leperous-like molten lead lay in the
centre of the crater, strangely iridescent. A broad path of destruction,
fifty yards or so in width, led from the scene of the disruption to the
precipice against which the Ray had played. The face of the cliff itself
seemed covered with a white coating or powder which gave it a ghostly
sheen. Moreover, the rain had turned to snow and already the entire
aspect of the valley had changed.

Bennie stood wonderingly on the edge of this inferno. He was cold,
famished, horror-stricken. Like a flash in a pan the mechanism which had
rocked the earth and dislocated its axis had blown out; and there was
now nothing left to tell the story, for its inventor had flashed out
with it into eternity. At his very feet a conscious human being, only
twelve short hours before, had by virtue of his stupendous brain been
able to generate and control a force capable of destroying the planet
itself, and now----! He was gone! It was all gone! Unless somewhere hard
by was hovering amid the whirling snowflakes that which might be his
soul. But Pax would send no more messages! Bennie's journey had gone for
naught. He had arrived just too late to talk it all over with his
fellow-scientist, and discuss those little improvements on Hiroshito's
theory. Pax was dead!

He sat down wearily, noticing for the first time that his ears pained
him. In his depression and excitement he had totally forgotten the Ring.
He wondered how he was ever going to get back to Cambridge. And then as
he raised his hand to adjust his Glengarry he saw it awaiting
him--unscathed. Far to the westward it rested snugly in its gigantic
nest of crossbeams, like the head of some colossal decapitated Chinese
mandarin. With an involuntary shout he started running down the valley,
heedless of his steps. Nearer and higher loomed the steel trestlework
upon which rested the giant engine. Panting, he blindly stumbled on,
mindful only of the momentous fact that Pax's secret was not lost.

Fifty feet above the ground, supported upon a cylindrical trestle of
steel girders, rested the body of the car, constructed of aluminum
plates in the form of an anchor ring some seventy-five feet in diameter,
while over the circular structure of the Ring itself rose a skeleton
tower like a tripod, carrying at its summit a huge metal device shaped
like a thimble, the open mouth of which pointed downward through the
open centre of the machine. Obviously this must be the