For the moment the two leaned motionless against the wall, breathless and exhausted but listening with pounding hearts to ascertain whether that last shrill squeal of the bar had given the alarm to Munson and the others. The faint voices from the laboratory, they noted, had apparently ceased, but there was no sound of alarm, and no one appeared in the clearing or within sight of their prison-room. Then, after that moment's pause, Mallett had pulled himself upward, was squeezing through the window between bar and wall, and in a moment Ralton had followed him. Crouched on the ground beneath the window, the gray light of dawn growing over the cone's summit, Mallett pointed across the open clearing to where stood the mighty globe-condenser and its unprotected switch control. "The control!" Mallett was whispering thickly. "If we can get to it----!" They stepped forward, stealthily, silently. No sound came from any part of the cone's summit, save for the great condenser's half-heard hum. Another step--another. Slowly, carefully they crept on, out from the shelter of their prison and the long building beside it, into the great circular clearing. Ralton's blood was pounding through his veins, for now the gleaming condenser lay but a few hundred feet ahead, at the clearing's center. Should he make a rush for it and trust to chance to get him to the condenser's control in time? He discarded the idea, even as Mallett and he crept forward; for within moments more their stealthy, silent progress would bring them to their goal. Within moments more---- "Your strategy, Mallett, is somewhat infantile, I fear!" _Munson's voice!_ Cool and mocking, it cut like a sword through their whirling thoughts and the two spun about, then recoiled. Out from the open door of one of the buildings behind them had stepped the massive, coldly smiling scientist, a heavy automatic in his grasp turned upon them. From between the other buildings, to right and to left of the clearing, had stepped the other three--Labreau, Kingsford, Krauner--their own pistols trained upon the two. Still hundreds of feet from the condenser, Ralton knew, with finality, in that moment, that never could they make it, never could they reach it with the steel-nosed bullets of four guns tearing through their bodies. That noise the bar had made had roused the four, had brought them pistols in hand to watch mockingly the two before them. The gray-haired, mocking-eyed Munson, the dark face of Labreau, contorted with insane rage; the gloating Kingsford, his strong, intellectual face twisted now as though by some devil's hand; the coldly indifferent countenance of the blond-haired Krauner, whose eyes yet burned madly behind his gleaming glasses--all these faces appeared to be slowly turning about Ralton in that seemingly eternal moment.