wakened, was of the girl. But he was alone
in the silence of the canyon. He sat up, realizing that many hours had
passed, for the air was growing cool again, and the sun was low behind
the peak at the head of the ravine. The huge, mysterious machine of
the purple ring and the vibrating white needle were blazing
splendidly.

He took more detailed stock of his immediate surroundings. The tangle
of brush that had sheltered them had been cut away by the green
annihilating ray. Charred stumps remained to show where it had fired
bushes beyond the trail. His own shoulder was blistered, a hole was
burned in the sheet wound about him, and the hair was singed from the
back of his head.

Suddenly trembling with horror, he looked about for anything to show
that Helen had perished by the ray. Discovering nothing, he breathed a
sigh of relief.

"She must be still alive, anyhow," he muttered. "And I've had another
lucky break! The ray was too high to get me. They must have left me
for dead."

Presently he became conscious of torturing thirst. He retired through
the brush, along the rocky wall of the canyon. By sunset he came upon
a little natural basin in a rock, half full of rain water. It was none
too clean, but he drank his fill of it, and felt relief.

Looking up the canyon, he could see the great mechanism on the peak,
gleaming in the dusk. Intensely-glowing purple mist clung about the
great metal ring, and the slender, delicate needle swung below it,
still vibrating, still throbbing with brilliant, white radiance. It
pointed at the red eye of Mars, which had just winked into view.

Dan stared at it a long time.

"It all sounds crazy," he muttered, "but it isn't! The Master
Intelligence of Mars, she said, is controlling the mechanical things
through that! The doom of the Earth is coming through that white
needle! If only I could smash it, somehow!"

He looked down at the white folds of the sheet that draped him, and
clenched his hands impotently. "No gun! Not even a pocket-knife.
Nothing but my bare hands!" He bit his lip.

* * * * *

Still he stared challengingly at the gleaming mechanism on the peak.
An idea slowly took form in his mind; an exclamation abruptly escaped
him. Narrowly he eyed the trussed girders of the silver towers which
supported the great ring, muttering to himself.

"Yes, I can do it! If I don't get caught! I can climb it, well enough.
The needle looks a bit frail