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.