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[153]

Old Crompton’s Secret

By Harl Vincent

Tom tripped on a
wire and fell, with
his ferocious adversary
on top.

Two miles west of the village
of Laketon there lived an aged
recluse who was known only as
Old Crompton. As far back as
the villagers could remember he had
visited the town
regularly twice a
month, each time
tottering his lonely
way homeward
with a load of
provisions. He
appeared to be
well supplied with funds, but purchased
sparingly as became a miserly
hermit. And so vicious was his tongue
that few cared to converse with him,
even the young hoodlums of the town
hesitating to harass him with the banter
usually accorded the other bizarre
characters of the streets.

Tom’s extraordinary machine glowed—and
the years were banished from Old
Crompton’s body. But there still remained,
deep-seated in his century-old
mind, the memory of his crime.

The oldest inhabitants knew nothing
of his past history, and they had long
since lost their curiosity in the matter.
He was a fixture,
as was the old
town hall with
its surrounding
park. His lonely
cabin was shunned
by all who chanced
to pass along the
old dirt road that led through the
woods to nowhere and was rarely used.

His only extravagance was in the
matter of books, and the village book
store profited considerably by his purchases.
But, at the instigation of Cass[154]
Harmon, the bookseller, it was whispered
about that Old Crompton was a
believer in the black art—that he had
made a pact with the devil himself and
was leagued with him and his imps.
For the books he bought were strange
ones; ancient volumes that Cass must
needs order from New York or Chicago
and that cost as much as ten and even
fifteen dollars a copy; translations of
the writings of the alchemists and astrologers
and philosophers of the dark
ages.

It was no wonder Old Crompton was
looked at askance by the simple-living
and deeply religious natives of the
small Pennsylvania town.

But there came a day when the hermit
was to have a neighbor, and the
town buzzed with excited speculation
as to what would happen.

The property across the road from
Old Crompton’s hut belonged to
Alton Forsythe, Laketon’s wealthiest
resident—hundreds of acres of scrubby
woodland that he considered well nigh
worthless. But Tom Forsythe, the only
son, had returned from college and his
ambitions were of a nature strange to
his townspeople and utterly incomprehensible
to his father. Something
vague about biology and chemical experiments
and the like is what he spoke
of, and, when his parents objected on
the grounds of possible explosions and
other weird accidents, he prevailed
upon his father to have a secluded laboratory
built for him in the woods.

When the workmen started the small
frame structure not a quarter of a mile
from his own hut, Old Crompton was
furious. He raged and stormed, but to
no avail. Tom Forsythe had his heart
set on the project and he was somewhat
of a successful debater himself.
The fire that flashed from his cold gray
eyes matched that from the pale blue
ones of the elderly anchorite. And the
law was on his side.

So the building was completed and
Tom Forsythe moved in, bag and baggage.

For more than a year the hermit studiously
avoided his neighbor, though,
truth to tell, this required very little
effort. For Tom Forsythe became almost
as much of a recluse as his predecessor,
remaining indoors for days
at a time and visiting the home of his
people scarcely oftener than Old
Crompton visited the village. He too
became the target of village gossip and
his name was ere long linked with that
of the old man in similar animadversion.
But he cared naught for the
opinions of his townspeople nor for the
dark looks of suspicion that greeted
him on his rare appearances in the public
places. His chosen work engrossed
him so deeply that all else counted for
nothing. His parents remonstrated
with him in vain. Tom laughed away
their recriminations and fears, continuing
with his labors more strenuously
than ever. He never troubled his mind
over the nearness of Old Crompton’s
hut, the existence of which he hardly
noticed or considered.

It so happened one day that the old
man’s curiosity got the better of
him and Tom caught him prowling
about on his property, peering wonderingly
at the many rabbit hutches, chicken
coops, dove cotes and the like which
cluttered the space to the rear of the
laboratory.

Seeing that he was discovered, the
old man wrinkled his face into a toothless
grin of conciliation.

“Just looking over your place, Forsythe,”
he said. “Sorry about the fuss
I made when you built the house. But
I’m an old man, you know, and changes
are unwelcome. Now I have forgotten
my objections and would like to be
friends. Can we?”

Tom peered searchingly into the
flinty eyes that were set so deeply in
the wrinkled, leathery countenance.
He suspected an ulterior motive, but
could not find it within him to turn the
old fellow down.

“Why—I guess so, Crompton,” he
hesitated: “I have nothing against you,[155]
but I came here for seclusion and I’ll
not have anyone bothering me in my
work.”

“I’ll not bother you, young man. But
I’m fond of pets and I see you have
many of them here; guinea pigs, chickens,
pigeons, and rabbits. Would you
mind if I make friends with some of
them?”

“They’re not pets,” answered Tom
dryly, “they are material for use in my
experiments. But you may amuse yourself
with them if you wish.”

“You mean that you cut them up—kill
them, perhaps?”

“Not that. But I sometimes change
them in physical form, sometimes cause
them to become of huge size, sometimes
produce pigmy offspring of normal
animals.”

“Don’t they suffer?”

“Very seldom, though occasionally a
subject dies. But the benefit that will
accrue to mankind is well worth the
slight inconvenience to the dumb creatures
and the infrequent loss of their
lives.”

Old Crompton regarded him
dubiously. “You are trying to
find?” he interrogated.

“The secret of life!” Tom Forsythe’s
eyes took on the stare of fanaticism.
“Before I have finished I shall know
the nature of the vital force—how to
produce it. I shall prolong human life
indefinitely; create artificial life. And
the solution is more closely approached
with each passing day.”

The hermit blinked in pretended
mystification. But he understood perfectly,
and he bitterly envied the
younger man’s knowledge and ability
that enabled him to delve into the mysteries
of nature which had always been
so attractive to his own mind. And
somehow, he acquired a sudden deep
hatred of the coolly confident young
man who spoke so positively of accomplishing
the impossible.

During the winter months that followed,
the strange acquaintance progressed
but little. Tom did not invite
his neighbor to visit him, nor did Old
Crompton go out of his way to impose
his presence on the younger man,
though each spoke pleasantly enough
to the other on the few occasions when
they happened to meet.

With the coming of spring they encountered
one another more frequently,
and Tom found considerable of interest
in the quaint, borrowed philosophy
of the gloomy old man. Old Crompton,
of course, was desperately interested in
the things that were hidden in Tom’s
laboratory, but he never requested permission
to see them. He hid his real
feelings extremely well and was apparently
content to spend as much time as
possible with the feathered and furred
subjects for experiment, being very
careful not to incur Tom’s displeasure
by displaying too great interest in the
laboratory itself.

Then there came a day in early
summer when an accident served
to draw the two men closer together,
and Old Crompton’s long-sought opportunity
followed.

He was starting for the village when,
from down the road, there came a series
of tremendous squawkings, then a bellow
of dismay in the voice of his young
neighbor. He turned quickly and was
astonished at the sight of a monstrous
rooster which had escaped and was
headed straight for him with head
down and wings fluttering wildly.
Tom followed close behind, but was
unable to catch the darting monster.
And monster it was, for this rooster
stood no less than three feet in height
and appeared more ferocious than a
large turkey. Old Crompton had his
shopping bag, a large one of burlap
which he always carried to town, and
he summoned enough courage to throw
it over the head of the screeching, over-sized
fowl. So tangled did the panic-stricken
bird become that it was a comparatively
simple matter to effect his
capture, and the old man rose to his
feet triumphant with the bag securely
closed over the struggling captive.

[156]
“Thanks,” panted Tom, when he
drew alongside. “I should never have
caught him, and his appearance at large
might have caused me a great deal of
trouble—now of all times.”

“It’s all right, Forsythe,” smirked the
old man. “Glad I was able to do it.”

Secretly he gloated, for he knew this
occurrence would be an open sesame to
that laboratory of Tom’s. And it
proved to be just that.

A few nights later he was awakened
by a vigorous thumping at
his door, something that had never before
occurred during his nearly sixty
years occupancy of the tumbledown
hut. The moon was high and he cautiously
peeped from the window and
saw that his late visitor was none other
than young Forsythe.

“With you in a minute!” he shouted,
hastily thrusting his rheumatic old
limbs into his shabby trousers. “Now
to see the inside of that laboratory,” he
chuckled to himself.

It required but a moment to attire
himself in the scanty raiment he wore
during the warm months, but he could
hear Tom muttering and impatiently
pacing the flagstones before his door.

“What is it?” he asked, as he drew
the bolt and emerged into the brilliant
light of the moon.

“Success!” breathed Tom excitedly.
“I have produced growing, living matter
synthetically. More than this, I
have learned the secret of the vital
force—the spark of life. Immortality
is within easy reach. Come and see
for yourself.”

They quickly traversed the short distance
to the two-story building which
comprised Tom’s workshop and living
quarters. The entire ground floor was
taken up by the laboratory, and Old
Crompton stared aghast at the wealth
of equipment it contained. Furnaces
there were, and retorts that reminded
him of those pictured in the wood cuts
in some of his musty books. Then
there were complicated machines with
many levers and dials mounted on their
faces, and with huge glass bulbs of peculiar
shape with coils of wire connecting
to knoblike protuberances of their
transparent walls. In the exact center
of the great single room there was what
appeared to be a dissecting table, with
a brilliant light overhead and with two
of the odd glass bulbs at either end.
It was to this table that Tom led the
excited old man.

“This is my perfected apparatus,”
said Tom proudly, “and by its use I
intend to create a new race of supermen,
men and women who will always
retain the vigor and strength of their
youth and who can not die excepting
by actual destruction of their bodies.
Under the influence of the rays all
bodily ailments vanish as if by magic,
and organic defects are quickly corrected.
Watch this now.”

He stepped to one of the many
cages at the side of the room and
returned with a wriggling cottontail in
his hands. Old Compton watched anxiously
as he picked a nickeled instrument
from a tray of surgical appliances
and requested his visitor to hold the
protesting animal while he covered its
head with a handkerchief.

“Ethyl chloride,” explained Tom,
noting with amusement the look of distaste
on the old man’s face. “We’ll
just put him to sleep for a minute while
I amputate a leg.”

The struggles of the rabbit quickly
ceased when the spray soaked the handkerchief
and the anaesthetic took effect.
With a shining scalpel and a surgical
saw, Tom speedily removed one
of the forelegs of the animal and then
he placed the limp body in the center
of the table, removing the handkerchief
from its head as he did so. At
the end of the table there was a panel
with its glittering array of switches
and electrical instruments, and Old
Crompton observed very closely the
manipulations of the controls as Tom
started the mechanism. With the ensuing
hum of a motor-generator from a
corner of the room, the four bulbs ad[157]jacent
to the table sprang into life, each
glowing with a different color and each
emitting a different vibratory note as
it responded to the energy within.

“Keep an eye on Mr. Rabbit now,”
admonished Tom.

From the body of the small animal
there emanated an intangible though
hazily visible aura as the combined effects
of the rays grew in intensity. Old
Crompton bent over the table and
peered amazedly at the stump of the
foreleg, from which blood no longer
dripped. The stump was healing over!
Yes—it seemed to elongate as one
watched. A new limb was growing on
to replace the old! Then the animal
struggled once more, this time to regain
consciousness. In a moment it
was fully awake and, with a frightened
hop, was off the table and hobbling
about in search of a hiding place.

Tom Forsythe laughed. “Never
knew what happened,” he exulted,
“and excepting for the temporary limp
is not inconvenienced at all. Even that
will be gone in a couple of hours, for
the new limb will be completely grown
by that time.”

“But—but, Tom,” stammered the old
man, “this is wonderful. How do you
accomplish it?”

“Ha! Don’t think I’ll reveal my
secret. But this much I will tell you:
the life force generated by my apparatus
stimulates a certain gland that’s
normally inactive in warm blooded animals.
This gland, when active, possesses
the function of growing new
members to the body to replace lost
ones in much the same manner as this
is done in case of the lobster and certain
other crustaceans. Of course, the
process is extremely rapid when the
gland is stimulated by the vital rays
from my tubes. But this is only one
of the many wonders of the process.
Here is something far more remarkable.”

He took from a large glass jar the
body of a guinea pig, a body that was
rigid in death.

“This guinea pig,” he explained, “was
suffocated twenty-four hours ago and
is stone dead.”

“Suffocated?”

“Yes. But quite painlessly, I assure
you. I merely removed the air from
the jar with a vacuum pump and the
little creature passed out of the picture
very quickly. Now we’ll revive it.”

Old Crompton stretched forth a skinny
hand to touch the dead animal, but
withdrew it hastily when he felt the
clammy rigidity of the body. There
was no doubt as to the lifelessness of
this specimen.

Tom placed the dead guinea pig on
the spot where the rabbit had been
subjected to the action of the rays.
Again his visitor watched carefully as
he manipulated the controls of the apparatus.

With the glow of the tubes and the
ensuing haze of eery light that surrounded
the little body, a marked
change was apparent. The inanimate
form relaxed suddenly and it seemed
that the muscles pulsated with an accession
of energy. Then one leg was
stretched forth spasmodically. There
was a convulsive heave as the lungs
drew in a first long breath, and, with
that, an astonished and very much alive
rodent scrambled to its feet, blinking
wondering eyes in the dazzling light.

“See? See?” shouted Tom, grasping
Old Crompton by the arm in a viselike
grip. “It is the secret of life and
death! Aristocrats, plutocrats and beggars
will beat a path to my door. But,
never fear, I shall choose my subjects
well. The name of Thomas Forsythe
will yet be emblazoned in the Hall of
Fame. I shall be master of the world!”

Old Crompton began to fear the glitter
in the eyes of the gaunt young man
who seemed suddenly to have become
demented. And his envy and hatred of
his talented host blazed anew as Forsythe
gloried in the success of his efforts.
Then he was struck with an idea
and he affected his most ingratiating
manner.

[158]
“It is a marvelous thing, Tom,” he
said, “and is entirely beyond my poor
comprehension. But I can see that it
is all you say and more. Tell me—can
you restore the youth of an aged person
by these means?”

“Positively!” Tom did not catch the
eager note in the old man’s voice. Rather
he took the question as an inquiry
into the further marvels of his process.
“Here,” he continued, enthusiastically,
“I’ll prove that to you also. My dog
Spot is around the place somewhere.
And he is a decrepit old hound, blind,
lame and toothless. You’ve probably
seen him with me.”

He rushed to the stairs and whistled.
There was an answering
yelp from above and the pad of uncertain
paws on the bare wooden steps.
A dejected old beagle blundered into
the room, dragging a crippled hind leg
as he fawned upon his master, who
stretched forth a hand to pat the unsteady
head.

“Guess Spot is old enough for the
test,” laughed Tom, “and I have been
meaning to restore him to his youthful
vigor, anyway. No time like the present.”

He led his trembling pet to the table
of the remarkable tubes and lifted him
to its surface. The poor old beast lay
trustingly where he was placed, quiet,
save for his husky asthmatic breathing.

“Hold him, Crompton,” directed Tom
as he pulled the starting lever of his
apparatus.

And Old Crompton watched in fascinated
anticipation as the ethereal luminosity
bathed the dog’s body in response
to the action of the four rays.
Somewhat vaguely it came to him that
the baggy flesh of his own wrinkled
hands took on a new firmness and color
where they reposed on the animal’s
back. Young Forsythe grinned triumphantly
as Spot’s breathing became
more regular and the rasp gradually
left it. Then the dog whined in pleasure
and wagged his tail with increasing
vigor. Suddenly he raised his head,
perked his ears in astonishment and
looked his master straight in the face
with eyes that saw once more. The low
throat cry rose to a full and joyous
bark. He sprang to his feet from under
the restraining hands and jumped
to the floor in a lithe-muscled leap that
carried him half way across the room.
He capered about with the abandon of
a puppy, making extremely active use
of four sound limbs.

“Why—why, Forsythe,” stammered
the hermit, “it’s absolutely incredible.
Tell me—tell me—what is this remarkable
force?”

His host laughed gleefully. “You
probably wouldn’t understand it
anyway, but I’ll tell you. It is as simple
as the nose on your face. The spark
of life, the vital force, is merely an extremely
complicated electrical manifestation
which I have been able to duplicate
artificially. This spark or force
is all that distinguishes living from inanimate
matter, and in living beings
the force gradually decreases in power
as the years pass, causing loss of health
and strength. The chemical composition
of bones and tissue alters, joints
become stiff, muscles atrophied, and
bones brittle. By recharging, as it
were, with the vital force, the gland
action is intensified, youth and strength
is renewed. By repeating the process
every ten or fifteen years the same degree
of vigor can be maintained indefinitely.
Mankind will become immortal.
That is why I say I am to be master of
the world.”

For the moment Old Crompton forgot
his jealous hatred in the enthusiasm
with which he was imbued. “Tom—Tom,”
he pleaded in his excitement,
“use me as a subject. Renew my youth.
My life has been a sad one and a lonely
one, but I would that I might live it
over. I should make of it a far different
one—something worth while. See,
I am ready.”

He sat on the edge of the gleaming
table and made as if to lie down on its
gleaming surface. But his young host[159]
only stared at him in open amusement.

“What? You?” he sneered, unfeelingly.
“Why, you old fossil! I told
you I would choose my subjects carefully.
They are to be people of standing
and wealth, who can contribute to
the fame and fortune of one Thomas
Forsythe.”

“But Tom, I have money,” Old
Crompton begged. But when he saw
the hard mirth in the younger man’s
eyes, his old animosity flamed anew
and he sprang from his position and
shook a skinny forefinger in Tom’s
face.

“Don’t do that to me, you old fool!”
shouted Tom, “and get out of here.
Think I’d waste current on an old cadger
like you? I guess not! Now get
out. Get out, I say!”

Then the old anchorite saw red.
Something seemed to snap in his soured
old brain. He found himself kicking
and biting and punching at his host,
who backed away from the furious onslaught
in surprise. Then Tom tripped
over a wire and fell to the floor with a
force that rattled the windows, his ferocious
little adversary on top. The
younger man lay still where he had
fallen, a trickle of blood showing at
his temple.

“My God! I’ve killed him!” gasped
the old man.

With trembling fingers he opened
Tom’s shirt and listened for his heartbeats.
Panic-stricken, he rubbed the
young man’s wrists, slapped his cheeks,
and ran for water to dash in his face.
But all efforts to revive him proved
futile, and then, in awful fear, Old
Crompton dashed into the night, the
dog Spot snapping at his heels as he
ran.

Hours later the stooped figure of
a shabby old man might have
been seen stealthily re-entering the
lonely workshop where the lights still
burned brightly. Tom Forsythe lay
rigid in the position in which Old
Crompton had left him, and the dog
growled menacingly.

Averting his gaze and circling wide
of the body, Old Crompton made for
the table of the marvelous rays. In
minute detail he recalled every move
made by Tom in starting and adjusting
the apparatus to produce the incredible
results he had witnessed. Not a
moment was to be wasted now. Already
he had hesitated too long, for
soon would come the dawn and possible
discovery of his crime. But the invention
of his victim would save him from
the long arm of the law, for, with youth
restored, Old Crompton would cease to
exist and a new life would open its
doors to the starved soul of the hermit.
Hermit, indeed! He would begin life
anew, an active man with youthful vigor
and ambition. Under an assumed
name he would travel abroad, would
enjoy life, and would later become a
successful man of affairs. He had
enough money, he told himself. And
the police would never find Old Crompton,
the murderer of Tom Forsythe!
He deposited his small traveling bag
on the floor and fingered the controls
of Tom’s apparatus.

He threw the starting switch confidently
and grinned in satisfaction as
the answering whine of the motor-generator
came to his ears. One by one he
carefully made the adjustments in exactly
the manner followed by the now
silenced discoverer of the process.
Everything operated precisely as it
had during the preceding experiments.
Odd that he should have anticipated
some such necessity! But something
had told him to observe Tom’s movements
carefully, and now he rejoiced
in the fact that his intuition had led
him aright. Painfully he climbed to
the table top and stretched his aching
body in the warm light of the four huge
tubes. His exertions during the struggle
with Tom were beginning to tell
on him. But the soreness and stiffness
of feeble muscles and stubborn joints
would soon be but a memory. His
pulses quickened at the thought and he
breathed deep in a sudden feeling of
unaccustomed well-being.

[160]

The dog growled continuously
from his position at the head of
his master, but did not move to interfere
with the intruder. And Old
Crompton, in the excitement of the momentous
experience, paid him not the
slightest attention.

His body tingled from head to foot
with a not unpleasant sensation that
conveyed the assurance of radical
changes taking place under the influence
of the vital rays. The tingling
sensation increased in intensity until
it seemed that every corpuscle in his
veins danced to the tune of the vibration
from those glowing tubes that
bathed him in an ever-spreading radiance.
Aches and pains vanished from
his body, but he soon experienced a
sharp stab of new pain in his lower jaw.
With an experimental forefinger he
rubbed the gum. He laughed aloud as
the realization came to him that in
those gums where there had been no
teeth for more than twenty years there
was now growing a complete new set.
And the rapidity of the process amazed
him beyond measure. The aching area
spread quickly and was becoming really
uncomfortable. But then—and he
consoled himself with the thought—nothing
is brought into being without
a certain amount of pain. Besides, he
was confident that his discomfort
would soon be over.

He examined his hand, and found
that the joints of two fingers long crippled
with rheumatism now moved freely
and painlessly. The misty brilliance
surrounding his body was paling and
he saw that the flesh was taking on a
faint green fluorescence instead. The
rays had completed their work and
soon the transformation would be fully
effected. He turned on his side and
slipped to the floor with the agility of
a youngster. The dog snarled anew,
but kept steadfastly to his position.

There was a small mirror over
the wash stand at the far end of
the room and Old Crompton made haste
to obtain the first view of his reflected
image. His step was firm and springy,
his bearing confident, and he found
that his long-stooped shoulders
straightened naturally and easily. He
felt that he had taken on at least two
inches in stature, which was indeed the
case. When he reached the mirror he
peered anxiously into its dingy surface
and what he saw there so startled him
that he stepped backward in amazement.
This was not Larry Crompton,
but an entirely new man. The straggly
white hair had given way to soft,
healthy waves of chestnut hue. Gone
were the seams from the leathery countenance
and the eyes looked out clearly
and steadily from under brows as thick
and dark as they had been in his youth.
The reflected features were those of an
entire stranger. They were not even
reminiscent of the Larry Crompton of
fifty years ago, but were the features
of a far more vigorous and prepossessing
individual than he had ever seemed,
even in the best years of his life. The
jaw was firm, the once sunken cheeks
so well filled out that his high cheek
bones were no longer in evidence. It
was the face of a man of not more than
thirty-eight years of age, reflecting exceptional
intelligence and strength of
character.

“What a disguise!” he exclaimed in
delight. And his voice, echoing in the
stillness that followed the switching
off of the apparatus, was deep-throated
and mellow—the voice of a new man.

Now, serenely confident that discovery
was impossible, he picked up his
small but heavy bag and started for the
door. Dawn was breaking and he
wished to put as many miles between
himself and Tom’s laboratory as could
be covered in the next few hours.
But at the door he hesitated. Then,
despite the furious yapping of Spot,
he returned to the table of the rays and,
with deliberate thoroughness smashed
the costly tubes which had brought
about his rehabilitation. With a pinch
bar from a nearby tool rack, he wrecked
the controls and generating mechanisms
beyond recognition. Now he was[161]
absolutely secure! No meddling experts
could possibly discover the secret
of Tom’s invention. All evidence
would show that the young experimenter
had met his death at the hands
of Old Crompton, the despised hermit
of West Laketon. But none would
dream that the handsome man of means
who was henceforth to be known as
George Voight was that same despised
hermit.

He recovered his satchel and left the
scene. With long, rapid strides he
proceeded down the old dirt road toward
the main highway where, instead
of turning east into the village, he
would turn west and walk to Kernsburg,
the neighboring town. There, in
not more than two hours time, his new
life would really begin!

Had you, a visitor, departed from
Laketon when Old Crompton did
and returned twelve years later, you
would have noticed very little difference
in the appearance of the village.
The old town hall and the little park
were the same, the dingy brick building
among the trees being just a little
dingier and its wooden steps more
worn and sagged. The main street
showed evidence of recent repaving,
and, in consequence of the resulting increase
in through automobile traffic;
there were two new gasoline filling stations
in the heart of the town. Down
the road about a half mile there was a
new building, which, upon inquiring
from one of the natives, would be
proudly designated as the new high
school building. Otherwise there were
no changes to be observed.

In his dilapidated chair in the untidy
office he had occupied for nearly thirty
years, sat Asa Culkin, popularly known
as “Judge” Culkin. Justice of the
peace, sheriff, attorney-at-law, and
three times Mayor of Laketon, he was
still a controlling factor in local politics
and government. And many a
knotty legal problem was settled in
that gloomy little office. Many a dispute
in the town council was dependent
for arbitration upon the keen mind and
understanding wit of the old judge.

The four o’clock train had just puffed
its labored way from the station when
a stranger entered his office, a stranger
of uncommonly prosperous air. The
keen blue eyes of the old attorney appraised
him instantly and classified him
as a successful man of business, not yet
forty years of age, and with a weighty
problem on his mind.

“What can I do for you, sir?” he
asked, removing his feet from the battered
desk top.

“You may be able to help me a great
deal, Judge,” was the unexpected reply.
“I came to Laketon to give myself up.”

“Give yourself up?” Culkin rose to
his feet in surprise and unconsciously
straightened his shoulders in the effort
to seem less dwarfed before the tall
stranger. “Why, what do you mean?”
he inquired.

“I wish to give myself up for murder,”
answered the amazing visitor,
slowly and with decision, “for a
murder committed twelve years ago. I
should like you to listen to my story
first, though. It has been kept too
long.”

“But I still do not understand.”
There was puzzlement in the honest old
face of the attorney. He shook his
gray locks in uncertainty. “Why
should you come here? Why come to
me? What possible interest can I have
in the matter?”

“Just this, Judge. You do not recognize
me now, and you will probably
consider my story incredible when you
hear it. But, when I have given you
all the evidence, you will know who I
am and will be compelled to believe.
The murder was committed in Laketon.
That is why I came to you.”

“A murder in Laketon? Twelve
years ago?” Again the aged attorney
shook his head. “But—proceed.”

“Yes. I killed Thomas Forsythe.”

The stranger looked for an expression
of horror in the features of his
listener, but there was none. Instead[162]
the benign countenance took on a look
of deepening amazement, but the smile
wrinkles had somehow vanished and
the old face was grave in its surprised
interest.

“You seem astonished,” continued
the stranger. “Undoubtedly you were
convinced that the murderer was Larry
Crompton—Old Crompton, the hermit.
He disappeared the night of the crime
and has never been heard from since.
Am I correct?”

“Yes. He disappeared all right. But
continue.”

Not by a lift of his eyebrow did Culkin
betray his disbelief, but the stranger
sensed that his story was somehow
not as startling as it should have been.

“You will think me crazy, I presume.
But I am Old Crompton. It was my
hand that felled the unfortunate young
man in his laboratory out there in West
Laketon twelve years ago to-night. It
was his marvelous invention that transformed
the old hermit into the apparently
young man you see before you.
But I swear that I am none other than
Larry Crompton and that I killed
young Forsythe. I am ready to pay
the penalty. I can bear the flagellation
of my own conscience no longer.”

The visitor’s voice had risen to the
point of hysteria. But his listener
remained calm and unmoved.

“Now just let me get this straight,”
he said quietly. “Do I understand that
you claim to be Old Crompton, rejuvenated
in some mysterious manner, and
that you killed Tom Forsythe on that
night twelve years ago? Do I understand
that you wish now to go to trial
for that crime and to pay the penalty?”

“Yes! Yes! And the sooner the better.
I can stand it no longer. I am
the most miserable man in the world!”

“Hm-m—hm-m,” muttered the judge,
“this is strange.” He spoke soothingly
to his visitor. “Do not upset yourself,
I beg of you. I will take care of this
thing for you, never fear. Just take a
seat, Mister—er—”

“You may call me Voight for the
present,” said the stranger, in a more
composed tone of voice, “George
Voight. That is the name I have been
using since the mur—since that fatal
night.”

“Very well, Mr. Voight,” replied the
counsellor with an air of the greatest
solicitude, “please have a seat now,
while I make a telephone call.”

And George Voight slipped into a
stiff-backed chair with a sigh of relief.
For he knew the judge from the old
days and he was now certain that his
case would be disposed of very quickly.

With the telephone receiver pressed
to his ear, Culkin repeated a number.
The stranger listened intently during
the ensuing silence. Then there came
a muffled “hello” sounding in impatient
response to the call.

“Hello, Alton,” spoke the attorney,
“this is Asa speaking. A stranger has
just stepped into my office and he
claims to be Old Crompton. Remember
the hermit across the road from your
son’s old laboratory? Well, this man,
who bears no resemblance whatever to
the old man he claims to be and who
seems to be less than half the age of
Tom’s old neighbor, says that he killed
Tom on that night we remember so
well.”

There were some surprised remarks
from the other end of the
wire, but Voight was unable to catch
them. He was in a cold perspiration
at the thought of meeting his victim’s
father.

“Why, yes, Alton,” continued Culkin,
“I think there is something in this
story, although I cannot believe it all.
But I wish you would accompany us
and visit the laboratory. Will you?”

“Lord, man, not that!” interrupted
the judge’s visitor. “I can hardly bear
to visit the scene of my crime—and in
the company of Alton Forsythe.
Please, not that!”

“Now you just let me take care of
this, young man,” replied the judge,
testily. Then, once more speaking into
the mouthpiece of the telephone, “All[163]
right, Alton. We’ll pick you up at
your office in five minutes.”

He replaced the receiver on its hook
and turned again to his visitor. “Please
be so kind as to do exactly as I request,”
he said. “I want to help you,
but there is more to this thing than
you know and I want you to follow unquestioningly
where I lead and ask no
questions at all for the present. Things
may turn out differently than you expect.”

“All right, Judge.” The visitor resigned
himself to whatever might
transpire under the guidance of the
man he had called upon to turn him
over to the officers of the law.

Seated in the judge’s ancient
motor car, they stopped at the
office of Alton Forsythe a few minutes
later and were joined by that red-faced
and pompous old man. Few words
were spoken during the short run to
the well-remembered location of Tom’s
laboratory, and the man who was
known as George Voight caught at his
own throat with nervous fingers when
they passed the tumbledown remains
of the hut in which Old Crompton had
spent so many years. With a screeching
of well-worn brakes the car stopped
before the laboratory, which was now
almost hidden behind a mass of shrubs
and flowers.

“Easy now, young man,” cautioned
the judge, noting the look of fear
which had clouded his new client’s features.
The three men advanced to the
door through which Old Crompton had
fled on that night of horror, twelve
years before. The elder Forsythe spoke
not a word as he turned the knob and
stepped within. Voight shrank from
entering, but soon mastered his feelings
and followed the other two. The
sight that met his eyes caused him to
cry aloud in awe.

At the dissecting table, which seemed
to be exactly as he had seen it last but
with replicas of the tubes he had destroyed
once more in place, stood Tom
Forsythe! Considerably older and
with hair prematurely gray, he was still
the young man Old Crompton thought
he had killed. Tom Forsythe was not
dead after all! And all of his years
of misery had gone for nothing. He
advanced slowly to the side of the wondering
young man, Alton Forsythe and
Asa Culkin watching silently from just
inside the door.

“Tom—Tom,” spoke the stranger,
“you are alive? You were not dead
when I left you on that terrible night
when I smashed your precious tubes?
Oh—it is too good to be true! I can
scarcely believe my eyes!”

He stretched forth trembling fingers
to touch the body of the
young man to assure himself that it
was not all a dream.

“Why,” said Tom Forsythe, in astonishment.
“I do not know you, sir.
Never saw you in my life. What do
you mean by your talk of smashing my
tubes, of leaving me for dead?”

“Mean?” The stranger’s voice rose
now; he was growing excited. “Why,
Tom, I am Old Crompton. Remember
the struggle, here in this very room?
You refused to rejuvenate an unhappy
old man with your marvelous apparatus,
a temporarily insane old man—Crompton.
I was that old man and I
fought with you. You fell, striking
your head. There was blood. You
were unconscious. Yes, for many hours
I was sure you were dead and that I
had murdered you. But I had watched
your manipulations of the apparatus
and I subjected myself to the action of
the rays. My youth was miraculously
restored. I became as you see me now.
Detection was impossible, for I looked
no more like Old Crompton than you
do. I smashed your machinery to avoid
suspicion. Then I escaped. And, for
twelve years, I have thought myself a
murderer. I have suffered the tortures
of the damned!”

Tom Forsythe advanced on this remarkable
visitor with clenched fists.
Staring him in the eyes with cold appraisal,
his wrath was all too apparent.[164]
The dog Spot, young as ever, entered
the room and, upon observing the stranger,
set up an ominous growling and
snarling. At least the dog recognized
him!

“What are you trying to do, catechise
me? Are you another of these
alienists my father has been bringing
around?” The young inventor was furious.
“If you are,” he continued, “you
can get out of here—now! I’ll have
no more of this meddling with my affairs.
I’m as sane as any of you and I
refuse to submit to this continual persecution.”

The elder Forsythe grunted, and
Culkin laid a restraining hand on his
arm. “Just a minute now, Tom,” he
said soothingly. “This stranger is no
alienist. He has a story to tell. Please
permit him to finish.”

Somewhat mollified, Tom Forsythe
shrugged his assent.

“Tom,” continued the stranger, more
calmly now, “what I have said is the
truth. I shall prove it to you. I’ll tell
you things no mortals on earth could
know but we two. Remember the day
I captured the big rooster for you—the
monster you had created? Remember
the night you awakened me and
brought me here in the moonlight? Remember
the rabbit whose leg you amputated
and re-grew? The poor guinea
pig you had suffocated and whose life
you restored? Spot here? Don’t you
remember rejuvenating him? I was
here. And you refused to use your
process on me, old man that I was.
Then is when I went mad and attacked
you. Do you believe me, Tom?”

Then a strange thing happened.
While Tom Forsythe gazed in growing
belief, the stranger’s shoulders sagged
and he trembled as with the ague. The
two older men who had kept in the
background gasped their astonishment
as his hair faded to a sickly gray, then
became as white as the driven snow.
Old Crompton was reverting to his
previous state! Within five minutes,
instead of the handsome young stranger,
there stood before them a bent,
withered old man—Old Crompton beyond
a doubt. The effects of Tom’s
process were spent.

“Well I’m damned!” ejaculated Alton
Forsythe. “You have been right
all along, Asa. And I am mighty glad
I did not commit Tom as I intended.
He has told us the truth all these years
and we were not wise enough to see it.”

“We!” exclaimed the judge. “You,
Alton Forsythe! I have always upheld
him. You have done your son a
grave injustice and you owe him your
apologies if ever a father owed his son
anything.”

“You are right, Asa.” And, his aristocratic
pride forgotten, Alton Forsythe
rushed to the side of his son and
embraced him.

The judge turned to Old Crompton
pityingly. “Rather a bad ending for
you, Crompton,” he said. “Still, it is
better by far than being branded as a
murderer.”

“Better? Better?” croaked Old
Crompton. “It is wonderful, Judge. I
have never been so happy in my life!”

The face of the old man beamed,
though scalding tears coursed
down the withered and seamed cheeks.
The two Forsythes looked up from
their demonstrations of peacemaking
to listen to the amazing words of the
old hermit.

“Yes, happy for the first time in my
life,” he continued. “I am one hundred
years of age, gentlemen, and I now look
it and feel it. That is as it should be.
And my experience has taught me a
final lasting lesson. None of you know
it, but, when I was but a very young
man I was bitterly disappointed in love.
Ha! ha! Never think it to look at me
now, would you? But I was, and it
ruined my entire life. I had a little
money—inherited—and I traveled
about in the world for a few years, then
settled in that old hut across the road
where I buried myself for sixty years,
becoming crabbed and sour and despicable.
Young Tom here was the[165]
first bright spot and, though I admired
him, I hated him for his opportunities,
hated him for that which he had that
I had not. With the promise of his invention
I thought I saw happiness, a
new life for myself. I got what I wanted,
though not in the way I had expected.
And I want to tell you gentlemen
that there is nothing in it. With developments
of modern science you may
be able to restore a man’s youthful vigor
of body, but you can’t cure his mind
with electricity. Though I had a
youthful body, my brain was the brain
of an old man—memories were there
which could not be suppressed. Even
had I not had the fancied death of
young Tom on my conscience I should
still have been miserable. I worked.
God, how I worked—to forget! But I
could not forget. I was successful in
business and made a lot of money.
I am more independent—probably
wealthier than you, Alton Forsythe, but
that did not bring happiness. I longed
to be myself once more, to have the
aches and pains which had been taken
from me. It is natural to age and to
die. Immortality would make of us
a people of restless misery. We would
quarrel and bicker and long for death,
which would not come to relieve us.
Now it is over for me and I am glad—glad—glad!”

He paused for breath, looking beseechingly
at Tom Forsythe.
“Tom,” he said, “I suppose you have
nothing for me in your heart but
hatred. And I don’t blame you. But I
wish—I wish you would try and forgive
me. Can you?”

The years had brought increased understanding
and tolerance to young
Tom. He stared at Old Crompton and
the long-nursed anger over the destruction
of his equipment melted into a
strange mixture of pity and admiration
for the courageous old fellow.

“Why, I guess I can, Crompton,” he
replied. “There was many a day when
I struggled hopelessly to reconstruct
my apparatus, cursing you with every
bit of energy in my make-up. I could
cheerfully have throttled you, had you
been within reach. For twelve years
I have labored incessantly to reproduce
the results we obtained on the night of
which you speak. People called me insane—even
my father wished to have
me committed to an asylum. And, until
now, I have been unsuccessful. Only
to-day has it seemed for the first time
that the experiments will again succeed.
But my ideas have changed with
regard to the uses of the process. I
was a cocksure young pup in the old
days, with foolish dreams of fame and
influence. But I have seen the error of
my ways. Your experience, too, convinces
me that immortality may not be
as desirable as I thought. But there
are great possibilities in the way of relieving
the sufferings of mankind and
in making this a better world in which
to live. With your advice and help I
believe I can do great things. I now
forgive you freely and I ask you to remain
here with me to assist in the work
that is to come. What do you say to
the idea?”

At the reverent thankfulness in the
pale eyes of the broken old man who
had so recently been a perfect specimen
of vigorous youth, Alton Forsythe blew
his nose noisily. The little judge
smiled benevolently and shook his head
as if to say, “I told you so.” Tom and
Old Crompton gripped hands—mightily.

COMING, NEXT MONTH
BRIGANDS OF THE MOON
By RAY CUMMINGS

[166]

Spawn of the Stars

By Charles Willard Diffin

The sky was alive with winged shapes,
and high in the air shone the glittering
menace, trailing five plumes of gas.

When Cyrus R. Thurston
bought himself a single-motored
Stoughton job he
was looking for new thrills.
Flying around the east coast had lost
its zest: he wanted
to join that
jaunty group who
spoke so easily of
hopping off for
Los Angeles.

The Earth lay powerless beneath those
loathsome, yellowish monsters that,
sheathed in cometlike globes, sprang from
the skies to annihilate man and reduce
his cities to ashes.

And what Cyrus
Thurston
wanted he usually obtained. But if
that young millionaire-sportsman had
been told that on his first flight this
blocky, bulletlike ship was to pitch him
headlong into the exact center of the
wildest, strangest war this earth had
ever seen—well, it is still probable that
the Stoughton
company would
not have lost the
sale.

They were
roaring through
the starlit, calm
night, three thousand
feet above a sage sprinkled desert,
when the trip ended. Slim Riley had[167]
the stick when the first blast of hot oil
ripped slashingly across the pilot’s
window. “There goes your old trip!”
he yelled. “Why don’t they try putting
engines in these ships?”

He jammed over the throttle and,
with motor idling, swept down toward
the endless miles of moonlit waste.
Wind? They had been boring into it.
Through the opened window he
spotted a likely stretch of ground.
Setting down the ship on a nice piece
of Arizona desert was a mere detail for
Slim.

[168]
“Let off a flare,” he ordered, “when
I give the word.”

The white glare of it faded the
stars as he sideslipped, then
straightened out on his hand-picked
field. The plane rolled down a clear
space and stopped. The bright glare
persisted while he stared curiously
from the quiet cabin. Cutting the motor
he opened both windows, then
grabbed Thurston by the shoulder.

“‘Tis a curious thing, that,” he said
unsteadily. His hand pointed straight
ahead. The flare died, but the bright
stars of the desert country still shone
on a glistening, shining bulb.

It was some two hundred feet away.
The lower part was lost in shadow, but
its upper surfaces shone rounded and
silvery like a giant bubble. It towered
in the air, scores of feet above the
chaparral beside it. There was a
round spot of black on its side, which
looked absurdly like a door….

“I saw something moving,” said
Thurston slowly. “On the ground I
saw…. Oh, good Lord, Slim, it isn’t
real!”

Slim Riley made no reply. His eyes
were riveted to an undulating, ghastly
something that oozed and crawled
in the pale light not far from the bulb.
His hand was reaching, reaching….
It found what he sought; he leaned toward
the window. In his hand was the
Very pistol for discharging the flares.
He aimed forward and up.

The second flare hung close before
it settled on the sandy floor. Its blinding
whiteness made the more loathsome
the sickening yellow of the flabby
flowing thing that writhed frantically
in the glare. It was formless, shapeless,
a heaving mound of nauseous matter.
Yet even in its agonized writhing
distortions they sensed the beating pulsations
that marked it a living thing.

There were unending ripplings
crossing and recrossing through the
convolutions. To Thurston there was
suddenly a sickening likeness: the
thing was a brain from a gigantic skull—it
was naked—was suffering….

The thing poured itself across the
sand. Before the staring gaze of
the speechless men an excrescence appeared—a
thick bulb on the mass—that
protruded itself into a tentacle. At the
end there grew instantly a hooked
hand. It reached for the black opening
in the great shell, found it, and the
whole loathsome shapelessness poured
itself up and through the hole.

Only at the last was it still. In the
dark opening the last slippery mass held
quiet for endless seconds. It formed,
as they watched, to a head—frightful—menacing.
Eyes appeared in the head;
eyes flat and round and black save for
a cross slit in each; eyes that stared
horribly and unchangingly into theirs.
Below them a gaping mouth opened
and closed…. The head melted—was
gone….

And with its going came a rushing
roar of sound.

From under the metallic mass
shrieked a vaporous cloud. It drove at
them, a swirling blast of snow and
sand. Some buried memory of gas
attacks woke Riley from his stupor. He
slammed shut the windows an instant
before the cloud struck, but not before
they had seen, in the moonlight, a
gleaming, gigantic, elongated bulb rise
swiftly—screamingly—into the upper
air.

The blast tore at their plane. And
the cold in their tight compartment
was like the cold of outer space. The
men stared, speechless, panting. Their
breath froze in that frigid room into
steam clouds.

“It—it….” Thurston gasped—and
slumped helpless upon the floor.

It was an hour before they dared
open the door of their cabin. An
hour of biting, numbing cold. Zero—on
a warm summer night on the desert!
Snow in the hurricane that had struck
them!

“‘Twas the blast from the thing,”
guessed the pilot; “though never did[169]
I see an engine with an exhaust like
that.” He was pounding himself with
his arms to force up the chilled circulation.

“But the beast—the—the thing!” exclaimed
Thurston. “It’s monstrous;
indecent! It thought—no question of
that—but no body! Horrible! Just a
raw, naked, thinking protoplasm!”

It was here that he flung open the
door. They sniffed cautiously of the
air. It was warm again—clean—save
for a hint of some nauseous odor. They
walked forward; Riley carried a flash.

The odor grew to a stench as they
came where the great mass had lain.
On the ground was a fleshy mound.
There were bones showing, and horns
on a skull. Riley held the light close
to show the body of a steer. A body
of raw bleeding meat. Half of it had
been absorbed….

“The damned thing,” said Riley, and
paused vainly for adequate words. “The
damned thing was eating…. Like a
jelly-fish, it was!”

“Exactly,” Thurston agreed. He
pointed about. There were other heaps
scattered among the low sage.

“Smothered,” guessed Thurston,
“with that frozen exhaust. Then the
filthy thing landed and came out to
eat.”

“Hold the light for me,” the pilot
commanded. “I’m goin’ to fix that
busted oil line. And I’m goin’ to do
it right now. Maybe the creature’s still
hungry.”

They sat in their room. About
them was the luxury of a modern
hotel. Cyrus Thurston stared vacantly
at the breakfast he was forgetting to
eat. He wiped his hands mechanically
on a snowy napkin. He looked from
the window. There were palm trees
in the park, and autos in a ceaseless
stream. And people! Sane, sober
people, living in a sane world. Newsboys
were shouting; the life of the city
was flowing.

“Riley!” Thurston turned to the man
across the table. His voice was curiously
toneless, and his face haggard.
“Riley, I haven’t slept for three nights.
Neither have you. We’ve got to get
this thing straight. We didn’t both
become absolute maniacs at the same
instant, but—it was not there, it was
never there—not that….” He was
lost in unpleasant recollections. “There
are other records of hallucinations.”

“Hallucinations—hell!” said Slim
Riley. He was looking at a Los Angeles
newspaper. He passed one hand
wearily across his eyes, but his face
was happier than it had been in days.

“We didn’t imagine it, we aren’t
crazy—it’s real! Would you read that
now!” He passed the paper across to
Thurston. The headlines were startling.

“Pilot Killed by Mysterious Airship.
Silvery Bubble Hangs Over New York.
Downs Army Plane in Burst of Flame.
Vanishes at Terrific Speed.”

“It’s our little friend,” said Thurston.
And on his face, too, the lines
were vanishing; to find this horror a
reality was positive relief. “Here’s the
same cloud of vapor—drifted slowly
across the city, the accounts says, blowing
this stuff like steam from underneath.
Airplanes investigated—an army
plane drove into the vapor—terrific explosion—plane
down in flames—others
wrecked. The machine ascended with
meteor speed, trailing blue flame.
Come on, boy, where’s that old bus?
Thought I never wanted to fly a plane
again. Now I don’t want to do anything
but.”

“Where to?” Slim inquired.

“Headquarters,” Thurston told him.
“Washington—let’s go!”

From Los Angeles to Washington
is not far, as the plane flies. There
was a stop or two for gasoline, but it
was only a day later that they were
seated in the War Office. Thurston’s
card had gained immediate admittance.
“Got the low-down,” he had written on
the back of his card, “on the mystery
airship.”

“What you have told me is incred[170]ible,”
the Secretary was saying, “or
would be if General Lozier here had
not reported personally on the occurrence
at New York. But the monster,
the thing you have described…. Cy,
if I didn’t know you as I do I would
have you locked up.”

“It’s true,” said Thurston, simply.
“It’s damnable, but it’s true. Now what
does it mean?”

“Heaven knows,” was the response.
“That’s where it came from—out of
the heavens.”

“Not what we saw,” Slim Riley broke
in. “That thing came straight out of
Hell.” And in his voice was no suggestion
of levity.

“You left Los Angeles early yesterday;
have you seen the papers?”

Thurston shook his head.

“They are back,” said the Secretary.
“Reported over London—Paris—the
West Coast. Even China has seen
them. Shanghai cabled an hour ago.”

“Them? How many are there?”

“Nobody knows. There were five
seen at one time. There are more—unless
the same ones go around the
world in a matter of minutes.”

Thurston remembered that
whirlwind of vapor and a vanishing
speck in the Arizona sky. “They
could,” he asserted. “They’re faster
than anything on earth. Though what
drives them … that gas—steam—whatever
it is….”

“Hydrogen,” stated General Lozier.
“I saw the New York show when poor
Davis got his. He flew into the exhaust;
it went off like a million bombs.
Characteristic hydrogen flame trailed
the damn thing up out of sight—a tail
of blue fire.”

“And cold,” stated Thurston.

“Hot as a Bunsen burner,” the General
contradicted. “Davis’ plane almost
melted.”

“Before it ignited,” said the other.
He told of the cold in their plane.

“Ha!” The General spoke explosively.
“That’s expansion. That’s a tip on
their motive power. Expansion of gas.
That accounts for the cold and the
vapor. Suddenly expanded it would be
intensely cold. The moisture of the
air would condense, freeze. But how
could they carry it? Or”—he frowned
for a moment, brows drawn over deep-set
gray eyes—”or generate it? But
that’s crazy—that’s impossible!”

“So is the whole matter,” the Secretary
reminded him. “With the information
Mr. Thurston and Mr. Riley
have given us, the whole affair is beyond
any gage our past experience
might supply. We start from the impossible,
and we go—where? What is
to be done?”

“With your permission, sir, a number
of things shall be done. It would
be interesting to see what a squadron
of planes might accomplish, diving on
them from above. Or anti-aircraft
fire.”

“No,” said the Secretary of War,
“not yet. They have looked us
over, but they have not attacked. For
the present we do not know what they
are. All of us have our suspicions—thoughts
of interplanetary travel—thoughts
too wild for serious utterance—but
we know nothing.

“Say nothing to the papers of what
you have told me,” he directed Thurston.
“Lord knows their surmises are
wild enough now. And for you, General,
in the event of any hostile move,
you will resist.”

“Your order was anticipated, sir.”
The General permitted himself a slight
smile. “The air force is ready.”

“Of course,” the Secretary of War
nodded. “Meet me here to-night—nine
o’clock.” He included Thurston and
Riley in the command. “We need to
think … to think … and perhaps their
mission is friendly.”

“Friendly!” The two flyers exchanged
glances as they went to the
door. And each knew what the other
was seeing—a viscous ocherous mass
that formed into a head where eyes
devilish in their hate stared coldly into
theirs….

[171]
“Think, we need to think,” repeated
Thurston later. “A creature that is just
one big hideous brain, that can think
an arm into existence—think a head
where it wishes! What does a thing
like that think of? What beastly
thoughts could that—that thing conceive?”

“If I got the sights of a Lewis gun
on it,” said Riley vindictively, “I’d
make it think.”

“And my guess is that is all you
would accomplish,” Thurston told him.
“I am forming a few theories about our
visitors. One is that it would be quite
impossible to find a vital spot in that
big homogeneous mass.”

The pilot dispensed with theories:
his was a more literal mind. “Where
on earth did they come from, do you
suppose, Mr. Thurston?”

They were walking to their hotel.
Thurston raised his eyes to the
summer heavens. Faint stars were
beginning to twinkle; there was one
that glowed steadily.

“Nowhere on earth,” Thurston stated
softly, “nowhere on earth.”

“Maybe so,” said the pilot, “maybe
so. We’ve thought about it and talked
about it … and they’ve gone ahead and
done it.” He called to a newsboy; they
took the latest editions to their room.

The papers were ablaze with speculation.
There were dispatches from all
corners of the earth, interviews with
scientists and near scientists. The machines
were a Soviet invention—they
were beyond anything human—they
were harmless—they would wipe out
civilization—poison gas—blasts of fire
like that which had enveloped the army
flyer….

And through it all Thurston read an
ill-concealed fear, a reflection of panic
that was gripping the nation—the
whole world. These great machines
were sinister. Wherever they appeared
came the sense of being
watched, of a menace being calmly
withheld. And at thought of the obscene
monsters inside those spheres,
Thurston’s lips were compressed and
his eyes hardened. He threw the papers
aside.

“They are here,” he said, “and that’s
all that we know. I hope the Secretary
of War gets some good men together.
And I hope someone is inspired with
an answer.”

“An answer is it?” said Riley. “I’m
thinkin’ that the answer will come, but
not from these swivel-chair fighters.
‘Tis the boys in the cockpits with one
hand on the stick and one on the guns
that will have the answer.”

But Thurston shook his head. “Their
speed,” he said, “and the gas! Remember
that cold. How much of it can they
lay over a city?”

The question was unanswered, unless
the quick ringing of the phone was
a reply.

“War Department,” said a voice.
“Hold the wire.” The voice of the Secretary
of War came on immediately.

“Thurston?” he asked. “Come over
at once on the jump, old man. Hell’s
popping.”

The windows of the War Department
Building were all alight
as they approached. Cars were coming
and going; men in uniform, as the
Secretary had said, “on the jump.”
Soldiers with bayonets stopped them,
then passed Thurston and his companion
on. Bells were ringing from all
sides. But in the Secretary’s office
was perfect quiet.

General Lozier was there, Thurston
saw, and an imposing array of gold-braided
men with a sprinkling of those
in civilian clothes. One he recognized:
MacGregor from the Bureau of Standards.
The Secretary handed Thurston
some papers.

“Radio,” he explained. “They are
over the Pacific coast. Hit near Vancouver;
Associated Press says city destroyed.
They are working down the
coast. Same story—blast of hydrogen
from their funnel shaped base. Colder
than Greenland below them; snow fell
in Seattle. No real attack since Van[172]couver
and little damage done—” A
message was laid before him.

“Portland,” he said. “Five mystery
ships over city. Dart repeatedly toward
earth, deliver blast of gas and then
retreat. Doing no damage. Apparently
inviting attack. All commercial planes
ordered grounded. Awaiting instructions.

“Gentlemen,” said the Secretary, “I
believe I speak for all present when I
say that, in the absence of first hand
information, we are utterly unable to
arrive at any definite conclusion or
make a definite plan. There is a menace
in this, undeniably. Mr. Thurston
and Mr. Riley have been good enough
to report to me. They have seen one
machine at close range. It was occupied
by a monster so incredible that the
report would receive no attention from
me did I not know Mr. Thurston personally.

“Where have they come from? What
does it mean—what is their mission?
Only God knows.

“Gentlemen, I feel that I must see
them. I want General Lozier to accompany
me, also Doctor MacGregor, to
advise me from the scientific angle. I
am going to the Pacific Coast. They
may not wait—that is true—but they
appear to be going slowly south. I will
leave to-night for San Diego. I hope
to intercept them. We have strong
air-forces there; the Navy Department
is cooperating.”

He waited for no comment. “General,”
he ordered, “will you kindly
arrange for a plane? Take an escort
or not as you think best.

“Mr. Thurston and Mr. Riley will
also accompany us. We want all the
authoritative data we can get. This on
my return will be placed before you,
gentlemen, for your consideration.”
He rose from his chair. “I hope they
wait for us,” he said.

Time was when a commander called
loudly for a horse, but in this day a
Secretary of War is not kept waiting
for transportation. Sirening motorcycles
preceded them from the city.
Within an hour, motors roaring wide
open, propellers ripping into the summer
night, lights slipping eastward
three thousand feet below, the Secretary
of War for the United States was
on his way. And on either side from
their plane stretched the arms of a V.
Like a flight of gigantic wild geese,
fast fighting planes of the Army air
service bored steadily into the night,
guarantors of safe convoy.

“The Air Service is ready,” General
Lozier had said. And Thurston and
his pilot knew that from East coast to
West, swift scout planes, whose idling
engines could roar into action at a moment’s
notice, stood waiting; battle
planes hidden in hangars would roll
forth at the word—the Navy was cooperating—and
at San Diego there
were strong naval units, Army units,
and Marine Corps.

“They don’t know what we can do,
what we have up our sleeve: they are
feeling us out,” said the Secretary.
They had stopped more than once for
gas and for wireless reports. He held
a sheaf of typewritten briefs.

“Going slowly south. They have
taken their time. Hours over San
Francisco and the bay district. Repeating
same tactics; fall with terrific
speed to cushion against their blast of
gas. Trying to draw us out, provoke
an attack, make us show our strength.
Well, we shall beat them to San Diego
at this rate. We’ll be there in a few
hours.”

The afternoon sun was dropping
ahead of them when they sighted
the water. “Eckener Pass,” the pilot
told them, “where the Graf Zeppelin
came through. Wonder what these
birds would think of a Zepp!

“There’s the ocean,” he added after
a time. San Diego glistened against
the bare hills. “There’s North Island—the
Army field.” He stared intently
ahead, then shouted: “And there they
are! Look there!”

Over the city a cluster of meteors[173]
was falling. Dark underneath, their
tops shone like pure silver in the sun’s
slanting glare. They fell toward the
city, then buried themselves in a dense
cloud of steam, rebounding at once to
the upper air, vapor trailing behind
them.

The cloud billowed slowly. It
struck the hills of the city, then lifted
and vanished.

“Land at once,” requested the Secretary.
A flash of silver countermanded
the order.

It hung there before them, a great
gleaming globe, keeping always its distance
ahead. It was elongated at the
base, Thurston observed. From that
base shot the familiar blast that turned
steamy a hundred feet below as it
chilled the warm air. There were round
orifices, like ports, ranged around the
top, where an occasional jet of vapor
showed this to be a method of control.
Other spots shone dark and glassy.
Were they windows? He hardly realized
their peril, so interested was he
in the strange machine ahead.

Then: “Dodge that vapor,” ordered
General Lozier. The plane
wavered in signal to the others and
swung sharply to the left. Each man
knew the flaming death that was theirs
if the fire of their exhaust touched that
explosive mixture of hydrogen and air.
The great bubble turned with them and
paralleled their course.

“He’s watching us,” said Riley, “giving
us the once over, the slimy devil.
Ain’t there a gun on this ship?”

The General addressed his superior.
Even above the roar of the motors his
voice seemed quiet, assured. “We must
not land now,” he said. “We can’t land
at North Island. It would focus their
attention upon our defenses. That
thing—whatever it is—is looking for a
vulnerable spot. We must…. Hold
on—there he goes!”

The big bulb shot upward. It slanted
above them, and hovered there.

“I think he is about to attack,” said
the General quietly. And, to the commander
of their squadron: “It’s in your
hands now, Captain. It’s your fight.”

The Captain nodded and squinted
above. “He’s got to throw heavier stuff
than that,” he remarked. A small object
was falling from the cloud. It
passed close to their ship.

“Half-pint size,” said Cyrus Thurston,
and laughed in derision. There
was something ludicrous in the futility
of the attack. He stuck his head from
a window into the gale they created.
He sheltered his eyes to try to follow
the missile in its fall.

They were over the city. The
criss-cross of streets made a grill-work
of lines; tall buildings were
dwarfed from this three thousand foot
altitude. The sun slanted across a
projecting promontory to make golden
ripples on a blue sea and the city
sparkled back in the clear air. Tiny
white faces were massed in the streets,
huddled in clusters where the futile
black missile had vanished.

And then—then the city was
gone….

A white cloud-bank billowed and
mushroomed. Slowly, it seemed to the
watcher—so slowly.

It was done in the fraction of a second.
Yet in that brief time his eyes
registered the chaotic sweep in advance
of the cloud. There came a
crashing of buildings in some monster
whirlwind, a white cloud engulfing it
all…. It was rising—was on them.

“God,” thought Thurston, “why can’t
I move!” The plane lifted and lurched.
A thunder of sound crashed against
them, an intolerable force. They were
crushed to the floor as the plane was
hurled over and upward.

Out of the mad whirling tangle of
flying bodies, Thurston glimpsed one
clear picture. The face of the pilot
hung battered and blood-covered before
him, and over the limp body the hand
of Slim Riley clutched at the switch.

“Bully boy,” he said dazedly, “he’s
cutting the motors….” The thought
ended in blackness.

[174]
There was no sound of engines or
beating propellers when he came to
his senses. Something lay heavy upon
him. He pushed it to one side. It was
the body of General Lozier.

He drew himself to his knees to
look slowly about, rubbed stupidly
at his eyes to quiet the whirl, then
stared at the blood on his hand. It
was so quiet—the motors—what was it
that happened? Slim had reached for
the switch….

The whirling subsided. Before him
he saw Slim Riley at the controls. He
got to his feet and went unsteadily forward.
It was a battered face that was
lifted to his.

“She was spinning,” the puffed lips
were muttering slowly. “I brought her
out … there’s the field….” His voice
was thick; he formed the words slowly,
painfully. “Got to land … can
you take it? I’m—I’m—” He slumped
limply in his seat.

Thurston’s arms were uninjured. He
dragged the pilot to the floor and got
back of the wheel. The field was below
them. There were planes taxiing
out; he heard the roar of their motors.
He tried the controls. The plane answered
stiffly, but he managed to level
off as the brown field approached.

Thurston never remembered that
landing. He was trying to drag Riley
from the battered plane when the first
man got to him.

“Secretary of War?” he gasped. “In
there…. Take Riley; I can walk.”

“We’ll get them,” an officer assured
him. “Knew you were coming. They
sure gave you hell! But look at the
city!”

Arms carried him stumbling from the
field. Above the low hangars he saw
smoke clouds over the bay. These and
red rolling flames marked what had
been an American city. Far in the
heavens moved five glinting specks.

His head reeled with the thunder of
engines. There were planes standing
in lines and more erupting from
hangars, where khaki-clad men, faces
tense under leather helmets, rushed
swiftly about.

“General Lozier is dead,” said a
voice. Thurston turned to the man.
They were bringing the others. “The
rest are smashed up some,” the officer
told him, “but I think they’ll pull
through.”

The Secretary of War for the
United States lay beside him. Men
with red on their sleeves were slitting
his coat. Through one good eye he
squinted at Thurston. He even managed
a smile.

“Well, I wanted to see them up
close,” he said. “They say you saved
us, old man.”

Thurston waved that aside. “Thank
Riley—” he began, but the words ended
in the roar of an exhaust. A plane
darted swiftly away to shoot vertically
a hundred feet in the air. Another followed
and another. In a cloud of brown
dust they streamed endlessly out,
zooming up like angry hornets, eager
to get into the fight.

“Fast little devils!” the ambulance
man observed. “Here come the big
boys.”

A leviathan went deafeningly past.
And again others came on in quick succession.
Farther up the field, silvery
gray planes with rudders flaunting
their red, white and blue rose circling
to the heights.

“That’s the Navy,” was the explanation.
The surgeon straightened the
Secretary’s arm. “See them come off
the big airplane carriers!”

If his remarks were part of his professional
training in removing a patient’s
thoughts from his pain, they
were effective. The Secretary stared
out to sea, where two great flat-decked
craft were shooting planes with the
regularity of a rapid fire gun. They
stood out sharply against a bank of
gray fog. Cyrus Thurston forgot his
bruised body, forgot his own peril—even
the inferno that raged back across
the bay: he was lost in the sheer thrill
of the spectacle.

[175]

Above them the sky was alive
with winged shapes. And from
all the disorder there was order appearing.
Squadron after squadron swept
to battle formation. Like flights of
wild ducks the true sharp-pointed Vs
soared off into the sky. Far above and
beyond, rows of dots marked the race
of swift scouts for the upper levels.
And high in the clear air shone the
glittering menace trailing their five
plumes of gas.

A deeper detonation was merging
into the uproar. It came from the
ships, Thurston knew, where anti-aircraft
guns poured a rain of shells into
the sky. About the invaders they
bloomed into clusters of smoke balls.
The globes shot a thousand feet into
the air. Again the shells found them,
and again they retreated.

“Look!” said Thurston. “They got
one!”

He groaned as a long curving arc of
speed showed that the big bulb was under
control. Over the ships it paused,
to balance and swing, then shot to the
zenith as one of the great boats exploded
in a cloud of vapor.

The following blast swept the airdrome.
Planes yet on the ground went
like dry autumn leaves. The hangars
were flattened.

Thurston cowered in awe. They were
sheltered, he saw, by a slope of the
ground. No ridicule now for the
bombs!

A second blast marked when the gas-cloud
ignited. The billowing flames
were blue. They writhed in tortured
convulsions through the air. Endless
explosions merged into one rumbling
roar.

MacGregor had roused from his stupor;
he raised to a sitting position.

“Hydrogen,” he stated positively,
and pointed where great volumes of
flame were sent whirling aloft. “It
burns as it mixes with air.” The scientist
was studying intently the mammoth
reaction. “But the volume,” he
marveled, “the volume! From that
small container! Impossible!”

“Impossible,” the Secretary agreed,
“but….” He pointed with his one good
arm toward the Pacific. Two great
ships of steel, blackened and battered
in that fiery breath, tossed helplessly
upon the pitching, heaving sea. They
furnished to the scientist’s exclamation
the only adequate reply.

Each man stared aghast into the pallid
faces of his companions. “I think
we have underestimated the opposition,”
said the Secretary of War quietly.
“Look—the fog is coming in, but
it’s too late to save them.”

The big ships were vanishing in the
oncoming fog. Whirls of vapor
were eddying toward them in the flame-blaster
air. Above them the watchers
saw dimly the five gleaming bulbs.
There were airplanes attacking: the
tapping of machine-gun fire came to
them faintly.

Fast planes circled and swooped toward
the enemy. An armada of big
planes drove in from beyond. Formations
were blocking space above….
Every branch of the service was there,
Thurston exulted, the army, Marine
Corps, the Navy. He gripped hard at
the dry ground in a paralysis of taut
nerves. The battle was on, and in the
balance hung the fate of the world.

The fog drove in fast. Through
straining eyes he tried in vain to
glimpse the drama spread above. The
world grew dark and gray. He buried
his face in his hands.

And again came the thunder. The
men on the ground forced their gaze
to the clouds, though they knew some
fresh horror awaited.

The fog-clouds reflected the blue terror
above. They were riven and torn.
And through them black objects were
falling. Some blazed as they fell.
They slipped into unthought maneuvers—they
darted to earth trailing yellow
and black of gasoline fires. The
air was filled with the dread rain of
death that was spewed from the gray
clouds. Gone was the roaring of motors.
The air-force of the San Diego[176]
area swept in silence to the earth,
whose impact alone could give kindly
concealment to their flame-stricken
burden.

Thurston’s last control snapped. He
flung himself flat to bury his face in
the sheltering earth.

Only the driving necessity of work
to be done saved the sanity of the
survivors. The commercial broadcasting
stations were demolished, a part of
the fuel for the terrible furnace across
the bay. But the Naval radio station
was beyond on an outlying hill. The
Secretary of War was in charge. An
hour’s work and this was again in commission
to flash to the world the story
of disaster. It told the world also of
what lay ahead. The writing was
plain. No prophet was needed to forecast
the doom and destruction that
awaited the earth.

Civilization was helpless. What of
armies and cannon, of navies, of aircraft,
when from some unreachable
height these monsters within their
bulbous machines could drop coldly—methodically—their
diminutive bombs.
And when each bomb meant shattering
destruction; each explosion blasting all
within a radius of miles; each followed
by the blue blast of fire that melted the
twisted framework of buildings and
powdered the stones to make of a proud
city a desolation of wreckage, black
and silent beneath the cold stars.
There was no crumb of comfort for the
world in the terror the radio told.

Slim Riley was lying on an improvised
cot when Thurston and the representative
of the Bureau of Standards
joined him. Four walls of a room still
gave shelter in a half-wrecked building.
There were candles burning: the
dark was unbearable.

“Sit down,” said MacGregor quietly;
“we must think….”

“Think!” Thurston’s voice had an
hysterical note. “I can’t think! I
mustn’t think! I’ll go raving crazy….”

“Yes, think,” said the scientist. “Had
it occurred to you that that is our only
weapon left?

“We must think, we must analyze.
Have these devils a vulnerable spot?
Is there any known means of attack?
We do not know. We must learn.
Here in this room we have all the direct
information the world possesses of
this menace. I have seen their machines
in operation. You have seen
more—you have looked at the monsters
themselves. At one of them, anyway.”

The man’s voice was quiet, methodical.
Mr. MacGregor was attacking
a problem. Problems called for
concentration; not hysterics. He could
have poured the contents from a beaker
without spilling a drop. His poise was
needed: they were soon to make a laboratory
experiment.

The door burst open to admit a wild-eyed
figure that snatched up their candles
and dashed them to the floor.

“Lights out!” he screamed at them.
“There’s one of ’em coming back.” He
was gone from the room.

The men sprang for the door, then
turned to where Riley was clumsily
crawling from his couch. An arm under
each of his, and the three men
stumbled from the room.

They looked about them in the night.
The fog-banks were high, drifting in
from the ocean. Beneath them the air
was clear; from somewhere above a hidden
moon forced a pale light through
the clouds. And over the ocean, close
to the water, drifted a familiar shape.
Familiar in its huge sleek roundness,
in its funnel-shaped base where a soft
roar made vaporous clouds upon the
water. Familiar, too, in the wild dread
it inspired.

The watchers were spellbound. To
Thurston there came a fury of impotent
frenzy. It was so near! His
hands trembled to tear at that door,
to rip at that foul mass he knew was
within…. The great bulb drifted
past. It was nearing the shore. But
its action! Its motion!

Gone was the swift certainty of con[177]trol.
The thing settled and sank, to
rise weakly with a fresh blast of gas
from its exhaust. It settled again, and
passed waveringly on in the night.

Thurston was throbbingly alive
with hope that was certainty. “It’s
been hit,” he exulted; “it’s been hit.
Quick! After it, follow it!” He
dashed for a car. There were some
that had been salvaged from the less
ruined buildings. He swung it quickly
around where the others were waiting.

“Get a gun,” he commanded. “Hey,
you,”—to an officer who appeared—”your
pistol, man, quick! We’re going
after it!” He caught the tossed
gun and hurried the others into the
car.

“Wait,” MacGregor commanded.
“Would you hunt elephants with a pop-gun?
Or these things?”

“Yes,” the other told him, “or my
bare hands! Are you coming, or aren’t
you?”

The physicist was unmoved. “The
creature you saw—you said that it
writhed in a bright light—you said it
seemed almost in agony. There’s an
idea there! Yes, I’m going with you,
but keep your shirt on, and think.”

He turned again to the officer. “We
need lights,” he explained, “bright
lights. What is there? Magnesium?
Lights of any kind?”

“Wait.” The man rushed off into
the dark.

He was back in a moment to thrust
a pistol into the car. “Flares,” he explained.
“Here’s a flashlight, if you
need it.” The car tore at the ground
as Thurston opened it wide. He drove
recklessly toward the highway that followed
the shore.

The high fog had thinned to a mist.
A full moon was breaking through to
touch with silver the white breakers
hissing on the sand. It spread its full
glory on dunes and sea: one more of
the countless soft nights where peace
and calm beauty told of an ageless existence
that made naught of the red
havoc of men or of monsters. It shone
on the ceaseless surf that had beaten
these shores before there were men,
that would thunder there still when
men were no more. But to the tense
crouching men in the car it shone only
ahead on a distant, glittering speck. A
wavering reflection marked the uncertain
flight of the stricken enemy.

Thurston drove like a maniac;
the road carried them straight toward
their quarry. What could he do
when he overtook it? He neither knew
nor cared. There was only the blind
fury forcing him on within reach of
the thing. He cursed as the lights of
the car showed a bend in the road. It
was leaving the shore.

He slackened their speed to drive
cautiously into the sand. It dragged
at the car, but he fought through to
the beach, where he hoped for firm
footing. The tide was out. They tore
madly along the smooth sand, breakers
clutching at the flying wheels.

The strange aircraft was nearer; it
was plainly over the shore, they saw.
Thurston groaned as it shot high in the
air in an effort to clear the cliffs ahead.
But the heights were no longer a refuge.
Again it settled. It struck on
the cliff to rebound in a last futile leap.
The great pear shape tilted, then shot
end over end to crash hard on the firm
sand. The lights of the car struck the
wreck, and they saw the shell roll over
once. A ragged break was opening—the
spherical top fell slowly to one
side. It was still rocking as they
brought the car to a stop. Filling the
lower shell, they saw dimly, was a
mucouslike mass that seethed and
struggled in the brilliance of their
lights.

MacGregor was persisting in his theory.
“Keep the lights on it!” he
shouted. “It can’t stand the light.”

While they watched, the hideous,
bubbling beast oozed over the side of
the broken shell to shelter itself in
the shadow beneath. And again Thurston
sensed the pulse and throb of life
in the monstrous mass.

[178]

He saw again in his rage the
streaming rain of black airplanes;
saw, too, the bodies, blackened
and charred as they saw them when
first they tried rescue from the crashed
ships; the smoke clouds and flames
from the blasted city, where people—his
people, men and women and little
children—had met terrible death. He
sprang from the car. Yet he faltered
with a revulsion that was almost a
nausea. His gun was gripped in his
hand as he ran toward the monster.

“Come back!” shouted MacGregor.
“Come back! Have you gone mad?”
He was jerking at the door of the car.

Beyond the white funnel of their
lights a yellow thing was moving. It
twisted and flowed with incredible
speed a hundred feet back to the base
of the cliff. It drew itself together in
a quivering heap.

An out-thrusting rock threw a sheltering
shadow; the moon was low in
the west. In the blackness a phosphorescence
was apparent. It rippled and
rose in the dark with the pulsing beat
of the jellylike mass. And through it
were showing two discs. Gray at first,
they formed to black, staring eyes.

Thurston had followed. His gun was
raised as he neared it. Then out of
the mass shot a serpentine arm. It
whipped about him, soft, sticky, viscid—utterly
loathsome. He screamed once
when it clung to his face, then tore
savagely and in silence at the encircling
folds.

The gun! He ripped a blinding
mass from his face and emptied
the automatic in a stream of shots
straight toward the eyes. And he
knew as he fired that the effort was
useless; to have shot at the milky surf
would have been as vain.

The thing was pulling him irresistibly;
he sank to his knees; it dragged
him over the sand. He clutched at a
rock. A vision was before him: the
carcass of a steer, half absorbed and
still bleeding on the sand of an Arizona
desert….

To be drawn to the smothering embrace
of that glutinous mass … for
that monstrous appetite…. He tore
afresh at the unyielding folds, then
knew MacGregor was beside him.

In the man’s hand was a flashlight.
The scientist risked his life on a guess.
He thrust the powerful light into the
clinging serpent. It was like the touch
of hot iron to human flesh. The arm
struggled and flailed in a paroxysm of
pain.

Thurston was free. He lay gasping
on the sand. But MacGregor!…
He looked up to see him vanish in the
clinging ooze. Another thick tentacle
had been projected from the main mass
to sweep like a whip about the man.
It hissed as it whirled about him in
the still air.

The flashlight was gone; Thurston’s
hand touched it in the sand. He sprang
to his feet and pressed the switch. No
light responded; the flashlight was out—broken.

A thick arm slashed and wrapped
about him…. It beat him to the
ground. The sand was moving beneath
him; he was being dragged swiftly,
helplessly, toward what waited in the
shadow. He was smothering…. A
blinding glare filled his eyes….

The flares were still burning when
he dared look about. MacGregor
was pulling frantically at his arm.
“Quick—quick!” he was shouting.
Thurston scrambled to his feet.

One glimpse he caught of a heaving
yellow mass in the white light; it
twisted in horrible convulsions. They
ran stumblingly—drunkenly—toward
the car.

Riley was half out of the machine.
He had tried to drag himself to their
assistance. “I couldn’t make it,” he
said: “then I thought of the flares.”

“Thank Heaven,” said MacGregor
with emphasis, “it was your legs that
were paralyzed, Riley, not your brain.”

Thurston found his voice. “Let me
have that Very pistol. If light hurts
that damn thing, I am going to put a[179]
blaze of magnesium into the middle
of it if I die for it.”

“They’re all gone,” said Riley.

“Then let’s get out of here. I’ve had
enough. We can come back later on.”

He got back of the wheel and
slammed the door of the sedan. The
moonlight was gone. The darkness
was velvet just tinged with the gray
that precedes the dawn. Back in the
deeper blackness at the cliff-base a
phosphorescent something wavered and
glowed. The light rippled and flowed
in all directions over the mass.
Thurston felt, vaguely, its mystery—the
bulk was a vast, naked brain; its
quiverings were like visible thought
waves….

The phosphorescence grew brighter.
The thing was approaching.
Thurston let in his clutch, but the scientist
checked him.

“Wait,” he implored, “wait! I
wouldn’t miss this for the world.” He
waved toward the east, where far distant
ranges were etched in palest rose.

“We know less than nothing of these
creatures, in what part of the universe
they are spawned, how they live, where
they live—Saturn!—Mars!—the Moon!
But—we shall soon know how one
dies!”

The thing was coming from the cliff.
In the dim grayness it seemed less
yellow, less fluid. A membrane enclosed
it. It was close to the car. Was
it hunger that drove it, or cold rage
for these puny opponents? The hollow
eyes were glaring; a thick arm formed
quickly to dart out toward the car. A
cloud, high above, caught the color of
approaching day….

Before their eyes the vile mass
pulsed visibly; it quivered and beat.
Then, sensing its danger, it darted like
some headless serpent for its machine.

It massed itself about the shattered
top to heave convulsively. The top was
lifted, carried toward the rest of the
great metal egg. The sun’s first rays
made golden arrows through the distant
peaks.

The struggling mass released its burden
to stretch its vile length toward
the dark caves under the cliffs. The
last sheltering fog-veil parted. The
thing was halfway to the high bank
when the first bright shaft of direct
sunlight shot through.

Incredible in the concealment of
night, the vast protoplasmic pod was
doubly so in the glare of day. But it
was there before them, not a hundred
feet distant. And it boiled in vast tortured
convulsions. The clean sunshine
struck it, and the mass heaved itself
into the air in a nauseous eruption,
then fell limply to the earth.

The yellow membrane turned
paler. Once more the staring
black eyes formed to turn hopelessly
toward the sheltering globe. Then the
bulk flattened out on the sand. It was
a jellylike mound, through which trembled
endless quivering palpitations.

The sun struck hot, and before the
eyes of the watching, speechless men
was a sickening, horrible sight—a
festering mass of corruption.

The sickening yellow was liquid. It
seethed and bubbled with liberated
gases; it decomposed to purplish fluid
streams. A breath of wind blew in
their direction. The stench from the
hideous pool was overpowering, unbearable.
Their heads swam in the evil
breath…. Thurston ripped the gears
into reverse, nor stopped until they
were far away on the clean sand.

The tide was coming in when they
returned. Gone was the vile putrescence.
The waves were lapping at the
base of the gleaming machine.

“We’ll have to work fast,” said MacGregor.
“I must know, I must learn.”
He drew himself up and into the shattered
shell.

It was of metal, some forty feet
across, its framework a maze of latticed
struts. The central part was
clear. Here in a wide, shallow pan the
monster had rested. Below this was
tubing, intricate coils, massive, heavy
and strong. MacGregor lowered him[180]self
upon it, Thurston was beside him.
They went down into the dim bowels
of the deadly instrument.

“Hydrogen,” the physicist was stating.
“Hydrogen—there’s our starting
point. A generator, obviously, forming
the gas—from what? They couldn’t
compress it! They couldn’t carry it
or make it, not the volume that they
evolved. But they did it, they did it!”

Close to the coils a dim light was
glowing. It was a pin-point of
radiance in the half-darkness about
them. The two men bent closer.

“See,” directed MacGregor, “it
strikes on this mirror—bright metal
and parabolic. It disperses the light,
doesn’t concentrate it! Ah! Here is
another, and another. This one is bent—broken.
They are adjustable. Hm!
Micrometer accuracy for reducing the
light. The last one could reflect
through this slot. It’s light that does
it, Thurston, it’s light that does it!”

“Does what?” Thurston had followed
the other’s analysis of the diffusion
process. “The light that would
finally reach that slot would be hardly
perceptible.”

“It’s the agent,” said MacGregor,
“the activator—the catalyst! What
does it strike upon? I must know—I
must!”

The waves were splashing outside
the shell. Thurston turned in a feverish
search of the unexplored depths.
There was a surprising simplicity, an
absence of complicated mechanism.
The generator, with its tremendous
braces to carry its thrust to the framework
itself, filled most of the space.
Some of the ribs were thicker, he noticed.
Solid metal, as if they might
carry great weights. Resting upon
them were ranged numbers of objects.
They were like eggs, slender, and
inches in length. On some were propellers.
They worked through the
shells on long slender rods. Each was
threaded finely—an adjustable arm engaged
the thread. Thurston called excitedly
to the other.

“Here they are,” he said. “Look!
Here are the shells. Here’s what blew
us up!”

He pointed to the slim shafts with
their little propellerlike fans.
“Adjustable, see? Unwind in their
fall … set ’em for any length of travel
… fires the charge in the air. That’s
how they wiped out our air fleet.”

There were others without the propellers;
they had fins to hold them nose
downward. On each nose was a small
rounded cap.

“Detonators of some sort,” said MacGregor.
“We’ve got to have one. We
must get it out quick; the tide’s coming
in.” He laid his hands upon one of
the slim, egg-shaped things. He lifted,
then strained mightily. But the object
did not rise; it only rolled sluggishly.

The scientist stared at it amazed.
“Specific gravity,” he exclaimed, “beyond
anything known! There’s nothing
on earth … there is no such substance
… no form of matter….” His
eyes were incredulous.

“Lots to learn,” Thurston answered
grimly. “We’ve yet to learn how to
fight off the other four.”

The other nodded. “Here’s the
secret,” he said. “These shells liberate
the same gas that drives the machine.
Solve one and we solve both—then we
learn how to combat it. But how to remove
it—that is the problem. You and
I can never lift this out of here.”

His glance darted about. There was
a small door in the metal beam. The
groove in which the shells were placed
led to it; it was a port for launching
the projectiles. He moved it, opened
it. A dash of spray struck him in the
face. He glanced inquiringly at his
companion.

“Dare we do it?” he asked. “Slide
one of them out?”

Each man looked long into the eyes
of the other. Was this, then, the end
of their terrible night? One shell to
be dropped—then a bursting volcano
to blast them to eternity….

“The boys in the planes risked it,”[181]
said Thurston quietly. “They got
theirs.” He stopped for a broken fragment
of steel. “Try one with a fan on;
it hasn’t a detonator.”

The men pried at the slim thing. It
slid slowly toward the open port. One
heave and it balanced on the edge, then
vanished abruptly. The spray was cold
on their faces. They breathed heavily
with the realization that they still
lived.

There were days of horror that
followed, horror tempered by a
numbing paralysis of all emotions.
There were bodies by thousands to be
heaped in the pit where San Diego had
stood, to be buried beneath countless
tons of debris and dirt. Trains brought
an army of helpers; airplanes came
with doctors and nurses and the beginning
of a mountain of supplies. The
need was there; it must be met. Yet
the whole world was waiting while it
helped, waiting for the next blow to
fall.

Telegraph service was improvised,
and radio receivers rushed in. The
news of the world was theirs once
more. And it told of a terrified, waiting
world. There would be no temporizing
now on the part of the invaders.
They had seen the airplanes
swarming from the ground—they
would know an airdrome next time
from the air. Thurston had noted the
windows in the great shell, windows
of dull-colored glass which would protect
the darkness of the interior, essential
to life for the horrible occupant,
but through which it could see.
It could watch all directions at once.

The great shell had vanished from
the shore. Pounding waves and
the shifting sands of high tide had obliterated
all trace. More than once had
Thurston uttered devout thanks for the
chance shell from an anti-aircraft gun
that had entered the funnel beneath the
machine, had bent and twisted the arrangement
of mirrors that he and MacGregor
had seen, and, exploding, had
cracked and broken the domed roof of
the bulb. They had learned little, but
MacGregor was up north within reach
of Los Angeles laboratories. And he
had with him the slim cylinder of
death. He was studying, thinking.

Telephone service had been established
for official business. The whole
nation-wide system, for that matter,
was under military control. The Secretary
of War had flown back to Washington.
The whole world was on a war
basis. War! And none knew where
they should defend themselves, nor
how.

An orderly rushed Thurston to the
telephone. “You are wanted at once;
Los Angeles calling.”

The voice of MacGregor was cool
and unhurried as Thurston listened.
“Grab a plane, old man,” he was saying,
“and come up here on the jump.”

The phrase brought a grim smile to
Thurston’s tired lips. “Hell’s popping!”
the Secretary of War had added
on that evening those long ages before.
Did MacGregor have something? Was
a different kind of hell preparing to
pop? The thoughts flashed through the
listener’s mind.

“I need a good deputy,” MacGregor
said. “You may be the whole works—may
have to carry on—but I’ll tell you
it all later. Meet me at the Biltmore.”

“In less than two hours,” Thurston
assured him.

A plane was at his disposal.
Riley’s legs were functioning
again, after a fashion. They kept the
appointment with minutes to spare.

“Come on,” said MacGregor, “I’ll
talk to you in the car.” The automobile
whirled them out of the city to
race off upon a winding highway that
climbed into far hills. There was
twenty miles of this; MacGregor had
time for his talk.

“They’ve struck,” he told the two
men. “They were over Germany yesterday.
The news was kept quiet: I
got the last report a half-hour ago.
They pretty well wiped out Berlin. No[182]
air-force there. France and England
sent a swarm of planes, from the reports.
Poor devils! No need to tell
you what they got. We’ve seen it first
hand. They headed west over the Atlantic,
the four machines. Gave England
a burst or two from high up,
paused over New York, then went on.
But they’re here somewhere, we think.
Now listen:

“How long was it from the time when
you saw the first monster until we
heard from them again?”

Thurston forced his mind back
to those days that seemed so far
in the past. He tried to remember.

“Four days,” broke in Riley. “It was
the fourth day after we found the devil
feeding.”

“Feeding!” interrupted the scientist.
“That’s the point I am making. Four
days. Remember that!

“And we knew they were down in
the Argentine five days ago—that’s another
item kept from an hysterical
public. They slaughtered some thousands
of cattle; there were scores of
them found where the devils—I’ll borrow
Riley’s word—where the devils
had fed. Nothing left but hide and
bones.

“And—mark this—that was four days
before they appeared over Berlin.

“Why? Don’t ask me. Do they have
to lie quiet for that period miles up
there in space? God knows. Perhaps!
These things seem outside the knowledge
of a deity. But enough of that!
Remember: four days! Let us assume
that there is this four days waiting
period. It will help us to time them.
I’ll come back to that later.

“Here is what I have been doing.
We know that light is a means of attack.
I believe that the detonators we
saw on those bombs merely opened a
seal in the shell and forced in a flash
of some sort. I believe that radiant
energy is what fires the blast.

“What is it that explodes? Nobody
knows. We have opened the shell,
working in the absolute blackness of a
room a hundred feet underground. We
found in it a powder—two powders, to
be exact.

“They are mixed. One is finely divided,
the other rather granular. Their
specific gravity is enormous, beyond
anything known to physical science
unless it would be the hypothetical
neutron masses we think are in certain
stars. But this is not matter as we
know matter; it is something new.

“Our theory is this: the hydrogen
atom has been split, resolved
into components, not of electrons and
the proton centers, but held at some
halfway point of decomposition. Matter
composed only of neutrons would
be heavy beyond belief. This fits the
theory in that respect. But the point is
this: When these solids are formed—they
are dense—they represent in a
cubic centimeter possibly a cubic mile
of hydrogen gas under normal pressure.
That’s a guess, but it will give
you the idea.

“Not compressed, you understand,
but all the elements present in other
than elemental form for the reconstruction
of the atom … for a million billions
of atoms.

“Then the light strikes it. These
dense solids become instantly a gas—miles
of it held in that small space.

“There you have it: the gas, the explosion,
the entire absence of heat—which
is to say, its terrific cold—when
it expands.”

Slim Riley was looking bewildered
but game. “Sure, I saw it snow,” he
affirmed, “so I guess the rest must be
O.K. But what are we going to do
about it? You say light kills ’em, and
fires their bombs. But how can we let
light into those big steel shells, or the
little ones either?”

“Not through those thick walls,” said
MacGregor. “Not light. One of our
anti-aircraft shells made a direct hit.
That might not happen again in a million
shots. But there are other forms
of radiant energy that do penetrate
steel….”

[183]

The car had stopped beside a
grove of eucalyptus. A barren,
sun-baked hillside stretched beyond.
MacGregor motioned them to alight.

Riley was afire with optimism. “And
do you believe it?” he asked eagerly.
“Do you believe that we’ve got ’em
licked?”

Thurston, too, looked into MacGregor’s
face: Riley was not the only
one who needed encouragement. But
the gray eyes were suddenly tired and
hopeless.

“You ask what I believe,” said the
scientist slowly. “I believe we are witnessing
the end of the world, our
world of humans, their struggles, their
grave hopes and happiness and aspirations….”

He was not looking at them. His
gaze was far off in space.

“Men will struggle and fight with
their puny weapons, but these monsters
will win, and they will have their
way with us. Then more of them will
come. The world, I believe, is
doomed….”

He straightened his shoulders. “But
we can die fighting,” he added, and
pointed over the hill.

“Over there,” he said, “in the valley
beyond, is a charge of their explosive
and a little apparatus of mine. I intend
to fire the charge from a distance
of three hundred yards. I expect to be
safe, perfectly safe. But accidents
happen.

“In Washington a plane is being prepared.
I have given instructions
through hours of phoning. They are
working night and day. It will contain
a huge generator for producing
my ray. Nothing new! Just the product
of our knowledge of radiant energy
up to date. But the man who flies that
plane will die—horribly. No time to
experiment with protection. The rays
will destroy him, though he may live a
month.

“I am asking you,” he told Cyrus
Thurston, “to handle that plane. You
may be of service to the world—you
may find you are utterly powerless.
You surely will die. But you know
the machines and the monsters; your
knowledge may be of value in an attack.”
He waited. The silence lasted
for only a moment.

“Why, sure,” said Cyrus Thurston.

He looked at the eucalyptus grove
with earnest appraisal. The sun
made lovely shadows among their
stripped trunks: the world was a beautiful
place. A lingering death, MacGregor
had intimated—and horrible….
“Why, sure,” he repeated steadily.

Slim Riley shoved him firmly aside
to stand facing MacGregor.

“Sure, hell!” he said. “I’m your man,
Mr. MacGregor.

“What do you know about flying?”
he asked Cyrus Thurston. “You’re
good—for a beginner. But men like
you two have got brains, and I’m thinkin’
the world will be needin’ them.
Now me, all I’m good for is holdin’ a
shtick”—his brogue had returned to
his speech, and was evidence of his
earnestness.

“And, besides”—the smile faded
from his lips, and his voice was suddenly
soft—”them boys we saw take
their last flip was just pilots to you,
just a bunch of good fighters. Well,
they’re buddies of mine. I fought beside
some of them in France…. I belong!”

He grinned happily at Thurston.
“Besides,” he said, “what do you know
about dog-fights?”

MacGregor gripped him by the hand.
“You win,” he said. “Report to Washington.
The Secretary of War has all
the dope.”

He turned to Thurston. “Now for
you! Get this! The enemy
machines almost attacked New York.
One of them came low, then went back,
and the four flashed out of sight toward
the west. It is my belief that
New York is next, but the devils are
hungry. The beast that attacked us
was ravenous, remember. They need
food and lots of it. You will hear of[184]
their feeding, and you can count on
four days. Keep Riley informed—that’s
your job.

“Now I’m going over the hill. If
this experiment works, there’s a chance
we can repeat it on a larger scale. No
certainty, but a chance! I’ll be back.
Full instructions at the hotel in
case….” He vanished into the scrub
growth.

“Not exactly encouraging,” Thurston
pondered, “but he’s a good man, Mac,
a good egg! Not as big a brain as the
one we saw, but perhaps it’s a better
one—cleaner—and it’s working!”

They were sheltered under the brow
of the hill, but the blast from the valley
beyond rocked them like an earthquake.
They rushed to the top of the
knoll. MacGregor was standing in the
valley; he waved them a greeting and
shouted something unintelligible.

The gas had mushroomed into a
cloud of steamy vapor. From above
came snowflakes to whirl in the churning
mass, then fall to the ground. A
wind came howling about them to beat
upon the cloud. It swirled slowly back
and down the valley. The figure of
MacGregor vanished in its smothering
embrace.

“Exit, MacGregor!” said Cyrus
Thurston softly. He held tight to the
struggling figure of Slim Riley.

“He couldn’t live a minute in that
atmosphere of hydrogen,” he explained.
“They can—the devils!—but
not a good egg like Mac. It’s our job
now—yours and mine.”

Slowly the gas retreated, lifted to
permit their passage down the slope.

MacGregor was a good
prophet. Thurston admitted that
when, four days later, he stood on the
roof of the Equitable Building in
lower New York.

The monsters had fed as predicted.
Out in Wyoming a desolate area
marked the place of their meal, where
a great herd of cattle lay smothered
and frozen. There were ranch houses,
too, in the circle of destruction, their
occupants frozen stiff as the carcasses
that dotted the plains. The country
had stood tense for the following blow.
Only Thurston had lived in certainty
of a few days reprieve. And now had
come the fourth day.

In Washington was Riley. Thurston
had been in touch with him frequently.

“Sure, it’s a crazy machine,” the pilot
had told him, “and ’tis not much I
think of it at all. Neither bullets nor
guns, just this big glass contraption
and speed. She’s fast, man, she’s fast
… but it’s little hope I have.” And
Thurston, remembering the scientist’s
words, was heartless and sick with
dreadful certainty.

There were aircraft ready near New
York; it was generally felt that here
was the next objective. The enemy
had looked it over carefully. And
Washington, too, was guarded. The
nation’s capital must receive what little
help the aircraft could afford.

There were other cities waiting for
destruction. If not this time—later!
The horror hung over them all.

The fourth day! And Thurston
was suddenly certain of the fate
of New York. He hurried to a telephone.
Of the Secretary of War he
implored assistance.

“Send your planes,” he begged.
“Here’s where we will get it next.
Send Riley. Let’s make a last stand—win
or lose.”

“I’ll give you a squadron,” was the
concession. “What difference whether
they die there or here…?” The voice
was that of a weary man, weary and
sleepless and hopeless.

“Good-by Cy, old man!” The click
of the receiver sounded in Thurston’s
ear. He returned to the roof for his
vigil.

To wait, to stride nervously back
and forth in impotent expectancy. He
could leave, go out into open country,
but what were a few days or months—or
a year—with this horror upon them?
It was the end. MacGregor was right.
“Good old Mac!”

[185]
There were airplanes roaring overhead.
It meant…. Thurston abruptly
was cold; a chill gripped at his heart.

The paroxysm passed. He was
doubled with laughter—or was it he
who was laughing? He was suddenly
buoyantly carefree. Who was he that
it mattered? Cyrus Thurston—an ant!
And their ant-hill was about to be
snuffed out….

He walked over to a waiting group
and clapped one man on the shoulder.
“Well, how does it feel to be an ant?”
he inquired and laughed loudly at the
jest. “You and your millions of dollars,
your acres of factories, your
steamships, railroads!”

The man looked at him strangely and
edged cautiously away. His eyes, like
those of the others, had a dazed,
stricken look. A woman was sobbing
softly as she clung to her husband.
From the streets far below came a quavering
shrillness of sound.

The planes gathered in climbing
circles. Far on the horizon were four
tiny glinting specks….

Thurston stared until his eyes
were stinging. He was walking in
a waking sleep as he made his way to
the stone coping beyond which was
the street far below. He was dead—dead!—right
this minute. What were
a few minutes more or less? He could
climb over the coping; none of the
huddled, fear-gripped group would
stop him. He could step out into space
and fool them, the devils. They could
never kill him….

What was it MacGregor had said?
Good egg, MacGregor! “But we can
die fighting….” Yes, that was it—die
fighting. But he couldn’t fight; he
could only wait. Well, what were the
others doing, down there in the streets—in
their homes? He could wait with
them, die with them….

He straightened slowly and drew one
long breath. He looked steadily and
unafraid at the advancing specks.
They were larger now. He could see
their round forms. The planes were
less noisy: they were far up in the
heights—climbing—climbing.

The bulbs came slantingly down.
They were separating. Thurston wondered
vaguely.

What had they done in Berlin? Yes,
he remembered. Placed themselves at
the four corners of a great square and
wiped out the whole city in one explosion.
Four bombs dropped at the same
instant while they shot up to safety in
the thin air. How did they communicate?
Thought transference, most
likely. Telepathy between those great
brains, one to another. A plane was
falling. It curved and swooped in a
trail of flame, then fell straight toward
the earth. They were fighting….

Thurston stared above. There
were clusters of planes diving
down from on high. Machine-guns
stuttered faintly. “Machine-guns—toys!
Brave, that was it! ‘We can die
fighting.'” His thoughts were far off;
it was like listening to another’s mind.

The air was filled with swelling
clouds. He saw them before the blast
struck where he stood. The great
building shuddered at the impact.
There were things falling from the
clouds, wrecks of planes, blazing and
shattered. Still came others; he saw
them faintly through the clouds. They
came in from the West; they had gone
far to gain altitude. They drove down
from the heights—the enemy had drifted—they
were over the bay.

More clouds, and another blast thundering
at the city. There were specks,
Thurston saw, falling into the water.

Again the invaders came down from
the heights where they had escaped
their own shattering attack. There was
the faint roar of motors behind, from
the south. The squadron from Washington
passed overhead.

They surely had seen the fate that
awaited. And they drove on to the attack,
to strike at an enemy that shot
instantly into the sky leaving crashing
destruction about the torn dead.

“Now!” said Cyrus Thurston aloud.

[186]

The big bulbs were back. They
floated easily in the air, a plume of
vapor billowing beneath. They were
ranging to the four corners of a great
square.

One plane only was left, coming in
from the south, a lone straggler, late
for the fray. One plane! Thurston’s
shoulders sagged heavily. All they had
left! It went swiftly overhead….
It was fast—fast. Thurston suddenly
knew. It was Riley in that plane.

“Go back, you fool!”—he was screaming
at the top of his voice—”Back—back—you
poor, damned, decent Irishman!”

Tears were streaming down his face.
“His buddies,” Riley had said. And
this was Riley, driving swiftly in,
alone, to avenge them….

He saw dimly as the swift plane sped
over the first bulb, on and over the second.
The soft roar of gas from the
machines drowned the sound of his engine.
The plane passed them in silence
to bank sharply toward the third
corner of the forming square.

He was looking them over, Thurston
thought. And the damn beasts disregarded
so contemptible an opponent.
He could still leave. “For God’s sake,
Riley, beat it—escape!”

Thurston’s mind was solely on the
fate of the lone voyager—until the impossible
was borne in upon him.

The square was disrupted. Three
great bulbs were now drifting. The
wind was carrying them out toward the
bay. They were coming down in a
long, smooth descent. The plane shot
like a winged rocket at the fourth
great, shining ball. To the watcher,
aghast with sudden hope, it seemed
barely to crawl.

“The ray! The ray….” Thurston
saw as if straining eyes had pierced
through the distance to see the invisible.
He saw from below the swift plane,
the streaming, intangible ray. That
was why Riley had flown closely past
and above them—the ray poured from
below. His throat was choking him,
strangling….

The last enemy took alarm. Had it
seen the slow sinking of its companions,
failed to hear them in reply
to his mental call? The shining pear
shape shot violently upward; the attacking
plane rolled to a vertical bank
as it missed the threatening clouds of
exhaust. “What do you know about
dog-fights?” And Riley had grinned
… Riley belonged!

The bulb swelled before Thurston’s
eyes in its swift descent. It canted to
one side to head off the struggling
plane that could never escape, did not
try to escape. The steady wings held
true upon their straight course. From
above came the silver meteor; it seemed
striking at the very plane itself. It was
almost upon it before it belched forth
the cushioning blast of gas.

Through the forming clouds a plane
bored in swiftly. It rolled slowly, was
flying upside down. It was under the
enemy! Its ray…. Thurston was
thrown a score of feet away to crash
helpless into the stone coping by the
thunderous crash of the explosion.

There were fragments falling from a
dense cloud—fragments of curved and
silvery metal … the wing of a plane
danced and fluttered in the air….

“He fired its bombs,” whispered
Thurston in a shaking voice. “He
killed the other devils where they lay—he
destroyed this with its own explosive.
He flew upside down to shoot up
with the ray, to set off its shells….”

His mind was fumbling with the miracle
of it. “Clever pilot, Riley, in a
dog-fight….” And then he realized.

Cyrus Thurston, millionaire sportsman,
sank slowly, numbly to the roof
of the Equitable Building that still
stood. And New York was still there
… and the whole world….

He sobbed weakly, brokenly.
Through his dazed brain flashed a sudden,
mind-saving thought. He laughed
foolishly through his sobs.

“And you said he’d die horribly, Mac,
a horrible death.” His head dropped
upon his arms, unconscious—and safe—with
the rest of humanity.

[187]

The Corpse on the Grating

By Hugh B. Cave

It was a corpse, standing before me like some propped-up thing
from the grave.

It was ten o’clock on the morning
of December 5 when M. S. and I
left the study of Professor
Daimler. You are perhaps acquainted
with M. S. His name appears
constantly in the pages of the Illustrated
News, in conjunction with some
very technical article
on psycho-analysis
or with
some extensive
study of the human
brain and its
functions. He is
a psycho-fanatic, more or less, and
has spent an entire lifetime of some
seventy-odd years in pulling apart
human skulls for the purpose of investigation.
Lovely pursuit!

In the gloomy depths of the old warehouse
Dale saw a thing that drew a
scream of horror to his dry lips. It was
a corpse—the mold of decay on its long-dead
features—and yet it was alive!

For some twenty years I have
mocked him, in a friendly, half-hearted
fashion. I am a medical man, and my
own profession is one that does not
sympathize with radicals.

As for Professor Daimler, the third
member of our triangle—perhaps, if I
take a moment to outline the events of
that evening, the Professor’s part in
what follows will
be less obscure.
We had called on
him, M. S. and I,
at his urgent request.
His rooms
were in a narrow,
unlighted street just off the square,
and Daimler himself opened the door
to us. A tall, loosely built chap he
was, standing in the doorway like a
motionless ape, arms half extended.

“I’ve summoned you, gentlemen,” he
said quietly, “because you two, of all[188]
London, are the only persons who
know the nature of my recent experiments.
I should like to acquaint you
with the results!”

He led the way to his study, then
kicked the door shut with his foot,
seizing my arm as he did so. Quietly
he dragged me to the table that stood
against the farther wall. In the same
even, unemotional tone of a man completely
sure of himself, he commanded
me to inspect it.

For a moment, in the semi-gloom of
the room, I saw nothing. At length,
however, the contents of the table revealed
themselves, and I distinguished
a motley collection of test tubes, each
filled with some fluid. The tubes were
attached to each other by some ingenious
arrangement of thistles, and
at the end of the table, where a chance
blow could not brush it aside, lay a
tiny phial of the resulting serum.
From the appearance of the table,
Daimler had evidently drawn a certain
amount of gas from each of the
smaller tubes, distilling them through
acid into the minute phial at the end.
Yet even now, as I stared down at the
fantastic paraphernalia before me, I
could sense no conclusive reason for
its existence.

I turned to the Professor with a
quiet stare of bewilderment. He
smiled.

“The experiment is over,” he said.
“As to its conclusion, you, Dale, as a
medical man, will be sceptical. And
you”—turning to M. S.—”as a scientist
you will be amazed. I, being neither
physician nor scientist, am merely
filled with wonder!”

He stepped to a long, square table-like
structure in the center of
the room. Standing over it, he glanced
quizzically at M. S., then at me.

“For a period of two weeks,” he
went on, “I have kept, on the table
here, the body of a man who has been
dead more than a month. I have tried,
gentlemen, with acid combinations of
my own origination, to bring that body
back to life. And … I have—failed!

“But,” he added quickly, noting the
smile that crept across my face, “that
failure was in itself worth more than
the average scientist’s greatest achievement!
You know, Dale, that heat, if
a man is not truly dead, will sometimes
resurrect him. In a case of epilepsy,
for instance, victims have been
pronounced dead only to return to life—sometimes
in the grave.

“I say ‘if a man be not truly dead.’
But what if that man is truly dead?
Does the cure alter itself in any manner?
The motor of your car dies—do
you bury it? You do not; you locate
the faulty part, correct it, and infuse
new life. And so, gentlemen,
after remedying the ruptured heart of
this dead man, by operation, I proceeded
to bring him back to life.

“I used heat. Terrific heat will
sometimes originate a spark of new life
in something long dead. Gentlemen,
on the fourth day of my tests, following
a continued application of electric
and acid heat, the patient—”

Daimler leaned over the table and
took up a cigarette. Lighting it, he
dropped the match and resumed his
monologue.

“The patient turned suddenly over
and drew his arm weakly across his
eyes. I rushed to his side. When I
reached him, the body was once again
stiff and lifeless. And—it has remained
so.”

The Professor stared at us quietly,
waiting for comment. I answered
him, as carelessly as I could, with a
shrug of my shoulders.

“Professor, have you ever played
with the dead body of a frog?” I said
softly.

He shook his head silently.

“You would find it interesting
sport,” I told him. “Take a common
dry cell battery with enough voltage
to render a sharp shock. Then apply
your wires to various parts of the
frog’s anatomy. If you are lucky, and
strike the right set of muscles, you[189]
will have the pleasure of seeing a dead
frog leap suddenly forward. Understand,
he will not regain life. You
have merely released his dead muscles
by shock, and sent him bolting.”

The Professor did not reply. I could
feel his eyes on me, and had I turned,
I should probably had found M. S.
glaring at me in honest hate. These
men were students of mesmerism, of
spiritualism, and my commonplace contradiction
was not over welcome.

“You are cynical, Dale,” said M. S.
coldly, “because you do not understand!”

“Understand? I am a doctor—not a
ghost!”

But M. S. had turned eagerly to the
Professor.

“Where is this body—this experiment?”
he demanded.

Daimler shook his head. Evidently
he had acknowledged failure and did
not intend to drag his dead man before
our eyes, unless he could bring
that man forth alive, upright, and ready
to join our conversation!

“I’ve put it away,” he said distantly.
“There is nothing more to be done,
now that our reverend doctor has insisted
in making a matter of fact thing
out of our experiment. You understand,
I had not intended to go in for
wholesale resurrection, even if I had
met with success. It was my belief
that a dead body, like a dead piece of
mechanism, can be brought to life
again, provided we are intelligent
enough to discover the secret. And by
God, it is still my belief!”

That was the situation, then,
when M. S. and I paced slowly
back along the narrow street that contained
the Professor’s dwelling-place.
My companion was strangely silent.
More than once I felt his eyes upon
me in an uncomfortable stare, yet he
said nothing. Nothing, that is, until
I had opened the conversation with
some casual remark about the lunacy
of the man we had just left.

“You are wrong in mocking him,
Dale,” M. S. replied bitterly. “Daimler
is a man of science. He is no child,
experimenting with a toy; he is a
grown man who has the courage to
believe in his powers. One of these
days….”

He had intended to say that some
day I should respect the Professor’s
efforts. One of these days! The interval
of time was far shorter than
anything so indefinite. The first event,
with its succeeding series of horrors,
came within the next three minutes.

We had reached a more deserted
section of the square, a black,
uninhabited street extending like a
shadowed band of darkness between
gaunt, high walls. I had noticed for
some time that the stone structure beside
us seemed to be unbroken by door
or window—that it appeared to be a
single gigantic building, black and forbidding.
I mentioned the fact to M. S.

“The warehouse,” he said simply. “A
lonely, God-forsaken place. We shall
probably see the flicker of the watchman’s
light in one of the upper chinks.”

At his words, I glanced up. True
enough, the higher part of the grim
structure was punctured by narrow,
barred openings. Safety vaults, probably.
But the light, unless its tiny
gleam was somewhere in the inner recesses
of the warehouse, was dead.
The great building was like an immense
burial vault, a tomb—silent and
lifeless.

We had reached the most forbidding
section of the narrow street, where a
single arch-lamp overhead cast a halo
of ghastly yellow light over the pavement.
At the very rim of the circle
of illumination, where the shadows
were deeper and more silent, I could
make out the black mouldings of a
heavy iron grating. The bars of metal
were designed, I believe, to seal the
side entrance of the great warehouse
from night marauders. It was bolted
in place and secured with a set of immense
chains, immovable.

This much I saw as my intent gaze[190]
swept the wall before me. This huge
tomb of silence held for me a peculiar
fascination, and as I paced along beside
my gloomy companion, I stared
directly ahead of me into the darkness
of the street. I wish to God my eyes
had been closed or blinded!

He was hanging on the grating.
Hanging there, with white,
twisted hands clutching the rigid bars
of iron, straining to force them apart.
His whole distorted body was forced
against the barrier, like the form of
a madman struggling to escape from
his cage. His face—the image of it
still haunts me whenever I see iron
bars in the darkness of a passage—was
the face of a man who has died from
utter, stark horror. It was frozen in
a silent shriek of agony, staring out
at me with fiendish maliciousness. Lips
twisted apart. White teeth gleaming
in the light. Bloody eyes, with a horrible
glare of colorless pigment. And—dead.

I believe M. S. saw him at the very
instant I recoiled. I felt a sudden grip
on my arm; and then, as an exclamation
came harshly from my companion’s
lips, I was pulled forward roughly.
I found myself staring straight
into the dead eyes of that fearful thing
before me, found myself standing rigid,
motionless, before the corpse that hung
within reach of my arm.

And then, through that overwhelming
sense of the horrible, came the
quiet voice of my comrade—the voice
of a man who looks upon death as
nothing more than an opportunity for
research.

“The fellow has been frightened to
death, Dale. Frightened most horribly.
Note the expression of his
mouth, the evident struggle to force
these bars apart and escape. Something
has driven fear to his soul, killed him.”

I remember the words vaguely.
When M. S. had finished speaking,
I did not reply. Not until he had
stepped forward and bent over the distorted
face of the thing before me, did
I attempt to speak. When I did, my
thoughts were a jargon.

“What, in God’s name,” I cried,
“could have brought such horror to a
strong man? What—”

“Loneliness, perhaps,” suggested M.
S. with a smile. “The fellow is evidently
the watchman. He is alone, in
a huge, deserted pit of darkness, for
hours at a time. His light is merely
a ghostly ray of illumination, hardly
enough to do more than increase the
darkness. I have heard of such cases
before.”

He shrugged his shoulders. Even as
he spoke, I sensed the evasion in his
words. When I replied, he hardly
heard my answer, for he had suddenly
stepped forward, where he could look
directly into those fear twisted eyes.

“Dale,” he said at length, turning
slowly to face me, “you ask for an
explanation of this horror? There is
an explanation. It is written with an
almost fearful clearness on this fellow’s
mind. Yet if I tell you, you will
return to your old skepticism—your
damnable habit of disbelief!”

I looked at him quietly. I had heard
M. S. claim, at other times, that he
could read the thoughts of a dead man
by the mental image that lay on that
man’s brain. I had laughed at him.
Evidently, in the present moment, he
recalled those laughs. Nevertheless, he
faced me seriously.

“I can see two things, Dale,” he said
deliberately. “One of them is a dark,
narrow room—a room piled with indistinct
boxes and crates, and with an
open door bearing the black number
4167. And in that open doorway, coming
forward with slow steps—alive,
with arms extended and a frightful
face of passion—is a decayed human
form. A corpse, Dale. A man who
has been dead for many days, and is
now—alive!”

M. S. turned slowly and pointed
with upraised hand to the
corpse on the grating.

[191]
“That is why,” he said simply, “this
fellow died from horror.”

His words died into emptiness. For
a moment I stared at him. Then, in
spite of our surroundings, in spite of
the late hour, the loneliness of the
street, the awful thing beside us, I
laughed.

He turned upon me with a snarl. For
the first time in my life I saw M. S.
convulsed with rage. His old, lined
face had suddenly become savage with
intensity.

“You laugh at me, Dale,” he thundered.
“By God, you make a mockery
out of a science that I have spent more
than my life in studying! You call
yourself a medical man—and you are
not fit to carry the name! I will wager
you, man, that your laughter is not
backed by courage!”

I fell away from him. Had I stood
within reach, I am sure he would have
struck me. Struck me! And I have
been nearer to M. S. for the past ten
years than any man in London. And
as I retreated from his temper, he
reached forward to seize my arm. I
could not help but feel impressed at
his grim intentness.

“Look here, Dale,” he said bitterly,
“I will wager you a hundred pounds
that you will not spend the remainder
of this night in the warehouse above
you! I will wager a hundred pounds
against your own courage that you will
not back your laughter by going
through what this fellow has gone
through. That you will not prowl
through the corridors of this great
structure until you have found room
4167—and remain in that room until
dawn!”

There was no choice. I glanced
at the dead man, at the face of
fear and the clutching, twisted hands,
and a cold dread filled me. But to refuse
my friend’s wager would have
been to brand myself an empty coward.
I had mocked him. Now, whatever the
cost, I must stand ready to pay for that
mockery.

“Room 4167?” I replied quietly, in a
voice which I made every effort to control,
lest he should discover the tremor
in it. “Very well, I will do it!”

It was nearly midnight when I found
myself alone, climbing a musty, winding
ramp between the first and second
floors of the deserted building. Not a
sound, except the sharp intake of my
breath and the dismal creak of the
wooden stairs, echoed through that
tomb of death. There was no light,
not even the usual dim glow that is left
to illuminate an unused corridor.
Moreover, I had brought no means of
light with me—nothing but a half
empty box of safety matches which, by
some unholy premonition, I had forced
myself to save for some future moment.
The stairs were black and difficult,
and I mounted them slowly, groping
with both hands along the rough
wall.

I had left M. S. some few moments
before. In his usual decisive manner
he had helped me to climb the iron
grating and lower myself to the sealed
alley-way on the farther side. Then,
leaving him without a word, for I was
bitter against the triumphant tone of
his parting words, I proceeded into the
darkness, fumbling forward until I had
discovered the open door in the lower
part of the warehouse.

And then the ramp, winding crazily
upward—upward—upward, seemingly
without end. I was seeking blindly
for that particular room which was to
be my destination. Room 4167, with
its high number, could hardly be on
the lower floors, and so I had stumbled
upward….

It was at the entrance of the second
floor corridor that I struck the first
of my desultory supply of matches,
and by its light discovered a placard
nailed to the wall. The thing was yellow
with age and hardly legible. In
the drab light of the match I had difficulty
in reading it—but, as far as I can
remember, the notice went something
like this:[192]

WAREHOUSE RULES

1. No light shall be permitted in
   any room or corridor, as a prevention
   against fire.
2. No person shall be admitted to
   rooms or corridors unless accompanied
   by an employee.
3. A watchman shall be on the
   premises from 7 P.M. until
   6 A.M. He shall make the
   round of the corridors every
   hour during that interval, at a
   quarter past the hour.
4. Rooms are located by their
   numbers: the first figure in the
   room number indicating its
   floor location.

I could read no further. The match
in my fingers burned to a black thread
and dropped. Then, with the burnt
stump still in my hand, I groped
through the darkness to the bottom of
the second ramp.

Room 4167, then, was on the fourth
floor—the topmost floor of the structure.
I must confess that the knowledge
did not bring any renewed burst
of courage! The top floor! Three
black stair-pits would lie between me
and the safety of escape. There would
be no escape! No human being in the
throes of fear could hope to discover
that tortured outlet, could hope to
grope his way through Stygian gloom
down a triple ramp of black stairs.
And even though he succeeded in
reaching the lower corridors, there was
still a blind alley-way, sealed at the
outer end by a high grating of iron
bars….

Escape! The mockery of it
caused me to stop suddenly in my
ascent and stand rigid, my whole body
trembling violently.

But outside, in the gloom of the
street, M. S. was waiting, waiting with
that fiendish glare of triumph that
would brand me a man without courage.
I could not return to face him,
not though all the horrors of hell inhabited
this gruesome place of mystery.
And horrors must surely inhabit
it, else how could one account for that
fearful thing on the grating below?
But I had been through horror before.
I had seen a man, supposedly dead on
the operating table, jerk suddenly to
his feet and scream. I had seen a
young girl, not long before, awake in
the midst of an operation, with the
knife already in her frail body. Surely,
after those definite horrors, no unknown
danger would send me cringing
back to the man who was waiting so
bitterly for me to return.

Those were the thoughts pregnant
in my mind as I groped slowly, cautiously
along the corridor of the upper
floor, searching each closed door for
the indistinct number 4167. The place
was like the center of a huge labyrinth,
a spider-web of black, repelling passages,
leading into some central chamber
of utter silence and blackness. I
went forward with dragging steps,
fighting back the dread that gripped
me as I went farther and farther from
the outlet of escape. And then, after
losing myself completely in the gloom,
I threw aside all thoughts of return
and pushed on with a careless, surface
bravado, and laughed aloud.

So, at length, I reached that room
of horror, secreted high in the
deeper recesses of the deserted warehouse.
The number—God grant I
never see it again!—was scrawled in
black chalk on the door—4167. I
pushed the half-open barrier wide, and
entered.

It was a small room, even as M. S.
had forewarned me—or as the dead
mind of that thing on the grate had
forewarned M. S. The glow of my
out-thrust match revealed a great stack
of dusty boxes and crates, piled against
the farther wall. Revealed, too, the
black corridor beyond the entrance, and
a small, upright table before me.

It was the table, and the stool beside
it, that drew my attention and brought
a muffled exclamation from my lips.
The thing had been thrust out of its[193]
usual place, pushed aside as if some
frenzied shape had lunged against it.
I could make out its former position
by the marks on the dusty floor at my
feet. Now it was nearer to the center
of the room, and had been wrenched
sidewise from its holdings. A shudder
took hold of me as I looked at it.
A living person, sitting on the stool
before me, staring at the door, would
have wrenched the table in just this
manner in his frenzy to escape from
the room!

The light of the match died,
plunging me into a pit of gloom.
I struck another and stepped closer to
the table. And there, on the floor,
I found two more things that brought
fear to my soul. One of them was a
heavy flash-lamp—a watchman’s lamp—where
it had evidently been dropped.
Been dropped in flight! But what awful
terror must have gripped the fellow
to make him forsake his only
means of escape through those black
passages? And the second thing—a
worn copy of a leather-bound book,
flung open on the boards below the
stool!

The flash-lamp, thank God! had not
been shattered. I switched it on, directing
its white circle of light over
the room. This time, in the vivid glare,
the room became even more unreal.
Black walls, clumsy, distorted shadows
on the wall, thrown by those huge piles
of wooden boxes. Shadows that were
like crouching men, groping toward
me. And beyond, where the single
door opened into a passage of Stygian
darkness, that yawning entrance was
thrown into hideous detail. Had any
upright figure been standing there, the
light would have made an unholy phosphorescent
specter out of it.

I summoned enough courage to cross
the room and pull the door shut. There
was no way of locking it. Had I been
able to fasten it, I should surely have
done so; but the room was evidently
an unused chamber, filled with empty
refuse. This was the reason, probably,
why the watchman had made use of it
as a retreat during the intervals between
his rounds.

But I had no desire to ponder over
the sordidness of my surroundings. I
returned to my stool in silence, and
stooping, picked up the fallen book
from the floor. Carefully I placed the
lamp on the table, where its light would
shine on the open page. Then, turning
the cover, I began to glance
through the thing which the man before
me had evidently been studying.

And before I had read two lines, the
explanation of the whole horrible thing
struck me. I stared dumbly down at
the little book and laughed. Laughed
harshly, so that the sound of my mad
cackle echoed in a thousand ghastly reverberations
through the dead corridors
of the building.

It was a book of horror, of fantasy.
A collection of weird, terrifying,
supernatural tales with grotesque illustrations
in funereal black and white.
And the very line I had turned to, the
line which had probably struck terror
to that unlucky devil’s soul, explained
M. S.’s “decayed human form, standing
in the doorway with arms extended
and a frightful face of passion!” The
description—the same description—lay
before me, almost in my friend’s words.
Little wonder that the fellow on the
grating below, after reading this orgy
of horror, had suddenly gone mad with
fright. Little wonder that the picture
engraved on his dead mind was a picture
of a corpse standing in the doorway
of room 4167!

I glanced at that doorway and
laughed. No doubt of it, it was that
awful description in M. S.’s untempered
language that had made me dread
my surroundings, not the loneliness
and silence of the corridors about me.
Now, as I stared at the room, the closed
door, the shadows on the wall, I could
not repress a grin.

But the grin was not long in duration.
A six-hour siege awaited me before
I could hear the sound of human[194]
voice again—six hours of silence and
gloom. I did not relish it. Thank God
the fellow before me had had foresight
enough to leave his book of fantasy
for my amusement!

I turned to the beginning of the
story. A lovely beginning it was,
outlining in some detail how a certain
Jack Fulton, English adventurer, had
suddenly found himself imprisoned (by
a mysterious black gang of monks, or
something of the sort) in a forgotten
cell at the monastery of El Toro. The
cell, according to the pages before me,
was located in the “empty, haunted pits
below the stone floors of the structure….”
Lovely setting! And the brave
Fulton had been secured firmly to a
huge metal ring set in the farther wall,
opposite the entrance.

I read the description twice. At the
end of it I could not help but lift my
head to stare at my own surroundings.
Except for the location of the cell, I
might have been in they same setting.
The same darkness, same silence, same
loneliness. Peculiar similarity!

And then: “Fulton lay quietly,
without attempt to struggle. In the
dark, the stillness of the vaults became
unbearable, terrifying. Not a suggestion
of sound, except the scraping of
unseen rats—”

I dropped the book with a start.
From the opposite end of the room in
which I sat came a half inaudible scuffling
noise—the sound of hidden rodents
scrambling through the great pile
of boxes. Imagination? I am not sure.
At the moment, I would have sworn
that the sound was a definite one, that
I had heard it distinctly. Now, as I
recount this tale of horror, I am not
sure.

But I am sure of this: There was
no smile on my lips as I picked up
the book again with trembling fingers
and continued.

“The sound died into silence. For
an eternity, the prisoner lay rigid, staring
at the open door of his cell. The
opening was black, deserted, like the
mouth of a deep tunnel, leading to
hell. And then, suddenly, from the
gloom beyond that opening, came an
almost noiseless, padded footfall!”

This time there was no doubt of
it. The book fell from my fingers,
dropped to the floor with a clatter.
Yet even through the sound of its falling,
I heard that fearful sound—the
shuffle of a living foot! I sat motionless,
staring with bloodless face at the
door of room 4167. And as I stared,
the sound came again, and again—the
slow tread of dragging footsteps, approaching
along the black corridor
without!

I got to my feet like an automaton,
swaying heavily. Every drop of courage
ebbed from my soul as I stood
there, one hand clutching the table,
waiting….

And then, with an effort, I moved
forward. My hand was outstretched
to grasp the wooden handle of the
door. And—I did not have the courage.
Like a cowed beast I crept back
to my place and slumped down on the
stool, my eyes still transfixed in a mute
stare of terror.

I waited. For more than half an
hour I waited, motionless. Not a sound
stirred in the passage beyond that
closed barrier. Not a suggestion of
any living presence came to me. Then,
leaning back against the wall with a
harsh laugh, I wiped away the cold
moisture that had trickled over my
forehead into my eyes.

It was another five minutes before I
picked up the book again. You call me
a fool for continuing it? A fool? I
tell you, even a story of horror is more
comfort than a room of grotesque
shadows and silence. Even a printed
page is better than grim reality!

And so I read on. The story was
one of suspense, madness. For
the next two pages I read a cunning
description of the prisoner’s mental
reaction. Strangely enough, it conformed
precisely with my own.

[195]
“Fulton’s head had fallen to his
chest,” the script read. “For an endless
while he did not stir, did not dare
to lift his eyes. And then, after more
than an hour of silent agony and
suspense, the boy’s head came up
mechanically. Came up—and suddenly
jerked rigid. A horrible scream burst
from his dry lips as he stared—stared
like a dead man—at the black entrance
to his cell. There, standing without
motion in the opening, stood a
shrouded figure of death. Empty eyes,
glaring with awful hate, bored into his
own. Great arms, bony and rotten, extended
toward him. Decayed flesh—”

I read no more. Even as I lunged to
my feet, with that mad book still
gripped in my hand, I heard the door
of my room grind open. I screamed,
screamed in utter horror at the thing
I saw there. Dead? Good God, I do
not know. It was a corpse, a dead
human body, standing before me like
some propped-up thing from the grave.
A face half eaten away, terrible in its
leering grin. Twisted mouth, with
only a suggestion of lips, curled back
over broken teeth. Hair—writhing,
distorted—like a mass of moving,
bloody coils. And its arms, ghastly
white, bloodless, were extended toward
me, with open, clutching hands.

It was alive! Alive! Even while I
stood there, crouching against the
wall, it stepped forward toward me.
I saw a heavy shudder pass over it,
and the sound of its scraping feet
burned its way into my soul. And
then, with its second step, the fearful
thing stumbled to its knees. The white,
gleaming arms, thrown into streaks of
living fire by the light of my lamp,
flung violently upwards, twisting toward
the ceiling. I saw the grin change
to an expression of agony, of torment.
And then the thing crashed upon me—dead.

With a great cry of fear I stumbled
to the door. I groped out of that room
of horror, stumbled along the corridor.
No light. I left it behind, on the table,
to throw a circle of white glare over
the decayed, living-dead intruder who
had driven me mad.

My return down those winding
ramps to the lower floor was a nightmare
of fear. I remember that I stumbled,
that I plunged through the
darkness like a man gone mad. I had
no thought of caution, no thought of
anything except escape.

And then the lower door, and the
alley of gloom. I reached the grating,
flung myself upon it and pressed my
face against the bars in a futile effort
to escape. The same—as the fear-tortured
man—who had—come before—me.

I felt strong hands lifting me up. A
dash of cool air, and then the refreshing
patter of falling rain.

It was the afternoon of the following
day, December 6, when M. S.
sat across the table from me in my own
study. I had made a rather hesitant
attempt to tell him, without dramatics
and without dwelling on my own lack
of courage, of the events of the previous
night.

“You deserved it, Dale,” he said
quietly. “You are a medical man, nothing
more, and yet you mock the beliefs
of a scientist as great as Daimler.
I wonder—do you still mock the
Professor’s beliefs?”

“That he can bring a dead man to
life?” I smiled, a bit doubtfully.

“I will tell you something, Dale,”
said M. S. deliberately. He was leaning
across the table, staring at me. “The
Professor made only one mistake in
his great experiment. He did not wait
long enough for the effect of his
strange acids to work. He acknowledged
failure too soon, and got rid of
the body.” He paused.

“When the Professor stored his patient
away, Dale,” he said quietly, “he
stored it in room 4170, at the great
warehouse. If you are acquainted
with the place, you will know that
room 4170 is directly across the corridor
from 4167.”

[196]

Creatures
of the Light

By Sophie Wenzel Ellis

In a night club of many lights
and much high-pitched laughter,
where he had come for an hour
of forgetfulness and an execrable
dinner, John Northwood was suddenly
conscious that Fate had begun shuffling
the cards of his
destiny for a dramatic
game.

He had striven to perfect the faultless
man of the future, and had succeeded—too
well. For in the pitilessly cold eyes
of Adam, his super-human creation, Dr.
Mundson saw only contempt—and annihilation—for
the human race.

First, he was
aware that the
singularly ugly
and deformed
man at the next table was gazing at
him with an intense, almost excited
scrutiny. But, more disturbing than
this, was the scowl of hate on the face
of another man, as handsome as this
other was hideous, who sat in a far
corner hidden behind
a broad column,
with rude
elbows on the
table, gawking
first at Northwood
and then[197]
at the deformed, almost hideous man.

The projector, belching forth
its stinking breath of corruption,
swung in a mad arc
over the ceiling, over the
walls.

Northwood’s blood chilled over the
expression on the handsome, fair-haired
stranger’s perfectly carved face. If a
figure in marble could display a fierce,
unnatural passion, it would seem no
more eldritch than the hate in the icy
blue eyes.

It was not a new experience for
Northwood to be stared at: he was not
merely a good-looking young fellow
of twenty-five, he was scenery, magnificent
and compelling. Furthermore,
he had been in the public eye for years,
first as a precocious child and, later,
as a brilliant young scientist. Yet, for
all his experience with hero worshippers
to put an adamantine crust on his
sensibilities, he grew warm-eared under
the gaze of these two strangers—this
hunchback with a face like a
grotesque mask in a Greek play, this
other who, even handsomer than himself,
chilled the blood queerly with the
cold perfection of his godlike masculine
beauty.

[198]

Northwood sensed something
familiar about the hunchback.
Somewhere he had seen that huge,
round, intelligent face splattered with
startling features. The very breadth
of the man’s massive brow was not altogether
unknown to him, nor could
Northwood look into the mournful,
near-sighted black eyes without trying
to recall when and where he had last
seen them.

But this other of the marble-perfect
nose and jaw, the blond, thick-waved
hair, was totally a stranger, whom
Northwood fervently hoped he would
never know too well.

Trying to analyze the queer repugnance
that he felt for this handsome,
boldly staring fellow, Northwood decided:
“He’s like a newly-made wax
figure endowed with life.”

Shivering over his own fantastic
thought, he again glanced swiftly at
the hunchback, who he noticed was
playing with his coffee, evidently to
prolong the meal.

One year of calm-headed scientific
teaching in a famous old eastern university
had not made him callous to
mysteries. Thus, with a feeling of high
adventure, he finished his supper and
prepared to go. From the corner of his
eye, he saw the hunchback leave his
seat, while the handsome man behind
the column rose furtively, as though
he, too, intended to follow.

Northwood was out in the dusky
street about thirty seconds, when the
hunchback came from the foyer. Without
apparently noticing Northwood,
he hailed a taxi. For a moment, he
stood still, waiting for the taxi to pull
up at the curb. Standing thus, with the
street light limning every unnatural
angle of his twisted body and every
queer abnormality of his huge features,
he looked almost repulsive.

On his way to the taxi, his thick
shoulder jostled the younger man.
Northwood felt something strike his
foot, and, stooping in the crowded
street, picked up a black leather wallet.

“Wait!” he shouted as the hunchback
stepped into the waiting taxi.

But the man did not falter. In a
moment, Northwood lost sight of him
as the taxi moved away.

He debated with himself whether
or not he should attempt to
follow. And while he stood thus in
indecision, the handsome stranger approached
him.

“Good evening to you,” he said curtly.
His rich, musical voice, for all its
deepness, held a faint hint of the
tremulous, birdlike notes heard in the
voice of a young child who has not
used his vocal chords long enough for
them to have lost their exquisite newness.

“Good evening,” echoed Northwood,
somewhat uncertainly. A sudden aura
of repulsion swept coldly over him.
Seen close, with the brilliant light of
the street directly on his too perfect
face, the man was more sinister than in
the café. Yet Northwood, struggling
desperately for a reason to explain his
violent dislike, could not discover why
he shrank from this splendid creature,
whose eyes and flesh had a new, fresh
appearance rarely seen except in very
young boys.

“I want what you picked up,” went
on the stranger.

“It isn’t yours!” Northwood flashed
back. Ah! that effluvium of hatred
which seemed to weave a tangible net
around him!

“Nor is it yours. Give it to me!”

“You’re insolent, aren’t you?”

“If you don’t give it to me, you will
be sorry.” The man did not raise his
voice in anger, yet the words whipped
Northwood with almost physical violence.
“If he knew that I saw everything
that happened in there—that I
am talking to you at this moment—he
would tremble with fear.”

“But you can’t intimidate me.”

“No?” For a long moment, the cold
blue eyes held his contemptuously.
“No? I can’t frighten you—you worm
of the Black Age?”

Before Northwood’s horrified sight,[199]
he vanished; vanished as though he
had turned suddenly to air and floated
away.

The street was not crowded at that
time, and there was no pressing
group of bodies to hide the splendid
creature. Northwood gawked stupidly,
mouth half open, eyes searching wildly
everywhere. The man was gone. He
had simply disappeared, in this sane,
electric-lighted street.

Suddenly, close to Northwood’s ear,
grated a derisive laugh. “I can’t
frighten you?” From nowhere came
that singularly young-old voice.

As Northwood jerked his head
around to meet blank space, a blow
struck the corner of his mouth. He felt
the warm blood run over his chin.

“I could take that wallet from you,
worm, but you may keep it, and see
me later. But remember this—the thing
inside never will be yours.”

The words fell from empty air.

For several minutes, Northwood
waited at the spot, expecting another
demonstration of the abnormal, but
nothing else occurred. At last, trembling
violently, he wiped the thick
moisture from his forehead and dabbed
at the blood which he still felt on his
chin.

But when he looked at his handkerchief,
he muttered:

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!”

The handkerchief bore not the
slightest trace of blood.

Under the light in his bedroom,
Northwood examined the wallet.
It was made of alligator skin, clasped
with a gold signet that bore the initial
M. The first pocket was empty; the
second yielded an object that sent a
warm flush to his face.

It was the photograph of a gloriously
beautiful girl, so seductively lovely
that the picture seemed almost to be
alive. The short, curved upper lip, the
full, delicately voluptuous lower,
parted slightly in a smile that seemed
to linger in every exquisite line of her
face. She looked as though she had
just spoken passionately, and the
spirit of her words had inspired her
sweet flesh and eyes.

Northwood turned his head abruptly
and groaned, “Good Heavens!”

He had no right to palpitate over
the picture of an unknown beauty.
Only a month ago, he had become engaged
to a young woman whose mind
was as brilliant as her face was plain.
Always he had vowed that he would
never marry a pretty girl, for he detested
his own masculine beauty sincerely.

He tried to grasp a mental picture of
Mary Burns, who had never stirred in
him the emotion that this smiling picture
invoked. But, gazing at the picture,
he could not remember how his
fiancée looked.

Suddenly the picture fell from his
fingers and dropped to the floor on its
face, revealing an inscription on the
back. In a bold, masculine hand, he
read: “Your future wife.”

“Some lucky fellow is headed for a
life of bliss,” was his jealous thought.

He frowned at the beautiful face.
What was this girl to that hideous
hunchback? Why did the handsome
stranger warn him, “The thing inside
never will be yours?”

Again he turned eagerly to the
wallet.

In the last flap he found something
that gave him another surprise: a plain
white card on which a name and address
were written by the same hand
that had penned the inscription on the
picture.

Emil Mundson, Ph. D.,
44-1/2 Indian Court

Emil Mundson, the electrical wizard
and distinguished scientific writer,
friend of the professor of science at
the university where Northwood was
an assistant professor; Emil Mundson,
whom, a week ago, Northwood had
yearned mightily to meet.

Now Northwood knew why the[200]
hunchback’s intelligent, ugly face was
familiar to him. He had seen it pictured
as often as enterprising news
photographers could steal a likeness
from the over-sensitive scientist, who
would never sit for a formal portrait.

Even before Northwood had graduated
from the university where
he now taught, he had been avidly interested
in Emil Mundson’s fantastic
articles in scientific journals. Only a
week ago, Professor Michael had come
to him with the current issue of New
Science, shouting excitedly:

“Did you read this, John, this article
by Emil Mundson?” His shaking,
gnarled old fingers tapped the open
magazine.

Northwood seized the magazine and
looked avidly at the title of the article,
“Creatures of the Light.”

“No, I haven’t read it,” he admitted.
“My magazine hasn’t come yet.”

“Run through it now briefly, will
you? And note with especial care the
passages I have marked. In fact, you
needn’t bother with anything else just
now. Read this—and this—and this.”
He pointed out penciled paragraphs.

Northwood read:

Man always has been, always will
be a creature of the light. He is
forever reaching for some future
point of perfected evolution which,
even when his most remote ancestor
was a fish creature composed
of a few cells, was the guiding
power that brought him up
from the first stinking sea and
caused him to create gods in his
own image.

It is this yearning for perfection
which sets man apart from all
other life, which made him man
even in the rudimentary stages of
his development. He was man when
he wallowed in the slime of the
new world and yearned for the air
above. He will still be man when
he has evolved into that glorious
creature of the future whose body
is deathless and whose mind rules
the universe.

Professor Michael, looking over
Northwood’s shoulder, interrupted the
reading:

“Man always has been man,” he
droned emphatically. “That’s not original
with friend Mundson, of course;
yet it is a theory that has not received
sufficient investigation.” He indicated
another marked paragraph. “Read this
thoughtfully, John. It’s the crux of
Mundson’s thought.”

Northwood continued:

Since the human body is chemical
and electrical, increased
knowledge of its powers and limitations
will enable us to work with
Nature in her sublime but infinitely
slow processes of human evolution.
We need not wait another
fifty thousand years to be godlike
creatures. Perhaps even now
we may be standing at the beginning
of the splendid bridge that
will take us to that state of perfected
evolution when we shall be
Creatures who have reached the
Light.

Northwood looked questioningly at
the professor. “Queer, fantastic
thing, isn’t it?”

Professor Michael smoothed
his thin, gray hair with his
dried-out hand. “Fantastic?” His
intellectual eyes behind the thick
glasses sought the ceiling. “Who can
say? Haven’t you ever wondered why
all parents expect their children to be
nearer perfection than themselves, and
why is it a natural impulse for them
to be willing to sacrifice themselves to
better their offspring?” He paused and
moistened his pale, wrinkled lips. “Instinct,
Northwood. We Creatures of
the Light know that our race shall
reach that point in evolution when, as
perfect creatures, we shall rule all matter
[201]and live forever.” He punctuated
the last words with blows on the table.

Northwood laughed dryly. “How
many thousands of years are you looking
forward, Professor?”

The professor made an obscure noise
that sounded like a smothered sniff.
“You and I shall never agree on the
point that mental advancement may
wipe out physical limitations in the
human race, perhaps in a few hundred
years. It seems as though your profound
admiration for Dr. Mundson
would win you over to this pet theory.”

“But what sane man can believe that
even perfectly developed beings,
through mental control, could overcome
Nature’s fixed laws?”

“We don’t know! We don’t know!”
The professor slapped the magazine
with an emphatic hand. “Emil Mundson
hasn’t written this article for nothing.
He’s paving the way for some announcement
that will startle the scientific
world. I know him. In the same
manner he gave out veiled hints of his
various brilliant discoveries and inventions
long before he offered them to
the world.”

“But Dr. Mundson is an electrical
wizard. He would not be delving seriously
into the mysteries of evolution,
would he?”

“Why not?” The professor’s wizened
face screwed up wisely. “A year
ago, when he was back from one of
those mysterious long excursions he
takes in that weirdly different aircraft
of his, about which he is so secretive,
he told me that he was conducting experiments
to prove his belief that the
human brain generates electric current,
and that the electrical impulses in the
brain set up radioactive waves that
some day, among other miracles, will
make thought communication possible.
Perfect man, he says, will perform
mental feats which will give him complete
mental domination over the physical.”

Northwood finished reading
and turned thoughtfully to the
window. His profile in repose had the
straight-nosed, full-lipped perfection
of a Greek coin. Old, wizened Professor
Michael, gazing at him covertly,
smothered a sigh.

“I wish you knew Dr. Mundson,” he
said. “He, the ugliest man in the
world, delights in physical perfection.
He would revel in your splendid body
and brilliant mind.”

Northwood blushed hotly. “You’ll
have to arrange a meeting between us.”

“I have.” The professor’s thin, dry
lips pursed comically. “He’ll drop in
to see you within a few days.”

And now John Northwood sat holding
Dr. Mundson’s card and the wallet
which the scientist had so mysteriously
dropped at his feet.

Here was high adventure, perhaps,
for which he had been singled
out by the famous electrical
wizard. While excitement mounted in
his blood, Northwood again examined
the photograph. The girl’s strange
eyes, odd in expression rather than in
size or shape, seemed to hold him. The
young man’s breath came quicker.

“It’s a challenge,” he said softly. “It
won’t hurt to see what it’s all about.”

His watch showed eleven o’clock. He
would return the wallet that night.
Into his coat pocket he slipped a revolver.
One sometimes needed weapons
in Indian Court.

He took a taxi, which soon turned
from the well-lighted streets into a section
where squalid houses crowded
against each other, and dirty children
swarmed in the streets in their last
games of the day.

Indian Court was little more than an
alley, dark and evil smelling.

The chauffeur stopped at the entrance
and said:

“If I drive in, I’ll have to back out,
sir. Number forty-four and a half is
the end house, facing the entrance.”

“You’ve been here before?” asked
Northwood.

“Last week I drove the queerest bird
here—a fellow as good-looking as you,
who had me follow the taxi occupied[202]
by a hunchback with a face like Old
Nick.” The man hesitated and went on
haltingly: “It might sound goofy,
mister, but there was something funny
about my fare. He jumped out, asked
me the charge, and, in the moment I
glanced at my taxi-meter, he disappeared.
Yes, sir. Vanished, owing me
four dollars, six bits. It was almost
ghostlike, mister.”

Northwood laughed nervously and
dismissed him. He found his number
and knocked at the dilapidated door.
He heard a sudden movement in the
lighted room beyond, and the door
opened quickly.

Dr. Mundson faced him.

“I knew you’d come!” he said with
a slight Teutonic accent. “Often I’m
not wrong in sizing up my man. Come
in.”

Northwood cleared his throat awkwardly.
“You dropped your wallet at
my feet, Dr. Mundson. I tried to stop
you before you got away, but I guess
you did not hear me.”

He offered the wallet, but the hunchback
waved it aside.

“A ruse, of course,” he confessed. “It
just was my way of testing what your
Professor Michael told about you—that
you are extraordinarily intelligent,
virile, and imaginative. Had you sent
the wallet to me, I should have sought
elsewhere for my man. Come in.”

Northwood followed him into
a living room evidently recently
furnished in a somewhat hurried manner.
The furniture, although rich, was
not placed to best advantage. The new
rug was a trifle crooked on the floor,
and the lamp shades clashed in color
with the other furnishings.

Dr. Mundson’s intense eyes swept
over Northwood’s tall, slim body.

“Ah, you’re a man!” he said softly.
“You are what all men would be if we
followed Nature’s plan that only the fit
shall survive. But modern science is
permitting the unfit to live and to mix
their defective beings with the developing
race!” His huge fist gesticulated
madly. “Fools! Fools! They
need me and perfect men like you.”

“Why?”

“Because you can help me in my plan
to populate the earth with a new race
of godlike people. But don’t question
me too closely now. Even if I should
explain, you would call me insane. But
watch; gradually I shall unfold the
mystery before you, so that you will
believe.”

He reached for the wallet that
Northwood still held, opened it with a
monstrous hand, and reached for the
photograph. “She shall bring you love.
She’s more beautiful than a poet’s
dream.”

A warm flush crept over the young
man’s face.

“I can easily understand,” he said,
“how a man could love her, but for me
she comes too late.”

“Pooh! Fiddlesticks!” The scientist
snapped his fingers. “This girl was
created for you. That other—you will
forget her the moment you set eyes on
the sweet flesh of this Athalia. She is
an houri from Paradise—a maiden of
musk and incense.” He held the girl’s
photograph toward the young man.
“Keep it. She is yours, if you are
strong enough to hold her.”

Northwood opened his card case and
placed the picture inside, facing
Mary’s photograph. Again the warning
words of the mysterious stranger
rang in his memory: “The thing inside
never will be yours.“

“Where to,” he said eagerly; “and
when do we start?”

“To the new Garden of Eden,” said
the scientist, with such a beatific
smile that his face was less hideous.
“We start immediately. I have arranged
with Professor Michael for you
to go.”

Northwood followed Dr.
Mundson to the street and walked
with him a few blocks to a garage
where the scientist’s motor car
waited.

“The apartment in Indian Court is[203]
just a little eccentricity of mine,” explained
Dr. Mundson. “I need people
in my work, people whom I must select
through swift, sure tests. The apartment
comes in handy, as to-night.”

Northwood scarcely noted where
they were going, or how long they had
been on the way. He was vaguely aware
that they had left the city behind, and
were now passing through farms
bathed in moonlight.

At last they entered a path that led
through a bit of woodland. For half a
mile the path continued, and then
ended at a small, enclosed field. In the
middle of this rested a queer aircraft.
Northwood knew it was a flying machine
only by the propellers mounted
on the top of the huge ball-shaped
body. There were no wings, no birdlike
hull, no tail.

“It looks almost like a little world
ready to fly off into space,” he commented.

“It is just about that.” The scientist’s
squat, bunched-out body, settled
squarely on long, thin, straddled legs,
looked gnomelike in the moonlight.
“One cannot copy flesh with steel and
wood, but one can make metal perform
magic of which flesh is not capable. My
sun-ship is not a mechanical reproduction
of a bird. It is—but, climb in,
young friend.”

Northwood followed Dr.
Mundson into the aircraft. The
moment the scientist closed the metal
door behind them, Northwood was instantly
aware of some concealed horror
that vibrated through his nerves. For
one dreadful moment, he expected
some terrific agent of the shadows that
escaped the electric lights to leap upon
him. And this was odd, for nothing
could be saner than the globular interior
of the aircraft, divided into four
wedge-shaped apartments.

Dr. Mundson also paused at the door,
puzzled, hesitant.

“Someone has been here!” he exclaimed.
“Look, Northwood! The
bunk has been occupied—the one in
this cabin I had set aside for you.”

He pointed to the disarranged bunk,
where the impression of a head could
still be seen on a pillow.

“A tramp, perhaps.”

“No! The door was locked, and, as
you saw, the fence around this field was
protected with barbed wire. There’s
something wrong. I felt it on my trip
here all the way, like someone watching
me in the dark. And don’t laugh! I
have stopped laughing at all things
that seem unnatural. You don’t know
what is natural.”

Northwood shivered. “Maybe someone
is concealed about the ship.”

“Impossible. Me, I thought so, too.
But I looked and looked, and there was
nothing.”

All evening Northwood had burned
to tell the scientist about the handsome
stranger in the Mad Hatter Club. But
even now he shrank from saying that a
man had vanished before his eyes.

Dr. Mundson was working with a
succession of buttons and levers. There
was a slight jerk, and then the strange
craft shot up, straight as a bullet from
a gun, with scarcely a sound other than
a continuous whistle.

“The vertical rising aircraft perfected,”
explained Dr. Mundson. “But
what would you think if I told you that
there is not an ounce of gasoline in my
heavier-than-air craft?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised. An electrical
genius would seek for a less obsolete
source of power.”

In the bright flare of the electric
lights, the scientist’s ugly face
flushed. “The man who harnesses the
sun rules the world. He can make the
desert places bloom, the frozen poles
balmy and verdant. You, John Northwood,
are one of the very few to fly
in a machine operated solely by electrical
energy from the sun’s rays.”

“Are you telling me that this airship
is operated with power from the sun?”

“Yes. And I cannot take the credit
for its invention.” He sighed. “The
dream was mine, but a greater brain[204]
developed it—a brain that may be
greater than I suspect.” His face grew
suddenly graver.

A little later Northwood said: “It
seems that we must be making fabulous
speed.”

“Perhaps!” Dr. Mundson worked
with the controls. “Here, I’ve cut her
down to the average speed of the ordinary
airplane. Now you can see a
bit of the night scenery.”

Northwood peeped out the thick
glass porthole. Far below, he saw two
tiny streaks of light, one smooth and
stationery, the other wavering as
though it were a reflection in water.

“That can’t be a lighthouse!” he
cried.

The scientist glanced out. “It is.
We’re approaching the Florida Keys.”

“Impossible! We’ve been traveling
less than an hour.”

“But, my young friend, do you realize
that my sun-ship has a speed of
over one thousand miles an hour, how
much over I dare not tell you?”

Throughout the night, Northwood
sat beside Dr. Mundson, watching his
deft fingers control the simple-looking
buttons and levers. So fast was their
flight now that, through the portholes,
sky and earth looked the same: dark
gray films of emptiness. The continuous
weird whistle from the hidden
mechanism of the sun-ship was like the
drone of a monster insect, monotonous
and soporific during the long intervals
when the scientist was too busy with
his controls to engage in conversation.

For some reason that he could not
explain, Northwood had an aversion to
going into the sleeping apartment behind
the control room. Then, towards
morning, when the suddenly falling
temperature struck a biting chill
throughout the sun-ship, Northwood,
going into the cabin for fur coats, discovered
why his mind and body shrank
in horror from the cabin.

After he had procured the fur
coats from a closet, he paused a
moment, in the privacy of the cabin, to
look at Athalia’s picture. Every nerve
in his body leaped to meet the magnetism
of her beautiful eyes. Never
had Mary Burns stirred emotion like
this in him. He hung over Mary’s picture,
wistfully, hoping almost prayerfully
that he could react to her as he
did to Athalia; but her pale, over-intellectual
face left him cold.

“Cad!” he ground out between his
teeth. “Forgetting her so soon!”

The two pictures were lying side by
side on a little table. Suddenly an obscure
noise in the room caught his attention.
It was more vibration than
noise, for small sounds could scarcely
be heard above the whistle of the sun-ship.
A slight compression of the air
against his neck gave him the eery
feeling that someone was standing
close behind him. He wheeled and
looked over his shoulder. Half
ashamed of his startled gesture, he
again turned to his pictures. Then a
sharp cry broke from him.

Athalia’s picture was gone.

He searched for it everywhere in the
room, in his own pockets, under the
furniture. It was nowhere to be found.

In sudden, overpowering horror, he
seized the fur coats and returned to the
control room.

Dr. Mundson was changing the
speed.

“Look out the window!” he called to
Northwood.

The young man looked and started
violently. Day had come, and now that
the sun-ship was flying at a moderate
speed, the ocean beneath was plainly
visible; and its entire surface was covered
with broken floes of ice and small,
ragged icebergs. He seized a telescope
and focused it below. A typical polar
scene met his eyes: penguins strutted
about on cakes of ice, a whale blowing
in the icy water.

“A part of the Antarctic that has
never been explored,” said Dr. Mundson;
“and there, just showing on the
horizon, is the Great Ice Barrier.” His
characteristic smile lighted the morose[205]
black eyes. “I am enough of the
dramatist to wish you to be impressed
with what I shall show you within less
than an hour. Accordingly, I shall
make a landing and let you feel polar
ice under your feet.”

After less than a minute’s search, Dr.
Mundson found a suitable place on the
ice for a landing, and, with a few deft
manipulations of the controls, brought
the sun-ship swooping down like an
eagle on its prey.

For a long moment after the scientist
had stepped out on the ice, Northwood
paused at the door. His feet were
chained by a strange reluctance to enter
this white, dead wilderness of ice.
But Dr. Mundson’s impatient,
“Ready?” drew from him one last
glance at the cozy interior of the sun-ship
before he, too, went out into the
frozen stillness.

They left the sun-ship resting on the
ice like a fallen silver moon, while they
wandered to the edge of the Barrier
and looked at the gray, narrow stretch
of sea between the ice pack and the
high cliffs of the Barrier. The sun of
the commencing six-months’ Antarctic
day was a low, cold ball whose slanted
rays struck the ice with blinding
whiteness. There were constant falls
of ice from the Barrier, which thundered
into the ocean amid great clouds
of ice smoke that lingered like wraiths
around the edge. It was a scene of
loneliness and waiting death.

“What’s that?” exclaimed the scientist
suddenly.

Out of the white silence shrilled a
low whistle, a familiar whistle. Both
men wheeled toward the sun-ship.

Before their horrified eyes, the great
sphere jerked and glided up, and
swerved into the heavens.

Up it soared; then, gaining speed,
it swung into the blue distance
until, in a moment, it was a tiny star
that flickered out even as they watched.

Both men screamed and cursed and
flung up their arms despairingly. A
penguin, attracted by their cries, waddled
solemnly over to them and regarded
them with manlike curiosity.

“Stranded in the coldest spot on
earth!” groaned the scientist.

“Why did it start itself, Dr. Mundson!”
Northwood narrowed his eyes as
he spoke.

“It didn’t!” The scientist’s huge
face, red from cold, quivered with helpless
rage. “Human hands started it.”

“What! Whose hands?”

“Ach! Do I know?” His Teutonic
accent grew more pronounced, as it always
did when he was under emotional
stress. “Somebody whose brain is better
than mine. Somebody who found a
way to hide away from our eyes. Ach,
Gott! Don’t let me think!”

His great head sank between his
shoulders, giving him, in his fur suit,
the grotesque appearance of a friendly
brown bear.

“Doctor Mundson,” said Northwood
suddenly, “did you have an enemy, a
man with the face and body of a pagan
god—a great, blond creature with eyes
as cold and cruel as the ice under our
feet?”

“Wait!” The huge round head
jerked up. “How do you know about
Adam? You have not seen him, won’t
see him until we arrive at our destination.”

“But I have seen him. He was sitting
not thirty feet from you in the
Mad Hatter’s Club last night. Didn’t
you know? He followed me to the
street, spoke to me, and then—”
Northwood stopped. How could he let
the insane words pass his lips?

“Then, what? Speak up!”

Northwood laughed nervously.
“It sounds foolish, but I saw
him vanish like that.” He snapped his
fingers.

“Ach, Gott!” All the ruddy color
drained from the scientist’s face. As
though talking to himself, he continued:

“Then it is true, as he said. He has
crossed the bridge. He has reached
the Light. And now he comes to see[206]
the world he will conquer—came unseen
when I refused my permission.”

He was silent for a long time, pondering.
Then he turned passionately
to Northwood.

“John Northwood, kill me! I have
brought a new horror into the world.
From the unborn future, I have
snatched a creature who has reached
the Light too soon. Kill me!” He
bowed his great, shaggy head.

“What do you mean, Dr. Mundson:
that this Adam has arrived at a point
in evolution beyond this age?”

“Yes. Think of it! I visioned godlike
creatures with the souls of gods.
But, Heaven help us, man always will
be man: always will lust for conquest.
You and I, Northwood, and all others
are barbarians to Adam. He and his
kind will do what men always do to
barbarians—conquer and kill.”

“Are there more like him?” Northwood
struggled with a smile of unbelief.

“I don’t know. I did not know that
Adam had reached a point so near the
ultimate. But you have seen. Already
he is able to set aside what we call
natural laws.”

Northwood looked at the scientist
closely. The man was surely mad—mad
in this desert of white death.

“Come!” he said cheerfully. “Let’s
build an Eskimo snow house. We can
live on penguins for days. And who
knows what may rescue us?”

For three hours the two worked at
cutting ice blocks. With snow for
mortar, they built a crude shelter which
enabled them to rest out of the cold
breath of the spiral polar winds that
blew from the south.

Dr. Mundson was sitting at the
door of their hut, moodily pulling
at his strong, black pipe. As though
a fit had seized him, he leaped up and
let his pipe fall to the ice.

“Look!” he shouted. “The sun-ship!”

It seemed but a moment before the
tiny speck on the horizon had swept
overhead, a silver comet on the grayish-blue
polar sky. In another moment
it had swooped down, eaglewise,
scarcely fifty feet from the ice hut.

Dr. Mundson and Northwood ran
forward. From the metal sphere
stepped the stranger of the Mad Hatter
Club. His tall, straight form, erect and
slim, swung toward them over the ice.

“Adam!” shouted Dr. Mundson.
“What does this mean? How dare
you!”

Adam’s laugh was like the happy
demonstration of a boy. “So? You
think you still are master? You think
I returned because I reverenced you
yet?” Hate shot viciously through the
freezing blue eyes. “You worm of the
Black Age!”

Northwood shuddered. He had heard
those strange words addressed to himself
scarcely more than twelve hours
ago.

Adam was still speaking: “With a
thought I could annihilate you where
you are standing. But I have use for
you. Get in.” He swept his hand to
the sun-ship.

Both men hesitated. Then Northwood
strode forward until he was within
three feet of Adam. They stood thus,
eyeing each other, two splendid beings,
one blond as a Viking, the other dark
and vital.

“Just what is your game?” demanded
Northwood.

The icy eyes shot forth a gleam like
lightning. “I needn’t tell you, of
course, but I may as well let you suffer
over the knowledge.” He curled his
lips with superb scorn. “I have one
human weakness. I want Athalia.” The
icy eyes warmed for a fleeting second.
“She is anticipating her meeting with
you—bah! The taste of these women
of the Black Age! I could kill you, of
course; but that would only inflame
her. And so I take you to her, thrust
you down her throat. When she sees
you, she will fly to me.” He spread his
magnificent chest.

“Adam!” Dr. Mundson’s face was
dark with anger. “What of Eve?”

“Who are you to question my ac[207]tions?
What a fool you were to let me,
whom you forced into life thousands of
years too soon, grow more powerful
than you! Before I am through with
all of you petty creatures of the Black
Age, you will call me more terrible
than your Jehovah! For see what you
have called forth from unborn time.”

He vanished.

Before the startled men could
recover from the shock of it, the
vibrant, too-new voice went on:

“I am sorry for you, Mundson, because,
like you, I need specimens for
my experiments. What a splendid
specimen you will be!” His laugh was
ugly with significance. “Get in,
worms!”

Unseen hands cuffed and pushed
them into the sun-ship.

Inside, Dr. Mundson stumbled to the
control room, white and drawn of face,
his great brain seemingly paralyzed by
the catastrophe.

“You needn’t attempt tricks,” went
on the voice. “I am watching you both.
You cannot even hide your thoughts
from me.”

And thus began the strange continuation
of the journey. Not once, in
that wild half-hour’s rush over the
polar ice clouds, did they see Adam.
They saw and heard only the weird
signs of his presence: a puffing cigar
hanging in midair, a glass of water
swinging to unseen lips, a ghostly
voice hurling threats and insults at
them.

Once the scientist whispered: “Don’t
cross him; it is useless. John Northwood,
you’ll have to fight a demigod
for your woman!”

Because of the terrific speed of the
sun-ship, Northwood could distinguish
nothing of the topographical details below.
At the end of half-an-hour, the
scientist slowed enough to point out a
tall range of snow-covered mountains,
over which hovered a play of colored
lights like the aurora australis.

“Behind those mountains,” he said,
“is our destination.”

Almost in a moment, the sun-ship
had soared over the peaks.
Dr. Mundson kept the speed low
enough for Northwood to see the
splendid view below.

In the giant cup formed by the encircling
mountain range was a green
valley of tropical luxuriance. Stretches
of dense forest swept half up the mountains
and filled the valley cup with tangled
verdure. In the center, surrounded
by a broad field and a narrow
ring of woods, towered a group of
buildings. From the largest, which was
circular, came the auroralike radiance
that formed an umbrella of light over
the entire valley.

“Do I guess right,” said Northwood,
“that the light is responsible for this
oasis in the ice?”

“Yes,” said Dr. Mundson. “In your
American slang, it is canned sunshine
containing an overabundance of certain
rays, especially the Life Ray, which I
have isolated.” He smiled proudly.
“You needn’t look startled, my friend.
Some of the most common things store
sunlight. On very dark nights, if you
have sharp eyes, you can see the radiance
given off by certain flowers, which
many naturalists say is trapped sunshine.
The familiar nasturtium and the
marigold opened for me the way to
hold sunshine against the long polar
night, for they taught me how to apply
the Einstein theory of bent light.
Stated simply, during the polar night,
when the sun is hidden over the rim of
the world, we steal some of his rays;
during the polar day we concentrate
the light.”

“But could stored sunshine alone
give enough warmth for the luxuriant
growth of those jungles?”

“An overabundance of the Life Ray
is responsible for the miraculous
growth of all life in New Eden. The
Life Ray is Nature’s most powerful
force. Yet Nature is often niggardly
and paradoxical in her use of her
powers. In New Eden, we have forced
the powers of creation to take ascendency
over the powers of destruction.”

[208]
At Northwood’s sudden start, the
scientist laughed and continued: “Is it
not a pity that Nature, left alone, requires
twenty years to make a man who
begins to die in another ten years?
Such waste is not tolerated in New
Eden, where supermen are younger
than babes and—”

“Come, worms; let’s land.”

It was Adam’s voice. Suddenly he
materialized, a blond god, whose eyes
and flesh were too new.

They were in a world of golden
skylight, warmth and tropical
vegetation. The field on which they
had landed was covered with a velvety
green growth of very soft, fine-bladed
grass, sprinkled with tiny, star-shaped
blue flowers. A balmy, sweet-scented
wind, downy as the breeze of a dream,
blew gently along the grass and tingled
against Northwood’s skin refreshingly.
Almost instantly he had the
sensation of perfect well being, and
this feeling of physical perfection was
part of the ecstasy that seemed to pervade
the entire valley. Grass and
breeze and golden skylight were saturated
with a strange ether of joyousness.

At one end of the field was a dense
jungle, cut through by a road that led
to the towering building from which,
while above in the sun-ship, they had
seen the golden light issue.

From the jungle road came a man
and a woman, large, handsome people,
whose flesh and eyes had the sinister
newness of Adam’s. Even before they
came close enough to speak, Northwood
was aware that while they seemed
of Adam’s breed, they were yet unlike
him. The difference was psychical
rather than physical; they lacked the
aura of hate and horror that surrounded
Adam. The woman drew
Adam’s head down and kissed him affectionately
on both cheeks.

Adam, from his towering height,
patted her shoulder impatiently and
said: “Run on back to the laboratory,
grandmother. We’re following soon.
You have some new human embryos, I
believe you told me this morning.”

“Four fine specimens, two of them
being your sister’s twins.”

“Splendid! I was sure that creation
had stopped with my generation. I
must see them.” He turned to the
scientist and Northwood. “You needn’t
try to leave this spot. Of course I
shall know instantly and deal with you
in my own way. Wait here.”

He strode over the emerald grass on
the heels of the woman.

Northwood asked: “Why does he call
that girl grandmother?”

“Because she is his ancestress.” He
stirred uneasily. “She is of the first
generation brought forth in the laboratory,
and is no different from you
or I, except that, at the age of five
years, she is the ancestress of twenty
generations.”

“My God!” muttered Northwood.

“Don’t start being horrified, my
friend. Forget about so-called natural
laws while you are in New Eden. Remember,
here we have isolated the Life
Ray. But look! Here comes your
Athalia!”

Northwood gazed covertly at
the beautiful girl approaching
them with a rarely graceful walk. She
was tall, slender, round-bosomed, narrow-hipped,
and she held her lovely
body in the erect poise of splendid
health. Northwood had a confused
realization of uncovered bronzy hair,
drawn to the back of a white neck in
a bunch of short curls; of immense
soft black eyes; lips the color of
blood, and delicate, plump flesh on
which the golden skylight lingered
graciously. He was instantly glad to
see that while she possessed the freshness
of young girlhood, her skin and
eyes did not have the horrible newness
of Adam’s.

When she was still twenty feet distant,
Northwood met her eyes and she
smiled shyly. The rich, red blood ran
through her face; and he, too, flushed.

She went to Dr. Mundson and, plac[209]ing
her hands on his thick shoulders,
kissed him affectionately.

“I’ve been worried about you, Daddy
Mundson.” Her rich contralto voice
matched her exotic beauty. “Since you
and Adam had that quarrel the day you
left, I did not see him until this morning,
when he landed the sun-ship
alone.”

“And you pleaded with him to return
for us?”

“Yes.” Her eyes drooped and a hot
flush swept over her face.

Dr. Mundson smiled. “But I’m back
now, Athalia, and I’ve brought some
one whom I hope you will be glad to
know.”

Reaching for her hand, he placed it
simply in Northwood’s.

“This is John, Athalia. Isn’t he
handsomer than the pictures of him
which I televisioned to you? God
bless both of you.”

He walked ahead and turned his
back.

A magical half hour followed
for Northwood and Athalia. The
girl told him of her past life, how Dr.
Mundson had discovered her one year
ago working in a New York sweat
shop, half dead from consumption.
Without friends, she was eager to follow
the scientist to New Eden, where
he promised she would recover her
health immediately.

“And he was right, John,” she said
shyly. “The Life Ray, that marvelous
energy ray which penetrates to the utmost
depths of earth and ocean, giving
to the cells of all living bodies the
power to grow and remain animate, has
been concentrated by Dr. Mundson in
his stored sunshine. The Life Ray
healed me almost immediately.”

Northwood looked down at the
glorious girl beside him, whose eyes
already fluttered away from his like
shy black butterflies. Suddenly he
squeezed the soft hand in his and said
passionately:

“Athalia! Because Adam wants you
and will get you if he can, let us set
aside all the artificialities of civilization.
I have loved you madly ever since
I saw your picture. If you can say the
same to me, it will give me courage to
face what I know lies before me.”

Athalia, her face suddenly tender,
came closer to him.

“John Northwood, I love you.”

Her red lips came temptingly close;
but before he could touch them, Adam
suddenly pushed his body between him
and Athalia. Adam was pale, and all
the iciness was gone from his blue
eyes, which were deep and dark and
very human. He looked down at
Athalia, and she looked up at him, two
handsome specimens of perfect manhood
and womanhood.

“Fast work, Athalia!” The new vibrant
voice was strained. “I was hoping
you would be disappointed in him,
especially after having been wooed by
me this morning. I could take you if
I wished, of course; but I prefer to
win you in the ancient manner. Dismiss
him!” He jerked his thumb over
his shoulder in Northwood’s direction.

Athalia flushed vividly and looked at
him almost compassionately. “I am not
great enough for you, Adam. I dare
not love you.”

Adam laughed, and still oblivious
of Northwood and Dr. Mundson,
folded his arms over his breast. With
the golden skylight on his burnished
hair, he was a valiant, magnificent
spectacle.

“Since the beginning of time, gods
and archangels have looked upon the
daughters of men and found them fair.
Mate with me, Athalia, and I, fifty
thousand years beyond the creature
Mundson has selected for you, will
make you as I am, the deathless overlord
of life and all nature.”

He drew her hand to his bosom.

For one dark moment, Northwood
felt himself seared by jealousy, for,
through the plump, sweet flesh of
Athalia’s face, he saw the red blood
leap again. How could she withhold
herself from this splendid superman?

[210]
But her answer, given with faltering
voice, was the old, simple one: “I have
promised him, Adam. I love him.”
Tears trembled on her thick lashes.

“So! I cannot get you in the ancient
manner. Now I’ll use my own.”

He seized her in his arms crushed
her against him, and, laughing over her
head at Northwood, bent his glistening
head and kissed her on the mouth.

There was a blinding flash of blue
electric sparks—and nothing else. Both
Adam and Athalia had vanished.

Adam’s voice came in a last mocking
challenge: “I shall be what
no other gods before me have been—a
good sport. I’ll leave you both to your
own devices, until I want you again.”

White-lipped and trembling, Northwood
groaned: “What has he done
now?”

Dr. Mundson’s great head drooped.
“I don’t know. Our bodies are electric
and chemical machines; and a super intelligence
has discovered new laws of
which you and I are ignorant.”

“But Athalia….”

“She is safe; he loves her.”

“Loves her!” Northwood shivered.
“I cannot believe that those freezing
eyes could ever look with love on a
woman.”

“Adam is a man. At heart he is as
human as the first man-creature that
wallowed in the new earth’s slime.”
His voice dropped as though he were
musing aloud. “It might be well to let
him have Athalia. She will help to
keep vigor in the new race, which
would stop reproducing in another few
generations without the injection of
Black Age blood.”

“Do you want to bring more creatures
like Adam into the world?”
Northwood flung at him. “You have
tampered with life enough, Dr. Mundson.
But, although Adam has my sympathy,
I’m not willing to turn Athalia
over to him.”

“Well said! Now come to the laboratory
for chemical nourishment and rest
under the Life Ray.”

They went to the great circular
building from whose highest tower issued
the golden radiance that shamed
the light of the sun, hanging low in the
northeast.

“John Northwood,” said Dr. Mundson,
“with that laboratory, which is the
center of all life in New Eden, we’ll
have to whip Adam. He gave us what
he called a ‘sporting chance’ because he
knew that he is able to send us and all
mankind to a doom more terrible than
hell. Even now we might be entering
some hideous trap that he has set for
us.”

They entered by a side entrance
and went immediately to what Dr.
Mundson called the Rest Ward. Here,
in a large room, were ranged rows of
cots, on many of which lay men basking
in the deep orange flood of light
which poured from individual lamps
set above each cot.

“It is the Life Ray!” said Dr. Mundson
reverently. “The source of all
growth and restoration in Nature. It
is the power that bursts open the seed
and brings forth the shoot, that increases
the shoot into a giant tree. It
is the same power that enables the fertilized
ovum to develop into an animal.
It creates and recreates cells almost instantly;
accordingly, it is the perfect
substitute for sleep. Stretch out, enjoy
its power; and while you rest, eat these
nourishing tablets.”

Northwood lay on a cot, and Dr.
Mundson turned the Life Ray on him.
For a few minutes a delicious drowsiness
fell upon him, producing a spell of
perfect peace which the cells of his being
seemed to drink in. For another
delirious, fleeting space, every inch of
him vibrated with a thrilling sensation
of freshness. He took a deep, ecstatic
breath and opened his eyes.

“Enough,” said Dr. Mundson, switching
off the Ray. “After three minutes
of rejuvenation, you are commencing
again with perfect cells. All ravages
from disease and wear have been corrected.”

[211]
Northwood leaped up joyously. His
handsome eyes sparkled, his skin
glowed. “I feel great! Never felt so
good since I was a kid.”

A pleased grin spread over the
scientist’s homely face. “See what my
discovery will mean to the world! In
the future we shall all go to the laboratory
for recuperation and nourishment.
We’ll have almost twenty-four hours a
day for work and play.”

He stretched out on the bed contentedly.
“Some day, when my
work is nearly done, I shall permit the
Life Ray to cure my hump.”

“Why not now?”

Dr. Mundson sighed. “If I were perfect,
I should cease to be so overwhelmingly
conscious of the importance
of perfection.” He settled back
to enjoyment of the Life Ray.

A few minutes later, he jumped up,
alert as a boy. “Ach! That’s fine.
Now I’ll show you how the Life Ray
speeds up development and produces
four generations of humans a year.”

With restored energy, Northwood
began thinking of Athalia. As he followed
Dr. Mundson down a long corridor,
he yearned to see her again, to be
certain that she was safe. Once he
imagined he felt a gentle, soft-fleshed
touch against his hand, and was disappointed
not to see her walking by his
side. Was she with him, unseen? The
thought was sweet.

Before Dr. Mundson opened the massive
bronze door at the end of the corridor,
he said:

“Don’t be surprised or shocked over
anything you see here, John Northwood.
This is the Baby Laboratory.”

They entered a room which seemed
no different from a hospital ward. On
little white beds lay naked children of
various sizes, perfect, solemn-eyed
youngsters and older children as
beautiful as animated statues. Above
each bed was a small Life Ray projector.
A white-capped nurse went
from bed to bed.

“They are recuperating from the
daily educational period,” said the
scientist. “After a few minutes of this
they will go into the growing room,
which I shall have to show you through
a window. Should you and I enter, we
might be changed in a most extraordinary
manner.” He laughed mischievously.
“But, look, Northwood!”

He slid back a panel in the wall,
and Northwood peered in
through a thick pane of clear glass.
The room was really an immense outdoor
arena, its only carpet the fine-bladed
grass, its roof the blue sky cut
in the middle by an enormous disc
from which shot the aurora of trapped
sunshine which made a golden umbrella
over the valley. Through openings
in the bottom of the disc poured
a fine rain of rays which fell constantly
upon groups of children, youths and
young girls, all clad in the merest
scraps of clothing. Some were dancing,
others were playing games, but all
seemed as supremely happy as the
birds and butterflies which fluttered
about the shrubs and flowers edging
the arena.

“I don’t expect you to believe,” said
Dr. Mundson, “that the oldest young
man in there is three months old. You
cannot see visible changes in a body
which grows as slowly as the human
being, whose normal period of development
is twenty years or more. But I
can give you visible proof of how fast
growth takes place under the full
power of the Life Ray. Plant life,
which, even when left to nature, often
develops from seed to flower within a
few weeks or months, can be seen making
its miraculous changes under the
Life Ray. Watch those gorgeous purple
flowers over which the butterflies
are hovering.”

Northwood followed his pointing
finger. Near the glass window through
which they looked grew an enormous
bank of resplendent violet colored
flowers, which literally enshrouded the
entire bush with their royal glory. At
first glance it seemed as though a vio[212]lent
wind were snatching at flower and
bush, but closer inspection proved that
the agitation was part of the plant itself.
And then he saw that the movements
were the result of perpetual
composition and growth.

He fastened his eyes on one huge
bud. He saw it swell, burst,
spread out its passionate purple velvet,
lift the broad flower face to the light
for a joyous minute. A few seconds
later a butterfly lighted airily to
sample its nectar and to brush the
pollen from its yellow dusted wings.
Scarcely had the winged visitor flown
away than the purple petals began to
wither and fall away, leaving the seed
pod on the stem. The visible change
went on in this seed pod. It turned
rapidly brown, dried out, and then sent
the released seeds in a shower to the
rich black earth below. Scarcely had
the seeds touched the ground than they
sent up tiny green shoots that grew
larger each moment. Within ten minutes
there was a new plant a foot high.
Within half an hour, the plant budded,
blossomed, and cast forth its own seed.

“You understand?” asked the scientist.
“Development is going on as rapidly
among the children. Before the first
year has passed, the youngest baby will
have grandchildren; that is, if the baby
tests out fit to pass its seed down to
the new generation. I know it sounds
absurd. Yet you saw the plant.”

“But Doctor,” Northwood rubbed his
jaw thoughtfully, “Nature’s forces of
destruction, of tearing down, are as
powerful as her creative powers. You
have discovered the ultimate in creation
and upbuilding. But perhaps—oh,
Lord, it is too awful to think!”

“Speak, Northwood!” The scientist’s
voice was impatient.

“It is nothing!” The pale young man
attempted a smile. “I was only imagining
some of the horror that could be
thrust on the world if a supermind like
Adam’s should discover Nature’s secret
of death and destruction and speed it
up as you have sped the life force.”

“Ach Gott!” Dr. Mundson’s face was
white. “He has his own laboratory,
where he works every day. Don’t talk
so loud. He might be listening. And I
believe he can do anything he sets out
to accomplish.”

Close to Northwood’s ear fell a faint,
triumphant whisper: “Yes, he can do
anything. How did you guess, worm?”

It was Adam’s voice.

“Now come and see the Leyden
jar mothers,” said Dr. Mundson.
“We do not wait for the child to be
born to start our work.”

He took Northwood to a laboratory
crowded with strange apparatus, where
young men and women worked. Northwood
knew instantly that these people,
although unusually handsome and
strong, were not of Adam’s generation.
None of them had the look of newness
which marked those who had grown up
under the Life Ray.

“They are the perfect couples whom
I combed the world to find,” said the
scientist. “From their eugenic marriages
sprang the first children that
passed through the laboratory. I had
hoped,” he hesitated and looked sideways
at Northwood, “I had dreamed of
having the children of you and Athalia
to help strengthen the New Race.”

A wave of sudden disgust passed
over Northwood.

“Thanks,” he said tartly. “When I
marry Athalia, I intend to have an old-fashioned
home and a Black Age family.
I don’t relish having my children
turned into—experiments.”

“But wait until you see all the wonders
of the laboratory! That is why
I am showing you all this.”

Northwood drew his handkerchief
and mopped his brow. “It sickens me,
Doctor! The more I see, the more pity
I have for Adam—and the less I blame
him for his rebellion and his desire to
kill and to rule. Heavens! What a
terrible thing you have done, experimenting
with human life.”

“Nonsense! Can you say that all life—all
matter—is not the result of scien[213]tific
experiment? Can you?” His black
gaze made Northwood uncomfortable.
“Buck up, young friend, for now I am
going to show you a marvelous improvement
on Nature’s bungling ways—the
Leyden jar mother.” He raised
his voice and called, “Lilith!”

The woman whom they had met on
the field came forward.

“May we take a peep at Lona’s
twins?” asked the scientist. “They are
about ready to go to the growing dome,
are they not?”

“In five more minutes,” said the
woman. “Come see.”

She lifted one of the black velvet
curtains that lined an entire side
of the laboratory and thereby disclosed
a globular jar of glass and metal, connected
by wires to a dynamo. Above
the jar was a Life Ray projector.
Lilith slid aside a metal portion of the
jar, disclosing through the glass underneath
the squirming, kicking body of a
baby, resting on a bed of soft, spongy
substance, to which it was connected
by the navel cord.

“The Leyden jar mother,” said Dr.
Mundson. “It is the dream of us scientists
realized. The human mother’s
body does nothing but nourish and protect
her unborn child, a job which
science can do better. And so, in New
Eden, we take the young embryo and
place it in the Leyden jar mother,
where the Life Ray, electricity, and
chemical food shortens the period of
gestation to a few days.”

At that moment a bell under the
Leyden jar began to ring. Dr. Mundson
uncovered the jar and lifted out the
child, a beautiful, perfectly formed
boy, who began to cry lustily.

“Here is one baby who’ll never be
kissed,” he said. “He’ll be nourished
chemically, and, at the end of the week,
will no longer be a baby. If you are
patient, you can actually see the processes
of development taking place under
the Life Ray, for babies develop
very fast.”

Northwood buried his face in his
hands. “Lord! This is awful. No childhood;
no mother to mould his mind!
No parents to watch over him, to give
him their tender care!”

“Awful, fiddlesticks! Come see how
children get their education, how they
learn to use their hands and feet so
they need not pass through the awkwardness
of childhood.”

He led Northwood to a magnificent
building whose façade of white
marble was as simply beautiful as a
Greek temple. The side walls, built almost
entirely of glass, permitted the
synthetic sunshine to sweep from end
to end. They first entered a library,
where youths and young girls poured
over books of all kinds. Their manner
of reading mystified Northwood. With
a single sweep of the eye, they seemed
to devour a page, and then turned to
the next. He stepped closer to peer over
the shoulder of a beautiful girl. She
was reading “Euclid’s Elements of
Geometry,” in Latin, and she turned
the pages as swiftly as the other girl
occupying her table, who was devouring
“Paradise Lost.”

Dr. Mundson whispered to him: “If
you do not believe that Ruth here is
getting her Euclid, which she probably
never saw before to-day, examine her
from the book; that is, if you are a
good enough Latin scholar.”

Ruth stopped her reading to talk to
him, and, in a few minutes, had completely
dumbfounded him with her pedantic
replies, which fell from lips as
luscious and unformed as an infant’s.

“Now,” said Dr. Mundson, “test
Rachael on her Milton. As far as she
has read, she should not misquote a
line, and her comments will probably
prove her scholarly appreciation of
Milton.”

Word for word, Rachael was able to
give him “Paradise Lost” from memory,
except the last four pages, which she
had not read. Then, taking the book
from him, she swept her eyes over
these pages, returned the book to him,
and quoted copiously and correctly.

[214]

Dr. Mundson gloated triumphantly
over his astonishment.
“There, my friend. Could you now be
satisfied with old-fashioned children
who spend long, expensive years in
getting an education? Of course, your
children will not have the perfect
brains of these, yet, developed under
the Life Ray, they should have splendid
mentality.

“These children, through selective
breeding, have brains that make everlasting
records instantly. A page in a
book, once seen, is indelibly retained
by them, and understood. The same is
true of a lecture, of an explanation
given by a teacher, of even idle conversation.
Any man or woman in this
room should be able to repeat the most
trivial conversation days old.”

“But what of the arts, Dr. Mundson?
Surely even your supermen and women
cannot instantly learn to paint a masterpiece
or to guide their fingers and
their brains through the intricacies of
a difficult musical composition.”

“No?” His dark eyes glowed. “Come
see!”

Before they entered another wing of
the building, they heard a violin being
played masterfully.

Dr. Mundson paused at the door.

“So that you may understand what
you shall see, let me remind you that
the nerve impulses and the coordinating
means in the human body are purely
electrical. The world has not yet
accepted my theory, but it will. Under
superman’s system of education, the
instantaneous records made on the
brain give immediate skill to the acting
parts of the body. Accordingly, musicians
are made over night.”

He threw open the door. Under a
Life Ray projector, a beautiful, Juno-esque
woman was playing a violin.
Facing her, and with eyes fastened to
hers, stood a young man, whose arms
and slender fingers mimicked every
motion she made. Presently she stopped
playing and handed the violin to him.
In her own masterly manner, he repeated
the score she had played.

“That is Eve,” whispered Dr. Mundson.
“I had selected her as Adam’s
wife. But he does not want her, the
most brilliant woman of the New Race.”

Northwood gave the woman an appraising
look. “Who wants a perfect
woman? I don’t blame Adam for preferring
Athalia. But how is she teaching
her pupil?”

“Through thought vibration, which
these perfect people have developed
until they can record permanently the
radioactive waves of the brains of
others.”

Eve turned, caught Northwood’s eyes
in her magnetic blue gaze, and smiled
as only a goddess can smile upon a
mortal she has marked as her own. She
came toward him with outflung hands.

“So you have come!” Her vibrant
contralto voice, like Adam’s, held the
birdlike, broken tremulo of a young
child’s. “I have been waiting for you,
John Northwood.”

Her eyes, as blue and icy as
Adam’s, lingered long on him,
until he flinched from their steely
magnetism. She slipped her arm
through his and drew him gently but
firmly from the room, while Dr. Mundson
stood gaping after them.

They were on a flagged terrace
arched with roses of gigantic size,
which sent forth billows of sensuous
fragrance. Eve led him to a white
marble seat piled with silk cushions,
on which she reclined her superb body,
while she regarded him from narrowed
lids.

“I saw your picture that he televisioned
to Athalia,” she said. “What a
botch Dr. Mundson has made of his
mating.” Her laugh rippled like falling
water. “I want you, John Northwood!”

Northwood started and blushed furiously.
Smile dimples broke around her
red, humid lips.

“Ah, you’re old-fashioned!”

Her large, beautiful hand, fleshed
more tenderly than any woman’s hand
he had ever seen, went out to him appealingly.
“I can bring you amorous[215]
delight that your Athalia never could
offer in her few years of youth. And
I’ll never grow old, John Northwood.”

She came closer until he could feel
the fragrant warmth of her tawny,
ribbon bound hair pulse against his
face. In sudden panic he drew back.

“But I am pledged to Athalia!”
tumbled from him. “It is all a dreadful
mistake, Eve. You and Adam were
created for each other.”

“Hush!” The lightning that flashed
from her blue eyes changed her from
seductress to angry goddess. “Created
for each other! Who wants a made-to-measure
lover?”

The luscious lips trembled slightly,
and into the vivid eyes crept
a suspicion of moisture. Eternal Eve’s
weapons! Northwood’s handsome face
relaxed with pity.

“I want you, John Northwood,” she
continued shamelessly. “Our love will
be sublime.” She leaned heavily against
him, and her lips were like a blood red
flower pressed against white satin.
“Come, beloved, kiss me!”

Northwood gasped and turned his
head. “Don’t, Eve!”

“But a kiss from me will set you
apart from all your generation, John
Northwood, and you shall understand
what no man of the Black Age could
possibly fathom.”

Her hair had partly fallen from its
ribbon bandage and poured its fragrant
gold against his shoulder.

“For God’s sake, don’t tempt me!” he
groaned. “What do you mean?”

“That mental and physical and spiritual
contact with me will temporarily
give you, a three-dimension creature,
the power of the new sense, which
your race will not have for fifty thousand
years.”

White-lipped and trembling, he demanded:
“Explain!”

Eve smiled. “Have you not guessed
that Adam has developed an additional
sense? You’ve seen him vanish. He and
I have the sixth sense of Time Perception—the
new sense which enables us
to penetrate what you of the Black Age
call the Fourth Dimension. Even you
whose mentalities are framed by three
dimensions have this sixth sense instinct.
Your very religion is based on
it, for you believe that in another life
you shall step into Time, or, as you
call it, eternity.” She leaned closer so
that her hair brushed his cheek. “What
is eternity, John Northwood? Is it not
keeping forever ahead of the Destroyer?
The future is eternal, for it is
never reached. Adam and I, through
our new sense which comprehends
Time and Space, can vanish by stepping
a few seconds into the future, the
Fourth Dimension of Space. Death can
never reach us, not even accidental
death, unless that which causes death
could also slip into the future, which
is not yet possible.”

“But if the Fourth Dimension is
future Time, why can one in the third
dimension feel the touch of an unseen
presence in the Fourth Dimension—hear
his voice, even?”

“Thought vibration. The touch is not
really felt nor the voice heard: they
are only imagined. The radioactive
waves of the brain of even you Black
Age people are swift enough to bridge
Space and Time. And it is the mind
that carries us beyond the third dimension.”

Her red mouth reached closer to
him, her blue eyes touched hidden
forces that slept in remote cells
of his being. “You are going into
Eternal Time, John Northwood, Eternity
without beginning or end. You
understand? You feel it? Comprehend
it? Now for the contact—kiss me!”

Northwood had seen Athalia vanish
under Adam’s kiss. Suddenly, in one
mad burst of understanding, he leaned
over to his magnificent temptress.

For a split second he felt the sweet
pressure of baby-soft lips, and then
the atoms of his body seemed to fly
asunder. Black chaos held him for
a frightful moment before he felt
sanity return.

[216]
He was back on the terrace again,
with Eve by his side. They were standing
now. The world about him looked
the same, yet there was a subtle change
in everything.

Eve laughed softly. “It is puzzling,
isn’t it? You’re seeing everything as
in a mirror. What was left before is
now right. Only you and I are real.
All else is but a vision, a dream. For
now you and I are existing one minute
in future time, or, more simply, we are
in the Fourth Dimension. To everything
in the third dimension, we are
invisible. Let me show you that Dr.
Mundson cannot see you.”

They went back to the room beyond
the terrace. Dr. Mundson was not
present.

“There he goes down the jungle
path,” said Eve, looking out a window.
She laughed. “Poor old fellow. The
children of his genius are worrying
him.”

They were standing in the recess
formed by a bay window. Eve
picked up his hand and laid it against
her face, giving him the full, blasting
glory of her smiling blue eyes.

Northwood, looking away miserably,
uttered a low cry. Coming over the
field beyond were Adam and Athalia.
By the trimming on the blue dress she
wore, he could see that she was still
in the Fourth Dimension, for he did
not see her as a mirror image.

A look of fear leaped to Eve’s face.
She clutched Northwood’s arm, trembling.

“I don’t want Adam to see that I have
passed you beyond,” she gasped. “We
are existing but one minute in the
future. Always Adam and I have feared
to pass too far beyond the sweetness of
reality. But now, so that Adam may
not see us, we shall step five minutes
into what-is-yet-to-be. And even he,
with all his power, cannot see into a
future that is more distant than that
in which he exists.”

She raised her humid lips to his.
“Come, beloved.”

Northwood kissed her. Again came
the moment of confusion, of the awful
vacancy that was like death, and then
he found himself and Eve in the laboratory,
following Adam and Athalia
down a long corridor. Athalia was crying
and pleading frantically with
Adam. Once she stopped and threw
herself at his feet in a gesture of
dramatic supplication, arms outflung,
streaming eyes wide open with fear.

Adam stooped and lifted her gently
and continued on his way, supporting
her against his side.

Eve dug her fingers into Northwood’s
arm. Horror contorted
her face, horror mixed with rage.

“My mind hears what he is saying,
understands the vile plan he has made,
John Northwood. He is on his way to
his laboratory to destroy not only you
and most of these in New Eden, but
me as well. He wants only Athalia.”

Striding forward like an avenging
goddess, she pulled Northwood after
her.

“Hurry!” she whispered. “Remember,
you and I are five minutes in the future,
and Adam is only one. We are witnessing
what will occur four minutes from
now. We yet have time to reach the
laboratory before him and be ready for
him when he enters. And because he
will have to go back to Present Time
to do his work of destruction, I will
be able to destroy him. Ah!”

Fierce joy burned in her flashing
blue eyes, and her slender nostrils
quivered delicately. Northwood, peeping
at her in horror, knew that no
mercy could be expected of her. And
when she stopped at a certain door and
inserted a key, he remembered Athalia.
What if she should enter with Adam
in Present Time?

They were inside Adam’s laboratory,
a huge apartment filled with
queer apparatus and cages of live animals.
The room was a strange paradox.
Part of the equipment, the walls, and
the floor was glistening with newness,[217]
and part was moulding with extreme
age. The powers of disintegration that
haunt a tropical forest seemed to be
devouring certain spots of the room.
Here, in the midst of bright marble,
was a section of wall that seemed as
old as the pyramids. The surface of the
stone had an appalling mouldiness, as
though it had been lifted from an ancient
graveyard where it had lain in the
festering ground for unwholesome centuries.

Between cracks in this stained and
decayed section of stone grew fetid
moss that quivered with the microscopic
organisms that infest age-rotten
places. Sections of the flooring and
woodwork also reeked with mustiness.
In one dark, webby corner of the room
lay a pile of bleached bones, still tinted
with the ghastly grays and pinks of
putrefaction. Northwood, overwhelmingly
nauseated, withdrew his eyes
from the bones, only to see, in another
corner, a pile of worm-eaten clothing
that lay on the floor in the outline of
a man.

Faint with the reek of ancient mustiness,
Northwood retreated to the door,
dizzy and staggering.

“It sickens you,” said Eve, “and it
sickens me also, for death and decay
are not pleasant. Yet Nature, left to
herself, reduces all to this. Every grave
that has yawned to receive its prey
hides corruption no less shocking.
Nature’s forces of creation and destruction
forever work in partnership.
Never satisfied with her composition,
she destroys and starts again, building,
building towards the ultimate of perfection.
Thus, it is natural that if Dr.
Mundson isolated the Life Ray, Nature’s
supreme force of compensation,
isolation of the Death Ray should
closely follow. Adam, thirsting for
power, has succeeded. A few sweeps
of his unholy ray of decomposition
will undo all Dr. Mundson’s work in
this valley and reduce it to a stinking
holocaust of destruction. And the time
for his striking has come!”

She seized his face and drew it toward
her. “Quick!” she said. “We’ll
have to go back to the third dimension.
I could leave you safe in the fourth,
but if anything should happen to me,
you would be stranded forever in future
time.”

She kissed his lips. In a moment, he
was back in the old familiar world,
where right is right and left is left.
Again the subtle change wrought by
Eve’s magic lips had taken place.

Eve went to a machine standing in
a corner of the room.

“Come here and get behind me, John
Northwood. I want to test it before he
enters.”

Northwood stood behind her shoulder.

“Now watch!” she ordered. “I shall
turn it on one of those cages of guinea
pigs over there.”

She swung the projector around,
pointed it at the cage of small, squealing
animals, and threw a lever. Instantly
a cone of black mephitis shot forth,
a loathsome, bituminous stream of
putrefaction that reeked of the grave
and the cesspool, of the utmost reaches
of decay before the dust accepts the
disintegrated atoms. The first touch of
seething, pitchy destruction brought
screams of sudden agony from the
guinea pigs, but the screams were cut
short as the little animals fell in shocking,
instant decay. The very cage which
imprisoned them shriveled and retreated
from the hellish, devouring
breath that struck its noisome rot into
the heart of the wood and the metal,
reducing both to revolting ruin.

Eve cut off the frightful power, and
the black cone disappeared, leaving the
room putrid with its defilement.

“And Adam would do that to the
world,” she said, her blue eyes like
electric-shot icicles. “He would do it
to you, John Northwood—and to me!”
Her full bosom strained under the
passion beneath.

“Listen!” She raised her hand warningly.
“He comes! The destroyer
comes!”

[218]

A hand was at the door. Eve
reached for the lever, and, the
same moment, Northwood leaned over
her imploringly.

“If Athalia is with him!” he gasped.
“You will not harm her?”

A wild shriek at the door, a slight
scuffle, and then the doorknob was
wrenched as though two were fighting
over it.

“For God’s sake, Eve!” implored
Northwood. “Wait! Wait!”

“No! She shall die, too. You love
her!”

Icy, cruel eyes cut into him, and a
new-fleshed hand tried to push him
aside. The door was straining open. A
beloved voice shrieked. “John!”

Eve and Northwood both leaped for
the lever. Under her tender white flesh
she was as strong as a man. In the
midst of the struggle, her red, humid
lips approached his—closer. Closer.
Their merest pressure would thrust
him into Future Time, where the laboratory
and all it contained would be
but a shadow, and where he would be
helpless to interfere with her terrible
will.

He saw the door open and Adam
stride into the room. Behind him, lying
prone in the hall where she had
probably fainted, was Athalia. In a
mad burst of strength he touched the
lever together with Eve.

The projector, belching forth its
stinking breath of corruption swung in
a mad arc over the ceiling, over the
walls—and then straight at Adam.

Then, quicker than thought, came the
accident. Eve, attempting to throw
Northwood off, tripped, fell half over
the machine, and, with a short scream
of despair, dropped into the black
path of destruction.

Northwood paused, horrified.
The Death Ray was pointed at
an inner wall of the room, which, even
as he looked, crumbled and disappeared,
bringing down upon him dust
more foul than any obscenity the
bowels of the earth might yield. In an
instant the black cone ate through the
outer parts of the building, where
crashing stone and screams that were
more horrible because of their shortness
followed the ruin that swept far
into the fair reaches of the valley.

The paralyzing odor of decay took
his breath, numbed his muscles, until,
of all that huge building, the wall behind
him and one small section of the
room by the doorway alone remained
whole. He was trying to nerve himself
to reach for the lever close to that
quiet formless thing still partly draped
over the machine, when a faint sound
in the door electrified him. At first, he
dared not look, but his own name,
spoken almost in a gasp, gave him
courage.

Athalia lay on the floor, apparently
untouched.

He jerked the lever violently before
running to her, exultant with the
knowledge that his own efforts to keep
the ray from the door had saved her.

“And you’re not hurt!” He gathered
her close.

“John! I saw it get Adam.” She
pointed to a new mound of mouldy
clothes on the floor. “Oh, it is hideous
for me to be so glad, but he was going
to destroy everything and everyone except
me. He made the ray projector
for that one purpose.”

Northwood looked over the pile of
putrid ruins which a few minutes ago
had been a building. There was not a
wall left intact.

“His intention is accomplished, Athalia,”
he said sadly. “Let’s get out before
more stones fall.”

In a moment they were in the open.
An ominous stillness seemed to
grip the very air—the awful silence of
the polar wastes which lay not far
beyond the mountains.

“How dark it is, John!” cried Athalia.
“Dark and cold!”

“The sunshine projector!” gasped
Northwood. “It must have been destroyed.
Look, dearest! The golden
light has disappeared.”

[219]
“And the warm air of the valley will
lift immediately. That means a polar
blizzard.” She shuddered and clung
closer to him. “I’ve seen Antarctic
storms, John. They’re death.”

Northwood avoided her eyes. “There’s
the sun-ship. We’ll give the ruins the
once over in case there are any survivors;
then we’ll save ourselves.”

Even a cursory examination of the
mouldy piles of stone and dust convinced
them that there could be no
survivors. The ruins looked as though
they had lain in those crumbling piles
for centuries. Northwood, smothering
his repugnance, stepped among them—among
the green, slimy stones and the
unspeakable revolting débris, staggering
back and faint and shocked when
he came upon dust that was once
human.

“God!” he groaned, hands over eyes.
“We’re alone, Athalia! Alone in a
charnal house. The laboratory housed
the entire population, didn’t it?”

“Yes. Needing no sleep nor food,
we did not need houses. We all worked
here, under Dr. Mundson’s generalship,
and, lately under Adam’s, like a
little band of soldiers fighting for a
great cause.”

“Let’s go to the sun-ship, dearest.”

“But Daddy Mundson was in the
library,” sobbed Athalia. “Let’s look
for him a little longer.”

Sudden remembrance came to
Northwood. “No, Athalia! He left
the library. I saw him go down the
jungle path several minutes before I
and Eve went to Adam’s laboratory.”

“Then he might be safe!” Her eyes
danced. “He might have gone to the
sun-ship.”

Shivering, she slumped against him.
“Oh, John! I’m cold.”

Her face was blue. Northwood jerked
off his coat and wrapped it around her,
taking the intense cold against his unprotected
shoulders. The low, gray sky
was rapidly darkening, and the feeble
light of the sun could scarcely pierce
the clouds. It was disturbing to know
that even the summer temperature in
the Antarctic was far below zero.

“Come, girl,” said Northwood gravely.
“Hurry! It’s snowing.”

They started to run down the road
through the narrow strip of jungle.
The Death Ray had cut huge swathes
in the tangle of trees and vines, and
now areas of heaped débris, livid with
the colors of recent decay, exhaled a
mephitic humidity altogether alien to
the snow that fell in soft, slow flakes.
Each hesitated to voice the new fear:
had the sun-ship been destroyed?

By the time they reached the open
field, the snow stung their flesh like
sharp needles, but it was not yet thick
enough to hide from them a hideous
fact.

The sun-ship was gone.

It might have occupied one of several
black, foul areas on the green
grass, where the searching Death Ray
had made the very soil putrefy, and
the rocks crumble into shocking dust.

Northwood snatched Athalia to him,
too full of despair to speak. A sudden
terrific flurry of snow whirled around
them, and they were almost blown from
their feet by the icy wind that tore
over the unprotected field.

“It won’t be long,” said Athalia
faintly. “Freezing doesn’t hurt, John,
dear.”

“It isn’t fair, Athalia! There never
would have been such a marriage as
ours. Dr. Mundson searched the world
to bring us together.”

“For scientific experiment!” she
sobbed. “I’d rather die, John. I want
an old-fashioned home, a Black Age
family. I want to grow old with you
and leave the earth to my children.
Or else I want to die here now under
the kind, white blanket the snow is
already spreading over us.” She
drooped in his arms.

Clinging together, they stood in the
howling wind, looking at each other
hungrily, as though they would snatch
from death this one last picture of the
other.

[220]
Northwood’s freezing lips translated
some of the futile words that crowded
against them. “I love you because you
are not perfect. I hate perfection!”

“Yes. Perfection is the only hopeless
state, John. That is why Adam
wanted to destroy, so that he might
build again.”

They were sitting in the snow now,
for they were very tired. The storm
began whistling louder, as though it
were only a few feet above their heads.

“That sounds almost like the sun-ship,”
said Athalia drowsily.

“It’s only the wind. Hold your face
down so it won’t strike your flesh so
cruelly.”

“I’m not suffering. I’m getting warm
again.” She smiled at him sleepily.

Little icicles began to form on
their clothing, and the powdery
snow frosted their uncovered hair.

Suddenly came a familiar voice:
“Ach Gott!“

Dr. Mundson stood before them,
covered with snow until he looked like
a polar bear.

“Get up!” he shouted. “Quick! To
the sun-ship!”

He seized Athalia and jerked her to
her feet. She looked at him sleepily
for a moment, and then threw herself
at him and hugged him frantically.

“You’re not dead?”

Taking each by the arm, he half
dragged them to the sun-ship, which
had landed only a few feet away. In
a few minutes he had hot brandy for
them.

While they sipped greedily, he
talked, between working the sun-ship’s
controls.

“No, I wouldn’t say it was a lucky
moment that drew me to the sun-ship.
When I saw Eve trying to charm John,
I had what you American slangists
call a hunch, which sent me to the
sun-ship to get it off the ground so
that Adam couldn’t commandeer it.
And what is a hunch but a mental
penetration into the Fourth Dimension?”
For a long moment, he brooded,
absent-minded. “I was in the air when
the black ray, which I suppose is
Adam’s deviltry, began to destroy
everything it touched. From a safe
elevation I saw it wreck all my work.”
A sudden spasm crossed his face. “I’ve
flown over the entire valley. We’re the
only survivors—thank God!”

“And so at last you confess that it is
not well to tamper with human life?”
Northwood, warmed with hot brandy,
was his old self again.

“Oh, I have not altogether wasted
my efforts. I went to elaborate pains
to bring together a perfect man and a
perfect woman of what Adam called
our Black Age.” He smiled at them
whimsically.

“And who can say to what extent
you have thus furthered natural evolution?”
Northwood slipped his arm
around Athalia. “Our children might
be more than geniuses, Doctor!”

Dr. Mundson nodded his huge,
shaggy head gravely.

“The true instinct of a Creature of
the Light,” he declared.

Remember
ASTOUNDING STORIES
Appears on Newsstands
THE FIRST THURSDAY IN EACH MONTH

[221]

Into Space

By Sterner St. Paul

A loud hum filled the
air, and suddenly the
projectile rose, gaining
speed rapidly.

Many of my readers will remember
the mysterious radio
messages which were
heard by both amateur and
professional short wave operators during
the nights of
the twenty-third
and twenty-fourth
of last
September, and
even more will remember
the astounding
discovery made by Professor
Montescue of the Lick Observatory on
the night of September twenty-fifth.
At the time, some inspired writers tried
to connect the two events, maintaining
that the discovery of the fact that the
earth had a new satellite coincident
with the receipt
of the mysterious
messages was evidence
that the
new planetoid
was inhabited and
that the messages
were attempts on the part of the inhabitants
to communicate with us.

What was the extraordinary connection
between Dr. Livermore’s sudden disappearance
and the coming of a new
satellite to the Earth?

[222]
The fact that the messages were on a
lower wave length than any receiver
then in existence could receive with
any degree of clarity, and the additional
fact that they appeared to come from
an immense distance lent a certain air
of plausibility to these ebullitions in
the Sunday magazine sections. For
some weeks the feature writers harped
on the subject, but the hurried construction
of new receivers which would
work on a lower wave length yielded no
results, and the solemn pronouncements
of astronomers to the effect that
the new celestial body could by no possibility
have an atmosphere on account
of its small size finally put an end to
the talk. So the matter lapsed into
oblivion.

While quite a few people will remember
the two events I have noted, I
doubt whether there are five hundred
people alive who will remember anything
at all about the disappearance of
Dr. Livermore of the University of
Calvada on September twenty-third.
He was a man of some local prominence,
but he had no more than a local
fame, and few papers outside of California
even noted the event in their
columns. I do not think that anyone
ever tried to connect up his disappearance
with the radio messages or the discovery
of the new earthly satellite; yet
the three events were closely bound up
together, and but for the Doctor’s disappearance,
the other two would never
have happened.

Dr. Livermore taught physics
at Calvada, or at least he taught
the subject when he remembered that
he had a class and felt like teaching.
His students never knew whether he
would appear at class or not; but he
always passed everyone who took his
courses and so, of course, they were always
crowded. The University authorities
used to remonstrate with him, but
his ability as a research worker was so
well known and recognized that he was
allowed to go about as he pleased. He
was a bachelor who lived alone and who
had no interests in life, so far as anyone
knew, other than his work.

I first made contact with him when
I was a freshman at Calvada, and for
some unknown reason he took a liking
to me. My father had insisted that I
follow in his footsteps as an electrical
engineer; as he was paying my bills, I
had to make a show at studying engineering
while I clandestinely pursued
my hobby, literature. Dr. Livermore’s
courses were the easiest in the
school and they counted as science, so
I regularly registered for them, cut
them, and attended a class in literature
as an auditor. The Doctor used to meet
me on the campus and laughingly scold
me for my absence, but he was really
in sympathy with my ambition and he
regularly gave me a passing mark and
my units of credit without regard to
my attendance, or, rather, lack of it.

When I graduated from Calvada I
was theoretically an electrical engineer.
Practically I had a pretty good
knowledge of contemporary literature
and knew almost nothing about my so-called
profession. I stalled around
Dad’s office for a few months until I
landed a job as a cub reporter on the
San Francisco Graphic and then I quit
him cold. When the storm blew over,
Dad admitted that you couldn’t make
a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and
agreed with a grunt to my new line of
work. He said that I would probably
be a better reporter than an engineer
because I couldn’t by any possibility be
a worse one, and let it go at that. However,
all this has nothing to do with
the story. It just explains how I came
to be acquainted with Dr. Livermore,
in the first place, and why he sent for
me on September twenty-second, in the
second place.

The morning of the twenty-second
the City Editor called me in and
asked me if I knew “Old Liverpills.”

“He says that he has a good story
ready to break but he won’t talk to anyone
but you,” went on Barnes. “I of[223]fered
to send out a good man, for when
Old Liverpills starts a story it ought
to be good, but all I got was a high
powered bawling out. He said that he
would talk to you or no one and would
just as soon talk to no one as to me any
longer. Then he hung up. You’d better
take a run out to Calvada and see
what he has to say. I can have a good
man rewrite your drivel when you get
back.”

I was more or less used to that sort
of talk from Barnes so I paid no attention
to it. I drove my flivver down to
Calvada and asked for the Doctor.

“Dr. Livermore?” said the bursar.
“Why, he hasn’t been around here for
the last ten months. This is his sabbatical
year and he is spending it on
a ranch he owns up at Hat Creek, near
Mount Lassen. You’ll have to go there
if you want to see him.”

I knew better than to report back to
Barnes without the story, so there was
nothing to it but to drive up to Hat
Creek, and a long, hard drive it was.
I made Redding late that night; the
next day I drove on to Burney and
asked for directions to the Doctor’s
ranch.

“So you’re going up to Doc Livermore’s,
are you?” asked the Postmaster,
my informant. “Have you got an
invitation?”

I assured him that I had.

“It’s a good thing,” he replied, “because
he don’t allow anyone on his
place without one. I’d like to go up
there myself and see what’s going on,
but I don’t want to get shot at like
old Pete Johnson did when he tried
to drop in on the Doc and pay him a
little call. There’s something mighty
funny going on up there.”

Naturally I tried to find out
what was going on but evidently
the Postmaster, who was also the express
agent, didn’t know. All he could
tell me was that a “lot of junk” had
come for the Doctor by express and
that a lot more had been hauled in by
truck from Redding.

“What kind of junk?” I asked him.

“Almost everything, Bub: sheet
steel, machinery, batteries, cases of
glass, and Lord knows what all. It’s
been going on ever since he landed
there. He has a bunch of Indians working
for him and he don’t let a white
man on the place.”

Forced to be satisfied with this
meager information, I started old Lizzie
and lit out for the ranch. After I
had turned off the main trail I met
no one until the ranch house was in
sight. As I rounded a bend in the road
which brought me in sight of the building,
I was forced to put on my brakes
at top speed to avoid running into a
chain which was stretched across the
road. An Indian armed with a Winchester
rifle stood behind it, and when
I stopped he came up and asked my
business.

“My business is with Dr. Livermore,”
I said tartly.

“You got letter?” he inquired.

“No,” I answered.

“No ketchum letter, no ketchum Doctor,”
he replied, and walked stolidly
back to his post.

“This is absurd,” I shouted, and
drove Lizzie up to the chain. I saw
that it was merely hooked to a ring
at the end, and I climbed out and
started to take it down. A thirty-thirty
bullet embedded itself in the post an
inch or two from my head, and I
changed my mind about taking down
that chain.

“No ketchum letter, no ketchum Doctor,”
said the Indian laconically as he
pumped another shell into his gun.

I was balked, until I noticed a pair
of telephone wires running from
the house to the tree to which one end
of the chain was fastened.

“Is that a telephone to the house?”
I demanded.

The Indian grunted an assent.

“Dr. Livermore telephoned me to
come and see him,” I said. “Can’t I
call him up and see if he still wants to
see me?”

[224]
The Indian debated the question
with himself for a minute and then
nodded a doubtful assent. I cranked
the old coffee mill type of telephone
which I found, and presently heard the
voice of Dr. Livermore.

“This is Tom Faber, Doctor,” I said.
“The Graphic sent me up to get a story
from you, but there’s an Indian here
who started to murder me when I tried
to get past your barricade.”

“Good for him,” chuckled the Doctor.
“I heard the shot, but didn’t know
that he was shooting at you. Tell him
to talk to me.”

The Indian took the telephone at
my bidding and listened for a minute.

“You go in,” he agreed when he hung
up the receiver.

He took down the chain and I drove
on up to the house, to find the Doctor
waiting for me on the veranda.

“Hello, Tom,” he greeted me heartily.
“So you had trouble with my
guard, did you?”

“I nearly got murdered,” I said ruefully.

“I expect that Joe would have drilled
you if you had tried to force your way
in,” he remarked cheerfully. “I forgot
to tell him that you were coming to-day.
I told him you would be here
yesterday, but yesterday isn’t to-day to
that Indian. I wasn’t sure you would
get here at all, in point of fact, for I
didn’t know whether that old fool I
talked to in your office would send you
or some one else. If anyone else had
been sent, he would have never got by
Joe, I can tell you. Come in. Where’s
your bag?”

“I haven’t one,” I replied. “I went
to Calvada yesterday to see you, and
didn’t know until I got there that you
were up here.”

The Doctor chuckled.

“I guess I forgot to tell where I
was,” he said. “That man I talked to
got me so mad that I hung up on him
before I told him. It doesn’t matter,
though. I can dig you up a new toothbrush,
and I guess you can make out
with that. Come in.”

I followed him into the house,
and he showed me a room fitted
with a crude bunk, a washstand, a bowl
and a pitcher.

“You won’t have many luxuries
here, Tom,” he said, “but you won’t
need to stay here for more than a few
days. My work is done: I am ready
to start. In fact, I would have started
yesterday instead of to-day, had you
arrived. Now don’t ask any questions;
it’s nearly lunch time.”

“What’s the story, Doctor?” I asked
after lunch as I puffed one of his excellent
cigars. “And why did you pick
me to tell it to?”

“For several reasons,” he replied, ignoring
my first question. “In the first
place, I like you and I think that you
can keep your mouth shut until you
are told to open it. In the second place,
I have always found that you had the
gift of vision or imagination and have
the ability to believe. In the third
place, you are the only man I know
who had the literary ability to write up
a good story and at the same time has
the scientific background to grasp what
it is all about. Understand that unless
I have your promise not to write this
story until I tell you that you can, not
a word will I tell you.”

I reflected for a moment. The
Graphic would expect the story when
I got back, but on the other hand I
knew that unless I gave the desired
promise, the Doctor wouldn’t talk.

“All right,” I assented, “I’ll promise.”

“Good!” he replied. “In that case,
I’ll tell you all about it. No doubt you,
like the rest of the world, think that
I’m crazy?”

“Why, not at all,” I stammered. In
point of fact, I had often harbored
such a suspicion.

“Oh, that’s all right,” he went on
cheerfully. “I am crazy, crazy as a
loon, which, by the way, is a highly
sensible bird with a well balanced
mentality. There is no doubt that I
am crazy, but my craziness is not of
the usual type. Mine is the insanity of
genius.”

[225]

He looked at me sharply as he
spoke, but long sessions at poker
in the San Francisco Press Club had
taught me how to control my facial
muscles, and I never batted an eye. He
seemed satisfied, and went on.

“From your college work you are familiar
with the laws of magnetism,” he
said. “Perhaps, considering just what
your college career really was, I might
better say that you are supposed to be
familiar with them.”

I joined with him in his laughter.

“It won’t require a very deep knowledge
to follow the thread of my argument,”
he went on. “You know, of
course, that the force of magnetic attraction
is inversely proportional to the
square of the distances separating the
magnet and the attracted particles, and
also that each magnetized particle had
two poles, a positive and a negative
pole, or a north pole and a south pole,
as they are usually called?”

I nodded.

“Consider for a moment that the laws
of magnetism, insofar as concerns the
relation between distance and power of
attraction, are exactly matched by the
laws of gravitation.”

“But there the similarity between the
two forces ends,” I interrupted.

“But there the similarity does not
end,” he said sharply. “That is the
crux of the discovery which I have
made: that magnetism and gravity are
one and the same, or, rather, that the
two are separate, but similar manifestations
of one force. The parallel between
the two grows closer with each
succeeding experiment. You know,
for example, that each magnetized particle
has two poles. Similarly each
gravitized particle, to coin a new word,
had two poles, one positive and one
negative. Every particle on the earth
is so oriented that the negative poles
point toward the positive center of the
earth. This is what causes the commonly
known phenomena of gravity or
weight.”

“I can prove the fallacy of that in a
moment,” I retorted.

“There are none so blind as those
who will not see,” he quoted with an
icy smile. “I can probably predict
your puerile argument, but go ahead
and present it.”

“If two magnets are placed so that
the north pole of one is in juxtaposition
to the south pole of the other,
they attract one another,” I said. “If
the position of the magnets be reversed
so that the two similar poles are opposite,
they will repel. If your theory
were correct, a man standing on his
head would fall off the earth.”

“Exactly what I expected,” he replied.
“Now let me ask you a question.
Have you ever seen a small bar magnet
placed within the field of attraction of
a large electromagnet? Of course you
have, and you have noticed that, when
the north pole of the bar magnet was
pointed toward the electromagnet, the
bar was attracted. However, when the
bar was reversed and the south pole
pointed toward the electromagnet, the
bar was still attracted. You doubtless
remember that experiment.”

“But in that case the magnetism of
the electromagnet was so large that the
polarity of the small magnet was reversed!”
I cried.

“Exactly, and the field of gravity of
the earth is so great compared to the
gravity of a man that when he stands
on his head, his polarity is instantly
reversed.”

I nodded. His explanation was too
logical for me to pick a flaw in it.

“If that same bar magnet were held
in the field of the electromagnet with
its north pole pointed toward the magnet
and then, by the action of some
outside force of sufficient power, its
polarity were reversed, the bar would
be repelled. If the magnetism were
neutralized and held exactly neutral,
it would be neither repelled nor attracted,
but would act only as the force
of gravity impelled it. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly,” I assented.

“That, then, paves the way for what
I have to tell you. I have developed[226]
an electrical method of neutralizing the
gravity of a body while it is within
the field of the earth, and also, by a
slight extension, a method of entirely
reversing its polarity.”

I nodded calmly.

“Do you realize what this
means?” he cried.

“No,” I replied, puzzled by his great
excitement.

“Man alive,” he cried, “it means that
the problem of aerial flight is entirely
revolutionized, and that the era of interplanetary
travel is at hand! Suppose
that I construct an airship and
then render it neutral to gravity. It
would weigh nothing, absolutely nothing!
The tiniest propeller would drive
it at almost incalculable speed with a
minimum consumption of power, for
the only resistance to its motion would
be the resistance of the air. If I were
to reverse the polarity, it would be repelled
from the earth with the same
force with which it is now attracted,
and it would rise with the same acceleration
as a body falls toward the
earth. It would travel to the moon in
two hours and forty minutes.”

“Air resistance would—”

“There is no air a few miles from the
earth. Of course, I do not mean that
such a craft would take off from the
earth and land on the moon three hours
later. There are two things which
would interfere with that. One is the
fact that the propelling force, the gravity
of the earth, would diminish as the
square of the distance from the center
of the earth, and the other is that when
the band of neutral attraction, or rather
repulsion, between the earth and the
moon had been reached, it would be
necessary to decelerate so as to avoid
a smash on landing. I have been over
the whole thing and I find that it would
take twenty-nine hours and fifty-two
minutes to make the whole trip. The
entire thing is perfectly possible. In
fact, I have asked you here to witness
and report the first interplanetary trip
to be made.”

“Have you constructed such a device?”
I cried.

“My space ship is finished and ready
for your inspection,” he replied. “If
you will come with me, I will show it
to you.”

Hardly knowing what to believe,
I followed him from the house
and to a huge barnlike structure, over
a hundred feet high, which stood
nearby. He opened the door and
switched on a light, and there before
me stood what looked at first glance to
be a huge artillery shell, but of a size
larger than any ever made. It was constructed
of sheet steel, and while the
lower part was solid, the upper sections
had huge glass windows set in them.
On the point was a mushroom shaped
protuberance. It measured perhaps
fifty feet in diameter and was one hundred
and forty feet high, the Doctor
informed me. A ladder led from the
floor to a door about fifty feet from the
ground.

I followed the Doctor up the ladder
and into the space flier. The door led
us into a comfortable living room
through a double door arrangement.

“The whole hull beneath us,” explained
the Doctor, “is filled with batteries
and machinery except for a space
in the center, where a shaft leads to a
glass window in the bottom so that I
can see behind me, so to speak. The
space above is filled with storerooms
and the air purifying apparatus. On
this level is my bedroom, kitchen, and
other living rooms, together with a
laboratory and an observatory. There
is a central control room located on
an upper level, but it need seldom be
entered, for the craft can be controlled
by a system of relays from this room or
from any other room in the ship. I
suppose that you are more or less
familiar with imaginative stories of
interplanetary travel?”

I nodded an assent.

“In that case there is no use in
going over the details of the air puri[227]fying
and such matters,” he said. “The
story writers have worked out all that
sort of thing in great detail, and there
is nothing novel in my arrangements.
I carry food and water for six months
and air enough for two months by constant
renovating. Have you any question
you wish to ask?”

“One objection I have seen frequently
raised to the idea of interplanetary
travel is that the human body could not
stand the rapid acceleration which
would be necessary to attain speed
enough to ever get anywhere. How do
you overcome this?”

“My dear boy, who knows what the
human body can stand? When the
locomotive was first invented learned
scientists predicted that the limit of
speed was thirty miles an hour, as the
human body could not stand a higher
speed. To-day the human body stands
a speed of three hundred and sixty
miles an hour without ill effects. At
any rate, on my first trip I intend to
take no chances. We know that the
body can stand an acceleration of
thirty-two feet per second without
trouble. That is the rate of acceleration
due to gravity and is the rate at
which a body increases speed when it
falls. This is the acceleration which I
will use.

“Remember that the space traveled
by a falling body in a vacuum is equal
to one half the acceleration multiplied
by the square of the elapsed time. The
moon, to which I intend to make my
first trip, is only 280,000 miles, or
1,478,400,000 feet, from us. With an
acceleration of thirty-two feet per second,
I would pass the moon two hours
and forty minutes after leaving the
earth. If I later take another trip, say
to Mars, I will have to find a means of
increasing my acceleration, possibly
by the use of the rocket principle.
Then will be time enough to worry
about what my body will stand.”

A short calculation verified the
figures the Doctor had given me, and I
stood convinced.

“Are you really going?” I asked.

“Most decidedly. To repeat, I would
have started yesterday, had you arrived.
As it is, I am ready to start
at once. We will go back to the house
for a few minutes while I show you the
location of an excellent telescope
through which you may watch my
progress, and instruct you in the use
of an ultra-short-wave receiver which
I am confident will pierce the Heaviside
layer. With this I will keep in communication
with you, although I have
made no arrangements for you to send
messages to me on this trip. I intend
to go to the moon and land. I will
take atmosphere samples through an
air port and, if there is an atmosphere
which will support life, I will step out
on the surface. If there is not, I will
return to the earth.”

A few minutes was enough
for me to grasp the simple
manipulations which I would have to
perform, and I followed him again to
the space flier.

“How are you going to get it out?” I
asked.

“Watch,” he said.

He worked some levers and the roof
of the barn folded back, leaving the
way clear for the departure of the
huge projectile. I followed him inside
and he climbed the ladder.