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* * * * *

Thorn set to work. He had come toilsomely to the neighborhood of the rocket-ship because he would have to do visual signaling, and there was no time to lose. The dome of force was transparent. The air fleet would be trying to communicate through it with the Martians they believed were in the rocket-ship. Sunlight reflected from a polished canteen would attract attention instantly from a spot near the red monster, while elsewhere it might not be observed for a long time. But, trying every radio wave-band, and every system of visual signaling, and watching and testing for a reply, Thorn’s signal ought to be picked up instantly.

He handed his pocket speech-light receptor to Sylva. It is standard equipment for all flying personnel, so they may receive non-broadcast orders from flight leaders. He pointed to a ten-man cruiser from which shone the queer electric-blue glow of a speech-light.

“Listen in on that,” he commanded. “I’m going to call them. Tell me when they answer.”

He began to flash dots and dashes in that quaintly archaic telegraph alphabet Watch fliers are still required to learn. It was the Watch code call, sent over and over again.

“They’re trying to make the Martians understand,” said Sylva unsteadily with the speech-light receiver at her ear.

* * * * *

Flash–flash–flash…. Thorn kept on grimly. The canteen top was slightly convex, so the sunlight-beam would spread. Accuracy was not needed, therefore. He covered and uncovered it, and covered and uncovered it….

“They answered!” said Sylva eagerly. “They said ‘Thorn Hard report at once!'”

There was a hissing, roaring noise over the hillside, where the red rocket-ship lay. Thorn paid no attention. He began to spell out, in grim satisfaction:

“R-o-c-k-e-t s-h-i-p i-s–“

“Look out!” gasped Sylva. “They say look out, Thorn!”

Then she screamed. As Thorn swung his head around, he saw a dense mass of white vapor rushing over the hillside toward them. He picked Sylva up in his arms and ran madly….

The white vapor tugged at his knees. It was a variation of a vortex-stream. He fought his way savagely toward higher ground. The white vapor reached his waist…. It reached his shoulders…. He slung Sylva upon his shoulder and fought more madly still to get out of the wide white current…. It submerged him in its stinging, bitter flood…. As he felt himself collapsing his last conscious thought was the bitter realization that the bulbous white tower had upheld television lenses at its top, which had watched his approach and inspection of the rocket-ship, and had enabled those in the red monster to accurately direct their spurt of gas.

His next sensation was that of pain in his lungs. Something that smarted intolerably was being forced into his nostrils, and he battled against the agony it produced. And then he heard someone chuckle amusedly and felt the curious furry sensation of electric anesthesia beginning….

* * * * *

When he came to himself again a machine was clicking erratically and there was the soft whine of machinery going somewhere. He opened his eyes and saw red all about him. He stirred, and he was free. Painfully, he sat up and blinked about him with streaming, gas-irritated eyes. He had been lying on a couch. He was in a room perhaps fifteen feet by twenty, of which the floor was slightly off-level. And everything in the room was red. Floor and walls and ceiling, the couch he had lain on and the furniture itself. There was a monstrous bulk of a man sitting comfortably in a chair on the other side of the room, pecking at a device resembling a writing-machine.