head; the night was a
criss-cross of stabbing search-rays. I lifted my friend and slung him
across my shoulder. Every exertion, every move, was accompanied by
excruciating agony, but I persevered. Abud was already halfway to the
tunnel, running like mad.

Then, what I had dreaded, happened. There came a swoosh through the
night, a dull thud, a blinding flash and roar that paled the
search-rays into insignificance. The first terminite bomb had been
dropped!

For a moment the landscape was filled with flying rocks and huge
chunks of ice. When the great clouds of violently upthrown earth had
settled, there was no sign of Abud. He had been directly in the path
of the explosion!

* * * * *

Staggering under my load, I headed as close to the ice pack as I
could. There was no safety out in the open. I groaned heavily past the
disintegrator, whose very existence I had forgotten in the crash of
events.

A sizzling hum, a thin eddy of steam, halted me in my tracks. I
stared. The machine was working! Even as I watched, a great wedge was
momentarily being driven further and further into the ice--a great
fan-shaped wedge. Clouds of steam billowed out, growing thicker and
heavier. A rushing stream of unleashed water was lapping at my feet.

I was bewildered, frankly so. What had started the disintegrator in
the dead of night? "Of course!" I shouted exultantly to the limp body
on my shoulder.

For a search-ray was fixed steadily on the funnel. There it was. From
that blinding light the machine was getting the energy it needed. If
only the visor did not disclose that little bit of metal to the
unwinking master machine! I looked again and took heart. It was almost
undistinguishable against the dazzling blur of ice in the fierce white
light. If those rays held, the salvation of the world was assured!

There was only one way to do it. I shrank at my own thoughts, yet
there was no alternative: it must be done. I was hidden from the rays
under a projection of ice, terminite bombs were dropping methodically
over a rapidly devastated sector with methodical regularity. Sooner or
later the master machine would feel that we were exterminated, and the
search-rays switched off. That would mean that the disintegrator would
cease working, and the whole plan fall through. In the morning light,
the sector signalling apparatus, at the first sign of renewed
activity, would give warning, and the unhuman thing of