lumsy hands hissed
savagely while jets of vapor, half liquid and half gas, shot
blindingly into the room. The faces dropped from his sight....

There had been the clamor of surprised and shouting men: there was
silence now. And the awkward figures in the bloated casings that
protected their bodies from the gas passed in safety to the room.
Blake, bound in the invisible chains of enemy gas, struggled silently,
futilely, to pit his will against this grip that held him. To lie
there helpless, to see these men slaughtered! He saw one of the
creatures push the body of his fallen comrade out of the way: it was
cast aside with an indifferent foot.

They were coming back: Blake saw the form of McGuire in unmistakable
khaki. He and another man were carried high on the shoulders of some
of the invaders. They were going toward the platforms, the slings
beneath the ship.... They passed close to Blake, and again he was
unnoticed in the dark.

A clamor came from distant buildings, a babel of howls and shrieks,
inhuman, unearthly. There were no phrases or syllables, but to Blake
it was familiar ... somewhere he had heard it ... and then he
remembered the radio and the weird wailing note that told of
communication. These things were talking in the same discordant din.

* * * * *

They were gathering now on the platforms slung under the ship. A
whistling note from somewhere within the great structure and the
platforms went high in the air. They were loaded, he saw, with papers
and books and instruments plundered from the observatories. Some made
a second trip to take up the loot they had gathered. Then the black
doorways closed; the huge bulk of the ship floated high above the
trees; it took form, dwindled smaller and smaller, then vanished from
sight in the star-studded sky.

Blake thought of their unconscious passenger--the slim figure of
Lieutenant McGuire. Mac had been a close friend and a good one; his
ready smile; his steady eyes that could tear a problem to pieces with
their analytic scrutiny or gaze far into space to see those visions of
a dreamer!

"Far into space." Blake repeated the words in his mind. And: "Good-by
Mac," he said softly; "you've shipped for a long cruise, I'm
thinking." He hardly realized he had spoken the words aloud.

* * * * *

Lying there in the cold night he felt his strength returning slowly.
The pines sang their soothing, whispere