"Yes," nodded Lester, drawing the coveralls over his pants legs. "It's something about a moving ob- ject becoming shorter in the direction of its travel."

"That's the gist of it," agreed Bentley. "And have you ever wondered what would happen to an object that went faster than light, that went beyond the limit where its length was zero? What, do you believe, would become of such an object— remember, it has not been destroyed. It is still a material solid object."

"You mean you've built some sort of space ship?" The man curled his lips scornfully. "Certainly not. There's a better method of attaining desired speed. Namely by vibration. Vibrate an object at high enough frequencies and its forward and backward movement will duplicate the Fitzgerald Contraction effect just as if it moved in only one direction. But come, I'll show you the device in which I've already accomplished this feat!

They neared the rear of the room, halted before the huge apparatus he had seen previously. It consisted mainly of a mammoth glass globe about eight feet in diameter, with a smaller tubular portion projecting from either side. Visible in each of these sections was a great metal rod that Lester took to be electrodes. The whole thing gave the impression of an oversized Crook's tube. On the nearest side was a plug in the glass wall, beveled and ground like the glass stopper of a chemist's bottle, but large enough to admit the body of a man.

Bentley jerked his head proudly at the towering mass of glass. "That, Kent," he said, "is the result of many years of experimentation and research. It is merely a device for producing tremendously high vibrational frequencies. Anything placed within that glass ball between the electrodes can be made to vi- brate so swiftly that the Fitzgerald effect occurs im- mediately, causing it to disappear! When the current is stopped it reappears.