Then he
paused, swore softly, lowered the gun.

"If I kill it," he murmured, "I may never find Agnes. And if I let it
carry me off, it may take me where she is."

He walked toward the monster, across the red sand.

It stood uncertainly upon green metal legs, seeming to stare at him
strangely with eye-like lenses. Its wings of thin green metal plates,
were folded; its four green tentacles were twitching oddly.

Abruptly, it sprang upon him.

A green tentacle seized the rifle and snatched it from his hands. He
felt the automatic pistol and the ammunition being removed from his
pockets.

Then, firmly held in the flexible arms of green metal, he was lifted
against the cylinder of violet liquid. The monster spread its broad
emerald wings, and Larry was swiftly borne into the air.

In a few moments the wide ruins of the ancient city were spread below,
with the green line of the choked canal cutting the infinite red waste
of the desert beyond it.

The monster flew westward.

* * * * *

For a considerable time, nothing save barren, ocherous desert was in
view. Then Larry's weird captor flew near a strange city. A city of
green metal. The buildings were most fantastic--pyramids of green,
crowned with enormous, glistening spheres of emerald metal. An
impassable wall surrounding the city.

Larry had expected the monster to drop into the city. But it carried
him on, and finally settled to the ground several miles beyond. The
green tentacles released him, as the thing landed, and he sprawled
beside it, dizzy after his strange flight.

As Larry staggered uncertainly to his feet, he saw that the monster
had released him in an open pen. It was a square area, nearly fifty
yards on each side, and fenced with thin posts or rods of green metal,
perhaps twenty feet high. Set very close together, and sharply pointed
at the top, they formed a barrier apparently insurmountable.

In the center of the pen was a huge and strange machine, built of
green metal. It looked very worn and ancient; it was covered with
patches of bluish rust or corrosion. At first it looked quite strange
to Larry; then he was struck by a vaguely familiar quality about it.
Looking closer, he realized that it was a colossal steam hammer!

Its design, of course, was unfamiliar. But in the vast, corroded frame
he quickly picked out a steam chest, cylinder, and the great hammer,
weighing many tons.

He gasped when his eyes w