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* * * * *

“It was just luck,” Hendricks tried to make us believe, a few minutes later, when Kincaide, Correy, and myself were through slapping his back and shaking his hands. “When you, sir, splashed into the water, I had just torn off my mask. I saw some of the water fall on one of the things clustered upon your helmet, and I distinctly heard it hiss, as it fell. And where it fell, it made a ragged hole, which very slowly closed up, leaving a dim spot in the tentacle where the hole had been. As I figure it, the water–to put it crudely–short-circuited the electrical energy of the things. That, too, is just a guess, but I think it’s a good one.

“Of course, it was a long chance, but it seemed like our only one. There was nothing more or less than acidulated water in the containers; and the air flasks, of course, were merely to supply the pressure to throw the water out in a powerful spray. It happened to work, and there isn’t anybody any happier about it than I am. I’m young, and there’re lots of things I want to do before I bleach my bones on a little deserted world like this, that isn’t important enough to even have a name!”

That was typical of Hendricks. He was a practical scientist, willing and eager to try out his own devices. A man of action first–as a man should be.

* * * * *

None of us, I think, spent a really easy moment until the Ertak was back at Base. Our outer hull was weakened by at least half, and we were obliged to increase the degree of vacuum there and thus place the major portion of the load on the inner skin. It was a ticklish business, but those old ships were solidly built, and we made it.

As soon as I had completed my report to the Chief, the Ertak was sent instantly to a secret field, under heavy guard, and a new outer hull put in place.

“This can’t be made public,” the Chief warned me. “It would ruin the whole future of space travel, as people are just learning to accept it as a matter of course. You will swear your men to utter secrecy, and pass me your word, in behalf of your officers and yourself, that you will not divulge any details of this trip.”

The scientists, of course, questioned me for days; they turned up their noses at the crude apparatus Hendricks had made, and which had saved the Ertak and all her crew–but they kept it, I noticed, for future reference.

All ships were immediately supplied with devices very similar, but more compact, the use of which only chief officers knew. And the scientists, to my knowledge, never did improve greatly on the model made for them by my third officer.

Whether or not these devices were ever used, I do not know. The silver-sleeves at Base are a close-mouthed crew. Hendricks always held that the group of things which so nearly caused the deaths of all of us had wandered into our portion of Universe from some part of space beyond the fringe of our knowledge.

* * * * *

But the same source which supplied one brood may supply another. Evidently, from young Clippen’s report, this thing has happened. And since starting this account, I have determined why the powers that be are willing now to have the knowledge made public. The new silicide coating with which all space ships have been covered, is proof against all electrical action. That it is smoother and reduces friction, is, in my opinion, no more than a rather halty explanation. It is, in reality, the decidedly belated scientific answer to a question raised back in the hey-day of the Ertak, and my own youth.

That was many, many years ago, as the crabbed, uncertain writing on these pages proves.

And now, rather thankfully, I am about to place the last of these pages under the curious weight which has held the others in place as I have written. That irregular bit of metal from the hull of the Ertak, so deeply pitted on the one side, where the hungry things had sapped our precious strength.

“Electites,” the scientists have dubbed these strange crescent-shaped things, young Clippen said. “Electites!” Something new under the sun!

New to this generation, perhaps, but not to old John Hanson.