an electric fan. There was a party of moon-tourists giggling foolishly
and clutching at everything and buying souvenirs to mail back to Earth.

"All right, Bill," said Cochrane. "They're gone. Now tell me why all the
not inconsiderable genius in the employ of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and
Fallowe, in my person, has been mobilized and sent up to the moon?"

Bill Holden swallowed. He stood up with his eyes closed, holding onto a
side-rail in the great central room of the platform.

"I have to keep my eyes shut," he explained, queasily. "It makes me ill
to see people walking on side-walls and across ceilings."

A stout tourist was doing exactly that at the moment. If one could walk
anywhere at all with magnetic-soled shoes, one could walk everywhere.
The stout man did walk up the side-wall. He adventured onto the ceiling,
where he was head-down to the balance of his party. He stood there
looking up--down--at them, and he wore a peculiarly astonished and
half-frightened and wholly foolish grin. His wife squealed for him to
come down: that she couldn't bear looking at him so.

"All right," said Cochrane. "You're keeping your eyes closed. But I'm
supposed to take orders from you. What sort of orders are you going to
give?"

"I'm not sure yet," said Holden thinly. "We are sent up here on a
private job for Hopkins--one of your bosses. Hopkins has a daughter.
She's married to a man named Dabney. He's neurotic. He's made a great
scientific discovery and it isn't properly appreciated. So you and I and
your team of tame scientists--we're on our way to the Moon to save his