"Y-yes, but—"
"Give them to me! All you have. And hurry!"
As he spoke, he was emptying his own capacious ammunition pouch. Capsule after capsule poured from it, until he had an overflowing double handful. With frenzied haste he broke the safety-tip off the first, tossed the cartridge into the stream that ran through their prison. As it struck, it hissed faintly; bubbles began to rise from the fluid, and a thin, steamy film of vapor rose whitely.
"Do that to all of them. Toss them in there! I'm right! I know I am. I have to be!"
Bewilderedly, Captain Lane and Dorothy began doing as he ordered. A dozen, a score, twoscore of the heat-gun cartridges were untipped, thrown into the coursing stream. The white film became a cloud, a fog, a thick, dense blanket about them, through which they could barely see each other. And still Tim's voice cried, "More! Faster! All of them!"
Then the last capsule had been tossed into the fluid, and their only contact with each other was by speech and the sense of touch. They were engulfed in rolling billows of white; vapor that frosted their view-panes, screened the world from view.
For half an hour they stood there waiting, turn with a thousand mingled doubts. Until, at last—
"I can't stand it any longer, Tim!" cried Dorothy. "What is it? What do we do? What is this wild plan?"
The vapor had thinned a trifle. And through gray mists, she saw a form loom before her. It was Tim's shape, and his hand stretched out to her. His voice was tense.