[Illustration: But in a few minutes the vicinity of the mine was dotted with the coiling hills of purple gas. I saw railway cars and engines, guns and tanks, and even the railroad rails and the mining machinery, torn from their places and plunging into the air.] What can men do against instruments that hurl them off the earth? By that time I was so high that the whole plain about the mine was but a tiny brownish patch, and soon that was veiled in the mists of distance. I grew very cold, and beat my arms against my sides to warm them. My breath grew short, and presently my nose began to bleed. The blue sky grew darker until a few stars broke into view, and then many. The flaming sun seemed to give no heat. Intense cold crept over my limbs. As I was floating upward to my doom, I thought of the impending fate of the earth. The red fleets might sweep over the world, sending armies, battleships, cities and factories into the frozen night of space. That madman, Vars, with his incredible allies that we had glimpsed, with the negative gravity bombs and Dr. Vernon's ray machine, could realize his mad dream of world dominion. Humanity would be helpless against his insane power. Amid those speculations of the horror to come, my consciousness faded. The Camp in the Crater The next I knew, it was late in the evening. The sun was low over the black hills in the west. My machine was still perhaps two miles high, and floating slowly down. I started the motor, and got the machine under control. I found that I had drifted far to the east of the mine. By the time the red sun set, I was back over it. I landed in a terrible scene of wreckage. All objects of iron--machines and weapons--were gone. Trenches, shelters, and buildings were stripped ruins. Here and there were dead men, singly and in piles. They showed no wounds; either they had been killed by the intense radioactivity of the gravity bombs, or by a Vernon Ray machine carried on the red planes. I landed by the ruined residence, near two dead men in uniform. In fearful anticipation, I hurried through the silent rooms. The doors were broken down and the walls were bullet-splintered--there had been fighting in the hall. I searched the empty rooms in which the precious thorium had been stored. Three more cold bodies I found, but they were of the Mexican soldiery. I found no trace of Ellen, Bill, or the Doctor. Had they been swept away into space? Or had the triumphant lunatic, Vars, taken them captive and carried them to his stronghold in the crater of Mocolynatal? I did not find the Doctor, but in his laboratory, in the inside pocket of a coat carelessly thrown aside, I found the compact little ray tube with which he had bleached the flowers on the day before. I examined it curiously, and put it in my pocket.