CHAPTER III
Hekki's Proposal
When Shelby reached his apartment, he immediately donned his laboratory smock and set to work. But he had scarcely finished mounting a tiny coil of wire within the hand-grip of his weapon, when the view-phone bell rang insistently.
The inventor pulled off his smock and threw it over the materials on his work bench, so that the person at the other end of the view-phone connection, whoever it was, would not be able to see them. Then he snapped the television and audio switches. The mists in the view-plate cleared, and there before him, as real as though he were actually in the room, sat Hekalu Selba. The Martian's eyes gleamed with suppressed excitement.
"Mr. Shelby," he was saying, "it may seem strange that I should be calling you so soon, but I have something simply colossal to talk over with you. You must come up to my place immediately! I realize that you may be very busy, but this is important!" And he added, "It's nothing to discuss over the view-phone. Will you come?—please!"
Shelby was about to make a cold reply, but he checked himself. An intense curiosity gripped him.
"All right, Akar Hekalu," he said. "I'll be there." The switches clicked.
Hastily Austin changed to his street clothes, and then gathered together the material for his weapon and placed them in the wall safe. Only one thing he selected from the jumble of apparatus—a tiny pinkish crystal, without which it was impossible to produce the Atomic Ray. This he secreted in a hollow button on his sleeve.
For a long moment he stared at his automatic, which lay on his work bench. "Better take you along," he muttered at length, "—may need you."