butt. And though nothing visible came from
the rod, Danny saw it pointed back at the building where iron bars
softened till they sent rivulets of molten steel splashing upon the
pavement.

A squad of soldiers in the blood-red color of their service stood
nearby. One gave an order, and a dozen rifles were swung toward their
shoulders. But the rifles never came to rest.

Danny saw the quick swing of the slender rod. And he saw the men's
mouths opened in screams that were never uttered. For, quicker than
nerves could send their message to human brain and muscles, some
unseen force had slashed their bodies in two as if a fiery sword had
been swung by invisible hands.

The pointing rod lingered upon the huddled bodies for an instant,
while that which had been human flesh vanished in a bursting cloud of
smoke; while the stones beneath turned to a seething pool of molten
rock.... Then the rod moved slowly toward the frozen figure of Danny
O'Rourke.

Did the strange being sense that Danny had not been disbelieving like
the rest? Danny could never know. He knew only that he stood rigid
with horror, entirely unable to move, while that rod swung upon him;
he knew that the hand that held it released something that clicked,
wherefore his life had been spared; and he knew that the savage face
above wrinkled into something resembling a snarling, triumphant smile,
as the rod was returned to its hiding place under the garment of
shimmering blue, and the mysterious figure turned and strode savagely
down the Avenue Stalin in the city of Stobolsk.

Danny O'Rourke was to carry that picture clearly in his mind--the
figure that moved unhurriedly on, towering above the others, men and
women, who scurried fearfully from his path. But he was to retain yet
more vividly the recollection of a group of red-clad bodies that were
severed at their waists as a slim tube swung--then a bursting cloud of
oily smoke, and a pool of molten rock where they had been.

* * * * *

Something of this, perhaps, was clouding the eyes of Danny O'Rourke,
Pilot of the A.F.F. a month and more later, as he sat at lookout duty
in a gleaming white tower on a high peak of the Sierras. Not that the
job of lookout was part of O'Rourke's duty, now that he was back in
the U. S. A., but a cylinder of scarlet rested on a great rack at the
base of the tower, and Danny had no wish to hear the roar of that
cylinder's stern exhaust for a time.