feeling happy and secure again someone was sure to spoil it all. "You know this thing may turn out to be more serious than we think," he would say. "I've got a nephew teaches out at the university. Hasn't got a dime but smart as the devil. Well, he told me confidentially it's getting worse instead of better. No telling where it may end, in fact."
Rather curiously, women had much more awareness of the Xi effect than men, for it struck at their most vulnerable point—their appearance. Golden hair could turn gray in a matter of weeks. A complexion drained of its warm flesh tints looked dead. Cosmetics were of no avail against it. For of what use was lipstick if it only turned, the lips from gray to black? Or of rouge if it left only deeper shadows on the cheeks? The radiant beauty of a short time past anxiously examining her face in her mirror at night might see an old woman staring back at her out of the glass. Deaths from sleeping pills became a commonplace.
Not until late in November, however, did the situation reach such a critical stage that government officials felt compelled to recognize the Xi effect as a definite world menace. Previously its encroachment had been dismissed by the ingenious process of studiously minimizing its existence. It was frue that the papers printed the censored reports from scientific institutions but always under captions that were misleading and with the significant news buried near the bottom of the column. A few scientists who refused to be muzzled soon found themselves out of a job or called up before an investigating committee.
Eventually, however, the clamor became so loud that announcement was made of a series of mass meetings to be held across the country in which all the facts insofar as they were known would be discussed without reservation. The first in the series was scheduled for the Los Angeles Coliseum for Monday, November 27th, with the great Dr. Friedmann as the feature speaker of the evening. Public sentiment changed almost overnight. The personal appearance of Friedmann alone did much to restore confidnce. He was the fellow who had discovered this Xi effect, wasn't he? Well, then, he could probably control it, too. Man had never met a problem that man was unable to solve.
By the evening of the 27th public curiosity over what Friedmann would say had been excited to such a degree, that it was necessary to keep the man's whereabouts a profound secret to prevent him from being mobbed on sight. By five o'clock every street leading toward the coliseum was blocked solid with cars for miles around, and by seven o'clock more than a hundred thousand people had jammed themselves into the vast structure, while thousands more milled around the walls outside seeking entrance. Although the Los Angeles Police Department had every man available on duty in
