alance and bent over.

His hands almost touched that weird, flowing surf as they clasped Ward's
boot. Throwing all his strength into the lift, he hurled Ward backward.

Ward screamed once and disappeared under the blue fire. Gray clawed the
rope from his neck. And then, suddenly, the world began to sway under
him. He knew he was falling.

Some one's hand caught him, held him up. Fighting down his vertigo as
his breath came back, he saw that it was Jill.

"Why?" he gasped, but her answer was lost in a titanic roar of thunder.
Lightning blasted down. Dio's voice reached him, thin and distant
through the clamor.

"We'll be killed! These damn things will attract the bolts!"

It was true. All his work had been for nothing. Looking up into that
low, angry sky, Gray knew he was going to die.

Quite irrelevantly, Jill's words in the tunnel came back to him. "You're
a fool ... lost truth ... not true to lie!"

Now, in this moment, she couldn't lie to him. He caught her shoulders
cruelly, trying to read her eyes.

Very faintly through the uproar, he heard her. "I'm sorry for you, Gray.
Good man, gone to waste."

Dio stifled a scream. Thunder crashed between the sounding boards of the
cliffs. Gray looked up.

A titanic bolt of lightning shot down, straight for them. The burning
blue surf was agitated, sending up pseudopods uncannily like worshipping
arms. The bolt struck.

The air reeked of ozone, but Gray felt no shock. There was a hiss, a
vast stirring of creatures around him. The blue light glowed, purpled.

Another bolt struck down, and another, and still they were not dead. The
fire-things had become a writhing, joyous tangle of tenuous bodies,
glowing bright and brighter.

Stunned, incredulous, the three humans stood. The light was now an
eye-searing violet. Static electricity tingled through them in eerie
waves. But they were not burned.

"My God," whispered Gray. "They eat it. They eat lightning!"

Not daring to move, they stood watching that miracle of alien life, the
feeding of living things on raw current. And when the last bolt had
struck, the tide turned and rolled back down the wind-tunnel, a blinding
river of living light.

Silently, the three humans went down the rocky slope to where Caron of
Mars cowered in the silver ship. No bolt had come near it. And now Caron
came to meet them.

His face was pasty with fear, but the old cunning still lurked in his
eyes.

"Gray," he said. "I have an off