bling,
hampered by their very numbers, as they tried to attack at will of
Luar and retreated in confusion at the will of Sarka.

Then there was Jaska beside Sarka, her face fearful, as he pointed off
across the gloomy expanse of the Moon.

From all sides, from all directions, from other craters which these
two had not even seen, came scores and hundreds of the monster cars!

They had beaten Luar and Dalis but for a moment, then! Now, at her
command, the countless other aircars were coming in to head them off,
to fight them back to the surface of the Moon. It would be a race
against time, and against death. But of at least a dozen of the
aircars, Sarka was master, and he did not fear the issue. That strange
exaltation which the white flames had given him filled him with a
confidence that nothing could shake.

He shot a thought at the gleaming cube in the forepeak.

"Faster! Faster! There is no limit to your speed! Faster! Faster! Even
faster!"

Instantly the Moon seemed literally to drop away beneath the dozen
aircars which carried the Radiant People, while the aircars of Luar
and of Dalis fell hopelessly behind.

Sure that they would win in this race now, since he was just beginning
to realize the vastness of his power--the all-encompassing,
all-mastering power of the human mind and will, which the white flames
of the Moon had made almost god-like--Sarka turned his eyes toward a
coldly gleaming sphere in the star-spangled heavens ahead.

* * * * *

It was the Earth, and it seemed ringed in flames! From its edges there
seemed to shoot long streamers of yellow or golden flames, which broke
into sunlike pinwheels of radiance at their tips. Something, there on
the precious Earth, was decidedly wrong!

Instantly, telepathically, he sought to gain mental contact with his
father.

"Father, we are coming!" he said, across those countless miles. "What
is happening?"

For a full minute there was no answer. Then it came, feeble, broken,
weighted with fear; but it was a thought-message, unmistakably, of
Sarka the Second.

"Hurry, son! Hurry! For Dalis has indeed betrayed us! I could not
maintain control of the Earth with the Beryls, for some strange
catastrophe has destroyed all the Beryls in the area Dalis ruled! The
shifting of positions of the Earth and the Moon has so altered the
relative effects of the pull of gravity exerted by the planets that
Mars has been brought into danger