Art Douglas saw one of the very first of them, found and brought in by two drivers from the huge steel burrowing worm which was at that time conducting the sub-crust explorations many miles below the rolling Kansas prairies. Why the men should have brought the discovery to an organization such as the Interplanetary Research Institute, was something not quite clear to Art. They must have known, he reflected bitterly, how utterly bogged down the Institute was, how close to absolute disintegration,