upon a screen.
Involuntary traitors, they disclose the secrets of Earth and its
helplessness; then attempt to escape and end their lives rather than
be forced to further betrayal of their own people.

McGuire finds a radio station and sends a message back to Earth. He
implores Blake to find a man named Winslow, for Winslow has invented a
space ship and claims to have reached the moon.

No time for further sending--McGuire does not even know if his message
has been received--but they reach the ocean where death offers them
release. A force of their captors attacking on land, they throw
themselves from a cliff, then swim out to drown beyond reach in the
ocean. An enemy ship sweeps above them: its gas cloud threatens not
the death they desire but unconsciousness and capture. "God help us,"
says Sykes; "we can't even die!"

They sink, only to be buoyed up by a huge metal shape. A metal
projector raises from the ocean, bears upon the enemy ship and sends
it, a mass of flame and molten metal, into the sea. And friendly
voices are in McGuire's ears as careful hands lift the two men and
carry them within the craft that has saved them.

CHAPTER XIII

Lieutenant McGuire had tried to die. He and Professor Sykes had
welcomed death with open arms, and death had been thwarted by their
enemies who wanted them alive--wanted to draw their knowledge from
them as a vampire bat might seek to feast. And, when even death was
denied them, help had come.

The enemy ship had gone crashing to destruction where its melting
metal made hissing clouds of steam as it buried itself in the ocean.
And this craft that had saved them--Lieutenant McGuire had never been
on a submarine, but he knew it could be only that that held him now
and carried him somewhere at tremendous speed.

This was miracle enough! But to see, with eyes which could not be
deceiving him, a vision of men, human, white of face--men like
himself--bending and working over Sykes' unconscious body--that could
not be immediately grasped.

Their faces, unlike the bleached-blood horrors he had seen, were aglow
with the flush of health. They were tall, slenderly built, graceful in
their quick motions as they worked to revive the unconscious man. One
stopped, as he passed, to lay a cool hand on McGuire's forehead, and
the eyes that looked down seemed filled with the blessed quality of
kindness.

They were human--his own kind!--and McGuire was unable to take in at
first the ful