It bore down upon me! A great crimson tentacle reached down and picked me up! I was swept through the air, held lightly in that strange grasp, and lifted until I was face to face with Sam, who sat astride the creature! He reached out his strong brown hand and grasped my own. "Mel, old man, it's some luck to find you! And what do you think of my army? A couple of the flying dragons captured Alec and me, so I've been making the best of a bad situation. The things are really quite intelligent, and I've been drilling them for months. They're hereditary enemies of the alien civilization, anyhow. There's going to be some fight when we meet the silver ships!" Exultant, joyous triumph rang in his tones. He had not noticed my strange condition. At last I was sufficiently recovered to speak. "I've got a ton of nitroglycerine in that rock," I stammered. "The lake will be running in the pit in an hour or so." My voice had a curious rusty sound. "Nitroglycerine! You've been making it, and planting a mine! No wonder you look like a ghost! And how comes Xenora to have that damned metal bar on her?" Abruptly I broke down into uncontrollable tears of relief and joy. I did not try to answer. In a few minutes the vast army of winged monsters had wheeled about, and was headed north again, over the crimson mists--line after regular line of beating green wings that bore the strangest army of history to the strangest battle ever fought! But, at the moment, I was paying little attention, for I was mounted on another of those vast flying creatures; and in my arms was Xenora! She was limp, unconscious, sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion. But she was free again from the Lord of Flame! With tears of joy streaming down my face, I tried to dress her bleeding hands and feet. CHAPTER XXXII When the Red Roof Fell Abruptly a green light ran through the rosy haze beneath us, and that dreadful twisting bar of radiance--that living, alien tongue of fire--the serpent-like head of the Lord of Flame, was thrust up out of the flickering violet! With its strange, writhing motion, it swept in a wide arc, as though it saw us! It searched the sky, and then drew back in alarm! The terrible, rhythmic throb of the emerald gleam in it grew faster! And quickly the crimson sky ahead of our flying army of green-winged monsters was filled with fleets of the silver spheres! They rose swiftly, by the hundred, in long, gleaming lines--floating, drifting, darting, as though carried in swift, cyclonic winds. And then in smoothly sailing squadrons they advanced to meet us, with the swirling green mists of the disintegration force reaching out before them!