The Moon's wounds have never healed . . . not since that great event in the distant past when the mystery planet between Mars and Jupiter blew apart in a massive explosion, sending fragments to devastate the surfaces of Earth and Moon.

The mystery of that missing planet has long intrigued Soames, who spends his hours charting celestial bodies in search of answers. Now a new mystery presents itself: for in detecting a meteor and trying to track it, he has come up empty-handed. He is obtaining no data at all.

Abruptly his twin radar screens flash white, while Inter-Base Radio lets out a screaming, shrieking uproar no radio had ever emitted before. And unknown to Soames, at this instant the same horrifying sounds are emerging from every radio and television set around the world!

Pioneering author Will Jenkins (1896-1975), writing as Murray Leinster, was long regarded as the Dean of Science Fiction.