A figure which had been staggering among the rocks near them, had fallen. They rushed to it. Vivian! She was trying to drag herself forward. Her hair, streaming down in a sodden mass, was matted with blood. Her pallid face was blood-smeared. Her neck and throat were a welter of crimson horror. Beside her on the ground lay a strange-looking apparatus of grids and wires--a metal belt--a skeleton helmet.... She was gripping it with a blood-smeared hand, dragging it with her. "Vivian--Vivian--" "Oh--you, Lee? Thank Gawd I got to you--" Her elbows gave way; her head and shoulders sank to the rock. Faintly gasping, with blood-foam at her livid lips, she lay motionless. But her glazing eyes gazed up at Lee, and she was trying to smile. "I went with them--that damned Franklin--he thought I was as bad as him--" Her faint words were barely audible as he bent down to her. "Just want to tell you, Lee--you're perfectly swell--I guess I fell for you, didn't I? That's over now--just wanted you to know it anyway. There's one of the damned mechanisms they've got--" "Where are they, Vivian?" "A cave, not very far from here--down that little ravine--just ahead--they're in there--four or five of them, getting ready to--" Blood was rattling in her throat, choking her. She tried, horribly, to cough. And then she gasped: "I stole this mechanism. He--Franklin--he caught me--slashed me. He thought I was dead, I guess--but--when he had gone, I got this mechanism--trying to get to you--" Her choking, rattling breath again gave out. For a moment she lay with a paroxysm of death twitching her. And then, very faintly she gasped: "Sort of nice--I was able to do one good thing--anyhow. I'm glad of that--" The paroxysm ended in a moment. Her white lips were still trying to smile as the light went out of her eyes and she was gone. Trembling, Lee stood up, with the mute, white-faced Aura clinging to him. It was fairly obvious how the weird mechanism should be adjusted--anklets, the skeleton helmet of electrodes, the belt around his waist, with its grids, tiny dials and curved battery box. In a moment he stood with the wires strung from his head, to wrist, ankles and waist. There seemed but one little control switch that would slide over a metal arc of intensity contacts. "Oh, Lee--what--what are you going to do--?" Aura stood white with terror. "She said--four or five of them in a cave near here--perhaps they haven't yet gotten large--" * * * * * Down in a little ravine Lee found himself running forward in the luminous darkness. He called back, "Aura--you stay where you are--you hide, until it's over--" Then, in the turmoil of his mind, there was no thought of the girl. There was only the vision of old Anthony lying back there so helpless--his burning eyes bitter with this thing which had so horribly come to his little realm. To meet force with force was the only answer.