night-blooming flowers burst open like star-shells to
fill the air with heavy scents.

Between the men and the forest growth was a row of denser vegetation,
great ferns twenty feet and more in height, and among them at regular
intervals stood plants of another growth--each a tremendous pod held in
air on a thick stalk. Tendrils coiled themselves like giant springs
beside each pod, tendrils as thick as a man's wrist. The great pods were
ranged in a line that extended as far as McGuire could see in the dim
light.

* * * * *

His shoulders drooped as the guard herded him and his companion toward
the building beyond. He must not be cast down--he would not! Who knew
how much of such feeling was read by these keen-eyed observers? And the
only thought with which he could fill his mind, the one forlorn ghost of
a hope that he could cling to, was that of an island, a volcanic peak
that rose from dark waters to point upward toward the heights.

The guard of four was clustered about; the figures were waiting now in
the gathering dark--waiting, while the one in scarlet listened and spoke
alternately into a jeweled instrument that hung by a slender chain about
his neck. He raised one lean hand to motion the stirring guards to
silence, listened again intently into the instrument, then pointed that
hand toward the cloud-filled sky, while he craned his thin neck to look
above him.

The men's eyes followed the pointing hand to see only the sullen black
of unlit clouds. The last distant aircraft had vanished from the skies;
not a ship was in the air--only the enveloping blanket of high-flung
vapor that blocked out all traces of the heavens. And then!--

The cloud banks high in the skies flashed suddenly to dazzling, rolling
flame. The ground under their feet was shaken as by a distant
earthquake, while, above, the terrible fire spread, a swift, flashing
conflagration that ate up the masses of clouds.

"What in thunder--" McGuire began; then stopped as he caught, in the
light from above, the reflection of fierce exultation in the eyes of the
scarlet one. The evil, gloating message of those eyes needed no words to
explain its meaning. That this cataclysm was self-made by these beings,
McGuire knew, and he knew that in some way it meant menace to him and
his.

Yet he groped in thought for some definite meaning. No menace could this
be to himself personally, for he and Sykes stood there safe in the
c