Still the Omnimobile lumbered irresistibly onward. The little gun crashed regularly, and the shells threw up the earth about that weird cylinder half a mile ahead. And the great white flame of the arc was playing far out toward it like the sword of the angel of death! I saw a cluster of curious gleaming machines about the base of the great cylinder. One of my shells must have struck them, for they suddenly seemed to collapse and dissolve in a cloud of white smoke. Abruptly a huge, terrible bar of green fire rose from the top of the cylinder almost like an extension of it--it was like a beam of green light from a vast searchlight. But it bent and twisted, as if it were alive! It moved like a snake, writhed toward me! And then came the catastrophe! A great pit in the rocky desert suddenly appeared before me--a hundred-foot chasm! I made a wild attempt to swing the machine around it. But, busy with the arc, the generators, and the gun, I had seen it too late. The brink loomed before me! Desperately I set the brakes. The machine paused jerkily, hesitated, then leaped over the rim! For a breathless second it fell down the sheer crater wall! I had no time to use the rockets! It crashed heavily upon the rocks! I was torn from my seat and flung cruelly against the side of the conning-tower! My helmet was knocked off! And on the instant, a red storm of fear broke about me! It beat down on my brain like a rain of horror! It throbbed with an archaic rhythm, stirring strange emotions that overruled my reason and volition! Terror swept about me like a fierce wind from a hot desert of death, picking up my soul and sweeping it away to a fate unnamable! I struggled with it terribly, with all my will. But it beat down my feeble barriers like a resistless tide. It burned away my will like a hot flame in my brain! That horror came over me in a vast, overwhelming wave! It seized my body! My hand moved unwillingly, and cut off the current of the great arc! And then my body was struggling to its feet, opening the manhole, and clambering out of the machine. But still the thing did not have _me_! I was still an independent entity, that sat apart and watched. I knew that I had succumbed to the hypnotic control of the alien power that dwelt in that vast metal cylinder. I was another of the slaves of the Lord of Flame--of the Sleepers of Mutron! CHAPTER XXIX Xenora's Sacrifice I was moved out of the machine like an automaton by the terrible force that controlled me. My body was no longer my own! It was swept along as if by a mighty wind. That force of horror roared and throbbed in my brain. Red flames of fear flickered before my eyes. I was sick and faint with terror. But my body did not collapse--it was relentlessly moved by that terrible force from the violet cylinder. I was utterly helpless--I felt the hopeless horror of one chained before a loathsome monster!