This etext was produced from Astounding Stories January 1931.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.
Astounding Stories
On Sale the First Thursday of Each Month
W. M. CLAYTON, Publisher
HARRY BATES, Editor
DR. DOUGLAS M. DOLD, Consulting Editor
The Clayton Standard on a Magazine Guarantees:
- That the stories therein are clean, interesting, vivid, by leading writers of the day and purchased under conditions approved by the Authors’ League of America;
- That such magazines are manufactured in Union shops by American workmen;
- That each newsdealer and agent is insured a fair profit;
- That an intelligent censorship guards their advertising pages.
The other Clayton magazines are:
ACE-HIGH MAGAZINE, RANCH ROMANCES, COWBOY STORIES, CLUES, FIVE-NOVELS
MONTHLY, ALL STAR DETECTIVE STORIES, RANGELAND LOVE STORY MAGAZINE,
WESTERN ADVENTURES, and WESTERN LOVE STORIES.
More Than Two Million Copies Required to Supply the Monthly Demand for Clayton Magazines.
VOL. V, No. 1 | CONTENTS | JANUARY, 1931 |
COVER DESIGN | H. W. WESSO | |
Painted in Water-Colors from a Scene in “The Gate to Xoran.” |
THE DARK SIDE OF ANTRI | SEWELL PEASLEE WRIGHT | 9 |
Commander John Hanson Relates an Interplanetary Adventure Illustrating the Splendid Service Spirit of the Men of the Special Patrol. |
THE SUNKEN EMPIRE | H. THOMPSON RICH | 24 |
Concerning the Strange Adventures of Professor Stevens with the Antillians on the Floor of the Mysterious Sargasso Sea. |
THE GATE TO XORAN | HAL K. WELLS | 46 |
A Strange Man of Metal Comes to Earth on a Dreadful Mission. |
THE EYE OF ALLAH | C. D. WILLARD | 58 |
On the Fatal Seventh of September a Certain Secret Service Man Sat in the President’s Chair and—Looked Back into the Eye of Allah. |
THE FIFTH-DIMENSION CATAPULT | MURRAY LEINSTER | 72 |
The Story of Tommy Reames’ Extraordinary Rescue of Professor Denham and his Daughter—Marooned in the Fifth Dimension. (A Complete Novelette.) |
THE PIRATE PLANET | CHARLES W. DIFFIN | 109 |
Two Fighting Yankees—War-Torn Earth’s Sole Representatives on Venus—Set Out to Spike the Greatest Gun of All Time. (Part Three of a Four-Part Novel.) |
THE READERS’ CORNER | ALL OF US | 132 |
A Meeting Place for Readers of Astounding Stories. |
Single Copies, 20 Cents (In Canada, 25 Cents)
Yearly Subscription, $2.00
Issued monthly by Readers’ Guild, Inc., 80 Lafayette Street, New York, N. Y. W. M. Clayton, President;
Francis P. Pace, Secretary. Entered as second-class matter December 7, 1929, at the Post Office at
New York, N. Y., under Act of March 3, 1879. Title registered as a Trade Mark in the U. S. Patent Office.
Member Newsstand Group—Men’s List. For advertising rates address E. R. Crowe & Co., Inc., 25 Vanderbilt
Ave., New York; or 225 North Michigan Ave., Chicago.
“Behold one of those who live in the darkness.”
The Dark Side of Antri
By Sewell Peaslee Wright
Commander John Hanson relates an interplanetary
adventure illustrating the splendid
Service spirit of the men of the
Special Patrol.
An officer of the Special Patrol
Service dropped in to see me
the other day. He was a young
fellow, very sure of himself,
and very kindly towards an old man.
He was doing a
monograph, he
said, for his own
amusement, upon
the early forms
of our present offensive and defensive
weapons. Could I tell him about the
first Deuber spheres and the earlier
disintegrator rays and the crude atomic
bombs we tried back when I first
entered the Service?
I could, of
course. And I
did. But a man’s
memory does not improve in the
course of a century of Earth years.
Our scientists have not been able to
keep a man’s brain as fresh as his body,
despite all their vaunted progress.
There is a lot these deep thinkers, in
their great laboratories, don’t know.
The whole universe gives them the
credit for what’s been done, yet the
men of action who carried out the
ideas—but I’m getting away from my
pert young officer.
He listened to me with interest and
toleration. Now and then he helped
me out, when my memory failed me on
some little detail. He seemed to have
a very fair theoretical knowledge of
the subject.
“It seems impossible,” he commented,
when we had gone over the ground
he had outlined, “that the Service could
have done its work with such crude and
undeveloped weapons, does it not?” He
smiled in a superior sort of way, as
though to imply we had probably done
the best we could, under the circumstances.
I suppose I should not have permitted
his attitude to irritate me,
but I am an old man, and my life has
not been an easy one.
“Youngster,” I said—like many old
people, I prefer spoken conversation—“back
in those days the Service was
handicapped in every way. We lacked
weapons, we lacked instruments, we
lacked popular support, and backing.
But we had men, in those days, who
did their work with the tools that were
at hand. And we did it well.”
“Yes, sir!” the youngster said hastily—after
all, a retired commander in
the Special Patrol Service does rate a
certain amount of respect, even from
these perky youngsters—“I know that,
sir. It was the efforts of men like
yourself who gave us the proud traditions
we have to-day.”
“Well, that’s hardly true,” I corrected
him. “I’m not quite so old as
that. We had a fine set of traditions
when I entered the Service, son. But
we did our share to carry them on, I’ll
grant you that.”
“‘Nothing Less than Complete Success,’”
quoted the lad almost reverently,
giving the ancient motto of our service.
“That is a fine tradition for a
body of men to aspire to, sir.”
“True. True.” The ring in the boy’s
voice brought memories flocking. It
was a proud motto; as old as I am,
the words bring a thrill even now, a
thrill comparable only with that which
comes from seeing old Earth swell up
out of the darkness of space after days
of outer emptiness. Old Earth, with
her wispy white clouds and her broad
seas— Oh, I know I’m provincial, but
that is another thing that must be forgiven
an old man.
“I imagine, sir,” said the young
officer, “that you could tell many a
strange story of the Service, and the
sacrifices men have made to keep that
motto the proud boast it is to-day.”
“Yes,” I told him. “I could do that.
I have done so. That is my occupation,
now that I have been retired from
active service. I—”
“You are a historian?” he broke in
eagerly.
I forgave him the interruption.
I can still remember my own rather
impetuous youth.
“Do I look like a historian?” I think
I smiled as I asked him the question,
and held out my hands to him. Big
brown hands they are, hardened with
work, stained and drawn from old acid
burns, and the bite of blue electric
fire. In my day we worked with crude
tools indeed; tools that left their mark
upon the workman.
“No. But—”
I waved the explanation aside.
“Historians deal with facts, with accomplishments,
with dates and places
and the names of great men. I write—what
little I do write—of men and high
adventures, so that in this time of softness
and easy living some few who may
read my scribblings may live with me
those days when the worlds of the universe
were strange to each other, and
there were many new things to be
found and marveled at.”
“And I’ll venture, sir, that you find
much enjoyment in the work,” commented
the youngster with a degree of
perception with which I had not
credited him.
“True. As I write, forgotten faces
peer at me through the mists of the
years, and strong, friendly voices call
to me from out of the past….”
“It must be wonderful to live the
old adventures through again,” said the
young officer hastily. Youth is always
afraid of sentiment in old people. Why
this should be, I do not know. But it
is so.
The lad—I wish I had made a note
of his name; I predict a future for him
in the Service—left me alone, then,
with the thoughts he had stirred up in
my mind.
Old faces … old voices. Old
scenes, too.
Strange worlds, strange peoples. A
hundred, a thousand different tongues.
Men that came only to my knee, and
men that towered ten feet above my
head. Creatures—possessed of all the
attributes of men except physical form—that
belonged only in the nightmare
realms of sleep.
An old man’s most treasured possessions:
his memories. A face drew close
out of the flocking recollections; the
face of a man I had known and loved
more than a brother so many years—dear
God, how many years—ago.
Anderson Croy. Search all the voluminous
records of the bearded historians,
and you will not find his name.
No great figure of history was this
friend of mine; just an obscure officer
on an obscure ship of the Special Patrol
Service.
And yet there is a people who owe to
him their very existence.
I wonder if they have forgotten him?
It would not surprise me.
The memory of the universe is not a
reliable thing.
Anderson Croy was, like most
of the officer personnel of the
Special Patrol Service, a native of
Earth.
They had tried to make a stoop-shouldered
dabbler in formulas out of
him, but he was not the stuff from
which good scientists are moulded. He
was young, when I first knew him, and
strong; he had mild blue eyes and a
quick smile. And he had a fine, steely
courage that a man could love.
I was in command, then, of the Ertak,
my second ship. I inherited Anderson
Croy with the ship, and I liked him
from the first time I laid eyes upon
him.
As I recall it, we worked together
on the Ertak for nearly two years,
Earth time. We went through some
tight places together. I remember our
experience, shortly after I took over
the Ertak, on the monstrous planet
Callor, whose tiny, gentle people were
attacked by strange, vapid Things that
come down upon them from the fastness
of the polar cap, and—
But I wander from the story I wish
to tell here. An old man’s mind is
a weak and weary thing that totters and
weaves from side to side; like a worn-out
ship, it is hard to keep on a straight
course.
We were out on one of those long,
monotonous patrols, skirting the outer
boundaries of the known universe, that
were, at that time, before the building
of all the many stations we have to-day
a dreaded part of the Special Patrol
Service routine.
Not once had we landed to stretch
our legs. Slowing up to atmospheric
speed took time, and we were on a
schedule that allowed for no waste of
even minutes. We approached the various
worlds only close enough to report,
and to receive an assurance that all was
well. A dog’s life, but part of the
game.
My log showed nearly a hundred
“All’s well” reports, as I remember
it, when we slid up to Antri, which
was, so far as size is concerned, one of
our smallest ports o’ call.
Antri, I might add, for the benefit of
those who have forgotten their maps of
the universe, is a satellite of A-411,
which, in turn, is one of the largest
bodies of the universe, and both uninhabited
and uninhabitable. Antri is
somewhat larger than the moon, Earth’s
satellite, and considerably farther from
its controlling body.
“Report our presence, Mr. Croy,” I
ordered wearily. “And please ask Mr.
Correy to keep a sharp watch on the
attraction meter.” These huge bodies
such as A-411 are not pleasant companions
at space speeds. A few minute’s
trouble—space ships gave trouble,
in those days—and you melted like a
drop of solder when you struck the
atmospheric belt.
“Yes, sir!” There never was a crisper
young officer than Croy.
I bent over my tables, working out
our position and charting our course
for the next period. In a few seconds
Croy was back, his blue eyes gleaming.
“Sir, an emergency is reported on
Antri. We are to make all possible
speed, to Oreo, their governing city. I
gather that it is very important.”
“Very well, Mr. Croy.” I can’t say
the news was unwelcome. Monotony
kills young men. “Have the disintegrator
ray generators inspected and tested.
Turn out the watch below in such time
that we may have all hands on duty
when we arrive. If there is an emergency,
we shall be prepared for it. I
shall be with Mr. Correy in the navigating
room; if there are any further
communications, relay them to me
there.”
I hurried up to the navigating
room, and gave Correy his orders.
“Do not reduce speed until it is absolutely
necessary,” I concluded. “We
have an emergency call from Antri,
and minutes may be important. How
long do you make it to Oreo?”
“About an hour to the atmosphere;
say an hour more to set down in the
city. I believe that’s about right, sir.”
I nodded, frowning at the twin
charts, with their softly glowing lights,
and turned to the television disc, picking
up Antri without difficulty.
Of course, back in those days we
had the huge and cumbersome discs,
their faces shielded by a hood, that
would be suitable only for museum
pieces now. But they did their work
very well, and I searched Antri carefully,
at varying ranges, for any sign
of disturbances. I found none.
The dark portion, of course, I could
not penetrate. Antri has one portion
of its face that is turned forever from
its sun, and one half that is bathed in
perpetual light. The long twilight
zone was uninhabited, for the people
of Antri are a sun-loving race, and
their cities and villages appeared only
in the bright areas of perpetual sunlight.
Just as we reduced to atmospheric
speed, Croy sent up a message
“The Governing Council sends word
that we are to set down on the platform
atop the Hall of Government,
the large, square white building in the
center of the city. They say we will
have no difficulty in locating it.”
I thanked him and ordered him to
stand by for further messages, if any,
and picked up the far-flung city of
Oreo in my television disc.
There was no mistaking the
building Croy had mentioned. It
stood out from the city around it, cool
and white, its mighty columns glistening
like crystal in the sun. I could
even make out the landing platform,
slightly elevated above the roof on
spidery arches of silvery metal.
We sped straight for the city at just
a fraction of space speed, but the
hand of the surface temperature gauge
crept slowly toward the red line that
marked the dangerous incandescent
point. I saw that Correy, like the good
navigating officer he was, was watching
the gauge as closely as myself, and
hence said nothing. We both knew that
the Antrians would not have sent a
call for help to a ship of the Special
Patrol Service if there had not been
a real emergency.
Correy had made a good guess in
saying that it would take about an
hour, after entering the gaseous envelope
of Antri, to reach our destination.
It was just a few minutes—Earth time,
of course—less than that when we settled
gently onto the landing platform.
A group of six or seven Antrians,
dignified old men, wearing the short,
loosely belted white robes that we
found were their universal costume,
were waiting for us at the exit of the
Ertak, whose sleek, smooth sides were
glowing dull red.
“You have hastened, and that is well,
sirs,” said the spokesman of the committee.
“You find Antri in dire need.”
He spoke in the universal language,
and spoke it softly and perfectly. “But
you will pardon me for greeting you
with that which is, of necessity, uppermost
in my mind, and in the minds of
these, my companions.
“Permit me to welcome you to Antri,
and to introduce those who extend
those greetings.” Rapidly, he ran
through a list of names, and each of
the men bowed gravely in acknowledgment
of our greetings. I have never
observed a more courteous nor a more
courtly people than the Antrians; their
manners are as beautiful as their faces.
Last of all, their spokesman introduced
himself. Bori Tulber, he was
called, and he had the honor of being
master of the Council—the chief executive
of Antri.
When the introductions had
been completed, the committee
led our little party to a small, cylindrical
elevator which dropped us,
swiftly and silently, on a cushion of
air, to the street level of the great
building. Across a wide, gleaming corridor
our conductors led us, and stood
aside before a massive portal through
which ten men might have walked
abreast.
We found ourselves in a great
chamber with a vaulted ceiling of
bright, gleaming metal. At the far end
of the room was an elevated rostrum,
flanked on either side by huge, intricate
masses of statuary, of some
creamy, translucent stone that glowed
as with some inner light. Semicircular
rows of seats, each with its carved
desk, surmounted by numerous electrical
controls, occupied all the floor
space. None of the seats was occupied.
“We have excused the Council from
our preliminary deliberations,” explained
Bori Tulber, “because such a
large body is unwieldy. My companions
and myself represent the executive
heads of the various departments of the
Council, and we are empowered to act.”
He led us through the great council
chamber, and into an anteroom, beautifully
decorated, and furnished with
exceedingly comfortable chairs.
“Be seated, sirs,” the Master of the
Council suggested. We obeyed silently,
and Bori Tulber stood before, gazing
thoughtfully into space.
“I do not know just where to begin,”
he said slowly. “You men
in uniform know, I presume, but little
of this world of ours. I presume I had
best begin far back.
“Since you are navigators of space,
undoubtedly, you are acquainted with
the fact that Antri is a world divided
into two parts; one of perpetual night,
and the other of perpetual day, due to
the fact that Antri revolves but once
upon its axis during the course of its
circuit of its sun, thus presenting always
the same face to our luminary.
“We have no day and night, such as
obtain on other spheres. There are no
set hours for working nor for sleeping
nor for pleasure. The measure of a
man’s work is the measure of his ambition,
or his strength, or his desire.
It is so also with his sleep and with
his pleasures. It is—it has been—a
very pleasant arrangement.
“Ours is a fertile country, and our
people live very long and very happily
with little effort. We have believed
that ours was the nearest of all the
worlds to the ideal; that nothing could
disturb the peace and happiness of our
people. We were mistaken.
“There is a dark side to Antri.
A side upon which the sun never
has shone. A dismal place of gloom,
which is like the night upon other
worlds.
“No Antrian has, to our knowledge,
ever penetrated this part of Antri, and
lived to tell of his experience. We do
not even till the land close to the twilight
zone. Why should we, when we
have so much fine land upon which the
sun shines bright and fair always, save
for the two brief seasons of rain?
“We have never given thought to
what might be on the dark face of Antri.
Darkness and night are things unknown
to us; we know of them only
from the knowledge which has come to
us from other worlds. And now—now
we have been brought face to face with
a terrible danger which comes to us
from that other side of this sphere.
“A people have grown there. A terrible
people that I shall not try to describe
to you. They threaten us with
slavery, with extinction. Four ara ago
(the Antrians have their own system
of reckoning time, just as we have on
Earth, instead of using the universal
system, based upon the enaro. An ara
corresponds to about fifty hours, Earth
time.) we did not know that such a
people existed. Now their shadow is
upon all our beautifully sunny country,
and unless you can aid us, before
other help can reach us, I am convinced
that Antri is doomed!”
For a moment not one of us spoke.
We sat there, staring at the old
man who had just ceased speaking.
Only a man ripened and seasoned
with the passing of years could have
stood there before us and uttered, so
quietly and solemnly, words such as
had just come from his lips. Only in
his eyes could we catch a glimpse of
the torment which gripped his soul.
“Sir,” I said, and have never felt
younger than at that moment, when
I tried to frame some assurance to this
splendid old man who had turned to
me and my youthful crew for succor,
“we shall do what it lies within our
power to do. But tell us more of this
danger which threatens.
“I am no man of science, and yet I
cannot see how men could live in a
land never reached by the sun. There
would be no heat, no vegetation. Is
that not so?”
“Would that it were!” replied the
Master of the Council, bitterly. “What
you say would be indeed the truth,
were it not for the great river and
seas of our sunny Antri, which bear
their heated waters to this dark portion
of our world, and make it habitable.
“And as for this danger, there is
little to be said. At some time, men
of our country, men who fish, or venture
upon the water in commerce, have
been borne, all unwillingly, across the
shadowy twilight zone and into the
land of darkness. They did not come
back, but they were found there and
despoiled of their menores.
“Somehow, these creatures who dwell
in darkness determined the use of the
menore, and now that they have resolved
that they shall rule all this
sphere, they have been able to make
their threat clear to us. Perhaps”—and
Bori Tulber smiled faintly and terribly—“you
would like to have that
message direct from its bearer?”
“Is that possible, sir?” I asked eagerly,
glancing around the room.
“How—”
“Come with me,” said the Master of
the Council gently. “Alone—for too
many near him excites this terrible
messenger. You have your menore?”
“No. I had not thought there would
be need of it.” The menores of those
days, it should be remembered, were
heavy, cumbersome circlets that were
worn upon the head like a sort of
crown, and one did not go so equipped
unless in real need of the device. To-day,
of course, your menores are but
jeweled trinkets that convey thought a
score of times more effectively, and
weigh but a tenth as much.
“It is a lack easily remedied.” Bori
Tulber excused himself with a little
bow and hurried out into the great
council chamber, to appear again in a
moment with a menore in either hand.
“Now, if your companions and mine
will excuse us for a moment….” He
smiled around the seated group apologetically.
There was a murmur of assent,
and the old man opened a door
in the other side of the room.
“It is not far,” he said. “I will go
first, and show you the way.”
He led me quickly down a long,
narrow corridor to a pair of steep
stairs that circled far down into the
very foundation of the building. The
walls of the corridor and the stairs
were without windows, but were as
bright as noonday from the ethon tubes
which were set into both ceiling and
walls.
Silently we circled our way down the
spiral stairs, and silently the Master of
the Council paused before a door at the
bottom—a door of dull red metal.
“This is the keeping place of those
who come before the Council charged
with wrong doing,” explained Bori
Tulber. His fingers rested upon and
pressed certain of a ring of small white
buttons in the face of the door, and
it opened swiftly and noiselessly. We
entered, and the door closed behind us
with a soft thud.
“Behold one of those who live in the
darkness,” said the Master of the Council
grimly. “Do not put on the menore
until you have a grip upon yourself:
I would not have him know how greatly
he disturbs us.”
I nodded, dumbly, holding the heavy
menore dangling in my hand.
I have said that I have beheld strange
worlds and strange people in my life,
and it is true that I have. I have seen
the headless people of that red world
Iralo, the ant people, the dragon-fly
people, the terrible carnivorous trees
of L-472, and the pointed heads of a
people who live upon a world which
may not be named. But I have still
to see a more terrible creature than
that which lay before me now.
He—or it—was reclining upon the
floor, for the reason that he could
not have stood. No room save one with
a vaulted ceiling such as the great
council chamber, could offer room
enough for this creature to walk erect.
He was, roughly, a shade better than
twice my height, yet I believe he would
have weighed but little more. You have
seen rank weeds that have grown up
in the darkness to reach the sun; if
you can imagine a man who had done
likewise, you can, perhaps, picture that
which I saw before me.
His legs at the thigh were no larger
than my arm, and his arms were but
half the size of my wrist, and jointed
twice instead of but once. He wore a
careless garment of some dirty yellow,
shaggy hide, and his skin, revealed on
feet and arms and face, was a terrible,
bloodless white; the dead white of a
fish’s belly. Maggot white. The white
of something that had never known
the sun.
The head was small and round, with
features that were a caricature of
man’s. His ears were huge, and had the
power of movement, for they cocked
forward as we entered the room. The
nose was not prominently arched, but
the nostrils were wide, and very thin,
as was his mouth, which was faintly
tinged with dusky blue, instead of
healthy red. At one time his eyes had
been nearly round, and, in proportion,
very large. Now they were but shadowy
pockets, mercifully covered by
shrunken, wrinkled lids that twitched
but did not lift.
He moved as we entered, and from
a reclining position, propped up
on the double elbows of one spidery
arm, he changed to a sitting position
that brought his head nearly to the
ceiling. He smiled sickeningly, and
a queer, sibilant whispering came from
the bluish lips.
“That is his way of talking,” explained
Bori Tulber. “His eyes, you
will note, have been gouged out. They
cannot stand the light; they prepared
their messenger carefully for his work,
you’ll see.”
He placed his menore upon his head,
and motioned me to do likewise. The
creature searched the floor with one
white, leathery hand, and finally located
his menore, which he adjusted
clumsily.
“You will have to be very attentive,”
explained my companion. “He expresses
himself in terms of pictures
only, of course, and his is not a highly
developed mind. I shall try to get him
to go over the entire story for us again,
if I can make him understand. Emanate
nothing yourself; he is easily confused.”
I nodded silently, my eyes fixed with
a sort of fascination upon the creature
from the darkness, and waited.
Back on the Ertak again. I called
all my officers together for a conference.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “we are confronted
with a problem of such gravity
that I doubt my ability to describe it
clearly.
“Briefly, this civilized, beautiful portion
of Antri is menaced by a terrible
fate. In the dark portion of this unhappy
world there live a people who
have the lust of conquest in their hearts—and
the means at hand with which to
wreck this world of perpetual sunlight.
“I have the ultimatum of this people
direct from their messenger. They want
a terrible tribute in the form of slaves.
These slaves would have to live in perpetual
darkness, and wait upon the
whims of the most monstrous beings
these eyes of mine have ever seen.
And the number of slaves demanded
would—as nearly as I could gather,
mean about a third of the entire population.
Further tribute in the form of
sufficient food to support these slaves
is also demanded.”
“But, in God’s name, sir,” burst forth
Croy, his eyes blazing, “by what means
do they, propose to inforce their infamous
demands?”
“By the power of darkness—and a
terrible cataclysm. Their wise men—and
it would seem that some of them
are not unversed in science—have discovered
a way to unbalance this world,
so that they can cause darkness to creep
over this land that has never known it.
And as darkness advances, these people
of the sun will be utterly helpless before
a race that loves darkness, and can
see in it like cats. That, gentlemen, is
that fate which confronts this world of
Antri!”
There was a ghastly silence for a
moment, and then Croy, always
impetuous, spoke up again.
“How do they propose to do this
thing sir?”, he asked hoarsely.
“With devilish simplicity. They have
a great canal dug nearly to the great
polar cap of ice. Should they complete
it, the hot waters of their seas will be
liberated upon this vast ice field, and
the warm waters will melt it quickly.
If you have not forgotten your lessons,
gentlemen, you will remember, since
most of you are of Earth, that our
scientists tell us our own world turned
over in much this same fashion, from
natural means, and established for itself
new poles. Is that not true?”
Grave, almost frightened nods travelled
around the little semicircle of
white, thoughtful faces.
“And is there nothing, sir, that we
can do?” asked Kincaide, my second
officer, in an awed whisper.
“That is the purpose of this conclave:
to determine what may be done.
We have our bombs and our rays, it
is true, but what is the power of this
one ship against the people of half a
world? And such a people!” I shuddered,
despite myself, at the memory
of that grinning creature in the cell
far below the floor of the council chamber.
“This city, and its thousands, we
might save, it is true—but not the
whole half of this world. And that
is the task the Council and its Master
have set before us.”
“Would it be possible to
frighten them?” asked Croy.
“I gather that they are not an advanced
race. Perhaps a show of power—the
rays—the atomic pistol—bombs— Call
it strategy, sir, or just plain bluff. It
seems the only chance.”
“You have heard the suggestion, gentlemen,”
I said. “Has anyone a better?”
“How does Mr. Croy plan to frighten
these people of the darkness?” asked
Kincaide, who was always practical.
“By going to their country, in this
ship, and then letting events take their
course,” replied Croy promptly. “Details
will have to be settled on the spot,
as I see it.”
“I believe Mr. Croy is right,” I decided.
“The messenger of these people
must be returned to his own kind; the
sooner the better. He has given me a
mental map of his country; I believe
that it will be possible for me to locate
the principal city, in which his ruler
lives. We will take him there, and
then—may God aid us gentlemen.”
“Amen,” nodded Croy, and the echo
of the word ran from lip to lip like
the prayer it was. “When do we
start?”
I hesitated for just an instant.
“Now,” I brought forth crisply. “Immediately.
We are gambling with the
fate of a world, a fine and happy people.
Let us throw the dice quickly, for
the strain of waiting will not help us.
Is that as you would wish it, gentlemen?”
“It is, sir!” came the grave chorus.
“Very well. Mr. Croy, please report
with a detail of ten men, to Bori Tulber,
and tell him of our decision.
Bring the messenger back with you.
The rest of you, gentlemen, to your
stations. Make any preparations you
may think advisable. Be sure that every
available exterior light is in readiness.
Let me be notified the moment the messenger
is on board and we are ready to
take off. Thank you, gentlemen!”
I hastened to my quarters and
brought the Ertak’s log down to the
minute, explaining in detail the course
of action we had decided upon, and the
reasons for it. I knew, as did all the
Ertak’s officers who had saluted so
crisply, and so coolly gone about the
business of carrying out my orders,
that we would return from our trip
to the dark side of Antri triumphant
or—not at all.
Even in these soft days, men still
respect the stern, proud motto of our
service: “Nothing Less Than Complete
Success.” The Special Patrol does what
it is ordered to do, or no man returns
to present excuses. That is a tradition
to bring tears of pride to the eyes of
even an old man, in whose hands there
is strength only for the wielding of a
pen. And I was young, in those days.
It was perhaps a quarter of an hour
when word came from the navigating
room that the messenger was aboard,
and we were ready to depart. I closed
the log, wondering, I remember, if I
would ever make another entry therein,
and, if not, whether the words I had
just inscribed would ever see the light
of day. The love of life is strong in
men so young. Then I hurried to the
navigating room and took charge.
Bori Tulber had furnished me with
large scale maps of the daylight portion
of Antri. From the information
conveyed to me by the messenger of
the people of darkness—the Chisee
they called themselves, as nearly as I
could get the sound—I rapidly
sketched in the map of the other side
of Antri, locating their principal city
with a small black circle.
Realising that the location of the
city we sought was only approximate,
we did not bother to work out exact
bearings. We set the Ertak on her
course at a height of only a few thousand
feet, and set out at low atmospheric
speed, anxiously watching for
the dim line of shadow that marked
the twilight zone, and the beginning
of what promised to be the last mission
of the Ertak and every man she carried
within her smooth, gleaming body.
“Twilight zone in view, sir,”
reported Croy at length.
“Thank you, Mr. Croy. Have all the
exterior lights and searchlights turned
on. Speed and course as at present,
for the time being.”
I picked up the twilight zone without
difficulty in the television disc, and at
full power examined the terrain.
The rich crops that fairly burst from
the earth of the sunlit portion of Antri
were not to be observed here. The
Antrians made no effort to till this
ground, and I doubt that it would have
been profitable to do so, even had they
wished to come so close to the darkness
they hated.
The ground seemed dank, and great
dark slugs moved heavily upon its
greasy surface. Here and there strange
pale growths grew in patches—twisted,
spotted growths that seemed somehow
unhealthy and poisonous.
I searched the country ahead, pressing
further and further into the line
of darkness that was swiftly approaching.
As the light of the sun faded, our
monstrous searchlights cut into the
gloom ahead, their great beams slashing
the shadows.
In the dark country I had expected
to find little if any vegetable growth.
Instead, I found that it was a veritable
jungle through which even our searchlight
rays could not pass.
How tall the growths of this jungle
might be, I could not tell, yet I had
the feeling that they were tall indeed.
They were not trees, these pale, weedy
arms that reached towards the dark
sky. They were soft and pulpy, and
without leaves; just long naked sickly
arms that divided and subdivided and
ended in little smooth stumps like amputated
limbs.
That there was some kind of activity
within the shelter of this weird jungle,
was evident enough, for I could catch
glimpses, now and then of moving
things. But what they might be, even
the searching eye of the television disc
could not determine.
One of our searchlight beams, waving
through the darkness like the
curious antenna of some monstrous insect,
came to rest upon a spot far ahead.
I followed the beam with the disc, and
bent closer, to make sure my eyes did
not deceive me.
I was looking at a vast cleared place
in the pulpy jungle—a cleared space in
the center of which there was a city.
A city built of black, sweating stone,
each house exactly like every other
house: tall, thin slices of stone, without
windows, chimneys or ornamentation
of any kind. The only break in
the walls was the slit-like door of each
house. Instead of being arranged along
streets crossing each other at right
angles, these houses were built in concentric
circles broken only by four
narrow streets then ran from the open
space in the center of the city to the
four points of the compass. Around
the entire city was an exceedingly high
wall built of and buttressed with the
black, sweating stone of which the
houses were constructed.
That it was a densely populated city
there was ample evidence. People—they
were creatures like the messenger;
that the Chisee are a people, despite
their terrible shape, is hardly
debatable—were running up and down
the four radial streets, and around the
curved connecting streets, in the wildest
confusion, their double-elbowed
arms flung across their eyes. But even
as I watched, the crowd thinned and
melted swiftly away, until the streets
of the queer, circular city were utterly
deserted.
“The city ahead is not the one we
are seeking, sir?” asked Croy,
who had evidently been observing the
scene through one of the smaller television
discs. “I take it that governing
city will be farther in the interior.”
“According to my rather sketchy information,
yes.” I replied. “However,
keep all the searchlight operators busy,
going over very bit of the country
within the reach of their beams. You
have men on all the auxiliary television
discs?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Any findings of interest
should be reported to me instantly.
And—Mr. Croy!”
“Yes, sir?”
“You might order, if you will, that
rations be served all men at their
posts.” Over such country as this, I
felt it would be wise to have every
man ready for an emergency. It was,
perhaps, as well that I issued this order.
It was perhaps half an hour after we
had passed the circular city when, far
ahead, I could see the pale, unhealthy
forest thinning out. A half dozen of
our searchlight beams played upon the
denuded area, and as I brought the television
disc to bear I saw that we were
approaching a vast swamp, in which
little pools of black water reflected the
dazzling light of our searching beams.
Nor was this all. Out of the swamp
a thousand strange, winged things were
rising: yellowish, bat-like things with
forked tails and fierce hooked beaks.
And like some obscene miasma from
that swamp, they rose and came
straight for the Ertak!
Instantly I pressed the attention
signal that warned every man on
the ship.
“All disintegrator rays in action at
once!” I barked into the transmitter.
“Broad beams, and full energy. Bird-like
creatures, dead ahead; do not cease
action until ordered!”
I heard the disintegrator ray generators
deepen their notes before I finished
speaking, and I smiled grimly,
turning to Correy.
“Slow down as quickly and as much
as possible, Mr. Correy,” I ordered.
“We have work to do ahead.”
He nodded, and gave the order to
the operating room; I felt the forward
surge that told me my order was being
obeyed, and turned my attention again
to the television disc.
The ray operators were doing their
work well. The search lights showed
the air streaked with fine siftings of
greasy dust, and these strange winged
creatures were disappearing by the
scores as the disintegrator rays beat
and played upon them.
But they came on gamely, fiercely.
Where there had been thousands, there
were but hundreds … scores …
dozens….
There were only five left. Three of
them disappeared at once, but the two
remaining came on unhesitatingly,
their dirty yellow bat-like wings flapping
heavily, their naked heads outstretched,
and hooked beaks snapping.
One of them disappeared in a little
sifting of greasy dust, and the same
ray dissolved one wing of the remaining
creature. He turned over suddenly,
the one good wing flapping wildly, and
tumbled towards the waiting swamp
that has spawned him. Then, as the
ray eagerly followed him, the last of
that hellish brood disappeared.
“Circle slowly, Mr. Correy,” I ordered.
I wanted to make sure there
were none of these terrible creatures
left. I felt that nothing so terrible
should be left alive—even in a world
of darkness.
Through the television disc I
searched the swamp. As I had
half suspected, the filthy ooze held the
young of this race of things: grub-like
creatures that flipped their heavy
bodies about in the slime, alarmed by
the light which searched them out.
“All disintegrator rays on the
swamp,” I ordered. “Sweep it from
margin to margin. Let nothing be left
alive there.”
I had a well trained crew. The disintegrator
rays massed themselves into
a marching wall of death, and swept
up and down the swamp as a plough
turns its furrows.
It was easy to trace their passage,
for behind them the swamp disappeared,
leaving in its stead row after
row of broad, dusty paths. When we
had finished there was no swamp: there
was only a naked area upon which
nothing lived, and upon which, for
many years, nothing would grow.
“Good work,” I commended the disintegrator
ray men. “Cease action.”
And then, to Correy, “Put her on her
course again, please.”
An hour went by. We passed several
more of the strange, damp circular cities,
differing from the first we
had seen only in the matter of size.
Another hour passed, and I became
anxious. If we were on our proper
course, and I had understood the Chisee
messenger correctly, we should be
very close to the governing city. We
should—
The waving beam of one of the
searchlights came suddenly to rest.
Three or four other beams followed it—and
then all the others.
“Large city to port, sir!” called Croy
excitedly.
“Thank you. I believe it is our destination.
Cut all searchlights except
the forward beam. Mr. Correy!”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can take her over visually now,
I believe. The forward searchlight
beam will keep our destination in view
for you. Set her down cautiously in
the center of the city in any suitable
place. And—remain at the controls
ready for any orders, and have the
operating room crew do likewise.”
“Yes, sir,” said Correy crisply.
With a tenseness I could not control,
I bent over the hooded television disc
and studied the mighty governing city
of the Chisee.
The governing city of the Chisee
was not unlike the others we had
seen, save that it was very much larger,
and had eight spoke-like streets radiating
from its center, instead of four.
The protective wall was both thicker
and higher.
There was another difference. Instead
of a great open space in the center
of the city, there was a central,
park-like space, in the middle of which
was a massive pile, circular in shape,
and built, like all the rest of the city,
of the black, sweating rock which
seemed to be the sole building material
of the Chisee.
We set the Ertak down close to the
big circular building, which we guessed—and
correctly—to be the seat of government.
I ordered the searchlight ray
to be extinguished the moment we
landed, and the ethon tubes that illuminated
our ship inside to be turned
off, so that we might accustom our
eyes as much as possible to darkness,
finding our way about with small ethon
tube flashlights.
With a small guard, I stood at the
forward exit of the Ertak and watched
the huge circular door back out on its
mighty threads, and finally swing to
one side on its massive gimbals. Croy—the
only officer with me—and I both
wore our menores, and carried full
expeditionary equipment, as did the
guard.
The Chisee messenger, grimacing
and talking excitedly in his sibilant,
whispering voice, crouched on all fours
(he could not stand in that small space)
and waited, three men of the guard on
either side of him. I placed his menore
on his head and gave him simple, forceful
orders, picturing them for him as
best I could:
“Go from this place and find others
of your kind. Tell them that we would
speak to them with things such as you
have upon your head. Run swiftly!”
“I will run,” he conveyed to me, “to
those great ones who sent me.” He
pictured them fleetingly. They were
creatures like himself, save that they
were elaborately dressed in fine skins
of several pale colors, and wore upon
their arms, between their two elbows,
broad circlets of carved metal which
I took to be emblems of power or
authority, since the chief of them all
wore a very broad band. Their faces
were much more intelligent than their
messenger had led me to expect, and
their eyes, very large and round, and
not at all human, were the eyes of
thoughtful, reasoning creatures.
Doubled on all fours, the Chisee
crept through the circular exit,
and straightened up. As he did so,
from out of the darkness a score or
more of his fellows rushed up, gathering
around him, and blocking the exit
with their reedy legs. We could hear
than talking excitedly in high-pitched,
squeaky whispers. Then, suddenly I
received an expression from the Chisee
who wore the menore:
“Those who are with me have come
from those in power. They say one
of you, and one only, is to come with
us to our big men who will learn,
through a thing such as I wear upon
my head, that which you wish to say
to them. You are to come quickly;
at once.”
“I will come,” I replied. “Have those
with you make way—”
A heavy hand fell upon my shoulder;
a voice spoke eagerly in my ear:
“Sir, you must not go!” It was Croy,
and his voice shook with feeling. “You
are in command of the Ertak; she, and
those in her need you. Let me go! I
insist, sir!”
I turned in the darkness, quickly and
angrily.
“Mr. Croy,” I said swiftly, “do you
realize that you are speaking to your
commanding officer?”
I felt his grip tighten on my arm
as the reproof struck home.
“Yes, sir,” he said doggedly. “I do.
But I repeat that your duty commands
you to remain here.”
“The duty of a commander in this
Service leads him to the place of greatest
danger, Mr. Croy,” I informed him.
“Then stay with your ship, sir!” he
pleaded, craftily. “This may be some
trick to get you away, so that they may
attack us. Please! Can’t you see that
I am right, sir?”
I thought swiftly. The earnestness
of the youngster had touched me. Beneath
the formality and the “sirs” there
was a real affection between us.
In the darkness I reached for his
hand; I found it and shook it solemnly—a
gesture of Earth which it is hard
to explain. It means many things.
“Go, then, Andy,” I said softly. “But
do not stay long. An hour at the
longest. If you are not back in that
length of time, we’ll come after you,
and whatever else may happen, you can
be sure that you will be well avenged.
The Ertak has not lost her stinger.”
“Thank you, John,” he replied. “Remember
that I shall wear my menore.
If I adjust it to full power, and you
do likewise, and stand without the shelter
of the Ertak’s metal hull, I shall be
able to communicate with you, should
there be any danger.” He pressed my
hand again, and strode through the exit
out into the darkness, which was lit
only by a few distant stars.
The long, slim legs closed in around
him; like a pigmy guarded by the
skeletons of giants he was led quickly
away.
The minutes dragged by. There
was a nervous tension on the ship,
the like of which I have experienced
not more than a dozen times in all my
years.
No one spoke aloud. Now and again
one man would matter uneasily to another;
there would be a swift, muttered
response, and silence again. We were
waiting—waiting.
Ten minutes went by. Twenty.
Thirty.
Impatiently I paced up and down
before the exit, the guards at their
posts, ready to obey any orders instantly.
Forty-five minutes. I walked through
the exit; stepped out onto the cold,
hard earth.
I could see, behind me, the shadowy
bulk of the Ertak. Before me, a
black, shapeless blot against the star-sprinkled
sky, was the great administrative
building of the Chisee. And
in there, somewhere, was Anderson
Croy. I glanced down at the luminous
dial of my watch. Fifty minutes. In
ten minutes more—
“John Hanson!” My name reached
me, faintly but clearly, through the
medium of my menore. “This is Croy.
Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” I replied instantly. “Are you
safe?”
“I am safe. All is well. Very well.
Will you promise me now to receive
what I am about to send, without interruption?”
“Yes,” I replied, thoughtlessly and
eagerly. “What is it?”
“I have had a long conference with
the chief or head of the Chisee,”
explained Croy rapidly. “He is very
intelligent, and his people are much
further advanced than we thought.
“Through some form of communication,
he has learned of the fight with
the weird birds; it seems that they are—or
were—the most dreaded of all the
creatures of this dark world. Apparently
we got the whole brood of them,
and this chief, whose name, I gather,
is Wieschien, or something like that,
is naturally much impressed.
“I have given him a demonstration
or two with my atomic pistol and the
flashlight—these people are fairly
stricken by a ray of light directly in
the eyes—and we have reached very
favorable terms.
“I am to remain here as chief bodyguard
and adviser, of which he has
need, for all is not peaceful, I gather,
in this kingdom of darkness. In return,
he is to give up his plans to subjugate
the rest of Antri; he has sworn
to do this by what is evidently, to him,
a very sacred oath, witnessed solemnly
by the rest of his council.
“Under the circumstances, I believe
he will do what he says; in any case,
the great canal will be filled in, and
the Antrians will have plenty of time
to erect a great series of disintegrator
ray stations along the entire twilight
zone, using the broad fan rays to form
a solid wall against which the Chisee
could not advance even did they, at
some future date, carry out their plans.
The worst possible result then would
be that the people in the sunlit portion
would have to migrate from certain
sections, and perhaps would have day
and night, alternately, as do other
worlds.
“This is the agreement we have
reached; it is the only one that will
save this world. Do you approve, sir?”
“No! Return immediately, and we
will show the Chisee that they cannot
hold an officer of the Special Patrol
as a hostage. Make haste!”
“It’s no go, sir,” came the reply instantly.
“I threatened them first.
I explained what our disintegrator rays
would do, and Wieschien laughed at
me.
“This city is built upon great subterranean
passages that lead to many
hidden exits. If we show the least
sign of hostility the work will be resumed
on the canal, and, before we can
locate the spot, and stop the work, the
damage will be done.
“This is our only chance, sir, to make
this expedition a complete success.
Permit me to judge this fact from the
evidence I have before me. Whatever
sacrifice there is to make, I make gladly.
Wieschien asks that you depart at
once, and in peace, and I know this is
the only course. Good-by, sir; convey
my salutations to my other friends upon
the old Ertak, and elsewhere. And
now, lest my last act as an officer of
the Special Patrol Service be to refuse
to obey the commands of my superior
officer, I am removing the menore.
Good-by!”
I tried to reach him again, but there
was no response.
Gone! He was gone! Swallowed up
in darkness and in silence!
Dazed, shaken to the very foundation
of my being, I stood there
between the shadowy bulk of the Ertak
and the towering mass of the great silent
pile that was the seat of government
in this strange land of darkness,
and gazed up at the dark sky above
me. I am not ashamed, now, to say that
hot tears trickled down my cheeks, nor
that as I turned back to the Ertak, my
throat was so gripped by emotion that
I could not speak.
I ordered the exit closed with a wave
of my hand; in the navigating room I
said but four words: “We depart at
once.”
At the third meal of the day I
gathered my officers about me and told
them, as quickly and as gently as I
could, of the sacrifice one of their number
had made.
It was Kincaide who, when I had
finished, rose slowly and made reply.
“Sir,” he said quietly, “We had a
friend. Some day, he might have died.
Now he will live forever in the records
of the Service, in the memory of a
world, and in the hearts of those who
had the honor to serve with him. Could
he—or we—wish more?”
Amid a strange silence he sat down
again, and there was not an eye among
us that was dry.
I hope that the snappy young officer
who visited me the other day
reads this little account of bygone
times.
Perhaps it will make clear to him
how we worked, in those nearly forgotten
days, with the tools we had at
hand. They were not the perfect tools
of to-day, but what they lacked, we
somehow made up.
That fine old motto of the Service,
“Nothing Less Than Complete Success,”
we passed on unsullied to those
who came after us.
I hope these youngsters of to-day
may do as well.
IN THE NEXT ISSUE
THE TENTACLES FROM BELOW
A Complete Novelette of An American Submarine’s Dramatic Raid on Marauding “Machine-Fish” of the Ocean Floor
By Anthony Gilmore
PHALANXES OF ATLANS
Beginning a Thrilling Two-Part Novel of a Strange Hidden Civilisation
By F. V. W. Mason
THE BLACK LAMP
Another of Dr. Bird’s Amazing Exploits
By Captain S. P. Meek
THE PIRATE PLANET
The Conclusion of the Splendid Current Novel
By Charles W. Diffin
They tilted her rudders and dove to the abysm below.
The Sunken Empire
By H. Thompson Rich
Concerning the strange adventures of Professor
Stevens with the Antillians on the
floors of the mysterious Sargasso Sea.
“Then you really expect to
find the lost continent of Atlantis,
Professor?”
Martin Stevens lifted his
bearded face sternly to the reporter
who was interviewing him in his study
aboard the torpedo-submarine Nereid,
a craft of his own
invention, as she
lay moored at her
Brooklyn wharf,
on an afternoon
in October.
“My dear young man,” he said, “I
am not even going to look for it.”
The aspiring journalist—Larry Hunter
by name—was properly abashed.
“But I thought,” he insisted nevertheless,
“that you said you were going
to explore the ocean floor under the
Sargasso Sea?”
“And so I did.” Professor Stevens
admitted, a smile moving that gray
beard now and his blue eyes twinkling
merrily. “But the Sargasso, an area
almost equal to Europe, covers other
land as well—land
of far more
recent submergence
than Atlantis,
which foundered
in 9564 B. C., according to Plato.
What I am going to look for is this
newer lost continent, or island rather—namely,
the great island of Antillia,
of which the West Indies remain above
water to-day.”
“Antillia?” queried Larry Hunter,
wonderingly. “I never heard of it.”
Again the professor regarded his interviewer
sternly.
“There are many things you have
never heard of, young man,” he told
him. “Antillia may be termed the missing
link between Atlantis and America.
It was there that Atlantean culture
survived after the appalling catastrophe
that wiped out the Atlantean
homeland, with its seventy million inhabitants,
and it was in the colonies
the Antillians established in Mexico
and Peru, that their own culture in
turn survived, after Antillia too had
sunk.”
“My Lord! You don’t mean to say
the Mayas and Incas originated on that
island of Antillia?”
“No, I mean to say they originated
on the continent of Atlantis, and that
Antillia was the stepping stone to the
New World, where they built the
strange pyramids we find smothered in
the jungle—even as thousands of years
before the Atlanteans established colonies
in Egypt and founded the earliest
dynasties of pyramid-building
Pharaohs.”
Larry was pushing his pencil
furiously.
“Whew!” he gasped. “Some story,
Professor!”
“To the general public, perhaps,” was
the reply. “But to scholars of antiquity,
these postulates are pretty well
known and pretty well accepted. It
remains but to get concrete evidence,
in order to prove them to the world at
large—and that is the object of my
expedition.”
More hurried scribbling, then:
“But, say—why don’t you go direct
to Atlantis and get the real dope?”
“Because that continent foundered
so long ago that it is doubtful if any
evidence would have withstood the
ravages of time,” Professor Stevens
explained, “whereas Antillia went
down no earlier than 200 B. C., archaeologists
agree.”
“That answers my question,” declared
Larry, his admiration for this
doughty graybeard rising momentarily.
“And now, Professor, I wonder if
you’d be willing to say a few words
about this craft of yours?”
“Cheerfully, if you think it would
interest anyone. What would you care
to have me say?”
“Well, in the first place, what does
the name Nereid mean?”
“Sea-nymph. The derivation is from
the Latin and Greek, meaning daughter
of the sea-god Nereus. Appropriate,
don’t you think?”
“Swell. And why do you call it a
torpedo-submarine? How does it differ
from the common or navy variety?”
Professor Stevens smiled.
It was like asking what was the
difference between the sun and the
moon, when about the only point of resemblance
they had was that they were
both round. Nevertheless, he enumerated
some of the major modifications
he had developed.
Among them, perhaps the most radical,
was its motive power, which was
produced by what he called a vacuo-turbine—a
device that sucked in the
water at the snout of the craft and expelled
it at the tail, at the time
purifying a certain amount for drinking
purposes and extracting sufficient
oxygen to maintain a healthful atmosphere
while running submerged.
Then, the structure of the Nereid was
unique, he explained, permitting it to
attain depths where the pressure
would crush an ordinary submarine,
while mechanical eyes on the television
principle afforded a view in all
directions, and locks enabling them to
leave the craft at will and explore the
sea-bottom were provided.
This latter feat they would accomplish
in special suits, designed on the
same pneumatic principle as the torpedo
itself and capable of sustaining
sufficient inflation to resist whatever
pressures might be encountered, as well
as being equipped with vibratory sending
and receiving apparatus, for maintaining
communication with those left
aboard.
All these things and more Professor
Stevens outlined, as Larry’s
pencil flew, admitting that he had
spent the past ten years and the best
part of his private fortune in developing
his plans.
“But you’ll get it all back, won’t
you? Aren’t there all sorts of Spanish
galleons and pirate barques laden with
gold supposed to be down there?”
“Undoubtedly,” was the calm reply.
“But I am not on a treasure hunt,
young man. If I find one single sign
of former life, I shall be amply rewarded.”
Whereupon the young reporter regarded
the subject of his interview
with fresh admiration, not unmingled
with wonder. In his own hectic world,
people had no such scorn of gold. Gee,
he’d sure like to go along! The professor
could have his old statues or
whatever he was looking for. As for
himself, he’d fill up his pockets with
Spanish doubloons and pieces of eight!
Larry was snapped out of his trance
by a light knock on the door, which
opened to admit a radiant girl in
creamy knickers and green cardigan.
“May I come in, daddy?” she inquired,
hesitating, as she saw he was
not alone.
“You seem to be in already, my dear,”
the professor told her, rising from his
desk and stepping forward.
Then, turning to Larry, who had also
risen, he said:
“Mr. Hunter, this is my daughter,
Diane, who is also my secretary.”
“I am pleased to meet you, Miss
Stevens,” said Larry, taking her hand.
And he meant it—for almost anyone
would have been pleased to meet Diane,
with her tawny gold hair, warm olive
cheeks and eyes bluer even than her
father’s and just as twinkling, just as
intelligent.
“She will accompany the expedition
and take stenographic notes of everything
we observe,” added her father, to
Larry’s amazement.
“What?” he declared. “You mean to
say that—that—”
“Of course he means to say that I’m
going, if that’s what you mean to say,
Mr. Hunter,” Diane assured him. “Can
you think of any good reason why I
shouldn’t go, when girls are flying
around the world and everything else?”
Even had Larry been able to think
of any good reason, he wouldn’t have
mentioned it. But as a matter of fact,
he had shifted quite abruptly to an entirely
different line of thought. Diane,
he was thinking—Diana, goddess of the
chase, the huntress! And himself,
Larry Hunter—the hunter and the
huntress!
Gee, but he’d like to go! What an
adventure, hunting around together on
the bottom of the ocean!
What a wild dream, rather, he
concluded when his senses returned.
For after all, he was only a
reporter, fated to write about other
people’s adventures, not to participate
in them. So he put away his pad and
pencil and prepared to leave.
But at the door he paused.
“Oh, yes—one more question. When
are you planning to leave, Professor?”
At that, Martin Stevens and his
daughter exchanged a swift glance.
Then, with a smile, Diane said:
“I see no reason why we shouldn’t
tell him, daddy.”
“But we didn’t tell the reporters
from the other papers, my dear,” protested
her father.
“Then suppose we give Mr. Hunter
the exclusive story,” she said, transferring
her smile to Larry now. “It
will be what you call a—a scoop. Isn’t
that it?”
“That’s it.”
She caught her father’s acquiescing
nod. “Then here’s your scoop, Mr.
Hunter. We leave to-night.”
To-night! This was indeed a scoop!
If he hurried, he could catch the late
afternoon editions with it.
“I—I certainly thank you, Miss
Stevens!” he exclaimed. “That’ll make
the front page!”
As he grasped the door-knob, he
added, turning to her father:
“And I want to thank you too, Professor—and
wish you good luck!”
Then, with a hasty handshake, and a
last smile of gratitude for Diane, he
flung open the door and departed, unconscious
that two young blue eyes
followed his broad shoulders wistfully
till they disappeared from view.
But Larry was unaware that he had
made a favorable impression on
Diane. He felt it was the reverse. As
he headed toward the subway, that
vivid blond goddess of the chase was
uppermost in his thoughts.
Soon she’d be off in the Nereid, bound
for the mysterious regions under the
Sargasso Sea, while in a few moments
he’d be in the subway, bound under the
prosaic East River for New York.
No—damned if he would!
Suddenly, with a wild inspiration,
the young reporter altered his course,
dove into the nearest phone booth and
got his city editor on the wire.
Scoop? This was just the first installment.
He’d get a scoop that would
fill a book!
And his city editor tacitly O. K.’d
the idea.
With the result that when the Nereid
drew away from her wharf that night,
on the start of her unparalleled voyage,
Larry Hunter was a stowaway.
The place where he had succeeded
in secreting himself was a small
storeroom far aft, on one of the lower
decks. There he huddled in the darkness,
while the slow hours wore away,
hearing only the low hum of the craft’s
vacuo-turbine and the flux of water
running through her.
From the way she rolled and pitched,
he judged she was still proceeding
along on the surface.
Having eaten before he came aboard,
he felt no hunger, but the close air and
the dark quarters brought drowsiness.
He slept.
When he awoke it was still dark, of
course, but a glance at his luminous
wrist-watch told him it was morning
now. And the fact that the rolling and
pitching had ceased made him believe
they were now running submerged.
The urge for breakfast asserting itself,
Larry drew a bar of chocolate
from his pocket and munched on it.
But this was scanty fare for a healthy
young six-footer, accustomed to a liberal
portion of ham and eggs. Furthermore,
the lack of coffee made him realize
that he was getting decidedly
thirsty. The air, moreover, was getting
pretty bad.
“All in all, this hole wasn’t exactly
intended for a bedroom!” he reflected
with a wry smile.
Taking a chance, he opened the door
a crack and sat there impatiently, while
the interminable minutes ticked off.
The Nereid’s turbine was humming
now with a high, vibrant note that indicated
they must be knocking off the
knots at a lively clip. He wondered
how far out they were, and how far
down.
Lord, there’d be a riot when he
showed up! He wanted to wait till
they were far enough on their way so
it would be too much trouble to turn
around and put him ashore.
But by noon his powers of endurance
were exhausted. Flinging open
the door, he stepped out into the corridor,
followed it to a companionway and
mounted the ladder to the deck above.
There he was assailed by a familiar
and welcome odor—food!
Trailing it to its origin, he came to
a pair of swinging doors at the end of
a cork-paved passage. Beyond, he saw
on peering through, was the mess-room,
and there at the table, among a
number of uniformed officers, sat Professor
Stevens and Diane.
A last moment Larry stood there,
looking in on them. Then, drawing a
deep breath, he pushed wide the swinging
doors and entered with a cheery:
“Good morning, folks! Hope I’m not
too late for lunch!”
Varying degrees of surprise
greeted this dramatic appearance.
The officers stared, Diane gasped, her
father leaped to has feet with a cry.
“That reporter! Why—why, what
are you doing here, young man?”
“Just representing the press.”
Larry tried to make it sound nonchalant
but he was finding it difficult
to bear up under this barrage of disapproving
eyes—particularly two very
young, very blue ones.
“So that is the way you reward us
for giving you an exclusive story, is
it?” Professor Stevens’ voice was
scathing. “A representative of the
press! A stowaway, rather—and as
such you will be treated!”
He turned to one of his officers.
“Report to Captain Petersen that we
have a stowaway aboard and order him
to put about at once.”
He turned to another.
“See that Mr. Hunter is taken below
and locked up. When we reach New
York, he will be handed over to the
police.”
“But daddy!” protested Diane, as
they rose to comply, her eyes softening
now. “We shouldn’t be too severe with
Mr. Hunter. After all, he is probably
doing only what his paper ordered him
to.”
Gratefully Larry turned toward
his defender. But he couldn’t
let that pass.
“No, I’m acting only on my own
initiative,” he said. “No one told me to
come.”
For he couldn’t get his city editor
involved, and after all it was his own
idea.
“You see!” declared Professor
Stevens. “He admits it is his own doing.
It is clear he has exceeded his
authority, therefore, and deserves no
sympathy.”
“But can’t you let me stay, now that
I’m here?” urged Larry. “I know
something about boats. I’ll serve as a
member of the crew—anything.”
“Impossible. We have a full complement.
You would be more of a
hindrance than a help. Besides, I do
not care to have the possible results of
this expedition blared before the public.”
“I’ll write nothing you do not approve.”
“I have no time to edit your writings,
young man. My own, will occupy me
sufficiently. So it is useless. You are
only wasting your breath—and mine.”
He motioned for his officers to carry
out his orders.
But before they could move to do so,
in strode a lean, middle-aged Norwegian
Larry sensed must be Captain
Petersen himself, and on his weathered
face was an expression of such gravity
that it was obvious to everyone something
serious had happened.
Ignoring Larry, after one brief
look of inquiry that was answered
by Professor Stevens, he reported
swiftly what he had to say.
While cruising full speed at forty
fathoms, with kite-aerial out, their
wireless operator had received a radio
warning to turn back. Answering on
its call-length, he had demanded to
know the sender and the reason for the
message, but the information had been
declined, the warning merely being repeated.
“Was it a land station or a ship at
sea?” asked the professor.
“Evidently the latter,” was the reply.
“By our radio range-finder, we determined
the position at approximately
latitude 27, longitude 65.”
“But that, Captain, is in the very
area we are headed for.”
“And that, Professor, makes it all the
more singular.”
“But—well, well! This is indeed peculiar!
And I had been on the point
of turning back with our impetuous
young stowaway. What would you
suggest, sir?”
Captain Petersen meditated, while
Larry held his breath.
“To turn back,” he said at length, in
his clear, precise English, “would in
my opinion be to give the laugh to
someone whose sense of humor is already
too well developed.”
“Exactly!” agreed Professor Stevens,
as Larry relaxed in relief. “Whoever
this practical joker is, we will show
him he is wasting his talents—even
though it means carrying a supernumerary
for the rest of the voyage.”
“Well spoken!” said the captain.
“But as far as that is concerned, I think
I can keep Mr. Hunter occupied.”
“Then take him, and welcome!”
Whereupon, still elated but now
somewhat uneasy, Larry accompanied
Captain Petersen from the mess-room;
started to, that is. But at a glance of
sympathy from Diane, he dared call
out:
“Say—hold on, folks! I haven’t had
lunch yet!”
When young Larry Hunter reported
to the captain of the
Nereid, after this necessary meal, he
found that the craft had returned to
the surface.
Assigned a pair of powerful binoculars,
he was ordered to stand watch in
the conning-tower and survey the horizon
in every direction, in an effort to
sight the vessel that had sent out that
mysterious radio, but though he cast
his good brown eyes diligently through
those strong lenses, he saw not so much
as a smoke tuft upon the broad, gray-blue
surface of the hazy Atlantic.
Gradually, however, as the afternoon
wore away, something else came in
view. Masses of brownish seaweed,
supported by small, berry-like bladders,
began drifting by. Far apart at
first, they began getting more and more
dense, till at last, with a thrill, he realized
that they were drawing into that
strange area known as the Sargasso
Sea.
Shortly after this realization dawned,
he was ordered below, and as the tropic
sun was sinking over that eery floating
tombstone, which according to Professor
Stevens marked a nation’s grave,
the Nereid submerged.
Down she slid, a hundred fathoms or
more, on a long, even glide that took
her deep under that veiling brown
blanket.
In the navigating room now, Larry
stood with the captain, the professor
and Diane, studying an illuminated
panel on which appeared a cross of five
squares, like a box opened out.
The central square reproduced the
scene below, while those to left and
right depicted it from port and starboard,
and those to front and rear revealed
the forward and aft aspects of
the panorama, thus affording a clear
view in every direction.
This, then, was the television device
Professor Stevens had referred to the
previous afternoon, its mechanical eyes
enabling then to search every square
inch of those mysterious depths, as
they cruised along.
It was the central square that occupied
their attention chiefly, however,
as they stood studying the panel.
While the others represented merely
an unbroken vista of greenish water,
this one showed the sea floor as clearly
as though they had been peering down
into a shallow lagoon through a glass-bottomed
boat, though it must have
been a quarter of a mile below their
cruising level.
A wonderful and fearsome sight it
was to Larry: like something seen in a
nightmare—a fantastic desert waste of
rocks and dunes, with here and there a
yawning chasm whose ominous depths
their ray failed to penetrate, and now
and then a jutting plateau that would
appear on the forward square and
cause Captain Petersen to elevate their
bow sharply.
But more thrilling than this was
their first glimpse of a sunken ship—a
Spanish galleon, beyond a doubt!
There she lay, grotesquely on her
side, half rotted, half buried in the
sand, but still discernible. And to
Larry’s wildly racing imagination, a
flood of gold and jewels seemed to pour
from her ruined coffers.
Turning to Diane, he saw that
her eyes too were flashing with intense
excitement.
“Say!” he exclaimed. “Why don’t
we stop and look her over? There may
be a fortune down there!”
Professor Stevens promptly vetoed
the suggestion, however.
“I must remind you, young man,” he
said severely, “that this is not a treasure
hunt.”
Whereupon Larry subsided; outwardly,
at least. But when presently
the central square revealed another and
then another sunken ship, it was all he
could do to contain himself.
Now, suddenly, Diane cried out:
“Oh, daddy, look! There’s a modern
ship! A—a freighter, isn’t it?”
“A collier, I would say,” was her
father’s calm reply. “Rather a large
one, too. Cyclops, possibly. She disappeared
some years ago, en route
from the Barbados to Norfolk. Or
possibly it is any one of a dozen other
steel vessels that have vanished from
these seas in recent times. The area
of the Sargasso, my dear, is known as
‘The Port of Missing Ships.’”
“But couldn’t we drop down and
make sure which ship it is?” she
pleaded, voicing the very thought
Larry had been struggling to suppress.
At the professor’s reply, however, he
was glad he had kept quiet.
“We could, of course,” was his gentle
though firm rebuke, “but if we stopped
to solve the mystery of every sunken
ship we shall probably see during this
cruise, we would have time for nothing
else. Nevertheless, my dear, you may
take a short memorandum of the location
and circumstances, in the present
instance.”
Whereupon he dictated briefly, while
Larry devoted his attention once more
to the central square.
Suddenly, beyond a dark pit that
seemed to reach down into the
very bowels of the earth, rose an abrupt
plateau—and on one of its nearer
elevations, almost directly under then,
loomed a monumental four-sided
mound.
“Say—hold on!” called Larry. “Look
at that, Professor! Isn’t that a building
of some kind?”
Martin Stevens looked up, glanced
skeptically toward the panel. But one
glimpse at what that central square revealed,
and his skepticism vanished.
“A building?” he cried in triumph.
“A building indeed! It is a pyramid,
young man!”
“Good Lord!”
“Oh, daddy! Really?”
“Beyond a doubt! And look—there
are two other similar structures, only
smaller!”
Struggling for calm, he turned to
Captain Petersen, who had taken his
eyes from the forward square and was
peering down as well upon those singular
mounds.
“Stop! Descend!” was his exultant
command. “This is my proof! We
have discovered Antillia!”
Swiftly the Nereid dropped to
that submerged plateau.
In five minutes, her keel was resting
evenly on the smooth sand beside the
largest of the three pyramids.
Professor Stevens then announced
that he would make a preliminary investigation
of the site at once.
“For, otherwise, I for one would be
quite unable to sleep tonight!” declared
the graybeard, with a boyish
chuckle.
He added that Diane would accompany
him.
At this latter announcement, Larry’s
heart sank. He had hoped against hope
that he might be invited along with
them.
But once again his champion came to
his aid.
“We really ought to let Mr. Hunter
come with us, daddy, don’t you think?”
she urged, noting his disappointment.
“After all, it was he who made the discovery.”
“Very true,” said her father, “but I
had not thought it necessary for anyone
to accompany us. In the event
anyone does, Captain Petersen should
have that honor.”
But this honor the captain declined.
“If you don’t mind, sir, I’d prefer to
stay with the ship,” he said, quietly.
“I haven’t forgotten that radio warning.”
“But surely you don’t think anyone
can molest us down here?” scoffed the
professor.
“No, but I’d prefer to stay with the
ship just the same, sir, if you don’t
mind.”
“Very well”—with a touch of pique.
“Then you may come along if you care
to, Mr. Hunter.”
If he cared to!
“Thanks, Professor!” he said with a
grateful look toward Diane. “I’d be
keen to!”
So he accompanied them below,
where they donned their pressure-suits—rubber
affairs rather less cumbersome
than ordinary deep-sea diving
gear, reinforced with steel wire and
provided with thick glass goggles and
powerful searchlights, in addition to
their vibratory communication apparatus
and other devices that were explained
to Larry.
When he had mastered their operation,
which was rendered simple by reason
of the fact that they were so nearly
automatic, the trio stepped into a lock
on the floor of the ship and Professor
Stevens ordered them to couple their
suits to air-valve connections on the
wall, at the same time admitting water
by opening another valve.
Swiftly the lock flooded, while their
suits inflated.
“All right?” came his vibratory
query.
“Right!” they both answered.
“Then stand by for the heavy pressure.”
Wider now he opened the water-valve,
letting the ocean in, while at the
same time their suits continued inflating
through their air-valve connections.
To his surprise, Larry found himself
no more inconvenienced by the
pressure than he had been from the moment
the submarine dove to its present
depth. Indeed, most of the air that was
coming into his suit was filling the
reinforced space between its inner and
outer layers, much as the Nereid held
air under pressure between her two
thick shells.
“All right now?” called out the professor’s
vibrator.
“Right!” they called back again.
“Then uncouple your air-valve connections
and make ready.”
They did so; and he likewise.
Then, advancing to a massive door
like that of a vault, he flung back its
powerful clamps, dragged it open—and
there beyond, its pressure equaled by
that within the lock, loomed the black
tide of the ocean bottom.
Awed by this solemn sight, tingling
with a sense of unparalleled
adventure, Larry stood there a
moment, peering out over the threshold
of that untrodden world.
Then he followed Diane and her
father into its beckoning mystery….
Their searchlights cutting bright
segments into the dark, they proceeded
toward the vast mound that towered
ahead, pushing through a weird realm
of phosphorescent fish and other marine
creatures.
As they neared it, any possible doubt
that it was in fact a pyramid vanished.
Corroded by the action of salt water
and covered with the incrustations of
centuries, it nevertheless presented unmistakable
evidence of human construction,
rising in steps of massive
masonry to a summit shadowy in the
murk above.
As Larry stood gazing upon that
mighty proof that this submerged
plateau had once stood forth proudly
above the sea, he realized that he was
a party to one of the most profound
discoveries of the ages. What a furore
this would make when he reported it
back to his New York paper!
But New York seemed remote indeed,
now. Would they ever get back?
What if anything went wrong with
their pressure-suits—or if they should
become lost?
He glanced back uneasily, but there
gleamed the reassuring lights of the
Nereid, not a quarter of a mile away.
Diane and her father were now
rounding a corner of the pyramid and
he followed them, his momentary
twinge of anxiety gone.
For some moments, Professor Stevens
prowled about without comment,
examining the huge basal blocks
of the structure and glancing up its
sloping sides.
“You see, I was right!” he declared
at length. “This is not only a man-made
edifice but a true pyramid, embodying
the same architectural principles
as the Mayan and Egyptian forms.
We see before us the visible evidence
of a sunken empire—the missing link
between Atlantis and America.”
No comments greeted this profound
announcement and the professor continued:
“This structure appears to be similar
in dimensions with that of the pyramid
of Xochicalco, in Mexico, which in
turn approximates that of the “Sacred
Hill” of Atlantis, mentioned by Plato,
and which was the prototype of both
the Egyptian and Mayan forms. It was
here the Antillians, as the Atlanteans
had taught them to do, worshipped
their grim gods and performed the human
sacrifices they thought necessary
to appease them. And it was here, too,
if I am not mistaken, that—”
Suddenly his vibratory discourse was
broken into by a sharp signal from the
submarine:
“Pardon interruption! Hurry back!
We are attacked!”
At this, the trio stood rigid.
“Captain Petersen! Captain Petersen!”
Larry heard the professor call.
“Speak up! Give details! What has
happened?”
But an ominous silence greeted the
query.
Another moment they stood there,
thoroughly dismayed now. Then came
the professor’s swift command:
“Follow me—quickly!”
He was already in motion, retracing
his steps as fast as his bulky suit would
permit. But as he rounded the corner
of the pyramid, they saw him pause,
stand staring. And as they drew up,
they in turn paused; stood staring, too.
With sinking hearts, they saw that
the Nereid was gone.
Stunned by this disaster, they
stood facing one another—three
lone human beings, on the bottom of
the Atlantic ocean, their sole means of
salvation gone.
Professor Stevens was the first to
speak.
“This is unbelievable!” he said. “I
cannot credit it. We must have lost
our senses.”
“Or our bearings!” added Diane,
more hopefully. “Suppose we look
around the other side.”
As for Larry, a darker suspicion
flashed through his mind. Captain
Petersen! Had he seized his opportunity
and led the crew to mutiny, in
the hope of converting the expedition
into a treasure hunt? Was that the
reason he had been so willing to remain
behind?
He kept his suspicion to himself,
however, and accompanied Diane and
her father on a complete circuit of the
pyramid; but, as he feared, there was
no sign of the Nereid anywhere. The
craft had vanished as completely as
though the ocean floor had opened and
swallowed her up.
But no, not as completely as that!
For presently the professor, who had
proceeded to the site where they left
the craft resting on the sand, called
out excitedly:
“Here—come here! There are tracks!
Captain Petersen was right! They
were attacked!”
Hurrying to the scene, they saw before
them the plain evidences of a
struggle. The ocean bottom was
scuffed and stamped, as though by
many feet, and a clear trail showed
where the craft had finally been
dragged away.
Obviously there was but one thing to
do and they did it. After a brief conference,
they turned and followed the
trail.
It led off over the plateau a quarter
mile or more, in an eastward direction,
terminating at length beside one
of the smaller pyramids—and there lay
the Nereid, apparently unharmed.
But her lights were out and there
came no answer to their repeated calls,
so they judged she must be empty.
What had happened to Captain
Petersen and his crew? What strange
sub-sea enemy had overcome them?
What was now their fate?
Unanswerable question! But one
thing was certain. Larry had misjudged
the captain in suspecting him
of mutiny. He was sorry for this and
resolved he would make amends by doing
all in his power to rescue him and
his men, if they were still living.
Meanwhile his own plight, and that
of Diane and her father, was critical.
What was to be done?
Suddenly, as all three stood there debating
that question, Professor Stevens
uttered an exclamation and strode toward
the pyramid. Following him
with their eyes, they saw him pass
through an aperture where a huge block
of stone had been displaced—and disappear
within.
The next moment they had joined
him, to find themselves in a small flooded
chamber at whose far end a narrow
gallery sloped upward at a sharp angle.
The floor and walls were tiled, they
noted, and showed none of the corrosion
of the exterior surfaces. Indeed,
so immaculate was the room that it
might have been occupied but yesterday.
As they stood gazing around in wonder,
scarcely daring to draw the natural
inferences of this phenomena, there
came a rasping sound, and, turning toward
the entrance, they saw a massive
section of masonry descend snugly into
place.
They were trapped!
Standing there tense, speechless,
they waited, wondering what
would be the next move of this strange
enemy who held them now so surely
in his power.
Nor had they long to wait.
Almost immediately, there issued a
gurgling sound from the inclined gallery,
and turning their eyes in the direction
of this new phenomena, they
saw that the water level was receding,
as though under pressure from above.
“Singular!” muttered Professor Stevens.
“A sort of primitive lock. It
seems incredible that human creatures
could exist down here, but such appears
to be the case.”
Larry had no desire to dispute the
assumption, nor had Diane. They
stood there as people might in the imminence
of the supernatural, awaiting
they knew not what.
Swiftly the water receded.
Now it was scarcely up to their
waists, now plashing about their ankles,
and now the room was empty.
The next moment, there sounded a
rush of feet—and down the gallery
came a swarm of the strangest beings
any of them had ever seen.
They were short, thin, almost emaciated,
with pale, pinched faces and
pasty, half-naked bodies. But they
shimmered with ornaments of gold and
jade, like some strange princes from
the realm of Neptune—or rather, like
Aztec chieftains of the days of Cortes,
thought Larry.
Blinking in the glare of the searchlights,
they clamored around their captives,
touching their pressure-suits half
in awe and chattering among themselves.
Then one of them, larger and more
regally clad than the rest, stepped
up and gestured toward the balcony.
“They obviously desire us to accompany
them above,” said the professor,
“and quite as obviously we have little
choice in the matter, so I suggest we
do so.”
“Check!” said Larry.
“And double-check!” added Diane.
So they started up, preceded by a
handful of their captors and followed
by the main party.
The gallery seemed to be leading toward
the center of the pyramid, but
after a hundred feet or so it turned and
continued up at a right angle, turning
twice more before they arrived at
length in another stone chamber, smaller
than the one below.
Here their guides paused and waited
for the main party.
There followed another conference,
whereupon their leader stepped up
again, indicating this time that they
were to remove their suits.
At this, Professor Stevens balked.
“It is suicide!” he declared. “The
air to which they are accustomed here
is doubtless at many times our own
atmospheric pressure.”
“But I don’t see that there’s anything
to do about it,” said Larry, as their
captors danced about them menacingly.
“I for one will take a chance!”
And before they could stop him, he
had pressed the release-valve, emitting
the air from his suit—slowly, at first,
then more and more rapidly, as no ill
effects seemed to result.
Finally, flinging off the now deflated
suit, he stepped before them in his
ordinary clothes, calling with a smile:
“Come on out, folks—the air’s fine!”
This statement was somewhat of
an exaggeration, as the air smelt
dank and bad. But at least it was
breathable, as Diane and her father
found when they emerged from their
own suits.
They discovered, furthermore, now
that their flashlights were no longer
operating, that a faint illumination lit
the room, issuing from a number of
small crystal jars suspended from the
walls: some sort of phosphorescence,
evidently.
Once again the leader of the curious
throng stepped up to them, beaming
now and addressing Professor Stevens
in some barbaric tongue, and, to their
amazement, he replied in words approximating
its harsh syllables.
“Why, daddy!” gasped Diane. “How
can you talk to him?”
“Simply enough,” was the reply.
“They speak a language which seems
to be about one-third Basque, mixed
oddly with Greek. It merely proves
another hypothesis of mine, namely,
that the Atlantean influence reached
eastward to the Pyrenees mountains
and the Hellenic peninsula, as well as
to Egypt.”
Whereupon he turned and
continued his conversation,
haltingly it is true and with many gestures,
but understandably nevertheless.
“I have received considerable enlightenment
as to the mystery of this
strange sunken empire,” he reported,
turning back to them at length. “It is
a singular story this creature tells, of
how his country sank slowly beneath
the waves, during the course of centuries,
and of how his ancestors adapted
themselves by degrees to the present
conditions. I shall report it to you
both, in detail, when time affords. But
the main thing now is that a man similar
to ourselves has conquered their
country and set himself up as emperor.
It is to him we are about to be taken.”
“But it doesn’t seem possible!” exclaimed
Diane. “Why, how could he
have got down here?”
“In a craft similar to our own, according
to this creature. Heaven
knows what it is we are about to face!
But whatever it is, we will face it
bravely.”
“Check and double-check!” said
Larry, with a glance toward Diane that
told her she would not find him wanting.
They were not destined to meet the
test just then, however, for just at
that moment a courier in breech-clout
and sandals dashed up the gallery and
burst into the room, bearing in his
right hand a thin square of metal.
Bowing, he handed it to the leader
of the pigmy throng, with the awed
word:
“Cabiri!”
At this, Professor Stevens gave a
start.
“A message from their high priests!”
he whispered.
Whatever it contained, the effect
produced on the reader was profound.
Facing his companions, he addressed
them gravely. Then, turning from the
room, he commanded the captives to
follow.
The way led back down the inclined
gallery to a point where another
door now stood open, then on
down until finally the passage leveled
out into a long, straight tunnel.
This they traversed for fully a mile,
entering at length a large, square chamber
where for a moment they paused.
“I judge we are now at the base of
the large pyramid,” the professor
voiced in an undertone. “It would
naturally be the abode of the high
priests.”
“But what do you suppose they want
with us?” asked Diane.
“That I am not disposed to conjecture,”
was her father’s reply.
But the note of anxiety in his voice
was not lost on Diane, nor on Larry,
who pressed her hand reassuringly.
Now their captors led them from the
room through a small door opening on
another inclined gallery, whose turns
they followed until all were out of
breath from the climb.
It ended abruptly on a short, level
corridor with apertures to left and
right.
Into the latter they were led, finding
themselves in a grotesquely furnished
room, lit dimly by phosphorescent
lamps.
Swiftly the leader addressed Professor
Stevens. Then all withdrew.
The aperture was closed by a sliding
block of stone.
For a moment they stood there silent,
straining their eyes in the
gloom to detect the details of their
surroundings, which included several
curious chairs and a number of mattings
strewn on the tiled floor.
“What did he say?” asked Diane at
length, in a tremulous voice.
“He said we will remain here for
the night,” her father replied, “and
will be taken before the high priests
at dawn.”
“At dawn!” exclaimed Larry. “How
the deuce do they know when it is
dawn, down here?”
“By their calendars, which they have
kept accurately,” was the answer. “But
there are many other questions you
must both want to ask, so I shall anticipate
them by telling you now what
I have been able to learn. Suppose we
first sit down, however. I for one am
weary.”
Whereupon they drew up three of
those curious chairs of some heavy
wood carved with the hideous figures
of this strange people’s ancient gods,
and Professor Stevens began.
Their sunken empire, as he had
surmised, had indeed been the
great island of Antillia and a colony
of Atlantis. A series of earthquakes
and tidal waves such as engulfed their
homeland ages before had sent it down,
and the estimated archaeological date
of the final submergence—namely, 200
B. C.—was approximately correct.
But long before this ultimate catastrophe,
the bulk of the disheartened
population had migrated to Central and
South America, founding the Mayan
and Incan dynasties. Many of the
faithful had stayed on, however, among
them most of the Cabiri or high priests,
who either were loath to leave their
temples or had been ordered by their
gods to remain.
At any rate, they had remained, and
as the great island sank lower and
lower, they had fortified themselves
against the disaster in their pyramids,
which by then alone remained above
the surface.
These, too, had gradually disappeared
beneath the angry waters, however,
and with them had disappeared
the steadfast priests and their faithful
followers, sealing their living tombs
into air-tight bell-jars that retained the
atmosphere.
This they had supplemented at first
by drawing it down from above, but as
time went by they found other means
of getting air; extracting it from the
sea water under pressure, by utilizing
their subterranean volcanoes, in whose
seething cauldrons the gods had placed
their salvation; and it was this process
that now provided them with the atmosphere
which had so amazed their
captives.
But naturally, lack of sunshine had
produced serious degeneration in their
race, and that accounted for their
diminutive forms and pale bodies.
Still, they had been able to survive
with a degree of happiness until some
ten or a dozen years ago, when a
strange enemy had come down in a
great metal fish, like that of these new
strangers, and with a handful of men
had conquered their country.
This marauder was after their gold
and had looted their temples ruthlessly,
carrying away its treasures, for
which they hated him with a fury that
only violation of their most sacred
deities could arouse. Long ago they
would have destroyed him, but for the
fact that he possessed terrible weapons
which were impossible to combat. But
they were in smouldering rebellion and
waited only the support of their gods,
when they would fall on this oppressor
and hurl him off.
That, though it left many things unexplained,
was all the professor had
been able to gather from his conversation
with the leader of their captors.
He ended, admitting regretfully that
he was still in ignorance of what fate
had befallen Captain Petersen and the
crew of the Nereid.
“Perhaps this fellow in the
other submarine has got them,”
suggested Larry.
“But why weren’t we taken to him
too?” asked Diane. “What do you suppose
they want with us, anyway,
daddy?”
“That, my dear, as I told you before,”
replied her father, “I am not disposed
to conjecture. Time will reveal it.
Meanwhile, we can only wait.”
As before, there was a note of anxiety
in his voice not lost on either of
them. And as for Larry, though he
knew but little of those old religions,
he knew enough to realize that their
altars often ran with the blood of their
captives, and he shuddered.
With these grim thoughts between
them, the trio fell silent.
A silence that was interrupted presently
by the arrival of a native bearing
a tray heaped with strange food.
Bowing, he placed it before them and
departed.
Upon examination, the meal proved
to consist mainly of some curious kind
of steamed fish, not unpalatable but
rather rank and tough. There were
several varieties of fungus, too, more
or less resembling mushrooms and
doubtless grown in some sunless garden
of the pyramid.
These articles, together with a pitcher
of good water that had obviously
been distilled from the sea, comprised
their meal, and though it was far from
appetizing, they ate it.
But none of the three slept that
night, though Diane dozed off for a
few minutes once or twice, for their
apprehension of what the dawn might
hold made it impossible, to say nothing
of the closeness of the air in that windowless
subterranean room.
Slowly, wearily, the hours dragged
by.
At length the native who had brought
their food came again. This time he
spoke.
“He says we are now to be taken
before the high priests,” Professor
Stevens translated for them.
Almost with relief, though their
faces were grave, they stepped out into
the corridor, where an escort waited.
Five minutes later, after proceeding
along an inclined gallery that
wound ever upward, they were ushered
into a vast vaulted chamber lit with a
thousand phosphorescent lamps and
gleaming with idols of gold and silver,
jewels flashing from their eyes.
High in the dome hung a great golden
disc, representing the sun. At the
far end, above a marble altar, coiled a
dragon with tusks of ivory and scales
of jade, its eyes two lustrous pearls.
And all about the room thronged
priests in fantastic head-dress and long
white robes, woven through elaborately
with threads of yellow and green.
At the appearance of the captives, a
murmur like a chant rose in the still
air. Someone touched a brand to the
altar and there was a flash of flame
followed by a thin column of smoke
that spiraled slowly upward.
Now one of the priests stepped out—the
supreme one among them, to
judge from the magnificence of his
robe—and addressed the trio, speaking
slowly, rhythmically.
As his strange, sonorous discourse
continued, Professor Stevens grew
visibly perturbed. His beard twitched
and he shifted uneasily on his feet.
Finally the discourse ceased and
the professor replied to it, briefly.
Then he turned grave eyes on Larry
and Diane.
“What is it?” asked the latter,
nervously. “What did the priest say,
daddy?”
Her father considered, before replying.
“Naturally, I did not gather everything,”
was his slow reply, “but I gathered
sufficient to understand what is
afoot. First, however, let me explain
that the dragon you see over there represents
their deity Tlaloc, god of the
sea. In more happy circumstances, it
would be interesting to note that the
name is identified with the Mayan god
of the same element.”
He paused, as though loath to go on,
then continued:
“At any rate, the Antillians have
worshipped Tlaloc principally, since
their sun god failed them. They believe
he dragged down their empire in
his mighty coils, through anger with
them, and will raise it up again if
appeased. Therefore they propose today
to—”
“Daddy!” cried Diane, shrinking
back in horror, while a chill went up
Larry’s spine. “You mean—mean
that—”
“I mean, my poor child, that we are
about to be sacrificed to the dragon
god of the Antillians.”
The words were no more than uttered,
when with a weird chant the
Cabiri closed in on their victims and
led them with solemn ceremonial toward
the altar.
In vain did Professor Stevens protest.
Their decision had been made
and was irrevocable. Tlaloc must be
appeased. Lo, even now he roared for
the offering!
They pointed to the dragon, from
whose nostrils suddenly issued hissing
spurts of flame.
Larry fumed in disgust at the cheap
hocus-pocus of it—but the next moment
a more violent emotion swept
over him as he saw Diane seized and
borne swiftly to that loathsome shrine.
But even as he lunged forward, the
professor reached his daughter’s side.
Throwing himself in front of her, he
begged them to spare her, to sacrifice
him instead.
The answer of the priests was a blow
that knocked the graybeard senseless,
and lifting Diane up, half-swooning,
they flung her upon the altar.
“Mr. Hunter! Larry!” came her despairing
cry.
She struggled up and for a moment
her blue eyes opened, met his beseechingly.
That was enough—that and that despairing
cry, “Larry!”
With the strength of frenzy, he flung
off his captors, rushed to her aid, his
hard fists flailing.
The pigmies went down in his path
like grain before the scythe. Reaching
the altar, he seized the priest whose
knife was already upraised, and, lifting
him bodily, flung him full into the ugly
snout of that snorting dragon.
Then, as a wail of dismay rose from
the Cabiri, at this supreme sacrilege, he
seized the now unconscious Diane and
retreated with her toward the door.
But there spears barred his escape;
and now, recovered from the first
shock of this fearful affront to their
god, the priests started toward him.
Standing at bay, with that limp, tender
burden in his arms, Larry awaited
the end.
As the maddened horde drew near,
she stirred, lifted her pale face and
smiled, her eyes still shut.
“Oh, Larry!”
“Diane!”
“You saved me. I won’t forget.”
Then, the smile still lingering, she
slipped once more into merciful oblivion,
and as Larry held her close to
his heart, a new warmth kindled there.
But bitterness burned in his heart,
too. He had saved her—won her love,
perhaps—only to lose her. It wasn’t
fair! Was there no way out?
The priests were close now, their
pasty faces leering with fierce anticipation
of their revenge, when suddenly,
from down the gallery outside that
guarded door, came the sharp crash of
an explosion, followed by shouts and
the rush of feet.
At the sound, the priests trembled,
fled backward into the room and fell
moaning before their idols, while the
quaking guards strove frantically to
close the door.
But before they could do so, in
burst a half dozen brawny sailors
in foreign uniform, bearing in their
hands little black bulbs that looked
suspiciously like grenades. Shouting
in a tongue Larry could not distinguish
above the uproar, they advanced upon
the retreating guards and priests.
Then, when all were herded in the
far corner of the room, the sailors
backed toward the door. Motioning
for Larry and Diane to clear out, they
raised those sinister little missiles, prepared
to fling them.
“Wait!” cried Larry, thinking of
Professor Stevens.
And releasing Diane, who had revived,
he rushed forward, seized the
prostrate savant from amid the unresisting
Cabiri, and bore him to safety.
“Daddy!” sobbed Diane, swaying to
meet them.
“Back!” shouted one of the sailors,
shoving them through the door.
The last glimpse Larry had of that
fateful room was the horde of priests
and guards huddled before their altar,
voices lifted in supplication to that
hideous dragon god.
Then issued a series of blinding
flashes followed by deafening explosions,
mingled with shrieks of anguish.
Sickened, he stood there, as the reverberations
died away.
Presently, when it was plain
no further menace would come
from that blasted temple, their rescuers
led the trio back down those winding
galleries, and through that long,
straight tunnel to the smaller pyramid.
Professor Stevens had recovered consciousness
by now and was able to
walk, with Larry’s aid, though a matted
clot of blood above his left ear showed
the force of the blow he had received.
The way, after reaching the smaller
pyramid, led up those other galleries
they had mounted the night before.
This time, undoubtedly, they were
to be taken before that mysterious
usurping emperor. And what would
be the result of that audience? Would
it but plunge them from the frying
pan into the fire, wondered Larry, or
would it mean their salvation?
Anyway, he concluded, no fate could
be worse than the hideous one they
had just escaped. But if only Diane
could be spared further anguish!
He glanced at her fondly, as they
walked along, and she returned him
a warm smile.
Now the way led into a short, level
passage ending in a door guarded by
two sailors with rifles. They presented
arms, as their comrades came up, and
flung open the door.
As he stepped inside, Larry blinked
in amazement, for he was greeted by
electric lights in ornate clusters, richly
carpeted floors, walls hung with
modern paintings—and there at the far
end, beside a massive desk, stood an
imposing personage in foreign naval
uniform of high rank, strangely familiar,
strangely reminiscent of war
days.
Even before the man spoke, in his
guttural English, the suspicion those
sailors had aroused crystallized itself.
A German! A U-boat commander!
“Greetings, gentlemen—and
the little lady,” boomed their
host, with heavy affability. “I see that
my men were in time. These swine of
Antillians are a tricky lot. I must
apologize for them—my subjects.”
The last word was pronounced with
scathing contempt.
“We return greetings!” said Professor
Stevens. “To whom, might I
ask, do we owe our lives, and the honor
of this interview?”
Larry smiled. The old graybeard was
up to his form, all right!
“You are addressing Herr Rolf von
Ullrich,” the flattered German replied,
adding genially: “commander of one
of His Imperial Majesty’s super-submarines
during the late war and at
present Emperor of Antillia.”
To which the professor replied with
dignity that he was greatly honored to
make the acquaintance of so exalted a
personage, and proceeded in turn to
introduce himself and party. But Von
Ullrich checked him with a smile.
“The distinguished Professor Stevens
and his charming daughter need no
introduction, as they are already familiar
to me through the American press
and radio,” he said. “While as for
Mr. Hunter, your Captain Petersen has
already made me acquainted with his
name.”
At the mention of the commander of
the Nereid, all three of them gave a
start.
“Then—then my captain and crew
are safe?” asked the professor, eagerly.
“Quite,” Von Ullrich assured him.
“You will be taken to them presently.
But first there are one or two little
things you would like explained—yes?
Then I shall put to you a proposal,
which if acceptable will guarantee your
safe departure from my adopted country.”
Whereupon the German traced briefly
the events leading up to the present.
During the last months of the
war, he had been placed in command
of a special U-boat known as the
“mystery ship”—designed to resist
depth-charges and embodying many
other innovations, most of them growing
out of his own experience with
earlier submarines.
One day, while cruising off the West
Indies, in wait for some luckless sugar
boat, he had been surprised by a destroyer
and forced to submerge so suddenly
that his diving gear had jammed
and they had gone to the bottom. But
the craft had managed to withstand the
pressure and they had been able to repair
the damage, limping home with a
bad leak but otherwise none the worse
for the experience.
The leak repaired and the hull further
strengthened, he had set out again.
But when in mid-Atlantic the Armistice
had come, and rather than return
to a defeated country, subject possibly
to Allied revenge, he had persuaded his
crew to remain out and let their craft
be reported missing.
What followed then, though Von
Ullrich masked it in polite words, was
a story of piracy, until they found by
degrees that there was more gold on
the bottom of the ocean than the top;
and from this to the discovery of the
sunken empire where he now held
reign was but a step.
They had thought at first they were
looting only empty temples—but, finding
people there, had easily conquered
them, though ruling them, he admitted,
was another matter. As, for instance,
yesterday, when the priests had interfered
with his orders and carried his
three chief captives off to sacrifice.
“Where now, but for me, you would
be food for their gods!” he ended.
“And if you do not find my hospitality
altogether to your liking, friends, remember
that you came uninvited. In
fact, if you will recall, you came despite
my explicit warning!”
But since they were here, he told
them, they might be willing to
repay his good turn with another.
Whereupon Von Ullrich launched
into his proposal, which was that Professor
Stevens place the Nereid at his
disposal for visiting the depths at the
foot of the plateau, where lay the capital
of the empire, he said—a magnificent
metropolis known as the City of
the Sun and modeled after the great
Atlantean capital, the City of the Golden
Gates, and the depository of a
treasure, the greedy German believed,
that was the ransom of the world.
The professor frowned, and for a
moment Larry thought he was going
to remind their host that this was not
a treasure hunt.
“Why,” he asked instead, “do you
not use your own submarine for the
purpose?”
“Because for one thing, she will not
stand the pressure, nor will our suits,”
was the reply. “And for another, she
is already laden with treasure, ready
for an—er—forced abdication!” with a
sardonic laugh.
“Then have you not enough gold already?”
“For myself, yes. But there are my
men, you see—and men who have
glimpsed the treasures of the earth are
not easily satisfied, Professor. But
have no fear. You shall accompany us,
and, by your aid, shall pay your own
ransom.”
Von Ullrich made no mention
of the alternative, in case the aid
was refused, but the ominous light
Larry caught in his cold gray eyes
spoke as clearly as words.
So, since there was nothing else to
do, Professor Stevens agreed.
Whereupon the audience terminated
and they were led from the presence
of this arrogant German to another
apartment, where they were to meet
Captain Petersen and the crew of the
Nereid.
As they proceeded toward it, under
guard, Larry wondered why Von Ullrich
had even troubled to make the request,
when he held it in his power to
take the craft anyway.
But after the first joyful moment of
reunion, it was a mystery no longer,
for Captain Petersen reported that immediately
upon their capture, the commander
of the U-boat had tried to force
him to reveal the operation of the
Nereid, but that he had steadfastly refused,
even though threatened with
torture.
And to think, it came to Larry with
a new twinge of shame, that he had
suspected this gallant man of mutiny!
That very morning, while Professor
Stevens and his party were still
exchanging experiences with Captain
Petersen and the members of the crew,
Von Ullrich sent for them and they
gathered with his own men in the small
lock-chamber at the base of the pyramid.
There they were provided with temporary
suits by their host, since their
own—which they brought along—could
be inflated only from the Nereid.
Beside her, they noted as they
emerged in relays, the U-boat was now
moored.
Entering their own craft, they got
under way at once and headed swiftly
westward toward the brink of the plateau.
Most of Von Ullrich’s crew were
with them, though a few had been left
behind to guard against any treachery,
on the part of the now sullen and
aroused populace.
Slipping out over the edge of that
precipitous tableland, they tilted her
rudders and dove to the abysm below.
Presently the central square of the
illuminated panel in the navigating
room showed three great concentric
circles, enclosed by a quadrangle that
must have been miles on a side—and
within this vast sunken fortress lay
a city of innumerable pyramids and
temples and palaces.
The German’s eyes flashed greedily
as he peered upon this vision.
“There you are!” he exclaimed, quivering
with excitement. “Those circles,
that square: what would you judge
they were, Professor?”
“I would judge that originally they
were the canals bearing the municipal
water supply,” Martin Stevens told him
quietly, suppressing his own excitement,
“for such was said to be the construction
of the City of the Golden
Gates; but now I judge they are walls
raised on those original foundations by
the frantic populace, when the submergence
first began, in a vain effort to
hold back the tides that engulfed
them.”
“And do you think they are of gold?”
“Frankly, no; though I have no
doubt you will find plenty of that element
down there.”
Nor was the prediction wrong, for
modern eyes had never seen such a
treasure house as they beheld when
presently the Nereid came to rest outside
that ancient four-walled city and
they forced their way inside.
Though the walls were not of
gold, the inner gates were, and the
temples were fairly bursting with the
precious metal, as well as rare jewels,
the eyes of a thousand idols gleaming
with rubies and emeralds.
But where was the populace, amid
all this prodigious wealth? Was there
no life down here?
Von Ullrich declared through the vibrator
of his pressure-suit that he had
heard there was. And as though in
substantiation, many of the temples
showed the same bell-jar construction
as the pyramids above, though even
stouter, revealing evidences of having
been occupied very recently; but all
were flooded and empty. The city was
as a city of the dead.
This ominous sign did not deter the
“emperor,” however. Ruthlessly he and
his men looted those flooded temples,
forcing Professor Stevens and his
party to lend aid in the orgy of pillage.
And all the time, Larry had an uneasy
feeling of gathering furtive hosts
about them, waiting—waiting for
what?
He confided his fears to no one,
though he noted with relief that Von
Ullrich seemed to sense these unseen
presences too, for he proceeded with
caution and always kept a strong guard
outside.
By early afternoon, the Nereid was
one great coffer-chest.
But still the rapacious U-boat commander
was unsatisfied, though Professor
Stevens began to have doubts if
his craft could lift that massive weight
of plunder to the top of the plateau.
“One more load and we go,” he
soothed. “A few more pretties for the
little lady!”
Larry writhed, and should have suspected
then and there—but as it was,
the blow fell unexpected, stunning.
Filing from the lock, they failed to
notice that Von Ullrich and his crew
hung back, until there came a sudden,
guttural command, whereupon Diane
was seized and the massive door flung
shut in their faces.
Appalled by this overwhelming disaster,
the party stood for a moment
motionless, speechless. Then, as one,
Larry and the professor rushed forward
and beat upon that barred hatch,
calling upon Von Ullrich to open it.
From within the submarine, through
their vibrators, they heard him laugh.
“Auf Wiedersehen!” he toasted them.
“I now have all the treasure I want!
The rest I leave to you! Help yourselves!”
Even as he spoke, the Nereid’s auxiliary
propellers started churning the
water. Slowly, sluggishly, like some
great gorged fish, the sturdy craft
moved off, lifted her snout, headed upward.
Professor Stevens bowed
his head, and Larry could well picture
the grief that distorted the graybeard’s
face, inside that owl-eyed helmet.
“Cheer up!” he said, though his own
face was twisted with anguish. “Perhaps—”
Then he paused—for how could he
say that perhaps the situation wasn’t
as bad as it seemed, when it was obviously
hopeless?
“My poor Diane!” moaned the professor.
“Poor child. Poor child!”
As for Captain Petersen and the
crew, they said nothing. Perhaps they
were thinking of Diane, perhaps of
themselves. At least, they knew it was
over.
Or so they thought. But to Larry,
suddenly, occurred a gleam of hope.
That strange sense of unseen presences!
It was bizarre, of course, but
doesn’t a drowning person catch at
straws? And Lord knows they were
drowning, if ever anyone was!
He turned and confided to Professor
Stevens his idea, which was to retrace
their steps within the city gates, seek
out the populace and throw themselves
on their mercy.
The stricken savant, too, grasped at
the straw.
“It seems fantastic, but after all it is
a chance,” he admitted.
So they pushed back into that great
submerged city, with Captain Petersen
and his skeptical crew. They entered
one of the largest of the temples, wandered
forlornly through its flooded
halls and corridors, seeking some sign
of these alleged beings Larry had
sensed.
Nor was their search unrewarded, for
suddenly the captain himself, most
skeptical of all, cried out:
“Listen! Did you hear that?”
There was no need to ask the question,
for all had heard. It was a rasping
sound, as of some great door swinging
shut, followed almost immediately
by a rushing gurgle—and as they stood
there tense, the water level began rapidly
receding.
Even while it was still plashing about
their ankles, a secret block of masonry
slid back and a horde of Antillians
burst in upon them.
What happened then, happened
with a rush that left them dazed.
Unable to talk directly with the pigmies,
by reason of their pressure-suits,
which they dared not remove, they
started gesturing with them, trying to
explain their predicament and make
known that they bore them no ill-will,
but the creatures waved for them to
cease and led them swiftly through the
now waterless temple.
“Well, I guess it’s all up!” said
Larry, adding with dismal humor:
“They’re probably going to finish that
meal they started feeding their dragon
last night!”
No one laughed, nor made any comment,
and he relapsed into silence, realizing
that they probably held him responsible
for this latest disaster.
Leaving the temple, their captors led
them into a passage that was level for
a time, then inclined sharply. It was
laborious going but they struggled on.
“I believe they know we are not their
enemies!” declared Professor Stevens,
at length, to everyone’s cheer. “They
seem to be leading us back to the plateau
by some underground passage.”
“Let’s hope so!” said Larry. “Perhaps
I had the right hunch after all.”
“But my poor Diane!” came the professor’s
sorrowing after-thought. “That
fiend Von Ullrich could never get the
Nereid up safely.”
“I think perhaps he could, with Miss
Stevens to help him,” put in Captain
Petersen, his usual optimism returning.
“She is thoroughly familiar with the
craft’s operation.”
“That is so,” her father admitted, his
tone brighter. “But—”
“Of course it’s so!” exclaimed Larry,
breaking off any less hopeful reflections.
“So cheerio, folks, as the English
say. We’ll make it yet!”
But in his heart, he was tormented
with doubt for Diane’s safety….
The trail was growing eery, now,
and precipitous. To their right
rose a sheer cliff. To their left, the
path fell off abruptly to a gigantic caldron
where red flames leaped and
waned.
“Looks like something out of Dante’s
‘Inferno’!” muttered Larry, with a
shudder.
“The volcano where they distill their
atmosphere, evidently,” commented
Professor Stevens. “It would have
been interesting, in other circumstances,
to observe the process.”
“Not to me, it wouldn’t!”
Larry was glad when they had passed
that seething hell-pot and were once
more proceeding through a long, dark
gallery.
But everywhere, though their guides
were but a handful, was a sense of
those unseen presences, of gathering,
furtive hosts about them, waiting—waiting
for what?
What was this strange sense of tension,
of foreboding, that hung in the
air? Was the professor wrong? Were
they being led to their doom, after all?
He was soon to know, for now the
gallery they had been traversing levelled
out into a series of short passages,
each barred by a heavy stone
door, and finally they were led into a
small, square room, barely large enough
to admit them all.
There, with gestures toward the far
end, their guides left them.
The door closed, and almost immediately
another on the opposite side
opened, slowly at first, then wider and
wider, admitting a rush of water that
promptly filled the room.
Stepping wonderingly out, they
found themselves on the upper level,
beside the second of the two smaller
pyramids.
“Whew!” gasped Larry, as they
stood looking around, still a
little dazed. “These people are sure
quick-change artists! First they try to
feed you to their gods, then they save
you from almost as bad a fate. Dizzy,
I call it!”
“Quite understandable, I should say,”
declared the professor. “Unable to
cope with Von Ullrich themselves, they
think perhaps we may be able to.”
“Well, let’s hope they’re right!”
grimly. “If once I get my hands on
him—”
He broke off suddenly, as Captain
Petersen called out:
“The Nereid! There she is!”
Following with their eyes the bright
segment cut into the murky depths by
his flashlight, they saw the familiar
outlines of their craft; and close beside
her lay the U-boat.
A feverish activity seemed to be going
on between the two submarines.
“They’re changing cargo!” cried
Larry. “Quick! We’ve got them now!”
But the progress they were able to
make, hampered by their heavy suits,
was maddeningly slow. Their searchlights,
moreover, betrayed their approach.
Before they could reach the
scene, most of the sailors had abandoned
their task and piled into the
U-boat.
Arms swinging wildly, Von Ullrich
stood beside it, trying to rally then.
Refusing to risk combat, however,
since they were unable to use their
deadly hand-grenades under water,
they continued clambering up the sides
of their submersible and shoving down
through its conning-tower hatch.
Now a figure in a familiar pressure-suit
broke away and started toward the
advancing party.
It was Diane!
Even as he recognized her, Larry
saw Von Ullrich lunge forward,
seize his captive and mount to the conning-tower
with her—but before the
German could thrust her into the
hatch, he had reached the U-boat’s side
and clambered to her rescue.
Dropping Diane, Von Ullrich
wheeled to face his assailant. They
grappled, fell to the deck, rolled over
and over.
But suddenly, as they were struggling,
there came a sound that caused
the German to burst free and leap to
his feet.
It was the sound of engines under
them!
Ignoring Larry now, Von Ullrich
staggered to the conning-tower hatch.
It was battened fast. Frantically he
beat on it.
This much Larry saw, as he knelt
there getting his breath. Then he rose,
took Diane by the arm and led her
down. And he was none too soon, for
with a lunge the U-boat got under way.
But she seemed unable to lift her
loot-laden mass from the ocean floor,
and headed off crazily across the plateau,
dragging her keel in the sand.
With fascinated horror, they watched
the craft’s erratic course, as it swung
loggily westward and headed toward
that yawning abysm from which they
had all so lately risen.
The last sight they had of the U-boat
was as it reached the brink, its despairing
commander still standing in the
conning-tower, hammering vainly on
that fast-bound hatch; then they turned
away faint, as the doomed craft
plunged down, stern up, into those
crushing depths.
Professor Stevens now
joined them.
“A lesson in avarice,” he said gravely,
when he had greeted his daughter
with heartfelt relief. “And a typical
fate of fortune hunters! Let that be a
lesson to you, young man.”
“Amen!” said Larry.
“But what happened, my dear?”
asked the professor of Diane, a moment
later. “Why were they in such
a hurry to be off?”
“Because the sensible Antillians
seized their opportunity and overcame
their guards, while we were below,”
was her reply. “When we got back, we
found the pyramids flooded, so there
was nothing else for them to do but
go.”
So that was the explanation of those
gathering, furtive hosts in the lower
level, thought Larry. Now he knew
what they had been waiting for! They
had been waiting for that usurping
vandal to depart.
And how they must be gloating now,
down there!
“But why were they so eager to abandon
the Nereid?” asked the savant, still
puzzled. “It it a better boat than
theirs, even if I do say so myself.”
“Because I put it out of commission,
directly we got back up here,” replied
Diane. “But not permanently!” she
added, with what Larry knew was a
smile, though he couldn’t see her face,
of course, through the helmet of her
pressure-suit.
“Little thoroughbred!” he exclaimed,
half to himself.
“What did you say, Mr. Hunter?—Larry,
I mean,” she inquired.
“N—nothing,” he replied uneasily.
“Fibber!” said Diane. “I heard you
the first time!”
“Just wait till I get out of this
darned suit!” said Larry.
“I guess I can wait that long!” she
told him.
And if Professor Stevens heard any
of this, it went in one ear and out the
other, for he was thinking what a report
he would have to make to his confrères
when they got home—particularly
with half a boatload of assorted
idols for proof.
He pressed the tiny switch in the flame-tool’s handle just as Arlok came through the door
By Hal K. Wells
A strange man of metal comes to Earth
on a dreadful mission.
He sat in a small half-darkened
booth well over in the corner—the
man with the strangely
glowing blue-green eyes.
The booth was
one of a score
that circled the
walls of the “Maori
Hut,” a popular
night club in the San Fernando Valley
some five miles over the hills from
Hollywood.
It was nearly midnight. Half a
dozen couples danced lazily in the central
dancing
space. Other couples
remained
tête-à-tête in the
secluded booths.
In the entire room only two men
were dining alone. One was the slender
gray-haired little man with the weirdly
glowing eyes. The other was Blair
Gordon, a highly successful young attorney
of Los Angeles. Both men had
the unmistakable air of waiting for
someone.
Blair Gordon’s college days were not
so far distant that he had yet lost any
of the splendid physique that had made
him an All-American tackle. In any
physical combat with the slight gray-haired
stranger, Gordon knew that he
should be able to break the other in
two with one hand.
Yet, as he studied the stranger from
behind the potted palms that screened
his own booth. Gordon was amazed to
find himself slowly being overcome by
an emotion of dread so intense that it
verged upon sheer fear. There was
something indescribably alien and utterly
sinister in that dimly seen figure
in the corner booth.
The faint eery light that glowed in
the stranger’s deep-set eyes was not
the lambent flame seen in the chatoyant
orbs of some night-prowling jungle
beast. Rather was it the blue-green
glow of phosphorescent witch-light
that flickers and dances in the night
mists above steaming tropical swamps.
The stranger’s face was as classically
perfect in its rugged outline as that
of a Roman war-god, yet those perfect
features seemed utterly lifeless. In
the twenty minutes that he had been
intently watching the stranger, Gordon
would have sworn that the other’s
face had not moved by so much as the
twitch of an eye-lash.
Then a new couple entered the
Maori Hut, and Gordon promptly
forgot all thought of the puzzlingly
alien figure in the corner. The new
arrivals were a vibrantly beautiful
blond girl and a plump, sallow-faced
man in the early forties. The girl was
Leah Keith, Hollywood’s latest screen
sensation. The man was Dave Redding,
her director.
A waiter seated Leah and her escort
in a booth directly across the room
from that of Gordon. It was a maneuver
for which Gordon had tipped lavishly
when he first came to the Hut.
A week ago Leah Keith’s engagement
to Blair Gordon had been abruptly
ended by a trivial little quarrel that
two volatile temperaments had fanned
into flames which apparently made reconciliation
impossible. A miserably
lonely week had finally ended in Gordon’s
present trip to the Maori Hut.
He knew that Leah often came there,
and he had an overwhelming longing
to at least see her again, even though
his pride forced him to remain unseen.
Now, as he stared glumly at Leah
through the palms that effectively
screened his own booth, Gordon
heartily regretted that he had ever
come. The sight of Leah’s clear fresh
beauty merely made him realize what
a fool he had been to let that ridiculous
little quarrel come between them.
Then, with a sudden tingling thrill,
Gordon realized that he was not the
only one in the room who was interested
in Leah and her escort.
Over in the half-darkened corner
booth the eery stranger was staring at
the girl with an intentness that made
his weird eyes glow like miniature
pools of shimmering blue-green fire.
Again Gordon felt that vague impression
of dread, as though he were in
the presence of something utterly alien
to all human experience.
Gordon turned his gaze back to
Leah, then caught his breath
sharply in sudden amaze. The necklace
about Leah’s throat was beginning to
glow with the same uncanny blue-green
light that shone in the stranger’s
eyes! Faint, yet unmistakable, the
shimmering radiance pulsed from the
necklace in an aura of nameless evil.
And with the coming of that aura
of weird light at her throat, a strange
trance was swiftly sweeping over
Leah. She sat there now as rigidly
motionless as some exquisite statue of
ivory and jet.
Gordon stared at her in stark bewilderment.
He knew the history of
Leah’s necklace. It was merely an oddity,
and nothing more—a freak piece
of costume jewelry made from fragments
of an Arizona meteorite. Leah
had worn the necklace a dozen times
before, without any trace of the weird
phenomena that were now occurring.
Dancers again thronged the floor to
the blaring jazz of the negro orchestra
while Gordon was still trying to force
his whirling brain to a decision. He
was certain that Leah was in deadly
peril of some kind, yet the nature of
that peril was too bizarre for his mind
to imagine.
Then the stranger with the glowing
eyes took matters into his own hands.
He left his booth and began threading
his way through the dancers toward
Leah. As he watched the progress of
that slight gray-haired figure Gordon
refused to believe the evidence of his
own eyes. The thing was too utterly
absurd—yet Gordon was positive that
the strong oak floor of the dancing
space was visibly swaying and creaking
beneath the stranger’s mincing
tread!
The stranger paused at Leah’s
booth only long enough to utter
a brief low-voiced command. Then
Leah, still in the grip of that strange
trance, rose obediently from her seat
to accompany him.
Dave Redding rose angrily to intercept
her. The stranger seemed to
barely brush the irate director with
his finger tips, yet Redding reeled back
as though struck by a pile-driver. Leah
and the stranger started for the door.
Redding scrambled to his feet again
and hurried after them.
It was then that Gordon finally
shook off the stupor of utter bewilderment
that had held him. Springing
from his booth, he rushed after the
trio.
The dancers in his way delayed Gordon
momentarily. Leah and the
stranger were already gone when he
reached the door. The narrow little
entrance hallway to the Hut was deserted
save for a figure sprawled there
on the floor near the outer door.
It was the body of Dave Redding.
Gordon shuddered as he glanced
briefly down at the huddled figure. A
single mighty blow from some unknown
weapon had crumpled the director’s
entire face in, like the shattered
shell of a broken egg.
Gordon charged on through the
outer door just as a heavy sedan
came careening out of the parking lot.
He had a flashing glimpse of Leah and
the stranger in the front seat of the
big car.
Gordon raced for his own machine,
a powerful low-slung roadster. A
single vicious jab at the starting button,
and the big motor leaped into roaring
life. Gordon shot out from the
parking lot onto the main boulevard.
A hundred yards away the sedan was
fleeing toward Hollywood.
Gordon tramped hard on the accelerator.
His engine snarled with the
unleashed fury of a hundred horsepower.
The gap between the two cars
swiftly lessened.
Then the stranger seemed to become
aware for the first time that he was
being followed. The next second the
big sedan accelerated with the hurtling
speed of a flying bullet. Gordon sent
his own foot nearly to the floor. The
roadster jumped to eighty miles an
hour, yet the sedan continued to leave
it remorselessly behind.
The two cars started up the
northern slope of Cahuenga Pass with
the sedan nearly two hundred yards
ahead, and gaining all the time. Gordon
wondered briefly if they were to
flash down the other side of the Pass
and on into Hollywood at their present
mad speed.
Then at the summit of the Pass the
sedan swerved abruptly to the right
and fled west along the Mulholland
Highway. Gordon’s tires screamed as
he swerved the roadster in hot pursuit.
The dark winding mountain highway
was nearly deserted at that
hour of the night. Save for an occasional
automobile that swerved frantically
to the side of the road to dodge
the roaring onslaught of the racing
cars, Gordon and the stranger had the
road to themselves.
The stranger seemed no longer to be
trying to leave his pursuer hopelessly
behind. He allowed Gordon to come
within a hundred yards of him. But
that was as near as Gordon could get,
is spite of the roadster’s best efforts.
Half a dozen times Gordon trod
savagely upon his accelerator in a
desperate attempt to close the gap, but
each time the sedan fled with the swift
grace of a scudding phantom. Finally
Gordon had to content himself with
merely keeping his distance behind the
glowing red tail-light of the car ahead.
They passed Laurel Canyon, and still
the big sedan bored on to the west.
Then finally, half a dozen miles beyond
Laurel Canyon, the stranger
abruptly left the main highway and
started up a narrow private road to the
crest of one of the lonely hills. Gordon
slowly gained in the next two
miles. When the road ended in a
winding gravelled driveway into the
grounds of what was apparently a private
estate, the roadster was scarcely
a dozen yards behind.
The stranger’s features as he stood
there stiffly erect in the vivid glare of
the roadster’s headlights were still as
devoid of all expression as ever. The
only things that really seemed alive in
that masque of a face were the two
eyes, glowing eery blue-green fire like
twin entities of alien evil.
Gordon wasted no time in verbal
sparring. He motioned briefly to Leah
Keith’s rigid form in the front seat of
the sedan.
“Miss Keith is returning to Hollywood
with me,” he said curtly. “Will
you let her go peaceably, or shall I—?”
He left the question unfinished, but its
threat was obvious.
“Or shall you do what?” asked the
stranger quietly. There was an oddly
metallic ring in his low even tones.
His words were so precisely clipped
that they suggested some origin more
mechanical than human.
“Or shall I take Miss Keith with
me by force?” Gordon flared angrily.
“You can try to take the lady by
force—if you wish.” There was an unmistakable
jeering note in the metallic
tones.
The taunt was the last thing needed
to unleash Gordon’s volatile temper.
He stepped forward and swung a hard
left hook for that expressionless
masque of a face. But the blow never
landed. The stranger dodged with uncanny
swiftness. His answering gesture
seemed merely the gentlest possible
push with an outstretched hand,
yet Gordon was sent reeling backward
a full dozen steps by the terrific force
of that apparently gentle blow.
Recovering himself, Gordon
grimly returned to the attack.
The stranger again flung out one hand
in the contemptuous gesture with
which one would brush away a troublesome
fly, but this time Gordon was
more cautious. He neatly dodged the
stranger’s blow, then swung a vicious
right squarely for his adversary’s unprotected
jaw.
The blow smashed solidly home with
all of Gordon’s weight behind it. The
stranger’s jaw buckled and gave beneath
that shattering impact. Then
abruptly his entire face crumpled into
distorted ruin. Gordon staggered back
a step in sheer horror at the gruesome
result of his blow.
The stranger flung a hand up to his
shattered features. When his hand
came away again, his whole face came
away with it!
Gordon had one horror-stricken
glimpse of a featureless blob of rubbery
bluish-gray flesh in which fiendish
eyes of blue-green fire blazed in
malignant fury.
Then the stranger fumbled at his
collar, ripping the linen swiftly away.
Something lashed out from beneath his
throat—a loathsome snake-like object,
slender and forked at the end. For
one ghastly moment, as the writhing
tentacle swung into line with him, Gordon
saw its forked ends glow strange
fire—one a vivid blue, the other a
sparkling green.
Then the world was abruptly blotted
out for Blair Gordon.
Consciousness returned to
Gordon as swiftly and painlessly
as it had left him. For a moment he
blinked stupidly in a dazed effort to
comprehend the incredible scene before
him.
He was seated in a chair over near
the wall of a large room that was flooded
with livid red light from a single
globe overhead. Beside him sat Leah
Keith, also staring with dazed eyes in
an effort to comprehend her surroundings.
Directly in front of them stood
a figure of stark nightmare horror.
The weirdly glowing eyes identified
the figure as that of the stranger at
the Maori Hut, but there every point
of resemblance ceased. Only the
cleverest of facial masques and body
padding could ever have enabled this
monstrosity to pass unnoticed in a
world of normal human beings.
Now that his disguise was completely
stripped away, his slight frame was
revealed as a grotesque parody of that
of a human being, with arms and legs
like pipe-stems, a bald oval head that
merged with neckless rigidity directly
into a heavy-shouldered body that tapered
into an almost wasp-like slenderness
at the waist. He was naked
save for a loin cloth of some metallic
fabric. His bluish-gray skin had a dull
oily sheen strangely suggestive of fine
grained flexible metal.
The creature’s face was hideously
unlike anything human. Beneath the
glowing eyes was a small circular
mouth orifice with a cluster of gill-like
appendages on either side of it.
Patches of lighter-colored skin on
either side of the head seemed to serve
as ears. From a point just under the
head, where the throat of a human being
would have been, dangled the foot-and-a-half
long tentacle whose forked
tip had sent Gordon into oblivion.
Behind the creature Gordon was dimly
aware of a maze of complicated and
utterly unfamiliar apparatus ranged
along the opposite wall, giving the
room the appearance of being a laboratory
of some kind.
Gordon’s obvious bewilderment
seemed to amuse the bluish-gray
monstrosity. “May I introduce myself?”
he asked with a mocking note
in his metallic voice. “I am Arlok of
Xoran. I am an explorer of Space, and
more particularly an Opener of Gates.
My home is upon Xoran, which is one
of the eleven major planets that circle
about the giant blue-white sun that
your astronomers call Rigel. I am here
to open the Gate between your world
and mine.”
Gordon reached a reassuring hand
over to Leah. All memory of their
quarrel was obliterated in the face of
their present peril. He felt her slender
fingers twine firmly with his. The
warm contact gave them both new
courage.
“We of Xoran need your planet and
intend to take possession of it,” Arlok
continued, “but the vast distance which
separates Rigel from your solar system
makes it impracticable to transport
any considerable number of our
people here in space-cars for, though
our space-cars travel with practically
the speed of light, it requires over five
hundred and forty years for them to
cross that great void. So I was sent
as a lone pioneer to your Earth to do
the work necessary here in order to
open the Gate that will enable Xoran
to cross the barrier in less than a minute
of your time.
“That gate is the one through the
fourth dimension, for Xoran and
your planet in a four-dimensional universe
are almost touching each other
in spite of the great distance separating
them in a three-dimensional
universe. We of Xoran, being three-dimensional
creatures like you Earthlings,
can not even exist on a four-dimensional
plane. But we can, by the
use of apparatus to open a Gate, pass
through a thin sector of the fourth
dimension and emerge in a far distant
part of our three-dimensional universe.
“The situation of our two worlds,”
Arlok continued, “is somewhat like
that of two dots on opposite ends of
a long strip of paper that is curved almost
into a circle. To two-dimensional
beings capable only of realizing and
traveling along the two dimensions of
the paper itself those dots might be
many feet apart, yet in the third
dimension straight across free space
they might be separated by only the
thousandth part of an inch. In order
to take that short cut across the third
dimension the two-dimensional creatures
of the paper would have only to
transform a small strip of the intervening
space into a two-dimensional
surface like their paper.
“They could, do this, of course, by
the use of proper vibration-creating
machinery, for all things in a material
universe are merely a matter of vibration.
We of Xoran plan to cross the
barrier of the fourth dimension by
creating a narrow strip of vibrations
powerful enough to exactly match and
nullify those of the fourth dimension
itself. The result will be that this narrow
strip will temporarily become an
area of three dimensions only, an area
over which we can safely pass from our
world to yours.”
Arlok indicated one of the
pieces of apparatus along the opposite
wall of the room. It was an intricate
arrangement of finely wound
coils with wires leading to scores of
needle-like points which constantly
shimmered and crackled with tiny blue-white
flames. Thick cables ran to a
bank of concave reflectors of some
gleaming grayish metal.
“There is the apparatus which will
supply the enormous power necessary
to nullify the vibrations of the fourth
dimensional barrier,” Arlok explained.
“It is a condenser and adapter of the
cosmic force that you call the Millikan
rays. In Xoran a similar apparatus is
already set up and finished, but the
Gate can only be opened by simultaneous
actions from both sides of the barrier.
That is why I was sent on my
long journey through space to do the
necessary work here. I am now nearly
finished. A very few hours more will
see the final opening of the Gate. Then
the fighting hordes of Xoran can sweep
through the barrier and overwhelm
your planet.
“When the Gate from Xoran to a new
planet is first opened,” Arlok continued,
“our scientists always like to
have at least one pair of specimens
of the new world’s inhabitants sent
through to them for experimental use.
So to-night, while waiting for one of
my final castings to cool, I improved
the time by making a brief raid upon
the place that you call the Maori Hut.
The lady here seemed an excellent type
of your Earthling women, and the
meteoric iron in her necklace made a
perfect focus for electric hypnosis. Her
escort was too inferior a specimen to
be of value to me so I killed him when
he attempted to interfere. When you
gave chase I lured you on until I could
see whether you might be usable. You
proved an excellent specimen, so I
merely stunned you. Very soon now
I shall be ready to send the two of you
through the Gate to our scientists in
Xoran.”
A cold wave of sheer horror
swept over Gordon. It was impossible
to doubt the stark and deadly
menace promised in the plan of this
grim visitor from an alien universe—a
menace that loomed not only for
Gordon and Leah but for the teeming
millions of a doomed and defenseless
world.
“Let me show you Xoran,” Arlok
offered. “Then you may be better able
to understand.” He turned his back
carelessly upon his two captives and
strode over to the apparatus along the
opposite wall.
Gordon longed to hurl himself upon
the unprotected back of the retreating
Xoranian, but he knew that any attempt
of that kind would be suicidal.
Arlok’s deadly tentacle would strike
him down before he was halfway
across the room.
He searched his surroundings with
desperate eyes for anything that might
serve as a weapon. Then his pulse
quickened with sudden hope. There on
a small table near Leah was the familiar
bulk of a .45 calibre revolver,
loaded and ready for use. It was included
in a miscellaneous collection of
other small earthly tools and objects
that Arlok had apparently collected for
study.
There was an excellent chance that
Leah might be able to secure the gun
unobserved. Gordon pressed her fingers
in a swift attempt at signalling,
then jerked his head ever so slightly
toward the table. A moment later the
quick answering pressure of Leah’s
fingers told him that she had understood
his message. From the corner
of his eye Gordon saw Leah’s other
hand begin cautiously groping behind
her for the revolver.
Then both Gordon and Leah froze
into sudden immobility as Arlok
faced them again from beside an apparatus
slightly reminiscent of an earthly
radio set. Arlok threw a switch, and
a small bank of tubes glowed pale
green. A yard-square plate of bluish-gray
metal on the wall above the apparatus
glowed with milky fluorescence.
“It is easy to penetrate the barrier
with light waves,” Arlok explained.
“That is a Gate that can readily be
opened from either side. It was
through it that we first discovered
your Earth.”
Arlok threw a rheostat on to more
power. The luminous plate cleared
swiftly. “And there, Earthlings, is
Xoran!” Arlok said proudly.
Leah and Gordon gasped in sheer
amaze as the glowing plate became a
veritable window into another world—a
world of utter and alien terror.
The livid light of a giant red sun
blazed mercilessly down upon a landscape
from which every vestige of animal
and plant life had apparently been
stripped. Naked rocks and barren soil
stretched illimitably to the far horizon
in a vast monotony of utter desolation.
Arlok twirled the knob of the apparatus,
and another scene flashed into
view. In this scene great gleaming
squares and cones of metal rose in
towering clusters from the starkly barren
land. Hordes of creatures like
Arlok swarmed in and around the metal
buildings. Giant machines whirled
countless wheels in strange tasks.
From a thousand great needle-like projections
on the buildings spurted shimmering
sheets of crackling flame, bathing
the entire scene in a whirling mist
of fiery vapors.
Gordon realized dimly that he must
be looking into one of the cities of
Xoran, but every detail of the chaotic
whirl of activity was too utterly unfamiliar
to carry any real significance to
his bewildered brain. He was as hopelessly
overwhelmed as an African savage
would be if transported suddenly
into the heart of Times Square.
Arlok again twirled the knob.
The scene shifted, apparently to
another planet. This world was still
alive, with rich verdure and swarming
millions of people strangely like those
of Earth. But it was a doomed world.
The dread Gate to Xoran had already
been opened here. Legions of bluish-gray
Xoranians were attacking the
planet’s inhabitants, and the attack of
those metallic hosts was irresistible.
The slight bodies of the Xoranians
seemed as impervious to bullets and
missiles as though armor-plated. The
frantic defense of the beleaguered
people of the doomed planet caused
hardly a casualty in the Xoranian
ranks.
The attack of the Xoranians was
hideously effective. Clouds of dense
yellow fog belched from countless projectors
in the hands of the bluish-gray
hosts, and beneath that deadly miasma
all animal and plant life on the doomed
planet was crumbling, dying, and rotting
into a liquid slime. Then even
the slime was swiftly obliterated, and
the Xoranians were left triumphant
upon a world starkly desolate.
“That was one of the minor planets
in the swarm that make up the solar
system of the sun that your astronomers
call Canopus,” Arlok explained.
“Our first task in conquering a world
is to rid it of the unclean surface scum
of animal and plant life. When this
noxious surface mold is eliminated, the
planet is then ready to furnish us sustenance,
for we Xoranians live directly
upon the metallic elements of the
planet itself. Our bodies are of a substance
of which your scientists have
never even dreamed—deathless, invincible,
living metal!”
Arlok again twirled the control
of the apparatus and the scene
was shifted back to the planet of
Xoran, this time to the interior of what
was apparently a vast laboratory. Here
scores of Xoranian scientists were
working upon captives who were pathetically
like human beings of Earth
itself, working with lethal gases and
deadly liquids as human scientists
might experiment upon noxious pests.
The details of the scene were so utterly
revolting, the tortures that were
being inflicted so starkly horrible, that
Leah and Gordon sank back in their
chairs sick and shaken.
Arlok snapped off a switch, and the
green light in the tubes died. “That
last scene was the laboratory to which
I shall send you two presently,” he
said callously as he started back across
the room toward them.
Gordon lurched to his feet, his brain
a seething whirl of hate in which all
thought of caution was gone as he
tensed his muscles to hurl himself upon
that grim monstrosity from the bleak
and desolate realm of Xoran.
Then he felt Leah tugging surreptitiously
at his right hand. The next moment
the bulk of something cold and
hard met his fingers. It was the revolver.
Leah had secured it while Arlok
was busy with his inter-dimensional
televisor.
Arlok was rapidly approaching them.
Gordon hoped against hope that the
menace of that deadly tentacle might
be diverted for the fraction of a second
necessary for him to get in a crippling
shot. Leah seemed to divine his
thought. She suddenly screamed hysterically
and flung herself on the floor
almost at Arlok’s feet.
Arlok stopped in obvious wonder
and bent over Leah. Gordon took
instant advantage of the Xoranian’s diverted
attention. He whipped the revolver
from behind him and fired point-blank
at Arlok’s unprotected head.
The bullet struck squarely, but Arlok
was not even staggered. A tiny spot
of bluish-gray skin upon his oval skull
gleamed faintly for a moment under
the bullet’s impact. Then the heavy
pellet of lead, as thoroughly flattened
as though it had struck the triple armor
of a battleship, dropped spent and
harmless to the floor.
Arlok straightened swiftly. For the
moment he seemed to have no thought
of retaliating with his deadly tentacle.
He merely stood there quite still with
one thin arm thrown up to guard his
glowing eyes.
Gordon sent the remainder of the revolver’s
bullets crashing home as fast
as his finger could press the trigger.
At that murderously short range the
smashing rain of lead should have
dropped a charging gorilla. But for all
the effect Gordon’s shots had upon the
Xoranian, his ammunition might as
well have been pellets of paper. Arlok’s
glossy hide merely, glowed momentarily
in tiny patches as the bullets
struck and flattened harmlessly—and
that was all.
His last cartridge fired, Gordon flung
the empty weapon squarely at the blue
monstrosity’s hideous face. Arlok
made no attempt to dodge. The heavy
revolver struck him high on the forehead,
then rebounded harmlessly to the
floor. Arlok paid no more attention to
the blow than a man would to the
casual touch of a wind-blown feather.
Gordon desperately flung himself
forward upon the Xoranian in one last
mad effort to overwhelm him. Arlok
dodged Gordon’s wild blows, then
gently swept the Earth man into the
embrace of his thin arms. For one
helpless moment Gordon sensed the incredible
strength and adamantine hardness
of the Xoranian’s slender figure,
together with an overwhelming impression
of colossal weight in that deceptively
slight body.
Then Arlok contemptuously flung
Gordon away from him. As Gordon
staggered backward, Arlok’s tentacle
lashed upward and levelled upon
him. Its twin tips again glowed brilliant
green and livid blue. Instantly
every muscle in Gordon’s body was
paralyzed. He stood there as rigid as
a statue, his body completely deadened
from the neck down. Beside him stood
Leah, also frozen motionless in that
same weird power.
“Earthling, you are beginning to try
my patience,” Arlok snapped. “Can
you not realize that I am utterly invincible
in any combat with you? The
living metal of my body weighs over
sixteen hundred pounds, as you measure
weight. The strength inherent in
that metal is sufficient to tear a hundred
of your Earth men to shreds. But
I do not even have to touch you to vanquish
you. The electric content of my
bodily structure is so infinitely superior
to yours that with this tentacle-organ
of mine I can instantly short-circuit
the feeble currents of your nerve
impulses and bring either paralysis or
death as I choose.
“But enough of this!” Arlok broke
off abruptly. “My materials are now
ready, and it is time that I finished my
work. I shall put you out of my way
for a few hours until I am ready to
send you through the Gate to the laboratories
of Xoran.”
The green and blue fire of the tentacle’s
tips flamed to dazzling brightness.
The paralysis of Gordon’s body
swept swiftly over his brain. Black
oblivion engulfed him.
When Gordon again recovered
consciousness he found that he
was lying on the floor of what was apparently
a narrow hall, near the foot of
a stairway. His hands were lashed
tightly behind him, and his feet and
legs were so firmly pinioned together
that he could scarcely move.
Beside him lay Leah, also tightly
bound. A short distance down the hall
was the closed door of Arlok’s work-room,
recognizable by the thin line of
red light gleaming beneath it.
Moonlight through a window at the
rear of the hall made objects around
Gordon fairly clear. He looked at Leah
and saw tears glistening on her long
lashes.
“Oh, Blair, I was afraid you’d never
waken again,” the girl sobbed. “I
thought that fiend had killed you!”
Her voice broke hysterically.
“Steady, darling,” Gordon said soothingly.
“We simply can’t give up now,
you know. If that monstrosity ever
opens that accursed Gate of his our
entire world is doomed. There must
be some way to stop him. We’ve got
to find that way and try it—even if it
seems only one forlorn chance in a
million.”
Gordon shook his head to clear
the numbness still lingering from
the effect of Arlok’s tentacle. The
Xoranian seemed unable to produce a
paralysis of any great duration with
his weird natural weapon. Accordingly,
he had been forced to bind his captives
like two trussed fowls while he
returned to his labors.
Lying close together as they were,
it was a comparatively easy matter for
them to get their bound hands within
reach of each other, but after fifteen
minutes of vain work Gordon realized
that any attempt at untying the
ropes was useless. Arlok’s prodigious
strength had drawn the knots so tight
that no human power could ever loosen
them.
Then Gordon suddenly thought of
the one thing in his pockets that
might help them. It was a tiny cigarette
lighter, of the spring-trigger type.
It was in his vest pocket completely
out of reach of his bound hands, but
there was a way out of that difficulty.
Gordon and Leah twisted and rolled
their bodies like two contortionists until
they succeeded in getting into such
a position that Leah was able to get her
teeth in the cloth of the vest pocket’s
edge. A moment of desperate tugging,
then the fabric gave way. The lighter
dropped from the torn pocket to the
floor, where Leah retrieved it.
Then they twisted their bodies back
to back. Leah managed to get the
lighter flaming in her bound hands.
Gordon groped in an effort to guide
the ropes on his wrists over the tiny
flickering flame.
Then there came the faint welcome
odor of smoldering rope as the
lighter’s tiny flame bit into the bonds.
Gordon bit his lips to suppress a cry
of pain as the flame seared into his skin
as well. The flame bit deeper into the
rope. A single strand snapped.
Then another strand gave way. To
Gordon the process seemed endless as
the flame scorched rope and flesh alike.
A long minute of lancing agony that
seemed hours—then Gordon could
stand no more. He tensed his muscles
in one mighty agonized effort to end
the torture of the flame.
The weakened rope gave way completely
beneath that pain-maddened
lunge. Gordon’s hands were free. It
was an easy matter now to use the
lighter to finish freeing himself and
Leah. They made their way swiftly
back to the window at the rear of the
hall. It slid silently upward. A moment
later, and they were out in the
brilliant moonlight—free.
They made their way around to the
front of the house. Behind the drawn
shades of one of the front rooms an
eery glow of red light marked the location
of Arlok’s work-room. They
heard the occasional clink of tools inside
the room as the Xoranian diligently
worked to complete his apparatus.
They crept stealthily up to where
one of the French windows of Arlok’s
work-room swung slightly ajar.
Through the narrow crevice they could
see Arlok’s grotesque back as he labored
over the complex assembly of
apparatus against the wall.
A heavy stone flung through the window
would probably wreck that delicate
mechanism completely, yet the
two watchers knew that such a respite
would be only a temporary one. As
long as Arlok remained alive on this
planet to build other gates to Xoran,
Earth’s eventual doom was certain.
Complete destruction of Arlok himself
was Earth’s only hope of salvation.
The Xoranian seemed to be nearing
the end of his labors. He left
the apparatus momentarily and walked
over to a work-bench where he picked
up a slender rod-like tool. Donning a
heavy glove to shield his left hand, he
selected a small plate of bluish-gray
metal, then pressed a switch in the
handle of the tool in his right hand.
A blade of blinding white flame,
seemingly as solid as a blade of metal,
spurted for the length of a foot from
the tool’s tip. Arlok began cutting the
plate with the flame, the blade shearing
through the heavy metal as easily as a
hot knife shears through butter.
The sight brought a sudden surge of
exultant hope to Gordon. He swiftly
drew Leah away from the window, far
enough to the side that their low-voiced
conversation could not be heard
from inside the work-room.
“Leah, there is our one chance!” he
explained excitedly. “That blue fiend
is vulnerable, and that flame-tool of his
is the weapon to reach his vulnerability.
Did you notice how careful he
was to shield his other hand with a
glove before he turned the tool on?
He can be hurt by that blade of flame,
and probably hurt badly.”
Leah nodded in quick understanding.
“If I could lure him out of the room
for just a moment, you could slip in
through the window and get that flame-tool,
Blair,” she suggested eagerly.
“That might work,” Gordon agreed
reluctantly. “But, Leah, don’t run any
more risks than you absolutely have
to!” He picked up a small rock. “Here,
take this with you. Open the door
into the hall and attract Arlok’s attention
by throwing the rock at his precious
apparatus. Then the minute he
sees you, try to escape out through the
hall again. He’ll leave his work to
follow you. When he returns to his
work-room I’ll be in there waiting for
him. And I’ll be waiting with a weapon
that can stab through even that
armor-plated hide of his!”
They separated, Leah to enter the
house, Gordon to return to the window.
Arlok was back over in front of
the apparatus, fitting into place
the piece of metal he had just cut. The
flame-tool, its switch now turned off,
was still on the work-bench.
Gordon’s heart pounded with excitement
as he crouched there with his
eyes fixed upon the closed hall door.
The minutes seemed to drag interminably.
Then suddenly Gordon’s muscles
tensed. The knob of the hall door
had turned ever so slightly. Leah was
at her post!
The next moment the door was flung
open with a violence that sent it slamming
back against the wall. The slender
figure of Leah stood framed in the
opening, her dark eyes blazing as she
flung one hand up to hurl her missile.
Arlok whirled just as Leah threw
the rock straight at the intricate Gate-opening
apparatus. With the speed of
thought the Xoranian flung his own
body over to shield his fragile instruments.
The rock thudded harmlessly
against his metallic chest.
Then Arlok’s tentacle flung out like
a striking cobra, its forked tip flaming
blue and green fire as it focussed upon
the open door. But Leah was already
gone. Gordon heard her flying footsteps
as she raced down the hall. Arlok
promptly sped after her in swift
pursuit.
As Arlok passed through the door
into the hall Gordon flung himself
into the room, and sped straight for the
work-bench. He snatched the flame-tool
up, then darted over to the wall by
the door. He was not a second too
soon. The heavy tread of Arlok’s return
was already audible in the hall
just outside.
Gordon prepared to stake everything
upon his one slim chance of disabling
that fearful tentacle before Arlok could
bring it into action. He pressed the
tiny switch in the flame-tool’s handle
just as Arlok came through the door.
Arlok, startled by the glare of
the flame-tool’s blazing blade,
whirled toward Gordon—but too late.
That thin searing shaft of vivid flame
had already struck squarely at the base
of the Xoranian’s tentacle. A seething
spray of hissing sparks marked the
place where the flame bit deeply home.
Arlok screamed, a ghastly metallic note
of anguish like nothing human.
The Xoranian’s powerful hands
clutched at Gordon, but he leaped lithely
backward out of their reach. Then
Gordon again attacked, the flame-tool’s
shining blade licking in and out like
a rapier. The searing flame swept
across one of Arlok’s arms, and the
Xoranian winced. Then the blade
stabbed swiftly at Arlok’s waist. Arlok
half-doubled as he flinched back.
Gordon shifted his aim with lightning
speed and sent the blade of flame lashing
in one accurate terrible stroke that
caught Arlok squarely in the eyes.
Again Arlok screamed in intolerable
agony as that tearing flame darkened
forever his glowing eyes. In berserker
fury the tortured Xoranian charged
blindly toward Gordon. Gordon warily
dodged to one side. Arlok, sightless,
and with his tentacle crippled, still
had enough power in that mighty
metallic body of his to tear a hundred
Earth men to pieces.
Gordon stung Arlok’s shoulder with
the flame, then desperately leaped to
one side just in time to dodge a flailing
blow that would have made pulp of
his body had it landed.
Arlok went stark wild in his frenzied
efforts to come to grips with his
unseen adversary. Furniture crashed
and splintered to kindling wood beneath
his threshing feet. Even the
stout walls of the room shivered and
cracked as the incredible weight of Arlok’s
body caromed against them.
Gordon circled lithely around
the crippled blue monstrosity like
a timber wolf circling a wounded
moose. He began concentrating his attack
upon Arlok’s left leg. Half a
dozen deep slashes with the searing
flame—then suddenly the thin leg
crumpled and broke. Arlok crashed
helplessly to the floor.
Gordon was now able to shift his
attack to Arlok’s head. Dodging the
blindly flailing arms of the Xoranian,
he stabbed again and again at that oval-shaped
skull.
The searing thrusts began to have
their effect. Arlok’s convulsive movements
became slower and weaker. Gordon
sent the flame stabbing in a long
final thrust in an attempt to pierce
through to that alien metal brain.
With startling suddenness the flame
burned its way home to some unknown
center of life force in the oval skull.
There was a brief but appalling gush
of bright purple flame from Arlok’s
eye-sockets and mouth orifice. Then
his twitching body stiffened. His
bluish-gray hide darkened with incredible
swiftness into a dull black.
Arlok was dead.
Gordon, sickened at the grisly ending
to the battle, snapped off the flame-tool
and turned to search for Leah. He
found her already standing in the hall
door, alive, and unhurt.
“I escaped through the window
at the end of the hall,” she explained.
“Arlok quit following me as
soon as he saw that you too were gone
from where he had left us tied.” She
shuddered as she looked down at the
Xoranian’s mangled body. “I saw most
of your fight with him, Blair. It was
terrible; awful. But, Blair, we’ve won!”
“Yes, and now we’ll make sure of the
fruits of our victory,” Gordon said
grimly, starting over toward the Gate-opening
apparatus with the flame-tool
in his hand. A very few minutes’ work
with the shearing blade of flame reduced
the intricate apparatus to a mere
tangled pile of twisted metal.
Arlok, Gate-opener of Xoran, was
dead—and the Gate to that grim planet
was now irrevocably closed!
“Blair, do you feel it too, that eery
feeling of countless eyes still watching
us from Xoran?” There was frank awe
in Leah’s half-whispered question.
“You know Arlok said that they had
watched us for centuries from their
side of the barrier. I’m sure they’re
watching us now. Will they send another
Opener of Gates to take up the
work where Arlok failed?”
Gordon took Leah into his arms. “I
don’t know, dear,” he admitted gravely.
“They may send another messenger,
but I doubt it. This world of ours has
had its warning, and it will heed it.
The watchers on Xoran must know that
in the five hundred and forty years it
would take their next messenger to get
here, the Earth will have had more than
enough time to prepare an adequate defense
for even Xoran’s menace. I doubt
if there will ever again be an attempt
made to open the Gate to Xoran.”
The great ship tore apart.
The Eye of Allah
By C. D. Willard
On the fatal seventh of September a certain
Secret Service man sat in the President’s
chair and—looked back into the
Eye of Allah.
Blinky Collins’ part in this
matter was very brief. Blinky
lasted just long enough to
make a great discovery, to
brag about it as was Blinky’s way, and
then pass on to find his reward in
whatever hereafter
is set apart
for weak-minded
crooks whose
heads are not
hard enough to
withstand the
crushing impact of a lead-filled pacifier.
The photograph studio of Blinky
Collins was on the third floor of a disreputable
building in an equally unsavory
part of Chicago. There were
no tinted pictures of beautiful blondes
nor of stern, square-jawed men of affairs
in Blinky’s reception room. His
clients, who came furtively there, were
strongly opposed to having their pictures
taken—they
came for other
purposes. For the
photographic
work of Mr. Collins
was strictly
commercial—and
peculiar. There were fingerprints to
be photographed and identified for
purpose of private revenge, photographs
of people to be merged and repictured
in compromising closeness for
reasons of blackmail. And even X-Ray
photography was included in the scope
of his work.
The great discovery came when a
box was brought to the dingy
room and Mr. Collins was asked to
show what was inside it without the
bother and inconvenience of disturbing
lock and seals. The X-Ray machine
sizzled above it, and a photographic
plate below was developed to
show a string of round discs that could
easily have been pearls.
The temporary possessor of the box
was pleased with the result—but
Blinky was puzzled. For the developer
had brought out an odd result.
There were the pearls as expected, but,
too, there was a small picture superimposed—a
picture of a bald head and
a body beneath seated beside a desk.
The picture had been taken from above
looking straight down, and head and
desk were familiar.
Blinky knew them both. The odd
part was that he knew also that both
of them were at that instant on the
ground floor of the same disreputable
building, directly under and two floors
below his workshop.
Like many great discoveries, this of
Blinky’s came as the result of an accident.
He had monkeyed with the
X-Ray generator and had made certain
substitutions. And here was the
result—a bald head and a desk, photographed
plainly through two heavy
wood floors. Blinky scratched his own
head in deep thought. And then he
repeated the operation.
This time there was a blonde head
close to the bald one, and two people
were close to the desk and to each
other. Blinky knew then that there
were financial possibilities in this new
line of portrait work.
It was some time before the rat eyes
of the inventor were able to see exactly
what they wanted through this
strange device, but Blinky learned.
And he fitted a telescope back of the
ray and found that he could look along
it and see as if through a great funnel
what was transpiring blocks and blocks
away; he looked where he would, and
brick walls or stone were like glass
when the new ray struck through them.
Blinky never knew what he had—never
dreamed of the tremendous potentialities
in his oscillating ethereal
ray that had a range and penetration
beyond anything known. But he
knew, in a vague way, that this ray was
a channel for light waves to follow,
and he learned that he could vary the
range of the ray and that whatever
light was shown at the end of that
range came to him as clear and distinct
as if he were there in the room.
He sat for hours, staring through the
telescope. He would train the device
upon a building across the street, then
cut down the current until the unseen
vibration penetrated inside the building.
If there was nothing there of interest
he would gradually increase the
power, and the ray would extend out
and still out into other rooms and beyond
them to still others. Blinky
had a lot of fun, but he never forgot
the practical application of the device—practical,
that is, from the distorted
viewpoint of a warped mind.
“I’ve heard about your machine,”
said a pasty-faced man one day,
as he sat in Blinky’s room, “and I
think it’s a lot of hooey. But I’d give
just one grand to know who is with
the district attorney this minute.”
“Where is he?” asked Blinky.
“Two blocks down the street, in the
station house … and if Pokey Barnard
is with him, the lousy stool-pigeon—”
Blinky paid no attention to the
other’s opinion of one Pokey Barnard;
he was busy with a sputtering blue
light and a telescope behind a shield
of heavy lead.
“Put your money on the table,” he
said, finally: “there’s the dicks …
and there’s Pokey. Take a look—”
It was some few minutes later that
Blinky learned of another valuable feature
in his ray. He was watching the
district attorney when the pasty-faced
man brushed against a hanging incandescent
light. There was a bit of
bare wire exposed, and as it swung into
the ray the fuses in the Collins studio
blew out instantly.
But the squinting eyes at the telescope
had seen something first. They
had seen the spare form of the district
attorney throw itself from the chair as
if it had been dealt a blow—or had received
an electric shock.
Blinky put in new fuses—heavier
ones—and tried it again on another
subject. And again the man at the receiving
end got a shot of current that
sent him sprawling.
“Now what the devil—” demanded
Blinky. He stood off and looked at
the machine, the wire with its 110
volts, the invisible ray that was streaming
out.
“It’s insulated, the machine is,” he
told his caller, “so the juice won’t
shoot back if I keep my hands off;
but why,” he demanded profanely,
“don’t it short on the first thing it
touches?”
He was picturing vaguely a ray
like a big insulated cable, with
light and current both traveling along
a core at its center, cut off, insulated
by the ray, so that only the bare end
where the ray stopped could make contact.
“Some more of them damn electrons.”
he hazarded; then demanded of
his caller: “But am I one hell of a
smart guy? Or am I?”
There was no denying this fact. The
pasty-faced man told Blinky with
lurid emphasis just how smart. He
had seen with his own eyes and this
was too good to keep.
He paid his one grand and departed,
first to make certain necessary arrangements
for the untimely end of
one Pokey Barnard, squealer, louse, et
cetera, et cetera, and then to spread
the glad news through the underworld
of Collins’ invention.
That was Blinky’s big mistake, as
was shown a few days later. Not many
had taken seriously the account of the
photographer’s experiments, but there
was one who had, as was evident. A
bearded man, whose eyes stared somewhat
wildly from beneath a shock of
frowzy hair, entered the Collins work-room
and locked the door behind him.
His English was imperfect, but the
heavy automatic in his hand could not
be misunderstood. He forced the
trembling inventor to give a demonstration,
and the visitor’s face showed
every evidence of delight.
“The cur-rent,” he demanded with
careful words, “the electreek cur-rent,
you shall do also. Yes?”
Again the automatic brought quick
assent, and again the visitor showed
his complete satisfaction. Showed it
by slugging the inventor quietly and
efficiently and packing the apparatus
in the big suitcase he had brought.
Blinky Collins had been fond of that
machine. He had found a form of television
with uncounted possibilities,
and it had been for him the perfect instrument
of a blackmailing Peeping
Tom; he had learned the secret of directed
wireless transmission of power
and had seen it as a means for annoying
his enemies. Yet Blinky Collins—the
late Blinky Collins—offered no
least objection, when the bearded man
walked off with the machine. His
body, sprawled awkwardly in the corner,
was quite dead….
And now, some two months later,
in his Washington office, the
Chief of the United States Secret Service
pushed a paper across his desk to
a waiting man and leaned back in his
chair.
“What would you make of that,
Del?” he asked.
Robert Delamater reached leisurely
for the paper. He regarded it with
sleepy, half-closed eyes.
There was a crude drawing of an eye
at the top. Below was printed—not
written—a message in careful, precise
letters: “Take warning. The Eye of
Allah is upon you. You shall instructions
receive from time to time. Follow
them. Obey.”
Delamater laughed. “Why ask me
what I think of a nut letter like that.
You’ve had plenty of them just as
crazy.”
“This didn’t come to me,” said the
Chief; “it was addressed to the President
of the United States.”
“Well, there will be others, and we
will run the poor sap down. Nothing
out of the ordinary I should say.”
“That is what I thought—at first.
Read this—” The big, heavy-set man
pushed another and similar paper
across the desk. “This one was addressed
to the Secretary of State.”
Delamater did not read it at once.
He held both papers to the light; his
fingers touched the edges only.
“No watermark,” he mused; “ordinary
white writing stock—sold in all
the five and ten cent stores. Tried
these for fingerprints I suppose?”.
“Read it,” suggested the Chief.
“Another picture of an eye,” said
Delamater aloud, and read: “‘Warning.
You are dealing with an emissary from
a foreign power who is an unfriend of
my country. See him no more. This
is the first and last warning. The Eye
of Allah watches.’
“And what is this below—? ‘He did
not care for your cigars, Mr. Secretary.
Next time—but there must be no next
time.’”
Delamater read slowly—lazily.
He seemed only slightly interested
except when he came to the odd
conclusion of the note. But the Chief
knew Delamater and knew how that
slow indolence could give place to a
feverish, alert concentration when
work was to be done.
“Crazy as a loon,” was the man’s
conclusion as he dropped the papers
upon the desk.
“Crazy,” his chief corrected, “like a
fox! Read the last line again; then get
this—
“The Secretary of State is meeting
with a foreign agent who is here very
much incog. Came in as a servant of
a real ambassador. Slipped quietly into
Washington, and not a soul knew he
was here. He met the Secretary in a
closed room; no one saw him come or
leave—”;
“Well, the Secretary tells me that
in that room where nobody could see
he offered this man a cigar. His visitor
took it, tried to smoke it, apologized—and
lit one of his own vile cigarettes.”
“Hm-m!” Delamater sat a little
straighter in his chair; his eyebrows
were raised now in questioning astonishment.
“Dictaphone? Some employee
of the Department listening
in?”
“Impossible.”
“Now that begins to be interesting,”
the other conceded. His eyes had lost
their sleepy look. “Want me to take
it on?”
“Later. Right now. I want you to
take this visiting gentleman under
your personal charge. Here is the
name and the room and hotel where he
is staying. He is to meet with the
Secretary to-night—he knows where.
You will get to him unobserved—absolutely
unseen; I can leave that to you.
Take him yourself to his appointment,
and take him without a brass band.
But have what men you want tail you
and watch out for spies…. Then,
when he is through, bring him back and
deliver him safely to his room. Compray?”
“Right—give me Wilkins and Smeed.
I rather think I can get this bird there
and back without being seen, but perhaps
they may catch Allah keeping
tabs on us at that.” He laughed
amusedly as he took the paper with the
name and address.
A waiter with pencil and order-pad
might have been seen some
hours later going as if from the
kitchen to the ninth floor of a Washington
hotel. And the same waiter, a
few minutes later, was escorting a
guest from a rear service-door to an
inconspicuous car parked nearby. The
waiter slipped behind the wheel.
A taxi, whose driver was half asleep,
was parked a hundred feet behind
them at the curb. As they drove away
and no other sign of life was seen in
the quiet street the driver of the taxi
yawned ostentatiously and decided to
seek a new stand. He neglected possible
fares until a man he called Smeed
hailed him a block farther on. They
followed slowly after the first car …
and they trailed it again on its return
after some hours.
“Safe as a church,” they reported to
the driver of the first car. “We’ll swear
that nobody was checking up on that
trip.”
And: “O. K.” Delamater reported to
his chief the next morning. “Put
one over on this self-appointed Allah
that time.”
But the Chief did not reply: he was
looking at a slip of paper like those
he had shown his operative the day
before. He tossed it to Delamater and
took up the phone.
“To the Secretary of State,” Delamater
read. “You had your warning.
Next time you disobey it shall be you
who dies.”
The signature was only the image of
an eye.
The Chief was calling a number;
Delamater recognized it as that of
the hotel he had visited. “Manager,
please, at once,” the big man was saying.
He identified himself to the distant
man. Then: “Please check up on the
man in nine four seven. If he doesn’t
answer, enter the room and report at
once—I will hold the phone….”
The man at the desk tapped steadily
with a pencil; Robert Delamater sat
quietly, tensely waiting. But some
sixth sense told him what the answer
would be. He was not surprised when
the Chief repeated what the phone had
whispered.
“Dead?… Yes!… Leave everything
absolutely undisturbed. We will
be right over.”
“Get Doctor Brooks, Del,” he said
quietly; “the Eye of Allah was watching
after all.”
Robert Delamater was silent as they
drove to the hotel. Where had he
slipped? He trusted Smeed and Wilkins
entirely; if they said his car had
not been followed it had not. And the
visitor had been disguised; he had seen
to that. Then, where had this person
stood—this being who called himself
the Eye of Allah?
“Chief,” he said finally. “I didn’t slip—nor
Wilkins or Smeed.”
“Someone did,” replied the big man,
“and it wasn’t the Eye of Allah,
either.”
The manager of the hotel was waiting
to take them to the room. He unlocked
the door with his pass key.
“Not a thing touched,” he assured
the Secret Service men; “there he is,
just the way we found him.”
In the doorway between the bedroom
and bath a body was huddled. Doctor
Brooks knelt quickly beside it. His
hands worked swiftly for a moment,
then he rose to his feet.
“Dead,” he announced.
“How long?” asked the Chief.
“Some time. Hours I should say—perhaps
eight or ten.”
“Cause?” the query was brief.
“It will take an autopsy to determine
that. There is no blood or wound to
be seen.”
The doctor was again examining
the partly rigid body. He opened
one hand; it held a cake of soap. There
was a grease mark on the hand.
Delamater supplied the explanation.
“He touched some grease on the old
car I was using,” he said. “Must have
gone directly to wash it off. See—there
is water spilled on the floor.”
Water had indeed been splashed on
the tile floor of the bath room; a pool
of it still remained about the heavy,
foreign-looking shoes of the dead man.
Something in it caught Delamater’s
eye. He leaned down to pick up three
pellets of metal, like small shot, round
and shining.
“I’ll keep these,” he said, “though
the man was never killed with shot as
small as that.”
“We shall have to wait for the autopsy
report,” said the Chief crisply;
“that may give the cause of death.
Was there anyone in the room—did
you enter it with him last night, Del?”
“No,” said the operative; “he was
very much agitated when we got here—dismissed
me rather curtly at the
door. He was quite upset about something—spoke
English none too well
and said something about a warning
and damned our Secret Service as inefficient.”
“A warning!” said the Chief. The
dead man’s brief case was on the bed.
He crossed to it and undid the straps;
the topmost paper told the reason for
the man’s disquiet. It showed the familiar,
staring eye. And beneath the
eye was a warning: this man was to
die if he did not leave Washington at
once.
The Chief turned to the hotel manager.
“Was the door locked?”
“Yes.”
“But it is a spring lock. Someone
could have gone out and closed it after
him.”
“Not this time. The dead-bolt was
thrown. It takes a key to do that from
the outside or this thumb-turn on the
inside.” The hotel man demonstrated
the action of the heavy bolt.
“Then, with a duplicate key, a man
could have left this room and locked
the door behind him.”
“Absolutely not. The floor-clerk
was on duty all night. I have questioned
her: this room was under her
eyes all the time. She saw this man
return, saw your man, here”—and he
pointed to Delamater—“leave him at
the door. There was no person left the
room after that.”
“See about the autopsy, Doctor,” the
Chief ordered.
And to the manager: “Not a thing
here must be touched. Admit only
Mr. Delamater and no one else unless
he vouches for them.
“Del,” he told the operative, “I’m
giving you a chance to make up for
last night. Go to it.”
And Robert Delamater “went to it”
with all the thoroughness at his command,
and with a total lack of result.
The autopsy helped not at all.
The man was dead; it was apparently
a natural death. “Not a scratch
nor a mark on him,” was the report.
But: “… next time it will be you,”
the note with the staring eye had
warned the Secretary of State. The
writer of it was taking full credit for
the mysterious death.
Robert Delamater had three small
bits of metal, like tiny shot, and he
racked his brain to connect these with
the death. There were fingerprints,
too, beautifully developed upon the
mysterious missives—prints that tallied
with none in the records. There
were analyses of the paper—of the ink—and
not a clue in any of them.
Just three pellets of metal. Robert
Delamater had failed utterly, and he
was bitter in the knowledge of his
failure.
“He had you spotted, Del,” the Chief
insisted. “The writer of these notes
may be crazy, but he was clever enough
to know that this man did see the Secretary.
And he was waiting for him
when he came back; then he killed
him.”
“Without a mark?”
“He killed him,” the Chief repeated;
“then he left—and that’s that.”
“But,” Delamater objected, “the
room clerk—”
“—took a nap,” broke in the Chief.
But Delamater could not be satisfied
with the explanation.
“He got his, all right,” he conceded,
“—got it in a locked room nine stories
above the street, with no possible
means of bringing it upon himself—and
no way for the murderer to escape.
I tell you there is something more to
this: just the letter to the Secretary, as
if this Eye of Allah were spying upon
him—”
The Chief waved all that aside. “A
clever spy,” he insisted. “Too clever
for you. And a darn good guesser;
he had us all fooled. But we’re dealing
with a madman, not a ghost, and
he didn’t sail in through a ninth story
window nor go out through a locked
door; neither did he spy on the Secretary
of State in his private office.
Don’t try to make a supernatural mystery
out of a failure, Del.”
The big man’s words were tempered
with a laugh, but there was an edge of
sarcasm, ill-concealed.
And then came the next note. And
the next. The letters were
mailed at various points in and about
the city; they came in a flood. And
they were addressed to the President
of the United States, to the Secretary
of War—of the Navy—to all the Cabinet
members. And all carried the
same threat under the staring eye.
The United States, to this man, represented
all that was tyrannical and
oppressive to the downtrodden of the
earth. He proposed to end it—this
government first, then others in their
turn. It was the outpouring of a
wildly irrational mind that came to
the office of the harassed Chief of the
United States Secret Service, who
had instructions to run this man down—this
man who signed himself The
Eye of Allah. And do it quickly for
the notes were threatening. Official
Washington, it seemed, was getting
jumpy and was making caustic inquiries
as to why a Secret Service department
was maintained.
The Chief, himself, was directing
the investigation—and getting nowhere.
“Here is the latest,” he said one
morning. “Mailed at New York.” Delamater
and a dozen other operatives
were in his office: he showed them a
letter printed like all the others. There
was the eye, and beneath were words
that made the readers catch their
breath.
“The Eye of Allah sees—it has
warned—now it will destroy. The day
of judgment is at hand. The battleship
Maryland is at anchor in the Hudson
River at New York. No more shall
it be the weapon of a despot government.
It will be destroyed at twelve
o’clock on September fifth.”
“Wild talk,” said the Chief, “but today
is the fourth. The Commander of
the Maryland has been warned—approach
by air or water will be impossible.
I want you men to patrol the
shore and nail this man if he shows up.
Lord knows what he intends—bluffing
probably—but he may try some fool
stunt. If he does—get him!”
Eleven-thirty by the watch
on Robert Delamater’s wrist
found him seated in the bow of a
speed-boat the following morning.
They patrolled slowly up and down
the shore. There were fellow operatives,
he knew, scores of them, posted
at all points of vantage along the
docks.
Eleven forty-five—and the roar of
seaplanes came from above where air
patrols were-guarding the skies. Small
boats drove back and forth on set
courses; no curious sight-seeing craft
could approach the Maryland that day.
On board the battleship, too, there was
activity apparent. A bugle sounded,
and the warning of bellowing Klaxons
echoed across the water. Here, in the
peace and safety of the big port, the
great man-of-war was sounding general
quarters, and a scurry of running
men showed for an instant on her
decks. Anti-aircraft guns swung silently
upon imaginary targets—
The watcher smiled at the absurdity
of it all—this preparation to repel the
attack of a wild-eyed writer of insane
threats. And yet—and yet— He knew,
too, there was apprehension in his frequent
glances at his watch.
One minute to go! Delamater
should have watched the shore. And,
instead, he could not keep his eyes
from the big fighting-ship silhouetted
so clearly less than a mile away, motionless
and waiting—waiting—for
what? He saw the great turreted guns,
useless against this puny, invisible opponent.
Above them the fighting tops
were gleaming. And above them—
Delamater shaded his eyes with a
quick, tense hand: the tip of the mast
was sparkling. There was a blue flash
that glinted along the steel. It was
gone to reappear on the fighting top
itself—then lower.
What was it? the watching man
was asking himself. What did
it bring to mind? A street-car? A defective
trolley? The zipping flash of a
contact made and broken? That last!
Like the touch of a invisible wire,
tremendously charged, a wire that
touched and retreated, that made and
lost its contact, the flashing arc was
working toward the deck. It felt its
way to the body of the ship; the arc
was plain, starting from mid-air to hiss
against the armored side; the arc shortened—went
to nothing—vanished….
A puff of smoke from an open port
proved its presence inside. Delamater
had the conviction that a deadly something
had gone through the ship’s side—was
insulated from it—was searching
with its blazing, arcing end for the
ammunition rooms….
The realization of that creeping
menace came to Delamater with a gripping,
numbing horror. The seconds
were almost endless as he waited.
Slowly, before his terrified eyes, the
deck of the great ship bulged upward … slowly
it rolled and tore apart … a
mammoth turret with sixteen-inch
guns was lifting unhurriedly into
the air … there were bodies of men
rocketing skyward….
The mind of the man was racing at
lightning speed, and the havoc before
him seemed more horrible in its slow,
leisurely progress. If he could only
move—do something!
The shock of the blasted air struck
him sprawling into the bottom of the
boat; the listener was hammered almost
to numbness by the deafening
thunder that battered and tore through
the still air. At top speed the helmsman
drove for the shelter of a hidden
cove. They made it an instant before
the great waves struck high upon the
sand spit. Over the bay hung a ballooning
cloud of black and gray—lifting
for an instant to show in stark
ghastliness the wreckage, broken and
twisted, that marked where the battleship
Maryland rested in the mud in the
harbor of New York.
The eyes of the Secret-Service
men were filled with the indelible
impress of what they had seen. Again
and again, before him, came the vision
of a ship full of men in horrible, slow
disintegration; his mind was numbed
and his actions and reactions were
largely automatic. But somehow he
found himself in the roar of the subway,
and later he sat in a chair and
knew he was in a Pullman of a Washington
train.
He rode for hours in preoccupied
silence, his gaze fixed unseeingly,
striving to reach out and out to some
distant, unknown something which he
was trying to visualize. But he looked
at intervals at his hand that held three
metal pellets.
He was groping for the mental sequence
which would bring the few
known facts together and indicate
their cause. A threat—a seeming spying
within a closed and secret room—the
murder on the ninth floor, a murder
without trace of wound or weapon.
Weapon! He stared again at the tangible
evidence he held; then shook his
head in perplexed abstraction. No—the
man was killed by unknown means.
And now—the Maryland! And a
visible finger of death—touching, flashing,
feeling its way to the deadly cargo
of powder sacks.
Not till he sat alone with his chief
did he put into words his thoughts.
“A time bomb did it,” the Chief was
saying. “The officials deny it, but what
other answer is there? No one approached
that ship—you know that,
Del—no torpedo nor aerial bomb!
Nothing as fanciful as that!”
Robert Delamater’s lips formed a wry
smile. “Nothing at fanciful as that”—and
he was thinking, thinking—of what
he hardly dared express.
“We will start with the ship’s personnel,”
the other continued; “find
every man who was not on board when
the explosion occurred—”
“No use,” the operative interrupted;
“this was no inside job, Chief.” He
paused to choose his words while the
other watched him curiously.
“Someone did reach that ship—reached
it from a distance—reached it
in the same way they reached that poor
devil I left at room nine forty-seven.
Listen—”
He told his superior of his vigil
on the speed-boat—of the almost
invisible flash against the ship’s mast.
“He reached it, Chief,” he concluded;
“he felt or saw his way down and
through the side of that ship. And
he fired their ammunition from God
knows where.”
“I wonder,” said the big man slowly;
“I wonder if you know just what you
are trying to tell me—just how absurd
your idea is. Are you seriously hinting
at long-distance vision through
solid armor-plate—through these walls
of stone and steel? And wireless
power-transmission through the same
wall—!”
“Exactly!” said the operative.
“Why, Del, you must be as crazy
as this Eye of Allah individual. It’s
impossible.”
“That word,” said Delamater, quietly,
“has been crossed out of scientific
books in the past few years.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have studied some physical science,
of course?” Delamater asked.
The Chief nodded.
“Then you know what I mean. I
mean that up to recent years science
had all the possibilities and impossibilities
neatly divided and catalogued.
Ignorance, as always, was the best basis
for positive assurance. Then they got
inside the atom. And since then your
real scientist has been a very humble
man. He has seen the impossibility of
yesterday become the established fact
of to-day.”
The Chief of the United States Secret
Service was tapping with nervous
irritation on the desk before him.
“Yes, yes!” he agreed, and again he
looked oddly at his operative. “Perhaps
there is something to that; you
work along that line, Del: you can have
a free hand. Take a few days off, a
little vacation if you wish. Yes—and
ask Sprague to step in from the other
office; he has the personnel list.”
Robert Delamater felt the
other’s eyes follow him as he left
the room. “And that about lets me
out,” he told himself; “he thinks I’ve
gone cuckoo, now.”
He stopped in a corridor; his fingers,
fumbling in a vest pocket, had touched
the little metal spheres. Again his
mind flashed back to the chain of events
he had linked together. He turned toward
an inner office.
“I would like to see Doctor Brooks,”
he said. And when the physician appeared:
“About that man who was
murdered at the hotel, Doctor—”
“Who died,” the doctor corrected;
“we found no evidence of murder.”
“Who was murdered,” the operative
insisted. “Have you his clothing where
I can examine it?”
“Sure,” agreed the physician. He led
Delamater to another room and brought
out a box of the dead man’s effects.
“But if it’s murder you expect to
prove you’ll find no help in this.”
The Secret Service man nodded. “I’ll
look them over, just the same,” he said.
“Thanks.”
Alone in the room, he went over the
clothing piece by piece. Again he examined
each garment, each pocket, the
lining, as he had done before when first
he took the case. Metal, he thought,
he must find metal.
But only when a heavy shoe was in
his hands did the anxious frown relax
from about his eyes.
“Of course,” he whispered, half
aloud. “What a fool I was! I should
have thought of that.”
The soles of the shoes were sewed,
but, beside the stitches were metal
specks, where cobbler’s nails were
driven. And in the sole of one shoe
were three tiny holes.
“Melted!” he said exultantly. “Crazy,
am I, Chief? This man was standing
on a wet floor; he made a perfect
ground. And he got a jolt that melted
these nails when it flashed out of him.”
He wrapped the clothing carefully
and replaced it in the box. And he fingered
the metal pellets in his pocket as
he slipped quietly from the room.
He did not stop to talk with Doctor
Brooks; he wanted to think,
to ponder upon the incredible proof of
the theory he had hardly dared believe.
The Eye of Allah—the maniac—was
real; and his power for evil! There
was work to be done, and the point of
beginning was not plain.
How far did the invisible arm reach?
How far could the Eye of Allah see?
Where was the generator—the origin
of this wireless power; along what
channel did it flow? A ray of lightless
light—an unseen ethereal vibration….
Delamater could only guess at the
answers.
The current to kill a man or to flash
a spark into silken powder bags need
not be heavy, he knew. Five hundred—a
thousand volts—if the mysterious
conductor carried it without resistance
and without loss. People had been
killed by house-lighting currents—a
mere 110 volts—when conditions were
right. There would be no peculiar or
unusual demand upon the power company
to point him toward the hidden
maniac.
He tossed restlessly throughout the
night, and morning brought no answer
to his repeated questions. But it
brought a hurry call from his Chief.
“Right away,” was the instruction;
“don’t lose a minute. Come to the
office.”
He found the big man at his desk.
He was quiet, unhurried, but the operative
knew at a glance the tense repression
that was being exercised—the
iron control of nerves that demanded
action and found incompetence and
helplessness instead.
“I don’t believe your fantastic theories,”
he told Delamater. “Impractical—impossible!
But—” He handed the
waiting man a paper. “We must not
leave a stone unturned.”
Delamater said nothing; he looked at
the paper in his hand. “To the President
of the United States,” he read.
“Prepare to meet your God. Friday.
The eighth. Twelve o’clock.”
The signature he hardly saw; the
staring, open eye was all too familiar.
“That is to-morrow,” said Delamater
softly. “The President dies to-morrow.”
“No!” exploded the Chief. “Do
you realize what that means?
The President murdered—more killings
to follow—and the killer unknown!
Why the country will be in a
panic: the whole structure of the Government
is threatened!”
He paused, then added as he struck
his open hand upon the desk: “I will
have every available man at the White
House.”
“For witnesses?” asked Delamater
coldly.
The big man stared at his operative;
the lines of his face were sagging.
“Do you believe—really—he can
strike him down—at his desk—from a
distance?”
“I know it.” Delamater’s fingers
played for a moment with three bits
of metal in his pocket. Unconsciously
he voiced his thoughts: “Does the
President have nails in his shoes, I
wonder?”
“What—what’s that?” the Chief demanded.
But Delamater made no reply. He
was picturing the President. He would
be seated at his desk, waiting, waiting
… and the bells would be ringing and
whistles blowing from distant shops
when the bolt would strike…. It
would flash from his feet … through
the thick rug … through the rug….
It would have to ground.
He paid no heed to his Chief’s repeated
question. He was seeing, not
the rug in the Presidential office, but
below it—underneath it—a heavy pad
of rubber.
“If he can be insulated—” he said
aloud, and stared unseeingly at his
eagerly listening superiors—“even the
telephone cut—no possible connection
with the ground—”
“For God’s sake, Del, if you’ve got
an idea—any hope at all! I’m—I’m up
against it, Del.”
The operative brought his distant
gaze back to the room and the man
across from him. “Yes,” he said slowly,
thoughtfully, “I’ve got the beginning
of an idea; I don’t see the end
of it yet.
“We can cut him off from the ground—the
President, I mean—make an insulated
island where he sits. But this
devil will get him the instant he leaves
… unless … unless….”
“Yes—yes?” The Chief’s voice was
high-pitched with anxious impatience;
for the first time he was admitting to
himself his complete helplessness in
this emergency.
“Unless,” said Delamater, as the idea
grew and took shape, “unless that wireless
channel works both ways. If it
does … if it does….”
The big man made a gesture of complete
incomprehension.
“Wait!” said Robert Delamater,
sharply. If ever his sleepy indolence
had misled his Chief, there was none
to do so now in the voice that rang
like cold steel. His eyes were slits
under the deep-drawn brows, and his
mouth was one straight line.
To the hunter there is no greater
game than man. And Robert Delamater,
man-hunter, had his treacherous
quarry in sight. He fired staccato questions
at his Chief.
“Is the President at his desk at
twelve?”
“Yes.”
“Does he know—about this?”
“Yes.”
“Does he know it means death?”
The Chief nodded.
“I see a way—a chance,” said the operative.
“Do I get a free hand?”
“Yes—Good Lord, yes! If there’s
any chance of—”
Delamater silenced him. “I’ll be the
one to take the chance,” he said grimly.
“Chief, I intend to impersonate the
President.”
“Now listen— The President and I
are about the same build. I know a
man who can take care of the make-up;
he will get me by anything but a close
inspection. This Eye of Allah, up to
now, has worked only in the light.
We’ll have to gamble on that and work
our change in the dark.
“The President must go to bed as
usual—impress upon him that he may
be under constant surveillance. Then,
in the night, he leaves—
“Oh, I know he won’t want to hide
himself, but he must. That’s up to you.
“Arrange for me to go to his room
before daylight. From that minute on
I am the President. Get me his routine
for that morning; I must follow it
so as to arouse no least suspicion.”
“But I don’t see—” began the
Chief. “You will impersonate
him—yes—but what then? You will
be killed if this maniac makes good.
Is the President of the United States
to be a fugitive? Is—”
“Hold on, hold on!” said Delamater.
He leaned back in his chair; his face
relaxed to a smile, then a laugh.
“I’ve got it all now. Perhaps it will
work. If not—” A shrug of the shoulders
completed the thought. “And I
have been shooting it to you pretty
fast haven’t I! Now here is the idea—
“I must be in the President’s chair
at noon. This Allah person will be
watching in, so I must be acting the
part all morning. I will have the heaviest
insulation I can get under the rug,
and I’ll have something to take the shot
instead of myself. And perhaps, perhaps
I will send a message back to the
Eye of Allah that will be a surprise.
“Is it a bet?” he asked. “Remember,
I’m taking the chance—unless you
know some better way—”
The Chief’s chair came down with a
bang. “We’ll gamble on it, Del,” he
said; “we’ve got to—there is no other
way…. And now what do you
want?”
“A note to the White House electrician,”
said Robert Delamater, “and
full authority to ask for anything I
may need, from the U. S. Treasury
down to a pair of wire-cutters.”
His smile had become contagious;
the Chief’s anxious look relaxed. “If
you pull this off, Del, they may give
you the Treasury or the Mint at that.
But remember, republics are notoriously
ungenerous.”
“We’ll have to gamble on that, too,”
said Robert Delamater.
The heart of the Nation is Washington.
Some, there are, who
would have us feel that New York rules
our lives. Chicago—San Francisco—these
and other great cities sometimes
forget that they are mere ganglia on
the financial and commercial nervous
system. The heart is Washington, and,
Congress to the contrary notwithstanding,
the heart of that heart is not the
domed building at the head of Pennsylvania
Avenue, but an American
home. A simple, gracious mansion,
standing in quiet dignity and whiteness
above its velvet lawns.
It is the White House that draws
most strongly at the interest and curiosity
of the homely, common throng
that visits the capital.
But there were no casual visitors at
the White House on the seventh of
September. Certain Senators, even,
were denied admittance. The President
was seeing only the members of
the Cabinet and some few others.
It is given to a Secret Service operative,
in his time, to play many parts.
But even a versatile actor might pause
at impersonating a President. Robert
Delamater was acting the role with
never a fumble. He sat, this new Robert
Delamater, so startlingly like the
Chief Executive, in the chair by a flat
top desk. And he worked diligently at
a mass of correspondence.
Secretaries came and went; files were
brought. Occasionally he replied to a
telephone call—or perhaps called someone.
It would be hard to say which
happened, for no telephone bells rang.
On the desk was a schedule that
Delamater consulted. So much time
for correspondence—so many minutes
for a conference with this or that official,
men who were warned to play up
to this new Chief Executive as if the
life of their real President were at
stake.
To any observer the busy routine
of the morning must have passed
with never a break. And there was an
observer, as Delamater knew. He had
wondered if the mystic ray might carry
electrons that would prove its presence.
And now he knew.
The Chief of the U. S. Secret Service
had come for a consultation with the
President. And whatever lingering
doubts may have stifled his reluctant
imagination were dispelled when the
figure at the desk opened a drawer.
“Notice this,” he told the Chief as
he appeared to search for a paper in
the desk. “An electroscope; I put it
in here last night. It is discharging.
The ray has been on since nine-thirty.
No current to electrocute me—just a
penetrating ray.”
He returned the paper to the drawer
and closed it.
“So that is that,” he said, and picked
up a document to which he called the
visitor’s attention.
“Just acting,” he explained. “The
audience may be critical; we must try
to give them a good show! And now
give me a report. What are you doing?
Has anything else turned up? I am
counting on you to stand by and see
that that electrician is on his toes at
twelve o’clock.”
“Stand by is right,” the Chief
agreed; “that’s about all we can do. I
have twenty men in and about the
grounds—there will be as many more
later on. And I know now just how little
use we are to you, Del.”
“Your expression!” warned Delamater.
“Remember you are talking to the
President. Very official and all that.”
“Right! But now tell me what is the
game, Del. If that devil fails to knock
you out here where you are safe, he
will get you when you leave the room.”
“Perhaps,” agreed the pseudo-executive,
“and again, perhaps not. He won’t
get me here; I am sure of that. They
have this part of the room insulated.
The phone wire is cut—my conversations
there are all faked.
“There is only one spot in this room
where that current can pass. A heavy
cable is grounded outside in wet earth.
It comes to a copper plate on this desk;
you can’t see it—it is under those papers.”
“And if the current comes—” began
the visitor.
“When it comes,” the other corrected,
“it will jump to that plate and go
off harmlessly—I hope.”
“And then what? How does that
let you out?”
“Then we will see,” said the presidential
figure. “And you’ve been here
long enough, Chief. Send in the President’s
secretary as you go out.”
“He arose to place a friendly, patronizing
hand on the other’s shoulder.
“Good-by,” he said, “and watch that
electrician at twelve. He is to throw
the big switch when I call.”
“Good luck,” said the big man huskily.
“We’ve got to hand it to you, Del;
you’re—”
“Good-by!” The figure of the Chief
Executive turned abruptly to his desk.
There was more careful acting—another
conference—some dictating. The
clock on the desk gave the time as
eleven fifty-five. The man before the
flat topped desk verified it by a surreptitious
glance at his watch. He dismissed
the secretary and busied himself
with some personal writing.
Eleven fifty-nine—and he pushed
paper and pen aside. The movement
disturbed some other papers, neatly
stacked. They were dislodged, and
where they had lain was a disk of dull
copper.
“Ready,” the man called softly.
“Don’t stand too near that line.” The
first boom of noonday bells came
faintly to the room.
The President—to all but the other
actors in the morning’s drama—leaned
far back in his chair. The room was
suddenly deathly still. The faint ticking
of the desk clock was loud and
rasping. There was heavy breathing
audible in the room beyond. The last
noonday chime had died away….
The man at the desk was waiting—waiting.
And he thought he was prepared,
nerves steeled, for the expected.
But he jerked back, to fall with the
overturned chair upon the soft, thick-padded
rug, at the ripping, crackling
hiss that tore through the silent room.
From a point above the desk a blue
arc flamed and wavered. Its unseen
terminal moved erratically in the
air, but the other end of the deadly
flame held steady upon a glowing, copper
disc.
Delamater, prone on the floor, saw
the wavering point that marked the
end of the invisible carrier of the current—saw
it drift aside till the blue
arc was broken. It returned, and the
arc crashed again into blinding flame.
Then, as abruptly, the blue menace
vanished.
The man on the floor waited, waited,
and tried to hold fast to some sense of
time.
Then: “Contact!” he shouted. “The
switch! Close the switch!”
“Closed!” came the answer from a
distant room. There was a shouted
warning to unseen men: “Stand back
there—back—there’s twenty thousand
volts on that line—”
Again the silence….
“Would it work? Would it?” Delamater’s
mind was full of delirious,
half-thought hopes. That fiend in
some far-off room had cut the current
meant as a death-bolt to the Nation’s’
head. He would leave the ray on—look
along it to gloat over his easy
victory. His generator must be insulated:
would he touch it with his
hand, now that his own current was
off?—make of himself a conductor?
In the air overhead formed a terrible
arc.
From the floor, Delamater saw it rip
crashingly into life as twenty thousand
volts bridged the gap of a foot or
less to the invisible ray. It hissed
tremendously in the stillness….
And Delamater suddenly buried his
face in his hands. For in his mind he
was seeing a rigid, searing body, and
in his nostrils, acrid, distinct, was the
smell of burning flesh.
“Don’t be a fool,” he told himself
fiercely. “Don’t be a fool! Imagination!”
The light was out.
“Switch off!” a voice was calling.
There was a rush of swift feet from
the distant doors; friendly hands were
under him—lifting him—as the room,
for Robert Delamater, President-in-name
of the United States, turned
whirlingly, dizzily black….
Robert Delamater, U. S.
Secret Service operative, entered
the office of his Chief. Two days of
enforced idleness and quiet had been
all he could stand. He laid a folded
newspaper before the smiling, welcoming
man.
“That’s it, I suppose,” he said, and
pointed to a short notice.
“X-ray Operator Killed,” was the
caption. “Found Dead in Office in
Watts Building.” He had read the
brief item many times.
“That’s what we let the reporters
have,” said the Chief.
“Was he”—the operative hesitated
for a moment—“pretty well fried?”
“Quite!”
“And the machine?”
“Broken glass and melted metal. He
smashed it as he fell.”
“The Eye of Allah,” mused Delamater.
“Poor devil—poor, crazy devil.
Well, we gambled—and we won. How
about the rest of the bet? Do I get
the Mint?”
“Hell, no!” said the Chief. “Do you
expect to win all the time? They want
to know why it took us so long to get
him.
“Now, there’s a little matter out in
Ohio, Del, that we’ll have to get
after—”
“The globe leaped upward into the huge coil, which whirled madly.”
The Fifth-Dimension Catapult
A COMPLETE NOVELETTE
By Murray Leinster
The story of Tommy Reames’ extraordinary
rescue of Professor Denham and his
daughter—marooned in the fifth dimension.
FOREWORD
This story has no normal starting-place,
because there are too many
places where it might be said to begin.
One might commence
when Professor
Denham,
Ph. D., M. A., etc.,
isolated a metal
that scientists
have been talking about for many years
without ever being able to smelt. Or
it might start with his first experimental
use of that metal with entirely
impossible results. Or it might very
plausibly begin
with an interview
between a celebrated
leader of
gangsters in the
city of Chicago
and a spectacled young laboratory assistant,
who had turned over to him a
peculiar heavy object of solid gold and
very nervously explained, and finally
managed to prove, where it came from.
With also impossible results, because
it turned “King” Jacaro, lord of vice-resorts
and rum-runners, into a passionate
enthusiast in non-Euclidean
geometry. The whole story might be
said to begin with the moment of that
interview.
But that leaves out Smithers, and
especially it leaves out Tommy Reames.
So, on the whole, it is best to take up
the narrative at the moment of Tommy’s
first entrance into the course of
events.
CHAPTER I
He came to a stop in a cloud
of dust that swirled up to
and all about the big roadster,
and surveyed the gate
of the private road. The gate was
rather impressive. At its top was a
sign. “Keep Out!” Halfway down was
another sign. “Private Property. Trespassers
Will Be Prosecuted.” On one
gate-post was another notice, “Live
Wires Within.” and on the other a defiant
placard. “Savage Dogs At Large
Within This Fence.”
The fence itself was all of seven
feet high and made of the heaviest
of woven-wire construction. It was
topped with barbed wire, and went all
the way down both sides of a narrow
right of way until it vanished in the
distance.
Tommy got out of the car and
opened the gate. This fitted the description
of his destination, as given
him by a brawny, red-headed filling-station
attendant in the village some
two miles back. He drove the roadster
through the gate, got out and closed it
piously, got back in the car and shot
it ahead.
He went humming down the narrow
private road at forty-five miles an
hour. That was Tommy Reames’ way.
He looked totally unlike the conventional
description of a scientist of any
sort—as much unlike a scientist as his
sport roadster looked unlike a scientist’s
customary means of transit—and
ordinarily he acted quite unlike one.
As a matter of fact, most of the people
Tommy associated with had no faintest
inkling of his taste for science as an
avocation. There was Peter Dalzell,
for instance, who would have held up
his hands in holy horror at the idea of
Tommy Reames being the author of
that article. “On the Mass and Inertia
of the Tesseract,” which in the Philosophical
Journal had caused a controversy.
And there was one Mildred Holmes—of
no importance in the matter of
the Fifth-Dimension Catapult—who
would have lifted beautifully arched
eyebrows in bored unbelief if anybody
had suggested that Tommy Reames
was that Thomas Reames whose “Additions
to Herglotz’s Mechanics of Continua”
produced such diversities of
opinion in scientific circles. She intended
to make Tommy propose to her
some day, and thought she knew all
about him. And everybody, everywhere,
would have been incredulous of
his present errand.
Gliding down the narrow, fenced-in
road. Tommy was a trifle dubious
about this errand himself. A
yellow telegraph-form in his pocket
read rather like a hoax, but was just
plausible enough to have brought him
away from a rather important tennis
match. The telegram read:
PROFESSOR DENHAM IN EXTREME
DANGER THROUGH
EXPERIMENT BASED ON
YOUR ARTICLE ON DOMINANT
COORDINATES YOU
ALONE CAN HELP HIM IN
THE NAME OF HUMANITY
COME AT ONCE.
A. VON HOLTZ.
The fence went on past the car. A
mile, a mile and a half of narrow lane,
fenced in and made as nearly intruder-proof
as possible.
“Wonder what I’d do,” said Tommy
Reames, “if another car came along
from the other end?”
He deliberately tried not to think
about the telegram any more. He didn’t
believe it. He couldn’t believe it. But
he couldn’t ignore it, either. Nobody
could: few scientists, and no human
being with a normal amount of curiosity.
Because the article on dominant
coordinates had appeared in the
Journal of Physics and had dealt with
a state of things in which the normal
coordinates of everyday existence were
assumed to have changed their functions:
when the coordinates of time,
the vertical, the horizontal and the lateral
changed places and a man went
east to go up and west to go “down”
and ran his street-numbers in a fourth
dimension. It was mathematical foolery,
from one standpoint, but it led to
some fascinating if abstruse conclusions.
But his brain would not remain
away from the subject of the telegram,
even though a chicken appeared
in the fenced-in lane ahead of him and
went flapping wildly on before the
car. It rose in mid-air, the car overtook
it as it rose above the level of
the hood, and there was a rolling,
squawking bundle of shedding feathers
tumbling over and over along the hood
until it reached the slanting windshield.
There it spun wildly upward,
left a cloud of feather’s fluttering about
Tommy’s head, and fell still squawking
into the road behind. By the back-view
mirror, Tommy could see it picking
itself up and staggering dizzily
back to the side of the road.
“My point was,” said Tommy vexedly
to himself, speaking of the article
the telegram referred to, “that a man
can only recognize three dimensions
of space and one of time. So that if he
got shot out of this cosmos altogether
he wouldn’t know the difference. He’d
still seem to be in a three-dimensioned
universe. And what is there in that
stuff to get Denham in trouble?”
A house appeared ahead. A low,
rambling sort of bungalow with a huge
brick barn behind it. The house of
Professor Denham, very certainly, and
that barn was the laboratory in which
he made his experiments.
Instinctively, Tommy stepped on the
gas. The car leaped ahead. And then
he was braking frantically. A pipe-framed
gate with thinner, unpainted
wire mesh filling its surface loomed
before him, much too late for him to
stop. There was a minor shock, a
crashing and squeaking, and then a
crash and shattering of glass. Tommy
bent low as the top bar of the gate
hit his windshield. The double glass
cracked and crumpled and bent, but
did not fly to bits. And the car came
to a halt with its wheels intricately
entangled in torn-away fence wire.
The gate had been torn from its hinges
and was draped rakishly over the roadster.
A tire went flat with a loud hissing
noise, and Tommy Reames swore
softly under his breath and got out to
inspect the damage.
He was deciding that nothing irreparable
was wrong when a man
came bursting out of the brick building
behind the house. A tall, lean,
youngish man who waved his arms
emphatically and approached shouting:
“You had no right to come in here!
You must go away at once! You have
damaged property! I will tell the Professor!
You must pay for the damage!
You must—”
“Damn!” said Tommy Reames. He
had just seen that his radiator was
punctured. A spout of ruddy, rusty
water was pouring out on the grass.
The youngish man came up furiously.
A pale young man, Tommy noticed.
A young man with bristling,
close-cropped hair and horn-rimmed
spectacles before weak-looking eyes.
His mouth was very full and very red,
in marked contrast to the pallor of his
cheeks.
“Did you not see the sign upon the
gate?” he demanded angrily, in curiously
stilted English. “Did you not
see that trespassers are forbidden?
You must go away at once! You will
be prosecuted! You will be imprisoned!
You—”
Tommy said irritably:
“Are you Von Holtz? My name is
Reames. You telegraphed me.”
The waving, lanky arms stopped in
the middle of an excited gesture. The
weak-looking eyes behind the lenses
widened. A pink tongue licked the
too-full, too-red lips.
“Reames? The Herr Reames?” Von
Holtz stammered. Then he said suspiciously,
“But you are not—you cannot
be the Herr Reames of the article
on dominant coordinates!”
“I don’t know why,” said Tommy
annoyedly. “I’m also the Herr Reames
of several other articles, such as on the
mechanics of continua and the mass and
inertia of the tesseract. And I believe
the current Philosophical Journal—”
He surveyed the spouting red
stream from the radiator and
shrugged ruefully.
“I wish you’d telephone the village
to have somebody come out and fix
my car,” he said shortly, “and then
tell me if this telegram is a joke or
not.”
He pulled out a yellow form and
offered it. He had taken an instinctive
dislike to the lean figure before him,
but suppressed the feeling.
Von Holtz took the telegram and
read it, and smoothed it out, and said
agitatedly:
“But I thought the Herr Reames
would be—would be a venerable gentleman!
I thought—”
“You sent that wire,” said Tommy.
“It puzzled me just enough to make
me rush out here. And I feel like a
fool for having done it. What’s the
matter? Is it a joke?”
Von Holtz shook his head violently,
even as he bit his lips.
“No! No!” he protested. “The Herr
Professor Denham is in the most terrible,
most deadly danger! I—I have
been very nearly mad, Herr Reames.
The Ragged Men may seize him!…
I telegraphed to you. I have not slept
for four nights. I have worked! I
have racked my brains! I have gone
nearly insane, trying to rescue the
Herr Professor! And I—”
Tommy stared.
“Four days?” he said. “The
thing, whatever it is, has been going
on for four days?”
“Five,” said Von Holtz nervously.
“It was only to-day that I thought of
you, Herr Reames. The Herr Professor
Denham had praised your articles
highly. He said that you were the
only man who would be able to understand
his work. Five days ago—”
Tommy grunted.
“If he’s been in danger for five
days,” he said skeptically, “he’s not in
such a bad fix or it’d have been over.
Will you phone for a repairman?
Then we’ll see what it’s all about.”
The lean arms began to wave again
as Von Holtz said desperately:
“But Herr Reames, it is urgent! The
Herr Professor is in deadly danger!”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“He is marooned,” said Von Holtz.
Again he licked his lips. “He is marooned,
Herr Reames, and you alone—”
“Marooned?” said Tommy more
skeptically still. “In the middle of
New York State? And I alone can
help him? You sound more and more
as if you were playing a rather elaborate
and not very funny practical
joke. I’ve driven sixty miles to get
here. What is the joke, anyhow?”
Von Holtz said despairingly:
“But it is true, Herr Reames! He
is marooned. He has changed his coordinates.
It was an experiment. He
is marooned in the fifth dimension!”
There was dead silence. Tommy
Reames stared blankly. Then his
gorge rose. He had taken an instinctive
dislike to this lean young man,
anyhow. So he stared at him, and grew
very angry, and would undoubtedly
have gotten into his car and turned it
about and driven it away again if it
had been in any shape to run. But it
wasn’t. One tire was flat, and the last
ruddy drops from the radiator were
dripping slowly on the grass. So he
pulled out a cigarette case and lighted
a cigarette and said sardonically:
“The fifth dimension? That seems
rather extreme. Most of us get along
very well with three dimensions. Four
seems luxurious. Why pick on the
fifth?”
Von Holtz grew pale with anger in
his turn. He waved his arms, stopped,
and said with stiff formality:
“If the Herr Reames will follow me
into the laboratory I will show him
Professor Denham and convince him
of the Herr Professor’s extreme danger.”
Tommy had a sudden startling conviction
that Von Holtz was in earnest.
He might be mad, but he was in
earnest. And there was undoubtedly
a Professor Denham, and this was undoubtedly
his home and laboratory.
“I’ll look, anyway,” said Tommy less
skeptically. “But it is rather incredible,
you know!”
“It is impossible,” said Von Holtz
stiffly. “You are right, Herr Reames.
It is quite impossible. But it is a fact.”
He turned and stalked toward the
big brick barn behind the house. Tommy
went with him, wholly unbelieving
and yet beginning to wonder if, just
possibly, there was actually an emergency
of a more normal and ghastly
nature in being. Von Holtz might be
a madman. He might….
Gruesome, grisly thoughts ran
through Tommy’s head. A madman
dabbling in science might do incredible
things, horrible things, and then
demand assistance to undo an unimaginable
murder….
Tommy was tense and alert as Von
Holtz opened the door of the barnlike
laboratory. He waved the lean
young man on ahead.
“After you,” he said curtly.
He felt almost a shiver as he entered.
But the interior of the laboratory displayed
no gruesome scene. It was a
huge, high-ceilinged room with a concrete
floor. A monster dynamo was
over in one corner, coupled to a matter-of-fact
four-cylinder crude-oil engine,
to which was also coupled by a
clutch an inexplicable windlass-drum
with several hundred feet of chain
wrapped around it. There were ammeters
and voltmeters on a control
panel, and one of the most delicate of
dynamometers on its own stand, and
there were work benches and a motor-driven
lathe and a very complete
equipment for the working of metals.
And there was an electric furnace,
with splashes of solidified metal on the
floor beside it, and there was a miniature
casting-floor, and at the farther
end of the monster room there was a
gigantic solenoid which evidently had
once swung upon gymbals and as evidently
now was broken, because it lay
toppled askew upon its supports.
The only totally unidentifiable piece
of apparatus in the place was one queer
contrivance at one side. It looked
partly like a machine-gun, because of
a long brass barrel projecting from it.
But the brass tube came out of a bulging
casing of cast aluminum and there
was no opening through which shells
could be fed.
Von Holz moved to that contrivance,
removed a cap from the
end of the brass tube, looked carefully
into the opening, and waved stiffly for
Tommy to look in.
Again Tommy was suspicious;
watched until Von Holtz was some distance
away. But the instant he put his
eye to the end of the brass tube he
forgot all caution, all suspicion, all
his doubts. He forgot everything in
his amazement.
There was a lens in the end of the
brass tube. It was, in fact, nothing
more or less than a telescope, apparently
looking at something in a closed
box. But Tommy was not able to believe
that he looked at an illuminated
miniature for even the fraction of a
second. He looked into the telescope,
and he was seeing out-of-doors.
Through the aluminum casting that
enclosed the end of the tube. Through
the thick brick walls of the laboratory.
He was gazing upon a landscape such
as should not—such as could not—exist
upon the earth.
There were monstrous, feathery tree-ferns
waving languid fronds in a
breeze that came from beyond them.
The telescope seemed to be pointing
at a gentle slope, and those tree-ferns
cut off a farther view, but there was
an impenetrable tangle of breast-high
foliage between the instrument and
that slope, and halfway up the incline
there rested a huge steel globe.
Tommy’s eyes fixed themselves upon
the globe. It was man-made, of course.
He could see where it had been bolted
together. There were glassed-in windows
in its sides, and there was a door.
As Tommy looked, that door opened
partway, stopped as if someone
within had hesitated, and then opened
fully. A man came out. And Tommy
said dazedly:
“My God!”
Because the man was a perfectly
commonplace sort of individual,
dressed in a perfectly commonplace
fashion, and he carried a perfectly
commonplace briar pipe in his hand.
Moreover, Tommy recognized him. He
had seen pictures of him often enough,
and he was Professor Edward Denham,
entitled to put practically all the
letters of the alphabet after his name,
the author of “Polymerization of the
Pseudo-Metallic Nitrides” and the
proper owner of this building and its
contents. But Tommy saw him against
a background of tree-ferns such as
should have been extinct upon this
earth since the Carboniferous Period,
some millions of years ago.
He was looking hungrily at his briar
pipe. Presently he began to hunt carefully
about on the ground. He picked
together half a handful of brownish
things which had to be dried leaves.
He stuffed them into the pipe, struck
a match, and lighted it. He puffed
away gloomily, surrounded by wholly
monstrous vegetation. A butterfly fluttered
over the top of the steel globe.
Its wings were fully a yard across. It
flittered lightly to a plant and seemed
to wait, and abruptly a vivid carmine
blossom opened wide; wide enough to
admit it.
Denham watched curiously enough,
smoking the rank and plainly unsatisfying
dried leaves. He turned his head
and spoke over his shoulder. The door
opened again. Again Tommy Reames
was dazed. Because a girl came out of
the huge steel sphere—and she was a
girl of the most modern and most normal
sort. A trim sport frock, slim
silken legs, bobbed hair….
Tommy did not see her face until
she turned, smiling, to make some comment
to Denham. Then he saw that
she was breath-takingly pretty. He
swore softly under his breath.
The butterfly backed clumsily out
of the gigantic flower. It flew
lightly away, its many-colored wings
brilliant in the sunshine. And the huge
crimson blossom closed slowly.
Denham watched the butterfly go
away. His eyes returned to the girl
who was smiling at the flying thing,
now out of the field of vision of the
telescope. And there was utter discouragement
visible in every line of
Denham’s figure. Tommy saw the girl
suddenly reach out her hand and put
it on Denham’s shoulder. She patted
it, speaking in an evident attempt to
encourage him. She smiled, and talked
coaxingly, and presently Denham made
a queer, arrested gesture and went
heavily back into the steel globe. She
followed him, though she looked wearily
all about before the door closed behind
her, and when Denham could not
see her face, her expression was tired
and anxious indeed.
Tommy had forgotten Von Holtz,
had forgotten the laboratory, had forgotten
absolutely everything. If his
original suspicions of Von Holtz had
been justified, he could have been
killed half a dozen times over. He was
oblivious to everything but the sight
before his eyes.
Now he felt a touch on his shoulder
and drew his head away with a jerk.
Von Holtz was looking down at him,
very pale, with his weak-looking eyes
anxious.
“They are still all right?” he demanded.
“Yes,” said Tommy dazedly. “Surely.
Who is that girl?”
“That is the Herr Professor’s daughter
Evelyn,” said Von Holtz uneasily.
“I suggest, Herr Reames, that you
swing the dimensoscope about.”
“The—what?” asked Tommy, still
dazed by what he had seen.
“The dimensoscope. This.” Von
Holtz shifted the brass tube. The
whole thing was mounted so that it
could be swung in any direction. The
mounting was exactly like that of a
normal telescope. Tommy instantly
put his eye to the eyepiece again.
He saw more tree-ferns, practically
the duplicates of the background
beyond the globe. Nothing moved save
small, fugitive creatures among their
fronds. He swung the telescope still
farther. The landscape swept by before
his eyes. The tree-fern forest
drew back. He saw the beginning of
a vast and noisome morass, over which
lay a thick haze as of a stream raised
by the sun. He saw something move
in that morass; something huge and
horrible with a long and snake-like
neck and the tiniest of heads at the
end of it. But he could not see the
thing clearly.
He swung the telescope yet again.
And he looked over miles and miles of
level, haze-blanketed marsh. Here and
there were clumps of taller vegetation.
Here and there were steaming, desolate
pools. And three or four times he
saw monstrous objects moving about
clumsily in the marsh-land.
But then a glitter at the skyline
caught his eye. He tilted the telescope
to see more clearly, and suddenly he
caught his breath. There, far away at
the very horizon, was a city. It was
tall and gleaming and very strange.
No earthly city ever flung its towers
so splendidly high and soaring. No
city ever built by man gave off the
fiery gleam of gold from all its walls
and pinnacles. It looked like an artist’s
dream, hammered out in precious
metal, with its outlines softened by
the haze of distance.
And something was moving in the
air near the city. Staring, tense, again
incredulous, Tommy Reames strained
his eyes and saw that it was a machine.
An air-craft; a flying-machine of a
type wholly unlike anything ever built
upon the planet Earth. It swept steadily
and swiftly toward the city, dwindling
as it went. It swooped downward
toward one of the mighty spires
of the city of golden gleams, and vanished.
It was with a sense of shock, of
almost physical shock, that Tommy
came back to realization of his surroundings
to feel Von Holtz’s hand
upon his shoulder and to hear the lean
young man saying harshly:
“Well, Herr Reames? Are you convinced
that I did not lie to you? Are
you convinced that the Herr Professor
Denham is in need of help?”
Tommy blinked dazedly as he looked
around the laboratory again. Brick
walls, an oil-spattered crude-oil engine
in one corner, a concrete floor and an
electric furnace and a casting-box….
“Why—yes….” said Tommy dazedly.
“Yes. Of course!” Clarity came
to his brain with a jerk. He did not
understand at all, but he believed what
he had seen. Denham and his daughter
were somewhere in some other dimension,
yet within range of the extraordinary
device he had looked through.
And they were in trouble. So much
was evident from their poses and their
manner. “Of course,” he repeated.
“They’re—there, wherever it is, and
they can’t get back. They don’t seem
to be in any imminent danger….”
Von Holtz licked his lips.
“The Ragged Men have not found
them yet,” he said in a hushed, harsh
voice. “Before they went in the globe
we saw the Ragged Men. We watched
them. If they do find the Herr Professor
and his daughter, they will kill
them very slowly, so that they will
take days of screaming agony to die.
It is that that I am afraid of, Herr
Reames. The Ragged Men roam the
tree-fern forests. If they find the Herr
Professor they will trace each nerve
to its root of agony until he dies. And
we will be able only to watch….”
CHAPTER II
“The thing is,” said Tommy feverishly,
“that we’ve got to find a
way to get them back. Whether it
duplicates Denham’s results or not.
How far away are they?”
“A few hundred yards, perhaps,”
said Von Holtz wearily, “or ten million
miles. It is the same thing. They are
in a place where the fifth dimension
is the dominant coordinate.”
Tommy was pacing up and down the
laboratory. He stopped and looked
through the eyepiece of the extraordinary
vision apparatus. He tore himself
away from it again.
“How does this thing work?” he demanded.
Von Holtz began to unscrew two
wing-nuts which kept the top of the
aluminum casting in place.
“It is the first piece of apparatus
which Professor Denham made,” he
said precisely. “I know the theory, but
I cannot duplicate it. Every dimension
is at right angles to all other dimensions,
of course. The Herr Professor
has a note, here—”
He stopped his unscrewing to run
over a heap of papers on the work-bench—papers
over which he seemed
to have been poring desperately at the
time of Tommy’s arrival. He handed
a sheet to Tommy, who read:
“If a creature who was aware of only
two dimensions made two right-angled
objects and so placed them that all the
angles formed by the combination were
right angles, he would contrive a figure
represented by the corner of a box;
he would discover a third dimension.
Similarly, if a three-dimensioned man
took three right angles and placed
them so that all the angles formed
were right angles, he would discover
a fourth dimension. This, however,
would probably be the time dimension,
and to travel in time would instantly
be fatal. But with four right angles
he could discover a fifth dimension,
and with five right angles he could
discover a sixth….”
Tommy Reames put down the
paper impatiently.
“Of course” he said brusquely. “I
know all that stuff. But up to the present
time nobody has been able to put
together even three right angles, in
practise.”
Von Holtz had returned to the unscrewing
of the wing-nuts. He lifted
off the cover of the dimensoscope.
“It is the thing the Herr Professor
did not confide to me,” he said bitterly.
“The secret. The one secret! Look
in here.”
Tommy looked. The objective-glass
at the end of the telescope faced a mirror,
which was inclined to its face at
an angle of forty-five degrees. A beam
of light from the objective would be
reflected to a second mirror, twisted in
a fashion curiously askew. Then the
light would go to a third mirror….
Tommy looked at that third mirror,
and instantly his eyes ached. He closed
them and opened them again. Again
they stung horribly. It was exactly the
sort of eye-strain which comes of looking
through a lens which does not
focus exactly, or through a strange
pair of eyeglasses. He could see the
third mirror, but his eyes hurt the instant
they looked upon it, as if that
third mirror were distorted in an impossible
fashion. He was forced to
draw them away. He could see, though,
that somehow that third mirror would
reflect his imaginary beam of light into
a fourth mirror of which he could see
only the edge. He moved his head—and
still saw only the edge of a mirror.
He was sure of what he saw, because
he could look into the wavy,
bluish translucency all glass shows
upon its edge. He could even see the
thin layer of silver backing. But he
could not put himself into a position
in which more than the edge of that
mirror was visible.
“Good Lord!” said Tommy Reames
feverishly. “That mirror—”
“A mirror at forty-five degrees,” said
Von Holtz precisely, “reflects light at
a right angle. There are four mirrors,
and each bends a ray of light through
a right angle which is also a right
angle to all the others. The result is
that the dimensoscope looks into what
is a fifth dimension, into which no man
ever looked before. But I cannot move
other mirrors into the positions they
have in this instrument. I do not know
how.”
Tommy shook his head impatiently,
staring at the so-simple,
yet incredible device whose theory had
been mathematically proven numberless
times, but never put into practice
before.
“Having made this device,” said Von
Holtz, “the Herr Professor constructed
what he termed a catapult. It was a
coil of wire, like the large machine
there. It jerked a steel ball first vertically,
then horizontally, then laterally,
then in a fourth-dimensional direction,
and finally projected it violently
off in a fifth-dimensional path.
He made small hollow steel balls and
sent a butterfly, a small sparrow, and
finally a cat into that other world. The
steel balls opened of themselves and
freed those creatures. They seemed to
suffer no distress. Therefore he concluded
that it would be safe for him
to go, himself. His daughter refused
to permit him to go alone, and he was
so sure of his safety that he allowed
her to enter the globe with him. She
did. I worked the catapult which
flung the globe in the fifth dimension,
and his device for returning failed to
operate. Hence he is marooned.”
“But the big catapult—”
“Can you not see that the big catapult
is broken?” demanded Von Holtz
bitterly. “A special metal is required
for the missing parts. That, I know
how to make. Yes. I can supply that.
But I cannot shape it! I cannot design
the gears which will move it as it
should be moved! I cannot make another
dimensoscope. I cannot, Herr
Reames, calculate any method of causing
four right angles to be all at right
angles to each other. It is my impossibility!
It is for that that I have
appealed to you. You see it has been
done. I see that it is done. I can
make the metal which alone can be
moved in the necessary direction. But
I cannot calculate any method of moving
it in that direction! If you can do
so, Herr Reames, we can perhaps save
the Herr Professor Denham. If you
cannot—Gott! The death he will die
is horrible to think of!”
“And his daughter,” said Tommy
grimly. “His daughter, also.”
He paced up and down the laboratory
again. Von Holtz moved to
the work-bench from which he had
taken Denham’s note. There was a
pile of such memoranda, thumbed over
and over. And there were papers in
the angular, precise handwriting which
was Von Holtz’s own, and calculations
and speculations and the remains of
frantic efforts to work out, somehow,
the secret which as one manifestation
had placed one mirror so that it hurt
the eyes to look at it, and one other
mirror so that from every angle of a
normal existence, one could see only
the edge.
“I have worked, Herr Reames,” said
Von Holtz drearily. “Gott! How I
have worked! But the Herr Professor
kept some things secret, and that so-essential
thing is one of them.”
Presently he said tiredly:
“The dimension-traveling globe was
built in this laboratory. It rested
here.” He pointed. “The Herr Professor
was laughing and excited at the
moment of departure. His daughter
smiled at me through the window of
the globe. There was an under-carriage
with wheels upon it. You cannot
see those wheels through the
dimensoscope. They got into the globe
and closed the door. The Herr Professor
nodded to me through the glass
window. The dynamo was running
at its fullest speed. The laboratory
smelled of hot oil, and of ozone from
the sparks. I lifted my hand, and the
Herr Professor nodded again, and I
threw the switch. This switch, Herr
Reames! It sparked as I closed it, and
the flash partly blinded me. But I saw
the globe rush toward the giant catapult
yonder. It leaped upward into
the huge coil, which whirled madly.
Dazed, I saw the globe hanging suspended
in mid-air, two feet from the
floor. It shook! Once! Twice! With
violence! Suddenly its outline became
hazy and distorted. My eyes ached
with looking at it. And then it was
gone!”
Von Holtz’s arms waved melodramatically.
“I rushed to the dimensoscope and
gazed through it into the fifth dimension.
I saw the globe floating onward
through the air, toward that bank of
glossy ferns. I saw it settle and turn
over, and then slowly right itself as
it came to rest. The Herr Professor
got out of it. I saw him through the
instrument which could look into the
dimension into which he had gone. He
waved his hand to me. His daughter
joined him, surveying the strange cosmos
in which they were. The Herr
Professor plucked some of the glossy
ferns, took photographs, then got back
into the globe.
“I awaited its return to our own
world. I saw it rock slightly as he
worked upon the apparatus within. I
knew that when it vanished from the
dimensoscope it would have returned
to our own universe. But it remained
as before. It did not move. After
three hours of anguished waiting, the
Herr Professor came out and made signals
to me of despair. By gestures,
because no sound could come through
the dimensoscope itself, he begged me
to assist him. And I was helpless!
Made helpless by the Herr Professor’s
own secrecy! For four days and nights
I have toiled, hoping desperately to
discover what the Herr Professor had
hidden from me. At last I thought of
you. I telegraphed to you. If you can
assist me….”
“I’m going to try it, of course,” said
Tommy shortly.
He paced back and forth. He stopped
and looked through the brass-tubed
telescope. Giant tree-ferns, unbelievable
but real. The steel globe resting
partly overturned upon a bank of
glossy ferns. Breast-high, incredible
foliage between the point of vision and
that extraordinary vehicle.
While Tommy had been talking
and listening, while he had
been away from the eyepiece, one or
other of the occupants of the globe
had emerged from it. The door was
open. But now the girl came bounding
suddenly through the ferns. She
called, though it seemed to Tommy
that there was a curious air of caution
even in her calling. She was excited,
hopefully excited.
Denham came out of the globe with
a clumsy club in his hand. But Evelyn
caught his arm and pointed up into the
sky. Denham stared, and then began
to make wild and desperate gestures
as if trying to attract attention to himself.
Tommy watched for minutes, and
then swung the dimensoscope around.
It was extraordinary, to be sitting in
the perfectly normal brick-walled laboratory,
looking into a slender brass
tube, and seeing another universe entirely,
another wild and unbelievable
landscape.
The tree-fern forest drew back and
the vast and steaming morass was
again in view. There were distant
bright golden gleams from the city.
But Tommy was searching the sky,
looking in the sky of a world in the
fifth dimension for a thing which
would make a man gesticulate hopefully.
He found it. It was an aircraft,
startlingly close through the telescope.
A single figure was seated at its controls,
motionless as if bored, with exactly
the air of a weary truck driver
piloting a vehicle along a roadway he
does not really see. And Tommy, being
near enough to see the pilot’s pose,
could see the aircraft clearly. It was
totally unlike a terrestrial airplane.
A single huge and thick wing supported
it. But the wing was angular
and clumsy-seeming, and its form was
devoid of the grace of an earthly aircraft
wing, and there was no tail whatever
to give it the appearance of a living
thing. There was merely a long,
rectangular wing with a framework
beneath it, and a shimmering thing
which was certainly not a screw propeller,
but which seemed to draw it.
It moved on steadily and swiftly,
dwindling in the distance, with its
motionless pilot seated before a mass
of corded bundles. It looked as if this
were a freight plane of some sort, and
therefore made in a strictly utilitarian
fashion.
It vanished in the haze above the
monster swamp, going in a straight
line for the golden city at the world’s
edge.
Tommy stared at it, long after it had
ceased to be visible. Then he saw a
queer movement on the earth near the
edge of the morass. Figures were
moving. Human figures. He saw four
of them, shaking clenched fists and
capering insanely, seeming to bellow
insults after the oblivious and now invisible
flying thing. He could see that
they were nearly naked, and that one
of them carried a spear. But the indubitable
glint of metal was reflected
from one of them for an instant, when
some metal accoutrement about him
glittered in the sunlight.
They moved from sight behind thick,
feathery foliage, and Tommy swung
back the brass tube to see the globe
again. Denham and his daughter were
staring in the direction in which Tommy
had seen those human figures. Denham
clutched his clumsy club grimly.
His face was drawn and his figure
tensed. And suddenly Evelyn spoke
quietly, and the two of then dived into
the fern forest and disappeared. Minutes
later they returned, dragging
masses of tree-fern fronds with which
they masked the globe from view.
They worked hastily, desperately, concealing
the steel vehicle from sight.
And then Denham stared tensely all
about, shading his eyes with his hand.
He and the girl withdrew cautiously
into the forest.
It was minutes later that Tommy
was roused by Von Holtz’s hand on
his shoulder.
“What has happened, Herr Reames?”
he asked uneasily. “The—Ragged
Men?”
“I saw men,” said Tommy briefly,
“shaking clenched fists at an aircraft
flying overhead. And Denham and his
daughter have hidden the globe behind
a screen of foliage.”
Von Holtz licked his lips fascinatedly.
“The Ragged Men,” he said in a
hushed voice. “The Herr Professor
called them that, because they cannot
be of the people who live in the Golden
City. They hate the people of the Golden
City. I think that they are bandits;
renegades, perhaps. They live in
the tree-fern forests and scream curses
at the airships which fly overhead.
And they are afraid of those airships.”
“How long did Denham use this
thing to look through, before he built
his globe?”
Von Holtz considered.
“Immediately it worked,” he said at
last, “he began work on a small catapult.
It took him one week to devise
exactly how to make that. He experimented
with it for some days and began
to make the large globe. That
took nearly two months—the globe and
the large catapult together. And also
the dimensoscope was at hand. His
daughter looked through it more than
he did, or myself.”
“He should have known what he was
up against,” said Tommy, frowning.
“He ought to have taken guns, at least.
Is he armed?”
Von Holtz shook his head.
“He expected to return at once,” he
said desperately. “Do you see, Herr
Reames, the position it puts me in? I
may be suspected of murder! I am the
Herr Professor’s assistant. He disappears.
Will I not be accused of having
put him out of the way?”
“No,” said Tommy thoughtfully.
“You won’t.” He glanced through the
brass tube and paced up and down the
room. “You telephone for someone to
repair my car,” he said suddenly and
abruptly. “I am going to stay here and
work this thing out. I’ve got just the
glimmering of an idea. But I’ll need
my car in running order, in case we
have to go out and get materials in a
hurry.”
Von Holtz bowed stiffly and
went out of the laboratory. Tommy
looked after him. Even moved to
make sure he was gone. And then
Tommy Reames went quickly to the
work bench on which were the littered
notes and calculations Von Holtz had
been using and which were now at his
disposal. But Tommy did not leaf
through them. He reached under the
blotter beneath the whole pile. He had
seen Von Holtz furtively push something
out of sight, and he had disliked
and distrusted Von Holtz from the beginning.
Moreover, it was pretty thoroughly
clear that Denham had not
trusted him too much. A trusted assistant
should be able to understand, at
least, any experiment performed in a
laboratory.
A folded sheet of paper came out.
Tommy glanced at it.
“You messed things up right!
Denham marooned and you got
nothing. No plans or figures either.
When you get them, you get your
money. If you don’t you are out
of luck. If this Reames guy can’t
fix up what you want it’ll be just
too bad for you.”
There was no salutation nor any signature
beyond a scrawled and sprawling
“J.”
Tommy Reames’ jaw set grimly. He
folded the scrap of paper and thrust
it back out of sight again.
“Pretty!” he said harshly. “So a
gentleman named ‘J’ is going to pay
Von Holtz for plans or calculations it
is hoped I’ll provide! Which suggests—many
things! But at least I’ll have
Von Holtz’s help until he thinks my
plans or calculations are complete. So
that’s all right….”
Tommy could not be expected, of
course, to guess that the note he had
read was quite astounding proof of the
interest taken in non-Euclidean geometry
by a vice king of Chicago, or that
the ranking beer baron of that metropolis
was the man who was so absorbed
in abstruse theoretic physics.
Tommy moved toward the great
solenoid which lay askew upon its
wrecked support. It had drawn the
steel globe toward it, had made that
globe vibrate madly, twice, and then
go hazy and vanish. It had jerked the
globe in each of five directions, each
at right angles to all the others, and
had released it when started in the
fifth dimension. The huge coil was
quite nine feet across and would
take the steel globe easily. It was
pivoted in concentric rings which
made up a set of gymbals far more
elaborate than were ever used to suspend
a mariner’s compass aboard ship.
There were three rings, one inside
the other. And two rings will take
care of any motion in three dimensions.
These rings were pivoted, too,
so that an unbelievably intricate series
of motions could be given to the solenoid
within them all. But the device
was broken, now. A pivot had given
away, and shaft and socket alike had
vanished. Tommy became absorbed.
Some oddity bothered him….
He pieced the thing together mentally.
And he exclaimed suddenly.
There had been four rings of metal!
One was gone! He comprehended, very
suddenly. The third mirror in the
dimensoscope was the one so strangely
distorted by its position, which was at
half of a right angle to all the dimensions
of human experience. It was the
third ring in the solenoid’s supports
which had vanished. And Tommy,
staring at the gigantic apparatus and
summoning all his theoretic knowledge
and all his brain to work, saw the
connection between the two things.
“The time dimension and the world-line,”
he said sharply, excited in spite
of himself. “Revolving in the time
dimension means telescoping in the
world-line…. It would be a strain
no matter could endure….”
The mirror in the dimensoscope
was not pointing in a fourth dimension.
It did not need to. It was
reflecting light at a right angle, and
hence needed to be only at half of a
right angle to the two courses of the
beam it reflected. But to whirl the
steel globe into a fifth dimension, the
solenoid’s support had for one instant
to revolve in time! For the fraction
of a second it would have literally to
pass through its own substance. It
would be required to undergo precisely
the sort of strain involved in turning
a hollow seamless metal globe, inside
out! No metal could stand such a
strain. No form of matter known to
man could endure it.
“It would explode!” said Tommy excitedly
to himself, alone in the great
bare laboratory. “Steel itself would
vaporize! It would wreck the place!”
And then he looked blank. Because
the place had very obviously not been
wrecked. And yet a metal ring had
vanished, leaving no trace….
Von Holtz came back. He looked
frightened.
“A—a repairman, Herr Reames,” he
said, stammering, “is on the way. And—Herr
Reames….”
Tommy barely heard him. For a moment,
Tommy was all scientist, confronted
with the inexplicable, yet groping
with a blind certainty toward a
conclusion he very vaguely foresaw.
He waved his hand impatiently….
“The Herr Jacaro is on the way
here,” stammered Von Holtz.
Tommy blinked, remembering that
Von Holtz had told him he could
make a certain metal, the only metal
which could be moved in the fourth
dimension.
“Jacaro?” he said blankly.
“The—friend of the Herr Professor
Denham. He advanced the money for
the Herr Professor’s experiments.”
Tommy heard him with only half his
brain, though that half instantly decided
that Von Holtz was lying. The
only Jacaro Tommy knew of was a
prominent gangster from Chicago, who
had recently cemented his position in
Chicago’s underworld by engineering
the amalgamation of two once-rival
gangs. Tommy knew, in a vague fashion,
that Von Holtz was frightened.
That he was terrified in some way.
And that he was inordinately suspicious
of someone, and filled with a
queer desperation.
“Well?” said Tommy abstractedly.
The thought he needed was coming.
A metal which would have full tensile
strength up to a certain instant, and
then disrupt itself without violence
into a gas, a vapor…. It would be an
alloy, perhaps. It would be….
He struck at his own head with his
clenched fist, angrily demanding that
his brain bring forth the thought that
was forming slowly. The metal that
could be revolved in time without producing
a disastrous explosion and
without requiring an impossible
amount of power….
He did not see Von Holtz looking
in the eyepiece of the dimensoscope.
He stared at nothing, thinking
concentratedly, putting every bit of
energy into sheer thought. And suddenly,
like the explosion he sought a
way to avoid, the answer came, blindingly
clear.
He surveyed that answer warily. A
tremendous excitement filled him.
“I’ve got it!” he said softly to himself.
“By God, I know how he did the
thing!”
And as if through a mist the figure
of Von Holtz became clear before his
eyes. Von Holtz was looking into the
dimensoscope tube. He was staring
into that other, extraordinary world
in which Denham and his daughter
were marooned. And Von Holtz’s face
was utterly, deathly white, and he was
making frantic, repressed gestures, and
whispering little whimpering phrases
to himself. They were unintelligible,
but the deathly pallor of his cheeks,
and the fascinated, dribbling fullness
of his lips brought Tommy Reames
suddenly down to earth.
“What’s happening?” demanded
Tommy sharply.
Von Holtz did not answer. He made
disjointed, moaning little exclamations
to himself. He was twitching horribly
as he looked through the telescope into
that other world….
Tommy flung him aside and clapped
his own eye to the eyepiece. And then
he groaned.
The telescope was pointed at the
steel globe upon that ferny bank,
no more than a few hundred yards
away but two dimensions removed
from Earth. The screening mass of
tree-fronds had been torn away. A
swarm of ragged, half-naked men was
gathered about the globe. They were
armed with spears and clubs, in the
main, but there were other weapons of
intricate design whose uses Tommy
could not even guess at. He did not
try. He was watching the men as they
swarmed about and over the steel
sphere. Their faces were brutal and
savage, and now they were distorted
with an insane hate. It was the same
awful, gibbering hatred he had sensed
in the caperings of the four he had
seen bellowing vituperation at an airplane.
They were not savages. Somehow
he could not envision them as primitive.
Their features were hard-bitten,
seamed with hatred and with vice unspeakable.
And they were white. The
instant impression any man would have
received was that here were broken
men; fugitives, bandits, assassins.
Here were renegades or worse from
some higher, civilized race.
They battered hysterically upon the
steel globe. It was not the attack of
savages upon a strange thing. It was
the assault of desperate, broken men
upon a thing they hated. A glass pane
splintered and crashed. Spears were
thrust into the opening, while mouths
opened as if in screams of insane fury.
And then, suddenly, the door of the
globe flew wide.
The Ragged Men did not wait for
anyone to come out. They fought each
other to get into the opening, their
eyes glaring madly, filled with the lust
to kill.
CHAPTER III
A battered and antiquated
flivver came chugging down the
wire-fenced lane to the laboratory, an
hour later. It made a prodigious din,
and Tommy Reames went out to meet
it. He was still a little pale. He had
watched the steel globe turned practically
inside out by the Ragged Men.
He had seen them bringing out cameras,
cushions, and even the padding
of the walls, to be torn to bits in a
truly maniacal fury. But he had not
seen one sign of a human being killed.
Denham and his daughter had not been
in the globe when it was found and
ransacked. So far, then, they were
probably safe. Tommy had seen them
vanish into the tree-fern forest. They
had been afraid, and with good reason.
What dangers they might encounter in
the fern forest he could not guess.
How long they would escape the search
of the Ragged Men, he could not know.
How he could ever hope to find them
if he succeeded in duplicating Denham’s
dimension-traveling apparatus
he could not even think of, just now.
But the Ragged Men were not searching
the fern forest. So much was sure.
They were encamped by the steel
sphere, and a scurvy-looking lot they
were.
Coming out of the brick laboratory,
Tommy saw a brawny figure getting
out of the antiquated flivver whose
arrival had been so thunderous. That
brawny figure nodded to him and
grinned. Tommy recognized him. The
red-headed, broad-shouldered filling
station attendant in the last village,
who had given him specific directions
for reaching this place.
“You hit that gate a lick, didn’t
you?” asked the erstwhile filling station
attendant amiably. “Mr. Von
Holtz said you had a flat and a busted
radiator. That right?”
Tommy nodded. The red-headed
man walked around the car,
scratched his chin, and drew out certain
assorted tools. He put them on
the grass with great precision, pumped
a gasoline blow-torch to pressure and
touched a match to its priming-basin,
and while the gasoline flamed smokily
he made a half dozen casual movements
with a file, and the broken radiator
tube was exposed for repair.
He went back to the torch and observed
placidly:
“The Professor ain’t around, is he?”
Tommy shook his head.
“Thought not,” said the red-headed
one. “He gen’rally comes out and talks
a while. I helped him build some of
them dinkuses in the barn yonder.”
Tommy said eagerly:
“Say, which of those things did you
help him build? That big thing with
the solenoid—the coil?”
“Yeah. How’d it work?” The red-headed
one set a soldering iron in
place and began to jack up the rear
wheel to get at the tire. “Crazy idea,
if you ask me. I told Miss Evelyn so.
She laughed and said she’d be in the
ball when it was tried. Did it work?”
“Too damn well,” said Tommy briefly.
“I’ve got to repair that solenoid.
How about a job helping?”
The red-headed man unfastened the
lugs of the rim, kicked the tire speculatively,
and said, “Gone to hell.” He
put on the spare tire with ease and
dispatch.
“Um,” he said. “How about that Mr.
Von Holtz? Is he goin’ to boss the
job?”
“He is not,” said Tommy, with a
shade of grimness in his tone.
The red-headed man nodded and
took the soldering iron in hand.
He unwound a strip of wire solder,
mended the radiator tube with placid
ease, and seemed to bang the cooling-flanges
with a total lack of care. They
went magically back into place, and it
took close inspection to see that the
radiator had been damaged.
“She’s all right,” he observed. He
regarded Tommy impersonally. “Suppose
you tell me how come you horn
in on this,” he suggested, “an’ maybe
I’ll play. That guy Von Holtz is a
crook, if you ask me about him.”
Tommy ran his hand across his forehead,
and told him.
“Um,” said the red-headed man
calmly. “I think I’ll go break Mr. Von
Holtz’s neck. I got me a hunch.”
He took two deliberate steps forward.
But Tommy said:
“I saw Denham not an hour ago. So
far, he’s all right. How long he’ll be
all right is a question. But I’m going
after him.”
The red-headed man scrutinized
him exhaustively.
“Um. I might try that myself. I
kinda like the Professor. An’ Miss
Evelyn. My name’s Smithers. Let’s
go look through the dinkus the Professor
made.”
They went together into the laboratory.
Von Holtz was looking through
the dimensoscope. He started back as
they entered, and looked acutely uneasy
when he saw the red-headed man.
“How do you do,” he said nervously.
“They—the Ragged Men—have just
brought in a dead man. But it is not
the Herr Professor.”
Without a word, Tommy took the
brass tube in his hand. Von Holtz
moved away, biting his lips. Tommy
stared into that strange other world.
The steel sphere lay as before,
slightly askew upon a bank of
glossy ferns. But its glass windows
were shattered, and fragments of everything
it had contained were scattered
about. The Ragged Men had made a
camp and built a fire. Some of them
were roasting meat—the huge limb of
a monstrous animal with a scaly, reptilian
hide. Others were engaged in
vehement argument over the body of
one of their number, lying sprawled
out upon the ground.
Tommy spoke without moving his
eyes from the eyepiece.
“I saw Denham with a club just now.
This man was killed by a club.”
The Ragged Men in the other world
debated acrimoniously. One of them
pointed to the dead man’s belt, and
spread out his hands. Something was
missing from the body. Tommy saw,
now, three or four other men with objects
that looked rather like policemen’s
truncheons, save that they were
made of glittering metal. They were
plainly weapons. Denham, then, was
armed—if he could understand how
the weapon was used.
The Ragged Men debated, and presently
their dispute attracted the attention
of a man with a huge black beard.
He rose from where he sat gnawing at
a piece of meat and moved grandly toward
the disputatious group. They
parted at his approach, but a single
member continued the debate against
even the bearded giant. The bearded
one plucked the glittering truncheon
from his belt. The disputatious one
gasped in fear and flung himself desperately
forward. But the bearded man
kept the truncheon pointed steadily….
The man who assailed him staggered,
reached close enough to strike a single
blow, and collapsed. The bearded man
pointed the metal truncheon at him as
he lay upon the ground. He heaved
convulsively, and was still.
The bearded man went back to his
seat and picked up the gnawed bit of
meat again. The dispute had ceased.
The chattering group of men dispersed.
Tommy was about to leave the
eyepiece of the instrument when
a movement nearby caught his eye. A
head peered cautiously toward the encampment.
A second rose beside it.
Denham and his daughter Evelyn.
They were apparently no more than
thirty feet from the dimensoscope.
Tommy could see them talking cautiously,
saw Denham lift and examine
a metal truncheon like the bearded
man’s, and force his daughter to accept
it. He clutched a club, himself, with
a grim satisfaction.
Moments later they vanished quietly
in the thick fern foliage, and though
Tommy swung the dimensoscope
around in every direction, he could
see nothing of their retreat.
He rose from that instrument with
something approaching hopefulness.
He’d seen Evelyn very near and very
closely. She did not look happy, but
she did look alert rather than worn.
And Denham was displaying a form
of competence in the face of danger
which was really more than would
have been expected in a Ph.D., a M.A.,
and other academic distinctions running
to most of the letters of the alphabet.
“I’ve just seen Denham and Evelyn
again,” said Tommy crisply. “They’re
safe so far. And I’ve seen one of the
weapons of the Ragged Men in use.
If we can get a couple of automatics
and some cartridges to Denham, he’ll
be safe until we can repair the big
solenoid.”
“There was the small catapult,” said
Von Holtz bitterly, “but it was dismantled.
The Herr Professor saw me examining
it, and he dismantled it. So
that I did not learn how to calculate
the way of changing the position—”
Tommy’s eyes rested queerly on
Von Holtz for a moment.
“You know how to make the metal
required,” he said suddenly. “You’d
better get busy making it. Plenty of
it. We’ll need it.”
Von Holtz stared at him, his weak
eyes almost frightened.
“You know? You know how to combine
the right angles?”
“I think so,” said Tommy. “I’ve got
to find out if I’m right. Will you make
the metal?”
Von Holtz bit at his too-red lips.
“But Herr Reames!” he said stridently,
“I wish to know the equation!
Tell me the method of pointing a body
in a fourth or a fifth direction. It is
only fair—”
“Denham didn’t tell you,” said
Tommy.
Von Holtz’s arms jerked wildly.
“But I will not make the metal! I
insist upon being told the equation!
I insist upon it! I will not make the
metal if you do not tell me!”
Smithers was in the laboratory, of
course. He had been surveying the big
solenoid-catapult and scratching his
chin reflectively. Now he turned.
But Tommy took Von Holtz by
the shoulders. And Tommy’s
hands were the firm and sinewy hands
of a sportsman, if his brain did happen
to be the brain of a scientist. Von
Holtz writhed in his grip.
“There is only one substance which
could be the metal I need, Von Holtz,”
he said gently. “Only one substance
is nearly three-dimensional. Metallic
ammonium! It’s known to exist, because
it makes a mercury amalgam, but
nobody has been able to isolate it because
nobody has been able to give it
a fourth dimension—duration in time.
Denham did it. You can do it. And
I need it, and you’d better set to work
at the job. You’ll be very sorry if you
don’t, Von Holtz!”
Smithers said with a vast calmness.
“I got me a hunch. So if y’want his
neck broke….”
Tommy released Von Holtz and the
lean young man gasped and sputtered
and gesticulated wildly in a frenzy of
rage.
“He’ll make it,” said Tommy coldly.
“Because he doesn’t dare not to!”
Von Holtz went out of the laboratory,
his weak-looking eyes staring
and wild, and his mouth working.
“He’ll be back,” said Tommy briefly.
“You’ve got to make a small model of
that big catapult, Smithers. Can you
do it?”
“Sure,” said Smithers. “The ring’ll
be copper tubing, with pin-bearings.
Wind a coil on the lathe. It’ll be kinda
rough, but it’ll do. But gears, now….”
“I’ll attend to them. You know how
to work that metallic ammonium?”
“If that’s what it was,” agreed
Smithers. “I worked it for the Professor.”
Tommy leaned close and whispered:
“You never made any gears of that.
But did you make some springs?”
“Uh-huh!”
Tommy grinned joyously.
“Then we’re set and I’m right! Von
Holtz wants a mathematical formula,
and no one on earth could write one,
but we don’t need it!”
Smithers rummaged around the
laboratory with a casual air, acquired
this and that and the other
thing, and set to work with an astounding
absence of waste motions. From
time to time he inspected the great
catapult thoughtfully, verified some
impression, and went about the construction
of another part.
And when Von Holtz did not return,
Tommy hunted for him. He suddenly
remembered hearing his car motor
start. He found his car missing.
He swore, then, and grimly began to
hunt for a telephone in the house. But
before he had raised central he heard
the deep-toned purring of the motor
again. His car was coming swiftly
back to the house. And he saw, through
a window, that Von Holtz was driving
it.
The lean young man got out of it,
his face white with passion. He
started for the laboratory. Tommy intercepted
him.
“I—went to get materials for making
the metal,” said Von Holtz hoarsely,
repressing his rage with a great effort.
“I shall begin at once, Herr Reames.”
Tommy said nothing whatever. Von
Holtz was lying. Of course. He carried
nothing in the way of materials.
But he had gone away from the house,
and Tommy knew as definitely as if
Von Holtz had told him, that Von
Holtz had gone off to communicate in
safety with someone who signed his
correspondence with a J.
Von Holtz went into the laboratory.
The four-cylinder motor began to
throb at once. The whine of the
dynamo arose almost immediately
after. Von Holtz came out of the laboratory
and dived into a shed that adjoined
the brick building. He remained
in there.
Tommy looked at the trip register
on his speedometer. Like most people
with methodical minds, he had noted
the reading on arriving at a new destination.
Now he knew how far Von
Holtz had gone. He had been to the
village and back.
“Meaning,” said Tommy grimly to
himself, “that the J who wants plans
and calculations is either in the village
or at the end of a long-distance wire.
And Von Holtz said he was on the
way. He’ll probably turn up and try
to bribe me.”
He went back into the laboratory
and put his eye to the eyepiece
of the dimensoscope. Smithers had
his blow-torch going and was busily
accumulating an apparently unrelated
series of discordant bits of queerly-shaped
metal. Tommy looked through
at the strange mad world he could see
through the eyepiece.
The tree-fern forest was still. The
encampment of the Ragged Men was
nearly quiet. Sunset seemed to be approaching
in this other world, though
it was still bright outside the laboratory.
The hours of day and night were
obviously not the same in the two
worlds, so close together that a man
could be flung from one to the other
by a mechanical contrivance.
The sun seemed larger, too, than the
orb which lights our normal earth.
When Tommy swung the vision instrument
about to search for it, he
found a great red ball quite four times
the diameter of our own sun, neatly
bisected by the horizon. Tommy
watched, waiting for it to sink. But
it did not sink straight downward as
the sun seems to do in all temperate
latitudes. It descended, yes, but it
moved along the horizon as it sank.
Instead of a direct and forthright dip
downward, the sun seemed to progress
along the horizon, dipping more deeply
as it swam. And Tommy watched
it blankly.
“It’s not our sun…. But it’s not our
world. Yet it revolves, and there are
men on it. And a sun that size would
bake the earth…. And it’s sinking
at an angle that would only come at a
latitude of—”
That was the clue. He understood
at once. The instrument through which
he regarded the strange world looked
out upon the polar regions of that
world. Here, where the sun descended
slantwise, were the high latitudes, the
coldest spaces upon all the whole
planet. And if here there were the gigantic
growths of a carboniferous era,
the tropic regions of this planet must
be literal infernos.
And then he saw in its gradual descent
the monster sun was going along
behind the golden city, and the outlines
of its buildings, the magnificence
of its spires, were limned clearly for
him against the dully glowing disk.
Nowhere upon earth had such a city
ever been dreamed of. No man had
ever envisioned such a place, where
far-flung arches interconnected soaring,
towering columns, where curves
of perfect grace were united in forms
of utterly perfect proportion….
The sunlight died, and dusk began
and deepened, and vividly brilliant
stars began to come out overhead, and
Tommy suddenly searched the heavens
eagerly for familiar constellations.
And found not one. All the stars were
strange. These stars seemed larger
and much more near than the tiny pinpoints
that blink down upon our earth.
And then he swung the instrument
again and saw great fires roaring and
the Ragged Men crouched about them.
Within them, rather, because they had
built fires about themselves as if to
make a wall of flame. And once Tommy
saw twin, monstrous eyes, gazing
from the blackness of the tree-fern
forest. They were huge eyes, and they
were far apart, so that the head of the
creature who used them must have been
enormous. And they were all of fifteen
feet above the ground when they
speculatively looked over the ring of
fires and the ragged, degraded men
within them. Then that creature,
whatever it was, turned away and vanished.
But Tommy felt a curious shivering
horror of the thing. It had moved
soundlessly, without a doubt, because
not one of the Ragged Men had noted
its presence. It had been kept away
by the fires. But Denham and Evelyn
were somewhere in the tree-fern forest,
and they would not dare to make
fires….
Tommy drew away from the dimensoscope,
shivering. He had been looking
only, but the place into which he
looked was real, and the dangers that
lay hidden there were very genuine,
and there was a man and a girl of his
own race and time struggling desperately,
without arms or hope, to survive.
Smithers was casually fitting together
an intricate array of little
rings made of copper tubing. There
were three of them, and each was fitted
into the next largest by pins which
enabled them to spin noiselessly and
swiftly at the touch of Smithers’ finger.
He had them spinning now, each
in a separate direction, and the effect
was bewildering.
As Tommy watched, Smithers
stopped them, oiled the pins carefully,
and painstakingly inserted a fourth
ring. Only this ring was of a white
metal that looked somehow more pallid
than silver. It had a whiteness like
that of ivory beneath its metallic
gleam.
Tommy blinked.
“Did Von Holtz give you that
metal?” he asked suddenly.
Smithers looked up and puffed at a
short brown pipe.
“Nope. There was some splashes of
it by the castin’ box. I melted ’em together
an’ run a ring. Pressed it to
shape; y’ can’t hammer this stuff. It
goes to water and dries up quicker’n
lightning—an’ you hold y’nose an’ run.
I used it before for the Professor.”
Tommy went over to him excitedly.
He picked up the little contrivance of
many concentric rings. The big motor
was throbbing rhythmically, and the
generator was humming at the back of
the laboratory. Von Holtz was out of
sight.
With painstaking care Tommy
went over the little device. He
looked up.
“A coil?”
“I wound one,” said Smithers calmly.
“On the lathe. Not so hot, but it’ll do,
I guess. But I can’t fix these rings
like the Professor did.”
“I think I can,” said Tommy crisply.
“Did you make some wire for springs?”
“Yeah!”
Tommy fingered the wire. Stout,
stiff, and surprisingly springy wire of
the same peculiar metal. It was that
metallic ammonium which chemists
have deduced must exist because of
the chemical behavior of the compound
NH3, but which Denham alone had
managed to procure. Tommy deduced
that it was an allotropic modification
of the substance which forms an amalgam
with mercury, as metallic tin is
an allotrope of the amorphous gray
powder which is tin in its normal, stable
state.
He set to work with feverish excitement.
For one hour, for two he worked.
At the end of that time he was explaining
the matter curtly to Smithers,
so intent on his work that he wholly
failed to hear a motor car outside or to
realize that it had also grown dark in
this world of ours.
“You see, Smithers, if a two-dimensioned
creature wanted to adjust two
right angles at right angles to each
other, he’d have them laid flat, of
course. And if he put a spring at the
far ends of those right angles—they’d
look like a T, put together—so that
the cross-bar of that T was under tension,
he’d have the equivalent of what
I’m doing. To make a three-dimensioned
figure, that imaginary man
would have to bend one side of the
cross-bar up. As if the two ends of
it were under tension by a spring, and
the spring would only be relieved of
tension when that cross-bar was bent.
But the vertical would be his time dimension,
so he’d have to have something
thin, or it couldn’t be bent. He’d
need something ‘thin in time.’
“We have the same problem. But
metallic ammonium is ‘thin in time.’
It’s so fugitive a substance that Denham
is the only man ever to secure it.
So we use these rings and adjust these
springs to them so they’re under tension
which will only be released when
they’re all at right angles to each other.
In our three dimensions that’s impossible,
but we have a metal that can revolve
in a fourth, and we reinforce
their tendency to adjust themselves by
starting them off with a jerk. We’ve
got ’em flat. They’ll make a good stiff
jerk when they try to adjust themselves.
And the solenoid’s a bit eccentric—”
“Shut up!” snapped Smithers suddenly.
He was facing the door, bristling.
Von Holtz was in the act of
coming in, with a beefy, broad-shouldered
man with blue jowls. Tommy
straightened up, thought swiftly, and
then smiled grimly.
“Hullo, Von Holtz,” he said pleasantly.
“We’ve just completed a model
catapult. We’re all set to try it out.
Watch!”
He set a little tin can beneath the
peculiar device of copper-tubing rings.
The can was wholly ordinary, made of
thin sheet-iron plated with tin as are
all the tin cans of commerce.
“You have the catapult remade?”
gasped Von Holtz. “Wait! Wait!
Let me look at it!”
For one instant, and one instant
only, Tommy let him see. The massed
set of concentric rings, each one of
them parallel to all the others. It
looked rather like a flat coil of tubing;
certainly like no particularly obscure
form of projector. But as Von Holtz’s
weak eyes fastened avidly upon it,
Tommy pressed the improvised electric
switch. At once that would energize
the solenoid and release all the
tensed springs from their greater tension,
for an attempt to reach a permanent
equilibrium.
As Von Holtz and the blue-jowled
man stared, the little tin can leaped upward
into the tiny coil. The small
copper rings twinkled one within the
other as the springs operated. The tin
can was wrenched this way and that,
then for the fraction of a second hurt
the eyes that gazed upon it—and it was
gone! And then the little coil came
spinning down to the work bench top
from its broken bearings and the remaining
copper rings spun aimlessly
for a moment. But the third ring of
whitish metal had vanished utterly,
and so had the coiled-wire springs
which Von Holtz had been unable to
distinguish. And there was an overpowering
smell of ammonia in the
room.
Von Holtz flung himself upon
the still-moving little instrument.
He inspected it savagely, desperately.
His full red lips drew back in a snarl.
“How did you do it?” he cried
shrilly. “You must tell me! I—I—I
will kill you if you do not tell me!”
The blue-jowled man was watching
Von Holtz. Now his lips twisted disgustedly.
He turned to Tommy and
narrowed his eyes.
“Look here,” he rumbled. “This
fool’s no good! I want the secret of
that trick you did. What’s your price?”
“I’m not for sale,” said Tommy,
smiling faintly.
The blue-jowled man regarded him
with level eyes.
“My name’s Jacaro,” he said after
an instant. “Maybe you’ve heard of
me. I’m from Chicago.”
Tommy smiled more widely.
“To be sure,” he admitted. “You
were the man who introduced machine-guns
into gang warfare, weren’t you?
Your gunmen lined up half a dozen of
the Buddy Haines gang against a wall
and wiped them out, I believe. What
do you want this secret for?”
The level eyes narrowed. They
looked suddenly deadly.
“That’s my business,” said Jacaro
briefly. “You know who I am. And
I want that trick y’did. I got my own
reasons. I’ll pay for it. Plenty. You
know I got plenty to pay, too. Or
else—”
“What?”
“Something’ll happen to you,” said
Jacaro briefly. “I ain’t sayin” what.
But it’s damn likely you’ll tell what I
want to know before it’s finished.
Name your price and be damn quick!”
Tommy took his hand out of his
pocket. He had a gun in it.
“The only possible answer to that,”
he said suavely, “is to tell you to go
to hell. Get out! But Von Holtz stays
here. He’d better!”
CHAPTER IV
Within half an hour after Jacaro’s
leaving, Smithers was in
the village, laying in a stock of supplies
and sending telegrams that Tommy
had written out for transmission.
Tommy sat facing an ashen Von Holtz
and told him pleasantly what would be
done to him if he failed to make the
metallic ammonium needed to repair
the big solenoid. In an hour, Smithers
was back, reporting that Jacaro was
also sending telegrams but that he,
Smithers, had stood over the telegraph
operator until his own messages were
transmitted. He brought back weapons,
too—highly illegal things to have in
New York State, where a citizen is only
law-abiding when defenseless. And
then four days of hectic, sleepless
labor began.
On the first day one of Tommy’s
friends drove in in answer to a telegram.
It was Peter Dalzell, with men
in uniform apparently festooned about
his car. He announced that a placard
warning passersby of smallpox within,
had been added to the decorative signs
upon the gate, and stared incredulously
at the interior of the big brick barn.
Tommy grinned at him and gave him
plans and specifications of a light steel
globe in which two men might be transported
into the fifth dimension by a
suitably operating device. Tommy had
sat up all night drawing those plans.
He told Dalzell just enough of what
he was up against to enlist Dalzell’s
enthusiastic cooperation without permitting
him to doubt Tommy’s sanity.
Dalzell had known Tommy as an
amateur tennis player, but not as a
scientist.
He marveled, refused to believe his
eyes when he looked through the dimensoscope,
and agreed that the whole
thing had to be kept secret or the
rescue expedition would be prevented
from starting by the incarceration of
both Tommy and Smithers in comfortable
insane asylums. He feigned to
admire Von Holtz, deathly white and
nearly frantic with a corroding rage,
and complimented Tommy on his taste
for illegality. He even asked Von
Holtz if he wanted to leave, and Von
Holtz snarled insults at him. Von
Holtz was beginning to work at the
manufacture of metallic ammonium.
It was an electrolytic process, of
course. Ordinarily, when—say—ammonium
chloride is broken down by
an electric current, ammonium is deposited
at the cathode and instantly becomes
a gas which dissolves in the
water or bubbles up to the surface.
With a mercury cathode, it is dissolved
and becomes a metallic amalgam, which
also breaks down into gas with much
bubbling of the mercury. But Denham
had worked out a way of delaying the
breaking-down, which left him with a
curiously white, spongy mass of metal
which could be carefully melted down
and cast, but not under any circumstances
violently struck or strained.
Von Holtz was working at that. On
the second day he delivered, snarling,
a small ingot of the white metal. He
was imprisoned in the lean-to-shed in
which the electrolysis went on. But
Tommy had more than a suspicion that
he was in communication with Jacaro.
“Of course,” he said drily to Smithers,
who had expressed his doubts.
“Jacaro had somebody sneak up and
talk to him through the walls, or maybe
through a bored hole. While there’s
a hope of finding out what he wants
to know through Von Holtz, Jacaro
won’t try anything. Not anything
rough, anyhow. We mustn’t be bumped
off while what we are doing is in our
heads alone. We’re safe enough—for
a while.”
Smithers grumbled.
“We need that ammonium,” said
Tommy, “and I don’t know how to
make it. I bluffed that I could, and in
time I might, but it would need time
and meanwhile Denham needs us. Dalzell
is going to send a plane over today,
with word of when we can expect
our own globe. We’ll try to have
the big catapult ready when it comes.
And the plane will drop some extra
supplies. I’ve ordered a sub-machine
gun. Handy when we get over there in
the tree-fern forests. Right now,
though, we need to be watching….”
Because they were taking turns looking
through the dimensoscope. For
signs of Denham and Evelyn. And
Tommy was finding himself thinking
wholly unscientific thoughts about Evelyn,
since a pretty girl in difficulties
is of all possible things the one most
likely to make a man romantic.
In the four days of their hardest
working, he saw her three times.
The globe was wrecked and ruined. Its
glass was broken out and its interior
ripped apart. It had been pillaged so
exhaustively that there was no hope
that whatever device had been included
in its design, for its return, remained
even repairably intact. That device
had not worked, to be sure, but Tommy
puzzled sometimes over the fact that
he had seen no mechanical device of
any sort in the plunder that had been
brought out to be demolished. But he
did not think of those things when he
saw Evelyn.
The Ragged Men’s encampment was
gone, but she and her father lingered
furtively, still near the pillaged globe.
The first day Tommy saw her, she was
still blooming and alert. The second
day she was paler. Her clothing was
ripped and torn, as if by thorns. Denham
had a great raw wound upon his
forehead, and his coat was gone and
half his shirt was in ribbons. Before
Tommy’s eyes they killed a nameless
small animal with the trunchionlike
weapon Evelyn carried. And Denham
carted it triumphantly off into the
shelter of the tree-fern forest. But to
Tommy that shelter began to appear
extremely dubious.
That same afternoon some of the
Ragged Men came suspiciously to the
globe and inspected it, and then vented
a gibbering rage upon it with blows
and curses. They seemed half-mad,
these men. But then, all the Ragged
Men seemed a shade less than sane.
Their hatred for the Golden City
seemed the dominant emotion of their
existence.
And when they had gone, Tommy
saw Denham peering cautiously from
behind a screening mass of fern. And
Denham looked sick at heart. His eyes
lifted suddenly to the heavens, and he
stared off into the distance again, and
then he regarded the heavens again
with an expression that was at once of
the utmost wistfulness and the uttermost
of despair.
Tommy swung the dimensoscope
about and searched the skies of
that other world. He saw the flying
machine, and it was a swallow-winged
device that moved swiftly, and now
soared and swooped in abrupt short
circles almost overhead. Tommy could
see its pilot, leaning out to gaze downward.
He was no more than a hundred
feet up, almost at the height of the
tree-fern tops. And the pilot was moving
too swiftly for Tommy to be able
to focus accurately upon his face, but
he could see him as a man, an indubitable
man in no fashion distinguishable
from the other men of this earth. He
was scrutinizing the globe as well as
he could without alighting.
He soared upward, suddenly, and his
plane dwindled as it went toward the
Golden City.
And then, inevitably, Tommy searched
for the four Ragged Men who had
inspected the globe a little while since.
He saw them, capering horribly behind
a screening of verdure. They did not
shake their clenched fists at the flying
machine. Instead, they seemed filled
with a ghastly mirth. And suddenly
they began to run frantically for the
far distance, as if bearing news of infinite
importance.
And when he looked back at Denham,
it seemed to Tommy that he
wrung his hands before he disappeared.
But that was the second day of the
work upon our own world, and
just before sunset there was a droning
in the earthly sky above the laboratory,
and Tommy ran out, and somebody
shot at him from a patch of woodland
a quarter of a mile away from the brick
building. Isolated as Denham’s place
was, the shot would go unnoticed. The
bullet passed within a few feet of Tommy,
but he paid no attention. It was one
of Jacaro’s watchers, no doubt, but Jacaro
did not want Tommy killed. So
Tommy waited until the plane swooped
low—almost to the level of the laboratory
roof—and a thickly padded package
thudded to the ground. He picked
it up and darted back into the laboratory
as other bullets came from the
patch of woodland.
“Funny,” he said dryly to Smithers,
inside the laboratory again; “they don’t
dare kill me—yet—and Von Holtz
doesn’t dare leave or refuse to do what
I tell him to do; and yet they expect
to lick us.”
Smithers growled. Tommy was unpacking
the wrapped package. A grim,
blued-steel thing came out of much
padding. Boxes tumbled after it.
“Sub-machine gun,” said Tommy,
“and ammunition. Jacaro and his little
pals will try to get in here when they
think we’ve got the big solenoid ready
for use. They’ll try to get it before
we can use it. This will attend to
them.”
“An’ get us in jail,” said Smithers
calmly, “for forty-’leven years.”
“No,” said Tommy, and grinned.
“We’ll be in the fifth dimension. Our
job is to fling through the catapult all
the stuff we’ll need to make another
catapult to fling us back again.”
“It can’t be done,” said Smithers
flatly.
“Maybe not,” agreed Tommy, “especially
since we ruin all our springs and
one gymbal ring every time we use the
thing. But I’ve got an idea. I’ll want
five coils with hollow iron cores, and
the whole works shaped like this, with
two holes bored so….”
He sketched. He had been working
on the idea for several days,
and the sketch was ready in his mind
to be transferred to paper.
“What you goin’ to do?”
“Something crazy,” said Tommy. “A
mirror isn’t the only thing that changes
angles to right ones.”
“You’re the doctor,” said the imperturbable
Smithers.
He set to work. He puzzled Tommy
sometimes, Smithers did. So far he
hadn’t asked how much his pay was going
to be. He’d worked unintermittantly.
He had displayed a colossal, a
tremendous calmness. But no man
could work as hard as Smithers did
without some powerful driving-force.
It was on the fourth day that Tommy
learned what it was.
The five coils had been made, and
Tommy was assembling them with an
extraordinary painstaking care behind
a screen, to hide what he was doing.
He’d discovered a peep-hole bored
through the brick wall from the lean-to
where Von Holtz worked. He was no
longer locked in there. Tommy abandoned
the pretense of imprisonment
after finding an automatic pistol and a
duplicate key to the lock in Von
Holtz’s possession. He’d had neither
when he was theoretically locked up,
and Tommy laughed.
“It’s a farce, Von Holtz,” he said dryly,
“this pretending you’ll run away.
You’re here spying now, for Jacaro. Of
course. And you don’t dare harm either
of us until you find out from me what
you can’t work out for yourself, and
know I have done. How much is Jacaro
going to pay you for the secret of
the catapult, Von Holtz?”
Von Holtz snarled. Smithers moved
toward him, his hands closing and unclosing.
Von Holtz went gray with
terror.
“Talk!” said Smithers.
“A—a million dollars,” said Von
Holtz, cringing away from the brawny
red-headed man.
“It would be interesting to know
what use it would be to him,” said
Tommy dryly. “But to earn that million
you have to learn what we know.
And to learn that, you have to help us
do it again, on the scale we want. You
won’t run away. So I shan’t bother to
lock you up hereafter. Jacaro’s men
come and talk to you at night, don’t
they?”
Von Holtz cringed again. It
was an admission.
“I don’t want to have to kill any of
them,” said Tommy pleasantly, “and
we’ll all be classed as mad if this thing
gets out. So you go and talk to them
in the lane when you want to, Von
Holtz. But if any of them come near
the laboratory, Smithers and I will kill
them, and if Smithers is hurt I’ll kill
you; and I don’t imagine Jacaro wants
that, because he expects you to build
another catapult for him. But I warn
you, if I find another gun on you I’ll
thrash you.”
Von Holtz’s pallor changed subtly
from the pallor of fear to the awful
lividness of rage.
“You—Gott! You dare threaten—”
He choked upon his own fury.
“I do,” said Tommy. “And I’ll carry
out the threat.”
Smithers moved forward once more.
“Mr. Von Holtz,” he said in a very
terrible steadiness, “I aim to kill you
some time. I ain’t done it yet because
Mr. Reames says he needs you a while.
But I know you got Miss Evelyn marooned
off in them fern-woods on purpose!
And—God knows she wouldn’t
ever look at me, but—I aim to kill you
some time!”
His eyes were flames. His hands
closed and unclosed horribly. Von
Holtz gaped at him, shocked out of his
fury into fear again. He went unsteadily
back to his lean-to. And Smithers
went back to the dimensoscope. It was
his turn to watch that other world for
signs of Denham and Evelyn, and for
any sign of danger to them.
Tommy adjusted the screen before
the bench on which he was working,
so Von Holtz could not see his
task, and went back to work. It was a
rather intricate task he had undertaken,
and before the events of the past
few days he would have said it was insane.
But now he was taking it quite
casually.
Presently he said:
“Smithers.”
Smithers did not look away from the
brass tube.
“Yeah?”
“You’re thinking more about Miss
Denham than her father.”
Smithers did not reply for a moment.
Then he said:
“Well? What if I am?”
“I am, too,” said Tommy quietly.
“I’ve never spoken to her, and I daresay
she’s never even heard of me, and
she certainly has never seen me, but—”
Smithers said with a vast calmness:
“She’ll never look at me, Mr. Reames.
I know it. She talks to me, an’ laughs
with me, but she’s never sure-’nough
looked at me. An’ she never will. But
I got the right to love her.”
Tommy nodded very gravely.
“Yes. You have. So have I. And so,
when that globe comes, we both get
into it with what arms and ammunition
we can pack in, and go where she is, to
help her. I intended to have you work
the switch and send me off. But you
can come, too.”
Smithers was silent. But he took his
eyes from the dimensoscope eye-piece
and regarded Tommy soberly. Then
he nodded and turned back. And it
was a compact between the two men
that they should serve Evelyn, without
any rivalry at all.
Tommy went on with his work.
The essential defect in the catapult
Denham had designed was the fact
that it practically had to be rebuilt
after each use. And, moreover, the metallic
ammonium was so fugitive a substance
that it was hard to keep. Once
it had been strained by working, it
gradually adverted to a gaseous state
and was lost. And while he still tried
to keep the little catapult in a condition
for use, he was at no time sure that
he could send a pair of automatics and
ammunition through in a steel box at
any moment that Denham came close
enough to notice a burning smoke-fuse
attached.
But he was working on another form
of catapult entirely, now. In this case
he was using hollow magnets placed at
known angles to each other. And they
were so designed that each one tended
to adjust its own hollow bore at right
angles to the preceding one, and each
one would take any moving, magnetic
object and swing it through four successive
right angles into the fifth dimension.
He fitted the first magnet on twin
rods of malleable copper, which also
would carry the current which energized
the coil. He threaded the second
upon the same twin supports. When
the current was passed through the two
of them, the magnetic field itself
twisted the magnets, bending the copper
supports and placing the magnets
in their proper relative positions. A
third magnet on the same pair of rods,
and a repetition of the experiment,
proved the accuracy of the idea. And
since this device, like the dimensoscope,
required only a forty-five degree
angle to our known dimensions, instead
of a right angle as the other catapult
did, Tommy was able to work with
ordinary and durable materials. He
fitted on the last two coils and turned
on the current for his final experiment.
And as he watched, the twin three-eighths-inch
rods twisted and writhed
in the grip of the intangible magnetic
force. They bent, and quivered, and
twisted…. And suddenly there seemed
to be a sort of inaudible snap, and one
of the magnets hurt the eyes that
looked at it, and only the edge of the
last of the series was visible.
Tommy drew in his breath sharply.
“Now we try it,” he said tensely.
“I was trying to work this as the mirrors
of the dimensoscope were fitted.
Let’s see.”
He took a long piece of soft-iron wire
and fed it into the hollow of the first
magnet. He saw it come out and bend
stiffly to enter the hollow of the second.
It required force to thrust it
through. It went still more stiffly into
the third magnet. It required nearly
all his strength to thrust it on, and on….
The end of it vanished. He pushed
two feet or more of it beyond the last
place where it was visible. It went into
the magnet that hurt one’s eyes. After
that it could not be seen.
Tommy’s voice was strained.
“Swing the dimensoscope, Smithers,”
he ordered. “See if you can see the
wire. The end of it should be in the
other world.”
It seemed an age, an aeon, that
Smithers searched. Then:
“Move it,” he said.
Tommy obeyed.
“It’s there,” said Smithers evenly.
“Two or three feet of it.”
Tommy drew a deep, swift breath
of relief.
“All right!” he said crisply. “Now
we can fling anything we need through
there, when our globe arrives. We can
built up a dump of supplies, all sent
through just before we slide through
in the globe.”
“Yeah,” said Smithers. “Uh—Mr.
Reames. There’s a bunch of Ragged
Men in sight, hauling something heavy
behind them. I don’t know what it’s
all about.”
Tommy went to the brass tube and
stared through it. The tree-fern forest,
drawing away in the distance. The vast
and steaming morass. The glittering
city, far, far in the distance.
And then a mob of the Ragged Men,
hauling at some heavy thing. They
were a long way off. Some of them
came capering on ahead, and Tommy
swung the dimensoscope about to see
Denham and Evelyn dart for cover and
vanish amid the tree-ferns. Denham
was as ragged as the Ragged Men, by
now, and Evelyn’s case was little
better.
Frightened for them, Tommy swung
the instrument about again. But they
had not been seen. The leaders who
ran gleefully on ahead were merely in
haste. And they were followed more
slowly by burly men and lean ones,
whole men and limping men, who
hauled frantically on long ropes of
hide, dragging some heavy thing behind
them. Tommy saw it only indistinctly
as the filthy, nearly naked
bodies moved. But it was an intricate
device of a golden-colored metal, and
it rested upon the crudest of possible
carts. The wheels were sections of
tree trunks, pierced for wooden axles.
The cart itself was made of the most
roughly-hewed of timbers. And there
were fifty or more of the Ragged Men
who dragged it.
The men in advance now attacked
the underbrush at the edge of the
forest. They worked with a maniacal
energy, clearing away the long fern-fronds
while they capered and danced
and babbled excitedly.
Irrelevantly, Tommy thought
of escaped galley slaves. Just such
hard-bitten, vice-ridden men as these,
and filled with just such a mad, gibbering
hatred of the free men they had
escaped from. Certainly these men had
been civilized once. As the golden-metal
device came nearer, its intricacy
was the more apparent. No savages
could utilize a device like this one. And
there was a queer deadliness in the very
grace of its outlines. It was a weapon
of some sort, but whose nature Tommy
could not even guess.
And then he caught the gleam of
metal also in the fern-forest. On the
ground. In glimpses and in fragments
of glimpses between the swarming
naked bodies of the Ragged Men, he
pieced together a wholly incredible impression.
There was a roadway skirting
the edge of the forest. It was not
wide; not more than fifteen feet at
most. But it was a solid road-bed of
metal! The dull silver-white of aluminum
gleamed from the ground. Two
or more inches thick and fifteen feet
wide, there was a seamless ribbon of
aluminum that vanished behind the
tree-ferns on either side.
The intricate device of golden metal
was set up, now, and a shaggy, savage-seeming
man mounted beside it grinning.
He manipulated its levers and
wheels with an expert’s assurance. And
Tommy saw repairs upon it. Crude
repairs, with crude materials, but expertly
done. Done by the Ragged Men,
past doubt, and so demolishing any
idea that they came of a savage race.
“Watch here, Smithers,” said Tommy
grimly.
He sat to work upon the little catapult
after Denham’s design. His
own had seemed to work, but the other
was more sure. This would be an ambush
the Ragged Men were preparing,
and of course they would be preparing
it for men of the Golden City. The
plane had sighted Denham’s steel
globe. It had hovered overhead, and
carried news of what it had seen to the
Golden City. And here was a roadway
that must have been made by the folk
of the Golden City at some time or another.
Its existence explained why
Denham remained nearby. He had been
hoping that some vehicle would travel
along its length, containing civilized
people to whom he could signal and ultimately
explain his plight. And, being
near the steel globe, his narrative
would have its proofs at hand.
And now it was clear that the
Ragged Men expected some ground-vehicle,
too. They were preparing for
it. They were setting a splendid ambush,
with a highly-treasured weapon
they ordinarily kept hidden. Their
triumphant hatred could apply to nothing
else than an expectation of inflicting
injury on men of the Golden City.
So Tommy worked swiftly upon the
catapult. A new little ring of metallic
ammonium was ready, and so were the
necessary springs. The Ragged Men
would lay their ambush. The men of
the Golden City might enter it. They
might. But the aviator who had spotted
the globe would have seen the shredded
contents of the sphere about. He would
have known the Ragged Men had found
it. And the men who came in a ground-vehicle
from the Golden City should
be expecting just such an ambush as
was being laid.
There would be a fight, and Tommy,
somehow, had no doubt that the men of
the Golden City would win. And when
they had cleared the field he would
fling a smoking missile through the
catapult. The victors should see it and
should examine it. And though writing
would serve little purpose, they
should at least recognize it as written
communication in a language other
than their own. And mathematical diagrams
would certainly be lucid, and
proof of a civilized man sending the
missile, and photographs….
The catapult was ready, and Tommy
prepared his message-carrying
projectile. He found snapshots and
included them. He tore out a photograph
of Evelyn and her father, which
had been framed above a work bench
in the laboratory. He labored, racking
his brain for a means of conveying
the information that the globe was
of any other world…. And suddenly
he had an idea. A cord attached to
his missile would lead to nothingness
from either world, yet one end would
be in that other world, and the other
end in this. A wire would be better.
Tugs upon it would convey the idea
of living beings nearby but invisible.
The photograph would identify Denham
and his daughter as associated
with the phenomenon and competent
to explain it….
Tommy worked frantically to get
the thing ready. He almost prayed that
the men of the Golden City would be
victors, would find his little missile
when the fray was over, and would try
to comprehend it….
All he could do was try.
Then Smithers said, from the dimensoscope:
“They’re all set, Mr. Reames. Y’better
look.”
Tommy stared through the eye-piece.
Strangely, the golden weapon had vanished.
All seemed to be exactly as before.
The cleared-away underbrush
was replaced. Nothing was in any way
changed from the normal in that space
upon a mad world. But there was a
tiny movement and Tommy saw a
Ragged Man. He was lying prone upon
the earth. He seemed either to hear or
see something, because his lips moved
as he spoke to another invisible man
beside him, and his expression of malevolent
joy was horrible.
Tommy swung the tube about. Nothing….
But suddenly he saw swiftly-moving
winkings of sunlight from the
edge of the tree-fern forest. Something
was moving in there, moving with
lightning swiftness along the fifteen-foot
roadway of solid aluminum. It
drew nearer, and more near….
The carefully camouflaged ambuscade
was fully focussed and Tommy
was watching tensely when the
thing happened.
He saw glitterings through the tree-fronds
come to a smoothly decelerated
stop. There was a pause; and suddenly
the underbrush fell flat. As if a
single hand had smitten it, it wavered,
drooped, and lay prone. The golden
weapon was exposed, with its brawny
and horribly grinning attendant. For
one-half a split second Tommy saw the
wheeled thing in which half a dozen
men of the Golden City were riding.
It was graceful and stream-lined and
glittering. There was a platform on
which the steel sphere would have been
mounted for carrying away.
But then there was a sudden intolerable
light as the men of the Golden
City reached swiftly for peculiar
weapons beside them. The light came
from the crudely mounted weapon of
the Ragged Men, and it was an unbearable
actinic glare. For half a second,
perhaps, it persisted, and died away to
a red flame which leaped upward and
was not.
Then the vehicle from the Golden
City was a smoking, twisted ruin. Four
of the six men in it were blasted, blackened
crisps. Another staggered to his
feet, struggled to reach a weapon and
could not lift it, and twitched a dagger
from his belt and fell forward; and
Tommy could see that his suicide was
deliberate.
The last man, alone, was comparatively
unharmed by the blast of light.
He swept a pistol-like contrivance into
sight. It bore swiftly upon the now
surging, yelling horde of Ragged Men.
And one—two—three of them seemed
to scream convulsively before they
were trampled under by the rest.
But suddenly there were a myriad
little specks of red all over the body
of the man at bay. The pistol-like
thing dropped from his grasp as his
whole hand became encrimsoned. And
then he was buried beneath the hating,
blood-lusting mob of the forest men.
CHAPTER V
An hour later, Tommy took his
eyes away from the dimensoscope
eye-piece. He could not bear to look
any longer.
“Why don’t they kill him?” he demanded
sickly, filled with a horrible, a
monstrous rage. “Oh, why don’t they
kill him?”
He felt maddeningly impotent. In
another world entirely, a mob of half-naked
renegades had made a prisoner.
He was not dead, that solely surviving
man from the Golden City. He was
bound, and the Ragged Men guarded
him closely, and his guards were diverting
themselves unspeakably by small
tortures, minor tortures, horribly painful
but not weakening. And they capered
and howled with glee when the
bound man writhed.
The prisoner was a brave man,
though. Helpless as he was, he presently
flung back his head and set his
teeth. Sweat stood out in great droplets
upon his body and upon his forehead.
And he stilled his writhings, and
looked at his captors with a grim and
desperate defiance.
The guards made gestures which
were all too clear, all too luridly descriptive
of the manner of death which
awaited him. And the man of the
Golden City was ashen and hopeless
and utterly despairing—and yet defiant.
Smithers took Tommy’s place at the
eye-piece of the instrument. His nostrils
quivered at what he saw. The vehicle
from the Golden City was being
plundered, of course. Weapons from
the dead men were being squabbled
over, even fought over. And the
Ragged Men fought as madly among
themselves as if in combat with their
enemies. The big golden weapon on
its cart was already being dragged
away to its former hiding-place. And
somehow, it was clear that those who
dragged it away expected and demanded
that the solitary prisoner not
be killed until their return.
It was that prisoner, in the agony
which was only the beginning of his
death, who made Smithers’ teeth set
tightly.
“I don’t see the Professor or Miss
Evelyn,” said Smithers in a vast
calmness. “I hope to Gawd they—don’t
see this.”
Tommy swung on his heel, staring
and ashen.
“They were near,” he said stridently.
“I saw them! They saw what happened
in the ambush! They’ll—they’ll
see that man tortured!”
Smithers’ hand closed and unclosed.
“Maybe the Professor’ll have sense
enough to take Miss Evelyn—uh—where
she—can’t hear,” he said slowly,
his voice level. “I hope so.”
Tommy flung out his hands desperately.
“I want to help that man!” he cried
savagely. “I want to do something! I
saw what they promised to do to him.
I want to—to kill him, even! It would
be mercy!”
Smithers said, with a queer, stilly
shock in his voice:
“I see the Professor now. He’s got
that gun-thing in his hand…. Miss
Evelyn’s urging him to try to do something…. He’s
looking at the sky…. It’ll
be a long time before it’s dark…. He’s
gone back out of sight….”
“If we had some dynamite!” said
Tommy desperately, “we could take a
chance on blowing ourselves to bits and
try to fling it through and into the middle
of those devils….”
He was pacing up and down the
laboratory, harrowed by the fate
of that gray-faced man who awaited
death by torture; filled with a wild terror
that Evelyn and her father would
try to rescue him and be caught to
share his fate; racked by his utter impotence
to do more than watch….
Then Smithers said thickly:
“God!”
He stumbled away from the eye-piece.
Tommy took his place, dry-throated
with terror. He saw the
Ragged Men laughing uproariously.
The bearded man who was their leader
was breaking the arms and legs of the
prisoner so that he would be helpless
when released from the stake to which
he was bound. And if ever human beings
looked like devils out of hell, it
was at that moment. The method of
breaking the bones was excruciating.
The prisoner screamed. The Ragged
Men rolled upon the ground in their
maniacal mirth.
And then a man dropped, heaving
convulsively, and then another, and
still another…. The grim, gaunt figure
of Denham came out of the tree-fern
forest, the queer small golden-metal
trunchion in his hand. A fourth
man dropped before the Ragged Men
quite realized what had happened. The
fourth man himself was armed—and a
flashing slender body came plunging
from the forest and Evelyn flung herself
upon the still-heaving body and
plucked away that weapon.
Tommy groaned, in the laboratory
in another world. He could not
look away, and yet it seemed that the
heart would be torn from his body by
that sight. Because the Ragged Men
had turned upon Denham with a concentrated
ferocity, somehow knowing
instantly that he was more nearly akin
to the men of the Golden City than to
them. But at sight of Evelyn, her garments
rent by the thorns of the forest,
her white body gleaming through the
largest tears, they seemed to go mad.
And Tommy’s eyes, glazing, saw the
look on Denham’s face as he realized
that Evelyn had not fled, but had followed
him in his desperate and wholly
hopeless effort.
Then the swarming mass of Ragged
Men surged over the two of them.
Buried them under reaching, hating,
lusting fiends who fought even among
themselves to be first to seize them.
Then there was only madness, and
Denham was bound beside the man of
the Golden City, and Evelyn was the
center of a fighting group which was
suddenly flung aside by the bearded
giant, and the encampment of the
Ragged Men was bedlam. And somehow
Tommy knew with a terrible clarity
that a man of the Golden City to
torture was bliss unimaginable to these
half-mad enemies of that city. But a
woman—
He turned from the instrument,
three-quarters out of his head. He literally
did not see Von Holtz gazing
furtively in the doorway. His eyes
were fixed and staring. It seemed that
his brain would burst.
Then he heard his own voice saying
with an altogether unbelievable steadiness:
“Smithers! They’ve got Evelyn. Get
the sub-machine gun.”
Smithers cried out hoarsely. His
face was not quite human, for an
instant. But Tommy was bringing the
work bench on which he had installed
his magnetic catapult, close over by the
dimensoscope.
“This cannot work,” he said in the
same incredible calmness. “Not possibly.
It should not work. It will not
work. But it has to work!”
He was clamping the catapult to a
piece of heavy timber.
“Put the gun so it shoots into the
first magnet,” he said steadily. “The
magnet-windings shouldn’t stand the
current we’ve got to put into them.
They’ve got to.”
Smithers’ fingers were trembling and
unsteady. Tommy helped him, not
looking through the dimensoscope at
all.
“Start the dynamo,” he said evenly—and
marveled foolishly at the voice that
did not seem to belong to him at all,
talking so steadily and so quietly.
“Give me all the juice you’ve got. We’ll
cut out this rheostat.”
He was tightening a vise which
would hold the deadly little weapon in
place while Smithers got the crude-oil
engine going and accelerated it recklessly
to its highest speed. Tommy
flung the switch. Rubber insulation
steamed and stank. He pulled the trigger
of the little gun for a single shot.
The bullet flew into the first hollow
magnet, just as he had beforehand
thrust an iron wire. It vanished. The
series of magnets seemed unharmed.
With a peculiar, dreamlike
steadiness, Tommy put his hand
where an undeflected bullet would go
through it. He pressed the trigger
again. He felt a tiny breeze upon his
hand. But the bullet had been unable
to elude the compound-wound magnets,
each of which now had quite four times
the designed voltage impressed upon
its coils.
Tommy flung off the switch.
“Work the gun,” he ordered harshly.
“When I say fire, send a burst of shots
through it. Keep the switch off except
when you’re actually firing, so—God
willing—the coils don’t burn out.
Fire!”
He was gazing through the dimensoscope.
Evelyn was struggling helplessly
while two Ragged Men held her
arms, grinning as only devils could
have grinned, and others squabbled and
watched with a fascinated attention
some cryptic process which could only
be the drawing of lots….
Tommy saw, and paid no attention.
The machine-gun beside him rasped
suddenly. He saw a tree-fern frond
shudder. He saw a gaping, irregular
hole where a fresh frond was uncurling.
Tommy put out his hand to the
gun.
“Let me move it, bench and all,” he
said steadily. “Now try it again. Just
a burst.”
Again the gun rasped. And the
earth was kicked up suddenly
where the bullets struck in that other
world. The little steel-jacketed missiles
were deflected by the terribly
overstrained magnets of the catapult,
but their energy was not destroyed. It
was merely altered in direction. Fired
within the laboratory upon our own
and normal world, the bullets came out
into the world of tree-ferns and monstrous
things. They came out, as it
happened, sideways instead of point
first, which was due to some queer effect
of dimension change upon an object
moving at high velocity. Because
of that, they ricocheted much more
readily, and where they struck they
made a much more ghastly wound. But
the first two bursts caused no effect at
all. They were not even noticed by the
Ragged Men. The noise of the little
gun was thunderous and snarling in
the laboratory, but in the world of the
fifth dimension there was no sound at
all.
“Like this,” said Tommy steadily.
“Just like this…. Now fire!”
He had tilted the muzzle upward.
And then with a horrible grim intensity
he traversed the gun as it roared.
And it was butchery. Three Ragged
Men were cut literally to bits before
the storm of bullets began to do real
damage. The squabbling group, casting
lots for Evelyn, had a swathe of
dead men in its midst before snarls begun
had been completed.
“Again,” said Tommy coldly. “Again,
Smithers, again!”
And again the little gun roared.
The burly bearded man clutched
at his throat—and it was a gory horror.
A Thing began to run insanely. It did
not even look human any longer. It
stumbled over the leader of the Ragged
Men and died as he had done. The bullets
came tumbling over themselves erratically.
They swooped and curved
and dispersed themselves crazily. Spinning
as they were, at right angles to
their line of flight, their trajectories
were incalculable and their impacts
were grisly.
The little gun fired ten several
bursts, aimed in a desperate cold-bloodedness,
before the smell of burnt
rubber became suddenly overpowering
and the rasping sound of an electric
arc broke through the rumbling of the
crude-oil engine in the back.
Smithers sobbed.
“Burnt out!”
But Tommy waved his hand.
“I think,” he said savagely, “that
maybe a dozen of them got away. Evelyn’s
staggering toward her father.
She’ll turn him loose. That prisoner’s
dead, though. Didn’t mean to shoot
him, but those bullets flew wild.”
He gave Smithers the eye-piece.
Sweat was rolling down his forehead
in great drops. His hands were trembling
uncontrollably.
He paced shakenly up and down the
laboratory, trying to shut out of his
own sight the things he had seen when
the bullets of his own aiming literally
splashed into the living flesh of men.
He had seen Ragged Men disemboweled
by those spinning, knifelike projectiles.
He had turned a part of the
mad world of that other dimension into
a shambles, and he did not regret it because
he had saved Evelyn, but he
wanted to shut out the horror of seeing
what he had done.
“But now,” he said uncertainly to
himself, “they’re no better off, except
they’ve got weapons…. If that man
from the Golden City hadn’t been
killed….”
He was looking at the magnetic
catapult, burned out and useless.
His eyes swung suddenly to the other
one. Just a little while since he had
made ready a missile to be thrown
through into the other world by that.
It contained snapshots, and diagrams,
and it was an attempt to communicate
with the men of the Golden City without
any knowledge of their language.
“But—I can communicate with Denham!”
He began to write feverishly. If he
had looked out of the laboratory window,
he would have seen Von Holtz
running like a deer, waving his arms
jerkily, and—when out of earshot of
the laboratory—shouting loudly. And
Von Holtz was carrying a small black
box which Tommy would have identified
instantly as a motion picture camera,
built for amateurs but capable of
taking pictures indoors and with a surprisingly
small amount of light. And
if Tommy had listened, he might possibly
have heard the beginnings of
those shoutings to men hidden in a
patch of woodland about a quarter of a
mile away. The men, of course, were
Jacaro’s, waiting until either Von
Holtz had secured the information that
was wanted, or until an assault in force
upon the laboratory would net them a
catapult ready for use—to be examined,
photographed, and duplicated at leisure.
But Tommy neither looked nor listened.
He wrote feverishly, saying to
Smithers at the dimensoscope:
“Denham’ll be looking around to see
what killed those men. When he does,
we want to be ready to shoot a smoke-bomb
through to him, with a message
attached.”
Smithers made a gesture of no especial
meaning save that he had heard.
And Tommy went on writing swiftly,
saying who he was and what he had
done, and that another globe was being
built so that he and Smithers could
come with supplies and arms to
help….
“He’s lookin” around now, Mr.
Reames,” said Smithers quietly. “He’s
picked up a ricocheted bullet an’ is
staring at it.”
The crude-oil engine was running
at a thunderous rate. Tommy fastened
his note in the little missile he
had made ready. He placed it under
the solenoid of the catapult after Denham’s
design, with the springs and
rings of metallic ammonium. He
turned to Smithers.
“I’ll watch for him,” said Tommy unsteadily.
“You know, watch for the
right moment to fling it through. Slow
up the generator a little. It’ll rack itself
to pieces.”
He put his eye to the eye-piece. He
winced as he saw again what the bullets
of his aiming had done. But he
saw Denham almost at once. And Denham
was scratched and bruised and
looked very far indeed from the ideal
of a professor of theoretic physics,
with hardly more than a few shreds of
clothing left upon him, and a ten-day’s
beard upon his face. He limped as he
walked. But he had stopped in the
task of gathering up weapons to show
Evelyn excitedly what it was that he
had found. A spent and battered bullet,
but indubitably a bullet from the
world of his own ken. He began to
stare about him, hopeful yet incredulous.
Tommy took his eye from the dimensoscope
just long enough to light the
fuse of the smoke-bomb.
“Here it goes, Smithers!”
He flung the switch. The missile
with its thickly smoking fuse leaped
upward as the concentric rings flickered
and whirled bewilderingly. The
missile hurt the eyes that watched it.
It vanished. The solenoid dropped to
the floor from the broken small contrivance.
Then Tommy’s heart stood still as
he gazed through the eye-piece again.
He could see nothing but an opaque
milkiness. But it drifted away, and he
realised that it was smoke. More, Denham
was staring at it. More yet, he
was moving cautiously towards its
source, one of the strange golden
weapons held ready….
Denham was investigating.
The generator at the back of the
laboratory slowed down. Smithers
was obeying orders. Tommy hung
close by the vision instrument, his
hands moving vaguely and helplessly,
as one makes gestures without volition
when anxious for someone else to duplicate
the movements for which he
sets the example.
He saw Denham, very near, inspecting
the smoking thing on the ground
suspiciously. The smoke-fuse ceased
to burn. Denham stared. After an
age-long delay, he picked up the missile
Tommy had prepared. And Tommy
saw that there was a cord attached to
it. He had fastened that cord when
planning to try to communicate with
the men of the Golden City, when he
had expected them to be victorious.
But he saw Denham’s face light up
with pathetic hope. He called to Evelyn.
He hobbled excitedly to her,
babbling….
Tommy watched, and his heart
pounded suddenly as Evelyn turned
and smiled in the direction in which
she knew the dimensoscope must be.
A huge butterfly, its wings a full yard
across, fluttered past her head. Denham
talked excitedly to her. A clumsy
batlike thing swooped by overhead. Its
shadow blanketed her face for an instant.
A running animal, small and
long, ran swiftly in full view from one
side of the dimensoscope’s field of
vision to the other. Then a snake, curiously
horned, went writhing past….
Denham talked excitedly. He turned
and made gestures as of writing, toward
the spot where he had picked up
Tommy’s message. He began to search
for a charred stick where the Ragged
Men had built a fire some days now
past. A fleeing furry thing sped across
his feet, running….
Denham looked up. And Evelyn
was staring now. She was staring
in the direction of the Golden City.
And now what was almost a wave of
animals, all wild and all fleeing, swept
across the field of vision of the dimensoscope.
There were gazelles, it seemed—slender-limbed,
graceful animals, at
any rate—and there were tiny hoofed
things which might have been eohippi,
and then a monstrous armadillo
clanked and rattled past….
Tommy swung the dimensoscope.
He gasped. All the animal world was
in flight. The insects had taken to
wing. Flying creatures were soaring
upward and streaking through the
clear blue sky, and all in the one direction.
And then out of the morass came
monstrous shapes; misshapen, unbelievable
reptilian shapes, which fled
bellowing thunderously for the tree-fern
forest. They were gigantic, those
things from the morass. They were
hideous. They were things out of
nightmares, made into flabby flesh.
There were lizards and what might
have been gigantic frogs, save that
frogs possess no tails. And there were
long and snaky necks terminating in
infinitesimal heads, and vast palpitating
bodies following those impossible
small brain-cases, and long tapering
tails that thrashed mightily as the
ghastly things fled bellowing….
And the cause of the mad panic was
a slowly moving white curtain of mist.
It was flowing over the marsh, moving
with apparent deliberation, but, as
Tommy saw, actually very swiftly. It
shimmered and quivered and moved onward
steadily. Its upper surface
gleamed with elusive prismatic colors.
It had blotted out the horizon and the
Golden City, and it came onward….
Denham made frantic, despairing
gestures toward the dimensoscope.
The thing was coming too fast.
There was no time to write. Denham
held high the cord that trailed from the
message-bearing missile. He gesticulated
frantically, and raced to the
gutted steel globe and heaved mightily
upon it and swung it about so that
Tommy saw a great steel ring set in its
side, which had been hidden before. He
made more gestures, urgently, and motioned
Evelyn inside.
Tommy struck at his forehead.
“It’s poison gas,” he muttered. “Revenge
for the smashed-up vehicle….
They knew it by an automatic radio
signal, maybe. This is their way of
wiping out the Ragged Men…. Poison
gas…. It’ll kill Denham and Evelyn….
He wants me to do something….”
He drew back, staring, straining
every nerve to think…. And somehow
his eyes were drawn to the back
of the laboratory and he saw Smithers
teetering on his feet, with his hands
clasped queerly to his body, and a
strange man standing in the door of the
laboratory with an automatic pistol in
his hand. The automatic had a silencer
on it, and its clicking had been
drowned out, anyhow, by the roaring
of the crude-oil engine.
The man was small and dark and
natty. His lips were drawn back in a
peculiar mirthless grin as Smithers
teetered stupidly back and forth and
then fell….
The explosion of Tommy’s own revolver
astounded him as much as it did
Jacaro’s gunman. He did not ever remember
drawing it or aiming. The
natty little gunman was blotted out by
a spouting mass of white smoke—and
suddenly Tommy knew what it was
that Denham wanted him to do.
There was rope in a loose and untidy
coil beneath a work bench.
Tommy sprang to it in a queer, nightmarish
activity. He knew what was
happening, of course. Von Holtz had
seen the magnetic catapult at work.
That couldn’t be destroyed or its workings
hidden like the ring catapult of
Denham’s design. He’d gone out to
call in Jacaro’s men. And they’d shot
down Smithers as a cold-blooded preliminary
to the seizure of the instrument
Jacaro wanted.
It was necessary to defend the laboratory.
But Tommy could not spare the
time. That white mist was moving
upon Evelyn and her father, in that
other world. It was death, as the terror
of the wild things demonstrated.
They had to be helped….
He knotted the rope to the end of the
cord that vanished curiously somewhere
among the useless mass of rings.
He tugged at the cord—and it was
tugged in return. Denham, in another
world, had felt his signal and had replied
to it….
A window smashed suddenly and a
bullet missed Tommy’s neck by inches.
He fired at that window, and absorbedly
guided the knot of the rope past its
vanishing point. The knot ceased to
exist and the rope crept onward—and
suddenly moved more and more swiftly
to a place where abruptly it was not.
For the length of half an inch, the rope
hurt the eyes that looked at it. Beyond
that it was not possible to see it at all.
Tommy leaped up. He plunged ahead
of two separate spurts of shots from
two separate windows. The shots
pierced the place where he had been.
He was racing for the crude-oil engine.
There was a chain wound upon a drum,
there, and a clutch attached the drum
to the engine.
He stopped and seized the repeating
shotgun Smithers had brought as his
own weapon against Jacaro’s gangsters.
He sent four loads of buckshot at the
windows of the laboratory. A man
yelled.
And Tommy had dropped the gun to
knot the rope to the chain, desperately,
fiercely, in a terrible haste.
The chain began to pay out to that
peculiar vanishing point which
was here an entry-way to another world—perhaps
another universe.
A bullet nicked his ribs. He picked
up the gun and fired it nearly at random.
He saw Smithers moving feebly,
and Tommy had a vast compassion for
Smithers, but— He shuddered suddenly.
Something had struck him a heavy
blow in the shoulder. And something
else battered at his leg. There was no
sound that could be heard above the
thunder of the crude-oil motor, but
Tommy, was queerly aware of buzzing
things flying about him, and of something
very warm flowing down his body
and down his leg. And he felt very
dizzy and weak and extremely tired….
He could not see clearly, either.
But he had to wait until Denham had
the chain fast to the globe. That was
the way he had intended to come back,
of course. The ring was in the globe,
and this chain was in the laboratory to
haul the globe back from wherever it
had been sent. And Von Holtz had disconnected
it before sending away the
globe with Denham in it. If the chain
remained unbroken, of course it could
be hauled in, as it would turn all necessary
angles and force the globe to follow
those angles, whatever they might
be….
Tommy was on his hands and knees,
and men were saying savagely:
“Where’s that thing, hey? Where’s
th’ thing Jacaro wants?”
He wanted to tell them that they
should say if the chain had stopped
moving to a place where it ceased to
exist, so that he could throw a clutch
and bring Denham and his daughter
back from the place where Von Holtz
had marooned them when he wanted to
steal Denham’s secret. Tommy wanted
to explain that. But the floor struck
him in the face, and something said to
him:
“They’ve shot you.”
But it did not seem to matter,
somehow, and he lay very still
until he felt himself strangling, and he
was breathing in strong ammonia which
made his eyes smart and his tired lungs
gasp.
Then he saw flames, and heard a motor
car roaring away from close by the
laboratory.
“They’ve stolen the catapult and set
fire to the place,” he remembered dizzily,
“and now they’re skipping
out….”
Even that did not seem to matter.
But then he heard the chain clank, next
to him on the floor. The white mist!
Denham and Evelyn waiting for the
white mist to reach them, and Denham
jerking desperately on the chain to
signal that he was ready….
The flames had released ammonia
from the metal Von Holtz had made.
That had roused Tommy. But it did
not give him strength. It is impossible
to say where Tommy’s strength came
from, when somehow he crawled to the
clutch lever, with the engine roaring
steadily above him, and got one hand
on the lever, and edged himself up, and
up, and up, until he could swing his
whole weight on that lever. That instant
of dangling hurt excruciatingly,
too, and Tommy saw only that the
drum began to revolve swiftly, winding
the chain upon it, before his grip gave
way.
And the chain came winding in and
in from nowhere, and the tall laboratory
filled more and more thickly with
smoke, and lurid flames appeared somewhere,
and a rushing sound began to
be audible as the fire roared upward
to the inflammable roof, and the engine
ran thunderously….
Then, suddenly, there was a shape
in the middle of the laboratory
floor. A huge globular shape which it
hurt the eyes to look upon. It became
visible out of nowhere as if evoked by
magic amid the flames of hell. But it
came, and was solid and substantial,
and it slid along the floor upon small
wheels until it wound up with a crash
against the winding drum, and the
chain shrieked as it tightened unbearably—and
the engine choked and died.
Then a door opened in the monstrous
globe. Two figures leaped out, aghast.
Two ragged, tattered, strangely-armed
figures, who cried out to each other and
started for the door. But the girl
stumbled over Tommy and called,
choking, to her father. Groping toward
her, he found Smithers. And
then Tommy smiled drowsily to himself
as soft arms tugged bravely at him,
and a slender, glorious figure staggered
with him to fresh air.
“It’s Von Holtz,” snapped Denham,
and coughed as he fought his way to
the open. “I’ll blast him to hell with
these things we brought back….”
That was the last thing Tommy
knew until he woke up in bed with
a feeling of many bandages and an impression
that his lungs hurt.
Denham seemed to have heard him
move. He looked in the door.
“Hullo, Reames. You’re all right
now.”
Tommy regarded him curiously until
he realized. Denham was shaved and
fully clothed. That was the strangeness
about him. Tommy had been
watching him for many days as his
clothing swiftly deteriorated and his
beard grew.
“You are, too, I see,” he said weakly.
“I’m damned glad.” Then he felt
foolish, and querulous, and as if he
should make some apology, and instead
said, “But five dimensions does seem
extreme. Three is enough for ordinary
use, and four is luxurious. Five seems
to be going a bit too far.”
Denham blinked, and then grinned
suddenly. Tommy had admired the
man who could face so extraordinary a
situation with such dogged courage,
and now he found, suddenly, that he
liked Denham.
“Not too far,” said Denham grimly.
“Look!” He held up one of the weapons
Tommy had seen in that other world,
one of the golden-colored truncheons.
“I brought this back. The same metal
they built that wagon of theirs with.
All their weapons. Most of their tools—as
I know. It’s gold, man! They
use gold in that world as we use steel
here. That’s why Jacaro was ready to
kill to get the secret of getting there.
Von Holtz enlisted him.”
“How did you know—” began Tommy
weakly.
“Smithers,” said Denham. “We
dragged both of you out before the lab
went-up in smoke. He’s going to be
all right, too. Evelyn’s nursing both
of you. She wants to talk to you, but
I want to say this first: You did a
damned fine thing, Reames! The only
man who could have saved us, and you
just about killed yourself doing it.
Smithers saw you swing that clutch
lever with three bullets in your body.
And you’re a scientist, too. You’re
my partner, Reames, in what we do in
the fifth dimension.”
Tommy blinked. “But five dimensions
does seem extreme….”
“We are the Interdimensional Trading
Company,” said Denham, smiling.
“Somehow, I think we’ll find something
in this world we can trade for the gold
in that. And we’ve got to get there,
Reames, because Jacaro will surely try
to make use of that catapult principle
you worked out. He’ll raise the devil;
and I think the people of that Golden
City would be worth knowing. No,
we’re partners. Sooner or later, you’ll
know how I feel about what you’ve
done. I’m going to bring Evelyn in
here now.”
He vanished. An instant later Tommy
heard a voice—a girl’s voice. His
heart began to pound. Denham came
back into the room and with him was
Evelyn. She smiled warmly upon Tommy,
though as his eyes fell blankly
upon the smart sport clothes she was
again wearing, she flushed.
“My daughter Evelyn,” said Denham.
“She wants to thank you.”
And Tommy felt a warm soft hand
pressing his, and he looked deep into
the eyes of the girl he had never before
spoken to, but for whom he had risked
his life, and whom he knew he would
love forever. There were a thousand
things crowding to his lips for utterance.
He had watched Evelyn, and he
loved her—
“H-how do you do?” said Tommy,
lamely. “I’m—awfully glad to meet
you.”
But before he was well he learned to
talk more sensibly.
—And the ships, at that touch, fell helplessly down from the heights.
The Pirate Planet
PART THREE OF A FOUR-PART NOVEL
By Charles W. Diffin
Two fighting Yankees—war-torn Earth’s
sole representatives on Venus—set out to
spike the greatest gun of all time.
WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE
The attack comes without warning;
its reason is unknown. But Venus
is approaching the earth, and flashes
from the planet
are followed by
terrific explosions
that wreak havoc
throughout the
world. Lieutenant McGuire and Captain
Blake of the U. S. Army Air Service
see a great ship fly in from space.
Blake attacks it with the 91st Squadron
in support, and Blake alone survives.
McGuire and Professor
Sykes, an
astronomer of
Mount Lawson,
are captured.
The bombardment ceases as Venus
passes on, and the people of Earth sink
into hopeless despondency. Less than
a year and a half and the planet will
return, and then—the end! The armament
of Earth is futile against an enemy
who has conquered space. Blake
hopes that science might provide a
means; might show our fighters how to
go out into space and throttle the
attack at its source. But the hope is
blasted, until a radio from McGuire
supplies a lead.
McGuire is on Venus. He and Sykes
land on that distant planet, captives of
a barbarous people. They are taken
before Torg, the emperor, and his council,
and they learn that these red, man-shaped
beasts intend to conquer the
earth. Spawning in millions, they are
crowded, and Earth is to be their colony.
Imprisoned on a distant island, the
two captives are drugged and hypnotized
before a machine which throws
their thoughts upon a screen. Involuntary
traitors, they disclose the secrets
of Earth and its helplessness; then attempt
to escape and end their lives
rather than be forced to further betrayal
of their own people.
McGuire finds a radio station and
sends a message back to Earth. He
implores Blake to find a man named
Winslow, for Winslow has invented a
space ship and claims to have reached
the moon.
No time for further sending—McGuire
does not even know if his message
has been received—but they reach
the ocean where death offers them release.
A force of their captors attacking
on land, they throw themselves
from a cliff, then swim out to drown
beyond reach in the ocean. An enemy
ship sweeps above them: its gas cloud
threatens not the death they desire but
unconsciousness and capture. “God
help us,” says Sykes; “we can’t even
die!”
They sink, only to be buoyed up by a
huge metal shape. A metal projector
raises from the ocean, bears upon the
enemy ship and sends it, a mass of
flame and molten metal, into the sea.
And friendly voices are in McGuire’s
ears as careful hands lift the two men
and carry them within the craft that
has saved them.
CHAPTER XIII
Lieutenant McGuire had
tried to die. He and Professor
Sykes had welcomed death with
open arms, and death had been
thwarted by their enemies who wanted
them alive—wanted to draw their
knowledge from them as a vampire bat
might seek to feast. And, when even
death was denied them, help had come.
The enemy ship had gone crashing
to destruction where its melting metal
made hissing clouds of steam as it buried
itself in the ocean. And this craft
that had saved them—Lieutenant McGuire
had never been on a submarine,
but he knew it could be only that that
held him now and carried him somewhere
at tremendous speed.
This was miracle enough! But to
see, with eyes which could not be deceiving
him, a vision of men, human,
white of face—men like himself—bending
and working over Sykes’ unconscious
body—that could not be immediately
grasped.
Their faces, unlike the bleached-blood
horrors he had seen, were aglow
with the flush of health. They were
tall, slenderly built, graceful in their
quick motions as they worked to revive
the unconscious man. One stopped, as
he passed, to lay a cool hand on McGuire’s
forehead, and the eyes that
looked down seemed filled with the
blessed quality of kindness.
They were human—his own kind!—and
McGuire was unable to take in at
first the full wonder of it.
Did the tall man speak? His lips
did not move, yet McGuire heard the
words as in some inner ear.
“We were awaiting you, friend Mack
Guire.” The voice was musical, thrilling,
and yet the listening man could
not have sworn that he heard a voice at
all. It was as if a thought were placed
within his mind by the one beside him.
The one who had paused hurried on
to aid the others, and McGuire let his
gaze wander.
The porthole beside him showed
dimly a pale green light; they were
submerged, and the hissing rush of
water told him that they were travelling
fast. There was a door in the
farther wall; beyond was a room of
gleaming lights that reflected from
myriads of shining levers and dials. A
control room. A figure moved as McGuire
watched, to press on a lever
where a red light was steadily increasing
in brightness. He consulted strange
instruments before him, touched a
metal button here and there, then
opened a switch, and the rippling hiss
of waters outside their craft softened
to a gentler note.
The tall one was beside him again.
“Your friend will live,” he told him
in that wordless tongue, “and we are
almost arrived. The invisible arms of
our anchorage have us now and will
draw us safely to rest.”
The kindly tone was music in McGuire’s
ears, and he smiled in reply.
“Friends!” he thought. “We are among
friends.”
“You are most welcome,” the other
assured him, “and, yes, you are truly
among friends.” But the lieutenant
glanced upward in wonder, for he knew
that he had uttered no spoken word.
Their ship turned and changed its
course beneath them, then came finally
to rest with a slight rocking motion as
if cushioned on powerful springs.
Sykes was being assisted to his feet as
the tall man reached for McGuire’s
hand and helped him to rise.
The two men of Earth stood for a
long minute while they stared unbelievingly
into each other’s eyes. Their
wonder and amazement found no words
for expression but must have been apparent
to the one beside them.
“You will understand,” he told them.
“Do not question this reality even to
yourselves. You are safe!… Come.”
And he led the way through an opening
doorway to a wet deck outside.
Beyond this was a wharf of carved
stone, and the men followed where
steps were inset to allow them to
ascend.
Again McGuire could not know if he
heard a tumult of sound or sensed it in
some deeper way. The air about them
was aglow with soft light, and it echoed
in his ears with music unmistakably
real—beautiful music!—exhilarating!
But the clamor of welcoming voices,
like the words from their tall companion,
came soundlessly to him.
There were people, throngs of
them, waiting. Tall like the others,
garbed, like those horrible beings of a
past that seemed distant and remote, in
loose garments of radiant colors. And
everywhere were welcoming smiles and
warm and friendly glances.
McGuire let his dazed eyes roam
around to find the sculptured walls of
a huge room like a tremendous cave.
The soft glow of light was everywhere,
and it brought out the beauty of flowing
lines and delicate colors in statuary
and bas-relief that adorned the walls.
Behind him the water made a dark
pool, and from it projected the upper
works of their strange craft.
His eyes were hungry for these new
sights, but he turned with Sykes to
follow their guide through the colorful
crowd that parted to let them through.
They passed under a carved archway
and found themselves in another and
greater room.
But was it a room? McGuire marveled
at its tremendous size. His eyes
took in the smooth green of a grassy
lawn, the flowers and plants, and then
they followed where the hand of Sykes
was pointing. The astronomer gripped
McGuire’s arm in a numbing clutch;
his other hand was raised above.
“The stars,” he said. “The clouds are
gone; it is night!”
And where he pointed was a vault of
black velvet. Deep hues of blue seemed
blended with it, and far in its depths
were the old familiar star-groups of the
skies. “Ah!” the scientist breathed,
“the beautiful, friendly stars!”
Their guide waited; then, “Come,”
he urged gently, and led them toward a
lake whose unruffled glassy surface
mirrored the stars above. Beside it a
man was waiting to receive them.
McGuire had to force his eyes away
from the unreal beauty of opal walls
like the fairy structures they had seen.
There was color everywhere that blended
and fused to make glorious harmony
that was pure joy to the eyes.
The man who waited was young.
He stood erect, his face like that of
a Grecian statue, and his robe was blazing
with the flash of jewels. Beside
him was a girl, tall and slender, and
sweetly serious of face. Like the man,
her garments were lovely with jeweled
iridescence, and now McGuire saw that
the throng within the vast space was
similarly apparelled.
The tall man raised his hand.
“Welcome!” he said, and McGuire
realized with a start that the words
were spoken aloud. “You are most welcome,
my friends, among the people of
that world you call Venus.”
Professor Sykes was still weak from
his ordeal; he wavered perceptibly
where he stood, and the man before
them them turned to give an order.
There were chairs that came like
magic; bright robes covered them; and
the men were seated while the man and
girl also took seats beside them as
those who prepare for an intimate talk
with friends.
Lieutenant McGuire found his voice
at last. “Who are you?” he asked in
wondering tones. “What does it mean?
We were lost—and you saved us. But
you—you are not like the others.” And
he repeated, “What does it mean?”
“No,” said the other with a slight
smile, “we truly are not like those
others. They are not men such as you
and I. They are something less than
human: animals—vermin!—from whom
God, in His wisdom, has seen fit to
withhold the virtues that raise men
higher than the beasts.”
His face hardened as he spoke and
for a moment the eyes were stern, but
he smiled again as he continued.
“And we,” he said, “you ask who we
are. We are the people of Venus. I am
Djorn, ruler, in name, of all. ‘In name’
I say, for we rule here by common reason;
I am only selected to serve. And
this is my sister, Althora. The name,
with us, means ‘radiant light.’” He
turned to exchange smiles with the girl
at his side. “We think her well named,”
he said.
“The others,”—he waved toward the
throng that clustered about—“you will
learn to know in time.”
Professor Sykes felt the need
of introductions.
“This is Lieutenant—” he began, but
the other interrupted with an upraised
hand.
“Mack Guire,” he supplied; “and you
are Professor Sykes…. Oh, we know
you!” he laughed; “we have been
watching you since your arrival; we
have been waiting to help you.”
The professor was open-mouthed.
“Your thoughts,” explained the
other, “are as a printed page. We have
been with you by mental contact at all
times. We could hear, but, at that distance,
and—pardon me!—with your
limited receptivity, we could not communicate.
“Do not resent our intrusion,” he
added; “we listened only for our own
good, and we shall show you how to
insulate your thoughts. We do not
pry.”
Lieutenant McGuire waved all that
aside. “You saved us from them,” he
said; “that’s the answer. But—what
does it mean? Those others are in control;
they are attacking our Earth, the
world where we lived. Why do you
permit—?”
Again the other’s face was set in
sterner lines.
“Yes,” he said, and his voice was full
of unspoken regret, “they do rule this
world; they have attacked your Earth;
they intend much more, and I fear they
must be successful. Listen. Your
wonderment is natural, and I shall explain.
“We are the people of Venus. Some
centuries ago we ruled this world. Now
you find us a handful only, living like
moles in this underworld.”
“Underworld?” protested Professor
Sykes. He pointed above to the familiar
constellations. “Where are the
clouds?” he asked.
The girl, Althora, leaned forward
now. “It will please my brother,” she
said in a soft voice, “that you thought
it real. He has had pleasure in creating
that—a replica of the skies we used to
know before the coming of the clouds.”
Professor Sykes was bewildered.
“That sky—the stars—they
are not real?” he asked incredulously.
“But the grass—the flowers—”
Her laugh rippled like music. “Oh,
they are real,” she told him, and her
brother gave added explanation.
“The lights,” he said: “we supply the
actinic rays that the clouds cut off
above. We have sunlight here, made
by our own hands; that is why we are
as we are and not like the red ones with
their bleached skins. We had our lights
everywhere through the world when we
lived above, but those red beasts are
ignorant; they do not know how to
operate them; they do not know that
they live in darkness even in the light.”
“Then we are below ground?” asked
the flyer. “You live here?”
“It is all we have now. At that time
of which I tell, it was the red ones who
lived out of sight; they were a race of
rodents in human form. They lived in
the subterranean caves with which this
planet is pierced. We could have exterminated
them at any time, but, in
our ignorance, we permitted them to
live, for we, of Venus—I use your name
for the planet—do not willingly take
life.”
“They have no such compunctions!”
Professor Sykes’ voice was harsh; he
was remembering the sacrifice to the
hungry plants.
A flash as of pain crossed the sensitive
features of the girl, and the man
beside her seemed speaking to her in
soundless words.
“Your mind-picture was not pleasant,”
he told the scientist; then continued:
“Remember, we were upon the world,
and these others were within it. There
came a comet. Oh, our astronomers
plotted its course; they told us we were
safe. But at the last some unknown
influence diverted it; its gaseous projection
swept our world with flame.
Only an instant; but when it had passed
there was left only death….”
He was lost in recollection for a
time; the girl beside him reached
over to touch his hand.
“Those within—the red ones—escaped,”
he went on. “They poured
forth when they found that catastrophe
had overwhelmed us. And we, the
handful that were left, were forced to
take shelter here. We have lived here
since, waiting for the day when the
Master of Destinies shall give us freedom
and a world in which to live.”
“You speak,” suggested the scientist,
“as if this had happened to you. Surely
you refer to your ancestors; you are the
descendants of those who were saved.”
“We are the people,” said the other.
“We lived then; we live now; we shall
live for a future of endless years.
“Have you not searched for the
means to control the life principle—you
people of Earth?” he asked. “We
have it here. You see”—and he waved
a hand toward the standing throng—“we
are young to your eyes and the
others who greeted you were the same.”
McGuire and the scientist exchanged
glances of corroboration.
“But your age,” asked Sykes, “measured
in years?”
“We hardly measure life in years.”
Professor Sykes nodded slowly; his
mind found difficulty in accepting so
astounding a fact. “But our language?”
he queried. “How is it that you can
speak our tongue?”
The tall man smiled and leaned
forward to place a hand on a knee
of each of the men beside him. “Why
not,” he asked, “when there doubtless is
relationship between us.
“You called the continent Atlantis.
Perhaps its very existence is but a fable
now: it has been many centuries since
we have had instruments to record
thought force from Earth, and we have
lost touch. But, my friends, even then
we of Venus had conquered space, and
it was we who visited Atlantis to find
a race more nearly like ourselves than
were the barbarians who held the other
parts of Earth.
“I was there, but I returned. There
were some who stayed and they were
lost with the others in the terrible cataclysm
that sank a whole continent beneath
the waters. But some, we have
believed, escaped.”
“Why have you not been back?” the
flyer asked. “You could have helped us
so much.”
“It was then that our own destruction
came upon us. The same comet,
perhaps, may have caused a change of
stresses in your Earth and sunk the
lost Atlantis. Ah! That was a beautiful
land, but we have never seen it
since. We have been—here.
“But you will understand, now,” he
added, “that, with our insight into your
minds, we have little difficulty in mastering
your language.”
This talk of science and incredible
history left Lieutenant McGuire cold.
His mind could not wander long from
its greatest concern.
“But the earth!” he exclaimed.
“What about the earth? This attack!
Those devils mean real mischief!”
“More than you know; more than you
can realize, friend Mack Guire!”
“Why?” demanded the flyer.
“Why?”
“Have your countries not reached out
for other countries when land was
needed?” asked the man, Djorn. “Land—land!
Space in which to breed—that
is the reason for the invasion.
“This world has no such continents
as yours. Here the globe is covered by
the oceans; we have perhaps one hundredth
of the land areas of your Earth
And the red ones breed like flies. Life
means nothing to them; they die like
flies, too. But they need more room;
they intend to find it on your world.”
“A strange race,” mused Professor
Sykes. “They puzzled
me. But—‘less than human,’ I think
you said. Then how about their ships?
How could they invent them?”
“Ours—all ours! They found a
world ready and waiting for them.
Through the centuries they have
learned to master some few of our inventions.
The ships!—the ethereal
vibrations! Oh, they have been cleverer
than we dreamed possible.”
“Well, how can we stop them?” demanded
McGuire. “We must. You
have the submarines—”
“One only,” the other interrupted.
“We saved that, and we brought some
machinery. We have made this place
habitable; we have not been idle. But
there are limitations.”
“But your ray that you projected—it
brought down their ship!”
“We were protecting you, and we
protect ourselves; that is enough.
There is One will deliver us in His own
good time; we may not go forth and
slaughter.”
There was a note of resignation and
patience in the voice that filled McGuire
with hopeless forebodings.
Plainly this was not an aggressive race.
They had evolved beyond the stage of
wanton slaughter, and, even now, they
waited patiently for the day when some
greater force should come to their aid.
The man beside them spoke quickly.
“One moment—you will pardon me—someone
is calling—” He listened intently
to some soundless call, and he
sent a silent message in reply.
“I have instructed them,” he said.
“Come and you shall see how impregnable
is our position. The red ones
have resented our destruction of their
ship.”
The face of the girl, Althora, was
perturbed. “More killings?” she asked.
“Only as they force themselves to
their own death,” her brother told her.
“Be not disturbed.”
The throng in the vast space drew
apart as the figure of their leader
strode quickly through with the two
men following close. There were many
rooms and passages; the men had
glimpses of living quarters, of places
where machinery made soft whirring
sounds; more sights than their eyes
could see or their minds comprehend.
They came at last to an open chamber.
The men looked up to see above them
a tremendous inverted-cone, and there
was the gold of cloudland glowing
through an opening at the top. It was
the inside of a volcano where they
stood, and McGuire remembered the
island and its volcanic peak where the
ship had swerved aside. He felt that
he knew now where they were.
Above them, a flash of light marked
the passage of a ship over the crater’s
mouth, and he realized that the ships of
the reds were not avoiding the island
now. Did it mean an attack? And
how could these new friends meet it?
Before them on the level volcanic
floor were great machines that came
suddenly to life, and their roar rose to
a thunder of violence, while, in the center,
a cluster of electric sparks like
whirling stars formed a cloud of blue
fire. It grew, and its hissing, crackling
length reached upward to a fine-drawn
point that touched the opening above.
“Follow!” commanded their leader
and went rapidly before them where a
passage wound and twisted to bring
them at last to the light of day.
The flame of the golden clouds was
above them in the midday sky, and beneath
it were scores of ships that swept
in formations through the air.
“Attacking?” asked the lieutenant
with ill-concealed excitement.
“I fear so. They tried to gas us some
centuries ago; it may be they have forgotten
what we taught them then.”
One squadron came downward and
swept with inconceivable speed
over a portion of the island that
stretched below. The men were a short
distance up on the mountain’s side, and
the scene that lay before them was
crystal clear. There were billowing
clouds of gas that spread over the land
where the ships had passed. Other
ships followed; they would blanket the
island in gas.
The man beside them gave a sigh of
regret. “They have struck the first
blow,” he said. He stood silent with
half-closed eyes; then: “I have ordered
resistance.” And there was genuine
sorrow and regret in his eyes as he
looked toward the mountain top.
McGuire’s eyes followed the other’s
gaze to find nothing at first save the
volcanic peak in hard outline upon the
background of gold; then only a shimmer
as of heat about the lofty cone.
The air above him quivered, formed to
ripples that spread in great circles
where the enemy ships were flashing
away.
Swifter than swift aircraft, with a
speed that shattered space, they
reached out and touched—and the
ships, at that touch, fell helplessly
down from the heights. They turned
awkwardly as they fell or dropped like
huge pointed projectiles. And the
waters below took them silently and
buried in their depths all trace of what
an instant sooner had been an argosy of
the air.
The ripples ceased, again the air was
clear and untroubled, but beneath the
golden clouds was no single sign of
life.
The flyer’s breathless suspense
ended in an explosive gasp. “What
a washout!” he exclaimed, and again
he thought only of this as a weapon to
be used for his own ends. “Can we use
that on their fleets?” he asked. “Why,
man—they will never conquer the
earth; they will never even make a
start.”
The tall figure of Djorn turned and
looked at him. “The lust to kill!” he
said sadly. “You still have it—though
you are fighting for your own, which is
some excuse.
“No, this will not destroy their fleets,
for their fleets will not come here to
be destroyed. It will be many centuries
before ever again the aircraft of
the reds dare venture near.”
“We will build another one and take
it where they are—” The voice of the
fighting man was vibrant with sudden
hope.
“We were two hundred years building
and perfecting this,” the other told
him. “Can you wait that long?”
And Lieutenant McGuire, as he followed
dejectedly behind the leader,
heard nothing of Professor Sykes’
eager questions as to how this miracle
was done.
“Can you wait that long?” this man,
Djorn, had asked. And the flyer saw
plainly the answer that spelled death
and destruction to the world.
CHAPTER XIV
The mountains of Nevada are not
noted for their safe and easy landing
places. But the motor of the plane
that Captain Blake was piloting roared
smoothly in the cool air while the man’s
eyes went searching, searching, for
something, and he hardly knew what
that something might be.
He went over again, as he had done a
score of times, the remarks of Lieutenant
McGuire. Mac had laughed that
day when he told Blake of his experience.
“I was flying that transport,” he had
said, “and, boy! when one motor began
to throw oil I knew I was out of luck.
Nothing but rocky peaks and valleys
full of trees as thick and as pointed as
a porcupine’s quills. Flying pretty
high to maintain altitude with one
motor out, so I just naturally had to
find a place to set her down. I found
it, too, though it seemed too good to be
true off in that wilderness.
“A fine level spot, all smooth rock,
except for a few clumps of grass, and
just bumpy enough to make the landing
interesting. But, say, Captain! I
almost cracked up at that, I was so
darn busy staring at something else.
“Off in some trees was a dirigible—Sure;
go ahead and laugh; I didn’t believe
it either, and I was looking at it.
But there had been a whale of a storm
through there the day before, and it
had knocked over some trees that had
been screening the thing, and there it
was!
“Well, I came to in time to pull up
her nose and miss a rock or two, and
then I started pronto for that valley of
trees and the thing that was buried
among them.”
Captain Blake recalled the
conversation word for word,
though he had treated it jokingly at the
time. McGuire had found the ship and
a man—a half-crazed nut, so it seemed—living
there all alone. And he wasn’t
a bit keen about Mac’s learning of the
ship. But leave it to Mac to get the
facts—or what the old bird claimed
were facts.
There was the body of a youngster
there, a man of about Mac’s age. He
had fallen and been killed the day before,
and the old man was half crazy
with grief. Mac had dug a grave and
helped bury the body, and after that
the old fellow’s story had come out.
He had been to the moon, he said.
And this was a space ship. Wouldn’t
tell how it operated, and shut up like a
clam when Mac asked if he had gone
alone. The young chap had gone with
him, it seemed, and the man wouldn’t
talk—just sat and stared out at the yellow
mound where the youngster was
buried.
Mac had told Blake how he argued
with the man to prove up on his claims
and make a fortune for himself. But
no—fortunes didn’t interest him. And
there were some this-and-that and be-damned-to-’em
people who would never
get this invention—the dirty, thieving
rats!
And Mac, while he laughed, had
seemed half to believe it. Said the old
cuss was so sincere, and he had nothing
to sell. And—there was the ship! It
never got there without being flown in,
that was a cinch. And there wasn’t a
propellor on it nor a place for one—just
open ports where a blast came out,
or so the inventor said.
Captain Blake swung his ship on another
slanting line and continued to
comb the country for such marks as
McGuire had seen. And one moment
he told himself he was a fool to be on
any such hunt, while the next thought
would remind him that Mac had believed.
And Mac had a level head, and
he had radioed from Venus!
There was the thing that made anything
seem possible. Mac had got a
message through, across that space, and
the enemy had ships that could do it.
Why not this one?
And always his eyes were searching,
searching, for a level rocky expanse
and a tree-filled valley beyond, with
something, it might be, shining there,
unless the inventor had camouflaged it
more carefully now.
It was later on the same day when
Captain Blake’s blocky figure
climbed over the side of the cockpit.
Tired? Yes! But who could think of
cramped limbs and weary muscles when
his plane was resting on a broad, level
expanse of rock in the high Sierras and
a sharp-cut valley showed thick with
pines beyond. He could see the corner
only of a rough log shack that protruded.
Blake scrambled over a natural rampart
of broken stone and went swiftly
toward the cabin. But he stopped
abruptly at the sound of a harsh voice.
“Stop where you are,” the voice
ordered, “and stick up your hands!
Then turn around and get back as fast
as you can to that plane of yours.”
There was a glint of sunlight on a rifle
barrel in the window of the cabin.
Captain Blake stopped, but he did
not turn. “Are you Mr. Winslow?” he
asked.
“That’s nothing to you! Get out!
Quick!”
Blake was thinking fast. Here was
the man, without doubt—and he was
hostile as an Apache; the man behind
that harsh voice meant business. How
could he reach him? The inspiration
came at once. McGuire was the key.
“If you’re Winslow,” he called in a
steady voice, “you don’t want me to go
away; you want to talk with me.
There’s a young friend of yours in a
bad jam. You are the only one who
can help.”
“I haven’t any friends,” said the
rasping voice: “I don’t want any! Get
out!”
“You had one,” said the captain,
“whether you wanted him or not. He
believed in you—like the other young
chap who went with you to the moon.”
There was an audible gasp of dismay
from the window beyond, and
the barrel of the rifle made trembling
flickerings in the sun.
“You mean the flyer?” asked the
voice, and it seemed to have lost its
harsher note. “The pleasant young fellow?”
“I mean McGuire, who helped give
decent burial to your friend. And now
he has been carried off—out into space—and
you can help him. If you’ve a
spark of decency in you, you will hear
what I have to say.”
The rifle vanished within the cabin;
a door opened to frame a picture of a
tall man. He was stooped; the years,
or solitude, perhaps, had borne heavily
upon him; his face was a mat of gray
beard that was a continuation of the
unkempt hair above. The rifle was still
in his hand.
But he motioned to the waiting man,
and “Come in!” he commanded. “I’ll
soon know if you’re telling the truth.
God help you if you’re not…. Come
in.”
An hour was needed while the
bearded man learned the truth. And
Blake, too, picked up some facts. He
learned to his great surprise that he
was talking with an educated man, one
who had spent a lifetime in scientific
pursuits. And now, as the figure before
him seemed more the scientist and
less the crazed fabricator of wild fancies,
the truth of his claims seemed not
so remote.
Half demented now, beyond a doubt!
A lifetime of disappointments and one
invention after another stolen from him
by those who knew more of law than
of science. And now he held fortune
in the secret of his ship—a secret which
he swore should never be given to the
world.
“Damn the world!” he snarled. “Did
the world ever give anything to me?
And what would they do with this?
They would prostitute it to their own
selfish ends; it would be just one more
means to conquer and kill; and the capitalists
would have it in their own
dirty hands so that new lines of transportation
beyond anything they dared
dream would be theirs to exploit.”
Blake, remembering the history
of a commercial age, found no
ready reply to that. But he told the
man of McGuire and the things that
had made him captive; he related what
he, himself, had seen in the dark night
on Mount Lawson, and he told of the
fragmentary message that showed McGuire
was still alive.
“There’s only one way to save him,”
he urged. “If your ship is what you
claim it is—and I believe you one hundred
per cent—it is all that can save
him from what will undoubtedly be a
horrible death. Those things were
monsters—inhuman!—and they have
bombarded the earth. They will come
back in less than a year and a half to
destroy us.”
Captain Blake would have said he
was no debater, but the argument and
persuasion that he used that night
would have done credit to a Socrates.
His opponent was difficult to convince,
and not till the next day did the inventor
show Blake his ship.
“Small,” he said as he led the flyer
toward it. “Designed just for the moon
trip, and I had meant to go alone. But
it served; it took us there and back
again.”
He threw open a door in the side of
the metal cylinder. Blake stood back
for only a moment to size up the machine,
to observe its smooth duralumin
shell and the rounded ends where portholes
opened for the expelling of its
driving blast. The door opening showed
a thick wall that gave insulation. Blake
followed the inventor to the interior
of the ship.
The man had seen Winslow examining
the thick walls. “It’s cold
out there, you know,” he said, and
smiled in recollection, “but the generator
kept us warm.” He pointed to a
simple cylindrical casting aft of the
ship’s center part. It was massive, and
braced to the framework of the ship to
distribute a thrust that Blake knew
must be tremendous. Heavy conduits
took the blast that it produced and
poured it from ports at bow and stern.
There were other outlets, too, above
and below and on the sides, and electric
controls that were manipulated
from a central board.
“You’ve got a ship,” Blake admitted,
“and it’s a beauty. I know construction,
and you’ve got it here. But what
is the power? How do you drive it?
What throws it out through space?”
“Aside from one other, you will be
the only man ever to know.” The bearded
man was quiet now and earnest. The
wild light had faded from his eyes, and
he pondered gravely in making the last
and final decision.
“Yes, you shall have it. It may be I
have been mistaken. I have known
people—some few—who were kindly
and decent; I have let the others prejudice
me. But there was one who was
my companion—and there was McGuire,
who was kind and who believed.
And now you, who will give your life
for a friend and to save humanity!… You
shall have it. You shall have the
ship! But I will not go with you. I
want nothing of glory or fame, and I
am too old to fight. My remaining
years I choose to spend out here.” He
pointed where a window of heavy glass
showed the outer world and a grave on
a sloping hill.
“But you shall have full instructions.
And, for the present, you
may know that it is a continuous explosion
that drives the ship. I have
learned to decompose water into its
components and split them into subatomic
form. They reunite to give
something other than matter. It is a
liquid—liquid energy, though the term
is inaccurate—that separates out in two
forms, and a fluid ounce of each is the
product of thousands of tons of water.
The potential energy is all there. A
current releases it; the energy components
reunite to give matter again—hydrogen
and oxygen gas. Combustion
adds to their volume through heat.
“It is like firing a cannon in there,”—he
pointed now to the massive generator—“a
super-cannon of tremendous
force and a cannon that fires continuously.
The endless pressure of expansion
gives the thrust that means a constant
acceleration of motion out there
where gravity is lost.
“You will note,” he added, “that I said
‘constant acceleration.’ It means building
up to speeds that are enormous.”
Blake nodded in half-understanding.
“We will want bigger ships,” he
mused. “They must mount guns and
be heavy enough to take the recoil.
This is only a sample; we must design,
experiment, build them! Can it be
done? … It must be done!” he concluded
and turned to the inventor.
“We don’t know much about those
devils of the stars, and they may have
means of attack beyond anything we
can conceive, but there is just one way
to learn: go up there and find out, and
take a licking if we have to. Now,
how about taking me up a mile or so in
the air?”
The other smiled in self-deprecation.
“I like a good fighter,” he
said; “I was never one myself. If I
had been I would have accomplished
more. Yes, you shall go up a mile or
so in the air—and a thousand miles
beyond.” He turned to close the door
and seal it fast.
Beside the instrument board he seated
himself, and at his touch the generator
of the ship came startlingly to life.
It grumbled softly at first, then the
hoarse sound swelled to a thunderous
roar, while the metal grating surged
up irresistibly beneath the captain’s
feet. His weight was intolerable. He
sank helplessly to the floor….
Blake was white and shaken when he
alighted from the ship an hour later,
but his eyes were ablaze with excitement.
He stopped to seize the tall man
by the shoulders.
“I am only a poor devil of a flying
man,” he said, “but I am speaking for
the whole world right now. You have
saved us; you’ve furnished the means.
It is up to us now. You’ve given us
the right to hope that humanity can
save itself, if humanity will do it.
That’s my next job—to convince them.
We have less than a year and a
half….”
There was one precious week
wasted while Captain Blake chafed
and waited for a conference to be arranged
at Washington. A spirit of
hopelessness had swept over the world—hopelessness
and a mental sloth that
killed every hope with the unanswerable
argument: “What is the use? It
is the end.” But a meeting was arranged
at Colonel Boynton’s insistence,
though his superiors scoffed at what he
dared suggest.
Blake appeared before the meeting,
and he told them what he knew—told it
to the last detail, while he saw the looks
of amusement or commiseration that
passed from man to man.
There were scientists there who
asked him coldly a question or two and
shrugged a supercilious shoulder;
ranking officers of both army and navy
who openly excoriated Colonel Boynton
for bringing them to hear the wild
tale of a half-demented man. It was
this that drove Blake to a cold frenzy.
The weeks of hopeless despair had
worn his nerves to the breaking point,
and now, with so much to be done, and
so little time in which to do it, all requirements
of official etiquette were
swept aside as he leaped to his feet to
face the unbelieving men.
“Damn it!” he shouted, “will you sit
here now and quibble over what you
think in your wisdom is possible or not.
Get outside those doors—there’s an
open park beyond—and I’ll knock your
technicalities all to hell!”
The door slammed behind him before
the words could be spoken to place
him under arrest, and he tore across a
velvet lawn to leap into a taxi.
There was a rising storm of indignant
protest within the room that he
had left. There were admirals, purple
of face, who made heated remarks
about the lack of discipline in the army,
and generals who turned accusingly
where the big figure of Colonel Boynton
was still seated.
It was the Secretary of War who
stilled the tumult and claimed the
privilege of administering the rebuke
which was so plainly needed. “Colonel
Boynton,” he said, and there was no
effort to soften the cutting edge of sarcasm
in his voice, “it was at your request
and suggestion that this outrageous
meeting was held. Have you any
more requests or suggestions?”
The colonel rose slowly to his feet.
“Yes, Mr. Secretary,” he said coldly,
“I have. I know Captain Blake. He
seldom makes promises; when he does
he makes good. My suggestion is that
you do what the gentleman said—step
outside and see your technicalities
knocked to hell.” He moved unhurriedly
toward the door.
It was a half-hour’s wait, and one or
two of the more openly skeptical
had left when the first roar came faintly
from above. Colonel Boynton led the
others to the open ground before the
building. “I have always found Blake
a man of his word,” he said quietly,
and pointed upward where a tiny speck
was falling from a cloud-flecked sky.
Captain Blake had had little training
in the operation of the ship, but he had
flown it across the land and had concealed
it where fellow officers were
sworn to secrecy. And he felt that he
knew how to handle the controls.
But the drop from those terrible
heights was a fearful thing, and it
ended only a hundred feet above the
heads of the cowering, shouting humans
who crouched under the thunderous
blast, where a great shell checked
its vertical flight and rebounded to the
skies.
Again and again the gleaming cylinder
drove at them like a projectile
from the mortars of the gods, and it
roared and thundered through the air
or turned to vanish with incredible
speed straight up into the heights, to
return and fall again … until finally
it hung motionless a foot above the
grass from which the uniformed figures
had fled. Only Colonel Boynton was
there to greet the flyer as he laid his
strange craft gently down.
“Nice little show, Captain,” he said,
while his broad face broke into the
widest of grins. “A damn nice little
show! But take that look off of your
face. They’ll listen to you now; they’ll
eat right out of your hand.”
CHAPTER XV
If Lieutenant McGuire could have
erased from his mind the thought
of the threat that hung over the earth
he would have found nothing but intensest
pleasure in the experiences that
were his.
But night after night they had heard
the reverberating echoes of the giant
gun speeding its messenger of death
toward the earth, and he saw as plainly
as if he were there the terrible destruction
that must come where the missiles
struck. Gas, of course; that seemed
the chief and only weapon of these
monsters, and Djorn, the elected leader
of the Venus folk, confirmed him in
this surmise.
“We had many gases,” he told McGuire,
“but we used them for good
ends. You people of Earth—or these
invaders, if they conquer Earth—must
some day engage in a war more terrible
than wars between men. The insects
are your greatest foe. With a developing
civilization goes the multiplication
of insect and bacterial life. We used
the gases for that war, and we made
this world a heaven.” He sighed regretfully
for his lost world.
“These red ones found them, and our
factories for making them. But they
have no gift for working out or mastering
the other means we had for our defense—the
electronic projectors, the
creation of tremendous magnetic fields:
you saw one when we destroyed the
attacking ships. Our scientists had
gone far—”
“I wish to Heaven you had some of
them to use now,” said the lieutenant
savagely, and the girl, Althora, standing
near, smiled in sympathy for the
flyer’s distress. But her brother, Djorn,
only murmured: “The lust to kill: that
is something to be overcome.”
The fatalistic resignation of these
folk was disturbing to a man of action
like McGuire. His eyes narrowed, and
his lips were set for an abrupt retort
when Althora intervened.
“Come,” she said, and took the flyer’s
hand. “It is time for food.”
She took him to the living quarters
occupied by her brother and herself,
where opal walls and jewelled inlays
were made lovely by the soft light
that flooded the rooms.
“Just one tablet,” she said, and
brought him a thin white disc, “then
plenty of water. You must take this
compressed food often and in small
quantities till your system is accustomed.”
“You make this?” he asked.
“But certainly. Our chemists are
learned men. We should lack for food,
otherwise, here in our underground
home.”
He let the tablet dissolve in his
mouth. Althora leaned forward to touch
his hand gently.
“I am sorry,” she said, “that you and
Djorn fail to understand one another.
He is good—so good! But you—you,
too, are good, and you fear for the
safety of your own people.”
“They will be killed to the last woman
and child,” he replied, “or they
will be captured, which will be worse.”
“I understand,” she told him, and
pressed his hand; “and if I can help,
Lieutenant Mack Guire, I shall be so
glad.”
He smiled at her stilted pronunciation
of his name. He had had the girl
for an almost constant companion since
his arrival; the sexes, he found, were
on a level of mutual freedom, and the
girl’s companionship was offered and
her friendship expressed as openly as
might have been that of a youth. Of
Sykes he saw little; Professor Sykes
was deep in astronomical discussions
with the scientists of this world.
But she was charming, this girl of a
strange race so like his own. A skin
from the velvet heart of a rose and eyes
that looked deep into his and into his
mind when he permitted; eyes, too, that
could crinkle to ready laughter or grow
misty when she sang those weird melodies
of such thrilling sweetness.
Only for the remembrance of Earth
and the horrible feeling of impotent
fury, Lieutenant McGuire would have
found much to occupy his thoughts in
this loveliest of companions.
He laughed now at the sounding of
his name, and the girl laughed
with him.
“But it is your name, is it not?” she
asked.
“Lieutenant Thomas McGuire,” he
repeated, “and those who like me call
me ‘Mac.’”
“Mac,” she repeated. “But that is
so short and hard sounding. And what
do those who love you say?”
The flyer grinned cheerfully. “There
aren’t many who could qualify in that
respect, but if there were they would
call me Tommy.”
“That is better,” said Althora with
engaging directness; “that is much
better—Tommy.” Then she sprang to
her feet and hurried him out where
some further wonders must be seen and
exclaimed over without delay. But
Lieutenant McGuire saw the pink flush
that crept into her face, and his own
heart responded to the telltale betrayal
of her feeling for him. For never in
his young and eventful life had the
man found anyone who seemed so entirely
one with himself as did this
lovely girl from a distant star.
He followed where she went dancing
on her way, but not for long could his
mind be led away from the menace he
could not forget. And on this day, as
on many days to come, he struggled and
racked his brain to find some way in
which he could thwart the enemy and
avert or delay their stroke.
It was another day, and they were
some months on their long journey
away from the earth when an inspiration
came. Althora had offered to help,
and he knew well how gladly she would
aid him; the feeling between them had
flowered into open, if unspoken love.
Not that he would subject her to any
danger—he himself would take all of
that when it came—but meanwhile—
“Althora,” he asked her, “can you
project your mind into that of one of
the reds?”
“I could, easily,” she replied, “but it
would not be pleasant. Their minds
are horrible; they reek of evil things.”
She shuddered at the thought, but the
man persisted.
“But if you could help, would you be
willing? I can do so little; I can never
stop them; but I may save my people
from some suffering at least. Here is
my idea:
“Djorn tells me that I had it figured
right: they plan an invasion of the
earth when next the two planets approach.
He has told me of their armies
and their fleets of ships that will set
off into space. I can’t prevent it; I am
helpless! But if I knew what their
leader was thinking—”
“Torg!” she exclaimed. “You want
to know the mind of that beast of
beasts!”
“Yes,” said the man. “It might be of
value. Particularly if I could know
something of their great gun—where it
is and what it is—well, I might do
something about that.”
The girl averted her eyes from the
savage determination on his face. “No—no!”
she exclaimed; “I could not.
Not Torg!”
McGuire’s own face fell at the realization
of the enormity of this favor he
had demanded. “That’s all right,” he
said and held her soft hand in his;
“just forget it. I shouldn’t have asked.”
But she whispered as she turned to
walk away: “I must think, I must
think. You ask much of me, Tommy;
but oh, Tommy, I would do much for
you!” She was sobbing softly as she
ran swiftly away.
And the man in khaki—this flyer of
a distant air-service—strode blindly off
to rage and fume at his helplessness
and his inability to strike one blow at
those beings who lived in that world
above.
There were countless rooms and
passages where the work of the
world below went on. There were men
and women whose artistic ability found
outlet in carvings and sculpture, chemists
and others whose work was the
making of foods and endless experimentation,
some thousand of men and
women in the strength of their endless
youth, who worked for the love of the
doing and lived contentedly and happily
while they waited for the day of
their liberation. But of fighters there
were none, and for this Lieutenant
McGuire grieved wholeheartedly.
He was striding swiftly along where
a corridor ended in blackness ahead.
There was a gleaming machine on the
floor beside him when a hand clutched
at his arm and a warning voice exclaimed:
“No further, Lieutenant McGuire;
you must not go!”
“Why?” questioned the lieutenant.
“I’ve got to walk—do something to
keep from this damnable futile thinking.”
“But not there,” said the other; “it is
a place of death. Ten paces more and
you would have vanished in a flicker of
flame. The projector”—he touched the
mechanism beside them—“is always on.
Our caves extend in an endless succession;
they join with the labyrinth
where the red ones used to live. They
could attack us but for this. Nothing
can live in its invisible ray; they are
placed at all such entrances.”
“Yet Djorn,” McGuire told himself
slowly, “said they had no weapons. He
knows nothing of war. But, great
heavens! what wouldn’t I give for a
regiment of scrappers—good husky
boys with their faces tanned and a
spark in their eyes and their gas masks
on their chests. With a regiment, and
equipment like this—”
And again he realized the futility of
armament with none to serve and direct
it.
It was a month or more before Althora
consented to the tests. Djorn
advised against it and made his protest
emphatic, but here, as in all things,
Althora was a free agent. It was her
right to do as she saw fit, and there was
none to prevent in this small world
where individual liberty was unquestioned.
And it was still longer before she
could get anything of importance. The
experiments were racking to her
nerves, and McGuire, seeing the terrible
strain upon her, begged her to
stop. But Althora had gained the
vision that was always before her loved
one’s eyes—a world of death and disaster—and
he, here where the bolt
would be launched, and powerless to
prevent. She could not be dissuaded
now.
It was a proud day for Althora when
she sent for McGuire, and he found her
lying at rest, eyes closed in her young
face that was lined and tortured with
the mental horror she was contacting.
She silenced his protests with a word.
“The gun,” she whispered; “they are
talking about the gun … and the
bombardment … planning….”
More silent concentration. Then:
“The island of Bergo,” she said,
“—remember that! The gun is there …
a great bore in the earth … solid
rock … but the casing of titanite
must be reinforced … and bands
shrunk about the muzzle that projects …
heavy bands … it shows signs of
distortion—the heat!…”
She was listening to the thoughts,
and selecting those that bore upon gun.
“… Only fifty days … the bombardment
must begin … Tahnor has
provided a hundred shells; two thousand
tals of the green gas-powder in
each one … the explosive charges
ready … yes—yes!…”
“Oh!” she exclaimed and opened her
troubled eyes. “The beast is so complacent,
so sure! And the bombardment
will begin in fifty days! Will it
really cause them anguish on your
Earth, Tommy?”
“Just plain hell; that’s all!”
McGuire’s voice was low; his
mind was reaching out to find
and reject one plan after another. The
gun!… He must disable it; he could
do that much at least. For himself—well,
what of it?—he would die, of
course.
The guard he had been taught to
place about his own thoughts must have
relaxed, for Althora cried out in distress.
“No—no!” she protested; “you shall
not! I have tried to help you, Tommy
dear—say that I have helped you!—but,
oh, my beloved, do not go. Do not risk
your life to silence this one weapon.
They would still have their ships. Remember
what Djorn has told of their
mighty fleets, their thousands of fighting
men. You cannot stop them; you
can hardly hinder them. And you
would throw away your life! Oh,
please do not go!”
McGuire was seated beside her. His
face was hidden in one hand while the
other was held tight between the white
palms of Althora’s tense hands. He
said nothing, and he shielded his eyes
and locked his mind against her
thought force.
“Tommy,” said Althora, and now her
voice was all love and softness, “Tommy,
my dear one! You will not go, for
what can you do? And if you stay—oh,
my dear!—you can have what you
will—the secret of life shall be yours—to
live forever in perpetual youth.
You may have that. And me, Tommy….
Would you throw your life
away in a hopeless attempt, when life
might hold so much? Am I offering so
little, Tommy?”
And still the silence and the hand
that kept the eyes from meeting hers;
then a long-drawn breath and a slim
figure in khaki that stood unconsciously
erect to look, not at the girl, but out
beyond the solid walls, through millions
of miles of space, to the helpless
speck called Earth.
“You offer me heaven, my dear,” he
spoke softly. “But sometimes”—and
his lips twisted into a ghost of a smile—“sometimes,
to earn our heaven, we
have to fight like hell. And, if we fail
to make the fight, what heaven worth
having is left?
“And the people,” he said softly;
“the homes in the cities and towns and
villages. My dear, that’s part of loving
a soldier: you can never own him altogether;
his allegiance is divided. And
if I failed my own folk what right
would I have to you?”
He dared to look at the girl who
lay before him. That other vision
was gone but he had seen a clear course
charted, and now, with his mind at rest,
he could smile happily at the girl who
was looking up at him through her
tears.
She rose slowly to her feet and stood
before him to lay firm hands upon his
shoulders. She was almost as tall as
he, and her eyes, that had shaken off
their tears but for a dewy fringe,
looked deep and straight into his.
“We have thought,” she said slowly,
“we people of this world, that we were
superior to you and yours; we have
accepted you as someone a shade below
our plane of advancement. Yes, we
have dared to believe that. But I know
better. We have gone far, Tommy, we
people of this star; we have lived long.
Yet I am wondering if we have lost
some virtues that are the heritage of a
sterner race.
“But I am learning, Tommy; I am so
thankful that I can learn and that I
have had you to teach me. We will go
together, you and I. We will fight our
fight, and, the Great One willing, we
will earn our heaven or find it elsewhere—together.”
She leaned forward to kiss the tall
man squarely upon the lips with her
own soft rose-petal lips that clung and
clung … and the reply of Lieutenant
McGuire, while it was entirely wordless,
seemed eminently satisfactory.
Althora, the beautiful daughter
of Venus, had the charm and
allure of her planet’s fabled namesake.
But she thought like a man and she
planned like a man. And there was no
dissuading her from her course. She
was to fight beside McGuire—that was
her intention—and beyond that there
was no value in argument. McGuire
was forced to accept the insistent aid,
and he needed help.
Sykes dropped his delving into astronomical
lore and answered to the call,
but there was no other assistance. Only
the three, McGuire, Althora and Sykes.
There were some who would agree to
pilot the submarine that was being outfitted,
but they would have no part in
the venture beyond transporting the
participants.
More than once McGuire paused to
curse silently at the complaisance of
this people. What could he not do if
they would help. Ten companies of
trained men, armed with their deadly
electronic projectors that disintegrated
any living thing they reached—and he
would clutch at his tousled hair and
realize that they were only three, and
go grimly back to work.
“I don’t know what we can do till we
get there,” he told Sykes. “Here we
are, and there is the gun: that is all we
know, except that the thing must be
tremendous and our only hope is that
there is some firing mechanism that we
can destroy. The gun itself is a great
drilling in the solid rock, lined with
one of their steel alloys, and with a big
barrel extending up into the air: Althora
has learned that.
“They went deep into the rock and
set the firing chamber there; it’s heavy
enough to stand the stress. They use
a gas-powder, as Althora calls it, for
the charge, and the same stuff but
deadlier is in the shell. But they must
have underground workings for loading
and firing. Is there a chance for
us to get in there, I wonder! There’s
the big barrel that projects. We might … but
no!—that’s too big for us to
tackle, I’m afraid.”
“How about that electronic projector
on the submarine?” Sykes suggested.
“Remember how it melted out the heart
of that big ship? We could do a lot
with that.”
“Not a chance! Djorn and the others
have strictly forbidden the men to turn
it on the enemy since they have given
no offense.
“No offense!” he repeated, and added
a few explosive remarks.
“No, it looks like a case of get there
and do what dirty work we can to their
mechanism before they pot us—and
that’s that!”
But Sykes was directing his
thoughts along another path.
“I wonder …” he mused; “it might
be done: they have laboratories.”
“What are you talking about? For
the love of heaven, man, if you’re got
an idea, let’s have it. I’m desperate.”
“Nitrators!” said the scientist. “I
have been getting on pretty good terms
with the scientific crowd here, and
I’ve seen some mighty pretty manufacturing
laboratories. And they have
equipment that was never meant for
the manufacture of nitro-explosives,
but, with a few modifications—yes, I
think it could be done.”
“You mean nitro-glycerine? TNT?”
“Something like that. Depends upon
what materials we can get to start
with.”
The lieutenant was pounding his
companion upon the back and shouting
his joy at this faintest echo of encouragement.
“We’ll plant it alongside the gun—No,
we’ll get into their working underground.
We’ll blow their equipment
into scrap-iron, and perhaps we
can even damage the gun itself!” He
was almost beside himself with excitement
at thought of a weapon being
placed in his straining helpless hands.
It was the earth-shaking thunder of
the big gun that hastened their
final preparations and made McGuire
tremble with suppressed excitement
where he helped Sykes to draw off a
syrupy liquid into heavy crystal flasks.
There were many of these, and the
two men would allow no others to
touch them, but stored them themselves
and nested each one in a soft bed within
the submarine. Then one last repetition
of their half-formed plans to
Djorn and his followers and a rush toward
the wharf where the submarine
was waiting.
Althora was waiting, too, and McGuire
wasted minutes in a petition that
he knew was futile.
“Wait here, Althora,” he begged. “I
will come back; this is no venture for
you to undertake. I can take my
chances with them, but you—! It is
no place for you,” he concluded lamely.
“There is no other place for me,” she
said; “only where you are.” And she
led the way while the others followed
into the lighted control room of the big
under-water craft.
McGuire’s eyes were misty with a
blurring of tears that were partly from
excitement, but more from a feeling of
helpless remonstrance that was mingled
with pure pride. And his lips
were set in a straight line.
The magnetic pull that held them to
their anchorage was reversed; the ship
beneath them was slipping smoothly
beneath the surface and out to sea,
guided through its tortuous windings
of water-worn caves and rocky chambers
under the sea by the invisible electric
cords that drew it where they
would.
And ahead on some mysterious island
was a gun, a thing of size and power
beyond anything of Earth. He was
going to spike that gun if it was the
last act of his life; and Althora was
going with him. He drew her slim
body to him, while his eyes stared
blindly, hopefully, toward what the
future held.
CHAPTER XVI
Throughout the night they
drove hour after hour at terrific
speed. The ship was running submerged,
for McGuire was taking no
slightest chance of their being observed
from the air. He and the others slept
at times, for the crew that handled the
craft very evidently knew the exact
course, and there were mechanical devices
that insured their safety. A ray
was projected continuously ahead of
them; it would reflect back and give on
an indicator instant warning of any
derelict or obstruction. Another row
of quivering needles gave by the same
method the soundings from far ahead.
But the uncertainty of what their tomorrow
might hold and the worry and
dread lest he find himself unable to
damage the big gun made real rest impossible
for McGuire.
But he was happy and buoyant with
hope when, at last, the green light from
the ports showed that the sun was shining
up above, and the slackening drive
of the submarine’s powerful motors
told that their objective was in sight.
They lay quietly at last while a periscope
of super-sensitiveness was thrust
cautiously above the water. It brought
in a panoramic view of the shoreline
ahead, amplified it and projected the
picture in clear-cut detail upon a
screen. If Lieutenant McGuire had
stood on the wet deck above and looked
directly at the island the sight could
have been no clearer. The colors of
torn and blasted tree-growths showed
in all their pale shades, and there was
stereoscopic depth to the picture that
gave no misleading illusions as to distance.
The shore was there with the white
spray of breakers on a rocky shoal, and
a beach beyond. And beyond that, in
hard outline against a golden sky, was
a gigantic tube that stood vertically in
air to reach beyond the upper limits of
the periscope’s vision.
McGuire tingled at the sight.
To be within reach of this
weapon that had sent those blasting,
devastating missiles upon the earth!
He paced back and forth in the small
room to stop and stare again, and resume
his pacing that helped to while
away the hours they must wait. For
there were man-shapes swarming over
the land, and the dull, blood-red of
their loose uniforms marked them as
members of the fighting force spawned
by this prolific breed.
“Not a chance until they’re out of the
picture,” said the impatient man; “they
would snow us under. It’s just as I
thought: we must wait until the gun
is ready to fire; then they will beat it.
They won’t want to be around when
that big boy cuts loose.”
“And then?” asked Althora.
“Then Sykes and I will take our collection
of gallon flasks ashore, and I
sure hope we don’t stumble.” He
grinned cheerfully at the girl.
“That reinforced concrete dome
seems to be where they get down into
the ground; it is close to the base of
the gun. We will go there—blow it
open if we have to—but manage in
some way to get down below. Then a
time-fuse on the charge, and the boat
will take me off, and we will leave as
fast as these motors can drive us.”
He omitted to mention any possible
danger to Sykes and himself in the
handling of their own explosive, and
he added casually, “You will stay here
and see that there is no slip-up on the
getaway.”
He had to translate the last remark
into language the girl could understand.
But Althora shook her head.
“You do try so hard to get rid of me,
Tommy,” the laughed, “but it is no use.
I am going with you—do not argue—and
I will help you with the attack.
Three will work faster than two—and
I am going.”
McGuire was silent, then nodded his
assent. He was learning, this Earth-man,
what individual freedom really
meant.
Only the western sky showed
golden masses on the shining
screen when McGuire spoke softly to
the captain:
“Your men will put us ashore; you
may ask them to stand by now.” And
to Professor Sykes, “Better get that
‘soup’ of yours ready to load.”
The red-clad figures were growing
dim on the screen, and the blotches of
colors that showed where they were
grouped were few. Some there were
who left such groups to flee precipitately
toward a waiting airship.
This was something the lieutenant
had not foreseen. He had expected
that the force that served the gun
would have some shock-proof shelter;
he had not anticipated a fighting ship
to take them away.
“That’s good,” he exulted; “that is a
lucky break. If they just get out of
sight we will have the place to ourselves.”
There were no red patches on the
screen now, and the picture thrown before
them showed the big ship, its
markings of red and white distinct
even in the shadow-light of late afternoon,
rising slowly into the air. It
gathered speed marvelously and vanished
to a speck beyond the land.
“We’re getting the breaks,” said McGuire
crisply. “All right—let’s go!”
The submarine rose smoothly, and
the sealed doors in the superstructure
were opened while yet there was water
to come trickling in. Men came with
a roll of cloth that spread open to the
shape of a small boat, while a metal
frame expanded within it to hold it
taut.
McGuire gasped with dismay as a
seaman launched it and leaped heavily
into the frail shell to attach a motor
to one end.
“Metal!” the captain reassured him;
“woven metal, and water-tight! You
could not pierce it with anything less
than a projector.”
Sykes was ready with one of the
crystal flasks as the boat was
brought alongside, and McGuire followed
with another. They took ten of
the harmless-looking containers, and
both men held their breaths as the boat
grounded roughly on the boulder-strewn
shore.
They lifted them out and bedded
them in the sand, then returned to the
submarine. This time Althora, too,
stepped into the boat. They loaded in
the balance of the containers; the motor
purred. Another landing, and they
stood at last on the island, where a
mammoth tube towered into the sky
and the means for its destruction was
at their feet.
But there was little time; already
the light was dimming, and the time
for the firing of the big weapon was
drawing near. The men worked like
mad to carry the flasks to the base of
the gun, where a dome of concrete
marked the entrance to the rooms below.
Each man held a flask of the deadly
fluid when Althora led the way where
stairs went deep down into the earth
under the domed roof. This part of
the work had been foreseen, and the
girl held a slender cylinder that threw
a beam of light, intensely bright.
They found a surprising simplicity
in the arrangements underground. Two
rooms only had been carved from the
solid rock, and one of these ended in
a wall of gray metal that could be only
the great base of the gun. But nowhere
was a complication of mechanism
that might be damaged or destroyed,
nor any wiring or firing device.
A round door showed sharp edges in
the gray metal, but only the strength
of many men could have removed its
huge bolts, and these two knew there
must be other doors to seal in the
mighty charge.
“Not a wire!” the scientist exclaimed.
“How do they fire it?” The
answer came to him with the question.
“Radio, of course; and the receiving
set is in the charge itself; the barrel
of the gun is its own antenna. They
must fire it from a distance—back on
the island where we were, perhaps. It
would need to be accurately timed.”
“Come on!” shouted McGuire, and
raised the flask of explosive to his
shoulder.
Each one knew the need for
haste; each waited every moment
for the terrible blast of gun-fire that
would jar their bodies to a lifeless
pulp or, by detonating their own explosive,
destroy them utterly. But
they carried the flasks again to the
top, and the three of them worked
breathlessly to place their whole supply
where McGuire directed.
The massive barrel of the gun was
beside them; it was held in tremendous
castings of metal that bolted to anchorage
in the ground. One great brace
had an overhanging flange; the explosive
was placed beneath it.
Professor Sykes had come prepared.
He attached a detonator to one of the
flasks, and while the other two were
placing the explosive in position he
fastened two wires to the apparatus
with steady but hurrying fingers; then
at full speed he ran with the spool
from which the wires unwound.
McGuire and Althora were behind
him, running for the questionable
safety of the sand-hills. Sykes stopped
in the shelter of a tiny valley where
winds had heaped the sand.
“Down!” he shouted. “Get down—behind
that sand dune, there!”
He dropped beside them, the bared
ends of the wires in his hands. There
was a battery, too, a case no larger than
his hands. Professor Sykes, it appeared,
had gained some few concessions
from his friends, who had learned
to respect him in the field of science.
One breathless moment he waited;
then—
“Now!” he whispered, and touched
the battery’s terminals with the bare
wires.
To McGuire it seemed, in that instant
of shattering chaos, that the
great gun itself must have fired. He
had known the jar of heavy artillery
at close range; he had had experience
with explosives. He had even been
near when a government arsenal had
thrown the countryside into a hell of
jarring, ear-splitting pandemonium.
But the concussion that shook the
earth under him now was like nothing
he had known.
The hill of sand that sheltered them
vanished to sweep in a sheet above
their heads. And the air struck down
with terrific weight, then left them in
an airless void that seemed to make
their bodies swell and explode. It
rushed back in a whirling gale to
sweep showers of sand and pebbles
over the helpless forms of the three
who lay battered and stunned.
An instant that was like an age; then
the scientist pointed with a weak and
trembling hand where a towering spire
of metallic gray leaned slowly in the
air. So slowly it moved, to the eyes
of the watchers—a great arc of gathering
force and speed that shattered
the ground where it struck.
“The gun!” was all that the still-dazed
lieutenant could say. “The—the
gun!” And he fell to shivering uncontrollably,
while tears of pure happiness
streamed down his face.
The mammoth siege gun—the only
weapon for bombardment of the helpless
Earth—was a mass of useless
metal, a futile thing that lay twisted
and battered on the sands of the sea.
The submarine now showed at a
distance; it had withdrawn, by
prearrangement, to the shelter of the
deeper water. McGuire looked carefully
at the watch on his wrist, and
listened to make certain that the explosion
had not stopped it. Sykes had
told him the length of the Venusian
day—twenty hours and nineteen minutes
of Earth time, and he had made
his calculations from the day of the
Venusians. And, morning and night,
McGuire had set his watch back and
had learned to make a rough approximation
of the time of that world.
The watch now said five-thirteen,
and the sun was almost gone; a line of
gold in the western sky; and McGuire
knew that it was a matter only of minutes
till the blast of the big gun would
rock the island. One heavy section of
the great barrel was resting upon the
shattered base, and McGuire realized
that this blocking of the monster’s
throat must mean it would tear itself
and the island around it to fragments
when it fired. He ran toward the beach
and waved his arms wildly in air to
urge on the speeding craft that showed
dim and vague across the heaving sea.
It drove swiftly toward them and
stopped for the launching of the little
boat. There was a delay, and McGuire
stood quivering with impatience where
the others, too, watched the huddle of
figures on the submarine’s deck.
It was Althora who first sensed their
danger. Her voice was shrill with terror
as she seized McGuire’s arm and
pointed landward.
“Tommy—Tommy!” she said. “They
are coming! I saw them!”
A swarming of red figures over
the nearby dunes gave quick confirmation
of her words. McGuire
looked about him for a weapon—anything
to add efficiency to his bare
hands—and the swarm was upon them
as he looked.
He leaped quickly between Althora
and the nearest figures that stretched
out grasping hands, and a red face
went white under the smashing impact
of the flyer’s fist.
They poured over the sand-hills now—-scores
of leaping man-shapes—and
McGuire knew in an instant of self-accusation
that there had been a shelter
after all, where a portion of the
enemy force had stayed. The explosion
had brought them, and now—
He struck in a raging frenzy at the
grotesque things that came racing
upon them. He knew Sykes was fighting
too. He tore wildly at the lean
arms that bound him and kept him
from those a step or two away who
were throwing the figure of a girl
across the shoulders of one of their
men, while her eyes turned hopelessly
toward McGuire.
They threw the two men upon the
sand and crowded to kneel on the prostrate
bodies and strike and tear with
their long hands, then tied them at
ankles and wrists with metal cords,
and raised them helpless and bound in
the air.
One of the red creatures pointed a
long arm toward the demolished gun
and shrieked something in a terror-filled
tone. The others, at the sound,
raced off through the sand, while those
with the burden of the three captives
followed as best they could.
“The gun!” said Professor Sykes in
a thick voice: the words were jolted
out of him as the two who carried him
staggered and ran. “They know—that
it—hasn’t—gone off—”
The straggling troop that strung
out across the dim-lit dunes was
approaching another domed shelter of
heavy concrete. They crowded inside,
and the bodies of the three were
thrown roughly to the floor, while the
red creatures made desperate haste to
close the heavy door. Then down they
went into the deeper safety of a subterranean
room, where the massive
walls about them quivered to a nerve-deadening
jar. It shook those standing
to the floor, and the silence that
followed was changed to a bedlam by
the inhuman shrieking of the creatures
who were gloating over their safety
and the capture they had achieved.
They leaped and capered in a maniacal
outburst and ceased only at the shrill
order of one who was in command.
At his direction the three were carried
out of doors and thrown upon the
ground. McGuire turned his head to
see the face of Althora. There was
blood trickling from a cut on her temple,
and her eyes were dazed and
blurred, but she managed a trembling
smile for the anxious eyes of the man
who could only struggle hopelessly
against the thin wires that held him.
Althora hurt! Bound with those cutting
metal cords! Althora—in such
beastly hands! He groaned aloud at
the thought.
“You should never have come; I
should never have let you. I have got
you into this!” He groaned again in
an agony of self-reproach, then lay
silent and waited for what must come.
And the answer to his speculations
came from the night above, where the
lights of a ship marked the approach
of an enemy craft.
The ships of the red race could
travel fast, as McGuire knew, but
the air monster whose shining, pointed
beak hung above them where they lay
helpless in the torturing bonds of fine
wire, was to give him a new conception
of speed.
It shot to the five thousand-foot
level, when the captives were safe
aboard, and the dark air shrieked like
a tortured animal where the steel shell
tore it to tatters. And the radio, in an
adjoining room, never ceased in its
sputtering, changing song.
The destruction of the Earth-bombarding
gun! The capture of the two
Earth-men who had dared to fight
back! And a captive woman of the
dreaded race of true Venusians! There
was excitement and news enough for
one world. And the discordant singing
of the radio was sounding in the
ears of the leaders of that world.
They were waiting on the platform
in the great hall where Sykes and McGuire
had stood, and their basilisk eyes
glared unwinkingly down at the three
who were thrown at their feet.
The leader of them all, Torg himself,
arose from his ornate throne and
strode forward for a closer view of
the trophies his huntsmen had brought
in. A whistled word from him and the
wires that had bound Althora’s slim
ankles were cut, while a red-robed warrior
dragged her roughly to her feet
to stand trembling and swaying as
the blood shot cruelly through her
cramped limbs.
Torg’s eyes to McGuire were those
of a devil feasting on human flesh, as
he stared appraisingly and gloatingly
at the girl who tried vainly to return
the look without flinching. He spoke
for a moment in a harsh tone, and the
seated councilors echoed his weird
notes approvingly.
“What does he say?” McGuire implored,
though he knew there could
be nothing of good in that abominable
voice. “What does he say, Althora?”
The face that turned slowly to him
was drained of the last vestige of
color. “I—do not—know,” she said in
a whisper scarcely audible; “but he
thinks—terrible things!”
She seemed speaking of some nightmare
vision as she added haltingly,
“There is a fleet of many ships, and
Torg is in command. He has thousands
of men, and he goes forth to conquer
your Earth. He goes there to
rule.” She had to struggle to bring the
words to her lips now. “And—he takes
me—with—him!”
“No—no!” the flyer protested, and
he struggled insanely to free his hands
from the wires that cut the deeper into
his flesh. The voice of Althora, clear
and strong now, brought him back.
“I shall never go, Tommy; never!
The gift of eternal life is mine, but it
is mine to keep only if I will. But,
for you and your friend—” She tried
to raise her hands to her trembling
lips.
“Yes,” said Lieutenant McGuire quietly,
“for us—?”
But there were some things the soft
lips of Althora refused to say. Again
she tried vainly to raise her hands,
then turned her white, stricken face
that a loved one might not see the
tears that were mingling with the
blood-stains on her cheeks, nor read
in her eyes the horror they beheld.
But she found one crumb of comfort
for the two doomed men.
“You will live till the sailing of the
ships, Tommy,” she choked, “and then—we
will go together, Tommy—you
and I.”
Her head was bowed and her shoulders
shaking, but she raised her head
proudly erect as she was seized by a
guard whose blood-red hands forced
her from the room.
And the dry, straining eyes of Lieutenant
McGuire, that watched her going,
saw the passing to an unknown
fate of all he held dear, and the end
of his unspoken dreams.
He scarcely felt the grip of the
hands that seized him, nor knew when
he and Sykes were carried from the
room where Torg, the Emperor, held
his savage court. The stone walls of
the room where they were thrown
could not hold his eyes; they looked
through and beyond to see only the
white and piteous face of a girl whose
lips were whispering: “We will go together,
Tommy—you and I.”
(Concluded in the next issue)
The Readers’ Corner
A Meeting Place for Readers of
Astounding Stories
A Letter and Comment
Three or four times in the year we
have been issuing Astounding Stories
the Editor has received letters calling
attention to fancied scientific errors in
our stories. All these letters were published,
but until now we have not cut
in on the space of “The Readers’ Corner”
to answer such objections because
they were very obviously the result of
hasty or inaccurate readings.
The other week one more such letter
reached us—from Mr. Philip Waite,
this time—claiming that there was “an
atrocious flaw” in two stories of Captain
S. P. Meek’s. This we could not
let go unanswered, first because of the
strong terms used, and second because
the objection would sound to many like
a true criticism; so we turned the letter
over to Captain Meek, and his answer
follows Mr. Waite’s letter below.
We welcome criticism of stories in
our “The Readers’ Corner.” Never yet
have we withheld from it any criticism
or brickbats of importance—and we
never intend to. But space is limited;
there’s not room now for all the good
letters that come in; and we do not
want to intrude too much with editorial
comment. Therefore when we do not
stop and answer all criticisms we are
not necessarily admitting they are
valid. In most cases everyone will
quickly see their lack of logic or accuracy,
and in the rest we will ask you to
remember that our Staff is meticulously
careful about the scientific facts and
laws and possibilities that enter our
stories, so it’s extremely unlikely that
anything very “atrocious” will get by.
Well, we’d better cut short now, before
we take up too much “Corner”
room. But first, thanks to Captain
Meek for going to the trouble of defending
two stories that needed no defense.
And thanks, too, to Mr. Waite,
for his kindness in writing in to inform
us of what he thought—unquestionably
because of hasty reading—were errors.—The
Editor.
P. S. (Now we’ll have to be super
careful of our science, for if Mr. Waite
ever gets anything on us—!!)
Dear Editor:
Just a note to tell you to keep up the good
work. There was an atrocious flaw, however,
in the two stories by Capt. S. P. Meek about
the Heaviside Layer. How, may I ask, do
meteors penetrate through that imaginary
substance which is too much for a powerful
space flyer? Also, how about refraction? A
substance denser than air would produce refraction
that would have been noticed long
ago. I don’t mind minor errors, but an
author has no right to ignore the facts so
outrageously. Fiction goes too far when an
author can invent such false conditions.
In the latest issue “Stolen Brains” was
fine, up to the Dr. Bird standard. “The Invisible
Death” was good enough, but too
much like the general run to be noteworthy.
“Prisoners on the Electron”—couldn’t
stomach it. Too hackneyed. “Jetta of the
Lowlands,” by Ray Cummings; nuff said.
“An Extra Man”—original idea and perfectly
written. One of the reasons I hang on to
Science Fiction. A perfect gem.—Philip
Waite, 3400 Wayne Ave., New York, N. Y.
Dear Editor:
May I use enough space in your discussion
columns to reply briefly to the objections
raised to the science in my two stories, “Beyond
the Heaviside Layer” and “The Attack
from Space”? Understand that I am not
arguing that there actually is a thick wall
of semi-plastic material surrounding the earth
through which a space flyer could not pass.
If I did, I would automatically bar myself
from writing interplanetary stories, a thing
that is far from my desires. I do wish to
point out, however, that such a layer might
exist, so far as we at present know. The objections
to which I wish to reply are two:
first, “How do meteors pass through that
imaginary substance which is too much for a
powerful space flyer?” and second, “How
about refraction?”
To reply to the first we must consider two
things, kinetic energy and resistance to the
passage of a body. The kinetic energy of a
moving body is represented by the formula
½mv2 where m is the mass of the body and
v the velocity. The resistance of a substance
to penetration of a body is expressed by the
formula A fc where A is the area of the body
in contact with the resisting medium and fc
is the coefficient of sliding friction between
the penetrating body and the resisting medium.
Consider first the space flyer. To hold
personnel the flyer must be hollow. In other
words, m must be small as compared to A.
A meteor, on the other hand, is solid and
dense with a relatively large m and small A.
Given a meteor and a space flyer of the same
weight, the volume of the meteor would be
much smaller, and as the area in contact with
the resisting medium is a function of volume,
the total resistance to be overcome by the
space flyer would be much greater than that
to be overcome by the meteor. Again, consider
the relative velocities of a meteor and
a space flyer coming from the earth toward
the heaviside layer. The meteor from space
would have an enormous velocity, so great
that if it got into even very rare air, it would
become incandescent. As it must go through
dense air, the space flyer could attain only
a relatively low velocity before it reached the
layer. Remember that the velocity is squared.
A one thousand pound meteor flying with a
velocity 100 times that of the space ship
would have 1002 or 10,000 times the kinetic
energy of the space ship while it would also
have less friction to overcome due to its
smaller size.
If my critic wishes to test this out for himself,
I can suggest a very simple experiment.
Take a plank of sound pine wood, two inches
thick by twelve inches wide and four feet
long. Support it on both ends and then pile
lead slabs onto it, covering the whole area
of the board. If the wood be sound the
board will support a thousand pounds readily.
Now remove the lead slabs and fire a 200
grain lead bullet at the board with a muzzle
or initial velocity of 1,600 feet per second.
The bullet will penetrate the board very
readily. Consider the heaviside layer as the
board, the space ship as the lead slabs and
the bullet as the meteor and you have the
answer.
Consider one more thing. According to
the stories, the layer grew thicker and harder
to penetrate as the flyer reached the outer
surface. The meteor would strike the most
viscous part of the layer with its maximum
energy. As its velocity dropped and its kinetic
energy grew less, it would meet material
easier to penetrate. On the other hand
the flyer, coming from the earth, would meet
material easy to penetrate and gradually lose
its velocity and consequently its kinetic
energy. When it reached the very viscous
portion of the layer, it would have almost
no energy left with which to force its way
through. Remember, the Mercurians made
no attempt to penetrate the layer until a portion
of it had been destroyed by Carpenter’s
genius.
As for the matter of refraction. If you
will place a glass cube or other form in the
air, you will have no difficulty in measuring
the refraction of the light passing through
it. If, however, the observer would place
himself inside a hollow sphere of glass so
perfectly transparent as to be invisible, would
not the refraction he would observe be taken
by him to be the refraction of air when in
reality it would be the combined refraction
of the glass sphere and the air around him?
I have taken glass as the medium to illustrate
this because my critic made the statement
that “a substance denser than air would
produce refraction that would have been noticed
long ago.” However nowhere in either
story is the statement made that the material
of the heaviside layer was denser than air.
The statement was that it was more viscous.
Viscosity is not necessarily a function of
density. A heavy oil such as you use in the
winter to lubricate your automobile has a
much higher viscosity than water, yet it will
float on water, i. e. it is less dense. There
is nothing in the story that would prevent
the heaviside layer from having a coefficient
of refraction identical with that of air.
To close, let me repeat that I am not arguing
that such a layer exists. I do not believe
that it does and I do believe that my generation
will probably see the first interplanetary
expedition start and possibly see the
first interplanetary trip succeed. I do, however,
contend that the science in my stories
is accurate until it transcends the boundaries
of present day knowledge and ceases to be
science and becomes “super-science,” and that
my super-science is developed in a logical
manner from science and that nothing in
present knowledge makes the existence of
such a layer impossible—S. P. Meek. Capt.
Ord. Dept., U. S. A.
Likes Long Novelettes
Dear Editor:
I have just finished reading the August
issue of your magazine. I am going to rate
the different stories in per cents. 100% means
excellent; 75% fairly good; 50% passable;
25% just an ordinary story.
I give “Marooned Under The Sea,” by
Paul Ernst, 100%; 75% for “The Attack
From Space,” by Captain S. P. Meek. “The
Problem in Communication,” by Miles J.
Breuer, M. D. and “Jetta of the Lowlands,”
by Ray Cummings; 50% for “The Murder
Machine,” by Hugh B. Cave and “Earth, The
Marauder,” by Arthur J. Burks; 25% for
“The Terrible Tentacles of L-472,” by Sewell
Peaslee Wright.
I am happy to say that since I have been
reading your magazine, I have induced at
least ten of my friends to be constant readers
of this magazine.
I like the long novelettes much better than
continued novels, and hope that in the future
we will get bigger and better novelettes.—Leonard
Estrin, 1145 Morrison Ave., Bronx,
N. Y.
Hasn’t Decided
Dear Editor:
Move over, you old-timers, and let a newcomer
say something.
A few months ago I didn’t read any Science
Fiction. Now I read it all. I haven’t
decided yet which magazine I like best.
I was a little disappointed when you didn’t
have another story in the September copy
by R. P. Starzl, who wrote “Planet of Dread.”
I thought you would hold on to a good
author when you find one.
I would also like another story by the fellow
who wrote the serial “Murder Madness.”
I like short stories best.
That idea of a mechanical nirvana in Miles
J. Breuer’s story was good.
“Jetta of the Lowlands?” Opinion reserved.
I like the action of the story, but I
hate a hero who is always bragging about
himself.
Don’t think I’m complaining, but nothing
is perfect.
Why not try to get a story of A. Merritt’s,
or Ralph Milne Farley’s?—A. Dougherty, 327
North Prairie Ave., Sioux Falls, So. Dak.
Announcement
Dear Editor:
May I enter “The Readers’ Corner” to announce
that a branch of The Scienceers has
recently been formed in Clearwater, Florida,
by a group of Science Fiction enthusiasts?
We have a library of 175 Science Fiction
magazines, including a complete file of
Astounding Stories to date. We hold weekly
meetings at which scientific topics are discussed,
and current Science Fiction stories
commented upon.
As the first branch of The Scienceers, we
are striving to achieve a success that will be
a mark for other branches to aim at.—Carlton
Abernathy, P. O. Box 584, Clearwater,
Fla.
From Merrie England
Dear Editor:
I came across your May publication of
Astounding Stories the other day, and I cannot
resist writing to you to congratulate you
on the most interesting magazine I have ever
read. I am now determined to take it every
month. Re “The Atom Smasher,” it is A-1.
I have read several interplanetary stories
over here but none to touch those of your
magazine.
Best wishes for the success of your book
and its authors.—J. C. Atkinson, 17 Balaclava
Rd., Sheffield, England.
Starting Young
Dear Editor:
You’ll excuse my writing, for it is the end
of vacation.
I like your book very much, which many
other readers approve of. Some dislikes, of
course, everyone has, and I have three which
many readers have, too. First, I wish the
magazine were bigger and the paper better.
Second, have more stories and raise the price
to 25c. Third, have stories of the future such
as “Earth, the Marauder,” and stories of lost
Atlantis, the fourth dimension, other planets,
atoms and electrons.—Jack Farber, Payette,
Idaho.
P. S. I am 11 years old and interested in
science.
Doesn’t Like Serials
Dear Editor:
I am a recent reader of the Astounding
Stories magazine. I am going to keep getting
the magazine, as I like it very much.
I did not like “Murder Madness,” or Burks’
“Earth, the Marauder” very much. I do not
think “Murder Madness” is the type of story
that belongs in this magazine. I do not like
continued stories very much as I hate to
break off at an interesting point and wait a
whole month before I can read the next installment
or conclusion of the story. The
front piece of the magazine is very good, and
except for the criticisms mentioned above
the magazine is excellent.—Kempt Mitchell.
A Staunch Defender
Dear Editor:
At one time a friend introduced your excellent
little publication to me. I read it and
enjoyed every paragraph of it. This issue
starred “The Monsters of Moyen,” which I
consider a real super-science story. I have
followed “The Readers’ Corner” quite a time.
In the September issue I saw where someone
made a commentary on the magazine.
One of the things they said was that the
paper should be of a better grade. It is true
that this would help, but “our” magazine is
not half full of advertisements to pay for this
expense. Dear friends, this is no Saturday
Evening Post. Don’t ask too much. Then,
you may take in consideration that other
magazines of Science Fiction have no better
grade of paper than this, for I have purchased
several.
I have but one thing to say as an improvement
for it. That is, why shouldn’t there be
a Quarterly? Other Science Fiction magazines
have them. They have complete stories
and are double in size and price. Dear Editor,
please, for the public’s sake, put out a
Quarterly. I’m sure others would like one.—H. C.
Kaufman, Jr., 1730 N. Monroe St., Baltimore,
Maryland.
Announcement
Dear Editor:
We would appreciate it very much if you
would print this in your “Readers’ Corner”
department.
We wish to inform the readers of Astounding
Stories of an organization lately formed,
called The Boys’ Scientifiction Club. Its purpose
is to promote scientific interest among
boys between the ages of 10 and 15, to encourage
the reading of Science Fiction and
scientific works, and to create a bond of
friendship among them.
A circulating library, composed of Science
Fiction books, magazines, articles, etc., is being
constructed to circulate among members
who desire to read any of the contents.
Officers are: President-Librarian, Forrest
J. Ackerman, 530 Staples Ave., San Francisco,
Cal.; Secretary-Treasurer, Frank Sipos,
174 Staples Ave., San Francisco, California.
Address all letters concerning membership
to the President. He will be glad to answer
all letters and explain particulars of the club.
Thank you for your kindness.—Linus Hogenmiller,
Vice-President B. S. C., 502 N. Washington
St., Farmington, Missouri.
But—Ray Cummings Writes Us
Only Brand New Stories!
Dear Editor:
I want to commend Astounding Stories on
carrying out an idea which I have had in
mind for some time; that is, some scientific
articles. “A Star That Breathes,” in the July
number, was very interesting, as were the
two articles in the August copy. However,
I hope that this is only the start of a valuable
new addition to Astounding Stories.
There should be at least five or six in each
magazine, and I think most of the readers
would prefer them at the end of the stories
instead of in the back of the magazine. Another
thing that is absolutely essential if
Astounding Stories would hold its own as
a high-class Science Fiction magazine is a
scientific editorial in the front of the book.
The way it starts off abruptly onto a story
gives the impression of a cheap publication.
A lot of your readers have been setting
up a clamor for stories by Ray Cummings.
While it is true that he has written a few
good stories, you will find that his antiquated
stuff is not being printed in any of the other
Science Fiction magazine, but only in ones
devoted to adventure-stories. For the sake
of your many readers who would like to see
“our magazine” keep abreast of the times,
Cummings should be dropped and some of
the peerless authors of to-day employed. As
an advance along this line you already have
Capt. S. P. Meek, Harl Vincent, Lilith Lorraine,
Edmond Hamilton, and, in the latest
copy, R. F. Starzl. “The Planet of Dread,”
by R. F. Starzl was the best story in the
August issue. A wealth of ideas was contained
in that treatise of life on a young,
warm planet, and the idea of fooling the
liquid intelligence by thought-suggestion is
quite novel but entirely reasonable. Mr.
Starzl is an author of the highest type and
ability, and you will do well to secure more
stories from his typewriter.
I was glad to see that the cover has finally
been changed from the conventional blue
background, and I hope we will have a little
variation from now on. Concerning illustrations,
Wesso is a great artist, and aside
from a few scientific errors his covers are
excellent. The inside drawings could be improved,
however.
I hope for your continued success—Wayne
D. Bray, Campbell, Mo.
Are We All “Morons?”
Dear Editor:
Having perused three issues of your magazine,
I must agree that its title is well chosen.
The stories are nearly all “astounding”;
astounding in that they utterly ignore every
scientific fact and discovery of the past ten
centuries.
The cold of inter-stellar space; its lack of
oxygen; the interplanetary effects of gravitation—all
are passed over as if non-existent.
An “anti-gravity ovoid”—of which no description
is given—if worn in a man’s hat,
makes his whole body weightless.
Men, buildings and cities float through the
air or become invisible, yet not the least
semi-scientific explanation is made as to the
how of it all.
In other words, the pattern of your stories
appears to have been taken from the Arabian
Nights and from Grimm’s Fairy Tales—but
with not a millionth part of the interest.
How anyone, save a young child or a
moron, can read and enjoy such futile nonsense
is incredible.
If your writers would (like Jules Verne)
only invent some pseudo-scientific explanation
for their marvels, your publication might
then be read with pleasure—but why do so
when trash is acceptable without thought behind
it!—M. Clifford Johnston, 451 Central
Avenue, Newark, N. J.
A Wesso Fan
Dear Editor:
Let me congratulate you on the September
issue of Astounding Stories. It is the
best issue you have published yet. I noticed
in this issue that you had four illustrations
by Wesso. Though that is the most you have
ever had, I think it would be much better
if all the illustrations were by him.
However, getting down to brass tacks, the
reason I’m typing this letter is to ask you
to publish an Astounding Stories Quarterly.
You could have it contain twice as much
reading material as in the monthly and
charge forty cents a copy for it. It would
be much better than a semi-monthly and I
am quite sure it would “go over” big.—Thomas
L. Kratzer, 3593 Tullamore Rd., University
Heights, Ohio.
Bang—Bang—Bang
Dear Editor:
I have read the August Astounding Stories
and greatly enjoyed the fiction, but “The
Readers’ Corner” gave me a good deal of
amusement. Some of your readers take their
fiction so seriously!
Take the “Brick or Two” from George L.
Williams and Harry Heillisan, for instance.
They want Astounding Stories filled with material
from authors that appear in other magazines—because
your readers “are used to
the standards set by those publications,” etc.
And again, “you should have some one who
is well qualified to pass upon the science in
the stories.” For the love of Pete, if people
want scientific treatises, why don’t they buy
books and magazines dealing with the subject?
There are many on the market—serious
and dull enough for anyone. But for our
fiction magazines, let’s have it pure and unadulterated,
the more improbably the better.
What possible difference does it make if,
in a story, the moon has a crater every ten
feet, or the black sky of outer space were
blazing with moons and aurora borealises,
or the sun were in a double eclipse!
We read stories to be amused, not for technical
information, so we certainly don’t want
“a scientific editorial in each issue by some
’eminent scientist.’”
As for a department in which readers could
write their opinions of the stories and suggest
improvements in the conduct of the
magazine, what else is “The Readers’ Corner?”
Why not adopt a tolerant attitude, and instead
of howling about petty faults and mistakes
get a good laugh over them? As for
telling writers and editors “how to do it,”
we would only expose our ignorance and inability
and make ourselves ridiculous.
If we think we could do so much better,
let’s try it. Write a story ourselves or start
running a magazine!
Astounding Stories is all right as is. We
like it “different.” We want different authors
from those of other magazines. What is the
use of having various publications if they
must all be conducted along identical lines?
Now for your writers: Mr. R.F. Starzl
is easily the best. His story, “The Planet of
Dread,” is full of thrills and imagination and
clever situations that are well developed and
surmounted. One thing that is rather remarkable
in this class of story, the hero gets
himself and his companion out of every difficulty
by his own ingenuity. The story moves
along with interest and thrills in every paragraph,
and is really my ideal of a “super-scientific”
yarn; i.e., not stuffed with tiresome
technical data. Let’s have more from
this interesting author.—C.E. Bush, Decatur,
Ark.
Assorted Bouquets
Dear Editor:
Before commenting upon the September
issue of your wonderful magazine, I would
like to personally thank Mr. Bates for the
kind reply to my former letter. It shows that
at least one editor glanced over my literary
ramblings.
Now for comments on the September issue.
I placed the stories in the following order,
which is based upon their merit:
“Marooned Under the Sea”; “Terrible Tentacles
of L-472”; “Jetta of the Lowlands”;
“The Attack from Space”; “A Problem in
Communication”; “Earth the Marauder,” and
“The Murder Machine.”
Your serials are the best I have ever read
in any magazine; your latest one, “Jetta of
the Lowlands,” promises to be an A-1 top-notcher.
Your artists, H.W. Wessolowski and J.
Fleming Gould, draw the finest illustrations
I have ever seen anywhere.
“The Readers’ Corner” is a fine corner
which can only be improved by making it
larger.
The stories scheduled for the October issue
look good to me. Am glad to see that Dr.
Bird is returning. Will sign off now wishing
Astounding Stories all the luck it deserves.—Edwin
Anderson, 1765 Southern
Boulevard, Bronx, N.Y.C., N.Y.
A Request
Dear Editor:
I thought I would drop you just a line
to comment on the authors now writing for
“our” magazine.
Among the best are: R. F. Starzl, Edmond
Hamilton, Harl Vincent, Ray Cummings and
Captain S. P. Meek. However, there is one
brilliant author whose fascinating stories
have, to date, failed to appear in our magazine.
The man I am referring to is Ed Earl
Repp. Please have a story by him in our
magazine as soon as possible.
I am sure other readers will agree with me
when I say that Mr. Repp writes exceedingly
thrilling and exciting Science Fiction tales.
Let’s see many stories by him in the forthcoming
issues of Astounding Stories.—Forrest
J. Ackerman, 530 Staples Avenue, San
Francisco, California.
Thank You, Mr. Lorenzo
Dear Editor:
Several Science Fiction magazines will
have to struggle along without my patronage.
Why? Because they flew (literally speaking)
over my head with all kinds of science. I
want some science, but mostly fiction. I
couldn’t understand what they were writing
about, so I lost interest. I can read a single
copy of a good magazine from cover to cover
in one day, but let me lose interest in it by
having too much dry matter and I just don’t
buy that book again.
Your magazine is the best of all Science
Fiction magazines, which means that I can
read and understand the tales in Astounding
Stories. So you get my trade. You’re trying
your best to supply me with interesting stories
so if there is an occasional dry story (to
me), I just remember one thing: you, as Editor,
are a human being like myself; so,
neither one of us being perfect, I just forgive
and go on buying.—Jas Lorenzo, 644
Hanover St., San Francisco, Cal.
Suggestions
Dear Editor:
“Earth, the Marauder,” by Arthur J. Burks,
gets four stars. It is one of the most astounding
stories I have ever read. I hope you have
more stories by Arthur J. Burks on schedule
for early issues. “Jetta of the Lowlands,” by
Ray Cummings, “Marooned Under the Sea,”
by Paul Ernst (a sequel soon, I hope). “The
Terrible Tentacles of L-472,” by S.P. Wright
and “The Attack from Space,” by S.P. Meek
(let’s have another sequel), all get three stars.
I hope that S.P. Wright will write more stories
of strange planets.
I think that your serials should all be
book-length novels with the installments
from thirty-five to fifty pages in length.
Don’t publish novelettes (thirty to sixty-five
pages) as serials.
In your August issue you mention that you
may some day publish Astounding Stories
twice a month. I would rather have you increase
the price to twenty-five cents, give us
as much material as Five Novels Monthly,
and smooth cut edges.
Wesso’s cover illustrations are improving
each month. I am glad to see more of his
illustrations inside.
Since so many readers ask for reprints,
why not give us an occasional one?—Jack
Darrow, 4225 N. Spaulding Ave., Chicago,
Illinois.
“A Flop”
Dear Editor:
I have read Astounding Stories since its
first issue, and I am convinced that it is without
a peer in the field of Science Fiction.
This preeminence is due to the fact that the
magazine regularly contains the work of the
best contemporary writers of scientific fantasy,
such as Cummings, Rousseau, Leinster,
Burks and Hamilton.
Certain readers, unaccustomed to such rich
fare, ask for stories by lesser lights. For a
time these requests went unheeded; but of
late it seems they are getting results—more’s
the pity.
Your September issue contained a story
called “A Problem in Communication” by
Miles J. Breuer, M.D. Now, the good doctor
may be a “wow” in other magazines, but
his stuff is not up to the standard of Astounding
Stories. His initial effort in this magazine
was dull and uninspired. It lacked the
sustained interest and gripping action of your
other stories. It was, to put it bluntly, a
flop.
In spite of this sad example, several readers
are still clamoring for more stuff from
the small-timers. If they get their way—which
Allah forbid!—it will mean the downfall
of Astounding Stories. Why ruin a truly
great magazine by catering to a misguided
minority?—George K. Addison, 94 Brandt
Place, Bronx, New York.
“No Favorites”
Dear Editor:
I found your magazine on the newsstand
while looking for another kind. The cover
picture looked interesting so I bought
Astounding Stories instead of the other.
Since that moment I have been a steady
reader.
I can see no way to improve your magazine
unless it is to enlarge it or to publish
it oftener. I am satisfied with it as it is. It
is the best magazine on the newsstands now.
I have no favorites among your stories as
I like them all equally well.—Robert L. King,
Melbourne, Florida.
Pride of the Regiment
Dear Editor:
I have just finished reading the September
issue of Astounding Stories and want to congratulate
you on your staff of writers. Although
this is the first copy I have read, I
can assure you that it will not be the last,
by any means.
I think the story called “Marooned Under
the Sea,” by Paul Ernst, a story that no one
could have passed without reading it. The
way the author explains the story to have
come to life has really got me guessing.
The only thing that I regretted was that
I didn’t get the copies previous to the story
called, “Earth, the Marauder,” by Arthur J.
Burks. Please give us more stories by Paul
Ernst. (I say us because I am a soldier,
and where you find one soldier you find
plenty soldiers.)
So keep the good work up, as we are looking
forward to a good time when the next
issues come around.—Co. “I,” 26th Inf.
Plattsburgh Barracks, Plattsburgh, New
York.
Covers Not Too Vivid
Dear Editor:
I can’t help joining the great number of
admirers of your wonderful magazine.
A great many readers ask for interplanetary
stories. As for me, I like any kind,
stories of other worlds, under the earth, under
the sea, on other planets, dimensional
stories, anything. So far I have not had the
slightest excuse to complain.
When I finish reading a story I write after
the title, “good,” “very good,” “fair,” etc.
Then I read the best ones over again while
waiting for the next issue. The following
two and the only stories I didn’t like so far
are: “The Stolen Mind” and “Creatures of
the Light.”
One critic stated that he considered the
illustrations of Astounding Stories too vivid.
Illustrations for stories such as are contained
in this magazine cannot be too vivid. Readers
have plenty of opportunity to use their
imaginations. Many scenes which the authors
try to portray are hard to visualize, and I
think that a number of good illustrations
would help the readers enjoy the stories more.
As long as you keep your magazine up to
the standard you have set thus far, I will
remain an eager reader.—Sam Castellina,
104 E. Railroad St. Pittston, Penn.
Quite True
Dear Editor:
I have enjoyed every one of your Astounding
Stories magazines from the first.
However, in the story, “The Murder Machine,”
by Hugh B. Cave, a man, Sir John
Harman, was made to kill a man by meccano-telepathically
projected hypnotic suggestions.
Some people think it is entirely possible to
make a man do such a thing by hypnotism,
but it is not possible because no person under
hypnotic influence will do anything that
his subconscious mind knows is immoral.
Neither a thief nor a murderer can be made
to confess their crime while under hypnotic
influence.
I am merely writing this so that the others
who have read the story will not get the
wrong idea of hypnotism. A man under hypnotic
influence can be made to think he is
murdering or robbing, but he will not do it
really, no matter how hard the hypnotist
tries to make him.—Henry Booth, 916 Federal
St., N. S. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“Paper Correct Kind”
Dear Editor:
I am a reader of four other Science Fiction
magazines but like Astounding Stories
the best for two main reasons. First, the size
is just right, second, the paper is the correct
kind. It does not glare at you when you
read.
I have every issue of Astounding Stories
since it came out. The stories are all good
and are becoming better each month. I prefer
stories of space traveling and of the
fourth dimension.
About reprints, I think that if you want to
give reprints, why not publish them in booklet
form. I’m sure many of the readers will
prefer to have reprints that way.—Frank
Wogavoda, Water Mill, New York.
Bouquets
Dear Editor:
“The Planet of Dread” was a classic in the
full meaning of the word. Not only was the
story a masterpiece of fantastic adventure
but also of short story craft. By all means
secure more of Mr. Starzl’s fine tales.
Your stories by Ray Cummings are great.
It would be a good policy upon your part
to continue to present stories of his at the
most not more than two issues apart.
Continue up to your present standard and
you’ll continue to stand above all other Science
Fiction magazines where stories of
super-science are concerned, now and forever.—Jerome
Siegel, 10622 Kimberley Ave.,
Cleveland, Ohio.
“The Readers’ Corner”
All Readers are extended a sincere
and cordial invitation to “come over
in ‘The Readers’ Corner’” and join
in our monthly discussion of stories,
authors, scientific principles and possibilities—everything
that’s of common
interest in connection with our
Astounding Stories.
Although from time to time the Editor
may make a comment or so, this is
a department primarily for Readers,
and we want you to make full use of
it. Likes, dislikes, criticisms, explanations,
roses, brickbats, suggestions—everything’s
welcome here; so “come
over in ‘The Readers’ Corner’” and
discuss it will all of us!
—The Editor.
No comments:
Post a Comment