to be dissolving into chaos.
Slowly the dust began to settle again. Perhaps five minutes passed before the sunbeams began to struggle through. A cloud of grey dust still obscured everything. But the wall of protoplasm was gone!
Cliff's voice came moaning out of the murk, calling Kay's name.
Kay moved forward cautiously, still holding Ruth. He seemed to be skirting the edge of a vast crater. At the edge of it he found the top, revolving slowly. And Cliff's voice came from beside the top.
"Kay, we've won. Don't look at me. Don't let Ruth see me! Look down!"
Kay looked down into the bottomless pit, extending clear across the plain to the distant jungle. An enormous canyon cloven in the earth, filled with the slowly settling cloud of dust.
"They're there, Kay. Don't look this way!"
But Kay looked – and could see nothing except a pile of debris, from the bottom of which Cliff's voice issued.
"Cliff, you're not hurt?"
"A – a little. You must listen while I tell you how to clean up the monsters. It's the psenium emanation. It has the same effect when our method is applied to it. It disintegrates everything inorganic – not organic.
"I thought, if I couldn't get them, I'd crumble the earth away – bury them. They're underneath the debris, Kay, a mile deep, buried, beneath the impalpable powder that represented the inorganic salts and minerals of the earth. They'll never get out of that. Protoplasm needs oxygen. They'll trouble us no more.
"You must take the top, Kay. Use our old method. You'll find its application to the psenium emanation written in a book fastened beneath the hood. Wipe out the rest of them. If any more come, you'll know how to deal with them."
"Cliff, you're not badly hurt?" Kay asked again.
"Don't look, I tell you! Keep Ruth away!"
But the dust was settling fast, and suddenly Ruth uttered a scream of fear.
And a strangled cry broke from Kay's throat as he looked down at what had been Cliff Hynes.
The man seemed to have become resolved into the same sort of protoplasm as the Earth Giants. He lay, a little heap, incredibly small, incredibly distorted. Flesh without bones, shapeless lumps of flesh where arms and legs and body frame should have been.
Cliff's voice came faintly. "You remember the leakage through the rubber and analektron container, Kay. The W-rays even fused the craolite socket. The psenium rays are stronger. They destroy even bone. They're fatal to the man who operates the machine, unless he follows the directions. I've written them out for you, but I had – no time – to apply them."
His voice broke off. Then, "Good luck to you and – Ruth, Kay," he whispered, absent inaudibly. "Don't let – her – look at me."
Kay led Ruth gently away. "Did you hear that?" she whispered, sobbing. "He died to save us Kay."
It was like a return from the grave for the amazed boys and girls who – since the onset of the monsters had destroyed the electric lines – poured out of the plain of Golgotha to life and freedom.
Many of them had gone mad, a few had died of fright, but the rest would come back to normal, and the world was saved.
Hunger was their greatest problem, for, despite Kay's hurried flight to the nearest occupied post, it was difficult to convince the Federation officials that the devils were really gone, buried beneath a mile of crumbled earth. And Kay had to be back to mop up other, smaller bands that had spread through the forests.
It was six months before the last of the monsters had been obliterated, and then Kay, now one of the highest officials in the Federation's service, was granted a lunarian's leave of absence pending his taking command of an Antarctic expedition for the purpose of destroying the remaining monsters in their lair.
He took this opportunity to be married to Ruth, in the church in his native town, which was en fête for the occasion.
"Thinking of Cliff?" Kay asked his bride, as she settled in his plane preparatory to their starting for the honeymoon in the Adirondacks. "I think he would be happy if he knew. He saved the world, dear; he gave his best. And that was all he wanted."
The Pirate Planet
BEGINNING A FOUR-PART NOVEL
By Charles W. Diffin
Like rats in a cage, the planes of the 91st Squadron were darting and whirling.
CHAPTER I
Lieutenant McGuire threw open his coat with its winged insignia of the air force and leaned back in his chair to read more comfortably the newspaper article.
A strange light blinks on Venus, and over old Earth hovers a mysterious visitant – dread harbinger of interplanetary war.
He glanced at Captain Blake across the table. The captain was deep in a game of solitaire, but he looked up at McGuire's audible chuckle.
"Gay old girl!" said Lieutenant McGuire and smoothed the paper across his knees. "She's getting flirtatious."
The captain swore softly as he gathered up his cards. "Not interested," he announced; "too hot to-night. Keep her away."
"Oh, she's far enough away," McGuire responded; "about seventy million miles. Don't get excited."
"What are you talking about?" The captain shuffled his cards irritably.
"Venus. She's winking at us, the old reprobate. One of these star-gazers up on Mount Lawson saw the flashes a week or so ago. If you'll cut out your solitaire and listen, I'll read you something to improve your mind." He ignored the other's disrespectful remark and held the paper closer to see the paragraphs.
"Is Venus Signalling?" inquired the caption which Lieutenant McGuire read. "Professor Sykes of Mt. Lawson Observatory Reports Flashes.
"The planet Venus, now a brilliant spectacle in the evening sky, is behaving strangely according to a report from the local observatory on Mount Lawson. This sister star, most like Earth of all the planets, is now at its eastern elongation, showing like a half-moon in the big telescopes on Mt. Lawson. Shrouded in impenetrable clouds, its surface has never been seen, but something is happening there. Professor Sykes reports seeing a distinct flash of light upon the terminator, or margin of light. It lasted for several seconds and was not repeated.
"No explanation of the phenomenon is offered by scientists, as conditions on the planet's surface are unknown. Is there life there? Are the people of Venus trying to communicate? One guess is as good as another. But it is interesting to recall that our scientists recently proposed to send a similar signal from Earth to Mars by firing a tremendous flare of magnesium.
"Venus is now approaching the earth; she comes the nearest of all planets. Have the Venusians penetrated their cloak of cloud masses with a visible light? The planet will be watched with increased interest as it swings toward us in space, in hope of there being a repetition of the unexplained flash."
"There," said
