Storm straightened, oar in hand. "Ants!" he snapped, disgustedly. He began to swing the ash blade down on the scurrying creatures.

The things continued to move about, apparently unharmed. Dents appeared in the oar and in the seat.

Hammond bent over the scurrying creatures and studied them. "No use, Pete," he muttered. "They're not ants. There's no division of head, thorax and abdomen. They're eight-legged and cephalothoracic—more like the arachnids." His startled surprise was fading under the prod of scientific curiosity. "Funny thing, Pete—the legs and shells seem to be composed of the same substance as the 'thing' they come from. Look!"

Storm dropped his oar and came forward. The boat rocked a little to his shift of weight. A faint humming came from the "thing" on the seat, catching his attention.

But Hammond, intent on one of the small creatures he was about to pick up, did not notice. Not until Pete's hoarse shout jerked him away.

"Look out, Frank! That tube—"

Hammond straightened up to face his friend. But Peter Storm had vanished, as if he had never been!

Between Hammond and where Storm had been was the "thing" on the seat. The humming emanating from it now was distinctly audible, and ominous!

A shining tube, mounted in a turret, had appeared in one of the openings. The tube was swinging around, lining itself on Hammond.

The dazed chemist did not think. He reacted instinctively, knowing, somehow, that that tube was related to Storm's disappearance. He twisted, violently, and tried to dive over the boat side.

Something halted him in the act. He felt a strange numbness wrap itself about him, and a cold like nothing he had ever experienced penetrated to his very vitals. Then he felt himself falling, as if through an endless blackness....

The darkness faded, slowly. He felt his feet jar on solid ground, and the terrible cold left him. But for long moments Frank Hammond stood rigid, his dazed mind trying to accept the strange world he had fallen into.

The landscape about him was maroon in color. Irregular ridges and gullies of apparently molten stone hemmed him in. Off to his left he could see a huge, bubbly pit that reminded him of fumaroles he had seen in the National Yellowstone Park. Far in the 

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