ve an
idea that the gas we came through is the answer. There is metal, we
know, that conducts an electric current in only one direction: why not
a gas that will do the same with light?"

* * * * *

The pilot was listening, but Diane seemed uninterested in scientific
speculations. "The trees!" she breathed in rapture; "the marvelous,
beautiful trees!"

She was gazing toward distant towering growths where the valley
widened. Like no trees of Earth, these monsters towered high in air,
their black trunks branching to end in tendrils that raised high above
them. And the tendrils were a waving, ever-moving sea of color, where
rainbow iridescence was stabbed through with the flash of crimson
buds. A down-draft of air brought a heady, intoxicating odor.

And still there was silence. To Walter Harkness, standing motionless
and alert amidst the waving grass, it seemed a hush of waiting. A
prickle of apprehension passed over his skin. He glanced about, his
pistol ready in his hand, looked back for a moment at the ship, then
smiled inwardly in self-derision of his fear as he strode forward.

"Let's have a look at things," he said with a heartiness not entirely
sincere. "We'll discover nothing standing here."

But the silence weighed upon them all as they pressed on. No
exclamations of amazement from them now, no speculations of what might
lie ahead. Only wide-eyed alertness and a constant listening,
listening--until the silence was broken by a scream.

A man it seemed at first, when Harkness saw the figure leap outward
from the cliff. A second one followed. They landed on all fours upon a
rock that jutted outward toward the trees.

The impact would have killed a human, but these creatures stood
upright to face the concealment from which they had sprung. One was
covered with matted, brown hair. Its arms were long, and its fists
pounded upon a barrel-like chest, while it growled hoarsely. The other
ape-thing, naked and hairless, did the same. They were both uttering
those sounds, that at times seemed almost like grunted words, when the
end came.

A swishing of leather wings!--a swooping, darting rush of a huge
body!--and one of the ape-men, as Harkness had mentally termed them,
was struggling in the clutch of talons that gripped him fast.

The giant bat-shape that had seized him reached for the other, too. A
talon ripped at the naked face, but the ape-man dodged and vanished
among the rocks