pletely
disintegrated lie blackened corpses in the chambers and corridors
overhead. The gas grenades, you know. The guards went to Ianito with
Farley and reported you dead: lost in the jungle from which none
return."

"Farley!" Blaine shouted. "He is alive?" A wild hope sprang into being,
intensified to a certainty as Dantor nodded.

"Why, yes. I thought you knew. They captured him very soon after the
escape, but were unable to find you and Ulana. Ianito has mechanized
him; he is in a hypnotic state of complete subjection to the Dictator.
A quantity of k-metal has been taken to the laboratory at the breech of
the great rocket-tube, and Farley now works there with Ianito's crew,
initiating them into the mysteries of the metal's uses. Things look
very bad."

"Wh-a-at!" Blaine lost his elation over the knowledge that his friend
was alive. Tommy was doomed, anyway. They all were doomed. "Why did you
bring us back?" he asked, turning away. Blaine felt it was better to
have died in the jungle than to face this certainty of lingering
torture. Ianito had triumphed; the universe was fated for utter
annihilation and Ulana would suffer for weeks, perhaps months, before
the final swift dissolution.

* * * * *

Understanding, Dantor smiled gravely. "My boy," he said, "we still
live, and while we live there is hope. That is the reason I brought you
back. Tiedus' message came to me as his spirit left the body and I made
haste to come here as soon as the Zara released me and I knew the coast
was clear."

"What hope can there be?" Appalled by the enormity of the disaster that
threatened the solar system, certain of the ultimate fate that would be
meted out to Tom Farley, and convinced of their own helplessness,
Blaine was gloomily unenthusiastic.

"That remains to be seen, Carson. I confess it seems impossible of
remedy, but the situation must be faced and studied carefully.
Insignificant as we are in the vastness of the cosmos, we may yet prove
to be the ones to circumvent the mad plans of the Llotta and prevent
the catastrophe which is inevitable if they succeed. We must not give
up while we still breathe."

The indomitable spirit of the old scientist glistened in his keen eyes,
and he stepped to the controls of the crystal sphere.

"He will not give up, oh Dantor," Ulana exclaimed loyally. "He is with
us to the end. Do I speak truth, my Carson?"

Her arm slipped through his and h