till obscured everything. But the wall of protoplasm was gone!

Cliff's voice came moaning out of the murk, calling Kay's name.

Kay moved forward cautiously, still holding Ruth. He seemed to be
skirting the edge of a vast crater. At the edge of it he found the
top, revolving slowly. And Cliff's voice came from beside the top.

"Kay, we've won. Don't look at me. Don't let Ruth see me! Look down!"

Kay looked down into the bottomless pit, extending clear across the
plain to the distant jungle. An enormous canyon cloven in the earth,
filled with the slowly settling cloud of dust.

"They're there, Kay. Don't look this way!"

But Kay looked--and could see nothing except a pile of debris, from
the bottom of which Cliff's voice issued.

"Cliff, you're not hurt?"

"A--a little. You must listen while I tell you how to clean up the
monsters. It's the psenium emanation. It has the same effect when our
method is applied to it. It disintegrates everything inorganic--not
organic.

"I thought, if I couldn't get them, I'd crumble the earth away--bury
them. They're underneath the debris, Kay, a mile deep, buried, beneath
the impalpable powder that represented the inorganic salts and
minerals of the earth. They'll never get out of that. Protoplasm needs
oxygen. They'll trouble us no more.

"You must take the top, Kay. Use our old method. You'll find its
application to the psenium emanation written in a book fastened
beneath the hood. Wipe out the rest of them. If any more come, you'll
know how to deal with them."

"Cliff, you're not badly hurt?" Kay asked again.

"Don't look, I tell you! Keep Ruth away!"

* * * * *

But the dust was settling fast, and suddenly Ruth uttered a scream of
fear.

And a strangled cry broke from Kay's throat as he looked down at what
had been Cliff Hynes.

The man seemed to have become resolved into the same sort of
protoplasm as the Earth Giants. He lay, a little heap, incredibly
small, incredibly distorted. Flesh without bones, shapeless lumps of
flesh where arms and legs and body frame should have been.

Cliff's voice came faintly. "You remember the leakage through the
rubber and analektron container, Kay. The W-rays even fused the
craolite socket. The psenium rays are stronger. They destroy even
bone. They're fatal to the man who operates the machine, unless he
follows the directions. I've written them out for you, but I had--no
time--to apply them."