"Mr. Jack-what is it? Tell mel What's wrong? What-" I ran outside. The distant figures had vanished. In the house the voices and tramping steps of Guy and Tob resounded.

Guy shouted, "Tamal Rowenal Tamawhere are you?" Guy met me at the doorway; his face was livid in the moonlight.

"Gone! They're not here!" Eliza was screaming with shrill, hysterical wails.

I gasped, "I think I saw them out there among the trees!" We seized our large-bore rifles, which stood in a corner of the room. Guy and Toh drew on overcoats and boots.

In a moment we started. The moon went under a passing cloud. The white snow surface turned dark gray, but the trail was plain. A wide, scuffled path, many footsteps. The edge of the forest was a few hundred feet away. We were half running. I suddenly realized, heedlessly running I stopped, and drew Guy and Toh crouching beside me behind the huge bulk of a fallen tree.

"Wait! They must be close ahead. I saw them!" We could not fire on any distant figure, with the girls possibly among them.

Toh murmured, "It must be Mercuriansi"

"They can't travel fast," I whispered. "The Earth's gravity is too great. If we can decide their direction, then circle and get ahead of them" I checked my words. Beside me in the snow, almost at my feet, a dark object was lying. I reached for it. A torn piece of cloth. There was light enough for me to see it.

A portion of a man's coat sleeve. The wrist cuff had some insignia on it. It was queerly burned, blackened where a segment of it had been melted away by a blast of heat.

It was from the uniform of Jimmy Turk! I had no time to do more than show it to Guy and Toh.

The Mercurians had seen us. From the edge of the nearby forest a narrow beam of blue-green light came with a hiss, like a tiny lightning bolt darting over us. It caught a snowdrift twenty feet away; melted a hole like a clean-bored tunnel with vapor rising from it.