The crystal planetoids

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.

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!"

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.

"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!"

"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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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,

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.

"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."

"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."

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

"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—"

"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?"

"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.

"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.

"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!"

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,

"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."

"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.

"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.

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

"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!

"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!"

"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.

"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.

"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."

"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!"

"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?"

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!

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.

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—"

"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—"

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—"

"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—"

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.

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."

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.

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."

"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.

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."

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."

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!"

"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?"

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

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.

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.

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!"

"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]

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.

"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?"

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?"

"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.

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.

"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."

"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.

"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!"

"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!"

"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—"

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

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.

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.

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!

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!

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!"

"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?"

"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.

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,

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."

"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,

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.

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

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.

"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!"

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.

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.

"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—"

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!"

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.

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!"

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

"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.

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.

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.

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.

"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]

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.

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?"

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.

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?"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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!"

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.

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.

[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.

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I.	Chapter I
II.	The Terror Strikes
III.	Red-Hood
IV.	"Co-operate--and Live!"
V.	Paralyzed!
VI.	An Offering from the Clouds
VII.	Prisoners' Progress
VIII.	The Revolt of Yellow-Claws
IX.	Through the Barred Door
X.	A Plunge in the Dark
XI.	The Electronic Space Ray
XII.	Prelude to Battle
XIII.	The Electric Blade Swings
XIV.	Deliverance

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The crystal planetoids

The Crystal Planetoids

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

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