Ralph took quick aim and pressed the trigger. There was a silent flash and Llysanorh' seemed to topple over. Simultaneously the glass of the port-hole turned green. In a flash Ralph jumped up and peered anxiously out one port-hole, then another, hoping to catch sight of Alice. There was nobody to be seen. He rushed to the wireless and signaled frantically for several minutes. Breathlessly he clasped the receivers to his ears. There was no answer--no sound--nothing. With sinking heart, he rushed to the connecting tube. In his excitement it took him twenty minutes to make the connection between the two machines and the tube air-tight. Before crawling into the connecting tube he grabbed up his radioperforer as a precaution. The sight that presented itself to him as he crawled into Llysanorh's machine drew from him an involuntary agonized cry. Llysanorh's dead body lay across that of Alice, his sharp dagger sunk into the upper part of her arm. Ralph hurriedly moved the rigid body aside. _There lay Alice in a terrible pool of her own blood, her eyes closed--dead._ FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 11: In 1876 Reitlinger & Urbanitzky before the Vienna Academy of Sciences published a report on their experiments on artificial comets. A tube containing hydrocarbon has been pumped out till the pressure has fallen to 0.1 millimeter. If connected to an induction coil, a blue sphere will be formed at the positive electrode after a short time, which "hangs" suspended freely. Connected to the sphere is a tail, fig. 1. One is struck immediately with the close resemblance between this artificial comet and that of Henry's Comet of 1873, fig. 2. If a [Illustration: _Fig. 1_] [Illustration: _Fig. 2_] conductor (a brass ball) as seen in fig. 1 is brought near the tube, the tail flees from the conductor as far as the tube allows. This again proves that the artificial as well as the real comets are subject to the same natural laws. As is known, the tails of all comets are repulsed strongly by the sun, which latter is nothing but a conductor.] [Footnote 12: According to Bredikhine, the long straight tails, as seen in the comet of 1861, are composed of hydrogen; the long curved tails, like the principal tail of Donati's Comet, consist largely of hydrocarbon vapors; while the somnolent, rare, short tails of violent curvature are made up of mixed iron, sodium and other metallic vapors. This classification has received support from spectroscopic evidence. In 1882, Fitzgerald first propounded the theory that the tail was due to the pressure of light upon the gaseous matter composing it. In 1900 Arrhenius revived the theory, but modified it to the extent of supposing the tail to consist, not of gaseous matter, but of fine particles produced by condensation from the emanations of the comet.--New International Encyclopædia.]