across lifeless
hemispheres to meet in mid-air over the long green swells of the
Pacific. They met, and on the instant they were at each others'
throats like two packs of wild dogs, killing, killing, killing till
they themselves were killed. No quarter was asked in that fight, and
none given. No hope of victory was there, nor fear of defeat. Better
swift death in the high passion of combat, than slow, hopeless
drifting over a dead world.

But there was one black ship that slunk out of that mass suicide of
man's last remnant. Within its long hulk three motionless forms lay in
a welter of blood that smeared their officers' badges, and a dozen
gibbering men labored at the controls of their craft. The long black
shadows came at last to veil an empty sky, and a sea whereon there was
drifting wreckage but not one sign of any life. And as far to the
north a shadowed airship sped athwart the moon, searching for one
spot, one tiny patch of solid ground, that was free from the dread
gas.

* * * * *

Consciousness came slowly back to Allan Dane. At first he was aware,
merely, that he was alive. That was astonishing enough. Even if the
orange beam had not killed him with its heat, the gas should have
struck his leather suit. The Easterners could not be behind his own
forces in their development of that terrible weapon.

Allan felt a coolness on his face, his hands, that could mean only
that his helmet and gloves had been removed. He heard movement, and
opened his eyes.

At first he could see only blueness, pale and lambent. He gazed dully
up at a lustrous, glasslike substance that arched above him. The sound
of some one moving came again, and Allan turned his head to it. His
neck muscles seemed stiff, that simple motion drew tremendously on his
strength.

About fifteen yards away, a man bent over a transparent, boxlike
contrivance in which something fluttered. From this device a metal
tube angled away into the wall. There was other apparatus on the long
table at which the man was--

"At last! Clear at last!" a mellow, rounded voice exclaimed
jubilantly.

"Clear? Are you sure, Anthony, are you sure?" This other voice,
throbbing with vibrant repression as if its owner feared to believe
longed-for tidings come at last, was a woman's. As the man half
turned, its owner came between him and Allan. All he could see of them
was that the one called Anthony was very tall, and thin, and the woman
a