A minute. It had taken no more than a minute. Sixty seconds is sometimes an eternity. I stood confused, my senses groping with the shock of these whirling events. “Oh, Jeff!” Nereid’s voice; her hand plucking to turn me. I saw through the side window, far off to the west where the sun had been golden, but now there was only the purple night--saw a white flare puff like a bomb. The Gian encampment was off there. Rhana’s voice came sharply. “What is that?” It was no Gian light-flare. She was surprised, and she rasped: “What is that?” It caught little Nereid; confused with horror, she blurted: “The earth attacking you--you have broken faith!” And then there was a red-yellow spot like a bursting shell in the distant darkness. It seemed, after an interval, that we could hear very faintly in the heavy air of the abyss, the muffled explosion. “You--have broken faith--” Amazement swept Rhana; amazement and a dawning wild anger. “Attacking? Your earth dares attack--me?” She stood half crouching behind the Gian man whose weapon was still levied at Nereid and me. “Attacking?” The moonlight caught her hawklike gray face, showed it distorted now with fury. “So? I will show them! Why, there will be millions of them dead in another day--” She straightened; issued swift orders to the women at the controls. Our aëro began rising. My thoughts whirled. Sixty seconds. It had been enough time for that watching plane to radio Washington; and for Washington to order its army, already assembled in the abyss, to the attack. Another red explosion showed off there. We were rising swiftly. I whispered: “Nereid, what is she going to do?” “She--oh, Jeff, she’ll rush to the Highlands, find some great city, loose the disease broadcast, pollute your great cities!” To-night, in one flight, spread death over the world. Thoughts are swift-flying things. The red spot in the abyss where the plane had fallen was still almost beneath us. Nereid was whispering to me vehemently, but my thoughts flew afield. The observing plane with Polly and Dr. Plantet could never follow our nearly thousand-mile-an-hour flight. A few hours in the moonlight over the Highlands, loosing the germs of that foul disease, polluting the air of our great cities! It would sweep our continents. What use if, in her demoniac, unreasoning fury, Rhana was finally brought down? What if our attacking army back there were able to annihilate the Gians? They would drive the Gians out of the grottos in a few days, no doubt. What of it? An uncontrollable plague would be sweeping our world, bringing death to millions. But what was Nereid saying? Her vehement whispers penetrated my consciousness; her fingers were digging into my arm. “That little coil, there at the edge of the control table--you see it? I can get to it with a sudden leap. I know what that coil controls. If I could tear it with my fingers--”