ding with Dio at the head of her men.

She wore ordinary light slippers, having been dressed only for indoors.
And there were silver ornaments at waist and throat.

He might have escaped, then, quite unnoticed. Instead, for a reason even
he couldn't understand, he ran for Jill Moulton.

The first ripples of blue fire touched the ranks of Dio's men. Bolts of
it leaped upward to fasten upon gun-butts and the buckles of the
cartridge belts. Men screamed, fell, and died.

An arm of the fire licked out, driving in behind Dio and the girl. The
guns of Caron's four remaining men were silent, now.

Gray leaped over that hissing electric surf, running toward Jill. A
hungry worm of light reared up, searching for Dio's gun. Gray's hand
swept it down, to be instantly buried in a mass of glowing ropes. Dio's
hatchet face snarled at him in startled anger.

Jill cried out as Gray tore the silver ornaments from her dress. "Throw
down the guns!" he yelled. "It's metal they want!"

He heard his name shouted by men torn momentarily from their own terror.
Dio cried, "Shoot him!" A few bullets whined past, but their immediate
fear spoiled both aim and attention.

Gray caught up Jill and began to run, toward the tube from which the
wind howled in the cave. Behind him, grimly, Dio followed.

The electric beasts didn't notice him. His insulated feet trampled
through them, buried to the ankle in living flame, feeling queer tenuous
bodies break and reform.

The wind met them like a physical barrier at the tunnel mouth. Gray put
Jill down. The wind strangled him. He tore off his coat and wrapped it
over the girl's head, using his shirt over his own. Jill, her black
curls whipped straight, tried to fight back past him, and he saw Dio
coming, bent double against the wind.

He saw something else. Something that made him grab Jill and point, his
flesh crawling with swift, cold dread.

* * * * *

The electric beasts had finished their pleasure. The dead were cinders
on the rock. The living had run back into the tunnels. And now the blue
sea of fire was flowing again, straight toward the place where they
stood.

It was flowing fast, and Gray sensed an urgency, an impersonal haste, as
though a command had been laid upon those living ropes of flame.

The first dim rumble of thunder rolled down the wind. Gripping Jill,
Gray turned up the tunnel.

The wind, compressed in that narrow throat of rock, beat the