path: root/75478-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75478 ***





                        The Crystal Planetoids

                        By STANTON A. COBLENTZ

                    There in the sky was a vast web
                   and perched on it were invisible
                     beings--what did it all mean?

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                       Amazing Stories May 1942.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




Philip Dunbar ran a lean exploratory hand through his tousled long
black hair. There was a sardonic, faintly quizzical look in his dark,
trimly moustached face, which acquaintances were inclined to describe
as "handsome, but saturnine." His little jet-points of eyes, as he
stared across at the next laboratory table, glittered enigmatically.

"Well, Ronny," he inquired, in a drawl that rasped, "found it at last?"

Ronald Gates peered up from amid a mass of lenses, batteries and wires.
His frank, open face widened into a broad smile. His clear blue eyes
sparkled.

"Yes, by heaven," he confessed, enthusiastically, "I think I've got
that devil licked!"

Instantly Dunbar was at his side.

"Like hell you have!" he doubted.

At the same time, from the opposite end of the great laboratory, a
feminine voice broke out,

"Oh, good, Ronald, I knew you'd do it!" And the tall form of Eleanor
Firth, its youthful attractiveness scarcely dimmed by the stained
rubber gloves and apron she was wearing, came gliding toward the men.
Her big golden-brown eyes blazed with admiration as she turned them
full upon Gates. "I knew it, Ronald--I knew you simply had to!"

To an onlooker, the relationship of the men and the girl would have
been crystal-clear. Dunbar's manner, as he glared at Gates, was
dagger-sharp; Gates had no eyes for Dunbar at all; while both men
regarded the young lady with softening glances that were eloquent.

Why was it, Dunbar reflected, that they had all taken to staying in
overtime here at their place of employment, the laboratory of the
Merlin Research Institute? True, Gates was all worked up about that
damnable invention of his! And Eleanor--wasn't it just like a woman
to find an excuse to stay when she knew Gates would be there? As for
himself--if he didn't want to be shoved out of the picture, he had no
choice but to work on after hours!

"Yes, by glory! I think I've done the trick!" Gates was exclaiming. "If
you folk'll just come with me to the roof, I'll demonstrate!"

He took up a black instrument resembling a pair of opera glasses,
except that it was equipped with large red lenses, and was attached by
wires to a cluster of minute batteries and radio-like tubes.

"What did you say you call the contraption?" asked Dunbar, as Gates
started upstairs with his invention.

"The Infra-Red Eye."

"Why in blazes do you call it that?"

"Just wait a minute, and you'll see. You know as well as I do, Dunbar,
photographs taken in infra-red light will reveal clear details through
a mist. Why must the human eye be blind where the camera can see?
It is all a question of securing the proper adaptation to etheric
vibrations--which I have done by means of invisible rays produced by
electrical action on certain iridium and osmium salts in these tubes."

       *       *       *       *       *

Dunbar grunted a half coherent reply, and threw open the roof-door. As
they came out into the heavy mist-laden air of the late July afternoon,
the humidity rolled from them visibly. There was a peculiar stagnation
in the atmosphere, as though the very breath of heaven had been
congealed. Featureless gray clouds hung wearily over the landscape; a
dull, blank haze obscured everything beyond a few hundred yards. One
might have said that the very elements had gone to sleep.

"Goodness, I do wish we could get some relief from this atrocious
heat!" sighed Eleanor.

"The twenty-ninth continuous day of it, unless I've missed my count!"
grumbled Dunbar, as he mopped his perspiring brow. "Doesn't it beat the
devil? What's more, it's getting worse!"

"Yes, and the strangest thing of all is, it seems to affect the whole
world!" returned the girl. "I just can't believe it's not something
more than common weather!"

"Hate to tell you what I suspect it is!" returned Dunbar, ominously.

"Come, come, folks, what are you so cheerful about, all of a sudden?"
Gates demanded, as he examined the adjustments of the wires. "Good
heavens! I'm sick and tired of hearing there's something supernatural
about a heat spell, just because it happens to be unusually prolonged."

"Yes, but the other phenomena!" broke in Dunbar, his sharp eyes
glinting with hostility. "The dust clouds--the checking of normal wind
movements--the indefinable thickening in the atmosphere--the thunder
storms of unprecedented violence--"

"Nothing has been definitely established," denied Gates. "Personally,
I doubt if it's anything at all, aside from a cycle of exceptional
sun-spot activity. But we're wasting our time. Ready now for the
infra-red eye?"

"I'm all keyed up!" announced Eleanor, casting the young man one of her
strangely kindled, animated glances.

"Here, you make the first test," he decided, thrusting the black
instrument into her hands. "Just fit it to your eyes like binoculars.
Turn that screw for the adjustment. Wait! I'll see to the current!"

He switched a lever, drew back a panel, and pressed a button. But,
aside from a faint whirring sound, there was no apparent effect.

"Now focus the instrument!" he went on. "Point it anywhere. If you
don't see through that haze as easily as a knife cuts butter, then set
me down as a fraud and a liar!"

The girl screwed up her eyes. Faint wrinkles were visible on her broad,
creamy white brow. A second passed in silence. Then an astonishing
change overcame her countenance.

All at once, her lips drew apart in an incredulous expression. A gasp
came from between her lips. A pallor spread across her cheeks. For
several seconds she remained as if glued to the instrument.

       *       *       *       *       *

Grimacing wrily, she snapped herself away from the eye-piece with a
horrified,

"Ugh!" Her eyes bulged. Her whole form was trembling.

"I--I--I guess I'm seeing things!" she explained, lamely.

Then, observing how strangely Dunbar was staring at her, she thrust the
instrument at him.

"Here, you--you just look for yourself!"

Dunbar took up the apparatus, and peered through it steadily for
perhaps half a minute. But he too, when he put it down, was visibly
paler.

"God! Am I crazy?" he grunted. "Here, Ronny, better have a peep
yourself--"

But Gates had already snatched up the instrument. And he too gasped as
he adjusted the lenses. For he saw nothing that he had anticipated.

The only purpose of the Infra-Red Eye, as he himself had declared, had
been to penetrate a haze. But how startlingly the results had exceeded
expectations!

Spread far above the earth's surface, in the form of colossal cobwebs,
were long tenuous strands, woven in a web many layers deep. The
threads, colorless and almost transparent, were thin as though composed
of some silken fabric; but were enormously long, and stretched in great
curves from horizon to zenith. Over the entire firmament they seemed
to be bent and twisted by the tens of thousands, forming intricate
geometric patterns, and uncannily giving the impression of enclosing
the earth in a great cage. Wavering slightly in the faint breezes of
the upper spaces, they covered every section of the visible heavens,
even spreading their dim crisscrossing bars across the moon.

As if this discovery in itself was not ghastly enough, a still more
terrible sight presented itself. Scores of beings, vaguely human-shaped
and each with many limbs dangling octopus-like, swung agilely along
the gigantic webs. Of prodigious size--seemingly not less than fifteen
or twenty feet tall--the creatures were of a watery pallor that made
only the bare outlines of their forms visible. Each, in the middle of
an egg-shaped head, displayed two oddly three-cornered eyes that glowed
with dull red flames; each possessed six or eight many-fingered hands
with which it was adding new segments to the monstrous web.

With a groan, Gates put down the instrument; and, wiping his streaming
brow, sagged against a wall for support. But the horror in his eyes
matched that in the faces of his companions as the three stared at one
another in open-mouthed amazement.




CHAPTER II

The Terror Strikes


It was as Dunbar had remarked. For nearly a month, unexampled
meteorological disturbances had been occurring throughout the earth.
Not only in the northern hemisphere had a record heat blanketed every
land; in regions far below the Equator, the accustomed mid-winter chill
had disappeared; indeed, an almost tropical calm had been reported
as far south as Cape Horn. Everywhere on the earth's surface, normal
wind currents had been retarded or halted; everywhere dust and mist
had accumulated; everywhere--even in the usually thunderless coastal
regions of California--electrical storms of unparalleled violence had
been of almost daily occurrence. But scientists, having no plausible
explanation, had for the most part looked on in mute bewilderment.

There were, however, some who professed to believe that the shattered
remnants of a comet had entered the earth's atmosphere; and supported
their theory by pointing out that quantities of some gaseous foreign
substance, which as yet they had been unable to analyze, had been
detected in the stratosphere; while scores of high-flying airplanes had
recently been slowed down or wrecked by unexplained impediments.

Few persons as yet saw any connection between the extraordinary weather
and the reports of astronomers that dozens of minute bodies had been
detected through telescopes, revolving as satellites about the earth
just beyond its atmospheric limits. For lack of a better theory, it was
assumed that they were asteroids or "minor planets" which had ventured
too close to the earth and had been caught by its gravitational
power; although no one could say why so many of them should have
been discovered almost simultaneously. Besides, it was hard to
account for the peculiar glassy appearance of these so-called Crystal
Planetoids--an appearance which did not at all indicate the nickel or
iron composition that might have been expected.

       *       *       *       *       *

Not all these facts were in the minds of the three observers on the
roof as they made their disconcerting discovery. But there were certain
things which they did realize clearly enough.

"By glory," exclaimed Gates, his big eyes as wide with surprise as
though he had seen the dead. "By glory! I just can't believe those
great spidery devils are real--"

"Real or not, I--I've got a feeling we shouldn't stay here," Eleanor
muttered, her face still white, as she started toward the door.
"I--I--something tells me it isn't safe!"

"What in tarnation do you think can happen to us here more than down
below?" demanded Gates. And then, with a shrug, "I'm going to take
another peep through that glass!"

"Sure, go ahead! Might as well all wait, and die together!" Dunbar
growled. "D'ye know, I've got an idea Eleanor's right. If we've a spark
of sense left in our hides--"

Gates cast him a scornful glance, noting what an abject figure he
seemed to be, as, with terror convulsing his lean, moustached face, he
went slouching away.

"Hope I'll fall dead before I get so soft!" reflected the inventor.

Yet, despite himself, his pulses were throbbing as he returned to
the Infra-Red Ray and observed the ominous, ruddy glow that, within
the last minute, had come across the heavens. Was not the atmosphere
thicker, hotter, heavier than ever? Why did it seem to bear down on
him like a stony weight? Why within him that impulse which he sternly
repressed--that impulse to race for shelter?

For a few seconds, after he had re-adjusted the instrument, he saw only
what he had observed before: the prodigious spidery webs, with the huge
octopus-limbed creatures swinging across them.

But almost immediately he made another observation. And, as he did
so, a cry came to his lips. It was a cry of horror, issuing from some
vast instinctive depth--a cry such as one might utter if one saw a
man-eating tiger springing toward one with wide-open jaws. "For God's
sake! Quick! Run--for your lives!"

Even as he uttered this plea, Gates dropped the instrument and started
away. Dunbar was already in the doorway, into which he was disappearing
with the violence of panic; while just behind him Eleanor was
scampering like a frightened wild thing.

But they were just a second too late. There came a rushing as of a
great wind. There came a moment as of immense shadows, sweeping down
with lightning velocity. There came a glimpse of tenuous shapes in
rapid motion, a little like the spokes of a furiously turning wheel. At
the same time, in a nightmarish, unbelievable fashion, Gates saw Dunbar
and Eleanor arrested in mid-flight. Something vague and gray, which
looked like a gigantic claw, seemed to be woven about them both. But it
all happened too quickly for him to be sure. In the same instant, he
beheld them both jerked into air; then whirled skyward at rocket speed,
while their cries rang in his ears.

[Illustration: The girl's scream rang out as the tentacles reached down
and enfolded them in steel mesh.]

At the same instant also, as he stared at his companions, stunned and
gasping, he felt something soft but powerful seizing him about the
middle--something wriggling, and snake-like, and icy chill of touch. He
was never to know whether he screamed in the extremity of his terror;
all that he was aware of was that there came a mighty jerk, and that,
helpless as a hare in an eagle's talons, he rose into air with a speed
that almost beat out his breath; and saw the roofs of the city fading
beneath him amid the reddish haze.

       *       *       *       *       *

For several minutes, beneath the clubbing rapidity of the flight, the
captive's senses deserted him. And when, feeling dazed and drugged, he
revived, it was to find himself amid a universe of fog in which the
earth had receded from sight. He had, however, the distinct sensation
of still rising--rising at tremendous speed. And he noticed--and
this, to his mind, was the most incredible thing of all--that he was
surrounded by an egg-shaped jelly-like transparent envelope about
fifteen feet long. Not until much later did he realize that this
envelope enclosed oxygen enough for him to breathe, and maintained it
at a temperature and pressure without which life at his great elevation
would have been impossible.

He had no way of knowing how much time went by in that nightmarish
flight. He did, however, feel sure that many minutes had passed before
at length he found himself above the mists. Blanketed in vapor,
the earth rolled beneath him, shadowy and featureless; while, in a
crepuscular dimness, he saw the stars glittering from the purple-gray
void. But what particularly held his attention was the sight of several
monstrous creatures--long and spidery, and with dangling octopus
limbs--which drifted ghost-like through the vagueness just outside the
egg-shaped envelope, with malevolently glowing three-cornered reddish
eyes.

As he still rose, past what might have been the upper limits of the
stratosphere, he saw a silvery globe sparkling above him in the
moonlight. At first he thought it to be a mere speck; but its disk
rapidly widened, until it appeared as large as the sun, then as great
as several suns, then seemed to fill the entire heavens with its pale
glassy form, which shed a tintless cold light that made Gates shudder.

Actually, the sphere was not more than a few hundred yards across; but
to the bewildered victim it seemed enormous as some prodigy of nature.
His confusion was only increased by the fact that he saw the stars
moving rapidly past it, with a westward drift, showing that it was
swinging swiftly to the east on an orbit of its own. So dazed was the
captive that it took him minutes to identify it as one of the Crystal
Planetoids.

By this time, they had reached the surface of the sphere, which he
could see to be composed of a jelly-like substance with the appearance
of milky glass. As they drew near, their speed rapidly diminished,
until they came to a halt almost in contact with the great globe. Then,
as if at its own volition, part of the surface billowed back, like a
paper flap blown by the wind; and Gates, with the sensation of one
entering a prison in a strange land, found himself drifting inside the
sphere.

As suddenly as if it had evaporated, the egg-shaped envelope had
disappeared, and he caught a whiff of hot, heavy, foul-smelling air,
reminding him of a breeze straight from a menagerie. He coughed and
gasped, and, as he did so, became aware of an unimaginably horrifying
scene.

       *       *       *       *       *

He stood inside the sphere at its lowest part, and gazed up into a
circular space that, to his startled senses, seemed of stupendous
magnitude. Woven about this vastness at all heights and angles was an
intricacy of webs; webs built in concentric circles; webs composed of
long parallel cables crisscrossed by shorter cables; webs ascending
as sharply as the riggings of sailing vessels; and webs spun into
hammock-like floating platforms. All the strands were thinner than
a man's small finger, and shimmered strangely in the many-hued
fluorescence of great light-patches on the ceiling; and somehow their
iridescence, their shifting rainbow hues, their purples, ambers,
aqua-marines, scarlets and turquoise blues, made them seem all the
stranger and more sinister.

But most sinister of all were the great beings sprinting along the webs
or dangling spider-like from a thread. Now for the first time Gates
saw his captors clearly; for now--as he was later to learn--they had
brushed off the powder that made them virtually invisible to human
eyes, and stood forth in their full grotesqueness.

Their outlines were what he had already seen: gigantic, spidery, with
octopus limbs ending in many tentacle-like curling fingers. He had
not known, however, that the monsters were encased in a scaly armor,
which glittered with every peacock hue in the unearthly light, changing
chameleon-like from ruby to emerald, and from gold and violet to
bronze, jade and sulphur-yellow. He had not known that they had wide
pouting greenish-gray lips, from which at times a faint smoke issued.
He had not realized that they were equipped with long whips of tails,
each ending in a horny dart, with which they could strike an enemy with
appalling effect. He had not anticipated that they would talk with a
peculiar whirr, a little like the grating of a buzz-saw; nor had he
expected to see the pouches beneath their lower ribs, in which some of
them, kangaroo-fashion, carried their young.

Scarcely had Gates been deposited in the Planetoid when he made still
another discovery.

"Great heavens, look at Ronald!" he heard a familiar feminine voice.
And, wheeling about, he found himself staring at Dunbar and Eleanor,
who gaped at him not half a dozen yards away.

Both were, literally, as white as ghosts--wide-eyed as persons who
have looked on unmentionable horror. Gates noticed that Dunbar's hair,
usually so sleekly glossed, straggled in wild disorder; that his tie
was a rag, and his coat buttons torn off as if in a struggle; while
Eleanor's clothes were in rumpled disorder. Yet he noted with relief
that neither captive, apparently, had been hurt.

"Thank God!" the girl explained. "You're whole and sound!"

"Even if a little mussed up," Dunbar forced out, with a wry grimace.
"Good Lord! Why, his shirt is in ribbons! And his collar--"

But he was not to finish the sentence. For Gates suddenly cried out,
with a sensation as if a boa constrictor had seized him about the
chest. One of the monsters, its red eyes glaring balefully, had reached
down and grasped him in its tentacles; and, with the manner of a master
reprimanding a disobedient puppy, had begun to carry him away.




CHAPTER III

Red-Hood


Straight up and up a swinging ladder the prisoner was borne for scores
of yards; while, as he gazed into the abyss and thought of the result
if his captor's hold should slacken, his head reeled with vertigo.

But his terror was not for himself alone. Even as he was hurtled high
in air, he glanced down and saw an octopus's arm wrapping itself about
a feminine form. And fury and alarm for Eleanor's sake drowned out all
self-concern. In a flash, as his persecutor wound his way through the
webbed void, he relived the history of his acquaintance with Eleanor.
He saw again that day, little more than a year ago, when she, fresh
from college, had come to the laboratory; and recalled the great leap
his heart had given, and how he had gone away thinking only of her. But
a natural timidity had delayed his advances; while Dunbar, the silent,
morose Dunbar, whom nobody liked, had not been so restrained. Could
she not see that the man, though clever enough, was as self-centered
as a porcupine? How could she have fallen for this schemer? Not that
she had fallen for him absolutely! Though they had been seen together
frequently, was she not always gracious to Gates? Yet the rivalry of
the two men was bubbling way beneath the surface like acid.

These thoughts, which passed through Gates' mind in much less time than
it takes to repeat them, were interrupted by a peculiar squeal which
his captor gave out as he reached one of the hammock-like floating
platforms and released the victim. Clinging to this unsteady island
high in air, in imminent peril of plunging into a two-hundred-foot
gulf, the prisoner was not likely to attempt escape!

But even had there been anywhere to flee, he would have been held by
the magnetism of a particularly large, sinister-looking pair of crimson
eyes, which glowed from a monster who appeared, to Gates' startled
gaze, to be at least twenty-five feet tall. A blood-red hood, placed
upon the creature's many-hued mail, set him off from all his fellows;
as did the air of autocratic command which, somehow, Gates sensed
rather than observed directly.

While he stood gaping at this goblin, a sharp cry to his left caught
his attention; and, wheeling about, he observed Eleanor and Dunbar
being deposited at his side. Both were trembling, as well they might,
after their journey up the web, but he thought he saw a glint of relief
in the girl's eyes, as he gestured to her.

A long, portentous silence fell as the red-hooded brute glared at his
victims. Gates had the sensation of standing before a judge about to
pass sentence of execution.

Then there came a throaty rumbling, followed by a buzzing as of a
multitude of bees; after which, to the hearers' incredulous amazement,
these words rasped forth, in grossly accented yet quite recognizable
English,

"Welcome, my guests! Welcome to our web!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The three humans stared at one another, their lips agape. Had they all
gone crazy?

The red eyes of the beast gave a wicked twinkle. Somehow, with their
triangular scarlet pupils, they seemed more diabolical than ever.

"Come, come, do you not return my greeting?" buzzed the creature; while
a grating noise, which may have been laughter, came from his companions.

"How--how in thunder do you come to speak English?" sputtered Gates,
feeling that he was but living through a nightmare from which he would
soon awaken.

Again that grating noise, like harsh laughter.

"English--pooh! It is not hard to learn. It is not as if it were an
advanced language," proceeded Red-Hood. "But you earthlings, with your
minor-planetary minds, may not understand. Do you want me to explain?"

"Why not?" gasped Gates. But had he not steadied himself barely in
time, he might have fallen off the platform.

"Well, it is all so very simple," went on the monster. "When
arriving here, we covered ourselves with the powder Amvol-Amvol,
which makes us invisible, or almost so. We then roamed your planet
for many days, unseen by you, observing your habits, and listening
to your conversations. Not being slow-witted like earth denizens,
we were able to pick up the meaning of the words, which we held in
our memories--memories that register everything, and never forget.
After all, it is not for nothing that we are gifted with Saturnian
intellects."

"Saturnian?" demanded Dunbar.

"Yes, that is the word you would use, is it not? We come from the
planet Olar-olargulu, the ringed one."

The hearers remained silent. After all, it had been evident from the
first that the strangers had not been born on earth!

"This is our first experience with the inferior globules," continued
the speaker, in a voice like a growl. "We have never before spoken with
any of you Nignigs, or lesser peoples. But of late centuries we of
Saturn have become too numerous, even for the great size of our native
planet. So we have been looking for provinces to colonize. For various
reasons, we have chosen the earth. As for Mars--it is too small to
bother with. Jupiter, unfortunately, is too powerfully defended by its
three-footed dwarfs. And Venus is too near the sun for comfort. So we
are prepared to take over the earth."

"Take over--the earth?" demanded the three humans, in one voice.

"What else? After all, are we not entitled to it, by virtue of our
superior intelligence?"

       *       *       *       *       *

His hearers could merely stare in bewildered silence.

"Our method, you see, is simple. We have ferried these cars--which
you call the Crystal Planetoids--all the way from Saturn, and placed
them in positions to whirl about the earth as satellites, enabling us
to drop down upon our future domains at leisure, while weaving our
clogclotlas--"

"Your what?" demanded Gates.

"Pardon me," apologized Red-Hood, while a spout of smoke came from
between his thick grayish-green lips, and his tail lashed out and shot
its hornet dart to within half a dozen inches of the young man's face.
"Pardon me--I had forgotten myself, and used a Saturnian term. Weaving
our webs, I should have said. You see, it is necessary to spin these
webs thoroughly through your entire atmosphere before choking out all
the planet's native life."

The speaker had made this announcement in as quiet a manner as though
he had merely foretold that tomorrow's weather would be rainy.

Hence his hearers were hardly able to take in his full dread meaning.
They merely gaped at him as though he were perpetrating a ghastly joke.

"What! Do you doubt me?" rattled out the monster. "Beware lest I take
offense! We Saturnians never lie to our inferiors."

This assertion was punctuated by another flick of the creature's tail,
whose rapier-like barb barely missed Dunbar's nose.

"But you don't mean to say you would actually exterminate
us--exterminate us all--" began Eleanor; then faltered, and halted in
confusion.

"Why not? Would you earth-creatures hesitate to wipe out a hive of
ants? Doubtless they too have minds, and even a civilization of a sort.
But what is that to you? If they got in your way, would you not crush
them?"

"So we are no more to you than ants?"

"Do not flatter yourselves. Why should we be sentimentalists, and spare
you nignigs unless you can serve us?"

The puff of smoke that came from between the monster's lips, as he spat
out these words, was so heavy that all three humans gasped, with the
stench of sulphur in their nostrils.

"As I have said," he went on, "our clogclotlas, or webs, have been
woven all through your atmosphere, checking the usual wind currents,
and laying down a blanket that will enclose the planet's heat, until
after a time every living creature will be baked or choked to death in
one vast oven. Of course, like any other great engineering project,
this will take time. We cannot expect to complete the good work in less
than a year or two."

In Gates' disturbed fancy, it seemed that many-colored points of light,
like little demons, danced malevolently upon the huge expanse of his
captor's armor.

Yet there was just a trace of incredulity in his tone, as he demanded,

"If this is all true, why do you trouble to tell us about it? We for
our part do not warn the ants we intend to trample!"

"Nor do we!" Red-Hood's words came in a snort, and his tail flicked
through the air in an angry crackling. "But whether we will spare you
or sting you to death remains to be seen!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The beast took a sudden step forward, and Gates found himself almost
projected off the platform as the monster shot out at him,

"Do you not think we brought you to the Planetoid for a purpose? For a
long while, have we not been looking for suitable earth-captives? No,
not at first members of the common pack! We wanted prisoners who knew
something of your science, rudimentary as that is. When you went to
the roof down there to use your ray machine--the Infra-Red Eye, as you
call it--you set up etheric vibrations that instantly attracted our
attention. Your ability to produce such vibrations told us that you
were the folk we were seeking. So we lost no time about capturing you."

During the moment of silence that followed, Dunbar turned toward Gates
with unveiled enmity in his snapping black eyes.

"So!" he snarled. "It was your damned invention that got us into this
mess!"

Gates made no reply; but an answer came from an unexpected direction.

"You should thank him, earth-man, for getting you into this mess.
Because of his invention, you three may live while all other
earth-creatures perish!"

"What in God's name would life on such terms be worth?" Gates demanded.
But a sob to his left caught his attention; and, wheeling about, he
joined Dunbar in trying to console the weeping girl.

With a contemptuous glint in his triangular eyes, Red-Hood stood
looking on; but it was several minutes before he resumed,

"Life is dear to all creatures--and you will find it not worthless on
our terms!"

"What are your terms?"

It was Dunbar who asked this question, while Gates felt a silent
resentment against the other man leap up within him.

"They are really most reasonable," the monster announced, sliding
back and forth on the web, while his scales clanked ominously. "You
see, even after all we have done, we find it hard to work on earth.
The air is much too thin. After we have thickened the atmosphere with
a complete network, things will be different; but as yet we labor
under great disadvantages. What we need are tanks of compressed air
to help our breathing. Such compressed air can be supplied only by
you earth-creatures, since in our haste, unfortunately, we neglected
to bring our automatic condensers from Saturn. That is why we have
captured you. And that is why we promise you your lives--if you will do
us a little service."

Gates glared back at Red-Hood in unconcealed fury. That this
creature, who was threatening to wipe out the human race, should ask
for his assistance--the idea was too preposterous, too heinous for
consideration! And he was glad to note, from the revulsion in Eleanor's
face, that she felt no less shocked than he.

But it was in unbelief, swiftly turning to anger, that he heard
Dunbar's low, even voice, inquire,

"And what little service do you want of us?"

The gray-green lips of the Saturnian opened in a hideous grin.

"I knew from the first," he rasped, "that you earth-animals would
be reasonable. Our proposition is simply this: we will release you
all, on condition that, on your return to earth, you prepare great
containers of compressed air, according to our directions. If you do
this faithfully, we will see that your lives are spared even after the
extinction of all other earth-creatures."

"And if we refuse?" demanded Gates.

Red-Hood took a menacing stride forward.

"You will not refuse!" he proclaimed, again with a puff of sulphur
fumes. "For, in that case, you will suffer a fate a hundred times worse
than death!"

With ominous rapidity, the monster's tail whipped out once more,
flashing back and forth before all three captives. And Gates, edging
again toward the webbed abyss, had a momentary idea of leaping over
the brink. But even as this thought came to him, he felt an ice-cold
arm lashing him in a firm grip. Harsh, loud and ironic, the monster's
derision grated in his ears,

"Not yet, my friend, not yet! The road of escape will be long and
spiky! The road of escape will be long and spiky for all who defy the
will of Saturn!"

These words were emphasized by a peal of laughter, shrill, grating,
diabolical, wherein all the onlooking monsters joined in one prolonged
scream.




CHAPTER IV

"Co-operate--and Live!"


"Earth-Men, we are not impatient! We know your minds work like rusty
hinges--but what else can be expected of the minor planets? So take a
little time. Consult with one another. We will allow you half an hour.
Then we will be back, and learn if you prefer to co-operate--or to die
a thousand deaths!"

With an agile looping movement, Red-Hood started down one of the cable
ladders, followed by all his retinue.

"One thing more!" he warned, noting how longingly Gates was staring
into the abyss. "Take care not to fall off the platform! In that case,
strong arms will be waiting to catch you--and your punishment will be
heavy in proportion to the crime!"

"How heavy will that be?" defied Gates, wondering what they could do to
him worse than they had already threatened.

Scarlet flashes shot from the monster's eyes. "One hundred of your
kind," he snorted, "will be picked up from the streets of your cities,
and crushed to death as hostages! Such is the vengeance of Saturn!"

As the creature left, with a low hissing as of escaping steam, Gates
felt as never before that he was in contact with a force having nothing
in common with humanity.

Silence ruled for a moment, while the three prisoners sat facing one
another on their high swinging perch. But their horror-filled eyes were
eloquent.

"God in heaven! I don't suppose there's much for us to decide!" mumbled
Gates, grimly, while he stared as in a nightmare at the looping,
crisscrossing intricacy of cables overhead.

"No, I'm sure not!" sighed Eleanor.

"Any idiot could see that!" Dunbar muttered. "Don't know what we need
this half hour to think about!"

Another gloomy silence ensued.

"Well, at least I'm glad we're agreed," declared Gates, who, to tell
the truth, was a little surprised at Dunbar's sudden manifestation of
decent feeling.

"Wouldn't we be imbeciles not to be," Dunbar drawled, running a lean,
long-fingered hand reflectively across his jutting chin. "All comes
down, I guess, to a question of saving our own hides. As for me--I
never did exactly hanker to shine as a martyr."

"Martyr?" echoed Gates. And all at once he knew the full enormity of
Dunbar's treason--yes, knew beyond all need for further questioning!

At the same time, he noticed Eleanor's nauseated look.

"Goddamn it, Ronny, mean to say I got you wrong? So you folks are not
with me after all?" demanded Dunbar, incredulously. "Deuce take you! I
never thought you were that crazy!"

"If you call it crazy not to betray your whole race--"

"I'd like to know what in hell my whole race has ever done for me!"
retorted Dunbar. "Lot it'll help them if I let myself be ground to bits
by those snaky dragons! No, sirree, you can play the saint if you want
to--but I'll think you're both hell-blasted fools. As for me--I'll
co-operate--and live!"

"I'd rather be a hell-blasted fool than live with the world's blood on
my hands. Wouldn't you, Eleanor?"

"A thousand times over!" attested the girl. And in her animated eyes,
as she nodded assent, there was a warmth Gates hadn't observed in them
before.

"You're letting your feelings rule you, Ronny, not your mind!" swore
Dunbar. "That's the trouble with you--too infernal much of a dreamer!
Can't face reality! Why, haven't I seen it in you all along? You
haven't got the guts of a jellyfish! That's why I've despised you!"

       *       *       *       *       *

There it was out in the open again, their antagonism flaring
white-hot. Somehow it seemed strange, ludicrous that the three of them
should be perched here, on the rim of eternity as it were, and be doing
nothing better than air their personal enmities. Yet, after all, did
Gates not know that Dunbar had always loathed him?

It was Eleanor's voice that broke the brief, bristling silence.
Struggling to gain control of herself, she cast a defiant glance at
Dunbar. "You are badly mistaken, Philip!" she defended, crisply, "if
you think Ronald hasn't got, as you say, the guts of a jellyfish. I
guess it doesn't take so much guts to be a traitor, the way you're
planning, Mr. Dunbar! And let us both die while you go pleasantly along
your way!"

Tears were in the girl's eyes; she had to avert her face violently to
prevent a telltale overflow.

Dunbar's answer was a low, gruff laugh.

"Good Lord! What makes you think I'm willing to let you both die?
Ronny can do what he damn well wants to--guess the world will outlive
his loss. But you, my girl--do you think I'll let you be massacred
just because most of our good-for-nothing species is due to be wiped
out? Believe me, if there's going to be one man survive the slaughter,
there'll be one woman too--just to start the new world right! Do you
get me?"

As he crept nearer to her along the web, his little black eyes widened
in a leer.

A quarter of an hour later, the full implications of his words became
clear. Red-Hood and the other Saturnians had returned; and, ringing
their captives about in a glittering circle, had demanded their
decision. And Eleanor and Gates had defied them with a resolute "No!",
regardless of the thunderous rumblings and the spouts of smoke that
came from their masters' lips.

But Dunbar took another track.

"Worthy visitors from Saturn," he said, with mincing gestures, "I am
glad to co-operate with you. But, in return, I ask one small boon."

"What boon?"

"If I help you, O noble ones, I must do so without restraint. But this
cannot be unless you grant me the favor I ask. You see, O Lords, we
earth-men are so made that we cannot do our best work without a woman
at our side. So I crave of you--spare the life of this female here;
release her, so that she may labor with me!"

A snort from Red-Hood drowned out Eleanor's shocked protests.

"But this woman, O earthling, has refused to co-operate. She deserves
the fate worse than death, which we have in store for her."

"Women, O Lords, are ever fickle and changeable of mind. If you will
but spare her, I will see that she will co-operate."

The Saturnians held a brief conference among themselves, in tones like
rapid gurglings. Then Red-Hood turned back toward Dunbar. "It is so, O
Nignig! On our planet, too, the female of the species is fickle, and
changes her mind like the lightning." And then, pointing scornfully at
Gates, "Do you also ask us to spare your other companion?"

"Not so, O Lords! I ask the woman only!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Eleanor's despairing cry was muffled amid the bellowing of the
Saturnians, as they once more conferred, punctuating their debate with
flashes of their many-colored armor, and with innumerable puffs of
smoke ... in a discussion that lasted for many minutes.

Finally, discharging sulphur fumes from little orifices at the ends of
his long twining fingers, Red-Hood turned back to his Quisling.

"Let it be so!" he rattled out. "On one condition, we will release the
woman. She will serve as a pledge for the faithful performance of your
promise. If you fail us, by even the minutest fraction of a fraction of
a degree, be sure she will not escape, but will perish along with you
on the Barbs of Slow Agony!"

Eleanor gasped; and peering up into the relentless red eyes of her
captors, knew that all protest would be futile.

"Zoltevi! Zoltevi! Quimboson!" she heard Red-Hood rasping, as one of
his long tentacled arms motioned to two retainers. And after a brief
interchange in their native tongue, the pair stepped forth, and she
felt the octopus arms of one of the giants winding about her, while
Dunbar was snatched up in the claws of the second.

"My followers will give you your instructions!" Red-Hood growled at
his new servant; while Eleanor, with swimming head, felt herself being
borne down the great swaying web.

"Have faith! Have faith! We will win out yet!" she thought she heard a
familiar voice calling after her. Or was it that, in her bewilderment,
she had only imagined? For her last glimpse at Gates showed him
standing erect and defiant enough, but so feeble-looking, of such
midget size beside the many-armed, tailed monsters that towered above
him to the height of the great dinosaurs of vanished ages!




CHAPTER V

Paralyzed!


Compared with Gates as he stared up at his captors, Daniel in the
lion's den may have considered himself almost among friends.

For a moment after the departure of the two other humans along with
Zoltevi and Quimboson, no sound was audible except that of the
threshing, sighing cables, and of the deep, throaty breathing of the
monsters.

Then in silence--a silence more terrible than any spoken
threat--Red-Hood advanced toward his victim. Gates, sensing his
sinister intention, spontaneously pressed back. But Red-Hood drew
nearer still, this time with a ten-foot stride. And Gates retreated to
the extreme outer edge of the platform. Another inch, and he would have
fallen!

But before he could plunge to a welcome deliverance, his persecutor's
long tail shot out. With a rapid whirring motion, sounding a little
like the warning buzz of a rattlesnake, it flicked by his left arm. And
this time it did not miss. A glancing stroke touched him painlessly,
leaving an abrasion hardly more noticeable than the prick of a pin.

But instantly something else occurred--something all too noticeable!
Gates felt a numbness shoot along the arm, which took on the lifeless
feeling of a jaw into which a dentist has pumped several charges of
novocain. And from the arm the feeling spread to his left shoulder,
then over to the right shoulder, then down toward his abdomen, and up
his neck, and along the right arm, and through both legs to the toes.

It all happened in a matter of seconds. Almost before he had had
time to grasp the full dread facts, he found himself paralyzed. Yes,
paralyzed practically completely! Except for a slight wriggling
movement in his feet and fingers, he was unable to stir! In his horror,
he attempted to cry out; but his tongue would not obey the impulse; all
that came forth was a whisper-thin gurgling. Meanwhile, no longer able
to maintain an upright position, he had sagged to the floor of the
web, where he lay like a bundle of rags.

Strangely enough, however, the higher nerve centers appeared
unaffected; his mind had not lost any of its clarity. It was, in fact,
as though his mental reactions had suddenly been heightened, now that
his physical frame was as if dead.

After a minute of silent gloating, during which he stood leering down
at the victim, Red-Hood drew wide his green-gray lips, and huskily
inquired,

"How do you feel now, O earthling? That was what we call a tail-prick.
Had the blow struck beneath the surface, you would have perished. But
that would not have served our purpose. You can do more for us alive
than dead."

       *       *       *       *       *

Savage and determined was the secret compact that Gates made with
himself: he would perish in agony, a hundred times over, sooner than
voluntarily help his captors by so much as the flick of one finger!

But Red-Hood, as if aware of his thoughts, twisted those great bag-like
lips of his into a sardonic grin, and grumbled,

"It will not be up to you, my friend, whether you assist us or not.
You see, there is nothing you can do against Lethemaz--the poison we
apply with the tips of our tails. For a hundred thousand cycles our
scientists have worked, until it has become the most efficient venom
in the universe. A tenth of a drop--which is just what we used--will
keep a mite like you paralyzed for days, unless we apply the proper
antidote."

To Gates' horrified consciousness there had come the memory of certain
wasps which injected a paralyzing fluid into their spider prey, keeping
them alive but helpless for an indefinite period, so that they might
nourish the next wasp generation.

But the fate of the spiders seemed almost enviable beside his own. For
they at least would at last know an end to their captivity!

As this thought shot through his mind, he heard Red-Hood conferring
in undertones with two subordinates. And the latter, after a moment,
approached him and produced long cables, which they began to twist and
loop about his body. For what purpose? He could not even guess. Yet the
wicked twinkles in their three-cornered red eyes told him that they
were up to some new villainy. A minute later, when they began to carry
him down the web, amid the shimmering many-hued strands, how fervently
he wished that he had seized his opportunity before it was too late,
and had fallen off the platform to his doom!

       *       *       *       *       *

Twelve hours had gone by. The Crystal Planetoid, whirling on its orbit
about the earth, had swung back to the point at which the three humans
had entered it. And a man and a girl, deposited by two invisible
attendants, had found themselves back near the spot where their
adventures had begun.

They had come down in a fog--which was not surprising, since fogs now
hovered continually over the earth; and their exact point of descent
was an isolated spot in a city park, a mile or two from the laboratory.
Dunbar recognized the place with a satisfied grunt, as he identified
a certain rustic bridge over a small stream. "Good! Just ideal for a
little chat!"

It seemed as if a huge shadow drifted over them and away, and vaguely
they were aware that the two Saturnians had departed.

"What is there to chat about, Mr. Dunbar?" she flung back haughtily.

There was a silken purr in the man's voice. But determination marked
his manner as he imposed himself in the girl's path.

"Now listen here, young lady. There are several things you might as
well understand. The first is that you must co-operate."

"Co-operate?" she tossed back, shrilly, and paused long enough for a
contemptuous fling of laughter. "Why, who wouldn't die sooner than
co-operate with those beasts--those dev--"

He had come closer to her, and his voice was coaxing, almost caressing.

"Do you think it was for their sake, Eleanor? Why do you think I saved
you, except for your own precious self? If you will only co-operate
with me--with _me_--"

"I'd rather co-operate with a viper!"

She had recoiled as though he were indeed the creature she had
mentioned; and he found it necessary to seize her arm in order to
prevent her departure.

"Come, let's forget all this, Eleanor. I know what nervous stress you
are under. When you return to yourself, you will realize all that I
have done for you. If I hadn't said a word in your behalf--"

"In _my_ behalf! Good heavens, man!" she retorted, bitterly.
"Don't you think I could have saved my own life, if I had been willing
to stoop to your kind of treason?"

"Treason or not, we shall see. We shall see. Meanwhile, I warn you,
don't try to interfere when I fulfill my agreement--when I prepare
those vats of compressed air--"

"And what if I report you to the authorities?"

"Report? By Christ! You wouldn't be that stupid? You wouldn't drive me
to action against you, would you?"

His tone had become subtly menacing as he leaned over her, and
whispered, almost furtively,

"Besides, have you not as much at stake as I, my girl? Remember, you
are a pledge for my success. If I fail--"

"If you fail, I will give thanks to heaven!"

With a determined effort, she had thrust herself forward; while he,
following through the fog, pleaded and expostulated, in tones half like
a lover, half like a taskmaster. At length, through the mist, there
came a choked sobbing. And thin and faint, where two enormous creatures
stood invisibly amid the vapors, there sounded an eerie squeak, like
the muffled mockery of demons.

       *       *       *       *       *

Chief of Police Joe McCullough had settled back to a good fat cigar
and the latest issue of the "Sports Digest." His long legs stretched
lankily across a chair; his heavy red face wore an expression almost
of contentment, except when now and then he mopped the sweat from his
brow with a crimson-bordered handkerchief. "Damn this heat!" he finally
muttered, glaring at the electric fan as if to accuse it of criminal
conspiracy. And just then the door opened, and the sandy head of
Sergeant Johannsen intruded.

"Sorry to butt in, Chief, but a dame out here wants to see you."

McCullough let out a low oath. "Didn't I tell you I don't want to be
pestered? See her yourself, Johannsen. You're no slouch when it comes
to dames." And, with a growl, he turned back to the "Sports Digest."

"But she swears she's gotta see you, Chief. Just can't do a thing with
her. Something damned important, she says."

"Tell her to go to hell!"

Even as he spoke, a woman's face poked itself through the doorway.
It was a face naturally comely, with clear blue eyes, and handsomely
chiselled chin and brow; but just now she looked like the victim of a
cyclone. Her clothes were rumpled; her disordered hair hung far down
her forehead; there were tear-stains beneath her eyes, which blazed
with a wild, impatient light.

"Chief McCullough?" she demanded.

Had she been a man, she would have been ejected without debate. As
it was, the Chief merely gaped at her, abashed, while awkwardly
withdrawing his feet from their comfortable perch. "Yes, Ma'am. What
can I do for you?"

"Something nobody else can do, Mr. McCullough. I know of a plot,
sir--the most fiendish plot ever imagined. You'll hardly believe it,
but I've just come down--well, down from one of the Crystal Planetoids,
where they've hatched a scheme to capture the earth."

       *       *       *       *       *

McCullough gaped, and let the "Sports Digest" drop from his hands. He
had had experience with crazy women before, but never with one who had
dug out a scheme to capture the earth. The best thing to do with her
kind was to let them rave on. If you tried to interrupt them, they were
apt to get hysterical.

And so it was with a polite but skeptical smile that he listened to
her story of invaders as tall as a two-story house, who had enormous
stinging tails and were invisible in ordinary light. Mid-way in her
recital, he scowled reproof at Sergeant Johannsen, who seemed about to
break out in open laughter; and, when she had finished, he thoughtfully
took up his cigar, which he had put down for the moment, and remarked,
with an attempt at courtesy,

"Well, now that's all too bad, Sister. The thing I'd advise you to do
is to go home and sleep it off. These are queer times, you know. Why,
with all this heat and tension, it's surprising we're not all seeing
rattlesnakes and tigers. So you just have a good sleep, and tomorrow
you'll feel better."

The girl stared at McCullough in dismay.

"But, my God, I'm not dreaming!" she insisted. "This is real--take my
word for it, horribly real! There's a man--I can give you his name--who
is working right now for the invaders, preparing tanks of compressed
air. If you don't help--and immediately--"

She was interrupted by Johannsen, who, no longer able to contain
himself, exploded in one mighty roar.

At the same time, she caught the amused glint in McCullough's eyes;
and all at once she felt sick--sick to the very pit of her being. And,
realizing the uselessness of further pleas, she turned without another
word, and stumbled blindly toward the doorway.




CHAPTER VI

An Offering from the Clouds


At almost any other time in modern history, the disappearance of a
promising young scientist would have created a sensation. As it was,
the newspapers were so preoccupied with other events that they merely
noted incidentally that "Ronald Gates, a technician employed by the
Merlin Research Institute, has dropped mysteriously out of sight.
No clue to his whereabouts has been found either at his lodgings or
his place of employment. Suspicions of suicide, and of kidnaping for
ransom, have not been confirmed."

Yet hardly was this story printed when extraordinary rumors began
to be heard. So wild, so fantastic were the tales that most hearers
shook their heads skeptically; newspapers denied them space; and even
the most credulous old wives found belief stretched to the breaking
point. But there were many who swore to the authenticity of the
accounts. Ronald Gates, they attested, had been seen again; had been
seen dangling in air, like a fly in a spider's web! About him were thin
shimmering strands, which vanished into a mist; while he himself swung
not many feet above the earth, was both gagged and bound. Some declared
that he was inert, and dead as a stone; but others averred that they
had seen him making frantic movements with his feet, and with the tips
of his fingers.

Among the few who listened seriously to these reports was Eleanor
Firth. Rousing herself from the sick bed in which she had been confined
for two days, suffering from what the doctor diagnosed as "nervous
delusions," she set out toward the field at the outskirts of town,
where, she had been told, the dangling apparition had been seen.

As she left the house, a skulking form slunk from behind a tree half a
block away; and slithered to the nearest phone booth. She did not see
the figure; but thought that it was by a queer coincidence that, after
she had boarded a street car ten minutes later, she saw a taxicab just
keeping pace with the trolley, and inside the vehicle recognized the
slim dark shape of Dunbar.

At first she thought of turning back. But thinking that she might have
made a mistake in identification, or that Dunbar might turn off in some
other direction without seeing her, she continued on her way.

Twenty minutes later, when the car had reached its terminal, the
taxicab was still a little behind.

But she could give little thought just then to the cab and its
occupant. Through the mist she saw some vacant lots about a hundred
yards away, where a crowd was assembled. And, with a fluttering heart,
she pressed forward, racing rather than walking toward the crowd in the
field.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the outskirts of the throng she joined the others in staring vaguely
upward into the hazes, although at first she saw nothing.

"Why, he just seems to come and go," she heard a neighbor remarking.
"Dips down, and then pops up again like a jack-in-the-box. You'd think
he was held on strings."

"There he is!" a child cried out, eagerly. "Oh, Mamma, look! He's
upside down!"

Surely enough, a figure was drifting out of the dense ceiling of fog.
It was a figure as stiff and lifeless-looking as a manikin, except
for the spasmodic twitching of the feet and fingers. And it was, as
the child had exclaimed, upside down! Nothing could be weirder or
more unnatural-looking than the way in which it slowly approached, in
a diver's posture, with its arms outspread beneath it, and its feet
uppermost. Obviously, it was supported by unseen hands or cables; yet
Eleanor, no matter how she strained her eyes, could catch no glimpse of
those cobweb strands which, she knew, encompassed it in a thick web.

For a moment or two, as she stared in a ghastly fascination,
recognition did not come to her. Then all at once she cried out in
astonished, dreadful certainty. That frank, open face, with the
aquiline nose and broad, high forehead; those masses of coffee-brown
hair, lying dishevelled along the brow--how could she help recognize
them, even though the tanned skin was covered with a dense stubble, and
the once-mobile features looked inflexible as marble!

"Ronny! Ronny!" she exclaimed, sagging for support against a fat
woman, who grumbled at her aberrations. And even as she spoke, she
thought that she was answered by a glint in the eyes of the floating
apparition. Yes, surely there was a responsive gleam! a vivid, deep
fire which no paralysis could quench! She knew, she knew that Ronny had
seen her, had recognized her!

But, at the same time, his eyes were kindled with such sorrow, such
suffering that she thought of a martyr writhing at the stake.

Downward he floated, until he dangled but ten or twelve feet above
her head. Only ten or twelve feet, she thought, yet what infinities
between them! But almost immediately, he began to retreat. Jerked by
the unseen cords, he slowly arose, was gradually pulled around to a
horizontal position, and mounted until by degrees he was lost in the
mist. And, all the while, from the watching crowd, came cries of wonder
and amazement.

But just as the figure disappeared, Eleanor noticed something hardly
less extraordinary. She could have sworn that, a moment before, a man
had stood just to her right, had pressed almost elbow to elbow with
her; and she knew that he had not strolled away. Yet suddenly she heard
a groan from where he had been; then a swift swishing; and, turning,
found that he was gone. Literally, he had vanished into thin air!

The next moment, when a frightened woman began crying, "John, John,
where are you? For goodness' sake, where are you, John?" it seemed
inevitable that there should be no response.

       *       *       *       *       *

But her mind had no chance to dwell upon the incident. For she felt
some one tapping her upon the shoulder; and, turning, stared into the
dark, sardonically grinning face that she wished to see least of all
faces on earth.

How she hated him for the triumphant leer with which he devoured her!
How she detested the manner in which he spoke, bowing urbanely, and
with an ironic purr in his voice! "Ah, Eleanor! Nice to meet you here!"
Somehow, she had the feeling of a bird in the fowler's hands!

"What a piece of good luck for us both, meeting like this!" he
murmured. "Better step over this way, Eleanor, there are some things to
talk over."

"I can't imagine what!" she denied.

But she caught the warning glint in his eyes. "Be unreasonable, young
lady, and I don't answer for the consequences!"

In any case, she reflected, she could not stand here arguing with him;
could not make a public spectacle of herself. And so, choking down the
voice of inner warning, she followed him toward the waiting taxicab.

As they started off, a cry rang from the crowd; and, looking up, she
saw the dangling figure emerging again from the mist. Strangely, it was
propelled--almost thrust--in her direction, until it floated a mere
half a dozen feet overhead. The face, as before, was rigid as rock, but
the eyes glared with anger--anger fierce, vehement, concentrated, which
seemed to focus in two fierce fire-points of light. Eleanor noticed how
Dunbar, after a single glance, winced and turned away--slunk away, it
seemed to her, in the manner of a whipped hound.

Upon reaching the taxicab, the girl hesitated. That warning voice,
stronger now and more insistent, bade her not to enter. But the man's
tones, soft and coaxing, appealed, "There's something I must tell
you--I _must_, Eleanor, if you want to save yourself and our
friend up above."

The plea for herself alone would not have sufficed; but at the
reference to Ronald she felt herself yielding.

"Come, let's drive around town a while--anywhere at all you say," he
suggested, "before having you taken back home."

After all, she thought, what harm in driving around a bit? She was
almost exhausted, and it would be so much easier not to have to go home
by trolley! Besides, she was so faint that there was little power in
her to resist Dunbar's will.

And so she found herself preceding him into the cab, although still
that warning voice cautioned, "Don't! Don't! Don't!"

"Anywhere around the suburbs," Dunbar instructed the driver. And then
the door slammed, and they were on their way. But, as the wheels
whirred beneath her, she would have given her last penny to be safely
on the ground again.

Subtly, insidiously, her companion's manner had changed. There was
a menacing note beneath the silken purr as he turned to her, and
demanded, "And now, young lady, maybe you will tell me why you have not
been co-operating?"

       *       *       *       *       *

She writhed; withdrew from him as far as possible; and made no answer.
How idiotic of her to have let him lure her into the taxi!

"Maybe you will tell me," he went on, "why it was you went to the
police to report me? No! don't say you didn't! I have informants!"

"That is to say, you've been shadowing me with spies, Mr. Dunbar?" she
retorted, turning upon him with spirit.

"I don't care a damn what you call it!" he snarled. "Simple fact is I
couldn't afford to take any chances. But I really didn't think you'd be
imbecilic enough to report me--since we're both in the same boat. If
the Saturnians murder me, they murder you too! Remember that!"

"So that's what you decoyed me into the car to say, Mr. Dunbar?"

"I didn't decoy you. But I did want to warn you. If you give me your
solemn promise, Eleanor, to keep a tight lock on your tongue, and not
interfere with me any further, I'll let you go about your way. But not
unless!"

"I don't propose to argue with you, Mr. Dunbar!" Her tones were slow,
incisive, cutting. "Now if you'll have the kindness to give the driver
my address--"

"Not so fast there, my girl! We've still got some things to thresh out.
Just because you don't seem to care about your own life, it doesn't
follow I'm going to let you throw mine away!"

At last the mask was falling off. He glared; his teeth bit into his
lower lip; his manner was truculent. "Good Lord, Eleanor, don't you
know those Saturnians are watching everything you do? How long do you
think their patience will last? What do you suppose old Red-Hood will
do when he finds you're all set to betray him?"

"Betray _him_?" Scornfully she laughed. "So that's the only
betrayal you're thinking of? Now will you kindly give that driver my
address?"

He made no move to obey.

"If you won't, then I will!" she decided, starting up.

But a powerful hand had seized her, and thrust her back. "I tell you,
my girl, we've got to thresh this out!"

"I tell you, there's nothing to thresh out!"

Before her inner vision there flashed again a figure, with
pain-tormented eyes, who dangled helplessly high in air. And she
clenched her fists, and secretly swore a bitter oath.

"So then it's not peace, but a sword?" he flung out, as if reading her
thoughts. "In that case, you force me to act in self-defense!"

Despite the quietness of his manner, she was becoming more and more
frightened. Her heart fluttered; she remembered again that voice of
warning which she had not heeded; and felt suddenly too weak and
helpless to make the attempt--the obviously futile attempt--to call out
to the driver.

From an inner pocket he had pulled a little vial filled with a
dark-brown fluid. And, from another pocket, he drew a hypodermic needle.

"Lucky for us both that, being a chemist, I can prepare my own
formulas," he went on, with an oily drawl. "Now this won't do you any
real harm, Eleanor, so I'd advise you not to struggle. That will only
make it harder for you, and not help at all in the end."

"For God's sake," she screamed, "what are you going to do?"

Wildly she stared out of the taxicab, with some vague idea of yelling
for help or jumping. But they were speeding along an almost houseless
suburban road, with not a person in sight; and to attempt to jump, even
if she should succeed, would be mere suicide.

Meanwhile he had dipped the needle in the brown fluid, and she saw its
thin, sinister point approaching.

"Just hold out your arm," he advised. "It will be all over in a second."

She was to remember hazily that she attempted a shriek, which was
muffled by his throttling hand. She was to remember that she struggled
spasmodically; beat at her oppressor with blind, self-protective
fury. But this was all that she did recollect ... aside from the fact
that there came a sharp stabbing sensation just above her wrist ...
followed by a shooting pain in her head, an overwhelming dizziness, a
reeling and swaying, and, suddenly and mercifully, a black, dreamless
unconsciousness.




CHAPTER VII

Prisoners' Progress


Lethemaz, the paralyzing drug of the Saturnians, had one quality for
which Gates was sometimes thankful, and which sometimes he bitterly
cursed. Despite the total incapacity of his body, his brain, as we have
seen, was able to work with new keenness and clarity. Yet his increased
mental awareness only added to his agony. For it made him see the
horror, the helplessness of his plight in even more pitiful sharpness.

Eleanor had been right in supposing that his eyes had glowed with
recognition as he dangled in air above her. She had been right in
believing that he had glared at the sight of Dunbar. But she could
not have known what torment seethed behind that rigid brow of his.
She could not have known the tantalizing madness of one who, hour
after hour, realizes that he is being used as a tool for the furies
of destruction, yet is powerless to speak or act. Nor could she have
guessed what dire new discoveries the captive had made.

From time to time Gates was carried back to the Crystal Planetoid,
where a sting from one of the monsters' tails applied a deparalyzing
fluid. Thus he found occasional relief--which, however, was not to be
credited to any feeling of mercy on the part of the captors. No! for he
could not be fed while paralyzed. And thanks to the way in which he was
jolted around, he had to be given food every few days if he was not to
perish.

As yet, it was not only the purpose of the invaders to keep him alive,
but to obtain as many living humans as possible. Dozens of men and
women, as he saw to his dismay, had been brought to the Planetoid and
paralyzed. Like flies tangled in the webs of gigantic spiders, the
victims lay scattered about the webs. And Gates realized that he was,
in a sense, responsible. Yes, he had been the unwilling tool to trap
them; it was as a bait that he had been dangled above the earth ...
so that, when the people congregated beneath, the Saturnians might
take their pick and whisk the victims away while the crowd was too
preoccupied to be aware what had happened.

But why did they desire so many humans? Gates had the boldness to put
this question to Red-Hood during one of his de-paralyzed intervals;
and, to his surprise, the monster immediately rasped out an answer:

"Nignig, surely you have not the brains of a gnat, else you would have
guessed! We capture you earthlings so as to dangle you above the earth
as a lure to capture other earthlings!"

"And why capture other earthlings?"

"Why?" The giant's red eyes twinkled with amusement, as at a child who
persists in asking the ridiculous. "Naturally, we want specimens of
all the human fauna, of every race and color, so that we may skin and
dry them in the interest of science, and bring them back to Saturn as
specimens for the Museum of Unnatural History."

Noting the horror with which Gates greeted this explanation, Red-Hood
went on to state,

"After all, Nignig, you should be grateful to us for seeking to
preserve some trace of your species, instead of obliterating it
entirely. You earth-creatures have no sense of gratitude!"

Thanks to this information, Gates' mind was more busy than ever with
the problem of circumventing the Saturnians. His first thought was to
destroy his own value to them by means of a hunger strike. But the
result was that his food, in liquid form, was forced down his throat;
while the Saturnians, apparently fearing that he would resort to other
means to take his own life, vigilantly followed his every movement.

Nevertheless, after a time, an idea did come to him--an idea that at
first appeared wild and impossible, and yet seemed to offer the only
prospect, however remote, of regaining his freedom.

       *       *       *       *       *

But before he could try out the scheme, matters on earth went from bad
to worse.[1]

[Footnote 1: Daily the unexplained thickening of the atmosphere was
growing more noticeable. Daily the air was becoming heavier, more
sluggish, more humid, and hotter. Thunder storms of greater violence
than ever had become of daily occurrence in widely scattered sections
of the earth. Droughts in some regions, and floods in others, had
scarred the surface of the planet. Temperatures running well into the
hundreds were now common in districts where eighty had been considered
hot. Some sections, indeed, had become uninhabitable.

By the first of August, the deaths ascribed to the heat in the great
cities of the eastern United States had risen to a daily average of
scores of thousands. Mass migrations were in progress from tropical and
sub-tropical regions--by every obtainable device, by liner, freighter
and tugboat, by private car, truck and airplane, the inhabitants of
South and Central America were streaming toward the temperate and polar
regions. In India, scores of millions were flocking into the Himalayas;
in Africa, the population was perishing like ants, and no count of
the mortality was even attempted; in the South Seas the customary
trade winds did not blow, and the waters became too warm for bathing.
For the first time in history the Antarctic Continent, its glaciers
beginning to melt, offered promise of becoming habitable; while men of
daring laid plans to establish winter homes in Labrador and Greenland.
Meanwhile vast once-verdant sections of America, Asia and Europe had
been seared to a leafless brown.--Ed.]

To say that the world was frantic would be to understate. Who of us
that lived through those cataclysmic days will ever forget how men
walked the streets with white, harried faces, their beards untended,
their clothes in soiled disarray? Who will ever forget the sense of
being at a world's end? Who will not shudder again as he recalls the
appeals made to scientists by government officials--the desperate
appeals headlined in the papers and blared through the radio: "As you
value your lives, find the cause of the disturbance! Find the cause of
this monstrous distortion of nature! Give us a remedy! Give us a remedy
soon, soon--or it will be too late!"

But scientists labored hard and long--labored fifteen or eighteen hours
a day, and found no remedy. Some, in fact, maintained that no remedy
was possible. Who that is now of middle age cannot re-live the day when
Dr. Arnold Woodrum, of the Cyclops Observatory, let it be known in an
interview that he believed the Solar System to be passing through a
region of space crossed by radio-active forces, which would gradually
raise the temperature until all life was burned to a crisp? In the
absence of any more definite knowledge, this view was widely accepted.
And prayers and lamentations became universal.

It is a never-to-be-forgiven crime that the one man who, in these
circumstances, could have poured out valuable information, was a man
who kept his lips tight-shut.

       *       *       *       *       *

In a private laboratory improvised in his apartment, Philip Dunbar
was hard at work. Motors buzzed about him; tubes and wires were woven
intricately across the room; while dark hissing vapors and spouts
of steam issued from numerous valves and retorts. Piled deep in one
corner, were dozens of great torpedo-shaped steel tubes, some of them
sealed, some of them ending in complicated coils of rubber tubing; and
it was to these that the worker gave his chief attention.

After several hours, Dunbar paused; sighed; mopped his sweaty brow;
turned a switch that sent the motors groaning to a halt; and, after
unlocking the door, stepped into an adjoining room.

There he was confronted by a girl who, her hands joined behind her back
and her teeth biting into her lower lip, had been pacing slowly back
and forth.

She cast him a scornful glance, and continued ranging the floor.

"Listen, Eleanor!" he said. "You don't have to carry on like this.
Don't act like a prisoner. Make yourself at home. In that case in the
foyer, you'll find some mighty interesting books--"

There was fury in her manner as she turned upon him. "Well, what am I
but a prisoner? Do you want me to bow down and thank you for keeping me
locked here these last seven days?"

His tone was quiet, restrained, almost reproachful.

"But what do you expect, Eleanor? Surely, you understand the
circumstances--"

Her blue eyes blazed. He had never before noticed how strong was the
curve of her chin, how firm the set of her jaw. "Circumstances?" she
derided. "All that I understand is that you drugged me--kidnapped
me--brought me here forcibly, with the help of that hireling of yours,
the taxi driver--"

"I've heard all about that before," he broke in, still without losing
control of himself. "I know I've behaved rudely, Eleanor. But, after
all, why not give me credit for some things? Haven't I treated you
decently here? Have I so much as touched you with one finger, even
though all the while I've been burning with love?"

She shuddered, and recoiled.

"Why do you act as if I were dirt beneath your feet?" he rushed on.
"Haven't I done everything to make you comfortable? Haven't I fed you
properly? My God, Eleanor! don't you know I love you?"

He had pressed toward her, his eyes hot and desirous, while she had
backed into the remotest corner of the room.

"And you expect _me_ to love a traitor?" she shot at him. "Am I to
sit by and adore you for playing Quisling to the whole Earth?"

"That isn't fair, Eleanor!" he protested. "Why, most girls would feel
indebted to me for life for saving them. You will too, never fear!
You're just a little hysterical now, that's the trouble. But come,
come, a little kiss is what you need to soothe you!"

       *       *       *       *       *

She saw the black-moustached face drawing closer. She saw the black
eyes sparkling with predatory glee. She knew that in an instant the
long twining fingers would be feeling their way about her. And she
realized the futility, the folly of calling out for help. Nevertheless,
a scream was upon her lips.

Then, when already she could feel his breath, hot and fetid as that of
some beast of prey, relief came from an unexpected quarter.

A sharp sudden rattling and snapping sounded from the direction of the
laboratory. And through the open door she could see how, miraculously,
the laboratory window flew open as if in a violent gale, although not
the slightest breeze was blowing.

Dunbar, hearing the noise, wheeled about, and gasped.

"By Christopher, how'd that happen?"

Then solemnly, after a moment, he added, "Why, I could swear I locked
that window this morning!"

As if in answer, several thick steel rods on the laboratory table began
to dance back and forth like dry leaves in the wind.

"Holy Jerusalem!" he ejaculated, backing away. "Am I going crazy?"

"No, nignig, you are no crazier than ever!" returned a rasping voice,
seemingly from nowhere. "But we have been paying you a visit of
inspection."

The two hearers stood with wide-open mouths, speechless.

"I am Quimboson, the servant of the Peerless Red One," went on the
invisible. "I am perched outside your window now, on a web you cannot
see. Finding the window closed, I pulled it open. One of my hands is in
the room, shuffling these little objects on the table. I can reach in
wherever I wish. Shall I prove it?"

Feeling the sudden pressure of a clammy paw against his brow, Dunbar
was quite convinced.

Now all at once the tone of the invisible became harsher, more menacing.

"Earthling," he growled, "I am much displeased! The tail of the
Peerless Red One will lash out in wrath when he hears my report. For
instead of attending to your duties, we find you in dalliance with the
female of your species!"

"But only for a moment!" pleaded Dunbar, in a cowed manner.

"A moment too much! I always thought it was a mistake to spare the
female. When I tell the Peerless Red One, he will order her to be stung
to death! Stung to death instantly! So I shall recommend, O earthling,
and the Peerless Red One always takes my advice on these minor matters!"

Eleanor's gasp of horror was drowned out by Dunbar's appeal.

"But you've got to spare her, O Quimboson! Otherwise, how can I do my
best work? On my oath! I shall waste no more time with her--"

"Your oath, O earthling, is as a sword of sand! But no more of this
empty talk! I go now--I go!"

There came a whirring and a screeching, sounding oddly like mocking
laughter; then the laboratory window banged to a close, and all became
silent.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was several minutes before Eleanor, her face white, turned to
Dunbar. "For God's sake, don't you see--don't you see, you _must_
let me go! They'll be back here--they'll be back soon, and strike me
dead--"

But Dunbar had returned to the laboratory, where he had switched on the
motors.

"If I do let you go, they'll strike _me_ dead!" he snapped back.
"Lord! Haven't you gotten me into trouble enough already?"

So speaking, he slammed the door with a violent jerk.

       *       *       *       *       *

Eleanor, sinking into a chair, her head buried in her hands, was driven
more sharply than ever against the same dreary problem that had baffled
her during all these days of her captivity.

How to escape?

The single door to the apartment was locked and securely barred. The
single accessible window gave upon a concrete court four stories
beneath--and, lest she be tempted to leap out, her approach was impeded
by a barbed wire barricade. Telephone connections had been cut--and
there was no neighbor to whom she could call through the sound-proof
walls. No! she was utterly balked!

Still, what matter that she might die a little ahead of the mass of
mankind? After all, that was of no importance--but what might be vital
was her chance to warn others of Dunbar's crime against humanity, if
only she could escape! True, she had already tried to give warning, and
had merely been laughed at; yet she had lately conceived a new idea,
which might offer a dim hope if once she were free.

Half swooning with the heat, she heard through the laboratory door the
whirring of motors; and her head ached dully, and she burst into tears,
for the dead have as much chance of rising as she had of beating down
the monstrous forces ranged against her.




CHAPTER VIII

The Revolt of Yellow-Claws


Hour after hour Gates had been watching his captors. Hour after hour
he had been scheming, observing, hoping. With the heightened mental
quickness of his paralyzed state, he was searching for a weak spot in
the armor of the foe. "Surely," he reflected, "there must be some flaw
that makes them vulnerable." And it was this thought that put him on
the track of the wild idea that appeared to offer his only prospect of
freedom.

By carefully following everything the invaders said and did, he was
able to grasp the meaning of many words and phrases in their language.
Even with his remarkable new rapidity of apprehension, he learned no
more than a four-year-old might learn of English--yet this little went
far, particularly as the enemy did not suspect that any mere earthling
could be so intelligent.

But it was his eyes and not his ears that enabled him to fathom the
secret of the Saturnians' greatest power: their ability to make
themselves invisible. Whenever one of the monsters wished to vanish
from sight, he merely dusted himself with a pale-blue powder from a
purple-veined container. Evidently the powder--acting somewhat like a
catalyzing agent--had the effect of causing the rays of light to pass
completely through any object, thereby rendering it invisible. But did
it make things invisible also to Saturnian eyes? The answer was in
the affirmative: a Saturnian dusted with Amvol-Amvol could not be seen
by any of his fellows, nor could the webs and cables, when concealed
beneath this substance, be observed by their makers.

This was, however, of little importance to Red-Hood and his followers;
for they relied upon sight much less than did human beings. They were
guided largely by what they called the Communication Sense: certain
vibrations in the air, set up by their tails, were recorded by a
bulging organ just under the left ear of each of the creatures; and
thus they were able to learn of their whereabouts and doings of their
kindred even when they could not be seen.

So, at least, Gates concluded after long and careful observation. And
his scheme for escape was built upon this knowledge.

       *       *       *       *       *

But for a long while the plan did not take definite shape. And
meanwhile he came to realize more keenly than ever how dangerous it
would be to provoke his masters needlessly.

For they had surpassingly quick and violent tempers; their rage was,
literally, like a tornado. Many a time Gates, lying helpless in
paralysis on a web in the Planetoid, was the terrified witness to one
of their disputes. He was seldom able to decide just what the quarrel
was about, the first that he ever knew of it was when a blast like a
siren ripped at his eardrums. Then other siren blasts would follow;
then spouts of smoke would leap through the air, and the acridness
of sulphur would torment his nostrils; then, if he were in a favored
position, he would see the adversaries facing one another, their tails
lashing the atmosphere in long loops and spirals, their octopus arms
threshing and writhing, while the screeching and bellowing would rise
to a crescendo as of battling fiends, and the eyes of the competitors
would blaze with fiery red flashes.

There was one fight, in particular, which Gates would never forget.
As usual, he had at first no idea of the cause; but the tumult this
time was more diabolical than ever before. Paralyzed, he hung on a web
several hundred feet above the floor of the Planetoid, in a grandstand
position to view the affray. Among the lower meshes and cables,
directly beneath him, Red-Hood stood amid steamy clouds of gas. And
opposite him was an almost equally huge Saturnian, whose distinguishing
features, as Gates saw it, was the clay-yellow coloration of his long
tentacle-like claws.

For a tense minute the two creatures stood opposite one another, like
bulls ready to charge. Then out shot Red-Hood's tail, striking with a
crash against the rainbowed armor of the foe. And Yellow-Claws' breast
was streaked with a golden-yellow spurt of blood; and crimson fires
shot from his lips in curling tongues. Wrathfully his own tail lashed
out, but missed his antagonist, who had leapt back with hair-trigger
agility; while from Red-Hood's throat came such a howl that the very
web trembled.

Gates was aware that a score of Saturnians stood watching intently
below, at a safe distance, like spectators about a prize ring. He
heard them whirring with excitement as the two opponents fended for
positions. Then, to his astonishment, he saw Red-Hood springing
forward, his octopus arms outspread, like some monster of a nightmare.
Yellow-Claws was ready for the onslaught; and for a moment the two
furies clashed, wrestling with hurricane vehemence ... so that they
seemed little more than a gigantic whirl of squirming, rotating,
threshing arms, legs and tails.

But soon, with an unearthly cry, one of the creatures detached
himself, and with cyclonic speed darted up the web. So swiftly did
he travel that at first Gates was unable to determine that it was
Yellow-Claws that fled, while Red-Hood pursued close behind. Up and
down and sideways along the web, with all manner of athletic twists
and wrigglings, the embattled pair rushed, now scores of feet above
the observer, now hundreds of feet beneath. Once Yellow-Claws lost his
grip and fell, but, with gymnastic swiftness, clutched at a dangling
cable, and saved himself barely in time. Once, slashed in the neck by
Red-Hood's tail, he let out such a roar that Gates thought he had been
slain. Once it was Red-Hood who, torn by his opponent's tail, yelled
in agony. Several times the rivals were screened from one another amid
smoke clouds.

Yet it was but a few minutes before the fight was over. Yellow-Claws,
one of his arms almost half severed, waved his tail high in air, and
uttered a shrill, "Wikyi! Wikyi! Wikyi!" ("I give up! I give up!")
And Red-Hood, with a contemptuous snort, lashed out at him for a
final time; and then, acknowledging the conclusion of peace, screamed
triumphantly, and majestically stalked away.

       *       *       *       *       *

But for hours the defeated giant sat on a web just below Gates,
tending his wounds. His armor had lost its iridescence; thick smears
of golden-orange covered its gashed surface. Yet Yellow-Claws'
three-cornered eyes blazed with unsubdued anger; and his greenish-gray
lips were twisted into grimaces of hate. Vengefully he muttered to
himself, ignoring the presence of an earthling in the web above;
vengefully he muttered three words, "Zugavl! Zugavl! Zug!"

Gates did not need to know the meaning of these expressions; from the
manner in which they were uttered, he was sure that they boded no good
for the Peerless Red One.

At about the same time, he made another important observation. Fighting
was not the only bad habit of the Saturnians; they were subject to
a far worse vice: that of inhaling Kishkash. This word, which was
constantly on the monsters' lips, referred to the fumes from the
burning of a certain dried leaf from Saturn. Nothing like it had ever
been known on earth; a single whiff was enough to give Gates nausea; it
had the foulest odor that had ever attacked his nostrils, being like
the concentrated stench of putrefaction.

Yet to the Saturnians it was ambrosia. They never tired of sitting over
little pots of the glowing substance, greedily drawing the smoke into
their lungs, amid sighs and grunts of satisfaction. And the effect upon
them was, to say the least, peculiar: after a time, they would fall
into a stupor, and would lie on their backs on the floor, kicking their
legs and lashing out with their arms and tails, evidently unable to
control their own movements. Some of them, in fact, spent half their
time in this state of delicious drunkenness.

It was from this fact that Gates hoped to profit. Eagerly he
watched for his opportunity; and one day, when he was fortunately
in a de-paralyzed state, the chance arrived. It had been a time of
celebration, in commemoration of a Saturnian holiday, honoring the
great hero Dupepu, who, it seems, had wiped out seventeen nations; and
Kishkash, which was considered indispensable on all festal occasions,
had been burned with exceptional lavishness. As a result, every visible
Saturnian lay on the floor of the Planetoid, kicking up his heels,
while whirring and mumbling the delicious nonsense of intoxication.

Here, Gates instantly realized, was a heaven-sent opportunity. Left
unguarded for the first time, he crawled down from the swinging
platform where he had been placed for safekeeping; and, risking his
life on a long rope-ladder, made his way to a portion of the web
featured by several round dangling purple pouches. In these bags,
he had observed, the natives kept their Amvol-Amvol, the powder of
invisibility. Once he had obtained this, his scheme would be already
half consummated!

And what was to keep him from the Amvol-Amvol? Could he believe his
senses?--believe that the precious substance was unwatched, and free
for the taking? Yes! This seemed actually to be the case! Barring the
remote possibility that one of the Saturnians would revive in time to
interfere, there was nothing between him and his goal!

       *       *       *       *       *

So down and down he climbed, along the interwoven meshes of swaying,
shimmering cables; down like a seaman descending the riggings of a
vessel. At length he had reached the pouches. The nearest of them, as
large as a watermelon, was within arm's grasp. The top, moreover, was
wide open! And, inside, he could see the sky-blue powder that for days
he had dreamt of obtaining!

Yet for just a second he hesitated. He could not guess what it was
that chilled his hand; that restrained for a moment his desire for
the magical substance. Was it some voice of hidden warning? He could
not say. He only knew that he laughed silently at himself; then, with
reviving eagerness, shot his hand into the pale-blue dust.

The substance was downy soft to the touch, yet was cold as stone, and
caused a tingling, faintly stinging sensation to creep along his skin.
Hungrily his fingers closed over it; then, with a good handful in their
clutch, began to withdraw.

But, as they did so, Gates was startled by a sudden grating noise,
followed by a sharp click. And a violent pain shot through his wrist.
Teeth of steel dug into his flesh; and, in horrible realization, he
knew that he was caught!

[Illustration: The sharp jaws of the thing closed on Gates' hand.]

Yes, caught like a wild beast snared in a wolf-trap! It is hard to say
whether, in that first stunned instant, his pain or his alarm was the
greater. Yet his mind at once took in the full dread import. The pouch
was but a ruse; it was equipped with hidden jaws, which would close at
the faintest touch, seizing the unwary intruder. Oh, why had he not had
the brains to beware?

From the first, he saw that escape would be impossible. Those cruel
jaws were so made that the more he struggled, the more tightly his
arm would be wedged between them, and the more intense his agony--if
he were not careful, his other wrist would be caught too! Knowing
that he would be fettered here until his masters revived from their
intoxication; and knowing also the terrible tempers of the tribe, he
concluded that he would be better off dead.

It was as this thought bored at his brain that he heard a sound to his
left. Low, stealthy, secretive, it yet had a vaguely familiar whirr.
"Earthling, listen to me!"

His heart gave a convulsive leap. He felt that his last moment had
come. So he had not been alone after all, had not been unguarded!
One of his captors, garbed in invisibility, had been watching him,
following his every movement, gloating in his helplessness as a cat
gloats in the sufferings of a mouse!

"Earthling, listen to me!"

The words had been repeated, in the same stealthy manner.

"For God's sake, who are you?" the prisoner found courage to gasp.

"Soon I shall say. First, let me free you from your misery."

       *       *       *       *       *

There came a snapping sound; the steel jaws clattered apart; and Gates,
to his astonishment, withdrew a bruised and bleeding wrist.

"The lower animals should not meddle with tools they do not
understand!" mumbled the unseen. "By my home-world's outer ring! you
did not pull down the safety clasp before sticking in your hand!"

"But who--who in blazes are you?" repeated the captive, becoming
bolder, although he could not believe that he had been freed for any
good purpose.

"Who am I?" The speaker paused long enough for a burst of low whirring
laughter. "I am Misthrumb, though that means nothing to you. I am he
who fought yesterday with the Peerless Red One, and was driven off, may
the curse of the Nine Planets fall on his foul bosom!"

"Oh--you mean, Yellow-Claws?"

"Yellow-Claws? Well, you may call me that, for my hands are of the
soil yellow of royalty! My blood too is yellow, golden-yellow! I am as
high-born as the Peerless Red One. Was I not designated by the Grand
Potentate, the Barbelcoppi, to share the leadership of this expedition?
And has the Peerless One not denied me at every turn?--yes, may the
demons of every vile disease prey on his liver!"

Not knowing what to reply, Gates said nothing. But hope, dead only a
minute before, had revived within him.

"As if he had not already injured me enough," went on the invisible,
"he ordered me to keep away from the great festival of Dupepu, whereat
all my brothers make merry. Forbidden me to enjoy the delectable,
sacred fumes of Kishkash! For that he shall suffer!"

Yellow-Claws' tones, rasping and angry, indicated that the feud between
the giants was far deeper than Gates has suspected. "And when I saw you
creeping toward the Amvol-Amvol, O nignig, I knew that you would be the
tool of my vengeance!"

"Me?" groaned the victim. Had he escaped the frying pan only to be
plunged into the fire?

"Have no fear, earthling! My purpose matches your own. To be sure,
there are perils--appalling perils! Not to master them is to die a
horrible death. But to prevail is to escape from the Peerless Red
One--and to repay him in full measure for his crimes against us both.
Are you ready to take the risk, O earthling?"

"I am ready!"

"By the stars! That is more than I would have expected of one of
your species! Then let us begin! We have but a little time before my
brothers recover from the Kishkash."

Gates could not see the creature's yellow claws as they entered the
pouch and drew out a pale-blue powder. But he felt something soft,
cool and tingling being sprinkled over his hands, his face, up his
sleeves, and down his neck. And he had one of the strangest sensations
of his life; for his body, even as he gazed at it, faded into a haze,
and vanished. He could look through himself! could see the meshwork of
shimmering cables as if there were nothing between!

"Come!" whispered his protector. "There is no time to lose!" And then
angrily, beneath his breath, "Zugavl! Zugavl! Zug!"

Upheld and guided by Yellow-Claws--since his arms and legs, now that he
could not see them, seemed oddly unreliable--Gates started once more
down the web, above the spot where the intoxicated monsters, like
huge over-turned beetles, lay on their backs with furiously wriggling
tentacles, legs and tails.




CHAPTER IX

Through the Barred Door


If only she could get word to some one outside! If only some one could
learn of her plight, she might be saved--might save the world! Such was
the thought that kept pounding at Eleanor's brain as she sat stooped in
her prison room, her head buried in her hands, while through the closed
door came the buzzing and droning of motors.

Then by degrees an idea thrust itself upon her. As she moped alone in
her dismal monotony, she had heard every evening the shuffling of some
one ascending the steps just beyond the barred apartment door. The
sound always came at the same time--at five minutes before six--and
she could recognize the peculiar dreary noise as it approached. Might
not the passer-by, whoever he was, become her deliverer? At first she
thought of calling out to him; but realized that, even if he took heed,
this would merely be to warn Dunbar, who would find ways to balk her
plan.

No! she must communicate without being heard. But how? As if
anticipating this very possibility, Dunbar had denied her all writing
materials. She considered, indeed, the ancient device of a message
written in her own blood, which she might scrawl on a fly-leaf torn
from a book; but she feared that some chance blood-stain would furnish
her captor with a fatal clue.

The thought of the books, however, gave her another idea. Leaping up
with sudden alacrity, she went to the case Dunbar had mentioned, and
eagerly selected a volume.

Passing through the room half an hour later, her oppressor paused with
a grim smile to see her bent above "The Greycourt Murder Mystery."

"Ah!" he exclaimed, as he leaned over her shoulder for a glance at the
title. "Didn't know you went in for that sort of stuff. Good idea,
though. Takes your mind off your troubles. Literature of escape, they
call it."

He did not notice the ironic glint in her eyes, nor the faint quivering
of her voice as she replied,

"Yes, that's it--literature of escape."

Had his mind not been preoccupied, he would have seen how her hands
fluttered, and how tremulously she averted his gaze.

"Oh, by the way, might just as well tell you," he confided. "I've been
making fine progress. In another five days, if all goes well, I'll be
able to set you free."

"Free?" she gasped, unbelievingly.

"Yes, I'll be done with my job by then--have all the compressed air
tanks ready, in just another five days."

She started up as if she had been struck, allowing the book to slip to
the floor unnoticed.

"Five days?" she repeated, blankly, realizing how little time remained
for her to work in. "Five days!"

"God! but I'm getting fed up, slaving in this damnable heat!" he
muttered; and then, passing out of the room, threw out at her, with a
burst of sardonic laughter,

"Now, my girl, better get back to your--your literature of escape!"

Stunned, she reached for the book. Yet it was with fresh alertness,
with a swift new eagerness, that she began racing through the pages.
Only a few minutes later, she came to a passage that made her sit up
with a start. Then hastily she reached for the little blue handbag she
had carried at the time of her capture by Dunbar; and drew out a pair
of nail scissors. Her eyes had a furtive look as she stared toward the
doorway where Dunbar had disappeared; but her fingers worked swiftly
and nimbly as they clipped away at the printed page.

       *       *       *       *       *

Several hours later, Emanuel Knapp, a civil service employee, was
on his way home to his top-floor apartment. As usual, he puffed and
wheezed as he climbed the weary five flights in the old-fashioned
"walk-up" building; and, as usual for many weeks past, he sweated in
the deadly heat. Arriving at the fourth floor, he paused to regain his
breath; and, as he did so, he became conscious of a low rustling, and
saw a thin bit of paper being ejected beneath the door of Apartment "4
E."

"Well now, isn't that funny," he thought; and, though not naturally a
curious man, reached automatically for the paper.

As he opened it, he saw to his surprise that it was part of the title
page of a book, and his eyes fell upon the conspicuous printed word,
MURDER.

"What the heck! Am I going crazy with the heat?" he mumbled to himself;
and noticing several smaller specks of paper fluttering loose from the
larger one, he reached down for them also.

"For heaven's sake, rescue me!" he read on the first of the slips,
which was printed in large book type; while another slip bore, in the
same type, an even more startling notation, "I'm caught in the toils of
the slimiest devil God ever put on earth!"

Now Emanuel Knapp was not a man naturally quick of apprehension. Hence
he was not certain that anything was really seriously amiss. "Most
likely there's some crazy loon inside--or else it's just a practical
joke," he reflected, as he scowled at the door of 4 E.

Having thus solved the mystery, he wiped his streaming red brow, and
bleakly started up the final flights of stairs.

But, as he did so, he spied a third printed slip at the base of the
steps. And wearily he reached down for it.

"Lord help us, sir, don't hesitate a minute!" he read. "Not one minute,
or it will be too late!"

"By gum," he meditated, "wonder if there mightn't be something in it
after all. Maybe I ought to notify the police. No harm, anyway, in
letting 'em know."

But the thought of retreating down those four long flights of stairs
was far from inviting. However, his interest being aroused, he pressed
one ear against the door of 4 E. And, from within, he heard a low
droning sound.

"By glory," he concluded, starting down the stairs, "maybe it's a
counterfeiting gang!"

Fifteen minutes later, two officers of the law had marched in Knapp's
company to the door of 4 E. And after prolonged rapping and violent
bell-ringing, the door had opened, to reveal a man in a chemist's
stained white robe, who greeted them blandly, and professed great
surprise at their call.

"Looks like you've got the wrong apartment, Officers," he protested,
suavely, when shown the clippings picked up by Knapp. "I've been busy
all day with some experiments in the laboratory. There's no one else in
the place."

"Well, damn it, the story did look phoney to me!" admitted Officer
O'Madden, glaring reproachfully at Knapp. "What the hell! a regular
cock-and-bull yarn! If the Chief hadn't ordered us to come--"

       *       *       *       *       *

But Officer Frye was of a different turn of mind. "Perfectly sure
you're the only person here, Mister?" he demanded of Dunbar.

"Hasn't been another soul around for weeks."

"Sure of that?"

"Absolutely!"

"Then what is that blue handbag doing over there on the settee?"

Dunbar could not quite control a startled gasp. His eyes flashed, and
his lips twitched oddly. But he did not reply.

"Mind if I look at it?"

Dunbar, imposing himself in the way, started to protest. But the
officer had already shoved himself into the room. In an instant he had
snatched up the handbag and slipped open the clasp. And from within he
had taken a small printed card, and read, "Miss Eleanor Firth."

"Firth? Eleanor Firth?" gasped O'Madden. "By crimps! ain't that the
girl what disappeared the other day? Why, her folks set up a hell of a
row--I was in the station when they popped in. Foul play, they called
it."

A long weighted silence followed. Dunbar glanced furtively toward the
door, as if looking for some easy way of escape. His eyes blazed with
the fury of the trapped animal.

"Well, maybe it's just what you call a coincidence," drawled Officer
Frye. "Anyway, guess we'd better take a look around."

Despite Dunbar's protestations, the officers proceeded to ransack the
room--though without results. And while they were peering under tables,
behind sofas and into closets, Knapp stood with his nose pressed
suspiciously against a locked door.

"Say, Officer, there's a funny smell coming from over here," he
reported.

"The whole place smells funny, if you ask me!" mumbled Frye. And then,
turning to Dunbar, "Guess you'd better let us peep in there, Brother!"

The chemist stood with his back firmly pressed against the door. "I'll
be damned if you will! That's my private laboratory. I'm in the midst
of an experiment, which will be ruined if I let any light in!"

"To hell with your experiment! Stand aside, Brother!"

But not until two pairs of strong arms had flung him away did Dunbar
forsake the door. And not until two strong pairs of shoulders had
pressed themselves against the partition did the lock show signs of
yielding. It was just when it began to crack that Dunbar made his dash
toward the front entrance--to be thwarted by the lucky chance that
Knapp blocked his way, giving Frye time to lay hands upon him, while
O'Madden finished the little business of breaking down the door.

As the barrier gave way, an unpleasant odor, a little like ether,
penetrated to the men's nostrils.

"Jumping crickets!" cried O'Madden. "What in tarnation is this!"

Stretched full-length on the floor in the electric light, with
pale bloodless face and inert, apparently unbreathing form, was a
dishevelled young woman, her unbared left arm displaying a long bloody
streak.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the first amazed instant of the discovery, Officer Frye almost lost
his grip on Dunbar.

"The saints preserve us! Is she dead?" he gasped.

"Looks like it," concluded O'Madden. "First let's attend to this devil,
then we'll investigate."

Out rattled a pair of handcuffs, which clapped themselves about
Dunbar's wrists.

Bending down to the girl, Frye felt her forehead. "Why, she's still
warm," he discovered. "Couldn't be dead very long."

"You blinking idiots!" raged the captive, struggling in O'Madden's
bear-like grip. "What makes you think she's dead? Why, she'll recover
soon enough. If you'll give me a chance, I'll bring her back right now.
We were just performing a little experiment--"

"Experiment! Like hell!"

It was only then that Frye observed the hypodermic needle on the floor
a few feet from the unconscious girl.

"Guess you can tell them all about that down at the station house," he
observed, caustically. "Meanwhile we'd better bring the lady down to
the doc's office on the first floor. You just keep your grip on that
thug, O'Madden!"

Six-foot giant that he was, Frye had gathered the girl into his arms as
easily as if she had been a sofa pillow.

"By God, if you don't let me go," threatened Dunbar, his black eyes
glittering like a crowd of devils dancing, "I swear you'll rue the day!"

Frye's answer was a hoarse burst of laughter.

But cutting through his laughter with the sharpness of an earthquake,
there came a rattling and banging at the laboratory window. And while
the two officers and Knapp stood as if transfixed, the window shade
flew up and the window burst open, though there was nothing visible to
account for the commotion, O'Madden afterwards asserted that a cold
breeze blew by him, though the thermometer stood around 100; and Frye,
whose courage no one had ever doubted, did not deny that the hair on
his head prickled and a chill swept down his spine.

"If only it'd been something I could of seen, no matter what, I'd of
stood up against it," he recited, as he told of the event between gulps
of whisky. "What the devil! A man can only die once! But this thing
that you couldn't see or put hands on--Christ, I'd rather fight a herd
of stampeding elephants!"

The fact was, as both officers testified, that the very walls of the
room shook, as if rocked by some mighty force. Dunbar's handcuffs,
though O'Madden swore that he had clasped them on firmly, fell to the
floor as though they had been mere bands of paper. An eerie whirring
voice, proceeding as if from nowhere, gave warning, "Harm him not,
earthlings, or beware the consequences!" And, at the same time, Dunbar
was jerked out of the astonished officer's grip!

Yes, jerked away completely, like a toy torn from a child's hands! From
the expression on his face, it was evident that he was as bewildered as
anyone as he went gliding toward the window and out--out into the open
air, where he disappeared in the fog! While, even as he vanished, the
window shade snapped down and the window slammed shut.

"By glory, the place is haunted!" mumbled O'Madden, crossing himself.
And as the three men, with the unconscious girl, emerged from the outer
door of 4 E, their faces streamed with a sweat that did not come from
the heat alone; and they knew that there was no force on earth powerful
enough to induce them to set foot across that threshold again.




CHAPTER X

A Plunge in the Dark


Beneath the great translucent milky-white envelope of the Planetoid,
Gates stood in an egg-shaped jelly-like car about thirty feet tall. He
was still invisible, even to himself; and could not see the gigantic
companion who shared with him his curious vehicle. But through the
gelatinous walls he could view the vast cloud-covered expanse of the
earth as it rolled by far beneath.

"Now we must wait, nignig," his unseen companion was saying, "until we
whirl around on our orbit to your own part of the globe. Fortunately,
it is but a minute planet, and the journey will take scarcely another
hour. The instruments will tell us when we arrive. But by my tail! may
my brothers not revive before then!"

"What will we do, when we get to earth?" inquired Gates.

"Do?" hissed Yellow-Claws. "What do you expect? Why, get vengeance, as
I have told you, earthling!"

"But how get vengeance?"

"You shall see! May the blue lightnings blast me, if you do not see!
I shall discredit the leadership of the Peerless Red One! I shall
frustrate his schemes! I shall invalidate him, as we say on Saturn!
Then he will go back home in disgrace, like the scum of the abyss
that he is! He will commit Guhl-Guhli--which is to say, he will sting
himself to death, and I will come into my own! Then, nignig, I will
return and conquer this world as it should be conquered!"

Gates groaned. He began to see that at heart Yellow-Claws was no
better than Red-Hood; all he would give the earth would be a momentary
reprieve.

Yet was not even a momentary reprieve better than nothing?

So at any rate, Gates asked himself a little later in a spasm of alarm.
Not quite an hour had gone by; and Yellow-Claws was just preparing to
cut the egg-shaped car adrift. But suddenly, through the jelly-like
shell of the Planetoid, huge spidery shapes were seen in shadowy
movement. And Yellow-Claws whirred with excitement, "Quick, earthling,
quick! or they'll be upon us!"

There came a ripping sound, though no cutting instrument was visible;
and the car began to plummet earthward.

But at the same time, through apertures in the walls of the Planetoid,
a score of octopus-limbed creatures began to glide, their angry eyes
glaring, like triangular rubies, their arms waving fantastically.
Around the Planetoid and beneath it they darted, then, gradually
becoming dimmer of outline, disappeared from sight.

But Gates was not to be deceived. He knew that they had but garbed
themselves in invisibility. He knew that the vibrations given off by
Yellow-Claws' body would guide them, although their foe could not be
seen. And he was appallingly aware that the whole pack of them were in
pursuit of his protector.

"By our planet's ten moons! they must not catch us!" rattled out
Yellow-Claws. "If we are captured, we will suffer the penalty of
deserters. We will be slain--yes, slain by the method of Multiple
Agony, which torments every nerve of the body for many days before
death brings relief."

       *       *       *       *       *

Down, down, down they dashed. They rushed through the stratosphere, and
the earth seemed to leap forward to meet them. But reaching the heavier
layers of the atmosphere, they were checked by the resistance of the
air--and were checked even more by the tangle of invisible Saturnian
webs.

Almost at the same time, they were lost in a fog. Whether the earth
were near or far they could not say; they bobbed around like a ship on
a stormy sea. "Cursed be all the demons of outer space! Something's
wrong with the direction gauge!" muttered Yellow-Claws.

Even as he spoke, there came a roar from somewhere near at hand. And a
dull-red smoke-puff burst through the fog overhead.

"Fiery imps of Jupiter!" growled Yellow-Claws. "They've got the range!"

It was an extraordinary battle that followed. Both sides were
invisible; both aimed frightening flashes in the other's direction.
Grimly Gates reflected that earth-folk, watching the demonstration
from below, would think an unusually severe thunder storm in progress.
For, in truth, there were all the symptoms of a thunder storm. The sky
rumbled with detonations as of gigantic artillery; red lightnings and
blue and purple shot through the hazes in zigzag streaks; rain began to
fall in howling torrents. How it was that they escaped destruction in
that first moment of the encounter was more than Gates could explain;
for he saw crimson bars and blue balls of fire playing along the outer
surface of the jelly-like envelope.

Manifestly, the car was made of a strongly non-conducting substance;
but, even so, he expected the whole fragile affair to collapse
instantly.

But the speed of their descent, it soon appeared, was greater than they
had imagined; in less than five minutes, they grew conscious of vague
outlines just beneath. At almost the same moment, there came a violent
threshing and bumping, and Gates, stunned and bruised, was aware of
vague projections, which he recognized as the limbs of trees.

At the same time, he was startled by a loud popping, as of a suddenly
deflated balloon.

"By the Eleventh Asteroid!" rasped Yellow-Claws. "We're being torn to
shreds!"

Surely enough, the branches of the tree had slashed through the
gelatinous envelope, which was hanging from the foliage in wispy,
thinly palpitating bands and tatters. Their car--or, rather, all that
was left of it--had lodged in the upper limbs of a huge oak, forty feet
above ground!

Not that this distance meant anything, so far as Yellow-Claws was
concerned. But his protective envelope had been destroyed; and though a
red spout of smoke vomited from between his gray-green lips and lunged
toward his foe in forked lightnings, he knew that the battle was lost.

"Stay where you are, earthling!" he muttered. "They must not find you!
By my fifth arm! They will pay dearly for my life!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Before these words had died in his ears, Gates knew that Yellow-Claws
had sprung down from the tree. The lightnings had become a little more
remote, though hardly less terrible. Then a scream shrilled from the
distance, and Gates rejoiced to know that one of the enemy had been
struck. But almost immediately, closer at hand, there rose an unearthly
shriek, followed by a groan as of some being in utmost anguish.

"Thur-glut-nu! Thur-glut-nu!" came terribly, in the Saturnian tongue.
And then less fiercely, to Gates,

"May all the devils of the space-ways curse them! They've hit me! Hit
me, earthling, in the middle nerve center!"--by which he referred to
a spot beneath the left shoulder, which, Gates had learned, was a
Saturnian's one really vulnerable point.

Yellow-Claws' next words were rasping and horrible beyond description.

"Flee, nignig, flee! I invoke on them the curses of a thousand dead
generations! the venom of all black planets! I--I--by my father's
claws, I shall never see Saturn again!"

The cry trailed off into a confusion of words in the sufferer's native
tongue. There came another moan; then a series of terrifying snorts,
snarls and bellowings, as of a wolf-pack closing in on its prey. And
red and green lightnings flashed, and blue fireballs played among the
treetops ... while a pandemonium of thunder drowned out that fiendish
chorus.[2]

[Footnote 2: On Earth, fireballs can travel along a wire fence, but
are grounded instantly they come to a wooden post, provided they are
in direct contact. However, these unearthly fireballs seem to have a
negative quality.--Ed.]

Quivering, Gates clung to his perch high in the oak-tree. At any
moment, he expected to be snatched up by an invisible arm. Yet time
went by, the lightnings and thunders faded out, and at last he began to
breathe more easily. He heard the threshing as of mighty forms moving
past him. They brushed by the tree; they whisked through the woods to
right and to left. But thanks to his invisibility; thanks also to the
fact that, unlike Yellow-Claws, he set up no etheric vibration that his
enemies could detect, he remained unmolested.

It seemed a long while before at last all became quiet. Then, as the
immediate danger passed, the rescued man began to take stock of his
position.

"By god," he reflected, with a wry grimace, "I'd better not start
crowing just yet!" For had he escaped only in order to face a
lingering, more cruel doom? Lost in some unknown corner of the woods,
perhaps many miles from home; invisible, and without food, money, or
other means of making his way, he was, to say the least, in a desperate
pass. Would he be able, despite all handicaps, to make his way to
civilization before Dunbar could carry out his Mephistophelean plots?

His teeth bit into his lower lip with a grimness of determination as,
in the misty twilight, he felt his way down from the tree and began
searching for an outlet from the wilderness.




CHAPTER XI

The Electronic Space Ray


The story of Officers Frye and O'Madden was greeted at the station
with incredulous smiles. Evidently these two doughty old members
of the force had been drinking too heavily; or else, like so many
thousands, had gone crazy with the heat. Nevertheless, thanks to
their allegations, two of their brother officers were dispatched to
investigate Philip Dunbar's apartment.

An hour later, they returned. Their uniforms were rumpled; their hair
lay loose and dishevelled across their sweaty red brows; their eyes
popped from their heads, and their hands shook and twitched with
nervous palpitations. Their experience was thus reported to Captain
Donnelley by Officer Halloran:

"We went up to that hell's nest, and worse luck to us! Got in without
any trouble, didn't we, Jensen? Somebody pulled the door open, and said
in the doggonest funniest voice you ever heard, 'Come in, earthlings,
we want some sport!' We knew then there was bats in somebody's belfry,
but went in anyway, and would you b'lieve it, there wasn't nobody near
the door. We walked further inside, and saw a guy working over a lot of
tubes and bottles; he said his name was Dunbar all right, and yelled
at us, 'I warn you, get out, before it is too late!' ... 'We've got
a warrant for your arrest,' says I, 'so you'd better come nice and
quiet.' At that he just laughed, didn't he, Jensen?"

"You'd of thought it was something funny, being arrested, by jiminy!"
affirmed Officer Jensen.

"Well, nobody wouldn't ever believe it, but before I could get to the
guy, the handcuffs was knocked right outer my hands," went on Halloran.
"Not by that fellow Dunbar, neither, curse him! He was over on the
other side of the room. Somebody hit me right through the air, with
something I couldn't see. May I be boiled in tar if I lie!"

"You sure oughter be boiled in tar, if you expect me to believe that
tommy-rot!" growled the Captain.

"Well, b'lieve it or not, that ain't nothing to what happened to me,"
Jensen took up the story. "I felt something grabbing me by the hair.
Yes, so help me God! I reached up my hand, and felt something cold and
hard, like a lobster's claw. But you still couldn't see a damned thing!"

"Ought of heard what a yell Jensen let out," Halloran continued. "Sure
was fit to wake the dead!"

"Oh, gwan!" countered Jensen. "'Twasn't nothing to the way you hollered
when you was pitched plumb across the room!"

"Well, who wouldn't holler if they was batted hard against the wall by
some invisible devil? I ain't boasting when I say I'm a tough nut to
crack, but when that thing, whatever it was, began tweaking my ears and
nose and saying, 'This is the way we'll twist your necks, earthlings,
if the likes of you ever come back here'--well then, what in thunder do
you think I'd do? Stay to get my neck twisted?"

The Captain meanwhile was smiling cynically.

"You boys sure must think I like fish stories!" he remarked.

It may not be that any one took Jensen and Halloran quite seriously.
Yet was it not hard to believe that four trusty old members of the
force had all gone crazy? The fact is, in any case, that when the
Captain considered sending two more men to the mysterious apartment, he
could find no one who did not threaten to resign from the force sooner
than accept the assignment.

       *       *       *       *       *

Eleanor meanwhile, as Dunbar had predicted, had regained consciousness.
Yet she could give only a confused account of what had happened. "When
the bell began ringing so furiously," she testified, "I thought I
heard Dunbar stealing behind me, but paid no attention till suddenly I
felt a sharp jab in one arm. By then it was too late even to cry out.
Everything went black around me before I'd even had time to realize
he'd stabbed me again with the hypodermic."

Thanks to her entreaties and the testimony of the officers, she was
granted a bodyguard of two detectives; for, as she asserted, "The
minute I walk out by myself, that fiend will re-capture me. And I have
work to do--very important work, if the world is to be saved!"

Every one smiled in half-veiled amusement. Yet no one could deny the
deadly seriousness of the girl's manner.

No one could deny, either, that she was in danger from some mysterious
source. On the day after her release, two men in a taxicab swerved
suddenly around a street corner, and came within an inch of snatching
her from under the noses of the detectives. The would-be abductors,
though unsuccessful, made good their escape; and, later that same day,
a still more ominous event occurred.

Eleanor was walking in a fog not far from one of the city's main
intersections, when suddenly she felt something clutching her. She
cried out in her terror; and the detectives, though seeing nothing,
fired into the mist. Evidently it was a mere lucky shot that struck the
unseen aggressor under the left shoulder, at his "middle nerve center,"
his most vulnerable spot. At any rate, an unearthly howl came from
the invisible--and, more significant yet, a spout of something thick,
sticky and golden-orange jutted to the pavement as if from nowhere.
And the girl felt the claws of the invisible relaxing.

"Another damned attack of nerves," Police Captain Donnelley called it,
when the incident was reported. Yet, being unable to account for the
golden-yellow liquid, he consented to double the girl's bodyguard.

Knowing that the time was exceedingly short--in fact, to take
Dunbar's word for it, but four days of grace remained--she worked
with desperation. Her first idea was to obtain possession of Gates'
infra-red eye, which might show the authorities the cobweb meshes
that entangled the planet, and so perhaps rouse them to eleventh hour
action. But how obtain this invaluable device? Neither a search of the
laboratory, nor a ransacking of Gates' home, revealed any trace of
the instrument. Eleanor remembered in despair how, on that memorable
evening on the roof, the inventor dropped the device just as the
Saturnians swooped down; and she concluded that it had either been
broken, lost, or snatched up by the invaders.

       *       *       *       *       *

Therefore she turned to her one other hope. For almost a year,
during spare hours in the laboratory, she had been working on what
she called the Electronic Space Ray--a beam designed to pierce and
dissolve the upper cloud formations. This ray, a modification of the
X-ray, engendered by an application of several hundred thousand volts
of electricity, had the power of cutting like a knife through any
mist, causing the vapors to disperse as though blown aside by a gale.
Its range, apparently, was enormous; Eleanor believed it capable of
bridging the gulf from the earth to the moon, and held that it would be
highly effective at several hundred miles.

Therefore the question arose: if the rays could dissipate a cloud,
could they not penetrate the gelatinous envelopes of the Crystal
Planetoids? Was it not conceivable that they could rip the Planetoids
apart, as a balloon may be ripped by a bullet? She did not know, but
the chance, however fantastic it seemed, was not to be ignored.

Surrounded by her four guards, she hastened to the laboratory of the
Merlin Research Institute; and, requiring solitude for efficient work,
busied herself from dawn to dusk and even through the early hours of
daylight to perfect her invention. Formerly she had expected to be able
to finish the contrivance at her leisure. But now with what feverish
haste she labored, scarcely taking time to eat, to sleep, to think
except of one thing only!

At first the fear haunted her that the Saturnians would break in, and
steal her away despite her bodyguard. But was it that the one lucky
shot, which had spilled the golden-orange blood of her attacker, had
deterred the invaders? More probably, they did not think her worth
bothering about--what could she, one poor feeble woman, do to avert the
doom that had been so well plotted, and that was so soon to descend?

The heat, as she worked, had risen to furnace intensity. Temperatures
below a hundred were now rarely found near sea level in the so-called
temperate regions; all breezes, except those engendered by electric
fans, were memories of the dear departed days; while so many areas were
parched and browned, so many people were perishing on all sides, that
bureau of statistics no longer kept records. That the long-awaited Day
of Judgment was at hand; that the destruction of the earth and all its
inhabitants was a matter but of weeks or at most of months, was now the
theme of preachers and laymen alike; millions, ceasing to hope, passed
their days amid a long mumbling of lamentations and prayers.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile few knew or cared about the young woman who, with eyes red
and strained, with fingers deft yet nervously hurried, with skin and
apron mottled with chemicals, yet with a spirit that refused to give
up, labored amid the motors and ray-spouting tubes, the flasks and
crucibles of the steamy hot laboratory. Nearly five days had gone by
before she had put her machine into working order--five days which, in
view of the time lost under the spell of the hypodermic drug, should
bring her beyond the deadline set by Dunbar. Already, perhaps, he
had turned over the containers of compressed air to the Saturnians!
Already they were making their last deadly assault! Already it was too
late--too late to save the earth!

Nevertheless, if but one chance in ten thousand remained, that chance
must not be tossed aside.

Her machine, when ready, was a monstrous-looking affair, somewhat
resembling a siege-gun in appearance. The fifteen-foot steel snout,
shooting upward like a spire from the central mass of lenses, prisms
and radio-like tubes, was attached by wires to several huge dynamos. A
telescope, fastened to the side of the main tube, connected with the
range finder; while the whole could be moved hither and thither on
wheels, a little like a great gun on its carriage.

Three skilled mechanics, who had helped to construct the apparatus on
Eleanor's instructions, shook their heads doubtfully over the completed
instrument. "The lady must be crazy," they muttered in private, "if she
thinks such a rigamagig can save the world!"

The skeptics were, it is true, just a little impressed by the first
demonstration. The machine was wheeled into a courtyard adjoining the
Research Institute; and its mouth was pointed upward into the mists
that precluded visibility above a hundred feet. At a signal, the power
was turned on; there came a low whirring, accompanied by blue flashes;
and almost instantly, as if some unseen fist had thrust its way through
them, the vapors disappeared from a circle of sky about ten degrees
across, and the azure of heaven appeared for the first time in many
days.

Equally impressive was the next experiment. A number of open jars of
gelatin were placed against the walls of the building, and the machine
was pointed toward them. For half a dozen seconds they were bombarded
by the rays; then, upon examination, the gelatin was found to have
vanished--to have dissolved despite the intervening glass of the jars,
which themselves had seemingly been unaffected!

A faint glow of hope came to the girl's mind as she witnessed these
results. Could it be that, after all, not everything was lost? A
machine that could work such miracles might also perform wonders
against the Planetoids!

But even as this thought flashed over her, there came another
realization--a numb, dull realization that struck her like a hand of
lead. On one of the Planetoids, hundreds if not thousands of humans
were held--at least, so she judged from the reports of the many that
disappeared mysteriously after setting out to see Gates dangled
from the web of the invaders. Worst of all! The man she loved was a
prisoner! If she destroyed the Planetoids, she would destroy Ronald!
And after that, though the world lived on, what meaning would life have
for her?

But only for a moment did she hesitate. They had reached a point where
the fate of individuals did not matter. The sacrifice of all the
captives, lamentable as it would be--the sacrifice of her lover--the
sacrifice of herself--what did all this count beside the future of the
human race?

Gritting her teeth and clenching her fists, she turned back to the
Electronic Space Ray. Her eyes were desolate but her manner was
determined as she picked up the range finder and revolved the telescope
through a newly cleared circle of blue sky.




CHAPTER XII

Prelude to Battle


There are some grave disadvantages in being invisible. So, at least,
Gates concluded as he went groping through the woods in the effort to
find his bearings. It is disconcerting, to say the least, to ask a
passer-by the way, and to be greeted with a shriek, and watch the man
turn and dash away frantically, as from a ghost. It is aggravating to
reach an automobile road and find every car trying to drive full-tilt
through one. Gates felt like a man returning from the dead as he picked
his way out of the woods, and, reaching a village, began to make a few
civil inquiries.... Inevitably, he found, his hearers would flee the
vicinity of his voice; and the harder he tried to call them back the
faster they would run.

He passed the night in an open field under a haystack--which,
considering the heat, was not at all a hardship. In the morning, driven
by hunger, he strolled into a farmhouse; and while the family stampeded
like sheep from the sound of his footsteps, he calmly helped himself
to some ham and biscuits from the kitchen table. Having thus satisfied
his needs, he wandered away along a railroad track, and after about an
hour's walk reached a junction, where a sign on the station showed him
that he was two hundred miles from home. "God! How'm I ever going to
make the distance?" he wondered, reflecting that he had not a penny in
his pockets.

Twenty minutes later, while he still stood there baffled, a train
puffed into the station--one of the few still running in those
disorganized days. Several people stepped aboard; and, without
hesitation, he joined them, trusting to his invisibility to save him
from the demands of the ticket-taker.

As there was no unoccupied seat, he stood in the vestibule, which
caused not a little confusion, as people kept brushing against him as
they went by, greatly to their consternation. Long before they had
reached their destination, in fact, half the passengers were ready
to swear that the train was haunted. This view was furthered by Buck
Johnson, one of the colored waiters in the dining car, who testified
that while his back was turned the better part of the contents of
a tray disappeared--and that he turned about just in time to see a
sausage go floating down the passageway, although nobody was in sight!

It was fortunate, Gates thought, that the train was air-conditioned;
the cool, fresh atmosphere made it easier for him to think. And,
certainly, he needed to think as never before. What would he do upon
getting back home? Obviously, go as soon as possible to Dunbar's
apartment, to check that traitor's vile designs, if there were still
time! And to rescue Eleanor from his clutches! But was it not already
too late? Gates gravely feared so. Besides, how prevail against Dunbar,
protected as he was by the overweening power of the Saturnians?

"Well, at least," Gates reflected, "I can't be seen--that's one
strategic advantage." But it would take more than his invisibility to
win the battle. He must have weapons--weapons of unrivalled power. And
where could such be found?

       *       *       *       *       *

At this thought he remembered a certain invention he had toyed with
months before. This was a knife which he called the Electric Blade:
a folding strip of metal, small and compact, and short enough to be
carried in a man's hip pocket, yet capable of being extended to the
length of one's forearm, when it would cut with the sharpness of a
sword. To it was attached a minute but powerful storage battery which
Gates had perfected: a battery that made it possible for the blade to
slash back and forth with such swiftness that the eye could hardly
follow its motions. The inventor had believed that the weapon might
prove valuable for close combat work in warfare; but had lost interest
in it temporarily while working on that still more important device,
the Infra-Red Eye.

It was, however, with the greatest of enthusiasm that he thought
now of the Electric Blade. Might this not be just what he needed in
the conflict with Dunbar? Knowing something of the prowess of the
Saturnians, he was far from sure; nevertheless, he swore a bitter oath,
"I'll have a try at it, even if they hack me to mincemeat!"--which, he
realized, they were only too likely to do.

The Electric Blade, he recalled, had been left in his locker at the
Merlin Research Institute. Accordingly, it was to this spot that he
must hasten immediately upon returning to the city.

It was night by the time he had reached the building; and the front
door was locked. But seeing a light inside, he rapped. As no answer
came, he rapped again, this time more loudly; and then rapped once
more, still more loudly. It was only after the fourth or fifth summons
that he heard shuffling footsteps warily approaching. "What the devil!"
he muttered to himself. "Do they think I want to steal the building?"

"Who's there?" a voice from within demanded, huskily.

"It's I! Ronald Gates! An employee of the Institute!"

There was a momentary hesitation. He heard two men conferring in
whispers; then the door opened a few inches, and he stared into the
muzzle of a revolver, behind which glowered the grim, determined face
of a uniformed man.

"Don't be scared, Officer," he began, slightly amused. "I can establish
my identity--"

Instantly there rang out a yell from the uniformed man. Savagely the
door banged to a close. "By God! It's one of them devils from Saturn!"

Almost simultaneously, he heard another voice taking up the cry. "Run,
Miss, run! Quick! Ain't no time to waste! One of them fiends is after
you again!"

From within, he heard a woman's scream. "Out this way! This way!" And
all other sounds were lost amid the scurrying of feet.

But had those tones not had a familiar ring? Could it be--or was his
heated imagination only playing tricks?

       *       *       *       *       *

He lost no time, however, in useless questionings. Realizing that the
fugitives must leave by the rear exit, on another street, he raced
around the block, in such haste that he bowled over two pedestrians,
who were never to know what had hit them. As he approached the rear
door, he saw five figures hurriedly emerge, among them a young woman,
the sight of whom caused his heart to pound furiously.

"Eleanor!" he shouted. "Eleanor!"

The girl glanced toward him, and shrieked. Even if she recognized his
voice, she thought that it was merely one of the Saturnians imitating
him.

"Eleanor! Eleanor!" he repeated. "It's I, Ronald! It's I!"

But it was doubtful if she even heard. Preceding the four
policemen--pushed and shoved by them, for he had never seen men in more
frantic haste--she was lost to view inside a black sedan. A moment
later, the car had spurted from sight around the corner.

Greatly shaken, Gates returned to the Institute. It was much--very
much--to know that Eleanor was alive, and apparently not in Dunbar's
hands. But to have her flee him as though he were a plague-bearer;
to be mistaken by her for one of the Saturnians--that was a new and
totally unexpected experience. Now, as never before, he began to curse
his invisibility.

But there was work to be done--work from which he must not be deterred
even by the thought of Eleanor. And at this point, as if by way of
compensation, his invisibility served him to excellent purpose. How,
considering that the doors were all locked, could he get into the
Institute? Contemplatively he strolled around the building, and saw
that the one possible entry was by means of an open window facing the
fire escape on the third floor. To hoist himself up to the fire escape
was, to be sure, no great task for one of his agility; but as it gave
upon a main street, where many people were passing, it would have
been impossible for any ordinary man to accomplish the feat without
detection. As it was, however, he managed the entry with ease.

Once within, he felt his way down to the locker room, where he switched
on the lights, and turned to his own locker--the combination of which,
fortunately, had not been altered. A moment later, the door rattled
open. He saw that the interior had been disturbed, as though somebody
had entered during his absence and fumbled among the contents; but
his pulses leapt with excitement when, safely hidden in a corner, he
located a steel-sheathed apparatus of about the size of a large pistol.

"Thank heaven!" he muttered. "This little blade may hold the world's
destiny!"

He placed the instrument carefully beneath his garments, so that it
too became invisible; closed the locker; and started away, with the
knowledge that he hastened to a battle that could end only in victory
or death.




CHAPTER XIII

The Electric Blade Swings


Stripped to the waist, Philip Dunbar worked in the electric glare of
the oven-hot laboratory. The throbbing of motors made a dull undertone
in his ears as he examined the register connecting with the steel
cylinders of compressed air. His dark face had become long and haggard;
his eyes glittered with a wild, almost demoniacal light. But a grunt of
satisfaction came from between those two thin cynic lips of his as he
muttered,

"Thank the Lord! At last it's done!"

"Thank not the Lord, earthling! Thank us!" a whirring voice sounded
from just outside the window. "For many days we have followed your
labors. For many days we have assisted. Nevertheless, you are a day
behind schedule. A whole day, earthling!"

"I have done my best!" sighed Dunbar. "Could I help it if I was sick
with the heat for two days, and could hardly work?"

"We will forgive you this once, nignig, although on our planet we are
not such weaklings as to get sick. After all, you have served us not
badly. Tomorrow, with the compressed air to improve our efficiency, we
will be lords of this world!"

"Tomorrow we will be lords of this world!" another voice, from an
invisible source, weirdly repeated.

"Earthling, we have one more command," buzzed the first voice. "These
casks of compressed air are hard for us to reach through your narrow
window. See that they are placed outside on the ground. Have them put
there early tomorrow, that we may gather them up with ease."

"I shall do so!" acceded Dunbar. And hastily he added, "Then you will
not--will not forget your promise?"

"Never fear!" a voice of reassurance droned. "When all the rest of your
race sleeps in the long Forever, you will be glad to be alive--you, the
last man!"

"I will be glad to be alive," acknowledged Dunbar. But his voice had a
tone of sadness; his long, lean, dark countenance drooped.

"One thing more! The female of my race--the girl I call Eleanor--have
you not saved her as a reward for my services? Through the wiles of
wicked connivers, she has escaped. Once more I ask you, can you not
seize her and bring her back?"

"Once more I tell you, earthling, the Peerless Red One has changed his
mind about the female of your species. In truth, we were not sorry when
she got away; and made but little effort to re-capture her, for she
drew your mind from your work. The Peerless Red One has decided, if the
female of the species is crafty enough to get away, might she not be
crafty enough to cause us much trouble? No, earthling! Let her perish
with the rest of her crawling species!"

Dunbar groaned, and sank disconsolately to the laboratory floor.
Had he not learned that nothing was more futile than to argue with a
Saturnian?

       *       *       *       *       *

The dreary gray of dawn was visible through the stagnant cloud-banks by
the time Gates had started toward Dunbar's apartment.

One thing, in particular, had delayed him. Having secured the Electric
Blade, he decided that he must also obtain the Infra-Red Eye as
a precaution in case of conflict with the Saturnians. One of the
instruments, he recalled to his regret, had been lost during that first
encounter with the invaders from space. But there was another, which
he had left for safekeeping in the home of his old friend Bill Denny.
Here, however, was indeed a predicament! How could he get to Denny and
ask for his property, now that he was invisible? After much thought,
he concluded that only one course was open to him; hence, taking a
flashlight from his locker at the Institute, he hurried to Bill's home,
climbed in through a window, and began to ransack his friend's spare
room, where he knew the Infra-Red Eye was kept.

It was this that gave rise to the panic in the Denny household; to
Martha Denny's screams when she awakened long after midnight and saw a
light proceeding as if on its own volition down the empty hallway. Bill
Denny, who went to investigate, said that he heard the sound of racing
footsteps, and caught a gleam, which he attributed to a burglar's
flashlight; and this theory was borne out the following morning by the
disordered state of the spare room. But what nobody could understand
was that a bill-packed wallet, which stood in plain sight, had been
untouched; while the only thing taken was the peculiar-looking
contraption entrusted to Bill weeks ago by his missing friend, poor
old Ronny Gates.

Meantime, with the Infra-Red Eye shielded from sight beneath his
garments, Gates was approaching Dunbar's apartment house. As he drew
near in the early dawn, he paused in an adjoining court; and a thrill
of satisfaction shot through him to know that, after all, he was not
too late. No! but he was barely in time! For two workmen, heaving and
panting, were throwing a thick steel cylinder on top of a great heap.

Beside them stood Dunbar, looking hot and unhappy as he directed their
movements with nervous haste. "Now you fellows, just one more!" he was
ordering, with a growl. "Go up and get it, and I'll pay you off! Go on,
quick! God! what are you such snails about?"

As the men slouched away, Gates let out an unconscious grunt; at which
Dunbar turned toward him sharply, terror in his piercing black little
eyes. "Good heavens!" he muttered to himself, as he hastily lit a
cigarette. "I'm getting so I see things everywhere!"

       *       *       *       *       *

A few minutes later, the last of the cylinders had been deposited on
the heap; the workmen had been paid, and had gone shuffling off; and
Dunbar, leaning against the pile, was awaiting the arrival of the
Saturnians. Nor had he long to wait. The laborers had hardly passed out
of sight around the corner, when one of the cylinders began to move as
of its own will, and, with gradually accelerating velocity, shot into
the air and out of sight.

Now if ever, Gates realized, was the time to act! With trembling speed,
he drew the Infra-Red Eye from under his coat, so as to reveal the
Saturnians who, he felt sure, were all about him. For a moment alarm
possessed him; for the Eye, being visible, would betray him to the foe!
But no! evidently some of the Amvol-Amvol had been rubbed upon it in
its contact with his clothes; it too was invisible!

Hastily he adjusted it, by means of tight bands running around his
head; yet not so hastily as to make unnecessary noise. How fortunate,
he thought, that the Saturnians' ears were less acute than some of
their other senses! Yet what he saw, after he had turned the proper
screws and levers, was nothing to reassure him. Not one Saturnian, nor
even two, as he had expected! Nor even five or six! At least twelve
of the great creatures, with their dangling octopus limbs, their long
stinging tails, their red triangular eyes--at least twelve of them,
all seeming of a watery pallor through the Infra-Red Eye! And among
them, leading them as he strutted savagely back and forth among the
compressed air containers, was the over-towering form of Red-Hood!

Pressed into a basement doorway for protection, Gates planned his
action. His mind worked with spring-like rapidity; he knew that he had
not a second to waste. Two advantages were his: the Electric Blade, and
his ability to take his adversaries by surprise. But how slight these
assets seemed by comparison with the number and prowess of his foes!

Yet not for an instant did he flinch. If he must die, then he must
die! Out from beneath his coat came the Electric Blade, its sheath
fortunately invisible; but after he had set the motors into operation,
the whirring sound betrayed him.

"What's that?" came suspiciously from one of the Saturnians, in his
native tongues, as the monster started toward the source of the sound.

Instantly Gates released the blade to its full length. But, as he did
so, he received another shock. The metal, in its folded position, had
evidently missed contact with the Amvol-Amvol! It could be seen just
like any ordinary steel!

"Ah! What devil have we here?" dinned from the Saturnian, in a mighty
roar. And he lunged in Gates' direction.

       *       *       *       *       *

As he did so, the blade began to swing with such speed that it made
but a gray blur. Too swift for the Saturnians to follow its movements,
the steel slashed at the assailant, whom Gates could clearly see
through the Infra-Red Eye. The first blows made but minor dents in
the creature's tough armor; but after a second or two Gates swung the
weapon upward toward the enemy's left shoulder.

Horrible to hear was the monster's howl as the Middle Nerve Center was
penetrated and fountains of golden-orange overflowed the pavement.
Terrible beyond words was his death-yell as he sagged and sank, and,
with all his limbs threshing violently, clutched blindly for his foe.

But Gates had leapt out of range. Vehemently he was darting hither
and thither among the Saturnians, slashing in all directions with the
furiously swinging blade. He could see the octopus limbs of half a
score of the creatures writhing simultaneously toward him, interfering
with one another in their convulsive movements. However, they aimed
not at him but at the blade, and always they struck at the point where
it had been just a fraction of a second before their blows descended.
Thus, by a hair's breadth, Gates was able to elude them.

[Illustration: Gates fired desperately at the advancing creatures.]

How long would he be able to keep up the unequal struggle? His strength
was waning; his breath was coming hard and fast; its very sound would
have betrayed him had it not been for the other noises of battle.
Already he had wounded several adversaries, though not mortally; their
golden-yellow blood flowed, but they still fought on. Time after time
he felt himself brushed by their sweeping arms; felt their deathly
cold claws against his skin. Once, by less than a finger's breadth, he
escaped a lashing envenomed tail.

Even as he lodged this peril, Gates recognized the huge gray-green
lips of Red-Hood. He saw the malevolent red light in the eyes of his
chief antagonist; and, like a matador fleeing a bull, he ducked and
ran sideways. Then, with ferocious suddenness, he turned and swung the
flashing blade upward.

A fraction of a second too soon or too late, and he would have been
lost. A few inches too high, or a few inches too low, and he might as
well not have fought at all. But Red-Hood, stooping low as he charged
head forward, had exposed the vulnerable left shoulder. And straight
through the susceptible spot burst the cleaving, electrically driven
blade.

       *       *       *       *       *

Red-Hood's roar of rage and agony, as he sank amid hideous convulsions,
was all but drowned by the dismayed bellowings of his companions. One
and all, as though they had hit a blank wall, halted in shrieking
consternation at the sight of their smitten leader. And Gates,
springing forward, profited from that instant of demoralization, to
strike another of the creatures through the Middle Nerve Center.

As he leapt back, barely in time to avert the drive of the swinging
tail, he made an amazing observation. The creatures were all in flight!
From their terrorized cries, he knew that they thought they were
fighting not one man, but an invisible army!

But the last of the monsters, as he turned to flee, swung back briefly.
Crouched in a cranny against a coal-bin, was a cowering form, its
eyes wide with terror. "You, nignig--you, you are the root of all our
trouble!" rasped the Saturnian. "You have betrayed us! You shall be
punished!"

Out swung the terrible tail; its barbed point, with the speed of
an arrow, plunged into Dunbar's heart. And as the victim, gasping,
collapsed in his own blood, his assailant went swinging away up a great
cobweb.

Meanwhile Gates, sinking in exhaustion to the pavement, stared at the
stones smeared with great streaks of golden-yellow; stared at the still
untouched containers of compressed air, and solemnly mumbled a prayer
of thanksgiving.




CHAPTER XIV

Deliverance


Gates' first thought, after recovering his breath, was to finish his
half-completed task. What if the Saturnian retreat were but temporary?
What if the foe should rally, and return with redoubled fury? What if,
after all, they should seize the containers of compressed air, and so
accomplish their original purpose and conquer the planet?

"By glory! not if I can prevent!" Gates swore a secret oath, as he
staggered toward the great steel cylinders. To carry off even one of
the heavy affairs would, obviously, be impossible--but was there no
other way? After a swift examination, he noticed a little faucet-like
spout at the end of one of the vessels, and took it to be a valve to
relieve excessive pressure.

"Just five minutes' leeway," he thought, "and there won't be a whiff of
compressed air left in the whole shooting match!"

At the same time, he gave the spigot a swift turn in his fingers.

Instantly there came such a blast that he was stunned. A loud popping,
as of an explosion, dinned in his ears. He reeled backward, knocked
over as by a hurricane. For a second or two a great fury of escaping
air blew by him.

Still a little dazed, he picked himself up a minute later, cursing
his own stupidity. In his haste he had turned the vent on full force,
so relieving far too much pressure--with results that might have been
disastrous.

Worst of all! what if the commotion should summon the Saturnians back?

Even as this fear swept across him, he made a discovery which, for the
moment, alarmed him even more. He could see himself again! His arms,
his legs, and all of his body, were perfectly visible! The blast of air
had been powerful enough to blow away all the Amvol-Amvol, the powder
of invisibility!

Aware that he would be utterly at the Saturnians' mercy should they
return, he worked quickly as possible to release the compressed air
from the other containers. At any moment, he expected to be snatched
up by a huge swooping claw, and borne away to his doom. But time went
by, and the monsters did not re-appear. And at length the last of the
compressed air cylinders was empty!

Then for the first time, as he started hastily away, a flash of joyous
realization swept over him. What a relief to be visible again! Once
more he could be received as a man!

       *       *       *       *       *

Early in the morning, following the alarm from the supposed Saturnians,
Eleanor insisted on resuming work at the Electronic Space Ray.
Surrounded by a whole squad of policemen--since her four previous
protectors had insisted that they were too few--she entered the
courtyard adjoining the Research Institute, where her machine with its
fifteen-foot cannon-like muzzle was pointed skyward. Now at last she
was ready for the crucial work!

Reaching the courtyard, she adjusted the instrument; cleared an
open circle of blue sky; and in so doing destroyed, she knew, an
incalculable number of the invisible cobwebs that clogged the
atmosphere. But she was out after bigger prey than cobwebs. By means of
the telescope she located a tiny shining speck which she recognized as
one of the Crystal Planetoids; and, with trembling hands, pointed her
machine toward the section of the sky containing the Planetoid.

Then, for the barest fraction of a second, she hesitated. She knew it
was but womanly weakness; she knew it was unworthy, inconsistent with
her all-important scheme; yet the hot tears trickled down her cheeks,
and something clutched at her throat. The next flick of her fingers
might be the movement that destroyed scores of human beings, among them
Ronny, her lover.

None the less, she held back only for an instant. Her fingers flashed
against a lever; and a faint clicking came to her ears. With eyes glued
to the telescope, she watched; and immediately, it seemed, she made out
a puff of red fire where the Planetoid had been--a puff that swiftly
gave way to long ruddy streamers, which almost as swiftly vanished.

Still struggling, she could not keep back her sobs. "Ronny would
forgive me, if he knew!" she consoled herself. Nevertheless, several
minutes had passed, before, with a great effort of will, she turned to
the range finder, and prepared to look for another Planetoid.

Then it was, that all at once, there came a sound which she heard in
mute, incredulous amazement. What was that voice?--that familiar, that
exultant voice arising suddenly behind her! "Eleanor!"

Wheeling about, she faced what she at first mistook for an apparition.
Could this be Ronald? this dishevelled man with the face ghostly pale,
although his eyes were agleam with joy?

But as he strode forward, and flung out his arms, she knew that he was
indeed no phantom!

       *       *       *       *       *

No less surprising than the speed with which the Saturnians had
overspread the earth was the rapidity with which the peril receded.
Within a few weeks, while dozens of Electronic Space Rays swept the
heavens to clear away the great cobwebs, the temperature of the planet
returned to normal; the winds blew again as usual; the ferocious
thunder storms, the floods and the droughts had dwindled to ghastly
memories. If any of the monsters still ranged the earth, they had
returned to remote, unpeopled regions; no trace of them was ever
seen, except for some mysterious streaks of yellow-orange observed by
mariners on an islet near Cape Horn, where the last of the invaders had
been dashed to their doom.

As for the Planetoids--so mercilessly were they hunted by the Space
Rays that, within a week, the most careful searching of the heavens
failed to reveal even one of the great gelatinous balls. The watchers
on Saturn, it was generally agreed, would not be encouraged by the
results of their expedition! And if ever they should attempt another
invasion, the weapons to repel them would be at hand.

Meantime, while paeans of thanksgiving resounded from all lands, the
world's eyes were focused on two individuals. The nuptials of Eleanor
Firth and Ronald Gates, which were celebrated a few weeks after the
overthrow of the Menace, were the occasion for universal rejoicing, for
nothing could have appeared more fitting than the union of these two.



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75478 ***