vacation. To that end they were installed, together with their earthly
belongings, in a three-roomed structure of transparent metal, floating
in the large central lagoon of the city. There they were left
undisturbed for a time--undisturbed, that is, except by the continuous
gaze of the crowd of hundreds of amphibians which constantly surrounded
the floating cottage.

"First we're bugs under a microscope," Bradley growled, "then we're
goldfish in a bowl. I don't know that...."

He broke off as two of their jailers entered the room. Without a word
into the transformers, they seized Bradley and the girl. As those
tentacular arms stretched out toward Clio, Costigan leaped. A vain
attempt. In midair the paralyzing ray of the Nevians touched him and he
crashed heavily to the crystal floor; and from that floor he looked on
in helpless, raging fury while his sweetheart and his captain were
carried out of their prison and into a waiting submarine.

CHAPTER X

The _Boise_ Acts

But what of the super-ship? What happened after that inertialess, that
terribly destructive take-off?

Doctor Frederick Rodebush sat at the control panel of Triplanetary's
newly reconstructed space-ship, his hands grasping the gleaming, ebonite
handles of two double-throw switches. Facing the unknown though the
physicist was, yet he grinned whimsically at his friend.

"Something, whatever it is, is about to take place. The _Boise_ is
taking off, under full neutralization. Ready for anything to happen,
Cleve?"

"All ready--shoot!" Laconically. Cleveland also was constitutionally
unable to voice his deeper sentiments in time of stress.

Rodebush flipped the switches clear over in flashing arcs, and instantly
over both men there came a sensation akin to a tremendously intensified
vertigo; but a vertigo as far beyond the space-sickness of
weightlessness, as that horrible sensation is beyond mere terrestrial
dizziness. The pilot tried to reverse the switches he had just thrown,
but his leaden hands utterly refused to obey the dictates of his reeling
mind. His brain was a writhing, convulsive mass of torment
indescribable; expanding, exploding, swelling out with an unendurable
pressure against its confining skull. Fiery spirals, laced with
streaming, darting lances of black and green, flamed inside his bursting
eyeballs. The Universe spun and whirled in mad gyrations about him as he
reeled drunkenly to his feet, staggering and sprawling. He