the electric messages in the nervous system, thus wiping out the commands of the brain in that system, so that while reflex actions like the breathing of the lungs and beating of the heart were unaffected, the conscious commands of the brain to the muscles were nullified, paralyzing those muscles.
"All of that day, and all through the next night, I lay in the bunk without moving a muscle, save only an hour in which he permitted me to eat. I heard him leave the cabin early the next morning, the second after the coming of the invaders, this very morning. Lying there, I listened with dull despair to the wind slamming the door of the cabin. The cone on the table was in the line of my vision and suddenly I gasped with hope, for at a particularly hard slam that cone had rolled a little way toward the table's edge. I waited breathless. Then, just as my hope was beginning to die, the door slammed to with all the wind's force behind it and the cone rolled from the table to the floor, breaking and exploding there in a flash of intense green light.
"My first move was to search the cabin for a gun, but there was none. The cabin stood at the edge of the bare and treeless hilltop, and from its window I could see Powell's head bobbing about in the pit of the sand-grain, as he prepared for the coming of the second force of invaders. I knew that he must be imprisoned or killed at once, but knew too that he carried with him another of the paralyzing cones, so that I dared not rush him on the open hilltop. Neither could I remain in the cabin, so my only chance was to make my way to the nearest village and get help, or at least, a gun.
"So I slipped out a rear window and got safely away without being seen by him. All of this morning it took me to get down the hill, and when I met you here I knew I should not have time to get to a village as I had planned, but must go back and do what I could myself. And now I have told you all. Up on that hill Powell is awaiting the second invasion of those monsters from the atom, an invasion that will annihilate our world. If we can overpower him and replace the glowing blocks around the sand-grain, we shall have prevented disaster. If not But do you believe the story? Will you help me?"
Hunter answered slowly, his brain whirling from the things he had heard. "It's so incredible," he began, "but the booming sounds you mentioned, they heard that in Leadanfoot. It seems so queer, though" Suddenly he thrust a hand toward Marlowe. "I believe you," he told him. "I want to help."
The other gripped his hand silently, then glanced up at the sun. "We have, perhaps, four hours," he said, rising. Hunter, too, jumped to his feet, and for a moment they looked together up the dark sides of Kerachan Hill.
Presently the two men were forging steadily up that hillside. They spoke little and their faces were set, drawn. The sun was falling ever more swiftly toward the west, and always their eyes measured the distance between that descending sun and the horizon.
By the time they surmounted the first rough heights and began their progress up the thinly-wooded upper half of the hill, the gray veils of twilight were already obscuring the surrounding country. Over peaks and valleys, over forests and grassy fields, lay a strange silence, ominous, foreboding. As they toiled up toward the summit through the thickening dusk, it seemed to Hunter that the whole world was silent, breathless, tensely waiting. . . . . . .
