Now New York lay behind him, and he was winging southward over the
Atlantic. All night he flew. At dawn he came down in a coast hamlet
for bootleg petrol and oil.

"You come from New York?" asked the Georgian. "Hear there's war broke
out up there."

"My war's down in Brazil," muttered Kay.

"Say, if them Giants comes up here yuh know what us folks is going to
do? We're going to set the hounds on 'em. Yes, sirree, we've got a
pack of bloodhounds, raised for jest that purpose. I guess that's
something them wisecrackers at Washington ain't thought of. They took
two little fellers from Hopetown, but they won't take nobody from
here."

Kay fuelled up and resumed his flight southward.

After that it was a nightmare. The sun rose and set, alternating with
the staring moon and stars. Kay crossed the Caribbean, sighted the
South American coast, swept southward over the jungles of Brazil. He
drank, but no food passed his lips. He had become a mechanism, set for
on special purpose--self-immolation.

* * * * *

It was in a wide savannah among the jungles that he first caught sight
of the monsters. At first he thought it was the rising dawn mist; then
he began to distinguish a certain horrible resemblance to human forms,
and swooped down, banking round and round the opening in the jungle
until he could see clearly.

There were perhaps a score of them, an advance guard that had pushed
forward from one of the main divisions. Men? Anthropoids, rather, for
their sex was indistinguishable! Human forms ranging from a few feet
to a hundred, composed apparently of a grayish jelly, propelling
themselves clumsily on two feet, but floating rather than walking.
Translucent, semi-transparent. Most horrible of all, these shadowy,
spheroid creatures exhibited here and there buds of various sizes,
which were taking on the similitude of fresh forms. And among them
were the young, the buds that had fallen from the parent stems, fully
formed humans of perhaps five or six feet, bouncing with a horrible
playfulness among their sires.

As Kay soared some three hundred feet overhead, a young tapir came
leaping out of the jungle and ran, apparently unconscious of their
presence, right toward the monsters. Suddenly it stopped, and Kay saw
that it was already encircled by coils of protoplasm, resembling arms,
which had shot forth from the bodies of the devils.

* * * * *

Swiftly