Marc glanced back at her, but didn't move. He seemed to be pulling frantically at the cable, almost as though he had somehow gotten caught on it. "Ready!" Cecil yelled. "Aim...!" "Marc!" Toffee screamed. "Marc! Marc!" "_Fire!_" In the dreadful flash that followed, Toffee couldn't be certain of what she saw. It seemed that Marc had darted away from the face of the turret, but she couldn't be sure. In the same moment there was a cry of terror from Gerald. "It didn't open!" he screamed. "He jammed the cable!" The tracks of the catapult gleamed red with friction, and the room was lighted with a dull glow. And then Toffee saw that the metal covering had remained secure, blocking the passage of the bomb. She had only a glimpse before the crash came. There was an awful rending as the old house groaned and screamed under the impact of the blow. The turret tore loose from its moorings on the roof, but the bomb had been deflected. The great metal cylinder looped away from the track, tore through a section of the ceiling and streaked upward into the night, traveling in a straight line. There was a breathless silence as Toffee and the brothers watched the terrible thing move into the sky directly above the house. It hovered for what seemed to be minutes, then started down again in a definite course. "My God!" Cecil screamed. "It's coming down on top of us!" He began to run. And then the bomb struck. The whole world glared with screaming light, and then exploded. In that last moment, Toffee had only a brief, horrified glimpse of the lank figure, some distance above the house, soaring away into the darkness, and the rain. The world gasped and crumbled around her.... CHAPTER XIV A small hum stirred at the back of the darkness, a glimmer of sound, like a faint ray of silver white light in an area of great stillness. Somehow sound and light had gotten themselves mixed up together, so that one was difficult to distinguish from the other. But this was sound and it had started with a humming smallness and grown shrill. It screamed in Marc's head so that he had to open his eyes to let it out. A great brightness rushed forward, stabbing at his eyes, thrusting deep into the nerve centers at the back of his head. He blinked painfully and looked away, but the light came at him again, nervous light that moved toward him, then away, but always in the same direction, jittering along with small, irregular spurts. Marc was aware that he was lying on his back, and there was a sharp pain in his shoulder. It didn't make sense. The last he could remember was the night drawing him upward, squeezing the breath and the life out of him. He lay back and gave himself over to the effort of breathing. And then a voice spoke close by, irritably. "Of all the perfectly insane places to wind up, this snags the prize!"