They stared out of the doorway at the sky. The auroral glow was gone. But they saw, for just an instant, a huge phosphorescent shape, hanging high against the stars. It was a little like a colossal image of a man, but it couldn't have been solid. It was like the aurora itself--as tenuous, as luminous--a kind of gigantic photograph projected in the air. The arm of the vapory figure extended; then the whole image vanished, as if at a speed far exceeding that of light, to some colossal distance. Sam didn't even speak of the being right away. He helped the girl out of the building into the open. "Wait here for a few seconds, Ellen," he said in a tone that trembled with awe. Then he stumbled back into the old garage. All electrical devices were dead, even his flashlight. He had to find his way to the laboratory by burning matches. Every bit of apparatus was in fused ruins now, faintly reddened with heat. But there was no ominous hum in the hot, black stillness. Something deadly had been burned out of diseased substances by counter fire. Even Sam's own flesh had submitted to a curative force. He found his way to one corner of the room, where, beneath a heavy block of concrete, he had prepared a new hiding place for his aluminum box, and the Martian demonstration apparatus it contained. Tugging the block of concrete free, he looked below it, lighting another match. Somehow the lid of the box had been blown off. Within, the Martian machine was the same as before, except that the crystal cube was no longer clear. Instead it was blackened all the way through, like a black diamond. And there were cracks in it that destroyed its usefulness forever. It, too, had been touched by those counter waves of energy. Touching the cube with his fingers, Sam found that it was hot. He left the thing in its hole and returned to Ellen, his mind full of colossal realizations. The girl's voice quavered with awe as she spoke there under the quiet stars. "We had help, didn't we, Sam?" she stammered, remembering the cloud in the sky, and what Sam had told her about his work. "Somebody from another world. But who? Where...?" "I don't know, Honey," Sam answered raggedly. "It wasn't Martian help. As far as I know, all Martians are dead. Besides, I've seen their bones. Manlike, but very slender. The being--pictured in the sky was heavily built." Sam nodded significantly toward the sky.