ed that Yolara had a lot more influence
with the Unholy Fireworks than Lugur. Also that being a woman she
could be more easily handled. All this being so, what was the logical
thing for himself to do? Sure, you get me, Steve! Throw down Lugur and
make an alliance with me! So _he_ calmly offered to ditch the red dwarf
if I would deliver Yolara. My reward from Russia was to be said
emperorship! Can you beat it? Good Lord!"

He went off into a perfect storm of laughter. But not to me in the
light of what Russia has done and has proved herself capable, did this
thing seem at all absurd; rather in it I sensed the dawn of
catastrophe colossal.

"And yet," he was quiet enough now, "I'm a bit scared. They've got the
_Keth_ ray and those gravity-destroying bombs--"

"Gravity-destroying bombs!" I gasped.

"Sure," he said. "The little fairy that sent the trees and stones
kiting up from Lugur's garden. Marakinoff licked his lips over them.
They cut off gravity, just about as the shadow screens cut off
light--and consequently whatever's in their range goes shooting just
naturally up to the moon--

"They get my goat, why deny it?" went on Larry. "With them and the
_Keth_ and gentle invisible soldiers walking around assassinating at
will--well, the worst Bolsheviki are only puling babes, eh, Doc?

"I don't mind the Shining One," said O'Keefe, "one splash of a
downtown New York high-pressure fire hose would do for it! But the
others--are the goods! Believe me!"

But for once O'Keefe's confidence found no echo within me. Not
lightly, as he, did I hold that dread mystery, the Dweller--and a
vision passed before me, a vision of an Apocalypse undreamed by the
Evangelist.

A vision of the Shining One swirling into our world, a monstrous,
glorious flaming pillar of incarnate, eternal Evil--of peoples
passing through its radiant embrace into that hideous, unearthly
life-in-death which I had seen enfold the sacrifices--of armies
trembling into dancing atoms of diamond dust beneath the green ray's
rhythmic death--of cities rushing out into space upon the wings of
that other demoniac force which Olaf had watched at work--of a haunted
world through which the assassins of the Dweller's court stole
invisible, carrying with them every passion of hell--of the rallying
to the Thing of every sinister soul and of the weak and the
unbalanced, mystics and carnivores of humanity alike; for well I knew
that, once loosed, not any nation could h