shudders that shook him:

"He doesn't dare, damn him! Can't let the wires touch us. Has
to--discharge--in air.... But he'll burn us--afterwards!"

* * * * *

"Stand still!" said Danny through stiffened lips. "Don't make a move!
He hasn't seen us, it may be!"

The crackling discharge had ceased; the rain of miniature lightning
bolts that had shot around them and through them had ended. The cable
had gone up before their eyes and hidden itself in the white ship. The
pilot's eyes clung to that white-bellied thing, so slender and round
and gleaming against the dark clouds overhead; he saw it hang
motionless for long minutes while it seemed that the breath in his
throat must choke him. Then he saw that white roundness enlarge as the
ship settled swiftly down.

It hung in another moment directly above their red ship. Danny saw
three round holes open in the white shell--the three outlets that the
Infant had predicted. It had descended noiselessly, but now there came
from within a high-pitched whining hum. The dreaded heat and ray! They
were about to see their own ship destroyed! And, as for themselves--!
Danny was still waiting for the first, devastating blast of
intolerable heat, when the ship settled softly down.

Green port-holes stared at him like eyes. A door was outlined with a
line of black that spread to a round opening as a door swung wide. A
huge door in the side of a huge ship, but it was none too large for
the giant figure that crept through.

And Danny O'Rourke stared wordlessly at the flat-nosed face above a
robe of chilled steel blue.

"'Tis him!" he gasped out that the Infant might hear. "The same
one--the devil I saw in Stobolsk!" And if any other identification
were needed it came in the slender rod, whose heavy metal butt was
gripped in the giant's hand. At sight of the wire looping back from
the weapon; at remembrance of the Infant's shrewd guess; and with the
conviction that now this same weapon was to annihilate the only two
men who knew how to combat this destroyer, Danny threw back his head
and laughed--until his harsh laughter died away in a snarl of rage.

"Go on and do it," he heard, "you ugly devil. You killed those Reds;
you've killed thousands of us since, you murderin' beast! Go on and
kill us, too!"

* * * * *

The slender tube was aimed at him squarely. Danny waited to hear the
faint click that would mean his death as