"Gentlemen, this is the secret that will make our planet sole master of the Solar System. This culture will destroy all life on every world, and give us all nine planets for our empire!"
The Martian officers cheered wildly, their faces flaming.
"The day of Mars has come at last!" they yelled.
* * *
Rab Crane's brain was a turmoil as he looked through his helmet at the vial Kark Al held aloft. The deadly culture — and it was in a glassite vial! The TSS man saw, in that instant, the superhuman chance to snatch eight planets from the jaws of doom!
He took that chance! With one wild upward lunge, Crane threw himself forward. His tied metal-clad hands struck the vial in Kark Al's grasp and knocked it to the floor. The glassite vial tinkled to shattered fragments.
"Gods of Mars!" screamed Kark Al as the vial broke. Then death was on him, was on them all, and those were his last words.
The fluffy yellow substance on the floor seemed to explode outward ever the Martians, expanding with the speed of light, covering them with a thick blanket of yellow fluff faster than the eye could follow.
It was the deadly bacteriophage Doctor Alph had cultivated, multiplying with the incredible speed the scientist had spoken of, devouring the flesh of the Martians like flame devouring tinder!
Kark Al and the other Martians were already indistinguishable, disintegrating mounds of yellow fluff. The stuff covered the helmets and space-suits of Rab Crane and Lalla Dee but could not penetrate through their air-tight glassite suits.