tor was rummaging
in his bag. I know I did not speak, did not cry out, for my tongue clove
to the roof of my mouth. It seemed I must go mad. The professor still
backed away from me; then, wiry little athlete that he was, he sprang
directly for my knees in a beautiful football tackle. I remember that
point clearly and how I admired his agility at the time. I remember the
glint of a small instrument in the doctor's hand. Then all was
blackness.

Eight days later, they tell me it was, I returned to painful
consciousness in a hospital bed. But let me skip the agony of mind I
experienced then. Suffice it to say that, when I was able, I set forth
for Washington. Hart Jones was there and he had sent for me. But I took
little interest in the going; did not even bother to speculate as to the
reason for his summons. I had devoured the news during my convalescence
and now, more than two weeks after the destruction of the Terror, I knew
the extent of the damage wrought upon our earth by those deadly green
light pencils we had seen issuing from the huge ring up there in the
skies. The horror of it all was fresh in my mind, but my own private
horror overshadowed all.

* * * * *

I was glad that Hart had been so signally honored by the World Peace
Board, that he was now the most famous and popular man in the entire
world. He deserved it all and more. But what cared I--I who had done
least of all to help in his great work--that the Terror had been found
where it buried itself in the sand of the Sahara when falling to earth?
What cared I that the discoveries made in the excavating of the huge
metal ring were of inestimable value to science?

It gave me passing satisfaction to note that all of Hart Jones' theories
were borne out by the discoveries; that Oradel and his minions were
responsible for this terrible war; that the planet they aligned against
us was Venus and that more than a hundred thousand of the Venerians had
been carried in that weird engine of destruction which had been brought
down by Hart.

It was interesting to read of the fall of that huge ring; how it was
heated to incandescence when it entered our atmosphere at such
tremendous velocity; of the tidal waves of concentric billows in the
sand that led to its discovery by Egyptian Government planes. The
broadcast descriptions and the television views of the stunted and
twisted Venerians whose bodies were recovered from the partly consu