glowing now, its warmth against his flesh attracting his attention.

An eavesdropper being used against us! I knew it was illegal for anyone but a Federal Man to have one; but criminals had them, and most of the other S.S. devices and weapons, of course. Some criminal was near here, listening to us now!

"Someone not far away!" Jim gasped. "Look at that dial!"

His little detector-needle was swaying violently, in the range of one to two hundred feet. Then it swung back to normal as the ray evidently was shut off.

I snatched out my flash-gun. Jim and I crouched with the numbed, terrified girl between us.

"Oh—" she muttered. "They have come, and they will kill us."

"There it is again!" Jim's hand gripped my arm. "My God—that little thing!"

The purple shadows of night were deepening in the forest now. But in the gloom I saw it. On the bole of a tree no more than six or eight feet from us a tiny figure stood peering at us. The glistening, brown-bronze figure of a man; a broad-shouldered, stocky little figure no more than a foot high! I had an instant glimpse of a powerfully-muscled body, a tiny hairless round head, then the creature leaped to the ground, recovered its balance and ran. In another second it was lost in the gloom.

The girl too, had seen it. "A Midge! Here? Why—then Curtmann's men are here, too!"

She stopped abruptly. From the leafy darkness something hurtled into a tree beside us. There was the faint tinkling of fragile glass, then a sickening sweet smell assailed us, and sticky liquid splattered on us.

"Anesthesia-bomb!" Jim gasped. "Get away from here—grab the girl!"

My head was reeling, with senses fading so that the dim scene was blurring around me. Jim and I dragged the girl through the thickets. Then came a shot at us, the sizzling flash just missing us, shriveling the foliage over our heads. Jim's shot answered it. I saw a skulking figure by a nearby tree, and fired quickly. My shot caught him full; he went down.

In front of me, Jim had dropped prone into the brush. His voice warned: "They're here. Get down."

We had no chance to fight them off. I drilled a shape that appeared in front of me; but another pounced on my shoulders as I crouched. Blurred by 

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