Reunion. A babble of voices. I stood confused, my ears still roaring, my legs weak from the shock of the fall. I heard Tad’s cheery, tired voice. I saw Arturo carried past me, and glimpsed his haggard white face, his eyes burning with fever. The man set him down. Arturo stood; he called; and I saw Nereid run like a child into his opened arms. * * * * * One scene more--an hour later, as from the cabin of the Allen climber we gazed down into the abyss. We had come up laboring. At the Zero-level we soared to the west. The full moon was well above the horizon behind us. Beneath, the Lowlands were white with patches of moonlight, black with inky shadows. Ahead some twenty miles and a few thousand feet down, the jagged ridge of the Moon Mountains lay white and black, sharp-etched as a lunar landscape. The abyss was like a great deep bowl, rising everywhere to a dim high horizon. To the south the tremendous slope rose toward the Carolines. Our earth artillery had been sent there--a precautionary measure if the truce should fail. We could see now the bombardment proceeding--the Essen fire-shells rising in a tremendous hundred-mile arc, dropping, pounding the Moon ridge; some of them releasing their gases. Over the ridge a covey of war-planes hung, directing the range. Occasionally a light-flare was dropped. Bombs were dropping. We could see them strike. The noise was like a muttering muffled thunder in the distance. The Gians had evidently remained inactive. Then we saw their attacking light-beams spring up. The planes scattered--some of them were caught. But the slow bombardment from a hundred miles away, went methodically on. It would take days. Smithby, at my elbow, babbled of the earth plans. And questioned me avidly. With my information to give our authorities, we could land planes closer; send in an army, fighting in the grottos--or perhaps the artillery could pound this porous ridge to pieces in a week or two. Could the enemy retreat farther underground? We would have to stop that. If we could get the wind right, our gas-shells would fill those caverns--smoke the enemy out like bees. And if we could get them out into the daylight, blinded-- Nereid’s cry silenced him. “The Middge! Look!” From the dark northern horizon a crimson light came in a beam. Light, or fire? A beam of something, crimson as a blood-stream. It rose from the northern distance; like a gigantic crimson jet of fluid it arched up and fell. An arc, huge as a rainbow--a rainbow of blood across the void of the abyss. Its distant source we could not see; its end fell here upon the Mountains of the Moon and drenched them with its crimson. The planes overhead winged away; the earth bombardment stopped. We approached within ten miles or so, with our image-finder trained upon the scene.