to the northward. To his great joy, on the next peak to the one where he sat, there stood two rough wooden towers, spanned by an aerial.

He decided to cut across country and attempt to approach the installation by stealth. So he started scrambling down into the intervening valley.

Never before had the earth-man traveled through such difficult country. As soon as he had gone a short distance below the summit he encountered a continuous expanse of boulders, ranging in size from a man’s head to twenty feet or more in diameter, and piled aimlessly together. Lying crossways in every direction, upon and between the rocks, were the gaunt skeletons of fallen trees in all stages of decay.

The sharp edges of the rocks cut and tore the bare feet of the earth-man, while the splinters of the fallen trees jabbed his body. Time and again he slipped and nearly fell into one of the chasms which yawned between the boulders, and on one of these occasions he must have inadvertently let go the ant-rifle which he had treasured so far so carefully, for presently he noticed that it was gone.

But to all this there was one extenuating feature, although Myles did not realize it at the time, namely that his physical pain and the need for constant vigilance on his part so occupied his mind as to spare him from the mental pain which had been his almost constant companion since his return to Poros. The attention necessary to avoid misjudging a jump, or slipping into a dark deep hole, or being impaled by a tree-branch, crowded out of his mind even his great love and anxiety for Princess Lilla and Baby Kew.

Through the maze of obstacles Cabot toiled all day long.

Oh, to reach the radio station established by his enemy Yuri, and get into touch with his own continent. Thus he could learn what was happening in Cupia, and also give word of his own safe arrival on the planet. Safe, hm! He smiled grimly at the word.

“I must reach that station,” he thought, “and then, when I have talked with Cupia, I must secure a Formian plane by hook or by crook, and brave the boiling seas. If ants have crossed those seas safely, if Yuri has safely crossed them twice, then why cannot I, the Minorian?”

As he communed thus with himself, a faint pink flush appeared in the sky. Slowly, painfully he continued his way. Gradually the pink light turned to crimson in the west and then darkened to a royal purple. Gradually the black night 

 Prev. P 22/186 next