world--a world of utter and alien
terror.

The livid light of a giant red sun blazed mercilessly down upon a
landscape from which every vestige of animal and plant life had
apparently been stripped. Naked rocks and barren soil stretched
illimitably to the far horizon in a vast monotony of utter desolation.

Arlok twirled the knob of the apparatus, and another scene flashed
into view. In this scene great gleaming squares and cones of metal
rose in towering clusters from the starkly barren land. Hordes of
creatures like Arlok swarmed in and around the metal buildings. Giant
machines whirled countless wheels in strange tasks. From a thousand
great needle-like projections on the buildings spurted shimmering
sheets of crackling flame, bathing the entire scene in a whirling mist
of fiery vapors.

Gordon realized dimly that he must be looking into one of the cities
of Xoran, but every detail of the chaotic whirl of activity was too
utterly unfamiliar to carry any real significance to his bewildered
brain. He was as hopelessly overwhelmed as an African savage would be
if transported suddenly into the heart of Times Square.

* * * * *

Arlok again twirled the knob. The scene shifted, apparently to another
planet. This world was still alive, with rich verdure and swarming
millions of people strangely like those of Earth. But it was a doomed
world. The dread Gate to Xoran had already been opened here. Legions
of bluish-gray Xoranians were attacking the planet's inhabitants, and
the attack of those metallic hosts was irresistible.

The slight bodies of the Xoranians seemed as impervious to bullets and
missiles as though armor-plated. The frantic defense of the
beleaguered people of the doomed planet caused hardly a casualty in
the Xoranian ranks.

The attack of the Xoranians was hideously effective. Clouds of dense
yellow fog belched from countless projectors in the hands of the
bluish-gray hosts, and beneath that deadly miasma all animal and plant
life on the doomed planet was crumbling, dying, and rotting into a
liquid slime. Then even the slime was swiftly obliterated, and the
Xoranians were left triumphant upon a world starkly desolate.

"That was one of the minor planets in the swarm that make up the solar
system of the sun that your astronomers call Canopus," Arlok
explained. "Our first task in conquering a world is to rid it of the
unclean surface scum of animal and plant life. When t