e streaming along the base of the mountain
underneath, seeking the safety of the jungles, and over them, riding
them, harrying them, flew the Atlantean birdmen, hurling their fiery
balls. And where the balls fell, conflagrations of cold fire seemed to
start and run like mercury, and shrivel up everything they touched.

But the birdmen were not without casualties of their own. Here and
there one could be seen to drop, and then the massed Drilgoes would
turn savagely upon him with their stone-pointed spears. The fight was
coming very close now. The savage cries of the Drilgoes filled the
night.

A ball of fire broke hardly fifty yards away from where the three were
crouching. A birdman fluttered down like a wounded hawk and lay
a-sprawl just underneath the rampart of boulders. Jim surmounted them,
ran down the slope of the mountainside, and bent over the dying man.
He was hideously wounded by the thrust of a Drilgo spear--whether
because the mechanism had failed, or because he had swooped too low,
Jim could not determine. As Jim bent over him he looked up at him.

A youth in his teens, with the face and build of a Greek warrior, a
worthy ancestor of European man. Jim looked at him and shuddered. "My
grandfather four hundred generations removed," he thought.

Seeing that this was no Drilgo, with eyes widened by the anticipation
of death, the Atlantean smiled, and died.

Jim detached the straps that held the wings to his shoulders and
examined them. They were multi-hinged, built of innumerable layers of
laminated wood, which seemed to have been subjected to some special
treatment. In the base of each, just where it fitted to the curve of
the shoulder-blade, a tiny light was burning.

* * * * *

Jim looped the straps about his arms and walked back to the rampart.
Old Parrish saw him and screamed. Lucille cried out.

"I'm going to try to get the Atom Smasher," said Jim, pointing to the
thin spire of violet flame that was still visible in the center of the
causeway. "It's our only chance. You must stay here. If I live, I'll
return. If I don't return--"

But he knew that he must return. Nothing could kill him, because
Lucille would be waiting for him behind that rampart of stones upon
the bare, vitreous mountainside.

"I'm going to get the Atom Smasher," Jim repeated. "In these wings
I'll be taken for Atlantean. I'll--bring it back." He spoke with
faltering conviction. And yet there wa