faltered. Then Chet leaped forward
to sweep the drooping, ragged figure up into his arms while he hustled
Harkness ahead and closed the port upon them all. But, still haggard and
stern of face, he left the fainting girl to Harkness' care while he
sprang for a ball-control and a firing key that released a hail of
little .50 caliber shells whose touch could plough the earth with the
ripping sword of an avenging god.

And later--a pulverous mass where a huge pyramid had been; smoking rock
in a great oval of shattered crumbling blocks; and, under all the cold
light of the stars, no sign of life but for a screaming, frantic mob of
ape-men, freed and fleeing from the broken bondage of masters now
crushed and dead!

All this Chet's straining, blood-shot eyes saw clearly before his hand
on the firing key relaxed, before he covered his eyes with trembling
hands as realization of their own release rushed overwhelmingly upon
him.

* * * * *

There were supplies of clothing in the ship--jackets, knee-length
trousers, silken blouses, boots, and even snug-fitting, fashionable
caps. Very unlike the ragged wanderers of the mountainous wastes were
the three who stood safely to windward of a spouting fumerole.

Mud, coughed hoarsely from a hot throat, and green, billowing
gas!--there was nothing now to show that here was the scene of a
companion's last moments. With heads bared to the steady breeze that had
been their undoing, they stood silent for long minutes.

Behind them, at a still safer distance, where no chance flicker of a
fire-god's finger might strike him down as it had the white man, a black
figure danced absurdly from foot to foot and indulged in unexpected
gyrations of joy.

For did not Towahg hold in one hand a most marvelous weapon of shining,
keen-edged metal, with a blade that was longer than his two hands? What
member of the tribe had ever seen such an indescribably glorious thing?
And, lacking the words even to propound that question, Towahg spun
himself in still tighter spirals of ecstasy.

Then there was the ax! Not made of stone but fashioned from the same
metal! And besides this a magic thing for which as yet there was not
even a name! It made flashing reflections in the sun; and if one held it
just so, and moved one's head before it, it showed a quite remarkably
attractive face of a man who was more than half ape--though Towahg had
never yet been able to catch that man beyo