e shock of its impact was apparently nullified by
the protective blue film. He emptied his gun in a last crashing
fusillade, but without effect of any kind upon the film-guarded
nuclei of the giant crystals.

Their forming arms never wavered as they came lancing forward with
deadly accuracy straight toward Joan and Powell. In a last effort to
save Joan from the terrible doom of the crystal lances as long as
possible, Powell flung his own body as a shield in front of the
half-fainting girl. The tip of one of the crystalline arms struck
his chest with a crashing tinkle of musical glass.

Instantly the tip sprayed into a web of fine filaments that laced on
around his body. A tinkling shock raced through his every nerve from
the contact with the weird life force of the great crystal.

The arm began contracting. Powell was helpless against the terrific
power of the slender, diamond-hard lance of crystal. He felt himself
irresistibly drawn toward the silver-faceted wall of the Devil
Crystal.

His senses reeled in the babel of alien sounds--the crashing,
glass-like music of the crystalline monsters and the snarling,
squealing, paean of jubilant triumph from the thousands of rat-men
now lining the rim of the pit above.

* * * * *

Then suddenly the pit, the Devil Crystals, and everything else in
the nightmare world of Arret was blotted out in a vast swirling
cloud of pulsing roseate flame that seemed to sweep him bodily up
into the air and whirl him dizzily around.

His dazed brain staggered from the shock of the cataclysmic force
that was disintegrating an entire world around him, but through the
utter chaos one thought rang clear and exultant in his consciousness.

Benjamin Marlowe had finally broadcast the recall wave!

For what seemed endless eons of time Powell hurried through a
limitless universe of swirling, tinted fires, while vibrations of a
mighty force tingled with poignant ecstasy in every atom of his
body.

Then the eddying clouds of flame began to coalesce and solidify with
startling suddenness. A moment later, like the abrupt lighting of a
room when an electric switch is snapped, the mists vanished and
Powell felt firm footing again under his feet. Around him were the
familiar objects of Benjamin Marlowe's laboratory.

He was standing upon the floor-plate in the center of the area
bounded by the banked green tubes, and beside him stood Joan,
sobbing with relief at the