was visible.

* * * * *

Sarka turned and peered through the bottom of the globe; but all he
could see below were the flames, a molten indigo lake of them. Now, as
they floated downward, the glow was giving away to lighter blue, to
white, almost pure white, like the radiance which covered Luar like a
mantle.

Sarka felt himself on the eve of vast important discoveries, and the
scientist in him made him, for the moment, almost forget the woman at
his side. Jaska, unbothered about anything, now that Sarka was at her
side, regarded his expression of deep concentration with a tolerant
smile.

Whiter now was the light, and faster fell the globe which held the
two.

The color of the globe, now fallen below the area of blue, had taken
on, chameleonlike, the color of the white flames that bathed it.

Then, apparently right in the center of a lake of white flames, though
Sarka could see no solid place on which the globe had landed, the
globe came to rest.

Now everything was plain to see, and Sarka studied his surroundings
with new interest. He felt a mounting sensation of scalp-prickling
horror.

For, scattered throughout the lake of white flames, in all directions,
as far as the eye could reach--standing alone, suffering untold
agonies, from the expressions on their faces--were people of the Gens
of Dalis!

* * * * *

No longer were they clothed in green and wearing on breast and back
the yellow stars of their Gens. Now they were nude as they had come
into the world and standing there, each was holding out hands in
horror, to hold back myriads of the Gnomes, who would have forced them
to submerge themselves in the white flames of the lake!

Was the Gens of Dalis being burned alive? What was the meaning of
this?

For a moment, filled with horror, Sarka looked away from the
spectacle. Off to his right, as he sat, he noted that the flames,
which here seemed lighter than they had in high levels, were
converging on a single spot toward the side of the lake of white
flames--as smoke converges on the base of a chimney leading outward to
the air!

He knew as he stared that he was gazing at the spot where the bluish
column of the cone was born!

Shaking his head, he turned back to the mighty spectacle of this
horrible thing that was being done to the people of the Gens of Dalis.

In his brain there suddenly crashed a thought whose source he could
only