The crimson barrage Graff had used on earth! His Brauns had smuggled it into Garla--they had its apparatus now on the platform. A great circular red curtain enveloped the rostrum up there. From a dozen points about the amphitheater the police guards were firing their short purple stabs of flame at it. A panic of confusion was around me. A sailing figure--a man trying to leave the stadium--came down and landed full on me. I was knocked sidewise; kicking, trying to disentangle myself from him. We crashed through a seat, and with my weight we fell half my height to a lower level. I got to my feet, fighting the press of frightened people who were shoving me. I could still see Graff's barrage; I could hear its squeals above the pandemonium of shouts. Up there in the purple moonlight, over the barrage, a black object was descending from the sky. A vehicle? A flying platform--I could not see it clearly. It dropped swiftly down within the barrage circle. In a moment it came sailing up. It passed high over me. A flying platform. The escaping Brauns crowded its rails. The crimson barrage faded out; the rostrum was empty. Graff's treachery was laid bare. He had stolen the globes of the Infra-red Control! Without them, Xenephrene in a month or two was doomed. These frightened officials of Garla, these panic-stricken people, all knew it. A world gone mad! But my thoughts were not concerned with that; the cold horror within me sprang from another thought. A realization. Graff had stolen the Infra-red Control to use on earth! My shuddering imagination leaped ahead. A world, our blessed earth, gone mad! CHAPTER XVI ON OUR WAY TO CONQUER THE EARTH! In the confusion I found myself pushed a considerable distance, separated from all our party. I could not see any of them; with the scrambling throng, the changing scene I could not at first determine where we had been sitting. Then I saw the place; it was empty. I strove to get there, fighting my way. The amphitheater was fast emptying. The official voice was still bellowing. Guards were leaping away, perhaps rushing to the grotto. In the distance across the city a siren was sounding--a long electrical scream. I thought, over near the gate through which a press of people were surging, that I saw father. I forced my way in that direction; went through the gate. They ought to be waiting for me here. But they were not. A cross-street ran down at an angle here into the forest vegetation--a narrow, shaky-looking causeway of fiber. It was unlighted, dark with straggling moonlight--a purple, ghostly-looking street. It seemed at the moment empty of people--the throng surged past it, keeping to the upper level.