g fear.
Agnes was in frightful danger, and facing it with quiet courage. He
must find a weapon!

* * * * *

Wildly, he looked about him. His eyes fell upon the tall, heavy wooden
stool, upon which Agnes had been sitting.

"Get back!" he shouted to her.

He snatched up the stool, and, swinging it over his head, sprang
toward the machine of violet-filled crystal and glittering green
metal.

"Stop!" Agnes screamed, in a terrified voice. "You can't--"

She had run before him. He seized her arm and swung her back behind
him. Then he advanced warily toward the machine-monster, which had
paused and seemed to be regarding him with sinister intentness,
through its glistening crystal eye-lenses.

With all his strength, Larry struck at the crystal cylinder, swinging
the stool like an ax. A slender, metallic green tentacle whipped out,
tore the stool from his hands, and sent it crashing across the room,
to splinter into fragments on the opposite wall.

Larry, sent off his balance, staggered toward the glittering machine.
As he stumbled against the transparent tube that contained the brain,
he clenched his fist to strike futilely at it.

A snake-like metal tentacle wrapped itself about him; he was hurled to
the floor, to sprawl grotesquely among broken apparatus.

His head came against the leg of a bench. For a few moments he was
dazed. But it seemed only a few seconds to him before he had staggered
to his feet, rubbing his bruised head. Anxiously, he peered about the
room.

The machine-monster and Agnes were gone!

He stumbled back to the mass of apparatus in the center of the huge
laboratory. Intently, he gazed into the upright pillar of crimson
flame. Nothing was visible there.

"No, the other!" he gasped. "The violet is the way they went."

* * * * *

He turned to the companion ray of violet radiance that beat straight
down on the opposite side of the tiny, whirling planet. And in that
motionless torrent of chill violet flame he saw them.

Tiny, already, and swiftly dwindling!

With green wings outspread, the machine-monster was beating swiftly
upward through the pillar of purple-blue flame. And close against the
crystal tube that contained its brain, was Agnes, held fast by the
whip-like tentacles of glistening green metal.

Larry moved to spring after them, into the torrent of violet light.
But sudden caution restrained him.

"I'd shrink, t