"Come on, Tom!" shouted Bud in alarm. "There's not other way out!"
       Covering his face with both arms, he plunged forward like a fullback hitting the line. Tom followed, and both boys plowed through the ring of fire.
       It seared their parkas and set their clothing ablaze. They threw themselves to the ground and rolled over and over in the snow, slapping at the burning fur until the fire was out.
       Tom looked anxiously at his pal. "Are you okay, Bud?"
       "No broken bones. But I'll have a few bruises to remind me of this incident!"
       The boys rose and saw that the ring of fire had died as suddenly as it had flared up. Tom crouched on one knee to examine the discolored snow where the blaze had been.
       "A chemical with a copper nitrate base did this," he judged. "The kind used in fireworks. The stuff was laid down in the snow and then set on fire. Whoever did it must have been hiding near here."
       Tom looked behind a cluster of snow-covered rocks, leaned over, and picked up something. "Here's our proof. Burned matches, Bud!"
       The pilot looked grim. "Then there's a spy network in the area. The Brungarians must have a hideout near this peak, Tom!"
       As the boys started down the mountainside, the wind rose to a gale. Heavy snow began to fall.
       "We're caught in a real storm!" Tom muttered. He stopped under an icy overhang so they could get their bearings.
       Suddenly Bud grasped Tom's elbow. "Listen!"
       They heard a voice speaking a whisper. The words were in Brungarian, which the boys understood fairly well. "We must stop Swift!"
       "If only our machine would come," a second voice replied, "we could take the mastodon and leave. But the machine isn't finished. It won't be here for another five days."
       The voices faded away. Tom and Bud stared at each other. Where could the speakers be?
       "I think it's a freak of acoustics," Tom said. "They're probably a long way off, and we've been hearing an echo."
       "We may as well forget them and head for the hacienda," Bud commented. "The storm is getting worse. We can come back and search for the hideout another time."
       "Good idea, Bud. We know the Brungarians won't be able to move the mastodon for five days. That gives us a little time to map out our strategy before their machine arrives."
       At the hacienda they found Mr. Swift greatly disturbed. He had been experimenting with the Transmittaton. In the midst of the experiment, the transmitter beam had gone dead.
       "And at the worst possible time," Tom's father complained. "We've received another message from our space friends!"
       "What did they say, Dad?"
       "More ghosts are streaming into our galaxy! A great horde of them are mustering on the other side of Mars!"
       Bud winced. "Could they be preparing to attack earth, Mr. Swift?"
       "Possibly, Bud! But our space friends still haven't been able to communicate with them! Tom it's up to you to do it."
       A check of the Transmittaton revealed a malfunction serious enough to require some basic restructuring.
       "We can't wait for repairs," Tom pointed out. "Bud and I will go up in the Cosmotron Express. I'll try to communicate with the P-E by Racodio!"
       Tom sent a message to Swift Enterprises order ing his Cosmotron Express to be prepared for blastoff from Fearing Island. He and Bud took a jeep to the valley where the Swift jet was parked.
       Chow insisted upon going along. "You buckaroos don't eat proper when you're alone. Somethin's always missin' from your diet!"
       "It sure isn't mushrooms!" Bud muttered.
       They landed at Swift Enterprises in daylight, boarded a smaller plane for Fearing Island, and arrived just as the last of the Cosmotron's fuel tanks was being tested.
       "A-OK?" Tom inquired.
       "A-OK!" the chief engineer replied.
       Tom, Bud, and Chow went aboard. With Tom at the controls, the spaceship roared upward from its launching pad. The earth rapidly diminished in size. The moon grew larger, and then it too fell behind.
       Mars was off to their right. Tom set a course for the point on the planet's orbit where its path and the Cosmotron's would intersect at the critical moment.
       "Autopilot will take us straight to our rendezvous," he assured his companions.
       "Kinda like headin' 'em off at the pass," Chow remarked. He had come in with the usual early-flight snack for the men at the controls.
       "Don't tell me!" Bud moaned. "Let me guess! Mushrooms on toast!"
       "Why not, pard?" Chow demanded.
       Tom grinned. He left the spaceship on autopilot, and after sampling Chow's fare, he and Bud went to shower and take a nap. Tom set his alarm because he had work to do before reaching Mars.
       "The Racodio must function perfectly," he told himself, "or we're in for king-size trouble when we meet the galaxy ghosts!"
       At the end of the trip to Mars, Bud took the controls and carefully plotted a path that put them in orbit at a safe distance from the Red planet.
       "The rule is: Observe now, approach later," Tom reminded him. "We want to know what we're getting into and not be trapped."
       The spaceship curved around Mars. the three observers gasped at the sight ahead of them. On the other side of the planet was an enormous seething cloud made up of what appeared to be globules of mist! Millions more were streaming in from outer space! The cloud was expanding at a tremendous rate.
       "What a glare those ghosts are throwing off!" Bud said in a trembling voice. "And look at our radiation counter. It's going wild!" he cried out.


       "It must be the ghosts' strange radiation!" Tom said. "And it's becoming stronger by the second!"
       "What kin we do to corral 'em?" Chow asked. "Those loco critters sure are somethin' new!"
       Tom said, "You stay in the Cosmotron, Chow. Bud and I will go out for a closer look at these ghosts!"
       The boys put on antiradiation suits and entered a life cap. This was a miniature spaceship that was equivalent to a lifeboat on a seagoing vessel. Made of Tomasite, the capsule could hold two men. It was powered by repelatrons, and capable of traveling away from the mother ship, operating on its own, and returning after its mission.
       Tom remarked grimly, "This is the biggest test any life cap has been put through!"
       Bud guided the baby spaceship toward the eerie pulsating horde of invaders. Both he and Tom had observed that the appearance or intensity of the ghosts was not altered by any know environment.
       Tom operated the Racodio. "Identification! We are earthlings!" he messaged the P-E. "Who are you?"
       He and Bud flew closer and closer to the radioactive mist with its glowing globules.
       "They don't seem able to translate my message," Tom said, "or answer the Racodio!"
       "Maybe their radio waves aren't strong enough to reach us yet," Bud suggested.
       "Take us right in and I'll find out! It's risky, but we have no alternative. Either we make contact with these beings from beyond our galaxy, or else we go up in smoke!"
       Tom reminded Bud that Tomasite had been unaffected by the radioactive rock that had bounced around his lab. But, they both wondered, would the Tomasite hull of the life cap be able to withstand the fantastic radiation emitted by the Photo-Essence?
       As they neared the seething mist, the miniature craft stopped moving under its own power. Bud jerked the controls. "The engine's gone dead!" he cried.
       "This mysterious radiation must have knocked out our repelatrons!" Tom replied grimly.
       Before the boys could decide what to do, a huge globule of shiny mist flashed past the life cap's bubble top and buried itself in the ghostly mass. A moment later the entire cloud gathered speed and momentum in the direction of the life cap! As the horde surged toward Tom and Bud, they could feel the temperature in their craft skyrocket. Burning rays invaded their space suits.
       "Tom!" Bud shouted. "They'll burn us to cinders!"