasurer. All the cabinet members saw them go in, as did the attendant corps of specially-selected guards. Nevertheless, when the treasurer opened the vault at five minutes after midnight, the five men were gone. No trace of any one of them had been found from that time on.

"And that—every word of it—is TRUE!" the assembled minds yelled as one, all 

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