trusively as possible he sent their long mechanism worming
forward through the vast throng of machines and Martians, toward the
great cone's door. Crouching low, the hands of their watches closing
fast toward the twelfth figure, they edged forward in the long
machine. At last they were moving through the mighty door, into the
cone's interior.

They moved slowly on through the mass of machines and crocodile forms
inside, then halted. For at the great crowd's center was a clear
circle hundreds of feet across, and as Randall gazed across it his
heart seemed to leap once and then stop.

At the center of that clear circle rose the two cubical metal chambers
of the matter-transmitter and receiver. The transmitting chamber, they
saw, was flooded with humming force, with white light pouring from its
inner walls. It was already in operation, and the masses of Martians
in the great cone were only waiting for the moment to sound when the
receiver on earth would be operating also. Then they would pour into
the chamber to be flashed in masses across the gulf to earth! The eyes
of all in the cone seemed turned toward an erect dial-mechanism beside
the chambers which was clocklike in appearance, and that would mark
the moment when the first Martian could enter the transmitting-chamber
and flash out.

* * * * *

A little distance from the two metal chambers stood a low dais on
which there sat the hideous triple-bodied form of the Martian Master.
Around him were the massed members of his council, waiting like him
for the start of their age-planned invasion of earth. And beside the
dais was a figure between two crocodilian guards at sight of whom
Randall forgot all else.

"Milton! My God, Lanier, it's Milton!"

"Milton! They've brought him here to torture or kill him if they find
he's lied about the moment they could flash to earth!"

Milton! And at sight of him something snapped in Randall's brain.

With a single motion of the knob he sent their centipede-machine
crashing out into the clear circle at the mighty cone's center. A wild
uproar of hissing cries broke from all the thousands in it as he sent
the mechanism whirling toward the dais of the Martian Master. He saw
the crocodilian forms there scattering blindly before him, and then
as his rays drove out and spun and stabbed in mad figures of crimson
death through the astounded Martian masses he saw Milton looking up
toward them, crying out cr