incineration tube by the time Barter had finished
his eighth transplantation.

So, the horror growing until nausea ate at Bentley's stomach like
voracious maggots, he watched Barter destroy three more men and
create godless monsters in their places. As each manape regained
consciousness Barter told him what he had told Keller--and Naka Machi
took them out, one by one, and placed them in their allotted cages.

Naka Machi placed the eighth man in the furnace, returned the
incineration tube to the table.

"Now, oh God the Father!" moaned Bentley.

He leaned forward, striving with all his will to force his hands to go
truly to their target as he fell. He had little or no control of his
legs or knees. But let him once hold that tube in his hands....

He fell soundlessly, his hands clutching for the tube. His fingers
touched it as he crashed to the floor, and it fell near him. His
fingers fumbled for the tube and now gripped it tightly.

From under the table, writhing and twisting, striving to break his
mental bondage, Bentley saw the legs of Caleb Barter. He snapped the
button on the tube and turned its open end toward those legs.

"I must not look into his eyes as he falls," thought Bentley, "or all
is lost."

- - -

A terrible scream rang through the operating room. Barter was falling,
crumpling as he fell, and as his body slid downward past the table
edge, Bentley held the end of the tube toward it. As the bodies of the
eight had shriveled, so shriveled the body of Caleb Barter.

Ellen Estabrook screamed horribly, and sprawled on the floor within a
foot or two of Bentley. Nature had mercifully sent her into momentary
oblivion when the will of Barter, holding her in thrall, had snapped
to show her the horror of what she did.

Naka Machi was screaming. Bentley was Bentley again, crawling forth
from under the table. Naka Machi met him in a rush and dissolved
before the deadly ray as though he had never existed. Its effect must
have been a silent explosion, for a fine gray ash came down from the
ceiling as the residue which falls when a soaring rocket has exploded
and expended its power. The gray ash was Naka Machi, forever rendered
harmless to Ellen.

Bentley walked over and stood looking at the manapes in their cages.
What could be done with them? There was no hope, no possible way by
which they could resume their normal lives, for of their human bodies
there remained but heaps of fine powdery as