cause I put it out of commission, directly we got back up here,"
replied Diane. "But not permanently!" she added, with what Larry knew
was a smile, though he couldn't see her face, of course, through the
helmet of her pressure-suit.

"Little thoroughbred!" he exclaimed, half to himself.

"What did you say, Mr. Hunter?--Larry, I mean," she inquired.

"N--nothing," he replied uneasily.

"Fibber!" said Diane. "I heard you the first time!"

"Just wait till I get out of this darned suit!" said Larry.

"I guess I can wait that long!" she told him.

And if Professor Stevens heard any of this, it went in one ear and out
the other, for he was thinking what a report he would have to make to
his confreres when they got home--particularly with half a boatload
of assorted idols for proof.

[Illustration: He pressed the tiny switch in the flame-tool's handle
just as Arlok came through the door.]

The Gate to Xoran

_By Hal K. Wells_

A strange man of metal comes to Earth on a dreadful mission.

He sat in a small half-darkened booth well over in the corner--the man
with the strangely glowing blue-green eyes.

The booth was one of a score that circled the walls of the "Maori
Hut," a popular night club in the San Fernando Valley some five miles
over the hills from Hollywood.

It was nearly midnight. Half a dozen couples danced lazily in the
central dancing space. Other couples remained tete-a-tete in the
secluded booths.

In the entire room only two men were dining alone. One was the slender
gray-haired little man with the weirdly glowing eyes. The other was
Blair Gordon, a highly successful young attorney of Los Angeles. Both
men had the unmistakable air of waiting for someone.

Blair Gordon's college days were not so far distant that he had yet
lost any of the splendid physique that had made him an All-American
tackle. In any physical combat with the slight gray-haired stranger,
Gordon knew that he should be able to break the other in two with one
hand.

Yet, as he studied the stranger from behind the potted palms that
screened his own booth. Gordon was amazed to find himself slowly being
overcome by an emotion of dread so intense that it verged upon sheer
fear. There was something indescribably alien and utterly sinister in
that dimly seen figure in the corner booth.

The faint eery light that glowed in the stranger's deep-set eyes was
not the lambent flame seen in the chatoyant orbs of some
night-