"See, I bring you the wonderful thing of Barsoni Sam, that shuts out the horror. I give it to you, and you can go on with your battle against the Flame!--No, you can never conquer the Flame! But fly! Go back to your land!" Even then I felt the horror awakening again, felt that fearful force directed again upon me. With a single quick motion, before I could prevent her, Xenora had whipped the electro-screen helmet from her head and drawn it about my own. "Fly," she whispered fiercely. "The Sleepers of Mutron! And think not of me! Fly! Even from me!" The horror relaxed, and I collapsed in a daze of relief. In a moment I had recovered and got to my feet. Xenora was a score of yards away, dashing off. I ran after her, calling for her to take back the precious helmet. Suddenly she stopped. A convulsion ran through her frame. She turned, with her face a mask of livid horror. She was in the power of the Flame! She was a Sleeper! She bent, seized a rock, and hurled it at my head with superhuman strength. I dodged and it hurtled past my ear. She sprang at me like an animal, drawing the hunting knife I had left her. I turned and ran wildly, as a score of the Sleepers came running. I passed close by that violet metal monostyle, and it seemed that its crawling violet fires reached out for me. I ran desperately toward the east! I heard the strange cries of the Sleepers of Mutron behind me! I felt the awful green flame writhing above me, but even it could not penetrate the helmet! I was insane with terror! I ran on and on, through eternities of heart-breaking effort. At last I stopped exhausted, with pounding temples and bursting lungs, to look behind me. The flaming brain was but a dull violet glow against the red sky. A desolate waste of bare rugged rocks and great round craters lay about me beneath the crimson mist. All was silent! The sounds of pursuit were gone! CHAPTER XXX "The Nitrate Plantation" Should I go on, or return and try to save Xenora, as she had rescued me? That question throbbed in my brain. The answer would have been easy enough if I had had her alone to consider. I might cheerfully have surrendered myself to that dreaded power to save her--any man would have done as much! But what of the menace to the earth? Should I give up the struggle? For a long time I stood there on the rim of a strange crater, lost in indecision. At last my sense of duty to mankind was victor. I set off wearily toward the east again. The Omnimobile was so near the flaming brain that I dared not attempt to reach it, even if I had been confident of finding it. And upon consideration, I was sure that if the machine was left as it was, it would be only as a trap for me.