d guidance; battleships ripped to
pieces by the Chinese disintegrators; and, finally, the great wave of
black death that had wiped out two hundred thousand men.

Kay Bevan--to use the old-fashioned names which still persisted,
despite the official numerical nomenclature--glanced through the
account. He threw the sheet away. "We deserved it, Cliff," he said.

Cliff nodded. "You saw that bit about the new Chinese disintegrator?
If the Government had seriously considered our Crumbler--"

Kay glanced at the huge, humming top that filled the center of the
laboratory. It spun so fast that it appeared as nothing but a
spherical shadow, through which one could see the sparse furnishings,
the table, the apparatus ranged upon it, and the window over-looking
the upper streets of New York.

"Yes--_if!_" he answered bitterly. "And I'm willing to bet the Chinese
have an inferior machine, built upon the plans that Chinese servant
stole from us last year."

"We deserved it, Cliff," said Kay again. "For ten years we've harried
and enslaved the yellow man, and taken a hundred thousand of his men
and women to sacrifice to the Earth Giants. What would we have done,
if conditions had been reversed?"

"Self-preservation," Cliff suggested.

"Exactly. The law of the survival of the fittest. They thought that
they were fitter to survive. I tell you they had right on their side,
Cliff, and that's what's beaten us. Now--a hundred thousand of our
_own_ boys and girls must be fed into the maw of these monsters every
year. God, suppose it were Ruth!"

"Or you or I," said Cliff. "If only we could perfect the Crumbler!"

"What use would that be against the Earth Giants? There's nothing
organic about them, not even bones. Pure protoplasm!"

"We could have used it against the Chinese," said Cliff. "Now--" He
shrugged his shoulders hopelessly.

* * * * *

And if explorers had been content to leave the vast unknown Antarctic
Continent alone, they would never have taught the imprisoned Giants to
cross the great ice barrier. But that crossing had taken place fifteen
years ago, and already the mind of man had become accustomed to the
grim facts.

Who could have dreamed that the supposed table-land was merely a rim
of ice-mountains, surrounding a valley twice the size of Europe, so
far below sea-level that it was warmed to tropic heat by Earth's
interior fires? Or that this valley was peopled with what could best