All at once, her lips drew apart in an incredulous expression. A gasp came from between her lips. A pallor spread across her cheeks. For several seconds she remained as if glued to the instrument. * * * * * Grimacing wrily, she snapped herself away from the eye-piece with a horrified, "Ugh!" Her eyes bulged. Her whole form was trembling. "I--I--I guess I'm seeing things!" she explained, lamely. Then, observing how strangely Dunbar was staring at her, she thrust the instrument at him. "Here, you--you just look for yourself!" Dunbar took up the apparatus, and peered through it steadily for perhaps half a minute. But he too, when he put it down, was visibly paler. "God! Am I crazy?" he grunted. "Here, Ronny, better have a peep yourself--" But Gates had already snatched up the instrument. And he too gasped as he adjusted the lenses. For he saw nothing that he had anticipated. The only purpose of the Infra-Red Eye, as he himself had declared, had been to penetrate a haze. But how startlingly the results had exceeded expectations! Spread far above the earth's surface, in the form of colossal cobwebs, were long tenuous strands, woven in a web many layers deep. The threads, colorless and almost transparent, were thin as though composed of some silken fabric; but were enormously long, and stretched in great curves from horizon to zenith. Over the entire firmament they seemed to be bent and twisted by the tens of thousands, forming intricate geometric patterns, and uncannily giving the impression of enclosing the earth in a great cage. Wavering slightly in the faint breezes of the upper spaces, they covered every section of the visible heavens, even spreading their dim crisscrossing bars across the moon. As if this discovery in itself was not ghastly enough, a still more terrible sight presented itself. Scores of beings, vaguely human-shaped and each with many limbs dangling octopus-like, swung agilely along the gigantic webs. Of prodigious size--seemingly not less than fifteen or twenty feet tall--the creatures were of a watery pallor that made only the bare outlines of their forms visible. Each, in the middle of an egg-shaped head, displayed two oddly three-cornered eyes that glowed with dull red flames; each possessed six or eight many-fingered hands with which it was adding new segments to the monstrous web. With a groan, Gates put down the instrument; and, wiping his streaming brow, sagged against a wall for support. But the horror in his eyes matched that in the faces of his companions as the three stared at one another in open-mouthed amazement. CHAPTER II The Terror Strikes