ning metal.
Attached to the lower band were four jointed legs of the same bright
green metal, upon which the strange thing stood.

Set in the middle band were two glittering, polished lenses, which
seemed to serve as eyes, and Larry felt that they were gazing at him
with malevolent menace. Behind the eyes, two wings sprang from the
green band. Ingenious, folding wings, of thin plates and bars of green
metal.

And from the upper band sprang four slender, glistening, whip-like
tentacles, metallic and brilliantly green, two yards in length. They
writhed with strange life!

* * * * *

It seemed a long time to Larry that the thing stood, motionless,
seeming to stare evilly at them with eye-like lenses. Then, lurching
forward a little, it moved toward them upon legs of green metal. And
now Larry saw another amazing thing about it.

Floating in the brilliant violet liquid that filled the crystal tube
was a gray mass, wrinkled and corrugated. This was divided by deep
clefts into right and left hemispheres, which, in turn were separated
into larger upper and smaller lower segments. White filaments ran
through the violet liquid from its base toward the three rings or
bands of green metal that encircled the cylinder.

In an instant, Larry realized that the gray mass was a human brain.
The larger, upper part the cerebrum, the smaller mass at the back the
cerebellum. And the white filaments were nerves, by means of which
this brain controlled its astounding, mechanical body!

A brain in a machine!

The violet liquid, it came to Larry in his trance of wonder, must take
the place of blood, feeding the brain-cells, absorbing waste.

An eternal mind, within a machine! Free from the ills and weaknesses
of the body. And devoid, too, of any pity, of any tender feelings. A
cold and selfish mind, without emotion--unless it might worship itself
or its mechanical body.

It was this monster that had spilt the pool of blood drying on the
floor, near the door. And it was these glistening, green, snake-like
tentacles that had crumpled the revolver into a broken mass of steel!

Abruptly the machine-monster darted forward, running swiftly upon its
four legs of green metal. Slender tentacles reached out toward the
shuddering girl at Larry's shoulder.

"Run!" Agnes gasped to him, quickly. "It will kill you!"

The girl tried to push him back.

As she touched him, Larry recovered from his daze of wonderin