personality with heady exuberance. He took the girl in his arms.

"Darling, life is very good," he murmured. "I don't want us to die. I don't want to be pushed off this lovable old earth of ours by an alien form of life. And it's chiefly because of you. But we're not going to let that happen, are we? We're going to fight until every last hideous, ugly one of them is gone."

"Yes, sweet," she sighed contentedly, "And Art, please—when it's all over—let's not just sink back into the old way of life again. I think our love will be able to stand even that test from now on—but let's not put it to that test. Can't we get out of Interplanetary, travel, open up new worlds, just anything like that?"

"I have a hunch that from now on we're going to require plenty of danger in our everyday life," he laughed. "After we're married—"

A shrill whine interrupted them, and they broke apart. Far out in the midnight sky, hours had slipped away like so many minutes, and Haight was arriving. He had been hurling his ship along at a reckless speed and was braking only at the last minute. Now they could see the dark shape arching down toward the laboratory. Suddenly it seemed to stop, to poise in midair. Then it dissolved into a blinding white flash. The deafening roar of the explosion came seconds later. Art and Elene looked at each other in mute horror and despair, amid a great silence broken only by tiny, distant sounds as the fragments of Haight and his ship rained down gently on the city of Washington.

"We'll keep fighting," Art finally said in a dull voice.

IV

Beneath Art's flier swept the tumbled mountains of Ozark Park. Once there had been people who lived there and actually eked a living from cultivating those steep and stony hillsides. Long ago that had been given up as impractical and unnecessary, however, and the whole region had been turned into one vast national forest. It was covered from one end to another with mighty timber, stocked in profusion with all kinds of wild game. That is, it had been covered the last time Art saw it. Now, the great trees lay tumbled about like so many match sticks, their great roots gnawed away by blind, mindless creatures. There was not a green thing in sight. A pall of smoke hung low overhead—great fires were raging everywhere in the dry stuff. Man had no time to protect the trees, when his own cities were being destroyed.

Art had just left Mexico City, 

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