“Of course I heard it.”
The radio was saying:
“This is Clarence Ainslee, astronomical observer at Mount Wilson Observatory. Are you looking at the moon? If not, get a large telescope and look at the extreme western extremity of the Sea of Vapours. You will see something you never saw before. There is a lake or sea forming there. At least that is the judgment of astronomers.”
“What do you think about it?” Billy asked.
“Horse radish.”
Both aviators looked toward the bright shining full moon.
“But,” Epworth remarked, “we could not tell anything with our naked eyes.”
“In addition to the appearance of a new lake,” the radio continued, “vegetation is appearing not far from the eastern border of the water. The mystery of this is now puzzling the scientific world.”
“Let them puzzle,” Epworth muttered as he switched the radio dial. “I should worry.”
“This is the news report from the morning Blade,” they heard the radio say. “Station WGCF. The report has just come in that twenty masked men, all of whom spoke a foreign tongue, have robbed the Swift & Co. laboratory. They lined up the seventy chemists and their assistants, and while the gunmen held them and their helpers the bandits looted the plant. Thousands of dollars in liquid air, saltpeter, and chemicals were carried off in two enormous airplanes, dim shadowy things that stretched out two thousand feet in length.”