overers to stop him.

He found time, even, for a fleeting thought of death. His mind framed
the question, "What will I be in a moment from now?"

Then he had struck the great white needle, and was crashing into the
delicate apparatus below it. Waves of pain beat upon his mind like
flashes of blinding light. But his last mental image, as he passed
into oblivion, was a picture of Helen's face. Oddly, it was not her
face as he had last seen it, but a reproduction of the old newspaper
half-tone, curiously retouched with life and color.

* * * * *

There is little more to tell. It was some weeks later when Dan came
back out of a world of delirium and dreams, to find himself lying on
his back in a tent, very much bandaged. He was alone at the moment,
and at first could not recall that tremendous last day of his
conscious life.

Then he heard a thrillingly familiar feminine voice calling "Kitty,
kitty, kitty." He tried to move, a dull pain throbbed in his breast,
and a groan escaped him. In a moment Helen appeared; the gray kitten
was forgotten. She looked very anxious and solicitous--and also, Dan
thought, very beautiful.

"No, no!" she cried. "You are going to be all right! Dad made me learn
a little elementary medicine before we came here, and I know. But you
mustn't speak! Not for days yet! I'll have to guess what you want. And
you can wink when I guess the right thing.

"Gee, but I'm glad you've come to! You'll be as well as ever, pretty
soon. The kitten was lots of comfort. Still--"

Dan attempted to move. She leaned over him, shifted his weight and
smoothed the sheet with strong, capable hinds. "You want to know about
what happened to the machine monsters?"

He winked.

"Well, you remember when they found us, and shot the green ray at us.
They left you there--I thought you were dead--and carried me up here
on the hill. Perhaps they wanted me for a laboratory subject to test
the green ray on, or something of the kind. Anyhow, they carried me
into a big shed filled with strange machines.

"They kept me there until that night. Then, all of a sudden, they
all--stopped! They froze! They were dead!

"The tentacles of the one that was holding me were set about me. But I
worked free, and got out of the shed. It took all night. And when I
came out, just at sunrise, I saw that the purple fire was gone from
the great ring. The needle was knocked down, and the apparatus
smashed.

"I