ay of light that made things not happen,'" repeated Wade curiously.
"A ray, which prevented things, which caused processes to stop--_The
Negrian Death Ray_!" he exclaimed as he suddenly recognized, in this
crude and garbled description of its powers, the Negrian ray of
anti-catalysis, a ray which tended to stop the processes of life's
chemistry and bring instant, painless death.

"Ah, you know it, too?" asked the Ortolian eagerly. "Then you will
understand what happened. The ray was turned first on Selto, and as the
whirling planet spun under it, every square foot of it was wiped clean
of every living thing, from gigantic Welsthan to microscopic Ascoptel,
and every man, woman and child was killed, painlessly, but instantly.

"Then Thenten spun under it, and all were killed, but many who had fled
the planets were still safe--many?--a few thousand.

"The day that Thenten spun under that ray, men of Ortol began to
complain of disease--men by the thousands, hundreds of thousands. Every
man, every woman, every child was afflicted in some way. The diseases
did not seem all the same. Some seemingly died of a disease of the
lungs, some went insane, some were paralyzed, and lay helplessly
inactive. But most of them were afflicted, for it was exceedingly
virulent, and the normal serums were helpless. Before any quantity of
new serum was made, all but a slender remnant had died, either of
starvation through paralysis, none being left to care for them, or from
the disease itself, while thousands who had gone mad were painlessly
killed.

"The Seltonians came to Ortol, and the remaining Ortolians, with their
aid, tried to rebuild the civilization. But what a sorry thing! The
cities were gigantic, stinking, plague-ridden morgues. And the plague
broke among those few remaining people. The Ortolians had done
everything in their power with the serums--but too late. The Seltonians
had been protected with it on landing--but even that was not enough.
Again the wild fires of that loathsome disease broke out.

"Since first those men had developed from their hairy forebears, they
had found their eternal friends were the dogs, and to them they turned
in their last extremity, breeding them for intelligence, hairlessness,
and resemblance to themselves. The Deathless ones alone remained after
three generations of my people, but with the aid of certain rays, the
rays capable of penetrating lead for a short distance, and most other
substances f