sped at the girl. She seemed to scream, though we could hear
nothing. She beat at the monster, weakly, vainly.

"She's gone!" cried Charlie.

"An octopus!" I said. "A giant cuttlefish!"

Virginia made a sudden fierce effort. With a strength that I had not
thought her chilled limbs possessed, she tore away from the dreadful
creature and clambered higher on the rock. But still a hideous black
tentacle clung about her ankle, tugging at her, drawing her back
despite her desperate struggle to break free.

"I've got to try it!" Charlie said, determination flashing in his
eyes. "It's a chance!"

He closed a switch. His new coils sung out above the old one. X-ray
tubes flickered beside the blue fire that ringed the window. He
adjusted his rheostats and closed the circuit through the new magnet.

A curtain of blue flame was drawn quickly between us and the round,
fire-rimmed window. A huge ball of blue fire hung, about the meteorite
and the instruments. For minutes it hung there, while Charlie,
perspiring, worked desperately with the apparatus. Then it expanded;
became huge. It exploded noiselessly, in a great flash of sapphire
flame, then vanished completely.

Meteor, bench, and apparatus were gone!

In the light of the stars we could make out the huge crater the
meteorite had torn, with a few odds and ends of equipment scattered
about it. But all the apparatus Charlie had set up, connected with the
meteoric stone, had disappeared.

He was dumbfounded, staggered with disappointment.

"Virginia! Virginia!" he called out, in a hopeless tone. "No, she
isn't here. It didn't draw her through. I've failed. And we can't even
see her any more!"

* * * * *

Desperately I searched for consolation for him.

"Maybe the octopus won't hurt her," I offered. "They say that most of
the stories of their ferocity are somewhat exaggerated."

"If the monster doesn't get her, the tide will!" he said bitterly. "I
made a miserable failure of it! And I don't know why! I can't
understand it!"

Apathetically, he picked up his pad and held it in the light of his
electric lantern.

"Something funny about this equation. The shift of the spectrum lines
can't be accounted for by distortion through space alone."

With wrinkled brow, he stared for many minutes at the bit of paper he
held in the white circle of light. Suddenly he seized a pencil and
figured rapidly.

"I have it! The light was bent through ti