"How long have I been here?" he asked urgently.
"Just a minute or two, lad. You're mighty battered and tired, but you'll be all right now. Just rest a while."
"Rest!" Jim repeated, and climbed quickly to his feet. "None of us can rest now—there's no time! It may be too late already—but we've got to make a fight for it, if for no other reason than because Kaarji's counting on it! No, Conley, I'm not delirious." He waved the worried Irishman away. "Listen, you men! I've solved the mystery of M'Tonak, and we've got to get out of here!"
In an anxious rush of words he explained the situation, told briefly of his discovery of the Dim-Ing and what it was, and of Kaarji's avowal to destroy all of M'Tonak.
"In another few weeks, Spurlin, your spaceship would have been finished, and the greatest horror the universe has ever known would have launched itself upon Earth! It still might happen! We've got to get back out there at once, en masse, and hold that thing's attention before it discovers what Kaarji's up to!"
It had all happened too suddenly for the men to quite believe him. They looked askance at each other.
"But after three years of heart-breaking work," Spurlin said, "to give up my spaceship now! That's what you're asking."
"A hell of a lot of good your spaceship will be, with millions of tons of rock and ice heaped on it! That's gonna happen about fifteen minutes from now, or less! Man, don't you understand? Kaarji said he'd give me a half-hour—"
"It's a trick!" Wessel squawked loudly. "Damned funny that he ever got back here to us at all! He's discovered a protection against those greenish rays, he's trying to lure us all outside to our death, so he can have all this new metal for himself!"
Jim strode back to the door, pausing only long enough to cry, "All right, stay here, then, and die. All of you! If you won't help me, that means our last chance is gone. I'll die too, but it'll be out there fighting that thing to the last!"