distance from the black shaft of energy. On planets, it was just enough to cause fear; the most infinitesimal waver in the constant course of the planets awakens racial fear. In spacecraft, the shift was more violent, but here people were prepared for a bit of wobble.

On planets, the shift was just enough to cause fear; auroras flamed for an hour....

The auroras flamed bright for an hour; as soon as the shift had shaken the wits out of every human in the solar system, the big observatories set their big glasses on the fixed stars and consulted quadrant-protractors to ascertain what the shift had done. On photographic plates of operating telescopes, the shift was barely noticeable upon the images of brighter stars. The dimmer ones had danced aside and back too swiftly for the emulsion to register. But it had been a swift jiggle up and back; now things were as they had been once more save for the big mystery that caused the radio lanes to buzz, and made men ask their neighbors what it could have been.

Captain Bardell of the Island Princess went to the salon after the radio had told him what little could be told about the incident. He told the passengers what he knew as a matter of interest, and because they had been as close to the phenomenon as any other human being.

Cliff Maculay, bent back across the bar with his elbows hooked over the edge and a glass in his right hand, chuckled amusedly.

"But this isn't funny," complained a comely woman in a strapless gown at his left.

"Dorothy, darling, you're wrong," he laughed.

"I suppose you know what it is?" came the cynical reply from the red-head on Cliff's right.

"Helen, that 'thing' was a manifestation of the application of variable-matrix wave mechanics to intrinsic space by the real and/or unreal roots of negative space."

"That's utter gibberish."

Maculay laughed. "Verily," he chuckled. "But my revered Uncle Clifford will—about now—be telling the world the same thing in about the same incomprehensible collection of dictionary fodder."

Captain Bardell heard, and came to stand before Maculay. "Clifford?" he said uncertainly. "Clifford Maculay?"

"Right name but 

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