the invisible ray sawed into
his body. Instead the huge figure leaned down to stare at the pilot;
then straightened while a crooked smile of recognition appeared on the
deformed face.... And the slender rod moved on--on--in a slow circle
toward the other waiting man!

It clicked before it reached him. Danny heard it, and "No--no!" he
screamed in a horrible voice. "Run, Infant! Beat it, for God's sake!"

The enemy was twenty feet away; it seemed as many miles to Danny as he
threw himself at the foe. He did not see the ray strike. He heard only
the Infant's steady voice calling: "Remember Danny--the Sorenson
machine--if you live."

Then a blast of reflected heat swept upon him, and he felt himself
stifling. There was a pool of molten rock, white and glaring with heat ...
and a puff of smoke, grayish black, and ashes that whirled in the wind that
swept up from the pool....

Danny tried to raise himself from the hot stone where he had fallen,
so near he was to the pool of death. He saw the grotesque figure of
the giant move over toward the red ship, look at it, sneer
contemptuously, and turn back to his own ship of doom. He saw the
black entrance swallow the huge foe and he saw the door close, while
the great ship, so innocently white in its sleek slender roundness,
rose again in the air where the clouds took it up.

And Danny, resting on scorched but unfeeling hands, stared after him
until he got the enemy's direction of flight as he entered the clouds,
then he turned towards a place of glowing rock where the air rose in
quivering waves.

"You said it, Infant," he whispered; "you knew I was just a fightin'
fool that wouldn't think the way you would. You told me to get the
Sorenson machine--" He brushed at his suddenly blinded eyes with one
seared hand, then turned to stare grimly and appraisingly where the
white ship had gone.

"And I'm thinkin'," he told the beastly occupant of that carrier of
death, "that you didn't shoot your damned ray quite quick enough. The
Infant beat you to it! He got his message to me first!"

* * * * *

How he got to the flat-roofed landing zone of the Consolidated
Electric, Danny, doubtless, could never have told. Nor was he aware of
the hand that set in the forward cabin of his ship a strange machine.
But he growled his instructions:

"Set it goin'! 'Tis the Infant's orders--I mean Mr. Morgan's. What the
devil it is I don't know, but 'Turn it on!' he