lue flame and was seized
with a well-nigh uncontrollable impulse to flee with the red men. For a
monstrous image of Detis swayed there in the hot vapors, a massive arm
raised menacingly and an equally Brobdingnagian voice issuing from his
lips in fierce syllables of the red man's tongue!

"Detis!" Carr shouted. "Detis! Ora--Mado!"

* * * * *

And then he was running toward the crater's edge in bounding strides
that carried him twenty feet at a leap. He understood now. Detis had
recovered from his wound and was reversing the rulden's energy. He was
projecting his own image and voice, many times amplified, into the
column of fire to terrify the savages!

Ora was lying there, on the rim of the pit. She had fainted at sight of
the ghost-shape, whose white-hot folds flapped there, reaching to engulf
her in their all-consuming embrace. Carr babbled like a madman as he
pulled her away from the horrible thing that pulsated with eager
flutterings not three feet away, its hot breath singeing her silken
lashes and brows.

Mado was there, encouraging him and yelling something else he couldn't
understand; pointing skyward. And then he saw it; the _Nomad_, with its
sleek, tapered cylinder of a body nosing down toward them with the
silvery aura of its propulsive energy gleaming like a beacon of hope
against the dull clouds of the satellite of terror. And there was
something else: one of the ovoids of Titan, clinging there to the
vessel's hull plates, alongside the open manhole. Nazu had not failed
them after all. His mind refused to question the miracle further.

Somehow, when the vessel landed, he managed to reach the manhole with
his precious burden. He staggered through the passageway and into their
stateroom, tenderly stretching Ora on her own bed. In the next instant
he was rummaging in the medicine closet. He found ointment for her
burns; smelling salts; damp cloths. With trembling fingers he ministered
to her, a great joy welling up within him as he saw she was recovering.
Another minute, back there at the crater, and he'd have lost her
forever. He swallowed hard at the thought, his eyes misty as he looked
down at her and remembered.

Impatiently he jerked the barbed dart from his arm and poured a powerful
antiseptic into the open wound, unmindful of the pain. As best he could,
he disinfected his other cuts and bandaged them. Ora had raised herself
and now sat there, swaying weakly and reg