No one could deny, either, that she was in danger from some mysterious source. On the day after her release, two men in a taxicab swerved suddenly around a street corner, and came within an inch of snatching her from under the noses of the detectives. The would-be abductors, though unsuccessful, made good their escape; and, later that same day, a still more ominous event occurred. Eleanor was walking in a fog not far from one of the city's main intersections, when suddenly she felt something clutching her. She cried out in her terror; and the detectives, though seeing nothing, fired into the mist. Evidently it was a mere lucky shot that struck the unseen aggressor under the left shoulder, at his "middle nerve center," his most vulnerable spot. At any rate, an unearthly howl came from the invisible--and, more significant yet, a spout of something thick, sticky and golden-orange jutted to the pavement as if from nowhere. And the girl felt the claws of the invisible relaxing. "Another damned attack of nerves," Police Captain Donnelley called it, when the incident was reported. Yet, being unable to account for the golden-yellow liquid, he consented to double the girl's bodyguard. Knowing that the time was exceedingly short--in fact, to take Dunbar's word for it, but four days of grace remained--she worked with desperation. Her first idea was to obtain possession of Gates' infra-red eye, which might show the authorities the cobweb meshes that entangled the planet, and so perhaps rouse them to eleventh hour action. But how obtain this invaluable device? Neither a search of the laboratory, nor a ransacking of Gates' home, revealed any trace of the instrument. Eleanor remembered in despair how, on that memorable evening on the roof, the inventor dropped the device just as the Saturnians swooped down; and she concluded that it had either been broken, lost, or snatched up by the invaders. * * * * * Therefore she turned to her one other hope. For almost a year, during spare hours in the laboratory, she had been working on what she called the Electronic Space Ray--a beam designed to pierce and dissolve the upper cloud formations. This ray, a modification of the X-ray, engendered by an application of several hundred thousand volts of electricity, had the power of cutting like a knife through any mist, causing the vapors to disperse as though blown aside by a gale. Its range, apparently, was enormous; Eleanor believed it capable of bridging the gulf from the earth to the moon, and held that it would be highly effective at several hundred miles. Therefore the question arose: if the rays could dissipate a cloud, could they not penetrate the gelatinous envelopes of the Crystal Planetoids? Was it not conceivable that they could rip the Planetoids apart, as a balloon may be ripped by a bullet? She did not know, but the chance, however fantastic it seemed, was not to be ignored.