y.

Chin in hand and eyes avoiding the pain of mourning in Tiedus' fixed
gaze, Carson lost himself in gloomy meditation. As he thought back over
the events of the past few days he could scarcely believe they had
actually occurred or that he was sitting here in a mystery car,
speeding through the rank atmosphere of an enclosed world a half
billion miles from his own. Home seemed incredibly remote and desirable
just then, and the future dark and forbidding.

CHAPTER V

_The Tritu Anu_

Before the car came to a stop Tiedus rummaged in a locker and stretched
forth his hands as if carrying something delicate and fragile.

"It will be necessary for you to put this on," he said: "it will be
unsafe otherwise."

Blaine stared, mystified. Was this Rulan kidding him? "Put what on?" he
asked.

"A thousand pardons. I had forgotten that you do not know. I hold in my
hands a cloak, an invisible thing that will hide you from the guards
and from the Zara's crystal. Another secret of my father's. Dantor
developed it for him only recently."

Blaine felt the texture of the stuff then; crumpled it in his fingers
as its gossamer-like weight dropped in loose folds around his body. But
there was nothing there: to the eyes. It simply did not exist except to
the touch, and he felt no different with it on than he had before.

"Where's Tommy?" he asked suddenly, seeing that Dantus now sat alone at
the controls.

Tiedus laughed. "He has been covered in the same manner," he said, "and
is safely hidden from sight as are you."

Incredulous, disbelieving, Blaine called out to his friend in a
tremulous voice. And Tom Farley's awed response reassured him.

"Keep close to me," Tiedus told him. The car had stopped and he
directed them into the basket of the lift. The two Earth men collided
violently and, clinging to each other in their ghastly invisibility,
laughed crazily for a moment. As far as any observers might know there
were only the two Rulans in the basket.

* * * * *

Blaine fingered Pegrani's ray pistol when the cable lowered them
swiftly to the roof of a huge steel cylinder that rose, a solitary and
unlovely structure, in the midst of the jungle a thousand miles from
Ilen-dar. The indicator informed him that seven energy charges still
remained in the storage chamber of the little weapon. Its possession
brought him a measure of confidence.

Careful scrutiny of the roof had show