s. Memories, mental records of past experience, were flashing
through his mind; mock battles, and the batteries were firing! And,
before him, on the metal screen, there glowed a vivid picture of the
same thing. Men were serving the guns with sure swiftness; the bursts
were high in the air--in a flash of understanding Lieutenant McGuire
knew that he was giving his country's secrets to the enemy. And in that
same instant he felt himself swept upward from the depths of that
darkness where he had drifted. He was himself again, bound and helpless
before an infernal contrivance of these devil-creatures. They had read
his thoughts; the machine beside him had projected them upon the screen
for all to see; a steady clicking might mean their reproduction in
motion pictures for later study! He, Lieutenant McGuire, was a traitor
against his will!

The screen was blank, and the lights of the room came on to show the
thin lips that smiled complacently in a cruel and evil face.

McGuire glared back into that face, and he tried with all the mental
force that he could concentrate to get across to the exultant one the
fact that they had not wholly conquered him. This much they had got--but
no more!

The thin-lipped one had an instrument in his hand, and McGuire felt the
prick of a needle plunged into his arm. He tried to move his head and
found himself powerless. And now, in the darkness of the room where all
lights were again extinguished, the helpless man was fighting the most
horrible of battles, and the battleground was within his own mind. He
was two selves, and he fought and struggled with all his consciousness
to keep those memories from flooding him.

With one part of himself he knew what it meant: a sure knowledge given
these invaders of what they must prepare to meet; he was betraying his
country; the whole of humanity! And that raging, raving self was
powerless to check the flow of memory pictures that went endlessly
through his mind and out upon the screen beyond....

He had no sense of time; he was limp and exhausted with his fruitless
struggle when he felt himself released from the bondage of the metal
straps and placed again in the hammock in his room. And he could only
look wanly and hopelessly after the figure of Professor Sykes, carried
by barbarous figures to the same ordeal.

* * * * *

Sleep, through the long night, restored both McGuire and his companion
to normal strength. The