In a fury of fear, Jerry fought her, grappled with her, twisted to avoid those extending robot hands that would drag him to destruction. And suddenly Carol was screaming his name, and her eyes were pools of terror and betrayal, and the leaping metal fingers had buried themselves in the soft flesh of her shoulders and dragged her back into grayness. Incredible energies came alive about her, and then there was only a shimmer of dusty crystalline winds, and she was gone. Jerry found himself standing before the still-warm plates of the atomic duplicator, in the room where Mawson had had his short-lived universe. Beside the machine, a squat cubic box dangled limp steel arms, its rows of photo-electric cells losing their golden glow. And then, as Burgess came hurrying in through the door, he toppled over in a dead faint. * * * * * "So there is no such person as Carol?" said Burgess, standing at the foot of the hospital bed. "She was only the figment of your imagination?" "Yes," said Jerry dully. "And all along, it was Mawson I was really with. He was clever, all right. She was certainly the last occupant of that crazy place I was likely to attack. If he had not tried attacking me himself--I might be atom dust by now. A little longer, and she--he, I mean--might have _talked_ me into that elevator." "Well," said Burgess, "I'm sorry this thing ended with Mawson's dissolution, but that can't be helped. You did your job well, Lieutenant." "Thanks," said Jerry, expressionlessly. "To come so near death so many times--" Burgess shuddered. "You have a remarkable constitution, not to have cracked under such a strain. Lieutenant, you're a lucky man." And Jerry, his mind still filled with a vision of golden hair, soft brown eyes and warm, eager lips, could only echo wearily, "Very lucky." END End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Creature Inside, by Jack Sharkey