"Our method, you see, is simple. We have ferried these cars--which you call the Crystal Planetoids--all the way from Saturn, and placed them in positions to whirl about the earth as satellites, enabling us to drop down upon our future domains at leisure, while weaving our clogclotlas--" "Your what?" demanded Gates. "Pardon me," apologized Red-Hood, while a spout of smoke came from between his thick grayish-green lips, and his tail lashed out and shot its hornet dart to within half a dozen inches of the young man's face. "Pardon me--I had forgotten myself, and used a Saturnian term. Weaving our webs, I should have said. You see, it is necessary to spin these webs thoroughly through your entire atmosphere before choking out all the planet's native life." The speaker had made this announcement in as quiet a manner as though he had merely foretold that tomorrow's weather would be rainy. Hence his hearers were hardly able to take in his full dread meaning. They merely gaped at him as though he were perpetrating a ghastly joke. "What! Do you doubt me?" rattled out the monster. "Beware lest I take offense! We Saturnians never lie to our inferiors." This assertion was punctuated by another flick of the creature's tail, whose rapier-like barb barely missed Dunbar's nose. "But you don't mean to say you would actually exterminate us--exterminate us all--" began Eleanor; then faltered, and halted in confusion. "Why not? Would you earth-creatures hesitate to wipe out a hive of ants? Doubtless they too have minds, and even a civilization of a sort. But what is that to you? If they got in your way, would you not crush them?" "So we are no more to you than ants?" "Do not flatter yourselves. Why should we be sentimentalists, and spare you nignigs unless you can serve us?" The puff of smoke that came from between the monster's lips, as he spat out these words, was so heavy that all three humans gasped, with the stench of sulphur in their nostrils. "As I have said," he went on, "our clogclotlas, or webs, have been woven all through your atmosphere, checking the usual wind currents, and laying down a blanket that will enclose the planet's heat, until after a time every living creature will be baked or choked to death in one vast oven. Of course, like any other great engineering project, this will take time. We cannot expect to complete the good work in less than a year or two." In Gates' disturbed fancy, it seemed that many-colored points of light, like little demons, danced malevolently upon the huge expanse of his captor's armor. Yet there was just a trace of incredulity in his tone, as he demanded, "If this is all true, why do you trouble to tell us about it? We for our part do not warn the ants we intend to trample!" "Nor do we!" Red-Hood's words came in a snort, and his tail flicked through the air in an angry crackling. "But whether we will spare you or sting you to death remains to be seen!" * * * * *