e dials pointing to the fifth dimension--eternity, he called
it, though actually I believe it's nothing more than annihilation, a
grand smash. Well, he pressed that lever. But something had gone
wrong.

"You remember how poor Cain seemed to take great interest in the Atom
Smasher. There's no way of telling what had been going on in that
brain of his, but it looks to me like he'd known that that lever meant
death. It was sealed up in wax, and Tode had got it free on the way
out of Atlantis.

"Well--this it what I made out from examining the thing afterward.
Cain had been monkeying with the lever. He'd pried loose one of the
wires that hooked to the transformer, and short-circuited it, not
knowing, of course, just what he was doing. The result was that when
Tode pressed that lever, instead of blowing the whole contraption to
pieces, he got a couple of billion volts of electricity through his
body, combined with a larger amperage than has ever been imagined. It
burned him to a few grease spots. He simply--vanished. You don't
remember what you did at the moment, boy?"

"I don't seem to remember anything," said Jim.

"Well, your response was an automatic one. You jumped him. Luckily
you were too late, for Tode vanished like that!" Old Parrish snapped
his fingers. "But you must have got into the field of magnetic
force--any way, you were almost electrocuted. Lucille and I thought
you were dead for hours.

"We laid you down and set a course for home. I used those dial
numberings Tode had given me. He'd said they wouldn't work, but he'd
lied. They did work. They brought us back to the Vanishing Place.

"We carried you out, and then I saw your eyelid twitch. We worked over
you with artificial respiration till it looked as if there was a
chance for you. Then I shut off the power and let the waters rush in
over the Atom Smasher, and swam ashore. And there it lies at the
bottom of the pool, and may it lie there till the Judgment Day."

* * * * *

"Tode was a genius," said Jim, "but he never understood that character
counts for more than genius."

"Let's think no more about him," said Lucille. She had come up to
them, and the two looked at each other and smiled. Love is
self-centred; other things it forgets very quickly.

"To-morrow we go back to New York," said Jim. "You think you're able
to face the world and take up life again?"

"I think so, Jim," said Lucille.

"You're not remember