"Flora," he grinned.

Hurrying to the other end of the room, he reached into a large flat
metal cage and brought forth three small rodent like animals, natives of
that world. These he also tossed carelessly under the glass.

"Fauna," he grunted, and picked up the tiny metal vial.

One end of the vial unscrewed. He turned the cap gently, carefully, a
strained, anxious look upon his face. My four guards watched him
breathlessly, fearfully.

* * * * *

The cap came loose at last, disclosing the end of the tube, sealed with
a grayish substance that looked like wax. Very quickly Ja Ben rolled the
little cylinder under the glass hemisphere, and picked up a beaker that
had been bubbling gently on an electric plate close by. Swiftly he
poured the thick contents of the beaker around the base of the glass
bell. The stuff hardened almost instantly, forming an air-tight seal
between the glass hemisphere and the flat plate of glass upon which it
rested. Then, with an evil, triumphant smile, Ja Ben looked up.

"_Flora_," he repeated. "_Fauna._ And _death_. Watch! The little metal
cylinder is plugged still, but in a moment that plug will
disappear--simply a volatile solid, you understand. It is going rapidly
... rapidly ... it is almost gone now! Watch ... In an instant now ...
_ah!_"

I saw the gray substance that stopped the entrance of the little metal
vial disappear. The rodents ran around and over it, trying to find a
crevice by which they might escape. The flowers, bright and beautiful,
lay untidily on the bottom of the glass prison.

Then, just as the last vestige of the gray plug vanished; an amazing, a
terrible thing happened. At the mouth of the tiny metal vial a greenish
cloud appeared. I call it a cloud, but it was not that. It was solid,
and it spread in every direction, sending out little needles that lashed
about and ran together into a solid mass while millions of little
needles reached out swiftly.

One of these little needles touched a scurrying animal. Instantly the
tiny brute stiffened, and from his entire body the greenish needles
spread swiftly. One of the flowers turned suddenly thick and pulpy with
the soft green mass, then another, another of the rodents ... _God!_

In the space of two heart beats, the entire hemisphere was filled with
the green mass, that still moved and writhed and seemed to press against
the glass sides as though the urge to expand was insistent,