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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Feature Serial Novel: 

THE SKYLARK OF VALERON 8 

Which contains new thought-variant conceptions 

Novel: b y edward e. smith, Ph.D. 

STRATOSPHERE TOWERS 94 

A great story of achievement 
by NAT SCHACHNER 

Novelette: 

WARRIORS OF ETERNITY 74 

Presenting two new science-fiction writers 

by CARL BUCHANAN and DR. ARCH CARR 

Short Stories: 

DR. CONKLIN— PACIFIST 34 

by CALVIN PEREGOY 

AGROUND IN SPACE 45 

by DAVID O. WOODBURY 

THE LAST MEN 55 

by FRANK BELKNAP LONG, JR. 

BEYOND THE SPECTRUM 61 

by ARTHUR LEO ZAGAT 

Serial Novel: 

THE LEGION OF SPACE (Part Five) . . .123 

by JACK WILLIAMSON 

Fact Feature Serial: 

LO! (Part Five) 141 

by CHARLES FORT 

Readers 9 Department : 

BRASS TACKS 153 

The Open House of Controversy 

EDITOR’S PAGE 7 

Cover Painting by Howard V. Brown 



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As To Discussions 

Of course I read your letters carefully. That is one big reason 
for the progress of our magazine. Not that I follow every suggestion 
— that is impossible — but I weigh them carefully. Often the con- 
sensus of opinions offered in a hundred letters seems to show a definite 
thought-trend. Then, and only then, I seek a means. 

Do you see my point? Thus we offer you THE SKYLARK OF 
VALERON in this issue. Thus we change our type and gain more 
words; increase the space allowed for Brass Tacks; swing the trend 
of our illustrations to conform to your expressed desires. And that 
is science! 

Science is the selection and classification of knowledge. Super- 
science is the projection of inventive thought into the realm of un- 
explored realism. So we bring to you a superscience magazine which 
is being developed scientifically. Studied intelligence alone develops 
worth-while reading. 

Just as a plant or Bower develops to maturity and then decays, so 
science-fiction had passed its supreme moment when Astounding 
Stories came to Street & Smith nearly a year ago. With the transition 
it stepped into a new cycle of life. Something glorious and fine re- 
mained from the old magazine— a tradition that we believed in. And 
like the first green sprouts of a plant peeking through the soil, the 
new, young magazine grew from f he strength — the bulb — which was 
the old. 

But the new Astounding Stories has reached out beyond the 
limits of the old. It has grown strong and robust drinking in new 
thoughts. It has pioneered where there were those who said that 
nothing new could be found. And it is still very, very young. 

The field is big and wide. There is room to grow. The vast 
majority of letters confirm our thought that each new issue has been 
better than the last. 

You may remember that in our first Brass Tacks there were few 
complimentary letters (of course you could not see our plans); but 
what a change there has been in their tone as our growth has become 
clear! I know every one does not like every story equally well, but 
it is a truth that for every letter calling a story poor, we get two 
calling it fine — and in the majority of cases the approval is unanimous. 

I’m sort of talking to you informally to-day, so we can get a 
little closer to each other. There are new plans maturing which will 
please you. Our magazine has a long period of development ahead 
before it reaches its supreme moment of full maturity. Who knows 
but what it may be three years — or five? 

But I am going to repeat, once more, my request to each of you 
who has not already complied to find a new buyer for Astounding. 
It will help me tremendously to keep going forward until the develop- 
ment of our magazine surpasses anything ever before attempted in 
science-fiction. The Editor. 




The SKYLARK E 

of 

VALERON 



by EDWARD E. SMITH, Ph.D. 

Illustrated by Elliot Dold 





The dummy that was DuQuesne whirled, snarling, and its automatic pistol 
and that of its fellow dummy were leaping out when a magnetic force 
snatched away their weapons and a heat ray of prodigious power reduced 
the effigies to two small piles of gray ashes. And DuQuesne, motionless 
inside his space suit, waited 



PROLOGUE 

M OTHER-R-R!” A sturdy, 
auburn-haired urchin otiwelve 
— Richard Ballinger Seaton the 
fourteen hundred and seventy-first — 
turned to the queenly young matron who 
was his mother as the viewing area be- 
fore them went blank “You said that 



as soon as I was old enough you would 
let me see the rest of the ‘Exploits of 
Seaton One.’ Now grandfather’s the 
chief of the Galactic Council, and I’m 
twelve, and I’m old enough.” 

“Perhaps you are, son.” Into the 
beautiful eyes of the young woman came 
that indefinable, indescribable some- 
thing ; the knowledge that her oldest was 



10 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



no longer a baby. “Tell me the story as 
it is run for the holiday, and I shall see.” 

“Richard Ballinger Seaton the First 
was a Ph. D. in chemistry,” the boy 
began. “He lived in the city of Wash- 
ington, in what was then the United 
States of America. He was born ” 

“Never mind dates and such things, 
sonny. It would take too long to give 
all the details. I just want to make 
sure that you really understand the story 
— conditions were so different then from 
what they are now.” 

“Well, Seaton One discovered Rovo- 
lon, which he called ‘X’ metal at first. 
He found out that it would turn copper 
into energy, and he and Martin Reyn- 
olds Crane One built the very first 
space ship that was ever known. But 
the World Steel Corporation wanted 
all the Rovolon that Seaton had found; 
so Dr. DuQuesne, a chemist of theirs, 
and a kind of a spy named Perkins, tried 
to steal it away from him. They got a 
little of it, but it exploded some copper 
and killed a lot of people. 

“When Seaton heard about the ex- 
plosion he found out that some of his 
Rovolon was gone, and they hired some 
detectives and had an awful time. A 
lot more people were killed, and a Japa- 
nese assistant of Crane’s, named Shiro, 
was almost killed, too. Then they went 
to work and invented a lot of new in- 
struments, such as a compass that 
pointed at any one thing forever ; and 
attractors and repellers and rays and 
screens and explosives and lots of things 
that are good yet. 

“This DuQuesne tried for a long time 
to get the Rovolon and couldn’t, so they 
built a space ship from Seaton’s plans 
that they stole, and he carried off Dor- 
othy Vaneman and Margaret Spencer, 
the girls that Seaton One and Crane 
One were going to marry — and they did 
marry them, afterward, too. Well, 
Dorothy kicked Perkins in the stomach, 
and the space ship ran away and kept 
on going until it got caught by the at- 



traction of the Dark Mass that the First 
of Energy has always had so much trou- 
ble with, and while they were falling 
toward it that Perkins went crazy and 
tried to kill Margaret, but DuQuesne 
killed him instead, and then Seaton One 
caught up with them and rescued them 
and ” 

“Just a minute, son ; there is no great 
hurry. How did Seaton One get way 
out there?” 

“Well, they had their big new space 
ship, the Skylark of Space, all built by 
then, and Seaton One had an object- 
compass set on DuQuesne, because he’d 
been watching him a long time since he’d 
been making lots of trouble for him. 
So Seaton One and Crane One followed 
the object-compass and found them and 
rescued them all but Perkins, because 
he was dead already. 

“They had an awful time getting away 
from the Dark Mass, but they did it, 
but they were about out of copper, so 
they had to hunt up a planet that had 
some. They landed on one that dino- 
saurs and things like that lived on, and 
got a lot more Rovolon, but didn’t find 
any copper, so they hunted up more 
planets. One had poison gas instead 
of air, and another had people that were 
pure intellectuals, so that they had bodies 
whenever they wanted to, but not all 
the time. .They pretty nearly dema- 
terialized Seaton One and all the rest 
of them, and we’re awfully glad they 
didn’t. 

“Well, anyway, they got away, but 
they had an awful time, and after a 
while they saw the green suns of the 
Central System. There’s lots of cop- 
per there, you know ; so much that 
Grandfather Seaton wouldn’t let me 
swim in the ocean last year when we 
were there because it was copper solu- 
tion and it would have made me sick. 
They went to Osnome first, one of 
the inside worlds, and landed in a coun- 
try named Mardonale. 

“They were bad people and wanted 



THE SKYLARK OF VALERON 



11 



to kill Seaton One and steal his ship, 
and they had already captured Dun ark, 
the Kofedix or crown prince of the 
other nation, Kondal. Then Dunark 
helped Seaton One get away, and they 
all went home with Dunark. But the 
Skylark was pretty nearly ruined in the 
battle they had getting away from Mar- 
donale, so Seaton One and Dunark built 
it over out of arenak, which was much 
better than the funny, soft steel they 
used to use in the old days. Of course, 
arenak doesn’t amount to much beside 
the inoson we have now, but even Seaton 
One didn’t know anything about inoson 
then. 

“Then they got married. Seaton 
married Dorothy, and they’re our great- 
great — fourteen hundred and seventy 
times — grandparents. Crane married 

Margaret, and they’re awfully famous, 
too. And Shiro is, too, especially in 
Asiatica. Well, anyway, after they got 
married they had a fight with a mon- 
ster Karlon, and were just going to 
start back here for Tellus when the 
whole Mardonalian fleet attacked Kon-. 
dal. The Skylark Two beat them all, 
and DuQuesne helped, too, and then of 
course Dunark’s father was Karfedix 
or emperor of the whole planet of Os- 
nome, and he made Seaton One the 
overlord. Then they came back home. 
Seaton One and Crane One didn’t know 
just what to do with DuQuesne, but he 
jumped out of Skylark Two in a para- 
chute and got away. 

“THEY hadn’t been back on Tellus 
very long when Dunark came to visit 
them, from Osnome, after some salt 
which they needed to make arenak, and 
some more Rovolon. He was going to 
blow up another planet of the Central 
Sun because they were having a war. 
But Seaton One didn’t have enough 
Rovolon, so both Skylark Two and the 
Kondal started out to go to the ‘X’ 
planet after some, and on the way there 
they were attacked by a space ship of 



the Fenachrone, who were a race of ter- 
rible men who were going to conquer 
the whole universe. The Fenachrone 
blew up the Kondal, and pretty nearly 
destroyed the Skylark, too, but Seaton 
One could use zones of force as well 
as they could — I don’t know much about 
zones of force because they’re in ad- 
vanced physics, but they’re barriers in 
the ether and space ships use them yet 
because nothing above the fifth level 
can get through them — and finally Sea- 
ton One cut the Fenachrone ship all up 
into little pieces. Then he rescued Du- 
nark, and one of his wives named Sitar, 
but one of the bad men got away with- 
out being killed and DuQuesne picked 
him up ” 

“But you haven’t said anything about 
DuQuesne being out there, sonny.” 

“Well, he was. He kept on trying 
to get the Rovolon away from Seaton 
One, but couldn’t, so he took his own 
space ship and went to Osnome. You 
see, while he was there he had found out 
something about the Fenachrone and 
was going to join them. Well, he got 
to Osnome and stole a better space ship 
than the one he had and started out to 
go to the Fenachrone System, but on 
the way he passed close to where Sky- 
lark Two was fighting the big Fena- 
chrone ship, which was the flagship 
Y427W. The chief engineer of the ship 
got away, and DuQuesne rescued him, 
and he showed DuQuesne how to get 
to the Fenachrone world, and he in- 
stalled his own super-drive on the Violet, 
which was the name of DuQuesne’s 
ship. But when they got there some- 
thing funny happened. A Fenachrone 
patrol ship apparently captured the 
Violet, and they burned up what they 
thought were DuQuesne and Loring — 
this Loring was DuQuesne’s helper — 
and the engineer reported over the visi- 
recorder everything that had happened 
to the flagship, and Seaton and Crane 
were listening in on their projector. 
Now’s the funny part. Some of the 



12 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



visirecorder report was right, but some 
of it didn’t really happen that way at 
all, because Dr. DuQuesne knew all the 
time what was going ” 

“You are getting ahead of the story, 
sonny. You have heard that part, of 
course, but you haven’t actually seen the 
record of it yet.” , 

“Well, anyway, Seaton One found 
out the Fenachrone’s plans by reading 
their brains with a mechanical educator, 
and he made Dunark’s people make 
peace with the other planet, the one 
that they were going to blow up. He 
knew from some old legends that there 
was a race of green men somewhere 
in the Central System that knew every- 
thing, so he went hunting for them. 
They went to Dasor first, where those 
funny porpoise men live, and a Daso- 
rian named Sacner Carfon was councilor 
then. A Sacner Carfon is councilor 
there yet, too, and I beat his boy shoot- 
ing a ray, but he beat me all hollow 
swimming, because he’s got web feet 
and hands. The Dasorians told Seaton 
One where to go, and that’s how they 
found Norlamin, where the oldest and 
wisest men in the whole Galaxy live. 
Rovol, the First of Rays, and Drasnik, 
the First of Psychology, and Caslor, the 
First of Mechanism, and lots of the 
other Firsts of Norlamin helped them 
build things. 

“Oh, yes; I almost forgot about the 
way the Norlaminian scientists learn 
things. When one of them gets old he 
makes a record of his brain on a tape, 
and when his son takes his place he just 
transfers all his knowledge to the son’s 
brain with a mechanical educator, and 
then he — the son, I mean — knows every- 
thing that every specialist in that line 
ever did find out, and he goes on from 
there. Rovol and Drasnik and some of 
the others gave Seaton One and Crane 
One copies of their own brains that 
way, and that’s why they knew so much. 
And then they built a projector that 
would take images of themselves clear 



across the Galaxy in a couple of sec- 
onds on fifth-order rays, and into the 
middle of suns and anywhere else they 
wanted to be or work, and then they 
built Skylark Three, a space ship about 
five kilometers long. Not so much these 
days, of course, but she was the biggest 
thing in the ether then. 

“But by that time the Fenachrone 
fleet had started out to conquer the 
Galaxy, and Seaton One and Crane One 
and all the other Ones and the Firsts 
of Norlamin hunted them up with the 
projector and blew them up by explod- 
ing their power bars, which were made 
of copper instead of uranium, like Three 
used. And then Dunark blew up the 
whole Fenachrone planet, so that they’d 
never make any more trouble, but one 
Fenachrone ship got away and started 
out for another Galaxy, ’way out of 
range of the projector. So Seaton One 
chased it and caught it out in space, 
halfway to the other Galaxy. They had 
a terrible battle, but Seaton One blew 
it up and the picture stopped, and I 
want to see some more of the ‘Exploits,’ 
mother, please !” 

“Very well told, son — I believe that 
you are old enough to follow One and 
his friends of ancient times. You will 
have them next year, anyway, in your 
history classes, and you might as well 
see them now; particularly since it is 
our own family history as well as that 
of civilization.” The young woman 
pressed a contact in the arm of her chair 
and spoke : 

“Central Library of History, please. 

. . . Mrs. R. B. Seaton fourteen 

seventy. Please put on reel three of 
the ‘Exploits.’ Wave point one nine 
four six. . . . Thank you.” 

I. 

DAY AFTER DAY a spherical 
space ship of aranak tore through the 
illimitable reaches of the interstellar 
void. She had once been a war vessel 
of Osnome; now, rechristened the 



THE SKYLARK OF VALERON 



13 



Violet, she was bearing two Terrestrials 
and a Fenachrone — Dr. Marc C. Du- 
Quesne of World Steel, “Baby Doll” 
Loring, his versatile and accomplished 
assistant, and the squat and monstrous 
engineer of the flagship Y427W — from 
the Green System toward the Solar Sys- 
tem of the Fenachrone. The mid-point 
of the stupendous flight had long since 
been passed ; the Violet had long been 
“braking down” with a negative acceler- 
ation of five times the velocity of light. 

Much to the surprise of both Du- 
Quesne and Loring, their prisoner had 
not made the slightest move against 
them. He had thrown all the strength 
of his supernaturally powerful body and 
all the resources of his gigantic brain 
into the task of converting the atomic 
motors of the Violet into the space-an- 
nihilating drive of his own race. This 
drive, affecting alike as it does every 
atom of substance within the radius of 
action of the power bar, entirely nulli- 
fies the effect of acceleration, so that 
the passengers feel no motion whatever, 
even when the craft is accelerating at 
maximum — and that maximum is al- 
most three times as great as the abso- 
lutely unbearable full power of the Sky- 
lark of Space. 

The engineer had not shirked a single 
task, however arduous. And, once un- 
der way, he had nursed those motors 
along with every artifice known to his 
knowing clan; he had performed such 
prodigies of adjustment and tuning as 
to raise by a full two per cent their al- 
ready inconceivable maximum accelera- 
tion. And this was not all. After the 
first moment of rebellion, he did not 
even once attempt to bring to bear the 
almost irresistible hypnotic power of his 
eyes; the immense, cold, ruby-lighted 
projectors of mental energy which, both 
men knew, were awful weapons indeed. 
Nor did he even once protest against 
the attractors which were set upon his 
giant limbs. 

Immaterial bands, these, whose slight 



force could not be felt unless the captor 
so willed. But let the prisoner make 
one false move, and those tiny beams 
of force would instantly become copper- 
driven tornadoes of pure energy, hurl- 
ing the luckless body against the wall 
of the control room and holding him 
motionless there, in spite of the most 
terrific exertions of his mighty body. 

DuQuesne lay at ease in his seat; 
rather, scarcely touching the seat, he 
floated at ease in the air above it. His 
black brows were drawn together, his 
black eyes were hard as he studied 
frowningly the Fenachrone engineer. 
As usual, that worthy was half inside 
the power plant, coaxing those mighty 
motors to do even better than their 
prodigious best. 

Feeling his companion’s eyes upon 
him, the doctor turned his inscrutable 
stare upon Loring, who had been study- 
ing his chief even as DuQuesne had been 
studying the outlander. Loring’s che- 
rubic countenance was as pinkly innocent 
as ever, his guileless blue eyes as calm 
and untroubled; but DuQuesne, know- 
ing the man as he did, perceived an al- 
most imperceptible tension and knew 
that the killer also was worried. 

“What’s the matter, Doll?” The 
saturnine scientist smiled mirthlessly. 
“Afraid I’m going to let that ape slip 
one over on us?” 

“Not exactly.” Loring’s slight tense- 
ness, however, disappeared. “It’s your 
party, and anything that’s all right with 
you tickles me half to death. I have 
known all along you knew that that bird 
there isn’t working under compulsion. 
You know as well as I do that nobody 
works that way because they’re made 
to. He’s working for himself, not for 
us, and I had just begun to wonder if 
you weren’t getting a little late in clamp- 
ing down on him.” 

“Not at all — there are good and suffi- 
cient reasons for this apparent delay. 
I am going to clamp down on him in 
exactly” — DuQuesne glanced at his 



14 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



» 



wrist watch — “fourteen minutes. But 
you’re keen— you’ve got a brain that 
really works — maybe I’d better give you 
the whole picture.” 

DuQuesne, approving thoroughly ot 
his iron-nerved, cold-blooded assistant, 
voiced again the thought he had ex- 
pressed once before, a few hours out 
from Earth; and Loring answered as 
he had then, in almost the same words 
—words which revealed truly the nature 
of the man : 

“Just as you like. Usually I don’t 
want to know anything about anything, 
because what a man doesn’t know he 
can’t be accused of spilling. Out here, 
though, maybe I should know enough 
about things to act intelligently in case 
of a jam. But you’re the doctor — if 
you’d rather keep it under your hat, 
that’s all right with me, too. As I’ve 
said before, it’s your party.” 

“Yes ; he certainly is working for him- 
self.” DuQuesne scowled blackly. “Or, 
rather, he thinks he is. You know I 
read his mind back there, while he was 
unconscious. I didn’t get all I wanted 
to, by any means — he woke up too soon 
— but I got a lot more than he thinks 
I did. 

“They have detector zones, ’way out 
in space, all around their world, that 
nothing can get past without being spot- 
ted ; and patrolling those zones there are 
scout ships, carrying armament to stag- 
ger the imagination. I intend to take 
over one of those patrol ships and by 
means of it to capture one of their first- 
class battleships. As a first step I’m 
going to hypnotize that ape and find out 
absolutely everything that he knows. 
When I get done with him, he’ll do ex- 
actly what I tell him to, and nothing 
else.” 

“Hypnotize him?” Curiosity was 
awakened in even Loring’s incurious 
mind at this unexpected development. 
“I didn’t know that was one of your 
specialties.” 

“It wasn’t until recently, but the Fena- 



chrone are all past masters, and I 
learned about it from his brain. Hyp- 
nosis is a wonderful science. The only 
drawback is that his mind is a lot 
stronger than mine. However, I have 
in my kit, among other things, a tube 
of something that will cut him down to 
my size.” 

“Oh, I see — pentabarb.” With this 
hint, Loring’s agile mind grasped in- 
stantly the essentials of DuQuesne's 
plan. “That’s why you had to wait so 
long, then, to take steps. Pentabarb 
kills in twenty-four hours, and he can’t 
help us steal the ship after he’s dead.” 

“Right ! One milligram, you know, 
will make a gibbering idiot out of any 
human being; but I imagine that it will 
take three or four times that much to 
soften him down to the point where I 
can work on him the way I want to. 
As I don’t know the eflects of such 
heavy dosages, since he’s not really hu- 
man, and since he must be alive when 
we go through their screens, I decided 
to give him the works exactly six hours 
before we are due to hit their outermost 
detector. That’s about all I can tell 
you right now; I’ll have to work out 
the details of seizing the ship after I 
have studied his brain more thor- 
oughly.” 

PRECISELY at the expiration of the 
fourteen allotted minutes, DuQuesne 
tightened the attractor beams, which had 
never been entirely released from their 
prisoner; thus pinning him helplessly, 
immovably, against the wall of the con- 
trol room. He then filled a hypodermic 
syringe and moved the mechanical edu- 
cator nearer the motionless, although 
violently struggling, creature. Then, 
avoiding carefully the baleful outpour- 
ings of those flame-shot volcanoes of 
hatred that were the eyes of the Fena- 
chrone, he set the dials of the educator, 
placed the headsets, and drove home the 
needle’s hollow point. One milligram 
of the diabolical compound was ah- 



THE SKYLARK OF VALERON 



15 



sorbed, without appreciable lessening of 
the blazing defiance being hurled along 
the educator’s wires. One and one 
half — two milligrams— three — four — 

five 

That inhumanly powerful mind at last 
began to weaken, but it became entirely 
quiescent only after the administration 
of the seventh milligram of that direly 
potent drug. 

“Just as well that I allowed only six 
hours.” DuQuesne sighed in relief as 
he began to explore the labyrinthine in- 
tricacies of the frightful brain now open 
to his gaze. “I don’t see how any pos- 
sible form of life can hold together long 
under seven milligrams of that stuff.” 

He fell silent and for more than an 
hour he studied the brain of the engi- 
neer, concentrating upon the several 
small portions which contained knowl- 
edge of most immediate concern. Then 
he removed the headsets. 

“His plans were all made,” he in- 
formed Loring coldly, “and so are mine, 
now. Bring out two full outfits of 
clothing — one of yours and one of mine. 
Two guns, belts, and so on. Break out 
a bale of waste, the emergency candles, 
and all that sort of stuff you can find.” 

DuQuesne turned to the Fenachrone, 
who stood utterly lax, inanimate, and 
stared deep into those now dull and ex- 
pressionless eyes. 

“You,” he directed crisply, “will build 
at once, as quickly as you can, two dum- 
mies which will look exactly like Loring 
and myself. They must be lifelike in 
every particular, with faces capable of 
expressing the emotions of surprise and 
of anger, and with right arms able to 
draw weapons upon signal — my signal. 
Also upon signal their heads and bodies 
will turn, they will leap toward the cen- 
ter of the room, and they will make cer- 
tain noises and utter certain words, the 
records of which I shall prepare. Go 
to it!” 

“Don’t you need to control him 



through the headsets ?” asked Loring 
curiously. 

“I may have to control him in detail 
when we come to the really fine work, 
later on,” DuQuesne replied absently. 
“This is more qr less in the nature of 
an experiment, to find out whether I 
have him thoroughly under control. 
During the last act he’ll have to do ex- 
actly what I shall have told him to do, 
without supervision, and I want to be 
absolutely certain that he will do it with- 
out a slip.” 

“What’s the plan — or maybe it’s some- 
thing that is none of my business?” 

“No; you ought to know it, and I’ve 
got time to tell you about it now. Noth- 
ing material can possibly approach the 
planet of the Fenachrone without being 
seen, as it is completely surrounded by 
never less than two full-sphere detector 
screens; and to make assurance doubly 
sure our engineer there has in- 
stalled a mechanism which, at the first 
touch of the outer screen, will shoot 
a warning along at tight communicator 
beam, directly into the receiver of the 
nearest Fenachrone scout ship. As you 
already know, the smallest of those 
scouts can burn this ship out of the ether 
in less than a second.” 

“That’s a cheerful picture. You still 
think we can get away?” 

“I’m coming to that. We can’t pos- 
sibly get through the detectors without 
being challenged, even if I tear out all 
his apparatus, so we’re going to use his 
whole plan, but for our benefit instead 
of his. Therefore his present hypnotic 
state and the dummies. When we touch 
that screen you and I are going to be 
hidden — well hidden. The dummies will 
"be in sole charge, and our prisoner will 
be playing the part I have laid out for 
him. 

"The scout ship that he calls will come 
up to investigate. They will bring ap- 
paratus and attractors to bear to liber- 
ate the prisoner, and the dummies will 
try to fight. They will be blown up or 



16 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



burned to cinders almost instantly, and 
our little playmate will put on his space 
suit and be taken across to the captur- 
ing vessel. Once there, he will report 
to the commander. 

“That officer will think the affair suffi- 
ciently serious to report it directly to 
headquarters. If he doesn’t, this ape here 
will insist upon reporting it to general 
headquarters himself. As soon as that 
report is in, we, working through our 
prisoner here, will proceed to wipe out 
the crew of the ship and take it over.” 

“And do you think he’ll really do it?” 
Loring’s guileless face showed doubt, 
his tone was faintly skeptical. 

“I know he’ll do it!” The chemist’s 
voice was hard. “He won’t take any 
active part — I’m not psychologist 

enough to know whether I could drive 
him that far, even drugged, against an 
unhypnotizable subconscious or not — but 
he’ll be carrying something along that 
will enable me to do it, easily and safely. 
But that’s about enough of this chin 
music — we’d better start doing some- 
thing.” 

WHILE Loring brought space cloth- 
ing and weapons, and rummaged 
through the vessel in search of material 
suitable for the dummies’ fabrication, 
the Fenachrone engineer worked rap- 
idly at his task. And not only did he 
work rapidly, he worked skillfully and 
artistically as well. This artistry 
should not be surprising, for to such a 
mentality as must necessarily be pos- 
sessed by the chief engineer of a first- 
line vessel of the Fenachrone, the faith- 
ful reproduction of anything capable of 
movement was not a question of art — 
it was merely an elementary matter of 
line, form, and mechanism. 

Cotton waste was molded into shape, 
reenforced, and wrapped in leather un- 
der pressure. To the bodies thus formed 
were attached the heads, cunningly con- 
structed of masticated fiber, plastic, and 
wax. Tiny motors and many small 



pieces of apparatus were installed, and 
the completed effigies were dressed and 
armed. 

DuQuesne’s keen eyes studied every 
detail of the startlingly lifelike, almost 
microscopically perfect, replicas of him- 
self and his traveling companion. 

“A good job,” he commented briefly. 

“Good?” exclaimed Loring. “It’s 
perfect ! Why, that dummy would fool 
my own wife, if I had one — it almost 
fools me!” 

“At least, they’re good enough to pass 
a more critical test than any they are apt 
to get during this coming incident.” 

Satisfied, DuQuesne turned from his 
scrutiny of the dummies and went to 
the closet in which had been stored the 
space suit of the captive. To the in- 
side of its front protector flap he at- 
tached a small and inconspicuous flat- 
sided case. He then measured carefully, 
with a filar micrometer, the apparent 
diameter of the planet now looming so 
large beneath them. 

“All right, Doll ; our time’s getting 
short. Break out our suits and test 
them, will you, while I give the big boy 
his final instructions?” 

Rapidly those commands flowed over 
the wires of the mechanical educator, 
from DuQuesne’s hard, keen brain into 
the now-docile mind of the captive. The 
Earthly scientist explained to the Fena- 
chrone, coldly, precisely, and in minute 
detail, exactly what he was to do and 
exactly what he was to say from the 
moment of encountering the detector 
screens of his native planet until after 
he had reported to his superior officers. 

Then the two Terrestrials donned 
their own armor of space and made their 
way into an adjoining room, a small 
armory in which were hung several sim- 
ilar suits and which was a veritable 
arsenal of weapons. 

“We’ll hang ourselves up on a couple 
of these hooks, like the rest of the suits,” 
DuQuesne explained. “This is the only 
part of the performance that may be 

AST— 1 



THE SKYLARK OF VALERON 



17 



even slightly risky, but there is no real 
danger that they will spot us. That 
fellow’s message to the scout ship will 
tell them that there are only two of us, 
and we’ll be out there with him, right 
in plain sight. 

“If by any chance they should send 
a party aboard us they would probably 
not bother to search the Violet at all 
carefully, since they will already know 
that we haven’t got a thing worthy of 
attention ; and they would of course sup- 
pose us to be empty space suits. There- 
fore keep your lens shields down, except 
perhaps for the merest crack to see 
through, and, above all, don’t move a 
millimeter, no matter what happens.” 

“But how can you manipulate your 
controls without moving your hands?” 

“I can’t; but my hands will not be 
in the sleeves, but inside the body of 
the suit — shut up! Hold everything — 
there’s the flash!” 

THE FLYING vessel had gone 
through the zone of feeble radiations 
which comprised the outer detector 
screen of the Fenachrone. But though 
tenuous, that screen was highly efficient, 
and at its touch there burst into fren- 
zied activity the communicator built 
by the captive to be actuated by that 
very impulse. It had been built during 
the long flight through space, and its 
builder had thought that its presence 
would be unnoticed and would remain 
unsuspected by the Terrestrials. 

Now automatically put into action, it 
laid a beam to the nearest scout ship of 
the Fenachrone and into that vessel’s 
receptors it passed the entire story of 
the Violet and her occupants. But Du- 
Quesne had not been caught napping. 
Reading the engineer’s brain and ab- 
sorbing knowledge from it, he had in- 
stalled a relay which would flash to his 
eyes an inconspicuous but unmistakable 
warning of the first touch of the screen 
of the enemy. The flash had come — 
they had penetrated the outer lines of 
AST— 2 



the monstrous civilization of the dread 
and dreaded Fenachrone. 

In the armory DuQuesne’s hands 
moved slightly inside his shielding 
armor, and out in the control room the 
dummy that was also, to all outward 
seeming, DuQuesne moved and spoke. 
It tightened the controls of the attrac- 
tors, which had never been entirely re- 
leased from their prisoner, thus again 
pinning the Fenachrone helplessly 
against the wall. 

“Just to be sure you don’t try to start 
anything,” it explained coldly, in Du- 
Quesne’s own voice and tone. “You 
have done well so far, but I’ll run things 
myself from now on, so that you can’t 
steer us into a trap. Now tell me ex- 
actly how to go about getting one of 
your vessels. After we get it I’ll see 
about letting you go.” 

“Fools, you are too late!” the pris- 
oner roared exultantly. “You would 
have been too late, even had you killed 
me out there in space and had fled at 
your utmost acceleration. Did you but 
know it you are as dead, even now — 
our patrol is upon you !” 

The dummy that was DuQuesne 
whirled, snarling, and its automatic pis- 
tol and that of its fellow dummy were 
leaping out when an awful acceleration 
threw them flat upon the floor, a mag- 
netic force snatched away their weapons, 
and a heat ray of prodigious power re- 
duced the effigies to two small piles of 
gray ash. Immediately thereafter a 
beam of force from the patrolling 
cruiser neutralized the attractors bear- 
ing upon the captive and, after donning 
his space suit, he was transferred to the 
Fenachrone vessel. 

Motionless inside his space suit, Du- 
Quesne waited until the airlocks of the 
Fenachrone vessel had closed behind his 
erstwhile prisoner ; waited until the engi- 
neer had told his story to Fenal, His em- 
peror, and to Fenimal, his general in 
command; waited until the communi- 
cator circuit had been broken and the 



18 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



hypnotized, drugged, and already dy- 
ing creature had turned as though to 
engage his fellows in conversation. 
Then only did the saturnine scientist act. 
His finger closed a circuit, and in the 
Fenachrone vessel, inside the front pro- 
tector flap of the discarded space suit, 
the flat case fell apart noiselessly and 
from it there gushed forth volume upon 
volume of colorless and odorless, but in- 
tensely lethal, vapor. 

“Just like killing goldfish in a bowl.” 
Callous, hard, and cold, DuQuesne ex- 
hibited no emotion whatever; neither 
pity for the vanquished foe nor elation 
at the perfect working out of his plans. 
“Just in case some of them might have 
been wearing suits, for emergencies, I 
had some explosive copper ready to de- 
tonate, but this makes it much better — 
the explosion might have damaged some- 
thing we want.” 

And aboard the vessel of the Fena- 
chrone, DuQuesne’s deadly gas diffused 
with extreme rapidity, and as it. diffused, 
the hellish crew to the last man dropped 
in their tracks. They died not knowing 
what had happened to them; died with 
no thought of even attempting to send 
out an alarm ; died not even knowing 
that they died. 

II. 

“CAN YOU OPEN the airlocks of 
that scout ship from the outside, doc- 
tor?” asked Loring, as the two adven- 
turers came out of the armory into the 
control room where DuQuesne, by 
means of the attractors, began to bring 
the two vessels together. 

“Yes. I know everything that that 
engineer of a first-class battleship knew. 
To him, one of these little scouts was 
almost beneath notice, but he did know 
that much about them — the outside con- 
trols of all Fenachrone ships work the 
same way.” 

Under the urge of the attractions, the 
two ships of space were soon door to 
door. DuQuesne set the mighty beams 



to lock the craft immovably together 
and both men stepped into the Violet’s 
airlock. Pumping back the air, Du- 
Quesne opened the outer door, then 
opened both outer and inner doors of 
the scout. 

As he opened the inner door the poi- 
soned atmosphere of the vessel screamed 
out into space, and as soon as the frigid 
gale had subsided the raiders entered 
the control room of the enemy craft. 
Hardened and conscienceless killer 
though Loring was, the four bloated, 
ghastly objects that had once been men 
gave him momentary pause. 

“Maybe we shouldn’t have let the air 
out so fast,” he suggested, tearing his 
gaze away from the grisly sight. 

“The brains aren’t hurt, and that’s all 
I care about.” Unmoved, DuQuesne 
opened the air valves wide, and not un- 
til the roaring blast had scoured every 
trace of the noxious vapor from the 
whole ship did he close the airlock doors 
and allow the atmosphere to come again 
to normal pressure and temperature, 

“Which ship are you going to use — 
theirs or our own?" asked Loring, as 
he began to remove his cumbersome 
armor. 

“I don’t know yet. That depends 
largely upon what I find out from the 
brain of the lieutenant in charge of this 
patrol boat. There are two methods by 
which we can capture a battleship; one 
requiring the use of the Violet, the other 
the use of this scout. The information 
which I am about to acquire will enable 
me to determine which of the two plans 
entails the lesser amount of risk. 

“There is a third method of proce- 
dure, of course ; that is, to go back to 
Earth and duplicate one of their battle- 
ships ourselves, from the knowledge I 
shall have gained from their various 
brains concerning the apparatus, mecha- 
nisms, materials, and weapons of the 
Fenachrone. But that would take a 
long time and would be far from cer- 
tain of success, because there would al- 



THE SKYLARK OF VALERON 



19 



most certainly be some essential facts 
that I would not have secured. Besides, 
I came out here to get one of their first- 
line space ships, and I intend to do it.” 

With no sign of distaste DuQuesne 
coupled his brain to that of the dead 
lieutenant of the Fenachrone through 
the mechanical educator, and quite as 
casually as though he were merely giv- 
ing Loring another lesson in Fenachrone 
matters did he begin systematically to 
explore the intricate convolutions of that 
fearsome brain. But after only ten min- 
utes’ study he was interrupted by the 
brazen clang of the emergency alarm. 
He flipped off the power of the educa- 
tor, discarded his headset, acknowl- 
edged the call, and watched the recorder 
as it rapped out its short, insistent mes- 
sage. 

“Something is going on here that was 
not on my program,” he announced to 
the alert but quiescent Loring. “One 
should always be prepared for the un- 
expected, but this may run into some- 
thing cataclysmic. The Fenachrone are 
being attacked from space, and all 
armed forces have been called into a 
defensive formation — Invasion Plan 
XB218, whatever that is. I’ll have to 
look it up in the code.” 

THE DESK of the commanding offi- 
cer was a low, heavily built cabinet of 
solid metal. DuQuesne strode over to 
it, operated rapidly the levers and dials 
of its combination lock, and took from 
one of the compartments the “Code” — 
a polygonal framework of engraved 
metal bars and sliders, resembling some- 
what an Earthly multiplex squirrel-cage 
slide rule. 

“X — B — Two — One— Eight.” Al- 
though DuQuesne had never before 
seen such an instrument, the knowledge 
taken from the brains of the dead offi- 
cers rendered him perfectly familiar 
with it, and his long and powerful fin- 
gers set up the indicated defense plan 
as rapidly and as surely as those of any 



Fenachrone could have done. He re- 
volved the mechanism in his- hands, 
studying every plane surface, scowling 
blackly in concentration. 

“Munition plants — shall — so-and-so 

We don’t care about that. Re- 
serves — zones — ordnance — commis- 
sary — defensive screens Oh, here 

we are! Scout ships. Instead of pa- 
trolling a certain volume of space, each 
scout ship takes up a fixed post just in- 
side the outer detector zone. Twenty 
times as many on duty, too — enough so 
that they will be only about ten thou- 
sand miles apart — and each ship is to 
lock high-power detector screens and 
visiplate and recorder beams with all its 
neighbors. 

“Also, there is to be a first-class bat- 
tleship acting as mother ship, protector, 
and reserve for each twenty-five scouts. 

The nearest one is to be Let's see, 

from here that would be only about 
twenty thousand miles over that way 
and about a hundred thousand miles 
down.” 

“Does that change your plans, 
chief ?” 

“Since my plans were not made, I 
cannot say that it does — it changes the 
background, however, and introduces an 
element of danger that did not pre- 
viously exist. It makes it impossible 
to go out through the detector zone — 
but it was practically impossible before, 
and we have no intention of going out, 
anyway, until we possess a vessel power- 
ful enough to go through any barrage 
they can lay down. On the other hand, 
there is bound to be a certain amount 
of confusion in placing so many vessels, 
and that fact will operate to make the 
capture of our battleship much easier 
than it would have been otherwise.” 

“What danger exists that wasn’t there 
before?” demanded Loring. 

“The danger that the whole planet 
may be blown up,” DuQuesne returned 
bluntly. “Any nation or race attack- 
ing from space would of course have 



20 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



atomic power, and any one with that 
power could volatilize any planet by 
simply dropping a bomb on it from open 
space. They might want to colonize 
it, of course, in which case they wouldn’t 
destroy it, but it is always safest to plan 
for the worst possible contingencies.” 

‘‘How do you figure on doing us any 
good if the whole world explodes?” 
Loring lighted a cigarette, his hand 
steady and his face pinkly unruffled. “If 
she goes up, it looks as if we go out, 
like that — puff!” And he blew out the 
match. 

“Not at all, Doll,” DuQuesne reas- 
sured him. “An atomic explosion start- 
ing on the surface and propagating 
downward would hardly develop enough 
power to drive anything material much, 
if any, faster than light, and no explo- 
sion wave, however violent, can exceed 
that velocity. The Violet, as you know, 
although not to be compared with even 
this scout as a fighter, has an accelera- 
tion of five times that, so that we could 
outrun the explosion in her. However, 
if we stay in our own ship, we shall 
certainly be found and blown out of 
space as soon as this defensive forma- 
tion is completed. 

“On the other hand, this ship carries 
full Fenachrone power of offense and 
defense, and we should be safe enough 
from detection in it, at least for as long 
a time as we shall need it. Since these 
small ships are designed for purely local 
scout work, though, they are compar- 
atively slow and would certainly be de- 
stroyed in any such cosmic explosion as 
is manifestly a possibility. That possi- 
bility is very remote, it is true, but it 
should be taken into consideration.” 

“So what? You’re talking yourself 
around a circle, right back to where you 
started from.” 

“Only considering the thing from all 
angles.” DuQuesne was- unruffled. 
“We have lots of time, since it will take 
them quite a while to perfect this for- 
mation. To finish the summing up — we 



want to use this vessel, but is it safe? 
It is. Why? Because the Fenachrone, 
having had atomic energy themselves 
for a long time, are thoroughly familiar 
with its possibilities and have undoubt- 
edly perfected screens through which no 
such bomb could penetrate. 

“Furthermore, we can install the high- 
speed drive in this ship in a few days — 
I gave you all the dope on it over the 
educator, you know — so that we’ll be 
safe, whatever happens. That’s the saf- 
est plan, and it will work. So you 
move the stores and our most necessary 
personal belongings in here while I’m 
figuring out an orbit for the Violet. We 
don’t want her anywhere near us, and 
yet we want her to be within reaching 
distance while we are piloting this scout 
ship of ours to the place where she is 
supposed to be in Plan XB218 ” 

“What are you going to do that for — 
to give them a chance to knock us off?” 
“No. I need a few days to study 
these brains, and it will take a few days 
for that battleship mother ship of ours 
to get into her assigned position, where 
we can steal her most easily.” Du- 
Quesne, however, did not at once re- 
move his headset, but remained standing 
in place, silent and thoughtful. 

“Uh-huh,” agreed Loring. “I’m 
thinking the same thing you are. Sup- 
pose that it is Seaton that’s got them all 
hot and bothered this way?” 

“The thought has occurred to me sev- 
eral times, and I have considered it at 
some length,” DuQuesne admitted at 
last. “However, I have concluded that 
it is not Seaton. For if it is, he must 
have a lot more stuff than I think he 
has. I do not believe that he can pos- 
sibly have learned that much in the 
short time he has had to work in. I 
may be wrong, of course; but the im- 
mediately necessary steps toward the 
seizure of that battleship remain un- 
changed whether I am right or wrong; 
or whether Seaton was the cause of this 
disturbance.” 




THE SKYLARK OF VALERON 






DuQuesne clamped the headset into place, shot power into it and trans- 
ferred to his own brain an entire section of the brain of the dead Fenachrone, 





22 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



WHEN the conversation was thus 
definitely at an end, Loring again in- 
cased himself in his space suit and set 
to work. For hours he labored, silently 
and efficiently, at transferring enough 
of their Earthly possessions and stores 
to render possible an extended period of 
living aboard the vessel of the Fena- 
chrone. 

He had completed that task and was 
assembling the apparatus and equipment 
necessary for the rebuilding of the 
power plant before DuQuesne finished 
the long and complex computations in- 
volved in determining the direction and 
magnitude of the force required to give 
the Violet the exact trajectory he de- 
sired. The problem was finally solved 
and checked, however, and DuQuesne 
rose to his feet, closing his book of nine- 
place logarithms with a snap. 

“All done with Violet, Doll?” he 
asked, donning his armor. 

“Yes.” 

“Fine! I’ll go aboard and push her 
off, after we do a little stage-setting 
here. Take that body there — I don’t 
need it any more, since he didn’t know 
much of anything, anyway — and toss it 
into the nose compartment. Then shut 
that bulkhead door, tight. I’m going 
to drill a couple of holes through there 
from the Violet before I give her the 
gun.” 

“I see — going to make us look dis- 
abled, whether we are or not, huh?” 

“Exactly! We’ve got to have a good 
excuse for our visirays being out of or- 
der. I can make reports all right on 
the communicator, and send and re- 
ceive code messages and orders, but we 
certainly couldn’t stand a close-up in- 
spection on a visiplate. Also, we’ve got 
to have some kind of an excuse for sig- 
naling to and approaching our mother 
battleship. We will have been hit and 
punctured by a meteorite. Pretty thin 
excuse, but it probably will serve for 
as long a time as we will need.” 

After DuQuesne had made sure that 



the small compartment in the prow of 
the vessel contained nothing of use to 
them, the body of one of the Fena- 
chrone was thrown carelessly into it, the 
air-tight bulkhead was closed and se- 
curely locked, and the chief marauder 
stepped into the airlock. 

“As soon as I get her exactly on 
course and velocity, I’ll step out into 
space and you can pick me up,” he di- 
rected briefly, and was gone. 

In the Violet’s engine room DuQuesne 
released the anchoring attractor beams 
and backed off to a few hundred yards’ 
distance. He spun a couple of wheels 
briefly, pressed a switch, and from the 
Violet’s heaviest needle-ray projector 
there flashed out against the prow of 
the scout patrol a pencil of incredibly 
condensed destruction. 

Dunark, the crown prince of Kondal, 
had developed that stabbing ray as the 
culminating ultimate weapon of ten 
thousand years of Osnomian warfare ; 
and, driven by even the comparatively 
feeble energies known to the denizens 
of the Green System before Seaton’s 
advent, no known substance had been 
able to resist for more than a moment 
its corrosively, annihilatingly poignant 
thrust. 

And now this furious stiletto of pure 
energy, driven by the full power of four 
hundred pounds of disintegrating 
atomic copper, at this point-blank range, 
was hurled against the mere inch of 
transparent material which comprised 
the skin of the tiny cruiser. DuQuesne 
expected no opposition, for with a beam 
less potent by far he had consumed ut- 
terly a vessel built of arenak — arenak, 
that Osnomian synthetic which is five 
hundred times as strong, tough, and 
hard as Earth’s strongest, toughest, or 
hardest alloy steel. 

Yet that annihilating needle of force 
struck that transparent surface and re- 
bounded from it in scintillating torrents 
of fire. Struck and rebounded, struck 
and clung; boring in almost impercep- 



THE SKYLARK OF VALERON 



23 



tibly as its irresistible energy tore 
apart, electron by electron, the surpris- 
ingly obdurate substance of the cruiser’s 
wall. For that substance was the ulti- 
mate synthetic — the one limiting mate- 
rial possessing the utmost measure of 
strength, hardness, tenacity, and rigidity 
theoretically possible to any substance 
built up from the building blocks of 
ether-borne electrons. This substance, 
developed by the master scientists of the 
Fenachrone, was in fact identical with 
the Norlaminian synthetic metal, inoson, 
from which Roval and his aids had con- 
structed for Seaton his gigantic ship of 
space — Skylark Three. 

FOR FIVE long minutes DuQuesne 
held that terrific beam against the point 
of attack, then shut it off ; for it had 
consumed less than half the thickness 
of the scout patrol's outer skin. True, 
the focal area of the energy was an al- 
most invisibly violet glare of incan- 
descence, so intensely hot that the con- 
centric shading off through blinding 
white, yellow, and bright- red heat 
brought the zone of dull red far down 
the side of the vessel; but that awful 
force had had practically no effect upon 
the spaceworthiness of the stanch little 
craft. 

“No use, Loring!’’ DuQuesne spoke 
calmly into the transmitter inside his 
face plate. True scientist that he was, 
he neither expressed nor felt anger or 
bafflement when an idea failed to work, 
but abandoned it promptly and com- 
pletely, without rancor or repining. “No 
possible meteorite could puncture that 
shell. Stand by!” 

He inspected the power meters 
briefly, made several readings through 
the filar micrometer of number six visi- 
plate, and checked the vernier readings 
of the great circles of the gyroscopes 
against the figures in his notebook. 
Then, assured that the Violet was fol- 
lowing precisely the predetermined 



course, he entered the airlock, waved a 
bloated arm at the watchful Loring, 
and coolly stepped off into space. The 
heavy outer door clanged shut b«hind 
him, and the globular ship of space 
rocketed onward ; while DuQuesne fell 
with a sickening acceleration toward the 
mighty planet of the Fenachrone, so 
many thousands of miles below. 

That fall did not long endure. Lor- 
ing, now a space pilot second to none, 
had held his vessel dead even with the 
Violet; matching exactly her course, 
pace, and acceleration at a distance of 
barely a hundred feet. He had cut off 
all his power as DuQuesne’s right foot 
left the Osnomian vessel, and now fall- 
ing man and plunging scout ship plum- 
meted downward together at the same 
mad pace; the man drifting slowly to- 
ward the ship because of the slight en- 
ergy of his step into space from the 
Violet’s side and beginning slowly to 
turn over as he fell. So consummate 
had been Loring’s spacemanship that 
the scout did not even roll ; DuQuesne 
was still opposite her starboard airlock 
when Loring stood in its portal and 
tossed a space line to his superior. This 
line — a small, tightly stranded cable of 
fiber capable of retaining its strength 
and pliability in the heatless depths of 
space — snapped out and curled around 
DuQuesne’s bulging space suit. 

“I thought you’d use an attractor, 
but this is probably better, at that,” Du- 
Quesne commented, as he seized the line 
in a mailed fist. 

“Yeah. I haven’t had much practice 
with them on delicate and accurate 
work. If I had missed you with this 
line I could have thrown it again ; but 
if I missed this opening with you on a 
beam and shaved your suit off on this 
sharp edge, I figured it’d be just too 
bad.” 

The two men again in the control 
room and the vessel once more leveled 



24 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



out in headlong flight, Loring broke 
the silence : 

“That idea of being punctured by a 
meteorite didn’t pan out so heavy. How 
would it be to have one of the crew go 
space-crazy and wreck the boat from 
the inside? They do that sometimes, 
don’t they?” 

“Yes, they do. That’s an idea — 
thanks. I’ll study up on the symptoms. 
I have a lot more studying to do, any- 
way — there’s a lot of stuff I haven’t got 
yet. This metal, for instance — we 
couldn’t possibly build a Fenachrone 
battleship on Earth. I had no idea that 
any possible substance could be so re- 
sistant as the shell of this ship is. Of 
course, there are many unexplored areas 
in these brains here, and quite a few 
l high-class brains aboard our mother 
(ship that I haven’t even seen yet. The 
secret of the composition of this metal 
must be in some of them.” 

“Well, while you’re getting their 
stuff, I suppose I’d better fly at that job 
of rebuilding our drive. I’ll have time 
enough all right, you think?” 

“Certain of it. I have learned that 
their system is ample — automatic and 
foolproof. They have warning long be- 
fore anything can possibly happen. 
They can, and do, spot trouble over 
a light-week away, so their plans allow 
one week to perfect their defenses. 
You can change the power plant over in 
four days, so we’re well in the clear 
on that. I may not be done with my 
studies by that time, but I shall have 
learned enough to take effective action. 
You work on the drive and keep house. 
I will study Fenachrone science and so 
on, answer calls, make reports, and ar- 
range the details of what is to happen 
when we come within the volume of 
space assigned to our mother ship.” 

THUS for days each man devoted 
himself to his task. Loring rebuilt the 
power plant of the short-ranging scout 



patrol into the terrific open-space drive 
of the first-line battleships and per- 
formed the simple routines of their 
Spartan housekeeping. DuQuesne cut 
himself short on sleep and spent every 
possible hour in transferring to his own 
brain every worth-while bit of knowl- 
edge which had been possessed by the 
commander and crew of the patrol ship 
which he had captured. 

Periodically, however, he would close 
the sending circuit and report the posi- 
tion and progress of his vessel, precisely 
on time and observing strictly all the 
military minutiae called for by the 
manual — the while watching appreci- 
atively and with undisguised admiration 
the flawless execution of that stupen- 
dous plan of defense. 

The change-over finished, Loring 
went in search of DuQuesne, whom he 
found performing a strenuous setting- 
up exercise. The scientist’s face was 
pale, haggard, and drawn. 

“What’s the matter, chief?" Loring 
asked. “You look kind of peaked.” 

“Peaked is good — I’m just about 
bushed. This thing of getting a hun- 
dred and ninety years of solid education 
in a few days would hardly come under 
the heading of light amusement. Are 
you done?” 

“Done and checked — O. K.” 

“Good ! I am, too. It won’t take 
us long to get to our destination now ; 
our mother ship should be just about 
at her post by this time.” 

Now that the vessel was approach- 
ing the location assigned to it in the 
plan, and since DuQuesne had already 
taken from the brains of the dead Fena- 
chrone all that he wanted of their 
knowledge, he threw their bodies into 
space and rayed them out of existence. 
The other corpse he left lying, a bloated 
and ghastly mass, in the forward com- 
partment as he prepared to send in what 
was to be his last flight report to the 
office of the general in command of the 
plan of defense. 



THE SKYLARK OF VALERON 



25 



“His high-mightiness doesn’t know 
it, but that is the last call he is going 
to get from this unit,” DuQuesne re- 
marked, leaving the sender and step- 
ping over to the control'board. “Now 
we can leave our prescribed course and 
go where we can do ourselves some 
good. First, we’ll find the Violet. I 
haven’t heard of her being spotted and 
destroyed as a menace to navigation, so 
we’ll look her up and start her off for 
home.” 

“Why?” asked the henchman. 
“Thought we were all done with her.” 

“We probably are, but if it should 
turn out that Seaton is back of all this 
excitement, our having her may save 
us a trip back to the Earth. Ah, there 
she is, right on schedule! I’ll bring 
her alongside and set her controls on 
a distance-squared decrement, so that 
when she gets out into space she’ll have 
a constant velocity.” 

“Think she’ll get out into free space 
through those screens?” 

“They will detect her, of course, but 
when they see that she is an abandoned 
derelict and headed out of their system 
they’ll probably let her go. It will be 
no great loss, of course, if they do bum 
her.” 

Thus it came about that the spherical 
cruiser of the void shot away from the 
then feeble gravitation of the vast but 
distant planet of the Fenachrone at a 
frightful but constant speed. Through 
the outer detector screens she tore. 
Searching beams explored her instantly 
and thoroughly; but since she was so 
evidently a deserted hulk and since the 
Fenachrone cared nothing now for im- 
pediments to navigation beyond their 
screens, she was not pursued. 

On and on she sped, her automatic 
controls reducing her power in exact 
ratio to the square of the distance at- 
tained ; on and on, her automatic deflect- 
ing detectors swinging her arouna suns 
and solar systems and back upon her 



original right line; on and on toward 
the Green System, the central system of 
this the First Galaxy — our own native 
island universe. 

III. 

“NOW WE’LL GET ready to take 
that battleship.” DuQuesne turned to 
his aid as the Violet disappeared from 
their sight. “Your suggestion that one 
of the crew of this ship could have gone 
space-crazy was sound, and I have 
planned our approach to the mother 
ship on that basis. 

“We must wear Fenachrone space 
suits for three reasons: First, because 
it is the only possible way to make us 
look even remotely like them, and we 
shall have to stand a casual inspection. 
Second, because it is general orders that 
all Fenachrone soldiers must wear suits 
while at their posts in space. Third, 
because we shall have lost most of our 
air. You can wear one of their suits 
without any difficulty — the surplus cir- 
cumference will not trouble you very 
much. I, on the contrary, cannot even 
get into one, since they’re almost a foot 
too short. 

“I must have a suit on, though, be- 
fore we board the battleship; so I shall 
wear my own, with one of theirs over 
it — with the feet cut off so that I can 
get it on. Since I shall not be able to 
stand up or to move around without 
giving everything away because of my 
length, I’ll have to be unconscious and 
folded up so that my height will not 
be too apparent, and you will have to be 
the star performer during the first act. 

“But this detailed instruction by word 
of mouth takes altogether too much 
time. Put on this headset and I’ll shoot 
you the whole scheme, together with 
whatever additional Fenachrone knowl- 
edge you will need to put the act across.” 

A brief exchange of thoughts and of 
ideas followed. Then, every detail made 
clear, the two Terrestrials donned the 



26 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



space suits of the very short, but enor- 
mously wide and thick, monstrosities 
in semihuman form who were so bigot- 
edly working toward their day of uni- 
versal conquest. 

DuQuesne picked up in his doubly 
mailed hands a massive bar of metal. 
“Ready, Doll? When I swing this we 
cross the Rubicon.” 

“It’s all right by me. All or noth- 
ing — shoot the works!” 

DuQuesne swung his mighty bludgeon 
aloft, and as it descended the telemental 
recorder sprang into a shower of shat- 
tered tubes, flying coils, and broken in- 
sulation. The visiray apparatus went 
next, followed in swift succession by 
the superficial air controls, the map 
cases, and practically everything else 
that was breakable; until it was clear to 
even the most casual observer that a 
madman had in truth wrought his fren- 
zied will throughout the room. One 
final swing wrecked the controls of the 
airlocks, and the atmosphere within the 
vessel began to whistle out into the 
vacuum of space through the broken 
bleeder tubes. 

“All right, Doll, do your stuff!” Du- 
Quesne directed crisply, and threw him- 
self headlong into a corner, falling into 
an inert, grotesque huddle. 

Loring, now impersonating the dead 
commanding officer’ of the scout ship, 
sat down at the manual sender, which 
had not been seriously damaged, and in 
true Fenachrone fashion laid a beam to 
the mother ship. 

“Scout ship K3296, Sublieutenant 
Grenimar commanding, sending emer- 
gency distress message,” he tapped out 
fluently. “Am not using telemental re- 
corder, as required by regulations, be- 
cause nearly all instruments wrecked. 
Private 244C14, on watch, suddenly 
seized with space insanity, smashed air 
valves, instruments, and controls. 
Op>ened lock and leaped out into space. 
I was awake and got into suit before 



my room lost pressure. My other man, 
397B42, was unconscious when I -reached 
him, but believe I got him into his suit 
soon enough so that his life can be saved 
by prompt aid. 244C14 of course dead, 
but I recovered his body as per general 
orders and am saving it so that brain 
lesions may be studied by College of 
Science. Repaired this manual sender 
and have ship under partial control. Am 
coming toward you, decelerating to stop 
in fifteen minutes. Suggest you handle 
this ship with beam when approach as 
I have no fine controls. Signing off — 
K3296.” 

“Superdreadnought Z12Q, acknowl- 
edging emergency distress message of 
scout ship K3296,” came almost instant 
answer. “Will meet you and handle 
you as suggested. Signing off — Z12Q.” 

Rapidly the two ships of space drew 
together; the patrol boat now stationary 
with respect to the planet, the huge bat- 
tleship decelerating at maximum. Three 
enormous beams reached out and, held 
at prow, midsection, and stern, the tiny 
flier was drawn rapidly but carefully 
against the towering side of her mother 
ship. The double suction seals engaged 
and locked ; the massive doors began to 
open. 

NOW CAME the most crucial point 
of DuQuesne’s whole scheme. For that 
warship carried a complement of nearly 
a hundred men, and ten or a dozen of 
them — the lock commander, surgeons 
and orderlies certainly, and possibly a 
corps of mechanics as well — would be 
massed in the airlock room behind those 
slowly opening barriers. But in that 
scheme’s very audacity lay its great 
strength — its almost complete assurance 
of success. For what Fenachrone, with 
the inborn superiority complex that was 
his heritage, would even dream that two 
members of any alien race would have 
the sheer, brazen effrontery to dare to 
attack, empty-handed, a full-manned 



THE SKYLARK OF VALERON 



27 



Class Z superdreadnought, one of the 
most formidable structures that had 
ever lifted its stupendous mass into the 
ether ? 

But DuQuesne so dared. Direct ac- 
tion had always been his forte. Appar- 
ently impossible odds had never daunted 
him. He had always planned his coups 
carefully, then followed those plans 
coldly and ruthlessly to their logical 
and successful conclusions. Two men 
could do this job very nicely, and would 
so do it. DuQuesne had chosen Loring 
with care. Therefore he lay at ease in 
his armor in front of the slowly open- 
ing portal, calmly certain that the iron 
nerves of his assassin aid would not 
weaken for even the instant necessary 
to disrupt his carefully laid plan. 

As soon as the doors had opened suffi- 
ciently to permit ingress, Loring went 
through them slowly, carrying the sup- 
posedly unconscious man with care. But 
once inside the opaque walls of the lock 
room, that slowness became activity in- 
carnate. DuQuesne sprang instantly to 
his full height, and before the clustered 
officers could even perceive that any- 
thing was amiss, four sure hands had 
trained upon them the deadliest hand 
weapons known to the superlative sci- 
ence of their own race. 

Since DuQuesne was overlooking no 
opportunity of acquiring knowledge, the 
heads were spared; but as the four 
furious blasts of vibratory energy tore 
through those massive bodies, making of 
their every internal organ a mass of dis- 
organized protoplasmic pulp, every 
Fenachrone in the room fell lifeless to 
the floor before he could move a hand 
in self-defense. 

Dropping his weapons, DuQuesne 
wrenched off his helmet, while Loring 
with deft hands bared the head of the 
senior officer of the group upon the 
floor. Headsets flashed out — were 
clamped into place — dials were set — the 
scientist shot power into the tubes, trans- 



ferring to his own brain an entire sec- 
tion of the dead brain before him. 

His senses reeled under the shock, but 
he recovered quickly, and even as he 
threw off the phones Loring slammed 
down over his head the helmet of the 
Fenachrone. DuQuesne was now com- 
mander of the airlocks, and the break 
in communication had been of such short 
duration that not the slightest suspicion 
had been aroused. He snapped out 
mental orders to the distant power room, 
the side of the vessel opened, and the 
scout ship was drawn within. 

“All tight, sir,” he reported to the 
captain, and the Z12Q began to retrace 
her path in space. 

DuQuesne’s first objective had been 
attained without untoward incident. The 
second objective, the control room, 
might present more difficulty, since its 
occupants would be scattered. How- 
ever, to neutralize this difficulty, the 
Earthly attackers could work with bare 
hands and thus with the weapons with 
w+iich both were thoroughly familiar. 
Removing their gauntlets, the two men 
ran lightly toward that holy of Fena- 
chrone holies, the control room. Its 
door was guarded, but DuQuesne had 
known that it would be — wherefore the 
guards went down before they could 
voice a challenge. The door crashed 
open and four heavy, long-barreled auto- 
matics began to vomit forth a leaden 
storm of death. Those pistols were 
gripped in accustomed and steady hands ; 
those hands in turn were actuated by 
the ruthless brains of heartless, con- 
scienceless, and merciless killers. 

HIS SECOND and major objective 
gained, DuQuesne proceeded at once to 
consolidate his position. Pausing only 
to learn from the brain of the dead 
captain the exact technique of proce- 
dure, he summoned into the sanctum, 
one at a time, every member of the gi- 
gantic vessel’s crew. Man after man 



28 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



they came, in answer to the summons 
of their all-powerful captain — and man 
after man they died. 

“Take the educator and get some of 
their surgeon’s skill,” DuQuesne directed 
curtly, after the last member of the crew 
had been accounted for. “Take off the 
heads and put them where they’ll keep. 
Throw the rest of the rubbish out. 
Never mind about this captain — I want 
to study him.” 

Then, while Loring busied himself at 
his grisly task, DuQuesne sat at the cap- 
tain’s bench, read the captain’s brains, 
and sent in to general headquarters the 
regular routine reports of the vessel. 

“All cleaned up. Now what?” Lor- 
ing was as spick-and-span, as calmly un- 
ruffled, as though he were reporting in 
one of the private rooms of the Perkins 
Cafe. “Start back to the Earth?” 

“Not yet.” Even though DuQuesne 
had captured his battleship, thereby per- 
forming the almost impossible, he was 
not yet content. “There are a lot of 
things to learn here yet, and I think 
that we had better stay here as long as 
possible and learn them ; provided we 
can do so without incurring any extra 
risks. As far as actual flight goes, two 
men can handle this ship as well as a 
hundred, since her machinery' is all auto- 
matic. Therefore we can run away any 
time. 

“We could not fight, however, as it 
takes about thirty men to handle her 
weapons. But fighting would do no 
good, anyway, because they could out- 
number us a hundred to one in a few 
hours. All of which means that if we 
go out beyond the detector screens we 
will not be able to come back— we had 
better stay here, so as to be able to take 
advantage of any favorable develop- 
ments.” 

He fell silent, frowningly concen- 
trated upon some problem obscure to his 
companion. At last he went to the main 
control panel and busied himself with 



a device of photo cells, coils, and kino 
bulbs; whereupon Loring set about pre- 
paring a long-delayed meal. 

“It’s all hot, chief — come and get it,” 
the aid invited, when he saw that his 
superior’s immediate task was done. 
“What’s the idea? Didn't they have 
enough controls there already?” 

“The idea is, Doll, not to take any 
unnecessary chances. Ah, this goulash 
hits the spot!” DuQuesne ate appreci- 
atively for a few minutes in silence, 
then went on : “Three things may hap- 
pen to interfere with the continuation of 
our search for knowledge. First, since 
we are now in command of a Fenachrone 
mother ship, I have to report to head- 
quarters on the telemental recorder, and 
they may catch me in a slip any minute, 
which will mean a massed attack. Sec- 
ond, the enemy may break through the 
Fenachrone defenses and precipitate a 
general engagement. Third, there is 
still the bare possibility of that cosmic 
explosion I told you about. 

“In that connection, it is quite obvious 
that an atomic explosion wave of that 
type would be propagated with the ve- 
locity of light. Therefore, even though 
our ship could run away from it, since 
we have an acceleration of five times 
that velocity, yet we could not see that 
such an explosion had occurred until 
the wave-front reached us. Then, of 
course, it would be too late to do any- 
thing about it, because what an atomic 
explosion wave would do to the dense 
material of this battleship would be sim- 
ply nobody’s business. 

“We might get away if one of us had 
his hands actually on the controls and 
had his eyes and his brain right on the 
job, but that is altogether too much to 
expect of flesh and blood. No brain can 
be maintained at its highest pitch for 
any length of time.” 

“So what?” Loring said laconically. 
If the chief was not worried about these 
things, the henchman would not be wor- 
ried, either. 



THE SKYLARK OF VALERON 



29 



“So I rigged up a detector that is 
both automatic and instantaneous. At 
the first touch of any unusual vibration 
it will throw in the full space drive and 
will shoot us directly away from the 
point of the disturbance. Now we shall 
be absolutely safe, no matter what hap- 
pens. 

“We are safe from any possible at- 
tack; neither the Fenachrone nor our 
common enemy, whoever they are, can 
harm us. We are safe even from the 
atomic explosion of the entire planet. 
We shall stay here until we get every- 
thing that we want. Then we shall go 
back to the Green System. We shall 
find Seaton.” 

His entire being grew grim and im- 
placable, his voice became harder and 
colder even than its hard and cold wont. 
“We shall blow him clear out of the 
ether. The world — yes, whatever I want 
of the Galaxy — shall be mine!” 

IV. 

ONLY A FEW days were required 
for the completion of DuQuesne’s Fena- 
chrone education, since not many of the 
former officers of the battleship had 
added greatly to the already vast knowl- 
edge possessed by the Terrestrial sci- 
entists. Therefore the time soon came 
when he had nothing to occupy either 
his vigorous body or his voracious mind, 
and the self-imposed idleness irked his 
active spirit sorely. 

"If nothing is going to happen out 
here we might as well get started back; 
this present situation is intolerable,” 
he declared to Loring one morning, and 
proceeded to lay spy rays to various 
strategic points of the enormous shell of 
defense, and even to the sacred precincts 
of headquarters itself. 

“They will probably catch me at this, 
and when they do it will blow the lid 
off ; but since we are all ready for the 
break we don’t care now how soon it 
comes. There’s something gone sour 



somewhere, and it may do us some good 
to know something about it.” 

“Sour? Along what line?” 

“The mobilization has slowed down. 
The first phase went off beautifully, 
you know, right on schedule ; but lately 
things have slowed down. That doesn’t 
seem just right, since their plans are all 
dynamic, not static. Of course general 
headquarters isn’t advertising it to us 
outlying captains, but I think I can 
sense an undertone of uneasiness. 
That’s why I am doing this little job of 

spying, to get the low-down Ah, 

I thought so! Look here, Doll! See 
those gaps on the defense map? Over 
half of their big ships are not in posi- 
tion — look at those tracer reports — not 
a battleship that was out in space has 
come back, and a lot of them are more 
than a week overdue. I’ll say that’s 

something we ought to know about ” 

“Observation Officer of the Z12Q, at- 
tention!” snapped from the tight-beam 
headquarters communicator. “Cut off 
those spy rays and report yourself un- 
der arrest for treason !” 

“Not to-day,” DuQuesne drawled. 
“Besides, I can’t — I am in command 
here now.” 

“Open your visiplate to full aper- 
ture!” The staff officer’s voice was 
choked with fury; never in his long life 
had he been so grossly insulted by a 
mere captain of the line. 

DuQuesne opened the plate, remark- 
ing to Loring as he did so ; “This is the 
blow-off, all right. No possible way of 
stalling him off now, even if I wanted 
to ; and I really want to tell them a few 
things before we shove off.” 

“Where are the men who should be. 
at stations?” the furious voice de- 
manded. 

“Dead,” DuQuesne replied laconically. 
“Dead ! And you have reported noth- 
ing amiss?” He turned from his own 
microphone, but DuQuesne and Loring 
could hear his savage commands: 



30 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



“X1427 — Order. the twelfth squadron 
to bring in the Z12Q!" 

He spoke again to the rebellious and 
treasonable observer: “And you have 

made your helmet opaque to the rays of 
this plate, another violation of the code. 
Take it off!” The speaker fairly rattled 
under the bellowing voice of the out- 
raged general. “If you live long enough 
to get here, you will pay the full penalty 
for treason, insubordination, and conduct 
unfiecom ” 

“Oh, shut up, you yapping nincom- 
poop!” snapped DuQuesne. 

Wrenching off his helmet, he thrust 
his blackly forbidding face directly be- 
fore the visiplate; so that the raging 
officer stared, from a distance of only 
eighteen inches, not into the cowed and 
frightened face of a guiltily groveling 
subordinate, but into the proud and 
sneering visage of Marc C. DuQuesne, 
of Earth. 

And DuQuesne’s whole being radiated 
open and supreme contempt, the most 
gallingly nauseous dose possible to in- 
flict upon any member of that race of 
self-styled supermen, the Fenachrone. 
As he stared at the Earthman the gen- 
eral’s tirade broke off in the middle of 
a word and he fell back speechless — 
robbed, it seemed, almost of conscious- 
ness by the shock. 

“You asked for it — you got it — now 
just what are you going to do with it 
or about it?” DuQuesne spoke aloud, 
to render even more trenchantly cutting 
the crackling mental comments as they 
leaped across space, each thought lash- 
ing the officer like the biting, tearing tip 
of a bull whip. 

“Better men than you have been 
beaten by overconfidence,” he went on, 
“and better plans than yours have come 
to nought through underestimating the 
resources in brain and power of the op- 
position. You are not the first race in 
the history of the universe to go down 
because of false pride, and you will not 



be the last. You thought that my com- 
rade and I had been taken and killed. 
You thought so because / wanted you 
so to think. In reality we took that 
scout ship, and when we wanted it we 
took this battleship as easily. 

“We have been here, in the very heart 
of your defense system, for ten days. 
We have obtained everything that we 
set out to get; we have learned every- 
thing that we set out to learn. If we 
wished to take it, your entire planet 
could offer us no more resistance than 
did these vessels, but we do not want it. 

“Also, after due deliberation, we have 
decided that the universe would be much 
better off without any Fenachrone in it. 
Therefore your race will of course soon 
disappear; and since we do not want 
your planet, we will see to it that no 
one else will want it, at least for some 
few eons of time to come. Think that 
over, as long as you are able to think. 
Good-by !” 

DuQUESNE cut off the visiray with 
a vicious twist and turned to Loring. 
“Pure boloney, of course!” he sneered. 
“But as long as they don’t know that 
fact it’ll probably hold them for a 
while.” 

“Better start drifting for home, hadn’t 
we? They’re coming out after us.” 

“We certainly had.” DuQuesne 
strolled leisurely across the room toward 
the controls. “We hit them hard, in 
a mighty tender spot, and they will make 
it highly unpleasant for us if we linger 
around here much longer. But we are 
in no danger. There is no tracer ray 
on this ship — they use them only on 
long-distance cruises — so they’ll have no 
idea where to look for us. Also, I 
don’t believe that they’ll even try to 
chase us, because I gave them a lot to 
think about for some time to come, even 
if it wasn’t true.” 

But DuQuesne had spoken far more 
truly than he knew — his “boloney” was 



THE SKYLARK OF VALERON 



31 



in fact a coldly precise statement of an 
awful truth even then about to be made 
manifest. For at that very moment 
Dunark of Osnome was reaching for 
the switch whose closing would send a 
detonating current through the thou- 
sands of tons of sensitized atomic cop- 
per already placed by Seaton in their 
deep-buried emplantments upon the 
noisome planet of the Fenachrone. 

DuQuesne knew that the outlying ves- 
sels of the monsters had not returned 
to base, but he did not know that Seaton 
had destroyed them, one and all, in free 
space; he did not know that his arch- 
foe was the being who was responsible 
for the failure of the Fenachrone space 
ships to come back from their horrible 
voyages. 

Upon the other hand, while Seaton 
knew that there were battleships afloat 
in the ether within the protecting 
screens of the planet, he had no inkling 
that one of those very battleships was 
manned by his two bitterest and most 
vindictive enemies, the official and com- 
pletely circumstantial report of whose 
death by cremation he had witnessed 
such a few days before. 

DuQuesne strolled across the floor of 
the control room, and in mid-step be- 
came weightless, floating freely in the 
air. The planet had exploded, and the 
outermost fringe of the wave-front of 
the atomic disintegration, propagated 
outwardly into spherical space with the 
velocity of light, had impinged upon the 
all-seeing and ever-watchful mechanical 
eye which DuQuesne had so carefully 
installed. But only that outermost 
fringe, composed solely of light and ul- 
tra-light, had touched that eye. The 
relay — an electronic beam — had been de- 
flected instantaneously, demanding of 
the governors their terrific maximum of 
power, away from the doomed world. 
The governor had responded in a space 
of time to be measured only in frac- 
tional millionths of a second, and the 
vessel leaped effortlessly and almost in- 



stantaneously into an acceleration of five 
light-velocities, urged onward by the full 
power of the space-annihilating drive of 
the Fenachrone. 

The eyes of DuQuesne and Loring 
had had time really to see nothing what- 
ever. There was the barest perceptible 
flash of the intolerable brilliance of an 
exploding universe, succeeded in the 
very instant of its perception — yes, even 
before its real perception — by the utter 
blackness of the complete absence of all 
light whatever as the space drive auto- 
matically went into action and hurled 
the great vessel away from the all-de- 
stroying wave-front of the atomic ex- 
plosion. 

As has been said, there were many 
battleships within the screens of the dis- 
tant planet, supporting a horde of scout 
ships according to Invasion Plan 
XB218; but of all these vessels and of 
all things Fenachrone, only two escaped 
the incredible violence of the holocaust. 
One was the immense space traveler of 
Ravindau the scientist which had for 
days been hurtling through space upon 
its way to a far-distant Galaxy ; the 
other was the first-line battleship carry- 
ing DuQuesne and his killer aid, which 
had been snatched from the very teeth 
of that indescribable cosmic cataclysm 
only by the instantaneous operation of 
DuQuesne’s automatic relays. 

Everything on or near the planet had 
of course been destroyed instantly, and 
even the fastest battleship, farthest 
removed from the disintegrating world, 
was overwhelmed without the slightest 
possibility of escape. For to human 
eyes, staring however attentively into 
ordinary visiplates, these had practically 
no warning at all, since the wave-front 
of atomic disruption was propagated 
with the velocity of light and therefore 
followed very closely indeed behind the 
narrow fringe of visible light which her- 
alded its coming. 

Even if one of the dazed command- 



32 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



ers had known the meaning of the corus- 
cant blaze of brilliance which was the 
immediate forerunner of destruction, he 
would have been helpless to avert it, for 
no hands of flesh and blood, human or 
Fenachrone, could possibly have thrown 
switches rapidly enough to have escaped 
from the advancing wave-front of dis- 
ruption ; and at the touch of that fright- 
ful wave every atom of substance, alike 
of vessel, contents, and hellish crew, be- 
came resolved into its component elec- 
trons and added its contribution of en- 
ergy to the stupendous cosmic catas- 
trophe. 

EVEN before his foot had left the 
floor in free motion, however, DuQuesne 
realized exactly what had happened. His 
keen eyes saw the flash of blinding in- 
candescence announcing a world’s end- 
ing and sent to his keen brain a picture ; 
and in the instant of perception that 
brain had analyzed that picture and un- 
derstood its every implication and con- 
notation. Therefore he only grinned 
sardonically at the phenomena which 
left the slower-minded Loring dazed 
and breathless. 

He continued to grin as the battle- 
ship hurtled onward through the void 
at a pace beside which that of any ether- 
borne wave, even that of such a Titanic 
disturbance as the atomic explosion of 
an entire planet, was the veriest crawl. 

At la§t, however, Loring compre- 
hended what had happened. “Oh, it ex- 
ploded, huh?” he ejaculated. 

“It most certainly did.” The sci- 
entist’s grin grew diabolical. “My state- 
ments to them came true, even though 
I did not have anything to do with 
their fruition. However, these events 
prove that caution is all right in its place 
— it pays big dividends at times. I’m 
very glad, of course, that the Fenachrone 
have been definitely taken out of the 
picture.” 

Utterly callous, DuQuesne neither felt 



nor expressed the slightest sign of pity 
for the race of beings so suddenly 
snuffed out of existence. “Their re- 
moval at this time will undoubtedly save 
me a lot of trouble later on,” he added, 
“but the whole thing certainly gives me 
furiously to think, as the French say. 
It was done with a sensitized atomic 
copper bomb, of course; but I should 
like very much to know who did it, and 
why ; and, above all, how they were able 
to make the approach.” 

“Personally, I still think it was Sea- 
ton,” the baby-faced murderer put in 
calmly. “No reason for thinking so, 
except that whenever anything impos- 
sible has been pulled off anywhere that 
I ever heard of, he was the guy that 
did it. Call it a hunch, if you want to.” 
“It may have been Seaton, of course, 
even though I can’t really think so.” 
DuQuesne frowned blackly in concen- 
tration. “It may have been accidental — 
started by the explosion of an ammuni- 
tion dump or something of the kind — 
but I believe that even less than I do 
the other. It couldn’t have been any 
race of beings from any other planet of 
this system, since they are all bare of 
life, the Fenachrone having killed off 
all the other races ages ago and not car- 
ing to live on the other planets them- 
selves. No; I still think that it was 
some enemy from outer space ; although 
my belief that it could not have been 
Seaton is weakening. 

“However, with this ship we can 
probably find out in short order who 
it was, whether it was Seaton or any 
possible outside race. We are far 
enough away now to be out of danger 
from that explosion, so we’ll slow down, 
circle around, and find out whoever it 
was that touched it off.” 

He slowed the mad pace of the cruiser 
until the firmament behind them once 
more became visible, to see that the sys- 
tem of the Fenachrone was now illumi- 
nated by a splendid double sun. Send- 
AST— 2 



THE SKYLARK OF VALERON 



33 



ing out a full series of ultra-powered de- 
tector screens, DuQuesne scanned the 
instruments narrowly. Every meter re- 
mained dead, its needle upon zero; not 
a sign of radiation could be detected 
upon any of the known communicator or 
power bands; the ether was empty for 
millions upon untold millions of miles. 
He then put on power and cruised at 
higher and higher velocities, describing 
a series of enormous looping circles 
throughout the space surrounding that 
entire solar system. 

Around and around the flaming dou- 
ble sun, rapidly becoming first a double 
star and then merely a faint point of 
light, DuQuesne urged the Fenachrone 
battleship, but his screens remained cold 
and unresponsive. No ship of the void 
was operating in all that vast volume of 
ether; no sign of man or of any of his 
works was to be found throughout it. 

DuQuesne then extended his detec- 
tors to the terrific maximum of their un- 
thinkable range, increased his already 
frightful acceleration to its absolute 
limit, and cruised madly onward in al- 
ready vast and ever-widening spirals 
until a grim conclusion forced itself 
upon his consciousness. Unwilling 
though he was to believe it, he was 



forced finally to recognize an appalling 
fact. The enemy, whoever he might 
have been, must have been operating 
from ' a distance immeasurably greater 
than any that even DuQuesne’s new- 
found knowledge could believe possible; 
abounding though it was in astounding 
data concerning superscientific weapons 
of destruction. 

He again cut their acceleration down 
to a touring rate, adjusted his automatic 
alarms and signals, and turned to Lor- 
ing, his face grim and hard. 

“They must have been farther away 
than even any of the Fenachrone physi- 
cists would have believed possible,” he 
stated flatly. “It looks more and more 
like Seaton — he probably found some 
more high-class help somewhere. Tem- 
porarily, at least, I am stumped — but I 
do not stay stumped long. I shall find 
him if I have to comb the Galaxy, star 
by star!” 

Thus DuQuesne, not even dreaming 
what an incredibly inconceivable dis- 
tance from this Galaxy Seaton was to 
attain; nor what depths of extradimen- 
sional space Seaton was to traverse be- 
fore they were again to stand face to 
face — cold black eyes staring straight 
into hard and level eyes of gray. 



TO BE CONTINUED. 




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Dr. Conklin — Pacifist 

The story of a scientist’s dream of 
peace — and the chaos that followed 

by Calvin Peregoy 



D R. CARL CONKLIN strode 
irritably about the solarium 
tower of Short-Wave Castle. 
He had spring fever. Also, in spite of 
authoring a monumental thesis on diet, 
he had a touch of dyspepsia. 

His usual tranquillity was as deeply 
disturbed as his stomach. Two colossal 
experiments had fizzled. He had 
created a race of supermen with a 
planned life and economy. They had 
promptly found themselves so glutted 
with necessities, luxuries and efficiency 
that they determined upon the extinction 
of their “ancestors” — still living — as a 
race too savage to live in an advanced 
world. 

Then the ensuing experiment, when 
he created an advanced race of “perfect 
normal people,” had ended in a war be- 
tween the sexes. A sexless civilization, 
and finally realization among the test- 
tube folk that being produced merely to 
die was hardly worth the boodle, re- 
sulted. 

He had been laughed at, by the few 
who knew, for those experiments. Yet 
his perfection of an ever-fresh taffy 
candy was hailed as a gargantuan sci- 
entific accomplishment! 

Doubtless the world was all wrong. 
But Dr. Conklin was a humanitarian. 
If the world was wrong, some cancer 
must be the poison center. And as he 
had nothing else at the moment to oc- 
cupy his mind, excepting to rationalize 
his dyspepsia, he decided to cure the 
world’s evils. 

He glanced again at the teletyped re- 



ports of the day’s headlines. War, riots, 
police troubles, underworld killings, 
political spoil, murders for jealousy, 
money, greed. Renewed warfare in the 
Orient — another Yellow Peril. Strikes, 
riots, slum fires — everywhere man’s 
hand turned against man for personal 
gain or triumph. 

The doctor’s face grew dark with rage. 
In his mild nature there were but two 
points of bitter hatred. The first, man’s 
baser self. The second, the arch fiend 
(his rival), Dr. Stanton Wales. And 
the news of the day spread evidence of 
both. 

Wales, “agent of the devil,” as Conk- 
lin remarked, was setting off to a secret 
laboratory in Alaska. He promised that 
within one year he would perfect a death 
ray making his country — or himself — 
ruler of the world. 

“War, death, predatory slave drivers, 
human hyenas, leeches of civilization, 
Wales!” muttered the doctor heatedly, 
thinking of a great many things at once. 
But particularly of the headlines Stan- 
ton Wales was reaping with his evil 
plans. 

And he had other worries. 

Shortly, his daughter Megs (named 
for the megalomania of his long-de- 
parted and unlamented wife, the doctor 
privately thought), would appear for tea 
with her conceited, red-shocked giant 
of a young man. 

The doctor had the vague notion that 
Pat Chelsea would ask for the hand of 
Megs Conklin that day. He grimaced. 
Conceited whippersnapper ! 




Her father, somewhat the worse for wear, but living, 
was draped over a beam. “Remarkable!” he said feebly. 



Illustrated by 
Elliot Dold 



Megs was growing hard to handle. 
Why couldn't she pick somebody like 
Dr. Ebenezer Whittleboose ? A bit el- 
derly and bony in spots, perhaps. But 
the coming great scientist. A man who 
thought (and starved) in terms of liv- 
ing for humanity, instead of living on it. 

MEGS ARRIVED with her red- 
headed giant, a handsome animal with 



destructive shoulders, carnivorous jaws, 
and a predatory gleam in his eye. He 
picked an early opportunity to get off 
on the wrong foot. With great enthusi- 
asm he mentioned the stupendous dream 
of Stanton Wales. 

Dr. Conklin was too enraged to do 
more than gurgle. Megs kicked Pat 
sharply under the table. Pat swallowed 
hard. Something queer happened as a 



36 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



result. His stomach constricted and he 
gave a small burp. 

"You should watch your diet, young 
man ! Entire human system depends on 
proper eating. No reason for an upset 
stomach.” The doctor’s tone was brittle. 
He gave a prodigious rumbling belch 
by way of punctuation. 

"Nothing to do with diet,” he hastened 
to explain. “Some new exercises I’m 
taking.” He glared at Pat malevolently 
as the corners of that young man’s 
mouth twisted upward. 

At last Megs left the two alone. 
There was the age-old awkward request, 
the timeless question: “Do you think 

you can support my daughter?” 

“Support her!” Pat Chelsea’s face 
broke into a broad smile. He was in 
his best braggart element. “Say, by the 
time I’m thirty I’ll be at the top! Yes, 
sir, if I have to strangle every big-shot 
financier in my path!” 

He sounded as if he meant it. And 
looked it. 

Dr. Conklin grew red, gray, white, 
green, finally black with wrath. That 
determined it. Another hyena — and in 
his own family. It was high time some- 
thing be done about man’s grosser in- 
stincts. 

Megs wisely sent Pat away. But 
loyally, she refused to leave with him. 

“I’m all dad has. There’s just me 
and his bugs in the laboratory. But I’ll 
come next week, Pat. Give me that 
time to tell him,” she explained. 

She told her father the next day. He 
looked at her savagely, stalked out of 
the room without a word. Two hours 
later there was a deafening explosion 
from the atomic laboratory. 

Megs ran. She sobbed as she threw 
open the door, saw the debris and drift- 
ing smoke and fumes. There was no 
sign of her father. Conscience smote 
her. The blow had been too much for 
her father to bear. 

A strange gurgle came from directly 
over her head. Her father, somewhat 



the worse for wear but living, was 
draped over a beam. An hour later he 
had recovered. 

“Remarkable! Ten years I’ve 
searched. Then it came in a flash!” 

“I heard the flash. But what ?” asked 

Megs. 

“My dream for humanity! Peace on 
earth! Megs, I’ve isolated all the emo- 
tions of unrest ! I will be the savior 
of civilization from itself.” 

“Maybe civilization doesn’t want to 
be saved,” Megs remarked with feminine 
lack of logic. But her father, in the 
bigness of the moment, forgave her. 

“For centuries the world has yearned 
for peace. Hate, lust, greed, ambition, 
rivalry, possession, inferiority have been 
the gain of civilization. Each has its 
separate brain cell. And now I’ve found 
a way to paralyze those cells ! And 
those alone. I will take my ray around 
the world, end bloodshed and the desire 
for conquest !” her father continued, ab- 
sorbed by a vision of brotherly love and 
out-headlining Stanton Wales. 

“Phooey!” Megs said. 

She retired to dream of husky young 
arms. The face was always a bit vague 
when Pat wasn’t around. Probably his 
features would become indelible with 
time, though. 

TWO MONTHS later, a light in his 
eyes and clippings in his bags, Dr. Conk- 
lin arrived in Tokio. He was in ex- 
cellent humor. His daughter had prom- 
ised to await his return before marry- 
ing. 

He had perfected his ray-broadcast 
equipment so that it could be relied upon 
to operate for three months without at- 
tention. Two months would definitely 
paralyze certain evil desires and emo- 
tions in mankind. The apparatus radi- 
ated five hundred miles. 

The theory was simple. He had iso- 
lated twelve cells of man’s brain. Each 
cell was responsible for one of man’s 



DR. CONKLIN— PACIFIST 



37 



evil motivations. Each cell was sus- 
ceptible to certain ray vibrations. 

His idea originated when he found 
directly applied infra-red rays would 
drive a person temporarily into a state 
of coma or delirium. The solution of 
the problem had been merely adding the 
technique of regular short-wave radio 
broadcasting and atomic decomposition. 

There had been one embarrassing mo- 
ment before he left. Megs had incon- 
tinently inquired if he had used the 
rays upon himself. Where she got such 
suspicions of his ethics he couldn’t 
imagine. 

But in the interests of science, natu- 
rally it was well that the operator of 
the rays should remain as formerly. 
Just until he had been able to study 
changes in the world from the old reac- 
tion standpoint, of course. Dr. Conklin 
had protected his own mind against the 
rays. 

Working feverishly, he had managed 
to spot North America thoroughly with 
ray stations.. Not one inhabitant would 
suffer longer with any of the twelve 
most evil desires of human nature. He 
chuckled as he imagined Wales’ evil, 
commercial ambitions and work put to 
naught. 

Within six months he would cover the 
globe with stations. Then peace and 
brotherly love would be so predominant 
he could release his secret to the world. 

He. Carl Conklin, would be the great- 
est living benefactor of the human race! 
And he would be putting a finish to the 
brutal work of Stanton Wales. 

Within the week, he had broadcasts of 
rays covering all Japan. It would take 
time for the rays to bear full effect. 
But on the day of taking plane for 
China he saw evidence that good will 
had come to his vast project. 

Four strangers stepped off a side- 
walk to help a donkey pull its load up 
a hill. Contrary to centuries of tradi- 
tion, the driver failed to beat the don- 
key. And contrary to ages of custom, 



the donkey failed to attempt pushing 
the cart downhill instead of up. 

At the airport a luggage rack tore 
loose from a plane, injuring a porter 
slightly. There was gravest concern. 
The entire staff and loungers rushed to 
be of assistance. 

In the press of crowd the injuired 
man was trampled upon, had four ribs 
and a leg broken. The grief of the 
people was remarkable. Dr. Conklin 
considered the broken bones in the in- 
terests of science. He had seen unusual 
and very real mass sorrow for an un- 
important being. 

ALTHOUGH Dr. Conklin was a most 
brilliant mathematician, he experienced 
great difficulty in finding the shortest 
distance between two points when trav- 
eling. 

Thus his destination was Peking. But 
for unaccountable reasons never quite 
clear he arrived way up at Harbin in 
the midst of a scattered warfare be- 
tween innumerable armies. He was 
struck by horror. But he could learn 
little about just which way the battle 
was going due to the fact that of the 
fifteen or twenty armies apparently in- 
terested in annihilating one another only 
the Japs stuck together long enough to 
be identified. 

The others, with what seemed no dis- 
cretion, shifted sides whenever a banner 
was waved. Such banners announced 
some other general would pay soldiers 
one yen more per day if they would 
swear by the Pink Toenail to get killed 
immediately and gloriously. 

They seldom got killed, never glori- 
ously at least. They never got paid their 
extra yen. Yet the scene gave the doc- 
tor’s imagination something to chew 
upon. 

There was nothing he could do. His 
equipment and supplies were in Peking. 
So by miracle and train, with inter- 
spersed airplanes, he arrived in the Im- 
perial City entirely via Chinese trans- 



38 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



portation. Since the days of Marco 
Polo that stands as an unequalled 
achievement. 

En route he met a comrade. The un- 
shaven gentleman spoke with a Third 
Avenue dialect of war, blood and revo- 
lution. He was, it seemed, spreading 
enlightenment, in the interest of a north- 
ern power. But learning Dr. Conklin’s 
views on war and hatred, and inciden- 
tally that the venerable doctor had ample 
ready cash, he realized that for years 
he had been a disciple of the doctor’s. 

Forthwith, he became chief of staff. 
And ate his first hearty meal in many 
a lean week. Unaccountably, he could 
operate an airplane. But he was not 
lacking in other sciences. Once he had 
been a full-fledged electrician’s appren- 
tice and understood the rudiments of 
electronics to the extent of acfually 
knowing what a relay and coil consisted 
of. 

Dr. Conklin was impressed with his 
new helper. Particularly after that 
gentleman listened to him talk all the 
way into Peking. The journey had been 
unpleasant and rather speculative at 
times. But his new helper had shown 
the height of intelligence. His remarks 
(“Yes,” “You’re absolutely correct,” 
and “Why does only one man in the 
world see those things?”), branded him 
as a being of deep insight. 

There were troublesome details about 
such matters as passports and visas. But 
his chief of staff had an uncanny ability 
to get such matters straightened in no 
time with the aid of a little money. And 
his pen. And sufficient sealing' wax. 
seals and stamps to obliterate completely 
whatever was printed on paper. 

There were rumors of pirate and 
brigand raids in the south. But they 
could be nothing like the ruthless battle 
zone the doctor had just passed through. 
A large plane was purchased. Properly 
armed with the necessities for setting 
up broadcast stations, the two saviors 
of the world flew northward. 



It was at this point that the doctor 
showed latent signs of native intelli- 
gence. He allowed his assistant to fall 
under the ray broadcast in a natural 
manner. Inasmuch as he could not 
avoid it, the assistant, whatever he might 
once have been, was soon a first-degree 
pacifist. 

During the journey north, they made 
two landings. The doctor would have 
liked to have set up broadcast stations 
at those points. But it seemed unneces- 
sary. The mere rumor that Japs were 
within eleven hundred miles had thrown 
the Chinese into a frenzy of pacifism 
and speed toward southern quarters. 
Obviously, it was the hardy northern 
brutes who needed the seed of brotherly 
love. 

THE CONQUEST of China by 
compassion and good will might have 
been an easy task had it not been sud- 
denly discovered, to the doctor’s com- 
plete amazement, that the boundaries of 
the country extended over a consider- 
able number of five-hundred-mile radii. 
And there seemed to be innumerable 
generals and warlike factions swarming 
in all quarters. 

However, he subdued the three Japa- 
nese and hundred or so odd Chinese 
armies north and west of Harbin. One 
morning, they were all fighting. The 
next, thinking of exchanging gifts. 

Unfortunately, just at this time, news 
came of hot warfare on the Siberian 
steppes. There was equipment for 
three broadcast stations left. The doc- 
tor dauntlessly set forth to confront the 
entire U. S. S. R. 

Alas, part of his work was wasted. 
One whole radius brought brotherly 
love to nothing other than a tribe of 
peaceful herders, a flock of sheep, a 
small village and one lingering Cossack. 
Had she known it, the Cossack’s “cap- 
tive lady” would hardly have thanked 
the doctor for the sudden loss of her 
conqueror’s brutality and lust. Rather 



DR. CONKLIN— PACIFIST 



39 



oddly for that part of the world, there 
had been no sense in her getting cap- 
tured. 

However, the doctor suddenly real- 
ized he had miscalculated his ability at 
traveling and the load capacity of planes. 
He now, rather haphazardly, organized 
an army of peace. But much to his 
amazement, the only members of his 
army who understood electronics suffi- 
ciently to follow blueprints were ten 
Japanese army officers. And the doc- 
tor, not yet himself under the spell of 
complete brotherly love, recalled lurid 
accounts of the Yellow Peril. Yet he 
had to use them. 

By various means, all started toward 
Peking. Only two were fated to ar- 
rive. The quiet and peaceful coolies last 
seen fleeing panic-stricken southward 
realized that the northern guns had 
ceased. Curiosity once satisfied that the 
wiry northerners had somehow gone in- 
sane and would not fight gave them an 
idea. It was easy to annihilate many 
thousand men who merely sat and 
smiled while their heads were removed. 

With Peking under the spell of a 
hastily erected ray broadcast, the doctor 
was heralded as a new messiah. Here 
he found friends, pacifists, technicians, 
electronists, aviators, help. One of his 
chief adherents, General Fung Wu, 
would hardly remove his heavy carcass 
from the doctor’s presence long enough 
for momentary privacies. 

And there was small wonder. Gen- 
eral Fung Wu was attempting to solve 
a grave question. How came it that he, 
who had some three hundred thousand 
heads to his credit, so thoroughly agreed 
with Conklin’s views on peace and the 
annihilation of evil passions? 

Dr. Conklin expressed his views quite 
publidy. But his means of accomplish- 
ment he kept a secret unto only the most 
impassioned adherents taken into his 
confidence and training. Yet over Asia, 
down into India, up and across Russia, 



swiftly spread the cosmic- ray conquest 
of man’s more bestial tendencies. 

So it was that on one fine morning, 
militant officials in Leningrad looked 
stupefied at a telegram from one of their 
most reliable generals. According to 
orders, he had captured eight thousand 
insurrectionists. He was to put most of 
them to the sword — after, of course, 
proper one-minute court martials. 

But, the telegram told distinctly that 
he had given them a banquet, com- 
mandeered a train and was sending them 
to Leningrad for a royal — “royal” of all 
words ! — reception ! There must be 

some joke. 

But there was no joke. The eight 
thousand arrived in due course. And 
the bloodiest official of a few days be- 
fore was the first to greet them and 
extend the cordiality of the republic. 

THE GERMAN POWER read the 
dispatch with a sadistic smile. His 
Russian correspondent was getting a bit 
out of hand to attempt such a joke. It 
would take a few days to recall the cor- 
respondent for discipline. 

But in the meantime, he recalled, 
there was a South Rheinish community 
which had extended work to six of the 
less-than-nothing race. True, the wages 
of those six were supporting about four 
hundred souls. But it was still out of 
proportion. Three might have been con- 
doned. 

He clipped forth an order in a sten- 
torian voice which caused a squirrel to 
pause in wonder and brought five aides 
before him. The head men of the commu- 
nity and the four hundred less-than-noth- 
ing beings would be brought before him. 
There was a deep salt mine which needed 
workers if the matter could be handled 
quietly. As the aides turned smartly 
to see his orders carried out he noted 
that the small spurs on one well-polished 
boot would drive nicely into the flank 
of certain bearded ex-money lenders. 

Rut five days later when the four 



4C 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



hundred were brought before him he 
gave them a feast and large gifts to 
carry home. Two of the young men 
were rather good fellows. He presented 
them with silk scarfs and Majorca 
leather boots. And he accepted a Tal- 
mud as a token. His ambition, hate and 
inferiority complex had disappeared. 

Conklin, traveling feverishly to com- 
mand his w r ork — always twice as far as 
would have been necessary for just an 
ordinary mortal — now moved headquar- 
ters to Paris. His secret workers had 
been there three weeks before. Their 
work had been thorough. But the doc- 
tor was rather annoyed with the French, 
particularly with the academy. 

In the past he had managed to find 
worthy opponents, enjoyed many a fine 
evening of hot debate over theories and 
abstract matters with the voluble 
French. They had been sharp, witty, 
ready to debate any scientific subject as 
a matter of pride. 

Such verbal fighting he enjoyed. It 
caused a flow of ideas, gave birth to 
new thought, enabled a shrewd observer 
to get an inkling of what other advanced 
scientists were thinking. 

Now the academy was dead. True, 
he was welcomed with opened arms, her- 
alded as the greatest leader of all time. 
But nobody was more than passingly 
interested in the technical means by 
wlucn he was accomplishing his great 
dream. He could find no scientific op- 
position. There was little theoretical 
discussion. 

Even his lifelong theory that a man 
could be transformed into an apple, a 
dinosaur, a piece of cheese or anything 
else and back again without harm, was 
listened to with nods of ready agree- 
ment. Everybody wanted to be friendly. 
There were no longer rivals or ambi- 
tious souls. 

In desperation, he turned toward the 
fish marts. If the scientific world had 
nothing to offer but praise and agree- 
ment, at least he was sure of lively bar- 



gaining with a fishmonger. He picked 
up a beautiful flounder worth, at the 
least, eight francs. More through habit 
than anything else, the monger asked 
eleven francs. 

“One franc six centimes!” the doctor 
snapped. The monger looked some- 
what shocked and hurt at the tone. A 
tear came to his eye. He bowed low, 
made profuse apologies. If his price 
seemed high, nothing would do but that 
the gentleman must take the flounder as 
a gift. 

Dr. Conklin felt frustrated. The 
French had become too peaceful and 
dull to be bearable. Beside, he did not 
want the flounder. But there he was, 
nearing his hotel, with the flounder flop- 
ping under his arm. 

A large, red-headed gendarme, ter- 
rifically reminiscent of a certain Pat 
Chelsea, appeared. Dr. Conklin felt a 
moment of complete madness. He 
hurled the flounder into the gendarme’s 
face. Then, terrified, he shrank back, 
awaited arrest. 

The gendarme wiped his surprised 
face. He contemplated the doctor very 
gravely. Then inquired if he did not 
feel well. Could he help the gentleman 
to his residence or a place of rest and 
refreshment? Dr. Conklin gave a yell 
of hysteria and raced for the privacy 
of his rooms. 

The doctor’s nerves became a matter 
of national concern. It was suggested 
that he rest in the country. He had 
traveled a great deal, worked like a dog 
for six months. Probably what he 
needed was rest and relaxation. 

THE FARM he visited was an old 
fortified place, built in a three-wing 
quadrangle, painted white, dotted with 
blue shutters and surrounded by a gur- 
gling brook. But inspection showed 
something amiss. The chickens were 
mere skin and bones. They laid no 
eggs. The ducks were all dead. The 
place was swarming with rats while a 



DR. CONKLIN— PACIFIST 



41 



family of half-starved cats contemplated 
them with interest but without action. 

For many weeks, the doctor had lived 
on special concentrated foods, following 
out his theory that under high pressure 
bulk food was bad for the stomach. 
Now, relaxing, he could afford to eat. 
And a full-course dinner with a bird 
and fish and roe would taste first rate. 

Cornering the obsequious butler, he 
spoke of what he would like that night. 
The butler stared at him in amazement. 
Quite unaccountably tears welled in his 
eyes. He rushed from the room. Dr. 
Conklin did not see him again until 
dinner time. And dinner, much to his 
annoyance, consisted of vegetables, milk, 
cheese, fruits. Not so much as a small 
trout or snail! 

The next day he had time to look over 
details of what was happening in the 
world. War had ceased, he noted with 
satisfaction. Even gang murders in his 
own highly civilized country had fallen 
to nothing. But here and there peculiar 
little notes came to light. 

In New York, the exterminators had 
gone on strike followed by dissolution. 
The city was suffering from a plague 
of vermin, bedbugs, roaches, ants, lice, 
other creatures. In a public statement 
the union declared its members to be 
unanimously against the extermination 
of live creatures with feelings, brains 
and souls of their own. 

A small child in a tenement had died 
of infections originating in multitudi- 
nous lice bites. The entire city turned 
out for the funeral. But apparently no- 
body thought to kill the lice. In fact, 
they were forbidden to by law. 

A new cult was gaining adherents. It 
was called the cult of the Holy Chigger. 
Its object was to aid the small insect in 
its fight for existence. A zealot had 
given a five-million endowment. The 
government was creating a subsidy to 
aid its work. 

Eggs throughout the world had 
reached tremendous prices. Hens were 



not laying. They had ceased to find 
bugs and worms delectable. A move- 
ment was afoot, growing from Turkey, 
to prevent by law the eating of eggs as 
being inimical to possible potential life. 

In Geneva, the secretary and field 
workers of the Society for the Advance- 
ment of World Peace had become hope- 
less pathological cases. The president 
of the society was a raving maniac. 
There was no longer cause for their 
life work. The Fascist party in Italy 
had disintegrated with the dissolution 
of the army and police. 

In England the budget was completely 
out of balance due to failure to collect 
taxes. Judges and tax collectors could 
not find the heart to prosecute or sen- 
tence delinquents and evaders. America 
had started the ball rolling by canceling 
the war debts. 

In Africa and South America the 
jungles stank with the rotting bodies of 
carnivorous animals. They had died of 
starvation after paralyzation of their 
killing instincts. The case of a leopard 
suckling on a herd of cows was reported. 
In India whole territories were being 
laid desolate by armies of ants which 
the natives refused to fight or kill. 

Dr. Conklin very suddenly took the 
first boat for New York. There he was 
given a tremendous ovation, being pro- 
claimed the savior of mankind. Ex- 
cept to intimates, the means he had used 
to bring about the state of peace and 
friendship was unknown. But his views 
were thought to have led the world 
from the evils of dark ages. 

AMONG THE first to greet him 
were his daughter and Pat Chelsea. 
Chelsea was a changed man. He 
thought he might have a chance with 
Conklin on the strength of his recent 
accomplishments. He had discovered a 
means of luring rats out of the city by 
means of peculiar lights, and was the 
hero of the hour. 

But his engagement with Megs 



42 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



seemed lacking in fire. Like millions 
of others, they had turned docile. There 
was no jealousy, no sense of possession, 
in either one. Decidedly it was not the 
same Megs the doctor had known and 
loved for twenty years. The sudden 
sugar sweetness of her nature, her con- 
stant desire to help and please him made 
him sick. Gone was the pertness, the 
little streak of hard-boiled selfishness. 

His home country stirred him deeply. 
Industry was chaotic. With no avarice, 
greed, ambition, rivalry, people were 
content to get along without much work. 
Cowboys, butchers, poultry fanners had 
quit work altogether, refusing to hurt 
living creatures. A few racketeers were 
making millions in the new surreptitious 
delousing racket. 

Spreading eastward from the prairie 
states was a jack-rabbit scourge. By 
law, it was a major offense to kill one 
since the establishment of peace on 
earth, good will toward all living things. 

Communities were being stripped bare 
of food as a result of unprotected crops. 
Scrubs, earthworms, pillagers of truck 
gardens ate unmolested. The boll weevil 
gained without hindrance, destroying the 
cotton crop. There was practically no 
fruit in the entire country. Popula- 
tions used to meat and now living on 
worm-eaten vegetables developed un- 
known diseases, died off like leaves. 

Every criminal in the country had 
compassionately been turned loose. 
There were still courts, but few if any 
sentences. It was no longer necessary 
to steal. Brotherly love was so in- 
trenched it was impossible for most peo- 
ple to refuse giving what another de- 
sired. Yet stealing went on unhindered, 
often within sight of those being robbed. 

A large western railroad was blocked 
for four days by a herd of cows un- 
frightened by the toot of the whistles 
or shouts. No worker aboard the train 
would lift stone or stick to hit them. 
One cow lay in the shade of the engine 



immediately beside the wheels and lowed 
gently at passing men. 

An entire area in the west was dev- 
astated by locusts. No birds would 
touch them. Except for birds living on 
plant life, most birds were dead any- 
way. 

And now terrible rumors came from 
abroad. A fierce person stalked the 
lands, taking governments, killing, beat- 
ing, forcing people to work and produce, 
eating meat, protecting late crops with 
sprays which killed countless insects and 
parasites. And with him were ten men. 
His name was Stanton Wales! 

So Wales had retained his former 
mental make-up ? Then he had not been 
in Alaska. Only two sections of the 
world remained uncovered by Conklin’s 
rays. The two poles. They had not 
seemed important. But they had been 
important. Wales must have been in 
Northern Greenland ! And no apparatus 
which would place him under the ray 
paralysis was now operating. 

STANTON WALES, with his ten 
assistant engineers, had arrived in Eu- 
rope mystified. It had taken the sci- 
entist a matter of days to realize that 
something colossal had happened. The 
semiperfection of his ray had caused 
horror and alarm, not applause. 

In high dudgeon over his cold re- 
ception by the Italian primate, nettled at 
the complete destruction of all war ap- 
paratus, he had furiously shouted that 
for a plugged lire he’d take the govern- 
ment over himself. 

It had been an empty threat, given in 
heat. But somebody anxious to please 
had promptly given him a plugged lire. 
And, unaccountably to him. the entire 
government had waited to learn his 
wishes ! 

If he thought himself crazy, he ac- 
cepted the fact calmly. He saw the op- 
portunity, unexplainable as it was, of 
controlling this world of subservient be- 



DR. CONKLIN— PACIFIST 



43 



ings who had lost their independence and 
sense of freedom. 

He promptly began reorganization of 
countries as he deemed fit. He was, 
he knew, cordially disliked, his army 
of ten feared. But nobody was of a 
mind to offer them physical harm, 
whereas, when necessary, he killed forth- 
right. Within weeks, he had conquered 
all western Europe. 

“Wales the Bloody,” he was called. 
He had killed perhaps fifteen people. 
But an equal sin in the eyes of his slaves 
was his fiendish destruction of bugs 
damaging crops. 

One man, with a little help, could con- 
quer the world! 

Yet Conklin was powerless to stop 
him. The only hope for world exist- 
ence, by the looks of things, lay in the 
conqueror. The rays to cause world 
peace were causing world destruction. 
While rays of destruction were at least 
sustaining life. 

Conklin’s wrath rose in him. This 
conqueror, of all men on earth, had to 
be his hated rival, the man he had 
thought most of hurting when he began 
his own vast work ! 

In rage, he determined to prevent 
Wales from becoming ruler of the 
world. But first he called a conference 
of men from varied walks of life. He 
asked distinctive men to name the one 
emotion which had carried them toward 
success in the dark days of hate, ambi- 
tion, blood lust. 

An industrial baron said ambition, a 
wheat and cattle king, the right of pos- 
session. A brilliant scientist said rivalry. 
A shrewd, and in his way good, politi- 
cian named greed. A famous self-made 
banker said an inferiority complex had 
driven him to control of millions. A 
union leader said desire for power. An 
economist named laziness. A great 
naturalist said hate for mankind. 

“And you,” Conklin asked a husky 
father of sixteen children, “you must 
have loved your wife deeply?” 



The man looked at him in consterna- 
tion. 

Conklin looked at his own daughter. 
A smile touched her lips, a sharp gleam 
flickered through her eyes. Then her 
face fell back into inanimate insipid 
sweetness. 

Conklin shook his hand at the roof. 

“Gentlemen, we have ended the most 
evil desires and emotions of man. But 
there is a dangerous being in the world 
today. Wales! You have heard of his 
conquests and brutality. It must stop. 
It will stop! Yes, if I have to search 
him out and kill him myself!” 

There was a horrified silence. For 
a long moment, the assembled men 
looked at Conklin with dread. Then, 
in a silent body, they arose and left. 

LATER that day Conklin looked over 
the headlines on the papers. 

“Conklin the Tyrant,” the headlines 
screamed. 

Even for such an extreme case of 
retrogressive opinion, the editorials 
pointed out, the world would not go 
back to the dark day of savage thought 
left behind. 

Undoubtedly, Wales was the most evil 
man in the world. Yet he could not be 
stopped without bloodshed. And blood- 
shed would be equally evil. Truly, 
Conklin, by his very desire to kill an- 
other man, was as evil as the man he 
wished to kill. 

The extreme punishment acceptable 
to modern thought must perforce be 
meted out. Conklin’s company must be 
shunned! 

The doctor’s lips twitched. A few 
short months before he had thought to 
save civilization from itself. His dream 
had failed. He could right that. But 
he was outcast not because the dream 
had failed. But because he wanted to 
protect the world from dominance by 
Wales ! 

Wales had given him this final blow! 



44 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



And with that in mind, Conklin set 
to work. He worked feverishly to dis- 
cover a ray which would restimulate 
paralyzed brain cells. He worked for 
days on end, dropped of exhaustion. 

Then radio reports of the spreading 
power of Wales would drive him on. 
Drive him on with hate! 

And at last, when the two Americas 
were the only lands not ruled by Stan- 
ton Wales, when he was driving self- 
made slaves to work, to kill insects, con- 
dition warships and make chemicals for 
his semi -per feet ed death rays, when the 
Americas stood in numbed panic of con- 
quest, then Dr. Conklin found his other 
rays. 

And almost overnight two continents 
sprang back to normal, made ready to 
meet the invader. 

The world was divided. Two-thirds 
so opposed to death and pain that they 
would not even fight for liberty. One- 
third as of old, ready to slaughter. 

And again Carl Conklin became the 
hero of the world. He had saved it 
from self annihilation, destruction, race 



suicide, conquest by an egomaniac, or 
by bugs. 

But his cup was bitter. The thing 
he had tried to accomplish had failed. 
The thing which had made it possible 
to defeat Wales was liate. 

And later, when Megs told him she 
was shortly marrying the red-headed 
brute who had something of love, but 
sometl'.ing predatory, too, in his eyes, 
then Conklin knew complete defeat. 

“Well, I hope you’ve had enough of 
saving humanity!” Megs added. “You 
just can’t meddle with human nature 
forever, you know.” 

Dr. Conklin’s face changed from bit- 
terness to high excitement. 

“Humanity! Human nature! Megs, 
I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” 

He dashed away toward his atomic 
laboratories, already lost in new dreams. 
Megs watched his flying coat-tails with 
a puckery smile. So he had another 
idea, did he? It might be better if she 
and Pat were married immediately. No 
sense taking chances on what he’d do 
next! 





Aground 

in 

* 

Space 



In which a scientist 
miscalculates the 
ethereal forces 

by David O. 
Woodbury 

T HE FIRST TIME I saw Joe 
Barnaby was on the operat- 
ing table in the emergency 
ward of the M. G. H. He lay 
sprawled and twisted with both legs 
broken and a lump on his head the 
size of a teacup. There was some- 
thing magnificent about him even 
then, for he looked up at me with 
those quizzical gray eyes of his and 
smiled. 

“Guess I need an overhaul, doc,’’ 
he said, and winced silently as I be- 
gan to cut the clothes from his man- 
gled limbs. 

Then they slipped the ether mask 
over his face and he relaxed, content 
to let others take charge of his des- 
tiny. From that moment on Joe 
Barnaby was to me a tragic figure — 
and the symbol of scientific progress. 

He was a student at the Engineer- 
ing Institute in those days, writing 
his master’s thesis in aviation. He’d 
been trying out a new parachute of 
his own invention, and it had tangled 
him up with a factory chimney and 
left him in the lurch, so to speak. 
But I mended him well enough, and 




Illustrated by Elliot Dold 



46 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



he was soon on his feet as lively as e\ier. 

As for me, I was never the same man 
again, for I had fallen deeply under his 
spell. In the midst of my precise and 
unemotional surgical world, here was an 
old-line inventor, a typical tall, stoop- 
shouldered, sandy-haired Yankee with 
a twinkle in his eye and a sense of hu- 
mor as keen as a razor and more often 
in use. To me with my smug routine 
of twenty-first-century medicine, Joe 
was a revelation. I could not afford 
to let him go. 

Afterward, he got an instructorship 
there at the institute and was for some 
years buried in routine. But when he 
emerged from it, it was as only Joe 
Barnaby could have emerged — with a 
scheme that would revolutionize the 
world and make of himself either a hero 
or an irretrievable fool. By that time 
he and I were tolerably intimate and 
used to spend an occasional week-end 
together in a bungalow on the Cape 
where he was doing some private re- 
search of his own. 

And it was here that I first saw Paula, 
his secretary, whom he used to bring 
with him under the stiff chaperonage of 
a maiden aunt. Paula was, well, all that 
two naturally scientific chaps could have 
desired in a woman — or a wife. She 
was — but the story is about Joe at pres- 
ent and I shouldn’t let myself get side- 
tracked by Paula, yet. 

Being somewhat older than Joe, I had 
adopted a slightly fatherly air toward 
him and was perhaps inclined to credit 
him with less genius than he had. And 
so one day when he smashed down on 
me with the full weight of his new dis- 
covery, I was about as responsive as a 
schoolboy suddenly confronted with a 
lesson in higher mathematics. 

“Mark,” he said, measuring ‘ his 
words, “I’m going to take you into my 
confidence. You’ve been a good friend 
to me, and Paula thinks you can help.” 

“Paula?” 

“Yes. She likes you. And she thinks 



I need another man in the venture. You 
see, this is no ordinary research, my 
boy, and Professor Berkle, for whom 
I’m doing it, has insisted on keeping it 
a closely guarded secret. He’s taking 
his orders from the president.” • 

“What on earth can you be working 
on that requires such precaution?” 

“Ah, that’s it,” he said significantly. 
“From Berkle’s and the prexy’s point 
of view, it isn’t so much its importance 
as it is its — well, its idiocy, I imagine. 
They don’t want the name of the insti- 
tute dragged into a hoax.” 

“My dear fellow, I wish you’d ex- 
plain. All this mystery isn’t scientific, 
you know.” 

“I will. But first I want you to 
promise me your silence and your co- 
operation.” 

- “Silence, of course,” I told him. “But 
surely you don’t expect me to help you 
actively. After all, I’m a surgeon do- 
ing full-time duty at a metropolitan hos- 
pital.” 

“I’m rash enough to imagine that you 
will give that up,” Joe said, with an al- 
most facetious note in his voice. But 
I knew Joe well enough to be sure that 
he wasn’t joking. 

“That crack on the head you got from 
that brick chimney ” I began. 

“Listen !” He turned on me with 
sudden fire. “We’re on the trail of 
something really big, and I’m offering 
you a ground-floor seat. Are you going 
to refuse it?” 

“Shoot,” I said calmly, “and I’ll tell 
you the answer afterward.” 

“I’M WORKING on a revolutionary 
means of transportation,” he went on. 
“A method by which a conveyance may 
be made to circle the globe in less than 
twenty- four hours. If I succeed, the 
world is going to jump ahead a hundred 
years overnight.” 

„ “Let me see that lump on your head,” 
I mocked him, bending over. 

“Just keep your shirt on,” he ordered. 



AGROUND IN SPACE 



47 



“and don’t try to be funny. You may 
not believe it, but the thing’s practically 
an assured success already.” 

“When do we start on the maiden 
trip?” I gibed, still unable to attain the 
proper air of seriousness. 

“It won’t be so long now,” Joe told 
me gravely. “I have been working the 
final kinks out of the scheme just lately, 
and I can say definitely that success is 
in sight.” 

“Come now,” I objected, “you can’t 
expect me to believe the institute has 
handed you any such research as this.” 
“No. I handed it to them, and they 
were afraid to let it go by,” he said 
proudly. “They thought it was insane, 
but they couldn’t figure out why it 
shouldn’t work, and so they’ve had to 
let me go ahead.” 

“And they’re playing ghost-backer to 
your DariuS Green, eh?” 

“Something like that. Did you ever 
hear of the Michaelson-Morely experi- 
ment on ether drift?” 

I qualified moderately on that point. 
“Michaelson, when he died, had never 
proved that the ether existed — never 
showed that the earth was drifting 
through it. But I have.” 

“Do you mean to tell me— — ” 

“I mean to tell you that while Michael- 
son was on the right track, he did not 
go quite far enough. All his work was 
done with light, you remember. He 
tried to show that the ether would drift 
with respect to a light beam. Well, it 
won’t. Einstein told us why. The speed 
of light is invariant, regardless of the 
point of reference. 

“But Michaelson never thought of 
trying to use matter as a reference 
point. That’s what I’ve done. If you 
fix on a particular atom, or rather, on 
its electrostatic field, you can readily 
show that the ether drifts ; you can prove 
that the world is revolving in a fluid 
bath, just like a ball spinning over and 
over in water. And the water is stand- 



ing essentially still. Do you see what 
that means?” 

“No; being nothing but a surgeon, I 
don’t,” I replied. “What does it mean?” 

“It means this: If you can manage 

to step off the ball and into the water — 
with a life preserver on, of course — the 
ball will turn around without you and 
you- ” 

“That seems plain enough,” I said, 
not in the least comprehending what he 
was driving at. 

“And when you get ready, you can 
step back on again, thus making your- 
self a present of a good long ride, with- 
out having gone anywhere at all.” 

“And reducing the analogy to prac- 
tical terms?” I prompted. 

“You come to this result: Construct 
a car, some of whose atoms can be 
brought under the influence of the ether 
field; raise it clear of the earth, jump 
out into the ether, so to speak, and wait 
while the earth goes around under you 
at the rate of a thousand miles an hour. 
Then, when you arrive over your desired 
destination, pick up the earth’s gravita- 
tional field again, adjust to the speed of 
the ground under you, and come down. 

“You see? Europe to America in 
five hours. Around the world in twenty- 
four or less. At least three times as 
fast as any rocket car ever invented, 
and with the expenditure of practically 
no energy, except for the original lift.” 

“It ought to be wonderful if it 
worked,” I said. 

“It will work. It does work!” Joe 
leaned forward with almost fanatic en- 
thusiasm in his eyes. “For two years 
I’ve been surmounting the obstacles to 
its achievement, and I have at last solved 
every problem. Mark, will you go in 
with me in this?” 

He seized my shoulders and turned 
upon me the full extraordinary strength 
of his personality. I felt as if I was 
being hypnotized. 

“What do you want me to do ?” I de- 
manded. “I told you already that I 



48 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



have a full-time professional job. If 
you expect me to hang around a labora- 
tory ” 

"Look here, doc,” he said — and now 
I was sure he was hypnotizing me — “all 
that is passed. The laboratory work is 
done. What I want you to do is to go 
with me on my first trial trip.” 

I won’t attempt to describe my emo- 
tions; as I say, he had me under his 
spell. What would you have done in 
the circumstances? I put it to you 
squarely. Would you have backed out? 
Pleaded a previous engagement? Dis- 
claimed any desire to pioneer in this 
fast-moving age of scientific achieve- 
ment? Turned down a chance to set 
all previous records at naught? I was 
only human — more so than I am now, 
I expect. 

In fifteen minutes I was sitting in 
my shirt sleeves, listening spellbound to 
Joe’s description of the machine he had 
already built, the arrangements he had 
made, the infinite pains he had taken 
to test and prove every phase of his 
theory before attempting the final ex- 
periment. To save my life, I could not 
help believing that it could be done. 

THAT NIGHT I resigned my post 
at the hospital, now thoroughly saturated 
with the insanity of the ether-drift ex- 
periment. 

“You needn’t worry about finances,” 
Joe told me. “I am allowed a large 
enough appropriation to pay you a de- 
cent salary — more than you were get- 
ting as a surgeon.” 

"It could hardly be less,” I informed 
him wryly. 

My first job was to get Joe — and my- 
self — into tiptop physical condition. 
When you plan to cut loose from the 
earth and go drifting around in the 
ether, you had better not be hampered 
by bodily ailments. It was simple 
enough. There were no organic defects 
beyond repair in either of us, and Joe’s 
legs were quite as good as new. 



Within a week we were established 
in the little bungalow on the Cape, with 
Paula for secretary and the usual old 
aunt for chaperon and cook. Our little 
scientific world was complete. We were 
ready to begin the intensive final prep- 
arations. 

The “car” had already been built 
and equipped. To me it looked very 
much the same as any ordinary stream- 
line automobile, though somewhat 
larger, and made of polished magnesium 
— lighter than paper, stronger than 
steel. It was attached to a huge balloon 
of essentially the same design as that 
originated by Picard, Settle, and others 
so many years before in the early strato- 
sphere experiments. 

There were, however, much more effi- 
cient means of controlling the rate of 
ascent, and in addition the car carried a 
brand-new type of high-altitude para- 
chute which was to see us safely to earth 
when we should arrive at the end of our 
journey. 

But within the car all was mysterious. 
After a few futile attempts to master 
the intricacies — or, rather, the utter sim- 
plicity — of the mechanisms, I wisely gave 
it up and contented myself with agree- 
ing with everything Joe said and be- 
lieving implicitly all he told me. 

We had as our frequent guest Pro- 
fessor Berkle, who, old and sedate as 
he appeared outwardly, was really fired 
with as great enthusiasm as Joe him- 
self. If he had been a younger man it 
would have been he and not I who ven- 
tured into the ether belt with that wild- 
eyed Yankee, and this history might 
never have seen the light at all. 

But Berkle was there mainly to help 
Joe check things up, and, consequently, 
I had a good deal of time to kill toward 
the last. And therein, perhaps, were 
planted the seeds of disaster. 

While Joe and his colleague were 
closeted in the laboratory shack, testing 
their interminable instruments, I neces- 
sarily saw much of Paula — dear Paula. 

AST-3 



AGROUND IN SPACE 



49 



From being a perfectly efficient secre- 
tary and scientific machine, she became 
suddenly very human, very small, very 
appealing. There were balmy evenings 
on the beach outside the bungalow, with 
the water of Nantucket Sound lapping 

at our feet. There were moonrises 

Oh, well, I was in love. 

And one night when we came in. we 
found Joe and Berkle had finished 
sooner than we thought. There was a 
curious expression in Joe’s eyes. He 
watched us come in ; moved up an arm- 
chair before the fireplace for Paula, and 
after she sat down he stood for a long 
time looking at her. When she went 
to bed at last, his good night to her was 
hardly audible. I- should have known, 

then, I should have realized But, 

as I say, I was in love. 

When we were alone he said: “We 
shall begin assembling to-morrow, Mark, 
old man. And I hope in a week we’ll 
be off.” 

I hadn’t realized things were so far 
along. I found myself suddenly sorry 
that they were. I had acquired, all at 
once, an important reason for staying 
on the good old earth. But there was 
Joe, standing looking at me out of his 
quizzical gray eyes. After all, this was 
Joe’s big party, not mine. 

“O. K.,” I told him. “I’d like to go 
up to town to arrange for a little life 
insurance, if you don’t mind. You never 
can tell. Hadn’t I better put you down 
for some, too?” 

He looked at me strangely. “No,” 
he said quietly. “I won't need it. Do 
what you like for yourself.” 

The next few days were filled with 
preparations. From morning till late at 
night we worked, assembling supplies 
and equipment for the car, overseeing 
the workmen as they filled the towering 
gas bag with the subatomic helium which 
had lately been discovered to have al- 
most the same lift as hydrogen without 
its extreme inflammability. 

For one who knew as little as I did 

AST-4 



of the underlying theory of all this, I 
managed to be remarkably useful. A 
surgeon’s training gives him at least an 
intelligent outlook on scientific matters. 

As things steadily neared completion, 
I began to have a dull feeling in my 
heart. In a few days now we would 
be gone. Should I ever see Paula again ? 
Absurd, I thought, to be worrying about 
a woman when I was so soon to step 
off the earth and share with Joe the 
stupendous adventure of the universe. 
But there it is. Love, which began with 
the cave man, has never for one instant 
weakened its hold on us. Nor will it 
ever do so. 

IT WAS the night before the final 
day. Berkle was there and the presi- 
dent of the institute. A feeling of ten- 
sion ran through the group; even the 
sedate professor was nervous and excit- 
able. Only Joe Barnaby remained calm. 
He laughed and joked and seemed less 
concerned with the morrow than with 
the banter of the moment. He was as 
light-hearted as a passenger leaving for 
Europe on an ordinary dirigible. He 
would not be serious. 

I followed Paula to the porch and 
stood with her there, gazing at the huge 
dark shape of the balloon as it swayed 
gently in the night breeze. Suddenly 
she uttered a little choking cry and, 
turning, buried her head on my shoul- 
der. I had not known, before. It 
seemed a greater discovery than if we 
had already landed on the moon or on 
Mars. 

“Mark, Mark, must you go?” 

This is not a love story. When we 
came in Joe glanced up, his cheerful 
face suddenly sobering'. There was that 
same strange look in his eyes that I had 
seen on the first night after being with 
Paula on the beach. 

“I’m tired,” I said rather lamely. 
“I’m going to bed.” 

“All right, old man, I would,” Joe 



50 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



returned gently. “You’ll need all your 
strength to-morrow.” 

And I left them there together. I 
was perplexed, harassed — on the thresh- 
old of two great adventures which did 
not mix. 

But Fate pushed me on. brooking no 
interference, giving no smallest inkling 
of the final outcome. 

The yard around the balloon was 
jammed with reporters; somehow they 
had got wind of the undertaking. And 
the highways were black with cars, com- 
ing from every direction. Joe stood by 
the door of the car with the prexy and 
Berkle. A little way off Paula watched 
them. 

As I came out of the house, I saw 
her advance and deliberately throw her 
arms about Joe’s neck and kiss him. I 
could see the look on his face. It was 
the same as when he had lain on my 
operating table and said: “I guess I 

need an overhaul, doc.” 

I approached them. 

Paula turned. “Good-by, Mark,” she 
said. “Cable us from Siberia or wher- 
ever you land.” 

“Come on,” Joe said. 

Just like that, as if we were stepping 
aboard a train for Boston after a pleas- 
ant week-end. He turned and climbed 
into the car. I gave one look toward 
the group on the ground and toward 
Paula. Her eyes were veiled, and she 
would not look at me. It would have 
taken a psychiatrist to unravel that emo- 
tional situation. 

I stepped in after Joe; the hatch 
banged shut. The great experiment had 
begun. 

SIGNALING the ground crew 
through the transparent steel windows, 
Joe directed the casting off. In a mo- 
ment there was a slight push upward on 
our feet. We were a thousand feet in 
the air. Nothing like that ascent had 
it ever been my good fortune to witness 
before. Smoother than the largest trans- 



atlantic airship, more swiftly than the 
best of express planes, we were borne 
upward. 

A momentary swish of rain against 
the windows and we had passed through 
the lower cloud lever and were out of 
sight of the earth. I turned away from 
my observation window in the bottom 
of the car and looked at Joe. He was 
sitting at the controls, idly watching the 
altimeter spin off the thousands of feet. 

He reached over and touched a but- 
ton; a small circulating fan began to 
hum somewhere. We were requiring 
booster pressure already. The faint hiss 
of oxygen in the deliquefying tanks 
could be heard, and the air became more 
pleasant to breathe. 

“Suppose you get out your parachute 
suit,” Joe said, then, pointing to a locker 
on the side of the car. “You’d be safer 
in it. Picking up the ether drift may 
require more skill than I anticipate.” 

I looked at him apprehensively. “How 
about yours?” I asked. 

“Can’t afford to be encumbered. Oh, 
I’ll be all right. Go on ; do as I say.” 

I got the thing out — a flexible asbestos 
casing filled with magnesia to withstand 
the intense cold of the atmosphere. And 
on its back a little parachute pack no 
bigger than a brief case. Joe had cer- 
tainly worked things out to perfection. 
I climbed gingerly into the contraption. 

“And now what do we do?” I asked 
him, feeling all arms and legs in this 
beautifully arranged flying laboratory. 

“Sit tight for about ten minutes,” he 
replied. “We must rise to at least sev- 
enty thousand feet before we begin.” 
“Why such extreme altitude? Isn’t 
the ether lower down all right?” 

“The ether is, but the atmosphere's 
too thick. Traveling through heavy air 
at a thousand miles an hour would crush 
us flatter than a pancake.” 

“Traveling through it?” I said, bewil- 
dered. 

“That’s what it amounts to. We shall 



AGROUND IN SPACE 



51 



cast anchor in the ether, so to speak, and 
let the world and its atmosphere spin 
around without us.” 

“It ought to be interesting,” I said 
lamely. 

I had no intelligent understanding of 
it even now. And so for fifteen minutes 
more we waited, while the clouds below 
us drifted apart and gave us such a 
glimpse of the earth as no man had ever 
seen before. 

The whole of New England lay re- 
vealed, stretching off into the blue haze 
at the horizon, the ocean lying like a 
vast silver sheet on one side, the land a 
mottled green-and-brown map on the 
other. Our altimeter read fifty thou- 
sand and was creeping steadily up ; 
slower now, because the lift of our 
balloon lessened as the air’s density 
dropped off. Fifty-five, then sixty 
thousand. 

Joe was at one end of the car, going 
over the apparatus, which seemed to 
consist mainly of a bank of vacuum 
tubes and a tangle of coils arranged 
around what I took to be a cathode-ray 
generator of huge size. The mystery 
lay in the source of power. A half 
dozen subatomic lead storage batteries 
were all that was visible, I asked him 
about it. 

“You’re right,” Joe said. “All the 
energy we need will come from those 
batteries. It isn’t a power job; that’s 
the point, my dear fellow. We are 
merely going to step off of something 
that is moving onto something that 
isn’t.” 

I smiled, trying to master this com- 
plicated problem in relativity. I couldn’t 
get it out of my head that we were 
presently going to begin to move, not to 
stop moving. 

"Well,” cried Joe, then, “I guess we’ll 
call this high enough.” 

He reached over his control board 
and valved down the balloon till it just 
balanced the lift of the thin air. The 



car hung at seventy-two thousand feet. 

“Now,” Joe directed, “we’ll make 
everything shipshape and start.” Rap- 
idly he got out his own parachute suit 
and put it on. 

There was something ominous about 
standing there in those diving suits at 
that moment. Everything was so still, 
so peaceful. The regenerative heating 
unit in the car kept us at seventy de- 
grees and eminently comfortable, though 
outside we could see the thermometer 
was reading ninety below. We swayed 
gently as the stratospheric wind bore us 
along evenly, out over the ocean. We 
were committed to it at last. There was 
no turning back now. 

Like two divers on the deck of the 
salvaging ship we stood, helping each 
other to adjust the snugly fitting suits, 
making sure that nothing was omitted. 
In case anything went wrong we had 
only to open the bottom hatch and step 
free. I cast my eye down through the 
lower window and shuddered. I hoped 
fervently that nothing would go wrong. 

“There !” said Joe at last. “I'm ready. 
Are you?” 

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I man- 
aged to reply. 

He bent over the control board and 
motioned me to a position just behind 
him. 

“I want you to watch these indicators 
here,” he directed me. “They show 
drift with respect to the earth. I’m go- 
ing to ease us into the ether stream now 
as gradually as I can.” 

I nodded. But I couldn’t help hold- 
ing my breath. I was suddenly aw 7 are 
that this ether of his was not by any 
means the intangible, inactive thing I 
had always supposed it to be. If it 
could yank us 

SOMETHING crashed at me from 
nowhere, doubling me across it. A roar- 
ing pain shot through my head and 
chest, and I felt a sudden overpower- 



52 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



ing nausea. I must have been uncon- 
scious for a time, for when I opened 
my eyes I was lying huddled in a corner 
of the car, which was careening and 
plunging wildly. 

I could see dimly that we had hit 
something, for the interior of our neat 
abode was a tangle of apparatus and 
wires. In the midst of it lay Joe, his 
whole six feet five sprawled like a fallen 
bridge. I pulled myself toward him, 
remembering all at once that I was a 
surgeon. 

But it was not necessary. Joe lay 
there, quaking — with laughter! 

“Boy !” he ejaculated. “Does it work ? 
I’ll say it works! I didn’t realize that 
things were going to take hold so hard. 
What hit you?” 

I dragged myself to my feet, much 
less damaged than I had anticipated. 
My injuries were no more than super- 
ficial. I had simply been thrown across 
one of the structural beams of the car 
like a sack of potatoes. 

“Can’t we — take it a bit slower, Joe?” 
I pleaded. “There really isn’t any hurry, 
you know.” 

He laughed again and got up. We 
set about straightening up the mess and 
found that nothing had been smashed 
except one temperature recorder. 

Joe went back to the control board. 
“This time we’ll hold on,” he said. 

I decided to lie flat on the floor and 
proceeded to do so without further de- 
lay. He closed a switch. Again there 
was that awful roar. The car seemed 
to collapse into nothing. The whole 
universe tumbled about us. But this 
time Joe’s hand remained steady on the 
controls, and we came out of it directly. 

“I wonder what’s wrong,” he mused. 
“It shouldn’t grab like that.” 

I had been glancing apprehensively 
at the altimeter. “You said we had to 
go up to seventy thousand feet,” I ven- 
tured. “That meter says ninety-five.” 



“What !” He leaped to it and scowled 
deeply as he read it. 

“Ninety-five thousand ! We’ve gained 
altitude !” 

“We must be rising,” I suggested 
sagely. “The balloon ” 

“The balloon was cut adrift long ago,” 
he broke in quickly. “No, no; we can’t 
be rising. Look, the gravity neutralizers 
work perfectly.” 

He indicated another dial on which 
the needle stood at the zero mark. The 
altimeter had also come to rest now, just 
under a hundred thousand. 

Then I had a brilliant idea — one of 
those that parallel the wisdom in the 
mouths of babes. “Where is this ether 
of yours going, anyway?” I asked him. 

“I told you it was standing still,” he 
said, a shade testily. 

“I know ; but the earth isn’t.” 

“No. It’s turning around, of course. 
Something over a thousand miles an 
hour, in a direction tangent to our line 
of ascent.” 

“What about the — the — what is it? 
The ecliptic? Isn’t the earth moving 
around the sun, too?” 

“What do you mean? Of course it 
is.” 

“Well,” I said impressively, beginning 
to enjoy my sudden position of knowl- 
edge. “I’ve always understood that, be- 
sides turning around, the earth goes 
around the sun — around a circle with 
something like a hundred million miles 
radius ” 

“By Jove!” Joe cried and sat down 
heavily. “The ecliptic speed! I never 
thought of it!” 

“You mean ” 

“Don’t bother me !” he growled, reach- 
ing for a slide rule on the control board. 

For the next minute or two he 
grunted and scowled, immersed in his 
calculations. Then he did a character- 
istic thing. He stood up, stretched his 
arms wide above his head, and burst 
out into peal after peal of wild laughter. 

“What the devil’s the matter with 



AGROUND IN SPACE 



53 



you?” I demanded, beginning to feel 
alarmed. Was he going mad? 

“Ha-ha-ha !” he roared. “Your friend 
Joe Barnaby has fooled ’em all ! In- 
cluding himself.” 

“Well?” 

“Mark,” he said, looking me straight 
in the eye. “This thing's a failure. It 
won’t work. It can’t. I forgot one 
thing in my calculations.” 

“You ” 

“What you discovered yourself — you, 
an ignorant layman. We’re dealing 
not with earth speed, nor w*ith ecliptic 
speed, but with cosmic speed. I’m try- 
ing to anchor this craft to a spot in 

space that is moving by here ” 

“At ten thousand miles an hour,” I 
put in helpfully. 

“No; at several hundred thousand 
miles a second! The whole solar sys- 
tem is on its way, and we’re trying to 
drop off it while it’s in motion. What 
do you think of that!” 

“Good Heaven !” I ejaculated. 
“Wh-what are you going to do about 
it?” 

“Do? What is there to do? What 
would any scientist do? Why, admit 
I’m licked and come down, of course. 
The whole thing’s off.” 

“But all these preparations — this ex- 
pense? What will Berkle say? What 
about the institute?” 

Again he burst into that wild laugh. 
“The joke’s on them as much as it is 
on me,” he chortled. “We’re all wrong. 
Golly, if the papers ever got hold of this 
story !” 

IT WAS for me a most uncomfortable 
moment. After all this banging about, 
all this suspense, I suddenly began to 
feel let down. It was a sickening anti- 
climax. I found myself almost wanting 
to argue him out of it. 

“Couldn’t we try just once more?” 
I asked tentatively. “Perhaps some of 
the ether might not be going quite so 
fast.” 



"By Jove ! We will do that !” he cried 
suddenly. 

I was taken aback. I hadn’t intended 
anything so definite. 

“Mark,” Joe said, a new fire lighting 
in his eyes; “we’ll go for a little ride — 
a tiny little ride. Just for a single sec- 
ond we’ll become a fixture in space and 
see how it feels.” 

Now I was thoroughly alarmed. /‘But 
supposing you couldn’t let go,” I ob- 
jected. 

“Nonsense. I’ve proved that I can 
handle the thing perfectly. Connect- 
ing and disconnecting is simple enough. 
And maybe we’ll have something to tell 
’em after all.” 

“Still——” 

He turned to me, his face transfused 
with a mad determination. “Mark, are 
you game? Are you game to cut loose 
and go with me?” 

“Go with you? Where?” 

He pushed his slip stick again for a 
moment before he answered : “Out into 
the Milky Way. We can get there in 
a couple of days.” 

“The Milky Way ! What would we 
do when we got there?” I demanded 
foolishly. 

“My dear fellow, don’t you under- 
stand? We’d see what no man ever 
saw before — the whole solar system, the 
constellations laid out before us ! We 
could thumb our noses at the world and 
then turn, our backs on it and go on! 
We could visit half the universe!” 

“But — but what then?” 

He shrugged and threw out his hands 
in a gesture of resignation. “Oh, wait 
for the rest of the human race to catch 
up with us. It would be a glorious way 
to end, don’t you think What’s the 
use of going back home and being the 
laughingstock of the whole earth?” 

I returned suddenly to my senses. 
This madman, proposing that we volun- 
tarily go aground in space and watch 
the whole universe parade by! 'This 



54 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



madman, who wanted to thumb his nose 
at all creation! And I, a sane human 
being, locked up with him, helpless be- 
fore his insane whim ! 

“No, no!’’ I said, leaping up. “No, 
Joe. For Heaven’s sake, no!” 

“You’re not getting frightened, are 
you?” he derided me. “See, here we 
are, comfortable, warm, snug. We’ve 
got food enough for a month, and oxy- 
gen for nearly six. We could cut down 
our rations, anyway. Good heavens, 
man, don’t you see what we can do? 
Pioneer the whole of space ! Isn’t there 
a spark of the discoverer in you any- 
where ?” 

“Joe ! Joe !” I cried. “Give it up. 
Do! You’re far too valuable a man to 
end this way, prematurely. Your work 
on earth isn’t nearly finished. Why, 
this is just the beginning. This par- 
ticular thing doesn’t work, but' you’ve 
discovered a new principle all the same. 
It may mean countless riches for man- 
kind — perhaps actually interplanetary 
travel. Surely you wouldn’t throw your- 
self away just for a — a single joy ride.” 
“My work is finished,” he said slowly. 
“To me, discovery is an end in itself. 
I’m not so keen ori slaving a lifetime 
away just for a miserly salary — just to 
add some hypothetical advantage to the 
so-called human race.” 

“Well, then, think of me. Think of 
my work — my ambitions. And — and 
Joe, think of Paula!” 

He stopped in his tracks. “Paula,” 
he breathed. 

I pursued my advantage. “She kissed 
you as you left. She loves you, Joe.” 
I was desperate. 

He looked at me, a long, level look, 
and his face softened. “She kissed me 
when I left,” he murmured. 

We were over some continent now; 
that we could see through the bottom 
window. Joe was buttoning up my 
parachute suit and checking it over. He 
fitted my oxygen mask over my head 
and adjusted it. I could hear his muf- 



fled voice through the thin steel helmet. 

“You go first,” he said as he opened 
the bottom hatch. 

I had won, then. I hated to go, but 
I hated more to stay. I dangled my 
legs through the opening. 

“Here,” I said. “How about you? 
Can’t we go together?” 

“No; you first. You’re the passen- 
ger.” 

But still I hesitated. Was I just plain 
afraid? Or did I have some inkling of 
Joe’s intention? 

“Joe!” I shouted, as well as I could 
through the mask. “Joe ! Are you com- 
ing?” 

His hand was on my shoulder. “Paula 
kissed me, but she loves you,” I heard 
him say. And with that he gave me 
a mighty shove. 

I grasped at the hatch opening and 
held on for a moment. He tore at my 
fingers. 

“Joe!” I yelled. “I won’t go without 
you. I won’t ” 

“Shut up and get back to her!” he 
shrieked above me, and with that he 
broke my hold on the car and sent me 
spinning downward through the thin 
atmosphere. 

For a moment I hung there, helpless. 
I was still partly under the influence of 
the car. Like a man under water, I 
seemed suspended. The car rode above 
me, rocking gently. I looked up. 

“Joe ” 

And as I looked there came a swish 
of air. Did I catch a glimpse, through 
the bottom window, of Joe standing 
there, his mouth stretched wide in a 
diabolical laugh? I don’t know. The 
next instant there was a streak of light, 
and the car shot upward and out of 
sight. 

And so, deprived of support, I dropped 
like a plummet of lead, till with a savage 
jerk, the parachute on my shoulders 
broke loose and lowered me gently to 
earth — and Paula. 




It spread its gigantic lacy wings 
and soared swiftly into the sky. 
The swiftness of its Bight 
choked Maljoc, and bis eyes 
were blinded by motes of dnst. 



Last Men by 

A scientific conception Long, Jr. 

of the far future IF Illustrated by 

Howard V. Brown 



The 



Frank 

Belknap 



M ALJOC had come of age. On a 
bright, cold evening in the fall 
of the year, fifty million years 
after the last perishing remnant of his 
race had surrendered its sovereignty to 
the swarming masters, he awoke proud 
and happy and not ashamed of his heri- 



tage. He knew, and the masters knew, 
that his kind had once held undisputed 
sway over the planet. Down through 
dim aeons the tradition — it was more 
than a legend — had persisted, and not 
all the humiliations of the intervening 
millenniums could erase its splendor. 







56 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



j Maljoc awoke and gazed up at the 
great moon. It shone down resplen- 
dency through the health-prism at the 
summit of the homorium. Its rays, pass- 
ing through the prism, strengthened his 
muscles, his internal organs, and the soft 
parts of his body. 

Arising from his bed, he stood 
proudly erect in the silver light and 
beat a rhythmic tattoo with his fists on 
his naked chest. He was of age, and 
among the clustering homoriums of the 
females of his race which hung sus- 
pended in the maturing nurseries of 
Agrahan was a woman who would share 
his pride of race and rejoice with him 
under the moon. 

As the massive metallic portals of the 
homorium swung inward, a great hap- 
piness came upon him. The swarming 
masters had instructed him wisely as he 
lay maturing under the modified lunar 
rays in the nursery homorium. 

He knew that he was a man and that 
the swarming masters were the descend- 
ants of the chitin-armored, segmented 
creatures called insects, which, his an- 
cestors had once ruthlessly despised and 
trampled under foot. At the front of 
his mind was this primary awareness of 
origins; at the back a storehouse of 
geologic data. 

He knew when and why his race had 

succumbed to the swarming masters. 
In imagination he had frequently re- 
turned across the wide wastes of the 
years, visualizing with scientific ac- 
curacy the post-Pleistocene glacial in- 
undations as they streamed equatorward 
from the poles. 

He knew that four of the earth’s re- 
maining continents had once lain be- 
neath ice sheets a half mile thick, and 
that the last pitiful and cold-weakened 
remnants of his race had succumbed to 
the superior sense-endowments of the 
swarming masters in the central core of 
a great land mass called Africa, now 
submerged beneath the waters of the 
southern ocean. 



The swarming masters were almost 
godlike in their endowments. With 
their complex and prodigious brains, 
which seemed to Maljoc as all-embrac- 
ing as the unfathomable forces which 
governed the constellations, they in- 
structed their servitors in the rudiments 
of earth history. 

In hanging nursery homoriums 
thousands of men and women were 
yearly grown and instructed. The 
process of growth was unbelievably 
rapid. The growth-span of the human 
race had once embraced a number of 
years, but the swarming masters could 
transform a tiny infant into a gangling 
youth in six months, and into a bearded 
adult, strong-limbed and robust, in 
twelve or fourteen. Gland injections 
and prism-ray baths were the chief 
casual agents of this extraordinary 
metamorphosis, but the growth process 
was further speeded up by the judicious 
administration of a carefully selected 
diet. 

The swarming masters were both 
benevolent and merciless. They de- 
spised men, but they wished them to be 
reasonably happy. With a kind of grim, 
sardonic toleration they even allowed 
them to choose their own mates, and it 
was the novelty and splendor of that 
great privilege which caused Maljoc's 
little body to vibrate with intense hap- 
piness. 

The great metallic portal swung open, 
and Maljoc emerged into the starlight 
and looked up at the swinging constella- 
tions. Five hundred feet below, the 
massive domed dwellings of Agrahan 
glistened resplendently in the silvery 
radiance, but only the white, glittering 
immensity of the Milky Way was in 
harmony with his mood. 

A droning assailed his ears as he 
walked along the narrow metal terrace 
toward the swinging nurseries of the 
women of his race. Several of the 
swarming masters were hovering in the 
air above him, but he smiled up at them 



THE LAST MEN 



57 



without fear, for his heart was warm 
with the splendor of his mission. 

The homoriums, sky promenades, and 
air terraces were suspended above the 
dwellings of Agrahan by great swing- 
ing cables attached to gas-inflated, bil- 
lowing air floats perpetually at anchor. 
As Maljoc trod the terrace, one of the 
swarming masters flew swiftly between 
the cables and swooped down upon him. 

MALJOC recoiled in terror. The 
swarming masters obeyed a strange, 
inhuman ethic. They reared their ser- 
vitors wjth care, but they believed also 
that the life of a servitor was simply a 
little puff of useful energy. Some- 
times, when in sportive mood, they 
crushed the little puffs out between their 
claws. 

A chitin-clad extremity gripped Mal- 
joc about his middle and lifted him into 
the air. Calmly then, and without re- 
versing its direction, the swarming mas- 
ter flew with him toward the clouds. 

Up and up they went, till the air grew 
rarefied. Then the swarming master 
laid the cool tips of its antennae on Mal- 
jac’s forehead and conversed with him 
in a friendly tone. 

“Your nuptial night, my little 
friend?” it asked. 

“Yes,” replied Maljoc. “Yes — yes — 
it is.” 

He was so relieved that he stam- 
mered. The master was pleased. The 
warmth of its pleasure communicated 
itself to Maljoc through the vibrations 
of its antennae. 

“It is well,” it said. “Even you little 
ones are born to be happy. Only a cruel 
and thoughtless insect would crush a 
man under its claw in wanton pleasure.” 

Maljoc knew, then, that he was to be 
spared. He smiled up into the great 
luminous compound-eyes of his bene- 
factor. 

“It amused me to lift you into the 
air,” conveyed the master. “I could see 
that you wanted to soar above the earth ; 



that your little wingless body was vi- 
brant with happiness and desire for ex- 
pansion.” 

“That is true,” said Maljoc. 

He was grateful and — awed. He had 
never before been carried so high. Al- 
most the immense soaring wings of the 
master brushed the stratosphere. 

For a moment the benevolent creature 
winged its way above the clouds, in 
rhythmic glee. Then, slowly, its body 
tilted, and it swept downward in a slow 
curve toward the sky terrace. 

“You must not pick a too-beautiful 
mate,” cautioned the master. “You 
know what happens sometimes to the 
too beautiful.” 

Maljoc knew. He knew that his own 
ancestors had once pierced the ancestors 
of the swarming masters with cruel 
blades of steel and had set them in dec- 
orative rows in square boxes because 
they were too beautiful. His instructors 
had not neglected to dwell with fervor 
on the grim expiation which the swarm- 
ing masters were in the habit of exact- 
ing. He knew that certain men and 
women who were too beautiful were 
frequently lifted from the little slave 
world of routine duties in the dwellings 
of the masters and anaesthetized, em- 
balmed, and preserved under glass in 
the museum mausoleums of Agrahan. 

The master set Maljoc gently down 
on the edge of the sky terrace and 
patted him benevolently on the shoulder 
with the tip of its hindermost leg. Then 
it soared swiftly upward and vanished 
from sight. 

Maljoc began to chant again. The 
Galaxy glimmered majestically in the 
heavens above him, and as he progressed 
along the sky promenade he feasted his 
gaze on the glowing misty fringes of 
stupendous island universes lying far 
beyond the milky nebulae to which his 
little race and the swarming masters be- 
longed. 

Nearer at hand, as though loosely en- 
meshed in the supporting cables, the, 



58 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



pole star winked and glittered ruddily, 
while Sirius vied with Betelgeuse in 
outshining the giant, cloud-obscured 
Antares, and the wheeling fire chariot 
of the planet Mars. 

Above him great wings droned, and 
careening shapes usurped his vision. He 
quickened his stride and drew nearer, 
and ever nearer, to the object of his de- 
sire. 

THE NURSERY homorium of the 
women of his race was a towering vault 
of copper on the edge of the cable- 
suspended walk. As he came abreast 
of it he began to tremble, and the color 
ebbed from his face. The women of his 
race were unfathomable, dark enigmas 
to him — bewildering shapes of loveli- 
ness that utterly eluded his comprehen- 
sion. 

He had glimpsed them evanescently 
in pictures — the swarming masters had 
shown him animated pictures in colors 
— but why the pictures enraptured and 
disturbed him so he did not know. 

For a moment he stood gazing fear- 
fully up at the massive metal portal of 
the homorium. Awe and a kind of 
panicky terror contended with exulta- 
tion in his bosom. Then, resolutely, he 
threw out his chest and began to sing. 

The door of the homorium swung 
slowly open, and a dim blue light en- 
girded him as he stood limned in the 
aperture. The illumination came from 
deep within the homorium. Maljoc did 
not hesitate. Shouting and singing ex- 
ultantly, he passed quickly through the 
luminous portal, down a long, dim cor- 
ridor, and into a vast, rectangular cham- 
ber. 

The women of his race were standing 
about in little groups. Having reached 
maturity, they were discussing such 
grave and solemn topics as the past his- 
tory of their kind and their future du- 
ties as obedient servants of the swarm- 
ing masters. Without hesitation, Mal- 



joc moved into the center of the cham- 
ber. 

The women uttered little gasping 
cries of delight when they beheld him. 
Clustering boldly about him, they ran 
their slim white hands 6ver his glisten- 
ing tunic and caressed with fervor his 
beard and hair. They even gazed ex- 
ultantly into his boyish gray eyes, and 
when he flushed they tittered. 

Maljoc was disturbed and frightened. 
Ceasing to sing, he backed away precip- 
itously toward the rear of the chamber. 

“Do not be afraid,” said a tall, flaxen- 
haired virago at his elbow. “We will 
not harm you.” 

Maljoc looked at her. She was at- 
tractive in a bold, flamboyant way, but 
he did not like her. Fie tried to move 
away from her, but she linked her arm 
in his and pulled him back toward the 
center of the chamber. 

He cried out in protest. “I do not 
like you!” he exclaimed. “You are not 
the kind of woman ” 

The amazon’s lips set in hard lines. 
“You are far too young to know your 
own mind,” she said. “I will be a good 
wife to you.” 

As she spoke, she thrust out a power- 
ful right arm and sent three of her ri- 
vals sprawling. 

Maljoc was panic-stricken. He 
pleaded and struggled. The woman was 
pulling him toward the center of the 
chamber, and two of the other women 
were contending with her. 

The struggle terminated suddenly. 
Maljoc reeled, lost his balance, and went 
down with a thud on the hard metallic 
floor. The metal bruised his skull, 
stunning him. 

FOR SEVERAL seconds a waver- 
ing twilight engulfed Maljoc’s faculties. 
Needles pierced his temples, and the 
relentless eyes of the amazon burned 
into his brain. Then, slowly and pain- 
fully, his senses cleared, and his eye- 



THE LAST MEN 



59 



lids flickered open in confused bewil- 
derment. 

Two compassionate blue eyes were 
gazing steadily down at him. Dazedly, 
Maljoc became aware of a lithely slim 
form, and a clear, lovely face. As he. 
starpd up in wonderment, the appari- 
tion moved closer and spoke in accents 
of assurance. 

“I will not let them harm you,” she 
said. 

Maljoc groaned, and his hand went 
out in helpless appeal. Slim, firm 
fingers encircled his palm, and a gentle 
caress eased the pain in his forehead. 

Gently he drew his comforter close 
and whispered: “Let us escape from 
these devils.” 

The woman beside him hesitated. She 
seemed both frightened and eager. “I 
am only eight months old,” she told 
him in a furtive whisper. “I am really 
too young to go forth. They say, too, 
that it would be dangerous, for I am 
” A blush suffused her cheeks. 

“She is dangerously beautiful,” said 
a harsh voice behind her. “The in- 
structors here are indifferent to beauty, 
but when she goes forth she will be 
seized and impaled. You had better 
take me.” 

Maljoc raised himself defiantly on his 
elbow. “It is my privilege to choose,” 
he said. “And I take this woman. 
Will you go forth with me, my little 
one?” 

The woman’s eyes opened widely. 
She looked slowly up at the amazon, 
who was standing in the shadows be- 
hind her, and said in a voice which did 
not tremble: “I will take this man. I 
will go forth with him.” 

The amazon’s features were con- 
vulsed with wrath. But she was power- 
less to intervene. Maljoc was priv- 
ileged to choose, and the woman was 
privileged to accept. With an infuriated 
shrug she retreated farther into the 
shadows. 

Maljoc arose from the floor and 



gazed rapturously at his chosen mate. 
She did not evade his scrutiny. As Mal- 
joc continued to stare at her, the 
strained look vanished from his face and 
mighty energies were released within 
him. 

He stepped to her and lifted her with 
impassioned chantings into the air. Her 
long hair descended and enmeshed his 
shoulders, and as he pressed her to his 
heart her arms tightened clingingly 
about him. 

The other women clustered quickly 
about the exultant couple. Laughing 
and nudging one another, they exam- 
ined the strong biceps of the bride- 
groom and ran their fingers enviously 
through the woman's dark hair. 

Maljoc ignored them. Holding his 
precious burden very firmly in his 
muscular arms, he walked across the 
chamber, down the long outer corridor, 
and out through the massive door. 
Above him in’ another moment the Cy- 
clopean luminous cables loomed beneath 
far-glimmering stars. He walked joy- 
fully along the sky promenade, chant- 
ing, singing, unquenchably happy in his 
little hour of triumph and rapture. 

The woman in his arms was unbe- 
lievably beautiful. She lay limply and 
calmly in his embrace, her eyes luminous 
with tenderness. Orion gleamed more 
brightly now, and the great horned 
moon was a silver fire weaving fantas- 
tically in and out of the nebulae-laced 
firmament. 

As Maljoc sang and chanted, the 
enormous droning shapes above him 
seemed mere alien intruders in a world 
of imperishable loveliness. He thought 
of himself now as lord of the earth and 
the sky, and the burden in his arms was 
more important in his sight than his 
destiny as a servitor and the benefits 
which the swarming masters had prom- 
ised to bestow upon him if he served 
them diligently and well. 

He no longer coveted slave joys and 
gratifications. He wished to be for- 



60 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



ever his own master under the stars. It 
was a daring and impious wish, and as if 
aware of his insurgent yearnings a great 
form came sweeping down upon him out 
of the sky. For an instant it hovered 
with sonorously vibrating wings in the 
air above him. But Maljoc was so ob- 
sessed with joy that he ignored the chill 
menace of its presence. He walked on, 
and the woman in his arms shared his 
momentary forgetfulness. 

THE END of their pathetic and in- 
sane dream came with a sickening 
abruptness. A great claw descended 
and gripped the woman’s slim body, 
tearing her with brutal violence from 
Mai joe’s clasp. 

The woman screamed twice shrilly. 
With a harsh cry, Maljoc leaped back. 
As he shook with horror, a quivering 
feeler brushed his forehead and spoke 
to him in accents of contempt : 

“She is too beautiful for you, little 
one. Return to the homorium and 
choose another mate.” 

Fear and awe of the swarming mas- 
ters were instinctive in all men, but as 
the words vibrated through Maljoc’s 
brain he experienced a blind agony 
which transcended instinct. With a 
scream he leaped into the air and en- 
twined his little hands about the enor- 
mous bulbous hairs on the master’s ab- 
domen. 

The master made no attempt to brush 
him off. It spread its gigantic lacy 
wings and soared swiftly into the sky. 
Maljoc tore and pulled at the -hairs in a 
fury of defiance. The swiftness of the 
flight choked the breath in his lungs, 
and his eyes were blinded by swirling 
motes of dust. But though his vision 
was obscured, he could still glimpse 
dimly the figure of the woman as she 



swung limply in the clasp of the great 
claw a few yards above him. 

Grimly, he pulled himself along the 
master’s abdomen toward the claw. He 
pulled himself forward by transferring 
his fingers from hair to hair. The mas- 
ter’s flat, broad stinger swung slowly 
toward him in a menacing arc, but he 
was sustained in his struggle by a sacri- 
ficial courage which transcended fear. 

Yet the stinger moved so swiftly that 
it thwarted his daring purpose. In a 
fraction of time his brain grew 
poignantly aware that the stinger would 
sear his flesh before he could get to his 
dear one, and the realization was like a 
knife in his vitals. In despair and rage, 
he thrust out his puny jaw and sank his 
teeth deep into the soft flesh beneath 
him. The flesh quivered. 

At the same instant the master 
swooped and turned over. Maljoc bit 
again. It screeched with pain and 
turned over and over, and suddenly, as 
it careened in pain, a white shape fell 
from its claw. 

Maljoc caught the shape as it fell. 
With one hand clinging to the hair of 
the master’s palpitating abdomen, and 
the other supporting the woman of his 
choice, he gazed downward into the 
abyss. 

A mile below him the unfriendly 
earth loomed obscurely through riven 
tiers of cirrus clouds. But Maljoc did 
not hesitate. With a proud, exultant 
cry he tightened his hold on the woman 
and released his fingers from the hair. 

The two lovers fell swiftly to the 
earth. But in that moment of swoon- 
ing flight that could end only in destruc- 
tion, Maljoc knew that he was mightier 
than the masters, and having recaptured 
for an imperishable instant the lost 
glory of his race, he went without fear 
into darkness. 



"Brass Tacks" has been enlarged. Readers are invited to use it for the expres- 
sion of their opinions. All letters receive a personal answer. Let us hear from you! 




Straining, sweat- 
ing, we poured 
lead into that aw- 
ful hole. 






Beyond the Spectrum 



by Arthur Leo Zagat 



Illustrated by 
Elliot Dold 



ANASOTA! Tanasota! All 
out for Tanasota!” 

The welcome cry of the brake- 
man signaled the end of my trip. The 
“all” meant me, I noted; no one else 
escaped from the sooty discomfort of 
the decrepit accommodation local. 

The old depot platform of the little 
Florida town was deserted. Strangely 
so, for the well-kept shops, the trim 
streets radiating from the station park 
would seem to indicate that this was a 



bustling, modem, ultra- American set- 
tlement. A tan and blue signboard 
caught my eye : 

WELCOME TO TANASOTA 
POPULATION 5,000 
HELP US GROW 
TANASOTA CHAMBER OF 
COMMERCE 
Henry Maury, President 

But the blazing sun had park and 
streets to itself ; no line of autos banked 




62 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



the high curbs of the gleaming side- 
walks, not even a dog moved. 

Far up the main street of the town 
a cloud of dust appeared, darting to- 
ward me. It solidified into an auto- 
mobile approaching at breakneck speed. 
In moments it was skidding to a stop at 
the platform — and Tom Denton was 
jumping from it. 

I was thunderstruck at the change 
two weeks had made in him. His face 
was gray and lined, his smile of greet- 
ing palpably forced. And the laughing 
humor of his eyes had given place to — 
was it grief, fear, that peered at me 
from those burnt-out orbs? 

“Ed, old man ! Thank God you’ve 
come 1" The hand that seized mine was 
trembling. “Quick! Hop in and we’ll 
get away from here!’’ 

There was an urgency, a driving haste 
in his voice that choked back my ques- 
tions. Before I quite realized what was 
happening, he had me in his car, was 
hunched over the wheel, was hurling the 
machine furiously in the direction from 
which he had just come. 

“What the hell is going on here?” I 
shouted against the wind that whipped 
the sounds away from me. 

“Wait! Can’t talk now. Got to go 

like the devil, or ” The rest was 

lost in the noise of our passage. 

The town vihizzed by in a blur and 
we were out in the open. I caught 
glimpses of tall palms lining the road, 
of green lawns and white-sanded drive- 
ways curving up to vine-clad houses. I 
had a feeling there was something wrong 
about those houses. I strained through 
the tears evoked by the rush of air and 
realized that, hot as the day was, every 
door was tight shut, every window 
closed and blinded by shades. Nor was 
there any one to be seen on road or 
lawn. 

Definitely a pall of fear lay heavy 
over the neighborhood. What was its 
cause, I wondered. One thing was cer- 
tain. I had been right in my interpre- 



tation of the queer telegram that had 
plucked me from my quiet lab at Kings 
University in New York and had 
brought me post-haste to this beleagured 
southern town. 

• I knew it by heart, that message ; had 
reread it a hundred times on the drag- 
ging journey: 

TANASOTA FLA 
PROF EDGAR THOMASSON 

PHYSICS DEPT 

KINGS UNIVERSITY NEW YORK 

DO NOT NEED YOU STOP NO 
TROUBLE STOP ON NO ACCOUNT 
TAKE SIX FORTY ONE FROM NEW 
YORK TO-DAY NOTNED MOT 

1 must have looked a goggle-eyed ass 
as I stared stupidly at the yellow slip. 
It hadn’t made sense. Going to Florida 
had been as far from my mind as going 
to the moon. And I knew no one with 
that queer name. 

Then a thought struck me. Tana- 
sota! Wasn’t that where the Dentons 
had gone two weeks before? The odd 
signature leaped out at me. Notned 
Mot. Tom Denton, of course, written 
backward. Then — suddenly it was clear 
as crystal — the message too was to be 
read backward, its meaning reversed ! 
With growing excitement I translated 
the cryptic words : “Need you. Trouble. 
Be sure to take the six forty one from 
New York to-day." 

I had just time to make that train. It 
wasn’t till I had sunk panting into my 
seat in the Pullman that, I had time to 
wonder what it was all about. The Den- 
tons were my best friends; tall, broad- 
shouldered Tom with his laughing eyes 
and endearing smile, and Mary, whose 
shimmering brown hair came to the 
middle of her husband’s barrel chest. 
Tom and I had been roommates at 
Kings, and although he had gone into 
geology and I into pure physics, nothing 
had ever broken our comradeship. And 
Mary — well, it wasn’t my fault that hei 
name wasn’t Mary Thomasson. 

Tom had done some rather good work 



BEYOND THE SPECTRUM 



63 



at his specialty, the finding of subter- 
ranean water in hitherto dry locations, 
but hadn’t made much money. So we 
had had a big celebration when the offer 
came from Tanasota. A typical boost- 
ers’ town, with a super-active chamber 
of commerce, we gathered. They had 
concocted a scheme for making the re- 
gion a tourists’ paradise; hotel, casino, 
swimming pool, tennis courts, links, and 
all the rest of it. 

All contracts had been let and work 
was about to start when the artesian 
wells suddenly failed. Catastrophe, ruin, 
stared them in the face. In this emer- 
gency they had heard of Denton. The 
generous proposition they made included 
the rent-free use of a bungalow, and 
the couple had departed, jubilant. 

WE ROUNDED a curve and I saw 
a low white house, a flutter of white 
skirts at the just-opening door. Brakes 
screeched, the car skidded through dust, 
slewed half around. There was a crash, 
and the machine lurched sickeningly. 
The hood sank to the right and didn’t 
rise. I was surprised to find I was still 
in my seat — uninjured. 

Tom paid no attention to the wheel 
that had smashed against a roadside 
boulder. With a laconic, “Come on. 
Quick!’’ he seized my bag and ran up 
the path. 

“All right, Mary?” 

“Safe, dear. And you?” 

“Not a sign of them.” 

A sigh of relief trembled on her lips. 
Tom picked up a stout iron bar and set 
it across the locked door in sockets that 
had been provided for it. Mary turned 
to me. 

“Ed! I knew you would understand 
and come.” Her face was lined with 
worry and sleeplessness. And in her 
eyes was the same haunting fear that 
had startled me in Tom’s. I kissed her, 
and her lips were icy-cold under mine. 

“Are you two going to have mercy 



on a fellow and tell him what this is all 
about ?” 

Tom’s mouth twisted in a pathetic 
attempt at his familiar smile. “All 
hell’s broke loose, Ed. Literally, I think. 
But sit down ; it’s a long story.” 

The cozy living room showed Mary’s 
genius for home-making. But, although 
the midday sun was blazing outside, the 
chamber was illuminated only by shaded 
electric bulbs. The two large windows 
were tightly closed, dark blinds were 
pulled down to the very sill, and a net- 
work of steel wire mesh had been nailed 
over all. 

The place was a fortress ! 

“You know what brought me down 
here,” Tom began. “After my first in- 
spection, I was puzzled, still am. From 
surface indications there should be no 
difficulty in finding water in this region. 
The wells that failed run from seven 
hundred to a thousand feet deep. I de- 
cided to extend one lying about a quar- 
ter mile south of here, one about nine 
hundred feet. 

“I had my drill set up. At the bot- 
tom of the hole we found a stratum of 
hard Archaeozoic Gneiss, the earliest 
formed of all rocks, certainly no younger 
than eighty millions of years. Ordi- 
narily I should have given up all hope 
of finding water in that spot as soon as 
I discovered this formation. But it was 
my theory that some minor earthquake 
had opened a rift through which the 
underground stream had dropped to a 
lower level. So I continued drilling. 

“We hadn’t gone down fifty feet when 
the lower section of the drill dropjied 
down into nothingness ! I had what 
was left of the drill raised, and since it 
was growing dark, stopped operations 
for the day, leaving old Tim Rooney to 
watch over the material. 

“In the morning I went out bright 
and early. I expected to find Tim 
asleep — there wasn’t any real need for 
leaving him out there, but I was put out 



64 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



to discover that he was nowhere in 
sight. 

“The next minute I forgot all about 
the old codger’s dereliction. For, Ed, 
that hole, which the night before had 
been only four inches in diameter — had 
widened to a span of three feet ! Not 
only right at the top — just as far down 
as I could see — and the focusing search- 
light I flashed dcnvn there sent its beam 
for at least four hundred feet! There 
isn’t a boring machine on earth that 
could do a job like that in the twelve 
hours since I had left the spot ! It was 
downright impossible ! 

“My first thought was to get hold of 
Rooney and find out what had hap- 
pened. I sent a youngster chasing to his 
home. 

“My messenger returned. Tim’s wife 
hadn’t seen him since he had left to take 
up his vigil the night before. I cast 
about. I found his tracks, where he had 
walked about for a while. Then — one 
spot— they vanished. But there was a 
long furrow in. the loam, as if a heavy 
body had been dragged along the ground. 
And that furrow led straight to the 
opening — ended there. 

“No. Old Tim’s wife hadn’t seen 
him. Nor has anybody else since! He 
was the first.” 

He whispered the last sentence. Then 
a wave of emotion seemed to overwhelm 
him, to make it impossible for him to go 
on. He looked off into the distance, 
dumb misery on his face. His wife put 
out her hand and stroked his. 

“It isn’t your fault, Tom ; it isn’t your 
fault, no matter what they say.” 

Apparently he did not hear. Again 
he was whispering, to himself, not to 
us. “He was the first — but not the last. 
And the end is not yet.” 

In the silence that followed I became 
aware of a sound — it seemed to be at 
the window. Very faint it was — -a suck- 
ing, sliding noise as if some one were 
drawing a wet rubber sponge across the 
pane. I thought I imagined it, till I 



saw the others staring at the window. 
Mary’s hand was at her breast. From 
somewhere Tom had produced a squat, 
ugly revolver. 

Then the sound stopped. Without 
explanation, Tom plunged back into his 
story. 

“I tried not to believe the evidence 
of the furrow I had found. I organized 
searching parties, sent them out in all 
directions. But toward evening I was 
convinced at last that old Tim was gone. 

“Of course, he might have fallen 
down the hole by accident. But some- 
thing told me this was not so. I tele- 
graphed for a windlass that would en- 
able me to go down the shaft. It would 
arrive the next morning. Meantime I 
decided I would watch the opening dur- 
ing the night. I couldn’t rest. I must 
do something to solve the mystery. 

“Jim Phelps, a splendid young chap 
who had been acting as my assistant, in- 
sisted on sharing my vigil. There was 
no moon, that night, and the sky was 
overcast. We built a little fire for light. 
The flip of a coin decided that the first 
watch was to be Jim’s. I stretched out 
on the ground. 

“I had thought I would be unable to 
sleep, but the strain of the day and the 
warm balmy air had their effect. How 
long I slept I do not know. But I was 
snapped awake by a shriek. In the dim 
light of the dying fire, I saw Jim at the 
very edge of the shaft, his whole body 
contorted in a terrific struggle against — 
nothing. There was nothing there — I 
swear it — but the boy was fighting, lash- 
ing out. His heels, planted deep, were 
being dragged through the ground 
against the utmost efforts of his tensed 
body ! 

“I had almost reached him when he 
suddenly collapsed. He rose a foot in 
the air — and disappeared down that in- 
fernal hole. My grasping hand just 
touched his hair as he descended. 

“At my feet lay the searchlight. I 
snatched it up and pressed the button. 

AST-4 



BEYOND THE SPECTRUM 



65 



I saw him, twenty-five feet below. He 
wasn’t falling ; lie was drifting down, as 
if something were carrying him! I 
watched his limp body descending, vivid 
in the bright light. I could pick out 
every line of his white face, every stria- 
tion in the smooth side of the vertical 
tunnel. There was nothing there, yet 
something was carrying him down. 

“God knows I'm no coward, but I 
turned and ran from that accursed spot, 
ran with the horrible fear of the Un- 
known tearing at my brain ; ran until, 
after countless years of running, I saw 
the door of this cottage.” 

MARY broke in: 

“I was awakened by a choked cry out- 
side, and the thud of something falling 
against the door. It took me an hour 
to revive him. And then, when he 
gasped out what he had seen, I thought 
with a chill at my heart that he had 
gone stark, raving crazy.” 

“The chief of police and the village 
president were quite sure of it the next 
morning,” Tom resumed. “In fact, 
they were convinced that I myself had 
thrown both men down the hole in a 
maniacal seizure. They were leading 
me out to take me to the county hospi- 
tal, when something occurred that 
changed their minds. 

“There are no other dwellings be- 
tween this house and that — that place. 
There we were — I was just stepping 
into the chief’s car. Mary, in tears, was 
pleading with him not to take me. Sud- 
denly some one pointed. A wild figure 
was coming down the road, reeling from 
the fence on one side to the rails on 
the other, tossing its arms in the air. 
It stumbled and fell, but kept on crawl- 
ing toward us. 

“I was the first to run up the road, 
the others close behind. It was Jim ! I 
called to him, and he lifted his face to 
me. Where the eyes should have been 
were two empty holes — two deep, red 
pits — staring out at me from the mask 

AST-5 



of white dust! He lifted that awful 
face to me, and laughed. 

“Out of poor Jim’s babblings and gib- 
berings we could strain not one morsel 
of information as to what lay at the 
bottom of that infernal bore. But when 
the doctor examined those scarred eye 
sockets, he turned to us with sheer un- 
belief. 

“ ‘I can’t understand this, gentlemen,’ 
he said. ‘There is every evidence here 
that a marvelous piece of surgery has 
been performed. Not only the eyeballs 
themselves have been excised; but the 
optic nerves, in their entirety, and all the 
complex system of muscles that enable 
the eyes to do their work properly. 
There are only one or two surgeons in 
the world who could perform such an 
operation !’ 

“Do you realize what that meant, the 
astounding implication of Dr. Wells’ 
finding? This thing that came from 
below, this invisible thing, had intelli- 
gence, knowledge, skill, equal to our 
own. Think of it ! 

“There was no longer any question of 
my sanity. The town authorities, in the 
persons of the president and the police 
chief, were now convinced that a blacker 
menace confronted them than the mere 
presence of a homicidal maniac. They 
held a whispered consultation in the . 
corner of the hospital reception room 
where we had received Dr. Wells’ re- 
port. Then they called me over. 

“President Maury did the talking. 
‘Listen, doc,’ he began. ‘We’ve got to 
keep this- thing damn quiet, or ’ 

“‘Quiet!’ I exploded. ‘Hell, man, 
what we’ve got to do is telegraph the 
governor for the State police, and the 
university for the best men they’ve got 
on paleontology and physics, and get 
busy trying to find out just what there 
is down there, and how to fight it!’ 

“ ‘Yeah, and have the papers get hold 
of it. Nothing doing! By the ?ime ir 
was all over, Tanasota would be ruined 



66 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



forever as a resort. People would never 
forget it.' 

“I was astounded. ‘How on earth 
can you be thinking of money when 
there may be thousands of those invisi- 
ble things, whatever they are, ready to 
pour out and carry off everybody 
around here?’ 

“ ‘Might as well be killed by them as 
starve to death. There ain’t nobody for 
fifteen miles around who ain’t stuck all 
they’ve got, includin’ what they could 
raise by mortgages on their houses and 
land, into this development. The con- 
tracts is all signed. If we stop now, 
all Tanasota township will be ruined. 
Nope, Tanasota’s got to handle this it- 
self ; and, by jingo, Tanasota kin do it !’ 

“We set to work at once. Steel rails 
were crisscrossed over the opening, and 
a six-foot-high mound of reenforced 
concrete erected on this armored base. 
By evening the concrete had set. 
Thomas was almost cheerful. 

“It was dark when I got home? Janey 
Ruxton, a sweet kid just home from 
Miami University, was here, chattering 
away to Mary. We played three-handed 
bridge till a little after nine. Then 
Janey left. She wouldn’t let me take 
her home ; it was just a bit up the road 
and nothing could possibly happen to 
her. Shortly after Mary thought she 
heard a scream, but I laughed at her. 
It was just the screech owl that had 
startled our city ears several times be- 
fore. 

“The next morning the phone rang at 
about ten. It was Mrs. Ruxton. When 
was Janey coming home? 

“The receiver shook in my hand. 
‘Why, Mrs. Ruxton, didn’t she get home 
last night?’ 

“‘No! She said when she went out 
that she might possibly sleep there. Mrs. 
Denton thought you might be detained 
at your work till late. Don’t tell me 
she isn’t there!’ 

“I mumbled something about having 
come in late and having just waked up. 



I’d ask Mary and call her back. I had 

to think. Could it be that Just as 

I hung up, Mary called to me that 
Thomas and Maury were coming up the 
path. 

“ ‘They seem excited ! I wonder what’s 
happened?’ she said. 

“There was something ludicrous in 
the way they trotted their pendulous 
paunches up the path. But the stricken 
look on Thomas’ face held no . humor. 
He called to me almost before I had the 
door open. 

“ ‘Doc, doc, have you seen anything 
of Jimmy?’ 

“Jimmy was his sixteen-year-old son. 

“ ‘No, I haven’t — why do you ask?’ 

“ ‘Got to find him, got to find him !’ 

“That’s all I could get out of the fa- 
ther. But the village president ex- 
plained. Young Jimmy had gone out 
before dawn; he was to join some of 
the other boys fishing. A half hour be- 
fore, one of his chums, having returned, 
had phoned to inquire why he had not 
met the crowd. 

“The same thought was in all our 
minds, I think. ‘Wait here,’ I snapped, 
‘I’ve got a hunch.’ Before there could 
be a reply, I was down the path and in 
my car. 

“I shot the machine out into the field 
and straight up to the solid cairn we had 
made the day before. I almost crashed 
into the stone. For — it hit me in the 
face like a physical blow — straight 
through the top of that huge boulder of 
concrete and steel a circular cavity 
yawned — three feet across ! When I 
could tear my staring eyes away from 
that black hole I saw, at the foot of the 
mound, the crumpled and broken frag- 
ments of a fishing rod! 

“I couldn’t have been away long, for 
when I got back here Thomas and 
Maury were just starting to follow me. 
I gasped out my discovery — careless 
how I hurt these mtft whose obstinacy 
I blamed. 

“ ‘It’s your own damn fault,’ I blazed, 



BEYOND THE SPECTRUM 



67 



alternately hot with anger and chilled 
with horror. ‘If it hadn’t been for your 
being stubborn, this wouldn’t have hap- 
pened! Now will you let me call for 
help?’ 

“Thomas held himself erect by one 
shaking hand on the lintel. His white 
face turned in piteous appeal toward 
Maury. But, though his eyes bulged 
with horror from a face that was green 
and gray by turns, the other could not 
be moved from the stand he had taken. 
He thundered an emphatic ‘No’ to my 
demand, and Thomas’ silent entreaty. 

“I stormed and raved, and Mary 
added her pleading, but Maury was ob- 
durate. From somewhere the stricken 
father summoned strength enough to 
second his superior’s fiat. • 

“ ‘Whatever you say, Hen,’ he mum- 
bled brokenly. ‘Whatever you say, I’ll 
stick to. You know best.’ 

“In answer to my threat to take mat- 
ters in my own hands, Maury laid down 
the edict flatly: 

“ ‘No telephone from you goes out of 
the local exchange, nor no letter nor 
telegram that I don’t O. K. And you’d 
better not try to leave the township, 
’cause you won’t get far.’ 

“I gave up. But Mary broke in. 
‘Tom,’ she said, ‘Edgar Thomasson was 
to leave to-day for his visit to us. We’d 
better telegraph him not to come, or 
Mr. Maury will think we tricked him.’ 
She was writing as she talked. ‘Here, 
will this do?’ I wondered what she was 
driving at, but played along. 

“She handed what she had written to 
the president. He spelled out the mes- 
sage. ‘Looks all right,’ he said at last; 
‘but what’s this here name signed at the 
bottom ?’ 

“ ‘Only Tom’s name spelled back- 
ward. The boys have always signed 
their letters to one another that way. 
They won’t tell me why; some secret 
society hocus pocus, I suppose.’ 

“Maury could understand that. The 
vast expanse of his vest was the back- 



ground for a half-dozen varied fraternal 
emblems. ‘O. K. You kin send it. 
Here, I’ll take it in to the depot myself.’ 
He stuffed the paper into a pocket. ‘I’ll 
get John home now, and then get busy 
on the phone tellin’ everybody to look 
out. Meantime, doc, see what you kin 
figger out. Don’t worry about expense ; 
I’ll see that you get all the money and 
help you need.’ 

“They went out, Thomas walking like 
a man in a dream. 

“That’s about all. They haven’t done 
a damn thing since except get an ar- 
mored car somewhere and patrol the 
roads with it. Lot of good that does! 
And they’ve got all the houses for miles 
around locked up like this one. There 
the stubborn fools sit in the dark, while 
those things prowl around, groping, 
groping, at the doors and windows. 
Sooner or later they will find a way to 
.break through our defenses. And 
then ” 

TOM BURIED his face in his hands. 
“It’s my fault,” I heard him mutter; 
“it’s my fault.” 

I wanted to argue with him about it, 
but somehow I couldn’t say anything. 
For long minutes there was silence, flat, 
imponderable. Finally be looked up 
with a twisted smile. 

“I’m all right now. Sorry I’m put- 
ting on such a baby act, but it’s got me, 
Ed. You’ve heard the story now ; what 
do you think of it?” 

“I don’t know what to think of it, 
Tom. One thing, though, I’ve been 
wondering about. I take it that there’s 
been no further attempt at confining 
these mysterious visitants. How is it 
then that they have not reached other 
communities ?” 

Denton shrugged. “They do not seem 
to wander far from the shaft. Perhaps 
something in conditions on the surface 
reacts on them unfavorably and limits 
the time they can stay above ground. 



68 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



Their tracks do not appear further than 
a mile away.” 

“Their tracks? Then they leave a 
definite impression on the ground?” 

He rose. “Come; I’ll show you.” 

I followed him to the nearer window. 
He listened tensely, ear close against the 
mesh. Mary went to the other window 
and listened too. Again I remarked the 
ravages, the horror through which she 
was living, had made on her winsome 
face. 

“Hear anything, dear?” Tom called. 

“Nothing, Tom; I guess it’s safe.” 
But the girl remained crouched taut 
against the mesh. 

“Look here, Ed.” Tom poked a long 
paper cutter through the screen and 
pushed aside an edge of the blind. His 
gun was in his other hand. I bent over 
and peered through the opening. 

I could see just a small patch of bare, 
soft soil. But all over that patch was 
the spoor of the monster — six thin lines 
radiating from a small round depres- 
sion — footprints the like of which the 
upper world had never seen. Twelve 
inches from end to end, and four across. 
Somehow those molded markings in the 
ground made the horror real to me, 
more real than all Tom’s vivid tale. 

Then that occurred that bristled the 
hairs at the nape of my neck with an- 
cestral fear, that drove the blood from 
my face, but held my staring eyes riv- 
eted to the little strip of loam. One by 
one new tracks appeared, forming whole 
in the matrix of that soil. 

Something was walking across the 
front of the house — something that I 
could not see! 

My throat was dry — so dry that I 
could not cry out. That weirdly form- 
ing progression of telltale marks passed 
beyond the range of vision, but another 
set of prints began to form. Another 
set that marched straight toward me! 

Suddenly an eye was looking into 
mine through the glass — a blue eye that 
did not wink ! An eye, and nothing 



more! Tom must have seen it too, for 
the black shade dropped between me and 
the eye. Then, right there in front of 
me, I heard again that sucking, sliding 
noise. From left to right across the pane 
it moved, and the blood froze in my 
veins. 

A crash of smashing glass ! 

The black shade before me bellied in- 
ward, flattened against the wire mesh 
and was held there by the force of 
something that crushed against it. 

“Shoot, Tom, shoot! It’s coming 
in !” 

That cry seemed to tear from out my 
very vitals. At top and side the screen 
was tearing away from the stout nails 
that held it! Tom’s gun roared — I felt 
the scorch of its flame on my arm as I 
thrust at the screen, fighting to hold back 
the thing that was pushing in, the thing 
whose power made nothing of my puny 
strength. Again the gun roared. I felt 
the invader flinch. White rents ap- 
peared in the shade, rents through which 
the unobstructed sun leered in. A form 
was outlined against the bulging cloth — 
Tom fired again ! 

I felt the thing falter and fall away. 

I fell back, wilting from the terrible 
exertion. Suddenly the room was 
flooded with light — sunlight ! As I 

whirled about, a scream ripped through 
me. Mary’s scream! 

The other window was stripped bare 
of shade and screen. In the center of 
the room, struggling against — blank- 
ness — was my chum’s wife. Her hair 
had fallen about her shoulders, her eyes 
were staring from a terror-distorted 
face, her mouth was open to scream 
again. Her little fists were flailing at 
the vacancy before her, her legs, lifted 
from the ground, were driving against 
the nothingness that held her, the unseen 
thing that was carrying her inexorably 
toward the gaping window! 

We dove together to her aid — Mary’s 
form shielded her captor from Tom’s 
gun. I reached her. Something twisted 



BEYOND THE SPECTRUM 



69 



around my waist and lifted me from my 
feet. My hands tore at the cold, hard, 
invisible thing that writhed but held me 
fast. I thought I saw brown eyes gleam- 
ing in midair. Then I was hurtling 
across the rooni, to thud crushingly 
against the wall. Tom, caught in the 
invisible grip, fought for a second, then 
he too was sliding helpless along the 
floor. With a last moaning screen, 
Mary soared through the shattered win- 
dow and disappeared. 

BRUISED, DAZED, horror-filled, I 
dragged myself up, reeled across toward 
the jagged opening. Tom was before 
me. He scrambled through, reckless of 
the broken glass, the tearing wire, and 
I after him. 

Already a hundred feet away, float- 
ing, apparently unsupported, some three 
feet above a flat field, I saw Mary. She 
had fainted, mercifully. She rose over 
a fence, flew southward up the road. I 
realized that I was running, giving 
everything that was in me to a burst of 
speed greater than I believed myself 
capable of. Tom was ahead of me. 
His gun was still in his hand, but there 
was nothing at which to shoot save the 
figure of his wife. 

We leaped the fence, were dashing up 
the road. I cast one despairing glance 
back at the car — if only that wheel were 
not smashed we might have a chance. 
As it was, though, I ran on after Tom’s 
speeding figure — reckless of the agony 
that burned my lungs. Despair flooded 
me. The thing we pursued sped faster 
than our uttermost efforts could drive 
us. 

Little spurts of dust showed in the 
road, only evidence that the unconscious 
girl was not being borne away from us 
by some wind that we could not feel. 
They ceased, but the tall grass in a field 
at the left swayed and was trampled 
down under the weight of an invisible 
runner. Ahead I could see a rounded 
gray hump, knew it for the futile bar- 



rier that had been erected against the 
incredible menace from below. Dimly 
I was aware of a clatter from some- 
where ahead on the highway, the bark- 
ing exhaust of a gasoline motor. But I 
was rushing through the field now, niy 
straining eyes fixed on Tom’s running 
form, and on Mary ahead. 

She rose to the mound — dipped 
within. Tom reached it in a final spurt. 
I was only moments behind him. He 
beat furiously with his hand and his 
gun against the hard rock. As I seized 
and dragged him away his hand was a 
torn and bleeding lump. 

“They’ve got her, they’ve got her!” 
His voice was a high-pitched shrill mon- 
otone. “Oh, damn them, damn them! 
Let me go!” 

He was fighting against me — I 
couldn’t hold him against his maniacal 
strength. He broke away and was 
scrambling up the stone. 

“I’m going down for her!” 

“Wait, you fool !” I had hold of his 
kicking foot. “Wait ! I’ll go with you 
— wait just a moment.” Somebody was 
beside me, an arm reached past me, a 
hand clamped around Tom’s ankle. To- 
gether we pulled him back. 

Four men were crowded around us, 
their canvas belts heavy with holstered 
revolvers and studded with cartridges. 
Behind them bulked the gray-painted, 
awkward shape of an armored car. 

Tom was quieter now, but he still 
muttered in a nerve-racking monotone: 
“I’ve got to go down and save her eyes; 
I’ve got to go down and save her eyes.” 

“Tom !” I shouted as if he were deaf. 
“Tom, stop that damn muttering and 
listen to me!” 

But he looked at me wildly and mum- 
bled: “I’ve got to go down and save her 
eyes.” 

Time for heroic measures. I gritted 
my teeth and slapped him stingingly on 
the cheek. He rubbed the red mark my 
hand had left, and sanity came back to 
him. 



70 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



“Oh, Ed,” he said brokenly, and the 
agony in his tones wrung me. “They’ve 
got her down there ! I must go down to 
save her. Please don’t hold me back!” 
“Of course we’re going down.” I 
fought to keep the hysteria out of my 
own voice. “But jumping down a thou- 
sand-foot hole and getting smeared all 
over the bottom isn’t going to do Mary 
any good. Now, is it?” 

“No, Ed, you’re right. I — I don’t 
know what I was thinking of. But when 
I saw her go down there and remem- 
bered the empty sockets in Jim Phelps’ 

face and the way he laughed ” 

One of the men from the armored car 
was speaking. 

“Gee, doc, it sure is tough ! We saw 
her swinging along the road and you 
guys after her. But we couldn't do 
nothing — if we’d let loose with the ma- 
chine gun we’d have cut her to pieces.” 
“Maybe — maybe it would have been 
better if you had. But it’s all right, 
boys. I know you would have helped 
her if you could. I told Chief Thomas 
this patrol of yours was no earthly 
good.” 

During this interchange my mind was 
racing. What were these monsters, 
these invisible things of horror? Were 
they elementals, imponderable phan- 
tasms, myths come true? 

No ! Unseeable they were, but ma- 
terial. Their tread left prints in the 
mud; grass bent beneath their passage. 
That had been a very real bulk against 
which I had struggled at the window. 
Tom’s bullets plunging into it had killed 
it. 

They were not invulnerable. 

I twisted to the haggard-faced, quiv- 
ering Tom, grabbed his arm and dug 
my fingers into it in my excitement. 

“Listen! We’ve got to get ropes, a 
searchlight, guns !” 

He stared at me wide-eyed, then 
snapped : “Come on !” 

We piled pell-mell into the steel-clad 
truck, shot all out along the road, our 



siren rising and falling in howls of 
warning to a non-existent traffic. Not 
ten minutes after we were back at the 
hive-shaped stone. 

Were we too late? Even as I snapped 
my instructions to the hard-faced men 
of the patrol, the question burned 
through my mind. In seconds the end 
of the windlass rope — luckily the reel 
still stood at the head of the shaft — had 
been fastened about me in a rude har- 
ness. Tom too was looped into the 
cable, four feet further along. About 
our waists hung borrowed cartridge 
belts, each with two holstered auto- 
matics. 

“Those are explosive bullets,” the pa- 
trol leader volunteered. “Get one o’ 
them in you and they’ll be picking up the 
pieces for a week.” 

From my belt swung also a large 
mirror I had snatched up somewhere, to 
which I had attached a long cord. In 
my hand was a powerful flashlight that 
also could be hooked into my belt at 
need. 

Trailing the long rope, we mounted 
the concrete. A dizzy look down the 
long bore. A farewell glance at the 
sunlit scene, the familiar world I might 
never see again. No prepossessing 
sight was this bare field, with its rank, 
lush grass. Yet at that moment it was 
very beautiful. Weasel thoughts of fear 
came flooding in. Almost I turned back, 
but I saw Tom watching me, saw the 
look in his eyes. I stepped over the 
edge and felt the rope harness Con- 
strict about me as it took my weight. 

“Lower away !” I called. 

DOWN, DOWN we went. Light 
faded and Stygian darkness wrapped 
round us. I seemed to have passed be- 
yond the boundaries of time and space, 
seemed doomed to swing forever in this 
darkness, this otherwhere. Down. 

From above came an urgent whisper. 
“The light, Ed; the light!” I remem- 



BEYOND THE SPECTRUM 



71 



bered the torch in my hand, pressed the 
contact. For an instant the sudden glare 
dazzled me. Then I saw, not six feet 
below, the bottom of the long shaft. 
“Hold it, Tom !’’ I felt the rope vibrate 
to the double tug of his signal. The 
wall stopped moving upward. 

Just under my feet there was an open- 
ing in the side of the vertical tunnel, 
dark, foreboding. Otherwise my light 
revealed nothing as it glinted back from 
wet rock. I unfastened the mirror and 
lowered it by its cord till the bottom 
edge rested on the stone floor. It had 
twisted as it dropped so that it faced 
the blank wall of the bore. I raised it a 
bit, twirled the ■ cord in my fingers. 
Slowly the silvered glass swung around. 
When it faced the opening, a quick dip 
of my hand stopped it so. I paid out a 
little more cord — now it was just right, 
its surface canted at a forty-five degree 
angle to the plane of the ground. 

The shining rectangle caught the ver- 
tical beam from the torch, flashed it out 
through the arched gap. Mirrored in 
the glass I saw a long, low gallery, 
sliced through age-old rock, a gallery 
that widened and heightened as it swept 
away from the shaft. The ancient stone 
was rotted and crumbling, and still wet 
from the flood that, draining away, had 
left the well bone-dry. I could make out 
dark patches that must be openings to 
caves or other corridors. Nothing 
moved in the dim subterranean passage, 
nothing that I could see. But I could 
hear faint scutterings, a low murmuring 
that should aot have been in that vacant 
pit. 

The mirror leaped inward, as if some- 
thing had grasped it! The cord was 
jerked from my grasp. The next in- 
stant there was something snakelike 
about my ankle, something that tugged 
downward — something horribly cold. I 
grabbed for a gun from my belt, fired 
down past my feet. In the confined 
space the roar of the discharge nearly 
deafened, but there was a muffled ex- 



plosion below, and the invisible thing 
around my ankle fell away. 

“Down! Down!” I shouted. In a 
moment my feet skidded on some slimy 
substance, gripped the ground. I could 
not see it, but I knew I was standing on 
the fragments of the thing my explosive 
bullet had spattered into destruction. 
First blood to us ! 

I hooked the torch into my belt, had 
the other gun in my hand. Just in time ! 
An unseen tentacle coiled around my 
shoulders. I fired blindly, and it was 
gone. Tom’s two weapons were roaring 
at my side, spitting lead into vacancy, 
into emptiness that yet was filled with a 
vast whisper of alien sound, menacing, 
horrible. My ears told me there was a 
ravening horde out there, a throng of 
strange things gathered to repel our in- 
vasion of their immemorial domain. But 
my eyes saw only blank walls and un- 
tenanted space. 

We backed against the rock behind us 
and poured the contents of our weap- 
ons into the invisible host. I glimpsed 
Tom’s face — his glittering, half-mad 
eyes, his lip curled in a snarl. From 
ahead came a rushing tumult, a hurri- 
cane sound as of a torrent flooding up 
to overwhelm us. My guns were hot 
in my grasp, my arms weary with firing. 
But the herd came on. I could hear 
them, closer, closer. I could see the 
debris on the labyrinth floor flatten un- 
der the masses of unseen feet — the front 
of that pressed-down space nearer and 
nearer— fifteen feet — ten feet away. A 
moment more and we should be over- 
whelmed, crushed under their thousands. 
The fire from my guns ebbed — they 
were empty — no time to reload. Tom’s 
last shot blazed out — and the mad rush 
halted! 

I saw the stigmata of the things’ pres- 
ence retreat. 

As we reloaded feverishly, not know- 
ing how soon again the things would 
sweep to the attack, a voice came out of 



72 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



the black silence beyond my torchbeam ! 
A human voice ! 

"Help! Help! Oh, help!” 

A woman’s voice! Mary’s voice! 
Echoing. 

"Help” 

A great shout from Tom. "Coming! 
Where are you?” 

More faintly. “Here, Tom, here.” 
Somewhere far ahead. 

There was a sob in Tom’s voice and 
an exultation as he cried: “She’s alive, 
Ed, she’s alive!” A giant fury surged 
through me, and I roared in response : 

"She’s alive ! Give ’em hell !” 

We started out, step by step, into the 
nothingness that was filled from wall to 
wall with the monsters we fought. We 
did not need to see them — we blazed 
straight ahead and knew we could not 
miss. The thunder of our firing was 
continuous now as, wordlessly, we gained 
a certain rhythm so that one fired as the 
other loaded, loaded as the other fired. 

Slowly we forged forward, fighting 
in a red madness. Beneath our feet we 
felt the slippery life-fluid Qf the things 
we destroyed. Their shattered bodies 
tripped us, writhing tentacles whipped 
around us and were torn away as we 
pressed forward, always forward. And 
ever the rustle and the murmur of that 
obscene throng fell back before us, and 
ever as on one side or other we reached 
an opening in the wall we paused a 
moment to listen, and ever Mary’s voice 
came from ahead. 

“Here. Here we are. Hurry! 
Hurry !” That weak voice, guiding. 

“Tom. Ed. Come quickly!” 

We dared not hurry lest we slip and 
fall into that shambles underfoot. We 
dared not hurry lest the dragging rope 
behind us catch in some projection and 
tangle us helpless while the things 
rushed back and swamped us beneath 
their teeming numbers. Our guns 
roared and thundered, roared and thun- 
dered as we harried them before us. An 



insane, nightmare battle there in earth’s 
bowels, a thousand feet beneath sun- 
shine and green grass ! 

A nightmare fight, but even night- 
mares have an end. We came abreast 
of a portal in the wall, and in the pause 
Mary’s voice came loud and clear. 

“Here! In here! Ed. Tom. Here 



It choked. 

“Hold them, Tom !” I swung round, 
threw my light into the cave. Three hu- 
man forms outstretched on platforms of 
bare rock. Two quiet — limply recum- 
bent. One struggling, fighting against 
something unseen that held her down. 
Mary ! 

Something glittered in the gleam of 
my torch. A scalpel ! Descending to- 
ward her face, her eyes ! My gun butt 
jumped in my hand — the scalpel clat- 
tered to the ground. Mary’s arching 
body slumped, relaxed, quivered and 
was still. 

“Hold them, Tom !” The rolling 
crash of his guns told me he was hold- 
ing them. I plunged in, got to her stony 
couch. Her face was death-white, her 
eyelids closed. I bent to her — fearing. 
Before I could find, grasp her pulse, 
she stirred, and a long breath whispered 
from her ashen lips. Her lids quivered. 
What would I see when they opened? 
I never knew eternity could be com- 
pressed into a half second! 

They were open! Her brave eyes 
looked square into mine! 

Oh, thank God ! Thank God ! 

“Ed — I knew you’d come!” Then a 
sudden fear flared in the eyes I had 
thought we were too late to save. “Tom ! 
I heard his voice. Is he ” 

“Safe. Right outside, fighting like 
mad. Come; we’ve got to get out of 
here.” She struggled to rise. I looked 
at the other two, fearfully quiet. How 
manage all three? One of us must be 
free to hold back the things. 

Brave girl ! She saw, understood. 



BEYOND THE SPECTRUM 



73 



“Take the others. I’m sure they’re still 
alive. Give me your guns and the light.” 

I swung them to my shoulders and we 
started back. How we got to the foot 
of the shaft I can’t remember. Guns 
blasting behind me, writhing horror 
underfoot. At the last it was a •ffiad 
rush as a shouted something from Tom 
warned of some new danger. I had to 
tug only once at the rope ; those waiting 
above must have been tensed to the 
breaking point. The burdens on my 
shoulders bumped crazily against the 
sides of the bore. 

I rolled down the concrete mound. 
From a great distance I heard voices, 
cheering. 

Then — oblivion. 

THERE ISN’T much more to tell. 
Visitors who flocked to Tanasota’s fa- 
mous resort wonder why that field on 
its outskirts is sunk so far beneath the 
surrounding terrain, but no one will tell 
them. A half ton of TNT did that, 
dropped down the shaft to hell and ex- 
ploded there. 

We found the body of the thing Tom 
had killed at the bungalow. In my 
laboratory at Kings I made certain tests, 
confirming the theory I had formed 
concerning the nature of the monsters. 

The secret of their invisibility lay in 
their epidermis, corresponding to our 
skin. This refracted all the light be- 
tween ultra-violet and infra-red, the 
spectrum by which we humans see ; car- 
ried it clear around them so that to our 
eyes they appeared perfectly transpar- 
ent. I have done the same thing with 
a set of refracting prisms. 

My assistant, Jim Thorne, was puz- 
zled. “How then do they see? If light 



passes around them, none readies their 
brains.” 

I smiled. “They are, of course, ab- 
solutely blind to our light. But remem- 
ber sunlight never readies them in their 
underground home. It is ultra-violet 
light, and other vibrations beyond our 
spectrum, emitted by radio-active sub- 
stances in the rotting rock that pervade 
that region. Utterly black to us, they 
see by it as perfectly as we do by the 
light of the sun." 

Thome got it. “Then that is why 
they cut out Phelps’ eyes, and the 
others ?” 

“Right ! They were blind, or almost 
so, in our world, which they sensed was 
a so much better abode than their own. 
They wanted human eyes to see things 
here above. It must have been poor 
Jim’s optics that glared at me through 
the window, his eyes in the head of one 
of the monsters.” 

WHENCE CAME those strange be- 
ings of an inner world? Perhaps they 
had their genesis in the very dawn of 
time, when old earth was still a molten 
ball and life itself existent only in re- 
sistant spores. Perhaps some of these 
spores, these life seeds, were enclosed 
in the vast bubbles that formed, and 
burst, and formed again, or were caught 
in some huge folding of more solid rock, 
and so were imprisoned within earth’s 
crust. Then, through the slow aeons, 
these primal cells may have evolved in 
their own far different way as their 
luckier brother seeds that were our far 
ancestors evolved on the surface. Per- 
haps — 

God grant that never again will they 
find a way to the light. 



Next Month: 

The author of “Crater 17, Near Tycho,” surpasses it with 

FAMINE ON MARS 

by FRANK K. KELLY 

— in the September issue of Astounding Stories 




The humming sound died. The youngest of the Men of Science stepped 
forward, and Futrell sat upright, stood. He was alive again! 



"Warriors of Eternity 

A fascinating novelette of space 

by Carl Buchanan 

Illustrated by 

and Dr. Arch Carr E1Hot Dold 



T HERE was a low, humming 
sound in the lead-insulated labo- 
ratory, a sound that bespoke 
lagging power in the massive system of 
transformers, dynamos, and vacuum- 
tube oscillators that occupied a larger 
part of the space. 

Dr. Daniel Futrell, nude except for 
the drape of a crimson robe about his 
shoulders, sat at a small porcelain tabic 
in one corner of the room. His lean 
fingers scrawled precise writing upon 
the single sheet of paper before him. 
Behind him, and standing before a 
broad control panel fitted with rheostats, 
glassed instruments of delicate gradua- 
tions, half a dozen double-pole, double- 
throw switches, was another man. Dr. 
Wilks Hurd. 

Dr. Hurd was sheathed from head to 
foot in a suit of flexible lead, protection 
against the infinitely powerful and un- 
predictable waves of electrical energy to 
which Dr. Futrell meant to subject him- 
self. 

Futrell’s hand moved calmly along 
the paper: 

“ there is the imminent possibil- 

ity, my dear Margaret, that .1 shall not 
see you again. It is not that I do not 
love you, or that I love science and 
surgery more. It is only that some 
force over which I have no control com- 
pels me to this experiment. I cannot 
ask another man to risk his life on my 
word — upon my years of research. I 
believe — and hope — that I have made 
no mistake, have left nothing undone 
which I should have done. 



“Hurd has agreed to handle the con- 
trols for me. He even offered to take 
my place as the subject for the first 
real and scientific experiment in the 
realm of intelligence liberation. Intelli- 
gence liberation — a regular jawbreaker 
of a phrase for you, my dear, who have 
always stood somewhat in awe of things 
scientific. It means only that I believe. 
I have found the. perfect anaesthetic 
agent. Surgery has been woefully han- 
dicapped because of imperfect anaesthet- 
ics. Ether is a horrible tool to use upon 
humanity; even the better agents are 
infinitely worse than the thing I have 
discovered. 

“Think of it, Margaret — an anaes- 
thetic which will divorce the intelligence 
from the body! I have experimented 
with animals. My brave little dogs 
have recovered from operations without 
the slightest ill effects — no nausea, no 
nerve reaction, no damage to their 
hearts. I feel that the intelligences of 
those dogs have passed into infinity. I 
could feel the presence of their small 
minds — here in the laboratory. I could 
feel that they But you are not in- 

terested in this. 

“What you are interested in is that 
I am now going to follow my dogs — 
for a little while, I hope; yet I realize 
that it may be impossible for me to re- 
turn from this journey. I have pro- 
vided for you amply in case I do not 
return. Caspar & Reynolds hold insur- 
ance policies in your favor in the 
amount of a quarter of a million dol- 
lars.” 



76 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



Futrell lifted his head, his mouth 
firm. Everything was ready for the 
great adventure. Life was good — this 
physical life of the earth which was 
filled with so many wonderful and 
beautiful things. Margaret — the woman 
he wanted, some day, to marry ! - He 
thought of her beauty, her massed cop- 
perish hair, her splendid body — perfect 
as that miraculous superwoman of 
whom every man dreams. 

He set his steady hand once more 
upon the paper: 

“I love you. Believe, I beg of you, 
no matter what fate shall be mine in 
that infinity of world intelligence into 
which I shall be catapulted without, aid 
of chart or compass, that I love you. 

“Dan.” 

FUTRELL arose quickly, inserted 
the folded paper into an addressed en- 
velope, walked to a door and opened it. 
His Negro servant appeared there. Fu- 
trell gave him the letter, said: “Deliver 
this letter immediately to Miss Marga- 
ret Dulaney.” 

He closed the door, locked it, and 
walked toward Hurd. 

His friend’s voice was hoarse, dis- 
tant: “I ask you, Dan, to relieve me of 
the task you have foisted upon me.” 

Futrell shook his head, flung the crim- 
son robe from his shoulders, wheeled 
and placed himself upon the negative 
plate of what appeared to be a massive 
two-plate, dielectric condenser. At the 
head and foot of the plate were enor- 
mous high-frequency coils. Huge glass 
insulators supported the plate, tablelike, 
from the floor. The positive plate was 
suspended from the ceiling by four simi- 
lar insulators. 

Futrell adjusted himself precisely 
upon the naked plate. 

Hurd walked toward him. His voice, 
muffled beneath the cowllike headgear 
and mask, said: "Last instructions, 
Dan !” 

“Simple matter, Wilks,” Futrell said. 



“Every switch full on to begin. Then 
move the rheostat knob forward slowly, 
until the red indicator coincides with 
the white stationary indicator at the top 
of the central meter. When that hap- 
pens my body should be completely in- 
sensible. Allow me to remain in that 
state for an hour. I — I have some re- 
search to do in — in that other world.” 

A white smile played about Futrell’s 
thin mouth. 

Hurd’s shoulders rose and fell be- 
neath the flexible robe he wore. 

“You have only to be careful that the 
red arrow does not go beyond the white 
marker,” Futrell went on. “This posi- 
tion indicates the point at which, I have 
discovered, the wave length of the oscil- 
lator has reached its zenith. In other 
words, it is there that our wave trans- 
formation has moved up into that super- 
frequency beyond the highest in the 
world of color, and, I think, into that 
unknown world of thought oscillation. 
It is there, I believe, that my intelli- 
gence will merge with the waves of the 
field, that my body, lying here on this 
slab, will be bereft of its last tinge of 
sensation, that it will, therefore, need- 
ing no natural functions of any of its 
organs, be lifeless, all animation sus- 
pended, and remain so until your hand 
on that rheostat gradually, slowly, 
'brings back my liberated mind. 

“Remember ! Beyond that white 
point lies death for me. Once, during 
my preparatory experiment, before I 
had determined the extreme point of 
my wave frequency, I burned one of the 
dogs. There was a blinding flash as 
the charge in the positive plate above 
the dark arcked over to the negative 
plate. I have a profound respect for 
this body of mine. I should hate like 
the very devil to have a six-inch hole 
burned in it.” 

Hurd turned away, hesitated, then 
walked back to the plate, extended his 
hand. Futrell’s hand gripped hard. 
The dynamo’s retarded hum was a 



WARRIORS OF ETERNITY 



77 



throbbing background for the height- 
ened pounding of Futrell.’ s heart, for 
the scene of what might be his last mo- 
■ ment of physical reality. 

For just a moment apprehension 
drove like a sword into FutreH’s breast. 
Wliat lay out there in that infinity to 
which he had sent his dogs? They 
could not tell him. No man before had 
ever probed the invisible world of uni- 
versal thought — that vast reservoir 
which might hold all the death-liberated 
intelligences of every man who had once 
breathed the air of earth. And now, 
he, Daniel Futrell, was about to set out 
upon that journey the course and end 
of which must be, and perhaps always 
would be, a wild speculation. 

HURD was back at the switchboard 
now. Futrell laid his arms along his 
naked body, upon which pale light 
shifted. He breathed deeply, stared 
overhead at the gleaming surface of the 
positive plate. He would not need to 
watch Hurd’s actions at the. panel. The 
weird, ascending note of the dynamo, 
the shrill whine of the transformer cir- 
cuit, the penultimate glow of the vac- 
uum tubes as the wave crashed beyond 
the barrier of sound and entered upon 
the wide band of waves that control 
color — these things would tell him of 
the slow movement of the rheostat. 

Liberation of intelligence! The pos- 
sibilities were infinite. If indeed the 
minds of mankind were merely tapped 
lines upon that immense reservoir of 
intelligence which lay somewhere in in- 
finity, then a man with liberated intelli- 
gence, a man whose intellect had been 
stripped of all carnal needs and handi- 
caps, would find it possible, at will, to 
read, even enter into, the mind of any 
person on earth. 

Amazing hypothesis! Fearful in its 
unexplored possibilities. Would he, 
Futrell, dare to enter into the mind of 
Margaret Dulaney? Would he not be 
afraid of what he might find there? 



Futrell blinked his eyes as the whin- 
ing note of the combined electrical de- 
vices ascended slowly to a thin, cutting 
immensity of sound. 

The laboratory became a flickering, 
dancing cauldron of light, green flashes 
enveloped the body of Futrell, and into 
his brain there stole a sense of lassitude 
which was neither unpleasant nor laden 
— as in the case of anaesthesia by means 
of ether or hypnotic gases — with appre- 
hension. 

He was moving slowly into insensibil- 
ity, just as his dogs had gone to sleep, 
without pain and without fear — a brief 
instant of utter oblivion. 

He was not conscious of possession 
of body now. There was only a vague- 
ness, a small lifting of the spirits. His 
ego was an infinitely expanding bowl, 
its rim touching upon infinite recession 
of time, its chalice filled with unutter- 
able brilliance and sharpness of percep- 
tion. 

He knew there was an acute sense of 
bombardment against whatever faculty 
of existence remained with him. There 
was no longer any sound in the world 
into which he drifted. The sense of 
the bowllike character of his ethereal 
existenae passed away, and in its place 
came a sort of disembodied perception. 
He was pure mind, intellect stripped of 
all physical qualities. He was an im- 
perceptible antenna, attuned sensitively 
to convincing, yet not quite definite, 
radiations that impinged upon it. 

He quickly sensed that he had only 
to exert the slight effort of his will to 
adjust the receptiveness of that antenna. 
He thought: “I have now passed into 
that timeless state of mentality I have 
sought for through years of patient en- 
deavor. I have only to think where I 
want to be, think what I want to see — 
and I shall see. I have now no need 
of the physical attributes of vision, 
of eyes which depend upon erratic and 
fallible laws of the physical world. 
Mentality, in the pure state of which I 



78 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



have now attained, is not circumscribed 
by physical laws nor dependent upon 
them.” 

He was to remember for a long there- 
after, as a note of discord in that 
strange life which became his, that his 
mind returned, not to Margaret, but to 
the laboratory where Wilks Hurd, his 
body sheathed in the leaded robe, stood 
at the instrument panel, crouching like 
some monstrous denizen of an indescrib- 
ably quixotic land. 

The intelligence of Daniel Futrell re- 
turned to the place where the greater 
part of his energies and spirit upon 
earth had been expended — returned and 
looked down with spiritual eyes upon 
the laboratory. 

4 . 

THERE was no light now in that 
lead-sheathed room except that cast by 
a yellow globe at the ceiling. There 
was no sound except that given off by 
the spinning shaft of the dynamo. The 
hum of the oscillators had passed — be- 
cause their wave had transcended the 
oscillations upon which sound exists. 

And the intelligence of Daniel Fu- 
trell looked down, more acutely than the 
eyes of Daniel Futrell had ever gazed 
through the cylinders of microscopes, 
upon the nude body upon the plate. 

Hurd’s lead-gloved hand lay upon the 
rheostat. The red needle was motion- 
less, its" tip coinciding exactly with that 
of the white marker. 

The warmth of a smile passedi into 
the- disembodied intelligence of Futrell. 
Coiild he communicate with Hurd? He 
would try. 

“Hurd, I am supremely happy. A 
sense of well-being 1 never knew in life 
pervades this astral being I have be- 
come. Hurd, look at me. There is no 
necessity of keeping your hand on the 
rheostat.” 

But the man at the board stared in- 
tently at the nude body. He made no 
movement, gave no sign that his brain 



had heard the thought waves that ema- 
nated from the intelligence of his friend. 

Futrell knew then that his experiment 
of trying to reach Hurd had failed. 
And why should it not have failed? 
There could not be, Futrell decided, any 
communication from his mind to Hurd’s 
until Hurd’s intelligence was also liber- 
ated. 

But could Hurd’s mind be read by a 
person whose intelligence had flowed 
back into that immense reservoir of uni- 
versal thought? 

Without conscious volition Futrell en- 
tered into the mind of the man at the 
panel. And his sense of well-being was 
destroyed in the twinkling of an eye. 

“I have only to move this rheostat 
an inch. They’d never know it was 
murder. Margaret and I forever — and 
he will never know, because his body 
will be dead, and his mind will also die. 
She’s worth committing murder for — 
and she loves me ! A quarter of a mil- 
lion dollars!” 

A vast and overwhelming sense of 
horror possessed Futrell. Hurd meant 
to destroy that body upon the plate. 
He must be stopped. There seemed no 
way at hand to prevent the outrageous 
act which was gradually taking shape 
in Hurd’s brain, but there had to be. 

Futrell felt there must be some way 
for him to control the physical acts of 
a man whose mind was an open book. 
Apprehension fastened upon the finely 
sensitized intelligence of his nebulous, 
astral being. He knew that a thousand 
broadsides of thought-waves were snarl- 
ing the delicate machinery of his mind. 

What would happen if Hurd should 
really thrust that rheostat handle be- 
yond the point of the white marker? 
What would become of the intelligence 
which had passed from that lifeless 
body upon the plate — that body which 
was bereft of mind and of animation? 

MENTALITY never died. Sud- 
denly Futrell knew the answer. If 



WARRIORS OF ETERNITY 



79 



Hurd committed the murder that fumed 
darkly in his brain, the intelligence of 
Daniel Futrell would be doomed to an 
eternity of hopeless questing, to an in- 
finity of terror and of horrible torture. 
He would become an exile of infinity. 

“Hurd! Kill the impulse that has 
brought you to this mad decision. Rid 
your brain of this mad thought. You 
are my friend — you are Margaret’s 
friend.” 

Margaret’s friend — or Margaret’s 
lover ? 

“Margaret! Where are you?” 

And he saw her. She was sitting at 
a lawn table with two young men. 
Other young men near by were sending 
brassie shots off a practice tee. A Ne- 
gro walked toward her, handed a note 
to her. Margaret read it, frowned im- 
patiently, got nervously to her feet. 

Futrell’s intelligence hesitated, aghast 
at the possibility of an eternity of dou- 
bly horrible existence if he should find 
within Margaret’s mind an indictment, 
a mood, a corroboration of the hideous 
thought that had lain in Hurd’s brain. 
What if the two were lovers? What 
if Hurd knew that she would marry 
him in case something happened to the 
physical body of Daniel Futrell? 

From such a grim possibility Futrell 
quailed. And he retreated from the 
half -begun, almost unconscious, pene- 
tration of the girl’s mind. He flung 
himself back through time and space to 
that moment of indecision which was 
staying Hurd’s hand on the rheostat. 

“I am possessed now of limitless 
power, Hurd. If you do what your 
mind directs I will destroy you, and I 
will destroy her. If you make it im- 
possible for me ever to return to earth 
by destroying the receptacle of my in- 
telligence, I will create for you an even 
more horrible existence. I will make 
it impossible for you to enjoy the fruits 
of your crime. I will create for you 
an existence in which, for all eternity, 
the l>eauty of the woman you desire will 



be dangled, tantalizingly before your 
thirsting, eager body! I will ” 

Dark horror rose about Futrell like a 
monstrous cloud. The hand of Wilks 
Hurd had tightened upon the rheostat. 
The dark purpose of the man’s brain 
drove to the point of decision like a 
loosed and terrible engine. 

Futrell, despair covering him, appre- 
hension of the iciness of a dark world 
of eternity closed about him. He knew 
that he had no such power as that of 
which he had boasted. He had not even 
the power to convince Hurd of the hor- 
ror of the act he was about to commit. 
If there was only some way in which 
he could warn Hurd of the eternal ter- 
ror into which this released intelligence 
would be thrown if that rheostat was 
moved forward ! 

But Hurd could not know, or did not 
dare speculate upon it — and his hand 
moved. 

Light heavy as iron, luminous as the 
concentration of a hundred blazing suns, 
thundered across the plates of the huge 
condenser. 

And then there was no sound save 
the echoes of the blast, no light save the- 
complementary glow of the charge, 
hanging there in the gloom. The ter- 
rific crash had stopped the dynamo, had 
destroyed the delicate tubes upon which 
Futrell’s hands had worked so long, had 
thrown Hurd across the room with 
painful violence. He lay now in an 
inert heap beside the wall. 

And the white body of Daniel Fu- 
trell lay still upon the plate, its breast 
punctured by that tremendous bolt of 
static electricity. Even in that absolute 
darkness which settled upon the labora- 
tory, Futrell knew that his body had 
been seared, the vital organs destroyed. 
He knew, too, that his intelligence was 
doomed to eternity and to the unutter- 
able horrors of a disembodied infinity 
of wandering, soul and mind, bodyless, 
crying voicelessly through space and 
time — and through infinity! 



80 



ASTOUNDING STORIES >' 



II. 

WITHIN the indefinite space of time 
through which the mentality of Daniel 
Futrell passed thereafter, he steadfastly 
refused to make an attempt at entering 
the mind of Margaret Dulaney. His 
position of unprecedented horror, he 
felt, would become more acute if he 
should learn that within her mind there 
had always been a tendency to unfaith- 
fulness — and with Hurd! 

Time, meaning nothing to Futrell ex- 
cept an intangible substance through 
which he could shuttle at will, neither 
passed, remained stationary, nor retro- 
gressed. He realized that he would have 
some difficulty explaining to time-bound 
Earthlings that time had become now 
an involuted and motionless stream, 
without beginning, without end, with- 
out power to mark change except in so 
far as the intelligence he, Daniel Futrell, 
had become willed it to pause upon a 
static instant of Earth-time. 

Projected into the future by some un- 
conscious exertion of his will, he un- 
derstood that the body of Daniel Futrell 
lay now in a grave ; he knew that Wilks 
Hurd and Margaret Dulaney had mar- 
ried and were spending the money the 
woman had received from 1 the insurance 
company. 

It was then, because of the human 
quality of regret and profound grief 
that fastened upon him, that Futrell re- 
alized he had not yet become pure in- 
tellect. Still clinging to his disembod- 
ied intelligence were tattered, sorry 
shreds of human emotion. He nurtured 
an intense sense of futility, of wounded 
pride, of longing for revenge against 
his erstwhile friend and the unfaithful 
woman. 

There could be, he knew, no way for 
him to seek intellectual amusement* in 
the gigantic and colorful pageant of the 
world that lay before him. No scene 
upon earth could ever make him for- 
get for an instant that he was a pris- 
oner of space, a hostage to infinite time. 



His was a remarkable power — that of 
projecting himself into any scene of the 
universe, any period of time. But of 
what use was such power if he was to 
be chained forever to this sense of frus- 
tration, this desperate longing to avenge 
the destruction of his body? 

Darkness, emptiness, and a futile and 
horrific sense of bodilessness lay about 
him. He tried to think himself into a 
state of hypnosis, of complete annihila- 
tion of mind. But the effort proved 
useless. There was no escape. 

No Earth scientist save himself — not 
even Wilks Hurd — knew the processes 
of his destroyed intelligence liberator. 
Even if it could be restored to perfect 
functioning, how would it be possible 
for any one to call back to its body the 
intelligence of Daniel Futrell unless that 
body, now disintegrating in the earth, 
could be fashioned into physical real- 
ity? How indeed could the destroyed 
machine — once miraculously potent — re- 
verse the process of liberation ? 

That was a point he had never quite 
cleared up in his experiments, though 
he had believed it necessary only that 
the released intelligence will its return 
to the body. The door of escape from 
terror was, for him, forever closed. 

TOO OFTEN, quite against his will, 
he saw Margaret, not as in the flesh, 
but as that ethereal being his chivalrous, 
romantic brain had pictured her to be. 
A splendid woman, he had thought her, 
fit for the companionship of a god; 
beautiful, alive, but now lost forever, 
since, even if the miracle of returning 
to earth in some other body could be 
accomplished, her unfaithfulness was an 
impenetrable barrier. 

“Had I a body, two hands, just for 
a minute,” he cried in anguish, “I would 
spend that minute in killing her — and 
him!” 

His intelligence, his ethereal being, 
paused. For just a moment — and in 
his Earthbound intellect such divisions 

AST-5 



WARRIORS OF ETERNITY 



61 



of time still retained a quality of real- 
ity — he knew that he had become re- 
ceptive to the bombardment of a vague 
but intensely compelling message. 

Some one was trying to communicate 
with him. Some one, some intellect, 
was striving to contact him. Some- 
where, within the limitless borders of 
no-time and no-space, there was a be- 
ing who recognized his position, knew 
how to reach him. 

Some Earthly being? Some scientist 
who had been working on a similar di- 
version of the powers of thought 
waves ? 

No, he decided. This urgent message 
was coming from some unknown, some 
unrecognized sphere of life. 

There was something in the message, 
only vaguely revealed, that hinted of 
immaculately formed womanhood, of 
complete and unhampered spiritual 
union. It was a strange and compell- 
ing thought, and he strove with all the 
power of his will to gather in the mes- 
sage. 

“Earthling? Are you not free at 
last? Are you not glad to be free of 
Earth where the wretchedness of ava- 
rice exists, where greed transcends all 
nobility, and where women are unfaith- 
ful?” 

THE MESSAGE had come as if 
through the medium of a mental voice 
of a strange and disturbing beauty. 

Futrell sent back the answer: “I have 
no freedom. I writhe beneath the 
chains of eternity. But who are you?” 

“I am Mola, maid of Phenos.” 

Hunger for companionship propelled 
the almost-frantic request from Fu- 
trell’s intelligence: “Describe yourself 
to me so that I may see you !” 

“In terms of Earth,” the ethereal 
voice proclaimed, “I am rather taller 
than your Earthwomen. Almost as tall 
as you, and my hair is like Margaret’s. 
I can see you perfectly because we 

AST-6 



watched you for years and hoped that 
your experiment would be successful.” 
Slowly, nebulously, the figure of a 
beautiful woman materialized dimly be- 
fore Futrell. Her face was Margaret’s 
because, Futrell realized, she had so de- 
scribed herself. The body was nude ex- 
cept for a single width of some dark 
material falling from shoulders to an- 
kles. 

“Why did you hope that I would be 
successful ?” 

Futrell was conscious now of a 
vaguely perceived body of his own ; 
knew that his intellect had been given 
the use of the woman's eyes. 

“Because millions of light-years ago 
we of Phenos discovered the art of 
thought liberation. We wished to com- 
municate with you, because, other than 
Phenos, Earth is inhabited by the most 
intelligent of beings.” 

“And where is Phenos?” 

"It is a rather small planet, billions 
of light-years from Earth.” 

And as Mola, maid of Phenos, com- 
municated with Futrell, he saw the 
planet. There was upon it the reddish 
glow of celestial twilight. Within the 
starred heavens about it glowed two 
greenish moons, iridescent and globu- 
lous. 

“We have solved all the problems 
which still harass the peoples of Earth,” 
Mola went on. "We have no criminal 
class. Our science has attained that 
point where criminals are recognized 
almost always at birth. It was not al- 
ways so, however. Millions of Earth- 
years ago we did not recognize criminals 
until they had attained full stature.” 
“Your people are much like Earth- 
people ?” 

“Yes; our men and women are like 
Earthpeople. Our scientists have ex- 
perimented with many forms of life. 
We liked the forms of Earthpeople, 
because they possess the most perfect 
bodies of any form of humanity. We 
set about copying them, and I think 



82 



ASTOUNDINU STORIES 



we have somewhat improved upon the 
copy. Phenos now is inhabited by su- 
perEarthlings. You see me as an Earth- 
woman. In reality I am much like 
them.” 

“I should like very much to visit 
Phenos.” 

Futrell, as if effected by some swiftly 
executed incantation, found himself, 
without shock or surprise, hovering 
above a wide marble plaza. To right 
and left were immense trees with the 
spirelike qualities of poplars, but of 
such a deep green as to give the impres- 
sion of eternal spring. 

He moved along the plaza, noted that 
a very evident solar body somewhere 
above him cast no shadow upon the 
brilliantly checkered walks and gardens 
below him. He was wafted through an 
arch laid in a mosaic of varicolored and 
intricately carved stones. 

“This is the entrance to Garlith, capi- 
tal of the Phenosian Unity,” came the 
thought-wave of his guide. “You be- 
hold it with my eyes. If this is adven- 
ture for you, think what it means to 
us who have waited millions of light- 
years for some man of Earth to stum- 
ble upon the secret of thought libera- 
tion.” 

Ebony columns, delicately fluted, 
enormous monoliths of a material like 
silver, massive and perfectly carved 
statues of grotesque animals, gave the 
great room a quality of splendor and 
magnificence. From some indefinite 
source came the chill light of day. It 
seemed to pour up, sourceless and re- 
mote, from the outside, and to penetrate 
the thick walls, to lie without hint of 
shadow upon every corner of the 
vaulted room. 

“You may pass now,” came the men- 
tal direction of Mola, “into the audience 
chamber of the Men of Science, the 
governing board of the kingdom.” 

Massive doors of ebony swung back 
from Futrell’s approach. He found 
himself inside a great chamber, in the 



center of which was a circular table. 
About this table seven men were seated. 
Two of them were old and bearded, but 
five were young, bronzed, eager-eyed. 
The foreheads of these men were some- 
what higher than those of Earthmen, 
and their eyes betrayed perfect health 
and keen intelligence. 

THE SEVEN rose as one as Futrell 
was conscious of drawing near them. 

“To the planet Phenos, to the city of 
Garlith, to the chamber of the Men of 
Science,” said the man- in the center of 
the group, “you have passed as one 
thrice welcome. The moment for which 
we have waited through many incarna- 
tions has at last arrived. We would not 
have you consider your intelligence a 
prisoner here.- You may leave at any 
time you wish, although we do not be- 
lieve that you will do so. We hope that 
you will allow us to give you a body of 
your own choosing, and to instruct you 
considerably in the science of thought 
liberation as we have practiced it for 
millions of Earth-years. We watched 
with much interest your experiments 
upon Earth.” 

Futrell thought — and the thought was 
communicated directly to the Men of 
Science : “I shall consider it an honor 
to be so instructed. I place myself en- 
tirely in your hands.” 

His mental acquiescence to their 
wishes involved him in a series of nebu- 
lar movements of which he was only 
partially conscious. He found himself 
hovering within a massive room where 
blue twilight lay. Against the walls 
upon black titles, row upon row, were 
heavy glass caskets, and in each of them 
was the nude body of a man. 

The bodies were perfectly formed 
and, apparently, without life. Lax mus- 
cles lay beneath alabaster skins ; massive 
torsos were like magnificent Rodinesque 
statues. Most of the men were dark; 
all were perfect physical specimens. 



WARRIORS OF ETERNITY 



83 



Futrell’s unasked question was an- 
swered at once. 

"These are the bodies of men who 
reached their full stature before we 
were able to discover in their intellects 
the germs of criminality. Upon Earth 
they would have been broken with hard 
labor in penal institutions, or destroyed 
by electrocution. But in Phenos we 
neither destroy the bodies of our crimi- 
nals, nor risk the chance of their com- 
mitting further crimes.” 

“What has happened to them?” 

"Their intelligences have been liber- 
ated, their bodies preserved in a state 
of suspended animation. This chamber 
is one of hundreds of animatoriums 
upon Phenos. When the older men of 
Phenos desire new bodies, we have only 
to transfer their intelligences into one 
of these bodies. There is no death on 
the planet.” 

"And what has become of the intel- 
ligences of these bodies?” 

“They have been banished to infin- 
ity.” 

Futrell’s intelligence recoiled before 
this amazing disclosure. It was the per- 
fect plan for dealing with criminality. 
Somewhere in infinity, in some track- 
less and vast Siberia, the intellects of 
millions of former inhabitants of Phe- 
nos lived-— and feared. 

"How is it possible for you to en- 
force this edict? My own body on 
Earth was destroyed. Had it not been, 

I feel sure that I could have willed my 
return to it.” 

"You have struck upon the problem 
upon which our greatest men of science 
have been working for eons. Each of 
these banished intelligences, „oi course, 
has a slightly different wave length. 
We find it necessary to maintain, at , 
great expense and use of electrical en- 
ergy, a vast system of intelligence bar- 
riers attuned in multiple waves, one for 
each of the released intellects, in order 
to prevent these banished minds from 
returning to the bodies. 



“Only once, in all the millions of 
years we have worked with these power- 
ful engines, have we failed. One of 
the guardians at the animatorium at 
Mardi came into the chamber one morn- 
ing to find that one of the bodies, hor- 
ribly bruised and lacerated in its at- 
tempt to escape from the casket, was 
dead.” 

Perplexity possessed Futrell’s intelli- 
gence. 

The thought of his guide continued: 
“The returned intelligence, having 
evaded or slipped through the waves of 
our intelligence barrier, converted the 
suspended body into a living man. The 
man had struggled vainly to release 
himself from the glass casket. In the 
end he died of asphyxiation. We do 
not want a recurrence of that horrible 
incident.” 

“And you think it is possible for me 
to enter one of these bodies?” 

"The one of your choosing.” 

A body! The chance, perhaps, to 
return to Earth, to use the body of a 
Phenosian in his avowed intention of 
revenging himself upon Margaret and 
Hurd who had condemned him to eter- 
nal exile in the astral world. Yes — a 
thousand times, yes ! He would sub- 
mit himself at once to the opportunity. 
Surely these Phenosians — these men of 
superscience — could devise some method 
of projecting his newly acquired ma- 
terial being back to Earth. 

"We must warn you that the experi- 
ment of giving you a new body may 
not be successful. We have never had 
the opportunity of trying to link the 
intelligence of an Earthman to the body 
of Phenosian.” 

“In what manner might the experi- 
ment fail?” 

“Your intelligence might, if it refuses 
to accept the new cloak of physical re- 
ality, become distorted, deranged be- 
yond repair. In short, you might find 
your intelligence doomed to an eternity 
of madness.” 



84 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



THE SHABBY remnants of Fu- 
trell’s Earth-spirit contemplated the risk 
he must assume. What horrible dreams, 
timeless and diabolic, might not haunt 
his crippled intelligence if the experi- 
ment should fail! There clung to him, 
like the dirty rags of a diseased beg- 
gar, the memory of that horrible mo- 
ment when he had come to the realiza- 
tion of an eternity of hopeless wander- 
ing. How much more horrible would it 
be if his intelligence should be forced 
to fly eternally before the tortuous and 
insane urgencies of a distorted ego ! 

Margaret and Hurd ! Fury took pos- 
session of him as he thought of their 
enjoying the fruits of their despicable 
crime. 

“I am ready for the experiment. 
Give me a body.” 

“We applaud your decision, but re- 
gret the motive that prompted it. You 
should experience no difficulty in find- 
ing here a body much like your own 
upon Earth. Will this one do?” 

Through the eyes of his guide Futreli 
looked down upon a body in a casket. 
And for a stabbing moment he thought 
he must be looking down once more 
upon his body as it had lam upon the 
negative plate of the condenser, in that 
moment just before Hurd’s hand had 
destroyed it. 

“How shall I be able to communicate 
with you after I receive this body? I 
know nothing of your language.” 

“You need no knowledge of our lan- 
guage because our language is used only 
for recording thoughts upon electrical 
sound disks. We speak with each other 
telepath ically. You will be able to 

speak in the same manner without the 
slightest difficulty.” 

“Then — I choose this body!” 

III. 

DARKNESS enveloped Futreli. He 
knew that the intelligence and the eyes 
of his guide had passed beyond his 
grasp. Once more that terrible feeling 



of helplessness which he had first known 
upon understanding the doom which had 
been laid upon him stole over his senses. 

He stirred, opened his eyes. He was 
lying on a circular dais of some dark, 
gleaming metal. About him was the 
muted sound of perfect synchronization. 
Beside the dais, clad in some fine ma- 
terial he had never seen before, were 
the Seven Men of Science. Upon their 
heads were coronets, evidently fash- 
ioned from single gems of blazing 
beauty. 

The humming sound died in a note 
of final protest. The youngest of the 
Men of Science stepped forward, ad- 
justed a 'hand beneath Futrell’s head, 
slowly lifted it. Futreli spread his 
palms upon the gleaming surface of the 
circular plate, exerted the mounting en- 
ergy of his arms. He sat upright, 
swung nude legs over the edge of the 
dais. 

Wonder thronged into his brain. He 
was alive again. He possessed a body. 

He stood erect, flexing his arms. His 
spirit became intoxicated with the rug- 
ged pound of blood in his veins. He 
was, once more, a man. 

Two of the Men of Science stepped 
majestically forward, bearing in their 
hands sandals and a robe of scarlet. 
The sandals were adjusted to Futreli 's 
feet, the robe fastened with a jewel 
about his shoulders, Grecian fashion. A 
third man stepped forward and placed 
upon Futrell’s head a coronet which 
flamed with the crimson beauty of a 
huge ruby. 

“You are now the eighth member of 
our governing board. Come with us!” 

Futreli spoke with them easily by ut- 
tering the words of his own language. 
Their voices came also to him, not as 
thoughts as heretofore, but as sounds, 
and in the syllables of his native tongue. 

They led him through an arched win- 
dow and out upon a platform. Before 
his eyes was a vast square, thronged 
with people. The eldest of the Men of 



WARRIORS OF ETERNITY 



85 



Science talked to them, told them of the 
successful experiment. When he fin- 
ished, a vast and rolling shout came up 
from the square. 

Futrell lifted his hand and spoke to 
the throng — of Earth and of his awk- 
ward experiments. His small speech 
was greeted with applause and with 
friendliness. He was led back into the 
room of the experiment. 

They asked him: “Is there anything 
now that you especially wish?” 

Futrell’s hands gathered the fold of 
the robe in a quick impulsive gesture of 
determination. His head lifted in de- 
fiance and in passion. “I wish, O Men 
of Science, to be returned to Earth!” 
Silence greeted his ringing statement. 
The faces of the Men of Science dark- 
ened. 

The eldest of them, Gurgan by name, 
said: “We anticipated that demand, but 
we must inform you that your wish is 
impossible of fulfillment.” 

DARK FURY roared like flame 
through Futrell’s brain. He stepped 
forward, his fists clenched, his throat 
charged with passion. “Nothing is im- 
possible with you!” he cried. “Why 
did you suppose I wanted a body ? Why 
did you suppose I submitted myself to 
the experiment, thus chancing the hor- 
ror of madness in eternity?” 

“We knew why you wanted a body; 
but we hope to dissuade you from your 
determination to murder.” 

“They murdered !” Futrell cried. 
“They sentenced my soul to an eternity 
of hopelessness. You can send me back 
to Earth — and you shall!” 

“Two feats,” said Gurgan, patiently, 
as if explaining a simple thing to a 
child, “we have not accomplished. We 
have not been able to send a physical 
body to Earth, a billion light-years from 
us; and we have not been able to de- 
stroy the intelligence of the Warriors 
of Eternity.” 

The hint of deadly menace in the last 



words of Gurgan’s speech broke 
through Futrell’s anger, his frustration. 
Warriors of Eternity? What could 
they be? 

The Men of Science turned. A door 
was opening. Futrell moved about in 
his tracks. 

The ebony door moved back noise- 
lessly upon itself, and a curtain of such 
rich texture as to seem animate parted 
in languid, liquid folds. 

A woman stepped into view. 

Her limbs were nude, save for a nar- 
row strip of cloth, like fine velvet, which 
depended from a jeweled clasp at her 
shoulder and fell softly down her body. 
Her head was crowned with a mass of 
copperish hair that clung like a helmet 
to her temples and fell away like deli- 
cate wings beneath the rounded ears. 
Her forehead was high and white; her 
eyes were dark. She moved forward 
with a grace that was at once regal and 
ethereal, her jeweled sandals touching 
at each step the single width of cloth 
that was her entire costume. 

Her eyes found Futrell, touched his 
gaze, held steadily upon it. 

“We need you on Phenos, O Earth- 
man!” she cried. “We need you in our 
fight against the Warriors of Eternity!” 

Amazement flooded Futrell’s brain. 
The voice was that of Mola, and she 
was not at all like Margaret. He stared, 
his tongue rooted in silence, shocked 
into boorish stupidity by the goddess- 
like beauty of this woman and by the 
realization that he had found Mola 
again. 

“You — you are,” he stammered, "the 
most — the most beautiful thing my eyes 
have ever beheld.” 

“There is not time,” cried Mola, her 
brow darkening, her eyes ravaged by 
some terrible thought, “to speak of love- 
liness, nor of what your Earthbound 
eyes have seen.” 

The Men of Science stood now with 
bowed heads. 

Futrell sensed the presence of some 



86 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



imminent disaster. “These Warriors of 
Eternity? Who are they?” he asked. 

“They are the intelligences of our 
banished criminals. Through millions of 
years they have become very clever. 
They have possessed themselves of the 
moon, Esta, have subjugated the primi- 
tive inhabitants of the Phenosian satel- 
lite, have bent them to their will. And 
now they have threatened the existence 
of Phenos — of our planetary system.” 

MOLA, Gurgan, the eldest scientist, 
and others among them, explained to- 
Futrell the situation in regard to the 
subjugation of the creatures of Esta by 
the liberated intelligences of the Pheno- 
sian criminals. 

The Warriors had created a dead 
field in a certain quadrant of the con- 
stellation of Phenos. In this dark 
quadrant the barrier waves of the Phe- 
nosian scientists were handicapped. No 
Phenosian dared to project his intelli- 
gence into that dangerous quarter of the 
heavens lest he be totally destroyed. 
Many had ventured into the field, had 
contrived to remain alive for a few min- 
utes of Phenos-time, but had at last 
been destroyed. 

The Warriors, using the half men of 
Esta, had built space ships, were per- 
fecting thought-transference machines, 
had even gone far along the road to per- 
fection of an engine on Esta which 
would, by making use of the principle 
of synchronization of material vibra- 
tions, eventually destroy the glass cask- 
ets in which their abandoned bodies 
were held prisoners. When they ob- 
tained the full use of this machine they 
would have only to project their intel- 
lects back to Phenos, reenter their bod- 
ies and usurp the planet from which 
they had been ejected. 

The scientists of Phenos had not been 
remiss in meeting these efforts of the 
Warriors to regain their lost estate. 
They had carefully retained the bruised 
and maimed body of the single Warrior 



who had returned to his glass prison — 
this as a warning to other Warriors of 
their fate should they attempt to return. 

“The most brilliant of our scientists 
have often become criminals,” Gurgan 
said. “These men, banished from Phe- 
nos, are the brains behind the gigantic 
preparations of the Warriors. The 
great conflict is not far distant. We 
are matching their preparations item by 
item. Our own space ships are ready 
for the interstellar war.” 

“We are prepared,” echoed one of 
the younger scientists, “for the day!” 

Futrell, chastened by the exposition 
of the precarious situation, declared sol- 
emnly: “I realize that I am only a neo- 
phyte, but I wish to learn so that I may 
take my place beside the scientists of 
Phenos against the Warriors of Eter- 
nity.” 

THUS it was that Daniel Futrell 
went into the laboratories of Phenos 
and was initiated into the vast realm 
of Phenosian science. He learned how 
to operate the intelligence barrier, came 
to know the secret of the massed banks 
of transformers in the great under- 
ground chambers beneath Garlith, 
Mardi, and other great cities of the 
planet. He learned to operate the deli- 
cate mechanisms which enabled the Phe- 
nosians to read the thoughts of the 
Warriors. 

And the day approached. Giant flo- 
tillas of space ships of various types 
were assembled throughout the land ; 
vast power plants for emergency use 
were erected; additional thought-detec- 
tors, shielded by an impenetrable metal, 
were built ; the guard of the animatori- 
ums was doubled, trebled ; every precau- 
tion was taken to prevent the Warriors 
from entering their bodies. 

And a day came upon which a silent 
watcher of the great convex mirror in 
the laboratory at Mardi discovered that 
the Warriors had perfected their ma- 
chine for the destruction of the caskets. 



WARRIORS OF ETERNITY 



87 



The word flashed instantaneously, by 
thought-waves, into every workshop, 
factory, and laboratory in the land. 

Engineers hurried: their work on the 
space ships still in the cradles. Techni- 
cians adjusted the delicate instruments 
which would serve as listening posts 
during the coming struggle. Arrange- 
ments were made for the accurate re- 
cording upon disks and reels of every 
movement in that great battle which 
would rage for thousands of years of 
Earth-time, and range over millions of 
miles of interstellar space. 

Early one purple evening of the 
eighty-hour day of Hurthe a glass 
casket in the Mardi animatorium sud- 
denly dissolved into mist. 

The body which had been imprisoned 
there sprang to life at the urgent com- 
mand of the Warrior intelligence which 
had entered it. Guards cut him down 
with glittering swords, and barrier op- 
erators thrust greater power into their 
apparatus, delayed the return of other 
Warriors. 

A council was called at Garlith. Fu- 
trell sat with the Men of Science. 

“We have averted tragedy for the 
moment,” Gurgan proclaimed. “But 
before the asteroids of Esta shall cross 
the next lunar meridian we must send 
some one into the dark quadrant to ob- 
serve operations there. Every precau- 
tion will be taken to see that this lone 
intelligence receives protection, but we 
cannot guarantee it. I ask for volun- 
teers.” 

There was a long period of silence, 
and Futrell knew why. The others 
were aware that he had decided long ago 
that he would, volunteer. Futrell rose 
to his feet. He had not seen Mola for 
a long time. He had heard that she was 
busy directing the operation of the spe- 
cial intelligence liberator which would 
propel some daring voyageur into the 
dangerous quadrant controlled by the 
Warriors. The thought that she might 
be thinking of volunteering for the mis- 



sion had been a factor in his own deci- 
sion. 

“I have the honor to offer my services 
in this venture,” he declared. “But upon 
one condition.” 

“That condition?” Gurgan asked. 

“That some method be devised as 
speedily as possible for the complete 
annihilation of those millions of released 
intelligences.” 

Gurgan nodded gravely. “We are 
working on that, now,” he replied. “But 
first we must destroy Esta so that the 
Warriors will have no primitive race 
near by upon which to foist their intel- 
ligences and again threaten Phenos.” 

“I am not thinking, as you know, of 
Phenos,” Futrell said grimly. “I think 
only of the horrible fate to which the 
Warriors have been assigned. You, 
who have never known the utter terror 
that possesses the intelligence of a man 
doomed to an eternity of wandering, 
cannot understand why my sympathies 
are aroused. It would be an act of 
mercy to destroy the Warriors.” 

“Two hundred of our scientists,” 
Gurgan returned, “are at work upon 
that project. They seek, by means of 
a new energy wave, to destroy the 
thought-waves of the Warriors. They 
will test the new machine as soon as it 
is completed.” 

“Then I offer my services,” Futrell 
said, “without condition, as observer in 
the quadrant of Esta.” 

“The quadrant has belonged to the 
Warriors for a million years,” Gurgan 
warned Futrell. “We are not at all 
sure that we can protect you.” 

Futrell smiled. “To say that I am 
not afraid would: be untrue,” he said. 
“I am afraid, but I have brought some- 
thing with me from Earth, something 
from my Earth life, which I think will 
serve as a shield against the Warriors.” 

IV. 

IN THE THIRD phase of the eve- 
ning of the day of Krithe the^Warriors 



88 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



struck. Futrell was ready for his ad- 
venture. His body, clothed in a yellow 
robe, lay upon the daislike plate in the 
laboratory at Garlith. 

At the space-ship field outside the city 
five hundred projectilelike machines 
were ready for the thought-wave signal 
which would send them hurtling toward 
Esta at a speed which, except for the 
powerful insulation of their sheathed 
sides, would destroy them in the twin- 
kling of an eye — not from friction heat, 
but from the astounding changes which 
take place to matter subjected to tre- 
mendous speed. 

At a hundred laboratories on Phenos, 
keen-eyed scientists sat at desks, prob- 
ing with their brains into the limitless 
space of the battlefield upon which the 
Warriors would meet the men of Phe- 
nos. But these scientists could not 
know what might take place within the 
quadrant which was the special property 
of the Estans. It was there that the 
battle must reach its greatest intensity, 
and it was there that Daniel Futrell’s in- 
telligence would be released, the target 
of a hundred thousand energy-waves 
from the powerful stations the Warriors 
had erected upon Esta. 

Futrell heard the murmurous whine 
of dynamos. The room was deluged 
with brilliant colors, pouring up the 
scale, diminishing into a yellow phos- 
phorescence as the waves changed from 
color to the infinitely small waves which 
control the liberation of thought. 

Would the device he had brought 
with him from Earth be sufficient to 
shield him from the bombardment of 
the Warriors’ thought-destruction ma- 
chines? Would he be able to report 
the arrangement of the space ships the 
Warriors would assemble in the dark 
quadrant, so that Gurgan, in his cen- 
tral control room high in a metal tower 
at Garlith, would be able to deploy his 
forces in the most efficient manner? 

Everything depended upon his suc- 



cess, Futrell decided. He could not, 
must not, fail. 

He remembered that his own work 
on an engine which might propel his 
Phenosian body to Earth where he could 
carry out his plan of revenge upon 
Hurd was almost complete. He must 
return to Phenos to finish the work. 
He must return to Earth. 

He wondered idly, just as his con- 
sciousness, in slow transmutation, be- 
came a temporary part of the wave 
which would project him into space, 
why Mola was not at the controls. But 
as his intelligence slipped, shuttling, 
into interplanetary space alongside the 
thin wall which separated the dangerous 
area of the Warrior’s dead quadrant 
from space which was safe, he forgot 
Mola, forgot Earth itself. 

FROM his position now, his mind 
encompassed all the massed and trig- 
gered armament of the Phenosians, all 
the wide panorama of the battlefield, ex- 
cept that which lay within the dark 
quadrant. Doubt assailed him. Why 
should he risk maiming his intelligence 
forever? 

But doubt and fear passed as the 
spirit of the great adventure rose from 
the gigantic plan about him and became 
like a hard flame in his mind. He, and 
he alone, would be privileged to wit- 
ness the entire battle front, the complete 
picture of the conflict. He, and he 
alone, could guide the Phenosian space 
ships into the dead quadrant with the 
accuracy necessary for their effective- 
ness against the hidden flotillas of the 
Warriors and for their quick return be- 
fore their operators should’ come under 
the deadly bombardment of the intelli- 
gence destroyers on Esta. 

Futrell had known that it would be 
impossible to show the operators of the 
space ships how to use the device he 
had brought with him from Earth. 
Only an Earthman, he believed, could 
use it. 



WARRIORS OF ETERNITY 



89 



A message, soundless but urgent, 
charged through Futrell’s intelligence: 
The signal from Gurgan’s metal tower 
at Garlith — the signal that announced 
the beginning of the conflict. 

Futrell knew that there was a con- 
certed catapulting of space ships from 
Esta. He knew that Phenosian ships 
were careening madly through the ether ; 
and he knew also that inside the dark 
quadrant thousands of Estan space 
ships and thought-controlled projectiles 
were waiting. 

Futrell projected himself beyond the 
diaphanous wall, slipped into the dark 
quadrant. At first he felt no change 
in the ethereal environment of a normal 
released intelligence. He was able now 
to see the positions of the waiting ships 
and projectiles. He knew that the test 
of the device upon which success hinged 
would come when Warrior scientists de- 
tected the presence of an alien intelli- 
gence inside the quadrant. 

Gurgan’s thoughts came across time 
and space to Futrell: “Calling Futrell. 
Make ready.” 

Futrell quickly placed himself in a 
receptive condition. 

From the tower at Garlith : “What 
do you find?” 

From Futrell, anxious, now that he 
was beginning to feel the effects of the 
strange waves from the Estan intelli- 
gence destroyers : “A giant flotilla of 
flat-shaped, unmanned projectiles, con- 
trolled by a laboratory at 36-47-17, 
north, 89-14-24, west, on Esta.” 

Futrell knew that Gurgan had 
touched a control, knew that half a 
thousand Phenosian ships, manned by 
operators who knew they must die, had 
obeyed that signal and were falling at 
twice the speed of the fastest comet to- 
ward that control laboratory on Esta. 

The giant laboratory was destroyed. 
Five hundred Phenosian operators were 
smashed into atoms, along with their 
ships. And the flotilla of projectiles in- 
side the quadrant were now hurtling, 



unguided, through millions of miles of 
interstellar space. 

The first skirmish of the battle was 
a victory for Phenos. 

Futrell realized that for him the criti- 
cal moment had arrived. A vague feel- 
ing settled upon him. A cosmic fog 
seemed to creep in upon him, numbing 
his faculties of thought. 

He willed himself to think: “I am a 
fool ! I should have remained upon 
Phenos to continue my work on the 
machine which may some day send me 
to Earth in the shape of Daniel Futrell 
so that I may wreak vengeance upon 
those two who destroyed me. My hate 
for them is more colossal than this con- 
flict. I would bruise her face, tear at 
her throat with my fingers, at his cow- 
ardly heart with my hands. I want to 
see them suffer, languish in terror — 
die.” 

SLOWLY, clearness of perception 
returned to him. He cast about for in- 
formation to send to Gurgan on Phenos. 

“Squadron of Jal-type space ships de- 
stroyed in the third zone of the quad- 
rant by Estan globes. Send: reenforce- 
ments there before the Estans can re- 
organize.” 

He knew that the report was received, 
saw Jal-type ships, sleek as mammoth 
seals, slide into the quadrant with the 
speed of thought itself, strike a power- 
ful blow, and return safely to the shore 
of the dark quadrant before disaster 
from the intelligence destroyers could 
reach them. 

Down upon Phenos — and action there 
was visible to Futrell when he willed 
that it should be — thousands of glass 
caskets in the Mardi animatorium 
melted away, and thousands of Warri- 
ors, assuming their old bodies, poured, 
hordelike, down the corridior, only to be 
smashed in the cross fire of Phenosian 
ray-gunners operating from the gallery. 

Once again, over the sense of Fu- 
trell’s intelligence, came that desperate 



90 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



feeling of slow disintegration. The 
Warriors had learned that upon Fu- 
trell’s reports were based the most tell- 
ing blows of their enemies. And they 
were redoubling their efforts to cripple 
the mind that hovered within the dark 
quadrant. 

“Hate her?” Futrell thought, disre- 
garding the interstellar clash that went 
on in gigantic skirmishes. “I hate her 
so much that my soul should be con- 
sumed in that hatred as a drop of wa- 
ter might be consumed in the white-hot 
cauldron of molten steel. It must be, 
that in whatever delight sihe now ex- 
ists — delight stolen from the man she 
declared she loved — she feels this hatred 
burning across space and time. And 
Hurd— he who consorts with her who 
should have been mine! What horri- 
ble torture should I devise for him 
which will be like that into which he 
cast his friend?” 

Once more Futrell was conscious of 
the slow retreat, the slow diminishing, 
of the intensity of the thought-destroy- 
ing waves hurled against him by the 
Estans. He was conscious, too, of some 
intimately lovely intelligence trying to 
communicate with him. 

He forgot Esta, the Warriors, the 
strange planet in whose cause he fought. 

“Who speaks to me?” 

“It is I, Mola!” 

“You are not here in the quadrant!” 

“I am here in the quadrant beside 
you. It is necessary that I remain here, 
so that there will be a special intelligence, 
other than your own, to direct the oper- 
ations of the special liberator which 
sent you here.” 

“You lie, Mola! And you recognize 
the danger of being here. Why have 
you come?” 

Silence. Then : “Do you hate her so 
much?’* 

“Mola! You should not have come 
here! Can you not feel that you are be- 
ing bombarded with the powerful 
tiiought-destroying waves from Esta? 



Do you not know that you cannot hope 
to escape them? I command you to 
leave the quadrant, at once.” 

“I wish there was some person whom 
I hated well. It must be a splendid way 
of spending time. You seem to derive 
so much pleasure from hating this 
Earthwoman called Margaret.” 

“You don’t understand, Mola. I must 
hate her — and you must hate her. Can 
you not understand what they have done 
to me? Can you not understand what, 
torment was mine when I knew that I 
could not return to Earth ?” 

“Is Earth so much more beautiful 
than Phenos?" 

“No. You misconstrue my words 
when ” 

“But not your thoughts. I detect 
that you are concealing something from 
me.” 

“Mola, if you will not leave the 
quadrant, you must think hard of hate. 
You must fill your brain with burning 
hatred — of the kind that lacerates the 
brain, that slashes it as with glass-sharp 
knives, that burns it as with searing 
flame. Have you never known hatred 
— jealousy?” 

“I have known jealousy — recently.” 

“Then think upon that jealousy. 
Think upon it every moment your in- 
telligence is not needed by the opera- 
tors on Phenos. Do you understand 
me?” 

“No; I do not understand you; but 
I will do as you say. I will let my 
thoughts walk with yours ; and they will 
be hateful, hot as with fire, and sharp 
as little glass knives.” 

TORN between the two points of 
his dilemma, Futrell shuttled his intelli- 
gence back and forth between observa- 
tion of the waning battle between the 
Warriors and the Phenosians and 'his 
desperate struggle to save himself and 
Mola. 

Time passed, and the shafts of the 
Estans were broken at last. The energy 



WARRIORS OF ETERNITY 



91 



that surged into the dark quadrant from 
the thought-destroyers of the Estans 
was not strong enough to break down 
the intelligence of the man from Earth, 
because he had found an armor much 
stronger than any of the mechanical and 
scientific genius of the Warriors had 
contrived. So long had they and the 
Phenosians worked with the abstract 
science of thought that they had forgot- 
ten that the human side of intelligence 
might prevail against all the mechanized 
forces they could devise. 

The space ships of the Estans were 
destroyed. The moon Esta blazed, 
upon the purple evening of the fourth 
Harthe, high with destructive flame. 
Its center, racked with darts of power- 
ful rays from a supership manned by 
a thousand Phenosians, exploded, and 
Esta was no more. 

A call went forth from Phenos. It 
was clarion and tinged, with the fine 
note of victory : “All liberated intelli- 
gences of Phenosians should return at 
once. As soon as we are assured that 
all have returned safely we intend to 
release the waves which will destroy 
the Warriors and all liberated intelli- 
gences.” 

“Mola!” 

From Futrell’s intelligence the word 
went out, bright as her beauty, challeng- 
ing as her own dark eyes. Where was 
she? He had not heard from her for 
many hours, perhaps many years — for 
he had little sense of the passage of 
time during the gigantic conflict. Had 
she slipped away from the guidance of 
his own intelligence and into the horror 
of oblivion ? 

He communicated with Gurgan. No ; 
Mola had not returned. Her body, clad 
in an orchid robe, her gentle breast ris- 
ing and falling beneath the dancing cur- 
tain of the energy waves of the station 
at Garlith, lay upon the dais plate in 
the room adjoining that in whioh Fu- 
trell’s own body lay. Operators at the 



controls could no longer communicate 
with her. 

Anxiety, like a driven sword, entered 
the intelligence of Futrell. 

“Get in touch with Mola if possible,” 
Gurgan directed. “Haste is urgent lest 
we fail in destroying the Warriors. Un- 
less she has returned within a few min- 
utes we must go on without her.’ 

“I demand that you wait for her re- 
turn !” Futrell cried. “I retract my de- 
mand for the destruction of the War- 
riors.” 

He anxiously awaited the reply of 
Gurgan, suddenly aware that nothing 
in all the universe was of any impor- 
tance except the safety of Mola. 

Grimly final was the terse message 
that Gurgan sent: “We cannot thrust 
aside the chance of safety for Phenos 
for the life of one maiden.” 

A SENSE of unutterable loss re- 
placed all the emotional content of Fu- 
trell’s intelligence. Mola would be de- 
stroyed. Perhaps she had already been 
destroyed, or her intellect condemned to 
an eternity of maniacal wandering 
through space and time. 

He must find her. His frantic call 
went out through all space and all time, 
resounding desperately against the re- 
ceding shores of infinity. And no an- 
swer from the maid Mola reached him. 
There was only soundless vacuity on 
every hand, only a cavernous void into 
which the maid had disappeared. 

Suddenly he willed himself back upon 
Phenos. 

He struggled erect upon the dais, 
charged to his feet while distracted op- 
erators of the machine which had cata- 
pulted him into space thronged after him. 
He pushed his way through a door, his 
throat tight with fear, his breast aching 
with apprehension. 

He brushed aside half a dozen at- 
tendants about the dais plate upon which 
the body of Mola lay as one asleep, her 
eyes shaded by her lids and. their dark 



92 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



lashes. Her alabaster breast moved 
tremulously. 

Futrell grasped her hand, and his eyes 
drank deep of her beauty. Madly he 
cried : “There is a chance that the wave 
length of this woman and mine are the 
same. She found me when I was a 
wanderer, and I must find her now. I 
shall lie here beside her until the wave 
that propelled her into time shall be- 
come operative upon my own intelli- 
gence. In that way I may find, myself 
beside her.” 

They said to him : “There was never 
record of two intelligences with identi- 
cal waves. You know what it will mean 
to you if it shall happen that this ma- 
chine is not casting your wave.” 

Futrell’s mouth was a white, taut 
line. He nodded. “I know,” he said. 
“I know that I shall be destroyed, or 
that I shall become quite mad — out 
there. But I do not care. Nothing can 
be worse than not knowing what has 
happened to her.” 

“We refuse to allow ” 

But they retreated from the tower- 
ing rage of his body, his eyes. 

They obeyed him. What seemed like 
ages of time passed before Futrell felt 
the action of the wave against his mind. 
What lay ahead of him now? The next 
few seconds would mean everything to 
him — and to the maid of Phenos. He 
knew that his intelligence was vaulting 
forward through strange sensations, and 
then 

“IS THERE so much hatred in your 
heart that it can find no room for 
Mola?” 

" Mola!" 

He had found her. She was safe. 
The antidote he had given her had 
proved effective against the now source- 
less and impotent destroyer wave of the 
Warriors. 

“Mola, your spirit came to me 
through space and time and dragged me 



back again to life. Now return to 
Phenos with me.” 

Exultation like a white cool flame 
burned in his soul. 

Silence ; then he said to her : “Mola, 
I do not liate that Earthman, nor the 
woman. Love of you has cleaned my 
heart of hatred, of jealousy, of wounded 
pride.” 

“Why, then,” she asked, “did you cry 
out your hatred? Why did you want 
me to think upon hatred and jealousy? 
You almost convinced me that I knew 
what hate was, when all I knew was 
that I loved, you — that I had to be with 
you, out here.” 

“Mola, I was fighting the Estan de- 
stroyer waves in the only way possible. 
It was necessary that I fill my mind and 
yours with something hard and brutal, 
so that the waves could not enter them. 
Phenosians have forgotten that intel- 
lect itself is a powerful human quality, 
is dependent upon no concocted sys- 
tem of waves. I felt that if I could fill 
your mind with hatred, the dark quad- 
rant waves would have no effect upon 
you. And I succeeded. You are safe.” 

Once more, from Gurgan’s tower, 
came the warning that soon powerful 
waves of the new Phenosian intelligence 
destroyer would penetrate all space and 
time. 

And the intelligences of Mola and 
the Earthman returned to Phenos, and 
their bodies rose from the dais. They 
walked, in their perfect bodies, into a 
corridor, stood together there for a mo- 
ment in perfect and wordless commun- 
ion. Futrell swept her into his arms. 

“And you do not want to return to 
Earth — to that Earthwoman?” she 
asked. 

Futrell smiled, walked to a door, 
called a name. A young scientist, his 
face flushed with victory, approached 
Futrell. 

“Sanda, do you know where my labo- 
ratory is?” 



WARRIORS OF ETERNITY 



93 



“I do,” replied Sanda. 

‘‘Go there,” Futrell ordered. “Along 
the east wall is a machine upon which 
I have been working in an effort to send 
my body across the billions of light- 
years that lie between Phenos and 
Earth. Do you understand?” 

“Yes; I understand.” 

“Go to that machine,” Futrell com- 
manded. 

“Yes.” 

“Do not try to probe its secret.” 

“I obey,” said Sanda. “But what 
further shall I do? What shall I do 
with the machine?” 

Futrell’s hand closed upon Mola’s. 



Upon his face was a light he knew 
would never be extinguished. 

“What shall I do with the machine?” 
Sanda asked again. 

“Do with the machine?” Futrell 
echoed — then triumphantly : "Destroy 
it!” 

Mola, when Sanda had gone to fulfill 
his mission, turned to Futrell, laid her 
hands upon his shoulders. Her eyes 
were warm with tears. She said: "I’m 
glad ! Pm glad you did that, not know- 
ing that upon Earth ten thousand years 
of Earth-time have passed since the 
Earthwoman was unfaithful, since your 
friend destroyed your body.” 




TOWARD THE ROCKET 



To test the effect of high speeds (such as may be expected of rockets) on 
life, engineers of the Rockefeller research organization have already "spun a mouse 
in a closed carriage” at a speed of fifteen miles a second. The mouse and its sealed 
cage were simply tied to a fly-wheel. The mouse showed no ill effects. A guinea- 
pig in the same carriage at the same speed was found dead from a cerebral hemor- 
rhage. 

Among the advantages of a rocket in space is that it provides artificial heat to 
the carriage it propels, a necessary factor when the temperature of great altitudes 
or outer space is considered. 

It is not an exaggeration that all details for a rocket trip to the moon have 
been computed as exactly as possible by engineers and mathematicians. The only 
drawback is an adequate fuel. Time and money, in many instances, are lacking to 
carry on adequate experiments. Nevertheless it is barely possible that within fifty 
years Earth-dwellers may be traveling to Mars and Venus. 



Stratosphere 



Illustrated by 
Elliot Dold 



Towers 



by Nat Schachner 



T HE TWO MEN stood in silence 
on the observation rim of Solar 
Tower No. 1 and surveyed the 
barren reaches of the Roba el Khali, 
twenty miles below. Even through the 
filtrine panels, the sun-drenched sands 
of the great empty Desert of Arabia 
slashed the vision like a fiery sword. 
Directly overhead, a molten sun burned 
unimpeded through the thin strato- 
sphere. 

There seemed no life anywhere on the 
smooth convex bowl of the earth. Not 
even a cloud beneath to break the mo- 
notony of hundreds of square miles of 
emptiness. Only the great stratosphere 
tower, lonely and aloof, spurning the 
desert from its five-mile base. It thrust 
its impermite walls upward like an 
elongated hourglass, tapering smoothly 
to its narrowest diameter at an altitude 
of fifteen miles; then it flared out again 
like a funnel until it made a yawning 
cavity three miles across at the top. 

Within the gigantic inclosing bubble 
of transparent impermite, the sliding 
facets of which were now open, a net- 
work of strong light girders crisscrossed 
the gap. Hundreds of tubes radiated 
upward from their support like a floral 
spray, each of them topped by a three- 
hundred-foot lens which glittered blind- 
ingly under the strong embrace of the 
sun. 

The curving interior of the tower was 
a bottomless pit through which great 
tubes and cables plunged in intricate 
orderliness. The smooth circumfer- 
ence of the tower was a double shell, 
several hundred feet in cross section. 



and elevators pierced its thousand floors 
on the long upward rush to the observa- 
tion rim near the peak. Suspension cat- 
walks thrust their slender fingers across 
the interior void to render the central 
cables properly accessible. 

The year 2540, half a century before, 
had seen the last ton of coal mined out 
of Antarctica. One hundred years be- 
fore that, oil had disappeared from the 
underground reservoirs. Accelerating 
exploitation denuded the earth of all 
former sources of power. And in the 
twenty-sixth century the machines did 
everything. The handicrafts were for- 
gotten arts. One week of idle, move- 
less machines, and the teeming billions 
who had spawned over the continents 
during the age of plenty would perish in 
helpless agony. 

For once the nations of the earth 
acted in concert. Nationalist hatreds, 
chauvinistic designs, ambitious rivalries, 
were perforce laid aside when the re- 
ports of the geological surveys came in. 
An international council was formed, 
the project of the utilization of solar 
heat was examined and found feasible, 
and feverish construction of two great 
solar towers to tap that inexhaustible 
supply began in the year 2510. No. 1 
reared its stratosphere height in the neu- 
tral area of Arabia; No. 2, the antipodal 
tower, in Mid-Pacific, on an artificial 
island bisecting the equator. 

It was a race against timet The tre- 
mendous towers took fifteen years to 
build. Disaster was circumvented by a 
scant five years. Now, however, as long 




The two giant fleets met in a cataclysmic smash. Great bombers sliced 
through each other; blinding flames slashed the stratosphere. War! 

















-TTy. ft 












&ng?£&atLl 



96 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



as the sun flamed in the heavens, the 
problem of power was solved. 

The vast energy of the solar orb 
pierced through the rarefied blanket of 
air above the towers with barely per- 
ceptible diminution, smote the burning 
lenses at the temperature of boiling 
water, slid down the great tubes in ever- 
increasing concentration through an in- 
geniously arranged series of subsidiary 
lenses, until, twenty miles below, the 
hundreds of spearheads of focused 
energy met in climactic fusion. 

Only the stripped atoms of the im- 
permite chamber could safely hold the 
resultant supernal flame. Only within 
the cores of the very hottest stars were 
temperatures comparable to this. Hun- 
dreds of thousands of degrees danced 
and roared their fury at the incredible 
restraint, but the resistant impennite 
tubes sluiced the flaming energy safely 
into the bowels of the earth, into a com- 
plex array of machines and thermo- 
couples and dynamos, there to be trans- 
formed into subtler, but no less power- 
charged, electricity. 

Twelve hours each day, for fifty-odd 
years now, the sun had flamed energy 
into the vast cells of the underground 
storage batteries, from which reservoirs 
it was broadcast on tight directional 
beams to thousands of local stations, 
there to be used as required for regional 
needs. No. 1 Tower supplied the west- 
ern hemisphere, and No. 2 the eastern. 

Displaying fine sagacity, the interna- 
tional council of scientists had laid down 
very simple and very stringent rules for 
the governance ‘of the towers. The na- 
tions guaranteed their unconditional 
neutrality. Control was vested solely 
in the several hundred scientists and 
technicians who inhabited the towers. 

These formed a self-perpetuating, 
self-governing corporation, subject only 
to the supervision of their own elected 
chief scientist. Each year a selected 
group of children, chosen by rigorous 
intelligence tests without discrimination 



from all the nations of the world, were 
brought into the confines of the towers, 
to be trained to the highly specialized 
duties that awaited them at maturity. 

Above all else, they were imbued with 
a fanatical devotion to science and to 
the towers themselves ; to the thesis that 
the towers had been built for the benefit 
of all mankind and not for the selfish 
purposes of any one group ; to the plan 
that the power was to flow forever to 
all who required it, without regard to 
national, racial, or other distinctions. On 
them, it was insisted, rested the des- 
tinies, the very lives, of the sprawling 
millions outside. No monk of the Mid- 
dle Ages ever submitted to a more rig- 
orous code of behavior. 

To prevent seizure of the towers by 
any group or combination for private 
ends, the walls were made of impermite, 
that curious element of closely packed 
protons which was impregnable against 
any offensive weapons known to the 
twenty-sixth century. The formula was 
evolved by the scientists themselves and 
destroyed upon the completion of the 
towers. 

II. 

THE TWO MEN on the observation 
rim were obviously worried. They 
stared down through the filtrine panels 
with frowning concentration. 

The younger man said: “There’s no 
sign of any trouble below, Benton.” 

Christopher Benton shook his head 
gravely. His gaunt kindly face was 
seamed with responsibility. He was the 
chief scientist of Tower No. 1, and 
Hugh Neville, the younger man, was his 
personal assistant. 

“The desert wouldn’t show it, of 
course,” he said. “But beyond ” 

He pressed a button. A visor screen 
sprang into life over the bulging filtrine 
panel. A man glanced inquiringly up 
at them from its pictured depths. He 
was thickset and blond, with weak blue 
eyes behind glasses. He was seated be- 

AST— 6 



STRATOSPHERE TOWERS 



97 



fore an. instrument board on which there 
were banked rows of signal lenses and 
under each a tiny switch. 

“What luck, Eric?” 

“None so far, sir. I can’t contact a 
single station. See!” he pointed. 
“Every switch is on. I’ve kept them 
that way ever since the first break. Yet 
not a lens lights to show contact. I’ve 
checked our own circuits and found 
everything all right. The signals are 
going through. The trouble is outside.” 
“How about Solar Tower No. 2?” 
Eric Mann said slowly: “No answer 
there, either.” 

Neville jerked forward. “Good heav- 
ens ! That means ” 

Benton made an almost imperceptible 
gesture that stopped the other short. 

“Thank you, Eric. Keep on trying,” 
the chief scientist said and snapped off 
the screen. The Teutonic features of 
the communications man faded quickly 
from the white oblong. 

“We had better keep our surmises to 
ourselves a while, Hugh,” Benton said 
heavily. 

' “But what could have happened to the 
Pacific Tower?” the younger man pro- 
tested. It was evident that inaction sat 
uneasily on his broad shoulders. “A 
breakdown ? They have emergency 
equipment. And the local stations ! 
Our power output recorders show that 
they are all taking their usual loads, 
vet they can’t, or won’t, answer our sig- 
nals.” 

“Since last night they have doubled 
their intakes,” Benton corrected gently. 
“I’ve been expecting something like this 
for years.” 

“What?” 

The chief scientist did not answer. 
Instead, he knifed the switches that con- 
nected the series of telescopes and sound 
gatherers which ringed the observation 
rim to' the visor screen. 

“They have a range of five hundred 
miles,” he said. “Perhaps they’ll bring 

AST-7 



us an inkling of what’s taking place in 
the outside world.” 

The screen lighted up again, and the 
men leaned forward in breathless 
fascination as the scenes slowly passed 
in review. First Northern Arabia — the 
desert had bloomed under a century of 
irrigation, and great white cities nestled 
between the golden glow of interminable 
orange groves. 

Even as they watched, the largest of 
the cities seemed to heave itself bodily 
into the air and rain back to a shattered 
earth in a tumbling ruin of disin- 
tegrated domes and minarets and mar- 
ble columns. Twelve minutes later, 
through the sound amplifier, came the 
booming thud of the explosion. Then 
even as the screaming air waves blasted 
their way through the observers’ ear- 
drums, the scene shifted. The next 
telescope in the series had taken up the 
tale. 

LONG before the sound had come 
through, however, Hugh Neville was on 
his feet, his face white, his fists 
clenched. “That’s Haji, a hundred and 
fifty miles away. Gone up, smashed, 
with three hundred thousand inhab- 
itants! What does it mean?” 

“What I had feared.” Benton’s 
shoulders sagged under a seemingly un- 
bearable load. “War!” 

The visor screen had shifted to the 
muddy waters of the Persian Gulf. All 
seemed peaceful on the slowly swelling 
sea. A few knifelike prows of cargo 
vessels, completely inclosed, cut through 
the waves at a terrific rate of speed un- 
der the impact of the surging power 
from the tower’s broadcast. 

“Nothing brewing out there," Hugh 
said confidently. “Perhaps it’s only a 
local squabble. Ibn Saud, Haji’s ruler, 
had enemies.” 

He had hardly finished when little 
black specks appeared on the edge of 
the lighted screen. They moved with 
the speed of lightning across the waste 



58 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



of sky, growing as they did so into a 
horde of huge stratosphere planes that 
plunged with breathless rush for the 
cargo ships. Little brown pellets disso- 
ciated themselves from the hurtling 
planes, fell with agonizing slowness 
straight for the doomed vessels. 

The cargo vessels saw the approach- 
ing menace and submerged, diving des- 
perately for safety. The bombs smacked 
into the sea, and the waters rose in a 
gigantic waterspout. The farthest ship 
had delayed getting under a trifle too 
long. Its fragments rode the crest of 
the spout. Not a sound came through 
except the quiet slap-slap of the waves 
of fifteen minutes before. It would take 
that long for the roar of the bombs to 
reach the amplifiers. And again the 
screen changed to the third of the tele- 
scopes in the series. 

The scene now was the broad Arabian 
Sea. The long billows were deserted. 
But, high overhead, squadrons of planes 
were locked in flaming warfare. 

The lower atmosphere was a pelting 
hail of crisped, shattered, unrecogniz- 
able things. The amplifiers resounded 
with the noise of earlier battle. Then, 
click, and Aden and its Gulf swam 
restlessly over the screen. Aden was a 
man-built Gibraltar, the mightiest 
fortress in the eastern waters, the last 
stronghold of a once-great empire. Its 
great blocks of ferro-concrete rose 
frowning from the sea; its walls shim- 
mered with defensive vibrations. 

It was being besieged — by sea and by 
land and by air. Great fleets darted 
past in zigzag procession, churning the 
water with their speed, belching black 
darkness to envelop and make them- 
selves inkily invisible; the stratosphere 
disgorged hundreds of bombers that 
went whistling at a five-hundred-miles- 
an-hour pace over the beleaguered 
stronghold, dropping tons of deadly de- 
layed-action explosives. 

On the land side, great tanks, like 
monstrous caterpillars, and shimmering 



with their own defensive vibrations, 
jumped ditches and canals, leveled off 
uneven terrain, surged at eighty miles 
an hour against the gaunt pink walls. 
The noise was indescribable. 

Sheeted flame completely enswathed 
the city. The shells and disruptors ex- 
ploded in a fury of sound. The heat 
rays bit into the ferro-concrete, sizzled 
in futile fury. 

For the protective screen of positron 
swarms was holding. Here and there a 
combination of offensive powers crashed 
through the curtain, and huge chunks 
of ferro-concrete went hurtling inward. 
Then the unending stream of positrons 
swerved back to its original position. 
The defenders, through lightning-swift 
gaps in their defensive screen, hurled 
projectiles out at the attacking forces. 
Ships, planes, and tanks crumpled and 
smashed, but there were plenty more to 
take their place. 

Click! Aden went blank, and the 
coast of Africa heaved into view. All 
along its steamy indented shore line, 
fronting the brick waters of the Red 
Sea, was ruin and desolation. 

Benton seemed suddenly aged. “This 
is no local war,” he said. “The whole 
world is aflame. The nations are at 
each other’s throats. With modern 
weapons, that means an end to civiliza- 
tion, an end to everything man has been 
working for during the centuries. It 
is a pity !” 

Hard fires burned in Hugh’s eyes. 
“We can put a stop to it,” he said qui- 
etly. 

The older man looked at him in -sur- 
prise. “How?” 

“Very simply. Shut off the power 
broadcast.” 

BENTON shook his head as if he 
had not heard aright. He repeated the 
words with gasping intonation : “Shut 
— off — the power — broadcast !” 

Their meaning seemed to penetrate 
slowly. He peered into his assistant’s 



STRATOSPHERE TOWERS 



99 



face. Perhaps he was joking, though 
such a sacrilegious jest was in the worst 
possible taste. But the young man’s 
countenance was grim, hard. 

Anger flamed then through the chief 
scientist. “You are mad, Hugh!” he 
exploded. “Shut off the power! You, 
my assistant, second in command, to 
suggest such a thing, even as a joke !” 

“I was never more serious in my 
life,” Neville returned calmly. 

Benton shook his head in sorrow. 
“Since the towers have been built, no 
one has dared entertain such a treason- 
able proposition. Why, man, our oaths, 
our life’s training, our whole reason for 
existence as scientists and custodians of 
the towers, have been dedicated to the 
proposition that the power must never 
cease, for an instant even, that it is the 
common property of all mankind, of all 
who wish to use it.” 

He placed his hand on Hugh’s shoul- 
der and spoke more kindly: “Now let 
us hear no more of it.” 

Neville shook his hand off and faced 
Benton with restrained anger. “If this 
is what training from birth and the con- 
stant reiteration of catchwords has done 
to us, then it is better that some one 
blow the tower and all its complement of 
routine-befuddled scientists to smith- 
ereens. It is all very well to repeat 
mouth-filling phrases — service to hu- 
manity, power to all without distinction 
of race or creed or condition! Swell! 
But don’t you see, Benton, those phrases 
are hollow mockeries now, deadly, dan- 
gerous ? 

“By continuing to broadcast our 
power, we shall be as directly responsi- 
ble for the destruction of civilization, 
for the blotting out of a world, as 
though we personally were out there 
heaving bombs and wielding conite dis- 
ruptors. It is the power we furnish 
which makes their weapons possible. 
Stop the broadcasts and the war must 
stop. Within a week the nations will 
be on their knees, ready for any terms 



we care to impose. It is high time 
trained scientists take over. The politi- 
cians and statesmen have made a botch 
of things.” 

Benton said harshly, his features 
twisted into only remote resemblance to 
their ordinary kindly wisdom : “Take 
care. Neville. You are exceeding all 
permissible bounds. It is unheard-of 
for a tower scientist to breach the con- 
fidence which has been reposed in him. 
I as chief can listen to you no longer. 
Go to your duties and let us hear no 
more of iti Otherwise I shall be com- 
pelled to divest you of your emblem as 
a scientist and expel you into the outer 
world of men.” 

Hugh fell back a trifle. His eyes 
fixed in wide surprise on Benton. “You 
would do — that?” he said slowly. 

Only once since the building of the 
towers had that ultimate punishment 
been invoked, and that was in the first 
ten years. The culprit had been a mem- 
ber of the first group, a man reared in 
the outer world, not one steeped from 
infancy in the traditions of the towers. 
Yet even he, shamed beyond endurance 
at the disgrace, had committed suicide. 

Benton said in a low, barely audible 
voice: “Yes.” For he loved the young 
man who was his assistant. Then, with 
fine inconsecutiveness, he added: “Be- 
sides, Tower No. 2 could supply the en- 
tire world in an emergency, even though 
we should quit operating.” 

Hugh started eagerly: “I could ” 

A throbbing of supercharged motors 
beat from the local sound amplifiers into 
the filtrine-inclosed observation rim. 
Both men turned to gaze out through 
the panels at the star-studded sky, then 
down at the curving earth. 

Far below, at the ten-mile level, a 
black speck swarmed over the western 
bulge. It grew rapidly on the sight, 
became distinguishable as a two-seater 
speed plane, hurtling full tilt for the 
tower under the impact of its electrically 
impelled motors. 



100 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



Behind, barely twenty miles away, a 
fleet of battle planes rose like a cloud 
of bees over the horizon, droning with 
rapid vibration. The observation rim 
thundered with the multitudinous roar 
of many engines. 

Benton snapped off the amplifiers, 
and the racket ceased abruptly. He 
sprang to the switch which controlled 
the domed bubble over the concentra- 
tion lenses. The transparent impermite 
panels slid smoothly into place. The 
tower was wholly covered now, im- 
pregnable against outside a-sault. 

Then another switch. The heavy 
blond features of Eric Mann looked at 
them from the visor screen. 

“Contact those planes,” Benton or- 
dered. “Find out their identity. De- 
mand to know what they are doing in 
tower territory. Don't the idiots know 
it is forbidden?” 

“At once, sir.” Eric plugged the lo- 
cal signal. • His head was cocked at a 
listening angle; his features were im- 
passive. 

He looked up. “They don’t answer, 
sir.” 

Neville said bitterly: “Perhaps they 
know the tradition of the towers. Ser- 
vice to all, even when you invade the 
neutral area. Perhaps they even have 
grandiose ideas. They may think they 
can capture the tower.” 

“Keep quiet!” Benton said sternly. 
His face showed conflicting emotions. 
“Eric!” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Signal them again. Warn them, if 
they don't answer or leave at once, 
we’ll ” 

III. 

BENTON left the phrase hanging 
in air. Too late he realized the ri- 
diculousness of threats. The tower held 
no offensive weapons. Appeal to the 
nations? They were mutually at war, 
and such an appeal would be worse 
than useless. Hugh’s idea? He ban- 



ished it resolutely. Every one knew 
that the scientists of the tower would 
continue to furnish power even in the 
face of a threat to their own safety. It 
was taken for granted, as a matter of 
course, even as the air they breathed. 
Such was the overpowering weight of 
tradition. 

Eric stared from the screen. His 
face was no longer impassive ; his pale 
eyes gleamed behind the glasses. 

“The battle planes do not answer, 
sir. But the single-speed plane in front 
has just signaled. It’s the code word, 
sir, -the code of the towers.” 

“Good heavens!” Benton gasped. 

“He’s asking for entrance, sir. What 
shall I do?” 

Benton said harshly: “It’s a ruse; 
some one has betrayed the word. Keep 
the landing port closed.” 

The speed plane was not more than 
fifteen miles away. Little puffs of 
smoke dissociated themselves from the 
following battle squadron. The puffs 
made white tracers through the rarefied 
air, leaped the intervening gap and ex- 
ploded in great white clouds immedi- 
ately to the rear of the lone flier. 

Neville jumped. He spoke rapidly at 
the visor screen. “Open the landing 
port at once, Eric. Let him in ; he’s be- 
ing fired at.” 

Mann’s eyes sought Benton’s doubt- 
fully. 

The chief came out of his daze. "Ne- 
ville’s right,” he said hoarsely. “It must 
be one of our men.” 

Ten miles below, in the smooth round 
of the tower, a section of black imper- 
mite slid open. The speed plane hurled 
itself through the stratosphere, was 
caught in the short guiding beam of the 
port, swung cradling along the ray into 
the interior, and cushioned to a halt on 
the smooth white tarmac within. 

Hardly had the impermite slide 
closed to an unbroken surface behind 
it than an inverted cone of flame seared 



STRATOSPHERE TOWERS 



101 



through the atmosphere and blasted 
greedily at the tower. 

Conite disruptors had been employed 
against the internationally neutral 
tower, the first overt act since it had 
been built. The flames licked harm- 
lessly against the compacted pro-tons, 
however, and soon burned out. 

“They’ll pay for this !” Neville cried 
fiercely. “What nation do they belong 
to?” 

Benton looked haggard and weary. 
“I do not know,” he muttered. “The 
planes are painted black and have no 
distinguishing marks.” 

The heavily armed vessels swerved 
suddenly in a great arc and vanished 
back over the distant horizon. It was 
as if they, too, had realized the temerity 
of their crime, or, Hugh thought, the 
uselessness of their weapons against the 
tower. 

Benton spoke into the screen : “Send 
the occupants of the plane up to the 
observation rim at once.” 

WITHIN a few seconds the elevator 
rushed smoothly to the platform ; the 
beryllium door went wide, and two men 
stepped out. Neville surveyed them 
curiously ; he had never seen either be- 
fore. But then the scientists of the 
towers rarely ever left their posts, and 
then only on approved and specified 
journeys. 

One of the new arrivals was tall, 
slender, and wiry ; the other shorter, 
yellow-skinned, and his eyes were 
shaped like almonds. Both men’s eyes 
were red-rimmed with fatigue, and their 
clothes were rumpled as though they 
had been slept in. 

“Identify yourselves, gentlemen,” 
Benton commanded. 

The tall young man essayed a grin. 
“I am Bob Jellicoe, the gentleman to 
my right is Atsu Mira, and we were 
both very recently associated scientists 
in the confining duties of Solar Tower 
No. 2.” 



“You are most welcome, then,” the 
chief scientist said cordially. “I am 
Christopher Benton, and this is Hugh 
Neville, my assistant. What ” 

Neville interrupted : “Out with it, 
man ! What has happened to your 
tower?” 

Jellicoe looked slowly at his comrade, 
the little man. 

That slant-eyed person shrugged, 
opened his hands a little, and answered 
politely : “It was captured !” 

Benton cried out : “The tower cap- 
tured ! By whom ? How is it possi- 
ble?” 

Jellicoe’s fatigue-stricken eyes burned. 
His voice was harsh: “It is not only 
possible ; it is done ; it is finished ! A 
traitor within the gates, if you want to 
know. We were warned in time of the 
outbreak of war, so that when the hy- 
droplanes swarmed around the tower, 
we were prepared. All ports were 
closed, and Rallitz, our chief, signaled 
furiously that if they didn’t get out of 
the neutral zone at once, the power 
would be shut off.” 

Neville stole a sidelong glance toward 
his own chief. He saw the slowly man- 
tling flush. 

“They started arguing,” Jellicoe went 
on, “but Rallitz was adamant. The 
commander of the fleet swung his ves- 
sel around as if to obey. We relaxed 
our guard a bit then, I’m afraid, for we 
didn’t notice until they were close in that 
the momentum of their swing had 
brought them almost alongside. 

“I was standing next to Rallitz on the 
observation rim at the time, and we 
saw them clearly through the filtrine 
magnifiers. The old chief spluttered 
guttural oaths and sprang to the power 
switch. He clamped it down so hard 
that it almost broke. 

“But the ships kept on coming. The 
secondary switch on the rim had not 
worked. Even as we watched help- 
lessly, the lower-level section opened to 



102 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



admit the battle planes. The tower had 
been captured without a fight.” 

“Poor Rallitz !” Benton muttered. “I 
met him once or twice. I never thought 
that he would forget the tradition of the 
service.” 

“What do you mean?” Bob Jellicoe 
exclaimed. 

“He tried to shut off the power, didn’t 
he?” 

Jellicoe and Neville exchanged 
glances. Hugh’s was charged with ex- 
asperation. 

He made a little gesture. “Never 
mind that,” he said. “What nation cap- 
tured the tower and who was the traitor 
who admitted them?” 

“It was,” replied Atsu Mira, “the 
Midcentral nation, and the traitor — we 
do not know.” 

“The Midcentral !” Hugh puzzled. 
A vision of heavy blond features arose 
in response — Eric Mann, for instance. 
“Were any of the men members of that 
nation ?” 

Benton cried out in reproof : “You 
forget, Neville, that in the towers we 
have no nationals ; every man is a tower 
scientist — and nothing else.” 

“That is, of course, true,” Jellicoe 
said formally. “But the tower was cap- 
tured — and it was an inside job. The 
only national of Midcentral in the tower, 
however, had a perfect alibi. He was 
with Rallitz and myself on the observa- 
tion rim at the time.” 

“How did you get away?” Hugh 
asked. 

Jellicoe grinned and turned to the lit- 
tle yellow-faced man. “That was Atsu's 
fault.” 

Mira bowed deprecatingly. 

“Rallitz had darted for the main ele- 
vator before I had a chance to stop him. 
He was swearing that he’d fight the 
scoundrels with his bare hands. The 
port slammed in my face, and he 
dropped downward.” His face sobered. 
“Poor firebrand! They must have killed 
him. I went for the second elevator and 



tried to beat him down. I couldnT let 
him go it alone. But on reaching the 
lower stratosphere port, the car stopped. 
Atsu was there ; with a speed plane on 
the tarmac. He explained that it would 
be useless to fight, and we could get 
away to warn you. I saw the point, and 
here we are.” 

Benton took a deep breath. “And 
the rest of the world?” 

Mira said quietly : “Everywhere is 
war! Everywhere nation against na- 
tion. What is called, I think, a dog 
fight. We saw cities wiped out, coun- 
tries ruined, valleys filled with poison 
gas, tanks exploding, waters dotted with 
blazing ships, the stratosphere raining 
fragments.” 

“It was a miracle we came through,” 
Jellicoe broke in. “Our single plane 
was an outlaw ; every one’s hand was 
against it. Luckily it had plenty of 
speed. Our closest call was just as we 
got to your tower. That fleet belonged 
to Northcontinent.” 

The visor screen buzzed, and Eric 
Mann looked out at them. 

“A message from the chancellor of 
Northcontinent,” he said tonelessly. “He 
wished to speak to you, sir.” 

Benton’s eyes glittered. His shoul- 
ders straightened. “Switch him on!” 
he snapped. 

THE FEATURES of the communi- 
cations chief faded, and those of a tall, 
thin man with bold aquiline nose and 
piercing look took their place. He was 
seated at a desk in a hermetically sealed 
chamber. Neville knew him from screen 
conversations on more amicable occa- 
sions. 

The chancellor came to the point at 
once. “Benton,” he surveyed them all 
in one swift glance, “the neutrality of 
the towers has been broken. In case 
you do not already know it, Midcentral 
has Solar Tower No. 2 in its control.” 

“I know that,” the chief scientist said, 
very low. 



STRATOSPHERE TOWERS 



103 



The chancellor watched him keenly. 
“Rallitz betrayed the tower into their 
hands.” 

Bob Jellicoe sprang toward the screen, 
fists clenched, his face dark with anger. 
“That’s a lie !” he exclaimed. “Rallitz 
was himself betrayed. He is dead, 
killed, fighting to save the tower.” 

The chancellor’s eyes pierced him 
through. “Take care, young man,” he 
said coldly, “how you give me the lie. 
Who are you?” 

Jellicoe restrained himself. “I am, 
or was, one of the scientists of Tower 
No. 2. I’ve just come from there. And 
since when does a tower man take or- 
ders from any one?” 

The chancellor shrugged and turned 
his gaze back to the troubled face of 
Benton. “He is insolent. Perhaps he, 

then, was responsible ” He broke 

off with a meaningful pause. “But that 
is neither here nor there, Benton. Mid- 
central has the tower. Already they 
have cut off power from all stations ex- 
cept the ones they control. The rest 
of the eastern hemisphere is helpless, 
starving. Within a week they’ll all be 
dead or under the domination of Mid- 
central. Within a month the whole 
world will have fallen into their clutches. 
You know what that means — a tyranny 
such as this earth has never seen.” 

Benton said: “What are you leading 
up to?” 

The chancellor leaned forward. 
“This! ’We must fight fire with fire. 
Give me control of your tower tem- 
porarily. I could then concentrate all 
your output into my battle armament, 
force the rest of the western hemisphere 
to join forces with me. Within the 
month we shall have beaten Midcentral 
to its knees and recaptured Tower 
No. 2.” 

“And then?” Benton’s tone was 
barely audible. 

The chancellor’s grin was falsely 
hearty. “Oh, and then — ah — of course, 
the towers will be given back to their 



rightful holders, the scientists, and the 
world will have the peace again that 
Midcentral has ruthlessly violated.” 
Neville said tensely: “You are lying 
again, chancellor. Once the towers are 
in your clutches, you will never let them 
go. You will use them to set up your 
own tyranny over the entire world. 
There is little difference between your 
schemes and those of Midcentral.” 

The thin man’s face went black with 
rage. “Why, you — you infernal puppy,” 
he stuttered, “I’ll break you in two for 
that !” 

Hugh remarked very gently : “That is 
a game I would like to play with you.” 
“Stop it !” Benton commanded. He 
looked steadily at the screened visage. 
“Chancellor, you forget things. You 
forget the very purpose of the towers, 
the oaths we took, the ideal service to 
all humanity we are sworn to give. 
Without fear or favor, without discrim- 
ination to any one, the power must go 
out. What do your insane quarrels 
matter to us, who man the towers ? 

“Mankind must and shall continue to 
live, in spite of your wars. The lives 
of every man, woman, and child on this 
earth, the billions who have always 
known that they need not want for food 
and comfort and shelter while the 
towers operate— we cannot let them 
down now, to suffer and die, because of 
the selfish aims of their political heads. 
The power will continue to go out, to 
all who need it.” 

“But,” argued the chancellor reason- 
ably, holding himself in with a tre- 
mendous effort, “Tower No. 2 is pro- 
ducing only for Midcentral. The others 
will die in the eastern hemisphere. Is 
that fair or- just?” 

“They will not die. We shall extend 
our sending radius to cover the whole 
earth ; we shall ration the power to all. 
It may mean a little less to each, but it 
can be managed.” 

The chancellor made no further ef- 
fort to restrain himself. His rage 



104 



ASTOUNDING STORIES ' 



poured out. “You stiff-necked idiot ! I 
gave you the chance to join me; to re- 
main in charge under me. Now I’ll 
take your tower and make you wish you 
were never born. You and your silly, 
schoolboy traditions ! Bah !” 

The screen snapped off abruptly. The 
chancellor was gone. 

BENTON’S nostrils twitched white. 
He pressed a button. “Eric,” he said 
rapidly, when the communication chief 
appeared on the screen, “make certain 
all ports are closed tightly. Cut off all 
subsidiary switches except your own. 
You will be personally responsible for 
their operation. No one is to enter 
or leave the tower hereafter, under any 
pretext, without my personal authority. 

And, Eric ” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Step up our sending radius to in- 
clude the eastern hemisphere. Ration 
the power broadcasts so that every sta- 
tion receives an equal share.” 

Jellicoe started forward. “But that 
would mean ” 

Benton halted him with a gesture. 
“With one exception, Eric. Cut off all 
power from the stations controlled by 
Midcentral. Your board will give you 
the list. Do you understand?” 

For the first time the broad ex- 
pressionless features showed emotion. 
A red flush crept slowly up behind his 
ears. “I understand.” 

Benton said sharply : “Eric Mann, 
you were born a Midcentral, were you 
not ?” 

The man leaned over his instrument 
board, fiddled aimlessly with the con- 
trols. They could not see his face. 

When he spoke, all tone had been 
wiped out of his voice: “I am a tower 
scientist, sir. I have no other coun- 
try.” 

“Good! Please remember that.” 
Then the screen was blank again. 
Atsu Mira said softly : "Excuse me, 
please. But Tower No. 2 was lost from 



inside. Midcentral will try for this one, 
too. So will Northcontinent. Maybe 
you trust this Mann too much?” 

Benton drew himself up proudly. “In 
this tower we are all scientists; noth- 
ing else. You heard what Eric said.” 
The little yellow man shrugged po- 
litely and made his face blank. 

But Neville took up the challenge. 
“There is something in what Atsu says. 
Eric may be all right, but there are 
over three hundred of us. Some of the 
men may still have what used to be 
called patriotic emotions for the coun- 
tries of their birth. Technically, looked 
at from that standpoint, we are all mu- 
tual enemies in here and should be at 
each other’s throats, praying for victory 

to our particular land ” 

“Neville is right.” Jellicoe broke in. 
“The chancellor of Northcontinent was 
not just making threats for effect. He 
has something up his sleeve. He knows 
the tower is impregnable to direct 
frontal attack. Perhaps he has already 
established communication with one of 
the scientists inside your walls.” 
“Never!” Benton exploded. 

He turned on his heel, strode angrily 
to the main elevator, stepped inside, slid 
the port into position behind him, and 
dropped with breath-taking speed to- 
ward the lower levels. 

The others watched him go. 

“I still say that we should cut off 
the power,” Hugh said steadily. 

“It would be the best plan,” Atsu 
murmured. 

“We can’t very well do that now,” 
Jellicoe objected. “It would mean that 
Midcentral would meet with no opposi- 
tion.” 

“I forgot the second tower.” 

They stared at each other helplessly. 
Outside, the world was flaming red war. 
Civilization was on the, verge of a to- 
tal eclipse. Yet they could do noth- 
ing about it, exce]<» keep up the tradi- 
tions of the service, as Benton insisted. 
“Sooner or later,” Hugh remarked 



STRATOSPHERE TOWERS 



105 



bitterly, “there’ll be no stations left to 
transmit power to, and no people to re- 
ceive its benefits.” 

Bob Jellicoe said suddenly: “There 
is only one way.” 

“What is that?” 

He looked around carefully. “Any 
screens open?” 

“None. You will not be overheard.” 

“This is my plan : When it gets dark, 
I’ll sneak my plane out and head back 
for my tower. I ought to get there be- 
fore dawn. I’m sure the scientists were 
left at their posts — under guard, of 
course. It would take a year at least 
to train outsiders to the jobs. Now we 
have a secret identification signal be- 
tween us — aside from the regular code. 
When the control man hears it, he’ll 
know what to do. 

“Once inside, I’ll be a pretty poor 
sort of a chap if I can’t throw a couple 
of monkey wrenches into the machinery. 
You may take it for granted that by 
this time to-morrow Tower No. 2 will 
not be functioning.” 

“And then,” Neville added, his face 
aglow, “I’ll pull the same job here. It 
may mean a broken heart for Benton, 
but it can’t be helped. Before repairs 
can be made, the whole world will beg 
for peace. We must balance a week’s 
suffering against the destruction of all 
mankind.” 

“That’s swell!” Jellicoe said cheer- 
fully. “It’s up to you now to get me 
out.” 

“Maybe,” Atsu interposed deferen- 
tially, “it is better that I handle this 
situation. My honored friend, Neville, 
is under what is called a cloud. If 
tower open and friend Jellicoe escape, 
contrary to orders, it is good for Ne- 
ville to have what is known to the vul- 
gar as an alibi.” 

“That’s an idea,” agreed Jellicoe. 
“You had better let Atsu handle the 
works, Neville. Benton would remem- 
ber your expressed views and clamp 



down hard if you couldn’t account for 
every minute of your time.” 

Hugh groaned, but saw the point. 

“Thank you very much for esteemed 
confidence.” Atsu bobbed his head. 
“It is almost twilight. Explain essential 
workings of machinery — maybe slight 
difference from ours; also where each 
man in charge is.” 

IV. 

IN THE VAST underground de- 
partment of the tower, the day shift 
was nearing its end. Soft blanketing 
twilight enveloped the sleeping sands 
of the outside desert. A faint mist 
swept in from the Arabian Sea, obscur- 
ing the ever-burning stars. It wrapped 
itself around the sky-piercing tower to 
a height of five thousand feet. Up above, 
fifteen miles of impermite walls loomed 
in eternal silence, bracing the thin clear 
stratosphere where the stars hung lu- 
minously by night and by day. 

Within the topping bubble the sim 
still shone, and the gigantic lenses still 
concentrated the last slanting rays down 
through miles of tubes and lenses into 
the furnace hells of ultimate fusion. 

The vast complex of machinery far 
below still pounded and whirred, con- 
verting the inexhaustible heat into elec- 
trical surges. But within minutes it 
would be night even in the stratosphere, 
and the machines would slowly idle 
down to quiescence, shining sleeping 
monsters that would wait for another 
morning to spring again into beating 
life. 

Then the night shift of technicians 
went on duty, the scattered few who 
kept certain essential duties alive dur- 
ing the long hours until dawn and 
guarded key centers. The communica- 
tions board was of course the most im- 
portant of these. 

Already the day men had gone to 
their quarters. Philippe Thibault came 
sprucely into the communications room. 



106 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



Eric Mann looked up at his dandified, 
yet vitally alert, assistant. 

“Hello, Philippe!” he greeted. “Is it 
time ?” 

“But of course, Eric. Catch you for- 
getting your shift is up.” 

“There’s a reason,” Mann remarked 
slowly. He seemed to have difficulty 
with his speech. “Benton has given 
strict orders, made me personally re- 
sponsible for their execution. I have 
still about an hour’s work. Tell you 
what, Philippe. Come back at nine 
o’clock to relieve me. By that time I’ll 
be through. Then you can take over. 
How does that sound?” 

“Magnificent !” Thibault gestured 
vivaciously. “To tell you the truth, 
Eric, I was just in the middle of an ex- 
citing spy story — now I’ll be able to 
finish it.” 

The communications chief smiled 
faintly • behind his glasses. “Those 
eternal spy stories of yours 1 The feeble 
efforts of weak imaginations. I’m sur- 
prised you read them.” 

Thibault said good humoredly : “They 
give one vicarious excitement. Life in 
the tower gets tedious now and then. 
And as for feeble efforts — listen to 
this!” 

“By nine o’clock, then,” Eric re- 
minded him and bent over the board. 

“Sorry!” Philippe chuckled and went 
out of the room. 

He strode whistling through the dim 
cavernous interior, threading his way 
with sure knowledge between ponder- 
ous machines, exchanging short greet- 
ings with the few scattered custodians, 
each seated comfortably in his own pool 
of light. He did not notice the slight 
figure that glided noiselessly from 
shadow to shadow, avoiding the areas 
of illumination, pressing against a loom- 
ing machine until Philippe had passed, 
then darting swiftly to the cover of the 
next one. 

Philippe entered his elevator, shot 
swiftly to the mid-belt of dormitories, 



already in his mind’s eye anticipating 
the mounting excitement of the spy 
story that awaited him. 

ATSU MIRA was but a shadow 
among shadows as he wormed his way 
into the darkened communications 
room. A brilliant spot of light flooded 
the board to the farther end and 
splashed over the bent, absorbed blond- 
ness of Eric Mann. The room was 
desperately silent, filled with the brood- 
ing hush of danger. Atsu paused, tens- 
ing his muscles for the last swift spring 
across the composition floor. He held 
a compression disk lightly in his hand. 

Mann stirred and grunted impa- 
tiently. Atsu stiffened in his stride, 
waiting. A little red signal lens glowed 
on the board. It was too far away for 
Mira’s straining eyes to determine what 
station it came from. The communica- 
tions chief made a feverish little sound 
with his teeth ; his hairy hand sprang out 
and did a surprising thing — he clicked 
off the visor screen. 

A swift guilty glance around barely 
missed the intruder’s crouching form. 
Mann scooped up a silence unit, ad- 
justed its electrodes two feet on either 
side of him. Only then did he plug in 
under the glowing signal. 

Atsu waited. He was curious. He 
saw Mann’s head cocked in listening at- 
titude, saw the queer mixture of fear 
and greed that flamed in the broad squat 
face under the spotlight, saw the thick 
lips open and close rapidly. 

He knew that Mann was talking to 
the unknown station, but he could not 
hear what was being said. The silence 
unit took care of that. It was a simple 
contrivance to insure secrecy; the puls- 
ing orbit of waves that circled between 
the electrodes damped the sound waves 
so that they were inaudible outside a 
limited area. 

Eric Mann shook his head several 
times as he talked soundlessly; then he 
listened again, and the greed in his face 



STRATOSPHERE TOWERS 



107 



overshadowed the brooding fear. He 
nodded, reached up, and plugged out 
the station. 

As he did so, Atsu acted. His quick 
pantherish rush brought him upon the 
unsuspecting communications chief be- 
fore he had a chance to move. A slight 
but muscular hand clamped the com- 
pression disk over the thick, fleshy lips. 
Mann saw the descending disk and 
screamed. But the still effective silence 
unit made the yell inaudible in the outer 
chamber. 

Then he slumped suddenly in his 
chair. The disk on pressure had re- 
leased a fine spray of powerful nar- 
cotic. Eric Mann would sleep for at 
least an hour under the dose. 

Atsu worked swiftly. He lifted the 
heavy figure with surprising ease, car- 
ried it to a darkened spot in the room, 
and dumped it down unceremoniously. 
Then he glided back to the board. In 
his mind’s eye he had fixed the position 
of that erstwhile glowing signal lens. 
He stared at its blank rotundity now, 
read the name of the station under- 
neath. He started violently, looked at 
it again. He passed a bewildered hand 
over his face and shook his head. Could 
he have made a mistake? Might it not 
have been a lens or two off either way? 

No! He had fixed it too definitely 
before he had attacked. His yellow 
features went grim and thoughtful. He 
swiveled hastily around, raked every 
cranny of the room for skulking shapes, 
thrust his head out of the silence unit. 
No one was around ; not a sound filtered 
in from the vastness outside. 

Satisfied, and with a slow grin man- 
tling his ordinarily impassive blankness, 
he knifed the switch which opened the 
exit port of the lower stratosphere land- 
ing unit. 

BOB JELLICOE fiddled impatiently 
at the controls. He was seated within 
the hermetically sealed body of the speed 
plane, waiting for the port to open, for 



the guiding beam to thrust him out into 
the stratosphere. Through his view- 
port of filtrine he could see the taut, 
anxious features of Hugh Neville, eyes 
glued to the smooth round of the im- 
permite wall. 

The minutes sped by, and still noth- 
ing happened. 

Bob jerked open the filtrine panel, 
thrust his head out. “Now what the 
devil’s taking Atsu so long?” he mut- 
tered. “I should have been out of here 
twenty minutes ago. As it is, I’m shav- 
ing dawn too close at the other end for 
comfort.” 

Neville turned his head. “I’m afraid 
he’s run into trouble. I should have 
gone myself ; my presence down there 
would have excited no suspicion.” 

“If I don’t get out in ten minutes, 
there’s no use my even starting,” Jelli- 
coe said resignedly. 

Neville’s square jaw tightened. With- 
out a Word he moved toward the ele- 
vator. 

“Hey! Where are you going?” Bob 
cried. 

Hugh flung back over his shoulder 
without pausing: “Down to the com- 
munications room. Atsu or no Atsu, 
you’ll be out on time.” And the ele- 
vator slammed shut. 

Bob cursed and lifted his eyes. The 
air-lock signal was glowing. That 
meant that within thirty seconds the 
inner slide would open and both plane 
and air in the chamber swoosh out along 
the guiding beam into the rarefied 
stratosphere. 

He ducked his head hastily into the 
cabin, sealed the filtrine panel just in 
time to feel the gliding movement of the 
plane, see the yawning black of outer 
space. Then he was out, cradled along. 

“Atsu did turn the trick!” he told 
himself exultantly as he switched on the 
current for full speed ahead. 

The plane leaped forward into the 
high reaches of the night like a rocket. 

Neville hurried grimly through the 



108 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



cavernous depths of the tower. Had 
Mira slipped up? Had Eric become 
suspicious and raised the alarm? Was 
the whole plot even now being exposed ? 

The silence of the darkened vastness 
somewhat comforted him. There had 
been no hue and cry. He encountered 
no one, but then he had taken care to 
avoid the fixed guard posts. 

He came swiftly to the communica- 
tions room, listened. Not a sound from 
within. Very quietly he stepped inside. 

ATSU MIRA waited with the im- 
passiveness of his race until the flash- 
ing lens showed that the speed plane 
had passed out of the tower, then he 
switched the port back into position. 
What he had told Jellicoe and Neville 
he would do had been accomplished. 
Now, according to plan, it was his duty 
to restore Eric Mann to his seated posi- 
tion in front of the board, spray him 
with the counternarcotic he had in his 
pocket. Within a minute the sleeping 
communications chief would be wide 
awake, and all memory of the attack and 
the potion erased from his mind. It 
would be as if he had nodded at his job 
for a fleeting instant. 

Instead, Atsu Mira searched the 
board carefully until he found the sig- 
nal lens he wanted. He switched in un- 
derneath, making sure that the silence 
unit was still functioning. 

A guarded voice swirled within the 
limited confines of the electrodes: ‘'Still- 
wig!” It was a code word. 

Atsu grinned delightedly. “K-4.” 

"Good! You are at the controls?” 

“Yes.” 

“You will proceed according to 
plan ?” 

“Of course ! By to-morrow noon 
Tower No. 1 will be out of commis- 
sion.” He chuckled. “And the as- 
sistant in command himself will do the 
work. I have so arranged it.” 

"Splendid ! Do not delay. Good- 
by.” 



“Wait ! I have information. Jelli- 
coe, who flew me here, is on his way 
back to Tower No. 2. He has a se- 
cret code word to obtain entrance from 
his friends inside. I could not find out 
what the word was. Take all precau- 
tions. He must not enter.” 

The invisible voice was coldly cruel : 
“We shall take care of him.” 

“Another item of importance. I may 
be mistaken, but I am almost positive 
I caught Eric Mann, the communica- 
tions chief of this tower, talking se- 
cretly to a station which belongs to ” 

Atsu’s supersensitive nerves felt the 
impact of watching eyes. Long train- 
ing made him act smoothly, efficiently. 
His hand flicked to the switch, shut off 
the telltale glow of the station signal, 
glided to the control of the silence unit. 
Then, without haste, he arose, turned 
around. 

His eyes widened at the sight of 
Hugh. “Neville !” he whispered. “You 
should not be here. You will not be 
able to plead what you call alibi.” 

“You took so long, I came down to 
find out what caused the delay.” 

Atsu bowed formally. “It took little 
time, but Atsu Mira never fails. Friend 
Jellicoe already speeding to destination ; 
there in corner is honored body of cow- 
like chief. He is peacefully asleep.” 
“Good!” Hugh approved. “Now we 
shall wake him up, and he won’t be any 
the wiser.” 

Atsu put his finger to his lips. “Sssh !” 
He stared apprehensively around. 
“What's the matter?” 

“Treachery!” whispered the yellow 
man. “When I enter, I find Mann with 
silence unit set up, talking to certain 
station. I sneak up on him to give him 
whiff compression disk, but too late. 
He already switched off station. But 
I see which it was.” 

Hugh eyed him sharply. “That's 
Eric’s job, talking to the outside world. 
What’s the treachery in that?” 

Atsu moved closer, whispered: “It 



STRATOSPHERE TOWERS 



109 



was Tower No. 2 our friend was mak- 
ing talk with.” 

Hugh jerked. “Are you sure?” 

Atsu bobbed his head. “I am most 
positive.” 

Neville passed his hand over his brow 
as if to clear away a mist. “Treachery !” 
he murmured. “Within the towers — 
first No. 2 ; now here. The tradition 
of the towers ! Bah ! Poor Benton, with 
his loyalty and passionate devotion — 
how it will hurt!” He smiled quizzically. 
“Yet in a way, Atsu, we, too, are tech- 
nically disloyal. In our case, however, 
it is for the greater good of all man- 
kind.” 

“Of course !” Mira agreed politely. 

“But Eric! Selling out to Midcen- 
tral. Or was it so-called patriotism for 
the land of his birth — the instinct that 
Benton was positive had been rooted 
out of the scientists?” 

Mira listened attentively, but did not 
answer. 

Neville gripped his arm. “You did 
not hear what was said ?” 

“No. The silence unit was in opera- 
tion.” 

“Then we cannot be sure. Listen, 
Atsu. Not a word of this to any one. 
We must give Eric the benefit of the 
doubt and keep careful watch. Neither 
he nor any one else must know our 
suspicions.” 

Atsu bowed. “You are my chief.” 

“Give me a hand with him.” 

Together they lifted the limp body, 
set it in the chair, its head lolling over 
the desk in front of the board. Atsu 
took out a tiny squirt, sprayed the color- 
less fluid over the drugged man’s face. 
Almost at once the color crept back into 
the flaccid cheeks. 

Hurriedly they slipped out of the 
room, just in time to avoid the whistling 
approach of Philippe Thibault. Eric 
was already stirring. 

At the mid-belt of the tower, Neville 
and Mira parted, each for his own quar- 
ters. 



“To-morrow!” Hugh said. 

“To-morrow!” Atsu echoed softly. 
“Perhaps, though, we watch friend 
Mann to-night?” 

“It’s not necessary. Thibault is on 
duty now, and I’ll answer for his hon- 
esty. Eric, if he really meditates treach- 
ery, won’t have a chance to do anything 
until to-morrow.” His jaw hardened. 
“I’ll see about him personally then. 
Good night !” 

But a change came over Hugh as he 
watched the retreating back of the lit- 
tle yellow man. Something strange glit- 
tered in his eye. He swore softly to 
himself. For he had paused an appre- 
ciable moment in the doorway to the 
communications room before Atsu had 
sensed his presence. 

His fingers drummed nervously 
against the wall of- the elevator. Then, 
with a quick gesture, he closed the slide, 
pushed the button for the five-mile drop 
back into the depths of the tower. He 
must get to the bottom of this mystery 
before dawn. 

V. 

BOB JELLICOE flashed through 
he stratosphere on his journey half 
around the world at a tremendous rate 
of speed. The power waves from the 
tower he had just quitted surged 
through the plane’s converters, actuated 
the superchargers that compressed the 
thin atmosphere, sent the propellers 
spinning at thousands of revolutions per 
second. Europe spread like a great 
map below. He switched on the infra- 
red magnifying ray, sprayed it over the 
unfolding continent. 

The ground lighted up with a pale 
red, featureless light, in which every- 
thing looked flat and wraithlike. But 
the beam was invisible from below, even 
to those bathed in its illumination, and 
therefore safer than the ordinary search 
ray. 

Jellicoe sucked in his breath at the 



110 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



spreading panorama. Where great cities 
had once stood were now scorched ruins, 
still smoldering, vast holes in the 
ground, deserts. Those few which re- 
mained shimmered with the blue de- 
fense-vibrations. In places the very 
ground itself burned with the un- 
quenchable fires of the Dongan pellets. 

His invisible beam caught and held 
on great hordes of fleeing people, 
streaming along the roads, stumbling 
in blind panic over shell-torn fields, fall- 
ing never to rise again, crushed under 
the rush of the fear-maddened multi- 
tudes — a mass migration of men, 
women, and children who had never 
before known the bitter realities of 
warfare. 

Even in the night there was fighting. 
Monster tanks locked in mortal com- 
bat; flames seared thousands 'out of 
their path. The darkness was torn by 
star shells and sudden blasting cones of 
fire. Huge battle fleets appeared out 
of nowhere, hurtled downward in head- 
long race. Once Bob had to dive 
sharply to avoid a head-on collision ; 
another time a vagrant pellet exploded 
ju-t off the tip of his plane. 

Then, with backward-seeming rush, 
the Atlantic gleamed far below. Yet 
even here there was no peace. Huge 
submarines cleaved the green depths, 
grappled furiously with other shining 
silver fish ; they rose to the surface and 
darted after cargo vessels like mon- 
strous bugs, or burst through the water 
to rise into the air with a great unfold- 
ing of wings. 

In the depths of the sea, on land and 
water, in the air, the war of extermina- 
tion raged. Every man’s hand was 
against his brother. Such suicidal 
mania could not continue. Within a 
week, unless somehow stopped, the 
fratricidal warfare would mean the end 
of civilization and reversion to the 
beast; or one nation, by annihilation of 
the others, would force its will upon 
the world. That nation, thought Bob 



grimly, would necessarily be Midcen- 
tral. 

The Atlantic fled away beneath ; then 
the welded unit of North America van- 
ished like a dream, and the blue Pacific 
rolled interminably. Bob turned south, 
pushing his plane to the utmost. It 
was still dark. 

A hundred miles away he saw the 
great hourglass-shaped tower, stretch- 
ing its dim gauntness up into the heav- 
ens. Below, the predawn mist hid the 
Pacific, made it a tossing world of 
smoke. He checked his speed, rapped 
out the secret word on his transmitter. 
His comrades would understand. 

He idled the plane along at a bare 
hundred miles an hour, waiting for the 
answer. White search beams plucked 
like questing fingers from the observa- 
tion rim, far overhead, but he had no 
difficulty in avoiding their sweeping 
paths. 

His heart hammered furiously. Why 
was there no response? Had his mates 
gone over to the enemy? More likely 
that they were watched, or that a Mid- 
central partisan had been placed in 
charge of the all-important communi- 
cations board. Of course, that was it! 
He remembered the unknown traitor. 
In which case 

His receiver buzzed. He almost 
shouted his joy. Good old comrades ! 
They had heard and understood. Natu- 
rally it was not the answering code 
word t there were enemy watchers. 

He put on speed again ; slammed di- 
rectly for the mid-section of the tower. 
Already the great topping bubble was 
blazing with the morning sun. Within 
five miles the guiding beam caught him, 
held him on an even course. The im- 
permite wall opened before him ; the 
plane slid in and halted on the smooth 
white tarmac. He slid open the filtrine 
port, thrust himself stiff-leggedly out 
into the dimness. Only a pilot light 
glowed. 

“Thanks, old mates!” he said to the 



STRATOSPHERE TOWERS 



111 



silent, clustering figures. “I knew you 
wouldn’t fail me.” 

Then, for the first time, in the dim- 
ness, he noted a certain strangeness 
about the figures, the thick silence. 
These were not his comrades, these 

were He sprang backward, trying 

to somersault into the plane port. 

It was too late. The figures con- 
verged on him in a swift, silent rush. 
Strong hands clutched at him, pulled 
him down. He tried to struggle, but 
there were too many of them. Some- 
thing hit him heavily on the head ; there 
was an explosion of stars, and he went 
under, unconscious. 

HUGH NEVILLE, brows knitted, 
made his way swiftly and openly into 
the communications room. This was a 
job he would have to unravel alone. 
He dared not call upon Benton, his 
chief. In the first place, he had noth- 
ing but certain suspicious actions to go 
upon ; in the second place, it would ef- 
fectually put an end to his own scheme. 

By noon to-morrow Bob Jellicoe had 
promised the stoppage of Tower No. 2. 
And Jellicoe struck Neville as being a 
man of his word. It was up to him, 
then, to throw his own tower out of 
gear. If he didn’t, it meant that Mid- 
central would be helpless at the mercy 
of her foes, notably Northcontinent. He 
did not want that. The only effectual 
method of saving civilization was a 
quick peace without victory ; and that 
meant he must do his part. 

Philippe Thibault looked up quickly 
at his entrance, guiltily shoved the book 
he had been reading under the desk. He 
grinned apologetically at the assistant 
chief. 

“Sorry, sir! But there’s nothing stir- 
ring to-night.” He indicated the light- 
less board. “So I thought it wouldn’t 
harm to ” 

Neville said: “I’m not here to snoop, 
Philippe. I come on very grave mat- 
ters, and you’ve got to help me. Above 



all, absolute secrecy is essential, even 
from Christopher Benton himself.” 

“Eh, what’s that?” Thibault was 
startled and showed it. 

Hugh said rapidly: “When yt/u came 
on the shift, did you notice anything 
about Eric ? His manner, his demeanor, 
I mean.” 

Thibault’s shrewd features sharp- 
ened. “Well,” he admitted reluctantly, 
“he did seem a little thick and hazy; 
vague, if you know what I mean.” 

“I know all that ; it’s other things I’m 
interested in. For instance, the silence 
unit that was set up on the board. Did 
he say anything about that?” 

“Eh 1 How did you know ” 

“Never mind how I know,” Hugh re- 
torted impatiently. “What did he do or 
say ?” 

“W-e-11, he seemed a bit upset; I’d 
say he was considerably excited. He 
pushed it down off the board quickly, 
as if he didn’t want me to see it.” 

“A-a-h !” 

That meant Eric himself had set up 
the silence unit, not Atsu. Then per- 
haps the little yellow man was right — 
Eric was the traitor. Yet Atsu had 
spoken to some one within the zone of 
silence before Hugh had entered the 
door. That, however, might be ex- 
plained. He might have been trying to 
establish communication with Tower 
No. 2, to find out things. But, then, 
why hadn’t he said something about it 
to Hugh? 

It was all very complicated. He 
sighed and was aware that Thibault 
was watching him curiously. 

“Listen, Philippe. Don’t ask me ques- 
tions, but I want you to contact Tower 
No. 2. Put up the silence unit. We 
mustn't be overheard. And I want you 
to disguise your voice like Eric’s; pre- 
tend you are he.” 

Thibault stiffened. “Sir,” he said 
formally, “I am under strict orders as 
handed down from the chief scientist 
himself. No one is permitted the use 



112 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



of the communications board except 
Eric Mann and myself. Tower No. 2 
is now an enemy station. Furthermore,” 
he went on more warmly and more hu- 
manly, “I’ll be damned if I’ll play such 
a dirty trick on my chief.” 

“Your personal feelings and devo- 
tion to duty do you credit, Philippe,” 
Neville approved. “But this involves 
the fate of both towers, not to speak of 
the future of the world itself. We’ve 
got along together in the past, haven’t 
we ?” 

“Y-e-e-s.” 

“Trust me this once, then.” 

Thibault looked a long time into 
Hugh’s clear eyes and sighed heavily. 
“I am committing a breach of duty, but 
I’ll ” 

Without another word, he reached 
for the silence unit, plugged it in. Then, 
while Hugh thrust his head into the 
circumscribed circle of sound, he 
switched contact with far-off Tower 
No. 2. The visor screen was off. 

“Who calls?” 

Cold, clipped words swirled around 
them. 

Thibault altered the pitch of his voice. 
It was a perfect imitation of his chief. 

“Eric Mann.” He achieved the ef- 
fect of whispered urgency. “I forgot 
to tell you something. Listen!” 

"Eric Mann? You forgot to tell me 
something?” The bodiless voice sounded 
puzzled, angry. “Now what the devil 
do you mean? I never spoke to you. 

Who are Eric Mann ! Hold on a 

second.” Breathless silence, then: 
“You’re communications chief of 
Tower No. 1, aren’t you?” 

“Of course; you know that.” 

The voice was suddenly wary. “Well, 
what is it?” 

Hugh reached over and snapped off 
the connection. They stared blankly at 
each other. 

Thibault said quietly: “I still don’t 
quite understand, but if it was a test, 
you’ve made a mistake.” 



“Yes,” Hugh agreed slowly, “I made 
a mistake. Eric is loyal. Now, Philippe, 
I’m making another test. This time I’ll 
do the talking.. Contact the tower 
again.” 

“Who calls?” It was the same cold, 
clipped voice. 

Hugh slurred the words : “Atsu Mira. 
Very sorry, but some one suspicious. 
Found him calling* you. He call no 

more — any one. I must tell you ” 

Hugh allowed his voice to trail off to 
inaudibility. There was silence for two 
pounding seconds. 

“Atsu Mira! Never heard of you.” 
The far-off speaker raised his tones in 
seeming anger. “What the devil is this 
all about, anyway?” 

Neville broke contact, switched off 
the silence unit. 

Thibault gaped at him. “Now what 

in the name of Saturn's rings ” 

Hugh was a study in complete be- 
wilderment. “I don’t know any an- 
swers,” he interrupted rather peevishly. 
“Either I'm all wrong, or else— — - 
Philippe,” he said earnestly,- “forget 
everything that has just happened ; erase 
it from your mind.” 

“And why, pray, should the assistant 
communications chief erase matters re- 
lating to the tower from his mind?” 

BOTH Neville and Thibault sprang 
to their feet, whirled around. Christo- 
pher Benton came slowly into the room, 
his usually kindly face stern and hard. 
His swift glance took in the silence unit, 
the guilty starts. 

Hugh went white. “Benton !” 

“Yes, Benton, chief scientist in charge 
of this tower. The man who loved you 
and whom you have betrayed. You and 
your fellow conspirator, Thibault. I 
saw the signal light. You were com- 
municating with Solar Tower No. 2.” 
Hugh stiffened under the lashing 
voice. “It does sound bad, doesn’t it ? 
And what is worse, I can’t even explain 
just yet. I can only ask you to trust 

AST— 7 



STRATOSPHERE TOWERS 



113 



me ; to accept my word without ex- 
planation that what I am doing is for 
the best interests of the tower, of the 
world. And Philippe has no knowl- 
edge of my plans ; he did only what I 
beg you to do now — trust me blindly for 
a while.” 

The old man’s eyes smoldered with 
mingled fury and sorrow. “You always 
were glib of tongue, Neville. I don’t 
believe a word you say. From this time 
on, you are no longer a scientist of the 
tower; you have disgraced the brother- 
hood. To-morrow your cases will be 
dealt with properly. Until then — — ” 

He took out a tiny whistle, blew on 
it. The sound pierced the silences of 
the underground, sent its impulses beat- 
ing up the sound tubes to all the dormi- 
tories of the mid-belt. 

Hugh took a step forward, put out 
an imploring hand. “You are destroy- 
ing the tower.” 

Men rushed in ; guards, weapons in 
hand, scientists, some half dressed. They 
came in increasing flood, ranged around 
the great room, curious, excited at the 
strange summons. On the outskirts 
Hugh noted Eric Mann in a sleep suit, 
licking his thick lips, and Atsu Mira, 
fully dressed, calmly impassive as ever. 

Benton stilled the confused babel with 
a stern, imperious gesture. “Hugh Ne- 
ville and Philippe Thibault are under 
arrest and stripped of association with 
the scientists. They have betrayed the 
high trust that was in them. Eric Mann, 
you will take immediate control of the 
board, until I can arrange for trust- 
worthy relief.” 

Mann came forward respectfully, his 
face twitching. “What have they done?” 
he asked hoarsely. 

“They attempted communication with 
Midcentral at Tower No. 2.” 

A low growl of horror swept the 
massed scientists. It was the unforgiv- 
able sin. 

Guards sprang to either side of the 
prisoners. Hugh held his head high, 

AST— 8 



though despair seethed within. Just 
when it was most necessary that he have 
a free hand, he was to be confined, dis- 
graced. 

As they were led through former 
comrades who now shrank away from 
contaminating contact, Hugh caught 
sight of Atsu. That worthy’s eye 
dropped in a significant wink. 

DALZELL, commander of the Mid- 
central forces in the Pacific Tower, 
stared at the board where the signal lens 
from Tower No. 1 had twice flashed, 
and twice been abruptly cut off. His 
bulldog face was screwed into puzzled 
inquiry. First, there had been a pur- 
ported message from one Eric Mann, 
cryptic, mysteriously cut off. He knew 
him only by name. Then, more disturb- 
ing, the voice, or a good imitation, of 
Atsu Mira. But Atsu never used his 
name; invariably it was his code sym- 
bol, K-4. 

What did it mean? His black brows 
grew blacker. One thing only ; that 
Tower No. 1 was suspicious and was 
fishing for more definite facts to justify 
their suspicions. Atsu might not be 
able to perform as he had promised. 

Dalzell was accustomed to swift de- 
cisions. “Hellwig!” he barked. 

The colonel clicked heels and saluted. 
“Highness !” 

“The stratosphere fleet leaves in 
thirty minutes. Fully equipped, all 
weapons. We attack Tower No. 1 on 
arrival. Atsu may still find means to 
help us from inside.” 

“Your highness’ will is done.” 

“Another thing, Hellwig: Leave or- 
ders concerning Jellicoe’s capture on 
his arrival. He is to be held for my 
return.” 

ERIC MANN burned with a dry fe- 
ver. His eyes glittered behind his 
glasses ; he licked his lips continuously. 
He was alone again in the communica- 
tions room. His head still ached from 



114 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



the strange arrest of Neville and Thi- 
bault; he felt fearfully that somehow 
it affected him. 

It was too late now to withdraw; he 
must go through with it. Yet even the 
tempting vision of power and fortune 
that had been skillfully dangled before 
his eyes no longer was the driving mo- 
tive. It was fear — fear of impending 
discovery that hounded him on to 
further treachery. 

This time he locked the door before 
he signaled. The light showed con- 
tact. 

“Chancellor!” he whispered, even 
though the silence unit was functioning. 
“It's Eric Mann.” 

“Well?” 

“Things have happened here. I can’t 
explain now, but you must accelerate 
your plans. To-morrow will be too 
late. I may not be on duty. You must 
attack at once.” 

The chancellor was also a man of in- 
stant decisions. He sensed the urgent 
terror in the traitor’s voice. 

“The fleet leaves in thirty minutes. 
Remember what you have to do. And, 
Eric — if you perform your part well, 
I shall double my previous offer.” 

VI. 

HUGH NEVILLE paced feverishly 
up and down the narrow limits of his 
cell. Thibault had been placed sep- 
arately. Hugh’s thoughts were whirl- 
ing. Something was brewing, of that 
he was sure, and he was helpless. Yet 
who was the traitor within the gates? 
If Atsu was honest, then it must be 
Eric; if Eric was blameless, then it 
must be Atsu. A vicious circle with- 
out a ray of light. Excepting only one : 
The reason why the calls to the other 
tower had failed. The informant as- 
suredly had a code name of identifica- 
tion, and of course he had not used it. 
The only result was that Midcentral 
was now on guard. 

He did not sleep, but kept on pacing. 



He glanced at his time signal. It was 
almost four in the morning. What was 
happening outside? The walls of his 
cell were impenetrable. 

He stopped suddenly. Something 
was scratching faintly. He listened. 
The noise continued. Then the slide 
door disappeared smoothly into its re- 
cess. A man stepped through. 

“Atsu!” he exclaimed." 

The yellow man’s finger was at his 
lips warningly. “No noise, please. So 
sorry what happened. But dared not 
interfere. Waited my chance. Now fol- 
low me.” 

“But how did you unseal the door? 
It has a photo-electric circuit, which 
only Benton’s image will break.” 

Atsu grinned. “I find that out. So 
I take liberty to invade honorable sci- 
entist’s room in his absence and dis- 
cover a stereo-image of him. I enlarge 
in stereo room to proper proportions 
and hold honorable image before cell. 
Foolish cell don’t see difference.” 

They had already glided out of the 
punishment chamber, were making their 
stealthy way to the elevator. No one 
was in sight. Hugh’s muscles were 
tensed for impending action. He felt 
ashamed of his former suspicions of the 
yellow man. 

“Thanks !” he said simply. “What 
has been happening?” 

They were dropping with tremendous 
velocity to the lowest level. 

Atsu said earnestly: “I try again to 
listen to Eric Mann. But impossible. 
He lock door. You know — I think ” 

“What?” 

“That he know what is called game 
is up. That you suspect ; that you soon 
convince honorable chief. So he sig- 
nal Midcentral to come with fleet, and 
he let them in.” 

Which was a shrewd guess, except 
that Mira knew it was Northcontinent 
to whom Mann had sold out. He did 
not want that to happen. It would 
smash Midcentral's dream of conquest 



STRATOSPHERE TOWERS 



115 



if the rival nation controlled the tower. 
What he did not know, however, was 
that Hugh had spoken to Dalzell, using 
Mira’s name, and that Dalzell, worried, 
was even now speeding with a great 
fleet to the attack. 

Hugh thrust his jaw forward. “We’ll 
put a stop to that idea,” he declared 
grimly. 

They threaded their way carefully 
to the dim underground. The sci- 
entists had gone back to their duties, 
or to bed, disturbed at the seeming 
treachery of two of their comrades. 

Hugh tried the door carefully. It was 
locked, from the inside. He knocked 
commandingly. 

Nothing could be heard through the 
soundproof door. 

Then it slid open, and Eric stood 
there, confused, stammering. “I — I 

was afraid of more trouble, sir, so I 
just ” 

He saw then the grim features of 
the man who was supposed to be safe 
in the detention cell and sprang back. 
He opened his mouth to yell. 

Hugh moved with the swiftness of a 
pouncing panther. One long arm shot 
out to catch him in a strangling neck 
hold, the other clamped firmly over the 
parted lips. The sound died down to 
a gurgling gasp. 

Atsu Mira glided sinuously into the 
room, catfooted for the board. 

“Wait!” Neville twisted his victim 
in front, propelled him across to the 
chair. “Lock the door first. We have 
a long job on our hands.” 

Atsu paused, turned back. It wouldn’t 
do to arouse suspicions now. He must 
act circumspectly and with care. 

ERIC was like putty in Hugh’s 
powerful hands. He fell like a lifeless 
sack into the chair in front of the board. 
His face was blue with congestion, and 
his breath came stertorously under Ne- 
ville’s strangling grip. Hugh relaxed a 
trifle. 



Eric put his hand gingerly to his 
bruised and lacerated throat. His eyes 
were wide with fear, but he said noth- 
ing. 

Atsu had come back and was staring 
down at him blandly. 

“Now !” Hugh said with deadly in- 
tonation. “It is our turn, Eric. You 
will talk and talk fast.” 

“I don’t know what you mean.” 

Atsu interrupted smoothly. “Why 
bother with traitor? We know he com- 
municated with enemy ; we know he 
tell them come ; he betray tower to 
them.” 

Eric stammered: “No — no! It’s a — 
a lie; I didn’t!” His voice rose to a 
scream. He was pitiable. 

Atsu went on relentlessly: “I myself 
stand in open door, see you call enemy 
station. You have silence unit in opera- 
tion.” 

Eric stared at his accuser with fright- 
ened gaze. He opened his mouth to 
deny it, met the yellow man’s mocking 
eyes, and choked off into inaudible 
mouthings. 

“You see, friend Neville, how it is? 
Let us waste no time on this scoundrel. 
Let us kill him, ag he deserves.” 

The wretched man slumped to his 
knees. He was frantic with terror. 
“Mercy!” he implored. “Let me live. 

I will tell you everything. It is true 
I ” 

Hugh caught the swift movement of 
Atsu’s hand. He swiveled, leaped for 
the driving steel. A quick jerking twist 
and the long, keen-bladed knife went 
thudding to the floor. The yellow man 
ground out an unintelligible oath and 
rocked back on his heels, nursing a 
sprained wrist. 

“None of that !” Hugh said sharply. 
“What the devil do you mean by try- 
ing cold-blooded murder?” 

Atsu wiped his face of all emotion. 
“So sorry,” he said blandly. “But 
righteous anger swept me away.” 



116 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



Hugh swung back on the cowering 
wretch. “Let’s have it.” 

The words tumbled eagerly: “It hap- 
pened yesterday. He contacted me, 
when I was alone. He made dazzling 
offers if I would open the tower to his 
forces. He promised that no harm 
would come to any one. In a moment 
of folly I yielded. But during the 
night, my conscience bothered me. I 
determined to back out, not to do it. 
When Benton’s whistle called, and you 
were arrested, I felt that you knew 
something, and I became so frightened, 
I — I didn’t know what I was doing. 
I called him, and — and the fleet is on 
its way. When I get the code signal, 
I’m to open the ports at all altitudes.” 
Hugh gripped the still kneeling man’s 
arm with a fierce grip. “The attack will 
take place when?” 

“In thirty minutes.” 

Hugh flung him away. “Midcentral 
knew how to pick its dupes.” 

Eric sprawled against the desk. He 
lifted his bruised head. “Midcentral?” 
he echoed blankly. “I had nothing to 
do with Midcentral. It was the chan- 
cellor of Northcontinent who spoke to 
me. It was because Midcentral was in 
control of Tower No. 2 that I agreed. 
I felt they would force each other to a 
quick peace.” 

Hugh swerved on Atsu, but the yel- 
low man forestalled him. 

“So sorry,” he said. “I must have 
mistaken the signal lenses. But differ- 
ence, if any, unimportant. Must keep 
enemy out. One nation bad as an- 
other.” 

“Of course,” Hugh agreed readily. 
But his glance flicked over the board. 
The signal lenses of the Pacific Tower 
and of Northcontinent ’s station were at 
opposite ends. He said nothing, how- 
ever, and sprang to the controls. 

He checked the signals with speed 
and efficiency. All the ports were 
closed. Eric lay on the floor where 
he had fallen, holding his head in his 



hands, groaning. Atsu hovered to one 
side, bland, inscrutable. He had wrig- 
gled nicely out of that. Let Neville 
pull the chestnuts out of the fire and 
burn his fingers in doing it. Then he, 
Atsu Mira, .would act, even as he had 
done at Tower No. 2. 

HUGH switched on the observation- 
rim telescopes, contacted them in slowly 
revolving series with a special visor 
screen. It was already dawn in the 
high stratosphere. 

Far off, to the northwest, at the ex- 
treme limit of visibility, a cloud of black 
specks seemed moveless in the lower 
stratosphere. 

Eric had told the truth. Northcon- 
tinent was hurtling to the attack. 

Hugh swore fiercely. Atsu leaned 
forward with masked eagerness. At the 
same time he edged toward the fallen, 
forgotten knife. . His plan was clear. 
Kill the two men in the room, wreck 
the communications board. Then to the 
key centers of the tower, to smash the 
delicate actuating apparatus. He would 
find them, he was siure. 

He bent over to flick something off 
his shoe. When he arose, the knife 
was hidden in his wide-flaring sleeve. 
He moved on stealthy feet toward the 
unsuspecting scientist. He was almost 
behind his victim. Eric was sobbing 
quietly in the corner, still crumpled to- 
gether. 

Hugh Reached over and threw a 
switch. The ravaged features of Chris- 
topher Benton turned full from the 
screen. He had not slepf. His face 
twitched as he saw the occupants of the 
communications room. 

Atsu snarled to himself, retreated a 
step. What did the fool mean by this? 

The chief scientist jumped to his feet. 
His hand reached for the whistle hang- 
ing on a chain from his neck. 

“Benton, don’t touch that whistle,” 
Hugh said rapidly. “Now I can ex- 
plain. We have been betrayed — by Eric. 



STRATOSPHERE TOWERS 



117 



The fleet of Northcontinent is almost at 
the tower. Look at the other screen.” 
Benton’s hand clutched the whistle, 
stayed. His eyes went to the visioned 
screen, saw the dots. They were larger 
now. His eyes came back. 

“You broke from your cell. You had 
confederates outside, then. Ah, Atsu 
Mira! ' I understand now. You've 
gained control of the board somehow, 
and you boast to me. You dare call 

Eric the traitor, but you ” 

“Eric Mann, lift your head,” Hugh 
interrupted. “Tell him the truth.” 

The miserable scientist raised him- 
self on one arm, looked with shame- 
swept eyes at his chief, and said in a 
low voice : “It was I who betrayed you.” 
Then he let his head fall again. 

Benton staggered slightly, shocked, 
bewildered. Yet strangely there was a 
flicker of relief, of joy even. 

“Hugh! I don’t understand.” 

“We have no time. The fleet is ap- 
proaching. Make sure all ports, the 
rim, the machinery, are manned by 
trustworthy men. There may be more 
backsliders in the ranks.” 

The chief scientist pulled himself to- 
gether. His whistle shrilled. The sound 
vibrated through every nook and cranny 
of the vast tower, carried through the 
cunningly constructed sound tubes. 
Even in the communications room it 
blasted its warning. 

Men sprang from sleep, gdarted into 
the corridors, confused, querying. It 
was the second summons of a thrill- 
packed night. 

Hugh’s eyes flicked back to the tele- 
visor screen. The automatic rotation of 
the telescopes had clicked past the north- 
ern view, and swept now over the south- 
eastern area. Water foamed at the bot- 
tom of the screen, but high above, com- 
ing swiftly over the Red Sea, was an- 
other fleet, great, grim, battle planes ! 
“Midcentral!” he cried. 

Red swastikas emblazoned the under 



wings. The truth flamed through him 
and he turned sharply. He was not fast 
enough. Atsu struck. 

The blade, poised for the broad of 
his back, sliced through the left shoul- 
der, crunched against bone. Hugh fell 
backward, hitting his head against the 
hard floor. The blood pulsed from the 
wound, dripped down his side. He was 
motionless, eyes wide-staring. 

Atsu balanced a ’moment, watching 
Eric. But the erstwhile communica- 
tions chief was still sprawled as he had 
been flung, moaning softly. With a 
contemptuous gesture, the yellow man 
switched on the direction finder, sent a 
tight beam hurtling toward the ap- 
proaching planes on the southeastern 
visor screen. 

“Stillwig!” The code word. 

“K-4! In complete control of tower, 
excellency.” 

“Splendid ! Open ports for our en- 
trance.” 

“Not yet. Northcontinent’s fleet is 
moving on the tower from the north- 
west. Your paths intersect in five min- 
utes.” 

There was silence. Then: "Can you 
turn off the power? The enemy fleet 
will crash.” 

“And you?” 

“We’re riding the beam from Tower 
No. 2.” 

“So sorry, excellency. The scientists 
are on guard. The key positions are 
protected. I dare not stir from the 
communications room.” 

“Very well. We shall fight it out 
then. We have the larger fleet. As 
soon as Northcontinent crashes, open 
the ports.” 

“Yes, excellency.” 

Atsu snapped off all connections ex- 
cept the tight beam and the telescopic 
screen. But not before the mid-belt 
lens had flared, and Benton’s startled 
features flashed on the local screen. 
Then they were gone. 



118 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



ATSU sputtered strange crackling 
syllables and catfooted to the door. He 
did not know whether the chief scientist 
had seen the bloody, motionless body of 
his assistant on the floor or not, but he 
was taking no chances. He sealed the 
entrance, connected wires with rapid, 
skillful fingers. One hundred thou- 
sand volts hurtled deadly power through 
the conductive element. He was safe 
against violent invasion. 

He padded softly back to the board. 
Hugh was motionless, seemingly dead. 
The pool of blood had widened. His 
face was white and set. Eric, unstirring 
from his position, had stopped sobbing. 
He seemed drugged, unconscious. 

Atsu watched the screen, fascinated. 
The two great fleets had seen each other, 
swung sharply around. Two thousand 
planes against fifteen hundred, glinting 
in the high sun, ten miles above the 
blazing desert, rushing toward each 
other at five hundred miles an hour. 

They met in a cataclysmic smash. 
Great bombers sliced through each other 
as if tough alloys were so much putty, 
locked crazily together in a mad dance 
of destruction. Blinding flame slashed 
through the shrieking stratosphere, en- 
veloped and crisped everything in its 
path to little fluttering motes of dust. 
Disruptors swallowed whole squadrons 
in hellish cones, wiped men and metals 
clean out of existence. And everywhere 
the Dongan pellets clung to doomed 
ships, burning, eating away, until, me- 
teorlike, they plunged to earth. 

Ten miles of air, saturated with 
debris of destruction, raining ghastly 
dew on hot, thirsty sands. The thin 
squeak of battle poured through the 
sound amplifiers. The rarefied air was 
not conducive to full-throated roars. 

Atsu watched patiently. The sight 
of battle, tffe holocaust of men, the 
crisping of agonized bodies, did not dis- 
turb his expressionless features. He had 
no doubt of the outcome. 

It was over in half an hour. North- 



continent’s fleet littered the burning ter- 
rain far below. Forty thousand men 
went with it. Midcentral rode the 
beams, shattered, tom, but victorious. 
They had suffered greatly, too ; half 
their fleet was inextricably intertwined 
with the debris of the enemy, but Dal- 
zell did not care. Tower No. 1 lay at 
his mercy. Once inside, the entire world 
must bow to his terms, or be wiped out 
of existence. He signaled the tower. 

VII. 

ATSU reached for the switches that 
controlled the entrance ports of the mid- 
belt. Nothing could stop them now. 
The signals from the executive rooms 
flared steadily, but he ignored them. 
Benton was frantically trying to estab- 
lish communication. Outside the sound- 
proofed door there must be the wildest 
excitement. Something battered against 
the barrier and was followed by silence. 
Atsu could envision the sizzling, electro- 
cuted bodies of the attackers. 

His hand was on the. switch when he 
heard a moan. He swung around. 
Hugh Neville, head gory with his own 
blood, was raising himself with infinite 
effort. Atsu made a gesture of annoy- 
ance. When he killed a man, it was in- 
decent for his victim to come back to 
life again. He plucked at his knife. 
This time there would be no further 
resuscitation. 

He bent over, the keen blade point- 
ing. Hugh saw the evil-glittering blade, 
raised a weak hand to fend it off. The 
knife descended. 

Atsu Mira had forgotten Eric Mann, 
or, rather, the traitorous scientist had 
lain in seeming stupor so long that he 
felt safe in disregarding him. T<J put 
the final quietus to Neville, he perforce 
turned his back on Eric. 

Now Eric had at first been so over- 
whelmed with the consciousness of guilt 
and the dreary rayless prospect before 
him that in truth he was as one dead. 
But the surprising treason of Atsu, akin 



STRATOSPHERE TOWERS 



119 



to his own and yet so dissimilar, stirred 
comatose brain cells into renewed 
activity. His own life was forfeit, yet 
he was repentant. Midcentral was the 
country of his birth ; Northcontinent had 
seduced him with false blandishments; 
and he hated both now with a consum- 
ing hatred. Once more he was a sci- 
entist, though an outcast. 

His brain was busy, but he held his 
limbs rigid, waiting. The opportunity 
came as Atsu bent over Hugh. He 
scrambled to his knees, flung himself in 
a headlong sprawling dive for the mur- 
derer. He hit the half-risen body of 
Hugh and knocked him crashing across 
the floor ; his own hands clutching 
vainly for Atsu’s legs. 

The keen driven point, meant for Ne- 
ville’s throat, bit deep into Eric’s chest, 
buried itself to the guard hilt. The yel- 
low man snarled hideous curses and 
tugged at the buried blade. It jerked 
out, the red blood spurting like a gey- 
ster behind it. 

Mira whirled and raised his knife 
again. But Hugh, unsteadily on his 
feet, pallid as a corpse, blood-smeared, 
wild-eyed, summoned his last reserves 
o! strength. He lifted the metal chair, 
brought it down crashing. Atsu crum- 
pled under the impact and slumped over 
the dead form of Eric Mann. His skull 
had crushed like so much thin card- 
board. 

Hugh leaned heavily against the 
board, grimacing with pain from the 
hurt in his shoulder, staring with half- 
glazed eyes at the shambles. A crash 
startled him, turned him slowly toward 
the door. It hung crazily ajar, and men 
were pouring in, Benton in the lead. 

“We had to shut off the power to 
break in,” the chief panted and stopped 
short. “For Heaven’s sake what hap- 
pened ?” 

Hugh swayed and grinned feebly. 
“There were two traitors,” he ex- 
plained. “Atsu was Midcentral’s agent. 
He is dead now ; so is Eric.” He stared 



down at the sightless eyes of Northcon- 
tinent’s dupe. “But Eric expiated his 
sin. He saved my life just now at the 
cost of his own. He was a true sci- 
entist, in spite of ” He sank limply 

into the chair. “The battle outside — 
what’s happened ?” The screen was 
blank ; the power was dead. 

“We don’t know. All secondary 
screens were off. But Midcentral must 
be victorious. When we shut off the 
power, Northcontinent of course 
crashed.” 

Neville shook his head. “Bob Jelli- 
coe took off last night for his own 
tow’er. He promised its capture and 
cessation of power by noon. It’s after 
that now. Both fleets must be down.” 

Benton looked bewildered. “What 
have you been conspiring behind my 
back ? However ” 

“Turn on the power again; I want to 
see.” 

BENTON sent the crowded scientists 
hurrying back to their stations. Within 
two minutes power surged through the 
great tower. Almost at once the signal 
of the tight beam of communication 
with Midcentral’s fleet glowed redly. 

Dalzell’s angry features glared at 
them from the screen. “What the devil, 

Atsu ” He stopped short, took in 

the scene with a rapid movement of his 
deep-set eyes. 

“Atsu is dead,” Benton said coldly. 

Hugh looked at the screen unbeliev- 
ingly. Northcontinent’s fleet was gone, 
but Midcentral was still in the air. For 
one moment he forgot that Dalzell was 
listening. 

“Then Jellicoe missed ” He 

paused abruptly, biting his lip. He had 
spoiled what last chance the other might 
have had. He had put Dalzell on guard. 

The Midcentral commander seemed to 
read his thoughts and smiled with tight 
lips. “I knew all about Jellicoe. There 
was a reception committee waiting him. 
He is out of harm’s way.” 



120 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



Benton said “We seem to have check- 
mated each other. You still have con- 
trol of Tower No. 2. But your emissary 
failed here. The tower is impenetrable. 
Without us. your plans must fall.” 
Dalzell did not seem perturbed. “You 
think so? You are mistaken. Your 
tower is not impregnable.” 

“What nonsense is that ?” Benton said 
angrily. “Your heaviest weapons can- 
not penetrate impermite.” 

“•You are wrong. Jellicoe had been 
working on a process secretly. I found 
his plans and formulas in the tower. 
They were not as well hidden as he 
had thought. It is a simple method, and 
I was able to equip my fleet overnight. 
We bombard_the stripped protons of 
your impermite walls with high-speed 
electrons. The electrons combine with 
the protons to form ordinary hydrogen 
gas.” He smiled his tight-lipped smile. 
“It will be a humorous sight to watch 
your walls gradually evaporate, leaving 
you, so to speak, suspended in mid-air.” 
Benton said confidently: “It’s a wild 
dream. You can’t do it.” 

“Watch me,” Dalzell retorted. He 
spoke into his broadcasting unit: “Pro- 
ceed with attack according to plan. 
Squadron A, encircle at ceiling of flight. 
B, remain at ten-mile level ; C, drop to 
five-mile altitude.” 

Like clockwork the maneuver was ex- 
ecuted. Two hundred planes pointed 
their noses upward, zoomed with thin- 
roaring motors. At fourteen miles they 
wavered, pushed with all the force of 
their superchargers, wabbled, and flat- 
tened out. They had reached the ceil- 
ing. 

Neville wiped the blood off his face. 
There was nothing he could do. He re- 
membered the competent carriage of 
Jellicoe, and felt a sinking sensation in 
the pit of his stomach. If the method 
was his, it would work. Theoretically, 
it sounded feasible. 

It was an awe-inspiring sight — the 
three levels of great circling planes 



swarming around the beleaguered tower, 
the red swastikas mocking at the help- 
less garrison. 

Hugh swore bitterly. “Damn that 
fool council for relying entirely on im- 
permite walls. If we had weapons now, 
we ” 

“It won’t work,” Benton said stub- 
bornly. 

IN THE screen Dalzell pressed a 
button. He grinned out at them. A 
whining sound game through the ampli- 
fiers, rose quickly to an inaudible shriek. 
Blue jets streaked from the sides of the 
thousand planes, focused on the black 
walls of the tower. The Midcentral 
commander bowed mockingly in his 
cabin and snapped off the communica- 
tions switch. His features faded. He 
had shown the mice with whom he was 
playing enough. . Thereafter the inmates 
of the tower saw only through the re- 
volving telescopes. 

The blue streams smashed into the re- 
sistant walls, spread over their surface 
until the entire structure seemed a haze 
of shimmering blue fire. Benton and 
Neville watched anxiously. Nothing 
happened; the walls glowed and re- 
mained intact. 

Benton chortled his relief. In spite 
of his seeming confidence he had been 
more shaken than he had cared to ad- 
mit. “Just as I thought. A futile 
gesture.” 

Hugh’s features were pinched with 
pain and the desperateness of their situ- 
ation. “It takes time,” he said with 
effort. “The protons are packed tightly ; 
the electron streams are diffused. The 
surface will slough off into hydrogen 
atoms almost imperceptibly.” 

Benton was taken aback. “There’s 
something in that.” His jaw set. 
“We’ll find out fast enough.” 

He stalked to the other end of the 
room where a small machine was welded 
to the wall. It sent an electrical im- 
pulse beating through the impermite to 



STRATOSPHERE TOWERS 



121 



the outer surface, from which it re- 
bounded inward again. The distance 
traveled was measured by a swinging 
pointer. Differences in length of less 
than a millimicron were easily per- 
ceptible. 

The chief scientist switched it on The 
needle traveled smoothly to the three- 
quarter mark and stopped. Then, very 
slowly, it began to retreat — a slow, in- 
exorable retreat. Every black line it 
passed meant one millimicron shaved off. 
The impermite wall was gradually less- 
ening in thickness. 

The two men looked at each other 
blankly. It would take hours, but 
eventually the impermite would com- 
pletely dissipate into hydrogen. 

They went to work with quiet des- 
perateness, trying every method to stave 
off the inevitable. There was no thought 
of surrender, even though the tower 
vanished in thin smoke around them. 

The tradition of the scientists was at 
stake. 

Every quarter hour Dalzell estab- 
lished communication, asked sardon- 
ically: “Ready to surrender?” 

The answer was always the same: 
“We’ll see you in hell first !” 

STILL the ceaseless evaporation con- 
tinued. The electrons, sucked out of 
the ionized stratosphere, beat in constant 
sparkling blaze against the impermite. 
The hydrogen gas ignited and sheeted 
around the walls in explosive bursts. 
Steam spread out in great clouds; it 
rained down on the bottomless desert 
below for the first time in hundreds of 
years. 

Benton sent broadcast appeals to 
every nation in the world. It was their 
fight as well as the scientists’. In many 
cases there was no response ; in others, 
though the language was different, the 
purport was the same. “We’d be glad 
to help, but Nation X — or Y or Z, as 
the case might be — is invading our terri- 



tories. We need a.H our forces for de- 
fense.” 

“Blind fools!” said Benton with more 
bitterness than he had ever displayed. 
“Don’t they realize that if the tower 
goes, they’re all through ? Their fleets 
will crash, their arms be so much metal- 
lic junk, and their peoples will starve. 
Yet they refuse to forget their idiotic 
jealousies and come to our rescue.” 

“Those are the people we’ve slaved 
for all our lives,” Hugh retorted. 

He had worked like a demon, in spite 
of wounds and loss of blood. He set 
up a defensive screen ; the electrons 
went through it with the greatest of 
ease. He diverted all the vast power 
of the tower to repel the electron 
streams with circling waves. This helped 
somewhat, but the speed of the hurtling 
elementary projectiles was such that a 
goodly percentage forced their way past 
the barrier. The inevitable process was 
only retarded. And the thought of the 
incalculable damage to the outside world 
by the stoppage of power at last induced 
him to send it back into the normal 
channels. 

The walls were becoming dangerously 
thin now. 

Benton threw up his hands. “What 
now ?” he asked quietly. 

“I don’t know,” Neville returned just 
as quietly. “We’re at the end of our 
rope. In another few minutes what is 
left of the walls will be insufficient to 
stand the strain. The six miles of tower 
above the ceiling of the Midcentral 
planes has retained its normal weight 
and will smash down through the weak- 
ened sections like so much tissue.” 

Benton drew himself proudly erect. 
“Very well ! We'll die in the ruins 
rather than prove recreant to our trust.” 

Noble sentiments, Hugh thought. If 
only Bob Jellicoe had been successful ! 
But of course he had been captured, 
was dead probably by now. Well, ii. a 
few minutes it wouldn’t matter; they'd 
all be dead. 



122 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



MOVED by some obscure instinct, 
Hugh knifed the switch under the sig- 
nal lens of the far-off tower. 

No answering signal ! Why should 
there be? Midcentral’s men would re- 
fuse to answer. Nevertheless, more or 
less mechanically, he sent out the call 
of distress, over and over. Still no an- 
swer. He switched off ; he was making 
himself a laughingstock to their opera- 
tors. 

A great shout burst from Benton. His 
eyes glued to the screen. Hugh fol- 
lowed his gaze. 

The blue flame was gone; the huge 
planes were plunging downward, er- 
ratically, with little convulsive jerks as 
white-faced, staring pilots tried to level 
off, faster and faster, as they neared 
the upward rushing earth, until, with a 
roar and a smothering geyser of sand, 
they plowed through the twisted rem- 
nants of the once mighty Northcon- 
tinent fleet. 

When the billowing haze had settled, 
the desert was a mass of wreckage, in 
which deadly rivals mingled peacefully 
together in one final unmoving heap. 

Benton’s tones were awed : “Some- 
thing happened to their power.” 

It was Hugh who saw the signal lens 
of Tower No. 2. He sprang to the 
board, threw in the switch. 

Bob Jellicoe appeared on the screen, 
disheveled, clothes half ripped off him, 
left arm limp. Behind him crowded the 



figures of scientists. On the floor were 
sprawled bodies. 

“You all right?” Bob demanded anx- 
iously. 

“Swell!” Hugh answered. 

“How about Dalzell? I shut off the 
power for only two minutes.” 

“Crashed !” 

“Good!” A cheerful grin lighted up 
his battered countenance. “We just got 
through mopping up. It took some time 
before I could find means to communi- 
cate with my comrades and for them to 
release me. Then came the big fight. 
We were still at it when your distress 
call came through.” 

“You couldn’t have come to the 
rescue in better time,” Hugh assured 
him fervently. 

Benton went grimly to the board, 
switched on every station in the world, 
row on row of them. 

“What are you going to do?” Neville 
asked curiously. 

“Do?” The chief scientist snorted. 
“Lay down the law to the nations. Tell 
them that hereafter the scientists are go- 
ing to do the ruling. I'm tired of the 
way in which they’ve run things.” 

“And if they refuse to obey?” Hugh 
said softly. 

Benton laughed harshly. “I’ll turn 
off every ounce of power. So will Jel- 
licoe out there. That will bring them to 
their knees in a hurry.” 



In response to many requests for social-problem stories, we bring 
you next month a conception utterly new, utterly fascinating. Y ou 

will remember 

HERITAGE 

by E. J. DERRINGER 

One of the strangest stories ever told! 

IN THE SEPTEMBER ASTOUNDING STORIES 




The Legion of Space 



Part Five of the great novel 

by Jack Williamson 



UP TO NOW: 

In the thirtieth century, John Star — 
then John Ulnar — receives his commis- 
sion in the legion of space, with orders 
to join the guard of Aladoree Anthar, 
a lovely, mysterious girl, keeper of 



AKKA — the secret weapon of human- 
ity, so terrific that its plans are intrusted 
to only one person in the system. 

For two hundred years AKKA has 
protected the democratic Green Hall 
Council from the “Purples,” who plot to 



124 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



restore the old empire, with the despotic 
family of Ulnar on the throne. 

Adam Ulnar, zvealthy leader of the 
Purples and vow commander of the 
legion, has sent his nephew, Eric Ulnar, 
claimant of the throne, to the star 
Yarkand, where he made an alliance 
until the weird, monstrous, but highly 
scientific Medusae, to help him crush the 
Green Hall, promising them iron, pre- 
cious to them. 

Aided by the Medusae, Eric Ulnar 
abducts Aladoree, to deprive the Green 
Hall of AKKA. John Star, zvith three 
legionnaires, Jay Kalam, Hal Sarndu, 
and Giles Habibula, captures the “Pur- 
ple Dream,” space cruiser of the traitor- 
ous commander, and follows to the 
gigantic planet of Yarkand, where the 
crippled ship plunges in an ocean. 

The Medusae, they learn, have tricked 
the Purples, planning to migrate to the 
system, from their dying sun, zviping out 
humanity. 

Leaving Adam Ulnar aboard the 
zvrecked ship, the four get ashore, reach 
the colossal, unearthly black city of the 
Medusae. Entering through an aqueduct, 
they are captured, imprisoned with Eric 
Ulnar. 

“They’re murdering mankind!” 
screams Eric. “Bombing the planets 
with a deadly red gas. And making me 
torture Aladoree! They zvant AKKA. 
They zvon’t let me die till she tells. But 
when she tells, they zvill kill us all!” 

They must rescue the girl to save the 
human race. 

XXI. 

M Y BLESSED bottle of wine!” 
sobbed Giles Habibula plain- 
tively. ‘‘I carried it out of the 
sunken cruiser. I carried it through the 
jungle of thorns. I carried it up the 
mortal black mountains. For precious 
months I carried it on the raft. I risked 
my mortal life to save it, fighting a 
blessed flying monster. L dived for it 
into the horrors of the yeilow river. I 



was near drowning with it in the fall 
beneath that precious aqueduct ! 

“The only bottle of wine on the whole 
black continent!” 

His fishy eyes clouded, and the clouds 
gave forth to a rain of tears. He sank 
down on the bare metal floor of the cell 
in a stricken heap. 

“Poor old Giles Habibula. lonely, 
desolate, forlorn old soldier of the legion. 
Accused for a pirate, hunted like a rat 
out of his own native system, caught like 
a rat in a mortal trap to be tortured and 
murdered by the monsters of an alien 
star! 

“And, ah, me, even that is not enough ! 
I’d carried that bottle through a mortal 
lot of hardship and peril. I’d held it up 
to the light, many a time, life knows, 
my old mouth watering. Always I’d 
saved it for the hour of greater need. 
Ah, yes, for such a time of mortal bleak 
necessity as faces us now ! 

“And it must fall ! Fall two thousand 
feet. Every mortal drop of it. Gone ! 
Ah, Giles Habibula ” 

His voice was overcome by cata- 
clysmic grief, earthquakes of sighs and 
storms of tears. 

John Star questioned Eric Ulnar 
again. He had slept, his haggard, 
emaciated body exhausted by the out- 
burst of hysteria. He was calm when 
he woke, sunk in a sort of apathy, speak- 
ing in a dull, weary tone. 

“The Medusae are anxious to desert 
this planet,” he said. “It’s old, its natu- 
ral resources exhausted. The long, bit- 
ter nights are always more severe. And 
it is spiraling back toward its dying sun ; 
sometime it will crash into it.” 

“They already have an outpost in the 
system, you say?” 

“Yes,” continued the lifeless mono- 
tone. “They’ve already conquered the 
Moon of Earth. They’ve filled its at- 
mosphere with the deadly red gas, wiped 
out the human colonists, built a great 
fortress of this black, synthetic metal.” 



THE LEGION OF SPACE 



125 



“But the legion! Surely ’’ 

“The legion of space is destroyed. 
The last, disorganized remnant of it was 
annihilated in a vain attack on the Moon. 
The Green Hall, too, is gone. The sys- 
tem has no organization, no defense. 

“And the Medusae, from the fort on 
the Moon, are proceeding with the de- 
struction of the human race. They’re 
firing great shells, filled with the red gas, 
at Earth and the other planets and satel- 
lites. Slowly, in every atmosphere, the 
concentration of the gas is increasing. 
Soon men everywhere will be dying of 
insanity and the green, leprous wasting 
away of their bodies. 

“Only a few of the Medusae, com- 
paratively, have already gone to the sys- 
tem. But their great fleet is now being 
organized and equipped, to carry the 
migrating hordes that will occupy our 
planets as the human race is destroyed.’’ 
There had been a vast change in Eric 
Ulnar’s manner. On the first occasion, 
his voice had been a thin, hysterical 
scream. Now his dull tones were barely 
audible. His face — it still had a sort of 
pallid beauty from his long yellow hair, 
worn, haggard, pain-drawn as it was — 
his face was vacantly calm. He spoke 
of the plans of the Medusae with an 
unconcern that was almost mechanical, 
as if the fate of the system no longer 
interested him. 

“And Aladoree?” John Star de- 
manded. “Where is she?” 

“She is locked in the next cell, beside 
us, under the floor of the hall above.” 
“You say she’s been” — he could not 
keep a little sob of pain and anger from 
bis voice, “been — tortured?” 

“The Medusae want to know her se- 
cret,” came the lifeless, expressionless 
reply. “They want the plans for 
AKKA. Since they can’t communicate 
with her themselves — she doesn’t know 
the code — they made me try to get the 
secret for them. But she won't tell. 
“We’ve used different means,” he 



droned on. “Fatigue, hypnotism, pain. 
But she won’t tell.” 

“You ” choked Hal Samdu. “You 

— beast — -coward ” 

He charged across the cell, great 
hands clenching savagely. Eric Ulnar 
shrank from him, shuddering, cried out: 
“Don’t! Don’t let him touch me! 
They tortured me ! I couldn’t stand it ! 
They tortured me ! And they wouldn’t 
let me die !” 

"Hal !” protested Jay Kalam gravely. 
“That won’t help things a bit. We need 
to know what he can tell us.” 

“But he — ” gasped the giant, “he — 
tortured Aladoree!” 

“I know,” soothed John Star, holding 
his arm, though he shared the savage 
impulse to destroy this abject human 
object. “What he tells us will help to 
rescue her.” 

He turned back to Eric Ulnar. 

“In the next cell, you say. Is there a 
guard ?” 

“Don’t let him touch me,” came the 
whining response. “Yes, one of the 
Medusae always watches in the hall.” 
“If we could get past the guard, is 
there any way out?” 

“Out of the city, you mean?” 

“Yes,” Jay Kalam spoke up. “We're 
going to rescue Aladoree. We're going 
to take her outside the city and let her 
set up her weapon. Then the Medusae 
will come to us for orders — unless we 
decide to destroy the whole city out of 
hand.” 

“No, you could never get out of the 
city,” returned the dull voice. “You 
can’t even leave the hall. It opens over 
a pit a mile deep. Just a sheer, blank 
wall below the door. Even if you got 
down, you’d have n& way to cross the 
city. The Medusae have no streets; 
they fly. 

“But there’s no use, even to talk of 
that. You can’t even get out of this cell, 
or get Aladoree out of hers. The sliding 
doors are locked. You are unarmed 
prisoners. Talking of stealing some- 



126 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



thing the Medusae are guarding in their 
securest fortress!” 

His voice died in dull contempt. 

WITH SOMETHING of the impa- 
tience of a trapped animal, John Star 
gazed about the cell — a bare metal cham- 
ber, square, twenty feet wide. Ten feet 
overhead was the rectangular opening 
through which they had been dropped, 
closed with a sliding grille of square 
metal bars. Green light filtered through 
the bars from the hall above. His eyes, 
searching for some weapon or tool to 
aid their escape, found no movable thing 
in the cell. It was simply a square box 
of black metal. 

Hal Samdu was pacing back and forth 
along the walls, his eyes roving like 
those of a caged beast, sometimes cast- 
ing a glance of savage rage at Eric 
Ulnar. 

“You can’t get out of this cell, even,” 
insisted the same dead voice. “The 
Medusae will kill you. They will soon 
be coming back to make me try again 
to get the plans from Aladoree. She 
will tell, this time. They are preparing 
a ray that burns like fire, and yet will 
not kill her too soon. But they will kill 
us all when she tells.” 

“Then,” John Star muttered fiercely, 
“we must get out!” 

Hal Samdu beat with his fists on the 
metal walls. They gave out a dull, heavy 
reverberation, a melancholy roll of 
doom; he left blood from his knuckles. 

“You can’t get out,” droned Eric. 
“The lock ” 

“One of us has a certain dexterity,” 
said Jay Kalam. “Giles, you must open 
the door.” 

Giles Habibula got to his feet in the 
corner of the cell, wiping the tears from 
his fishy eyes. 

“Ah, yes,” he wheezed in a brighter 
tone. “One of us has a certain slight 
dexterity. It came of the accident that 
his father was an inventor of locks. 



Even so, it cost him a mortal lot of toil, 
to develop an aptitude into a skill. 

“A mortal dexterity! Life knows, it 
has never been given the credit it has 
earned. Ah, me ! Lesser men have won 
riches and honor and fame with half the 
genius and a tenth the toil. And to old 
Giles Habibula his talent and his unre- 
mitting effort have brought only poverty 
and obscurity and disgrace! 

“Mortal me! But for that dexterity, 
I should never have been here, rotting 
in the hands of a lot of bloody monsters, 
waiting for torture and death ! Ah, no ! 
But for that affair on Venus, twenty 
years ago, I should never have been in 
the legion. And ’twas that dexterity 
that tempted me then — that, and the 
fame of a certain cellar of wine ! 

“Poor old Giles, brought by his own 
genius to ruin and starvation and death 
and ” 

“But now’s the chance to make your 
skill undo all that,” urged John Star. 
“Can you open the lock?” 

“Ah, me, lad ! The penalty of unjust 
obscurity! If I had been a painter, a 
poet, a blessed musician, you would 
never dare cast doubt upon the mortal 
power of my art. With my genius, it 
would be known from end to end of the 
system. Ah, me, it was an ill tide of 
destiny into which I was cast! 

“That even you, lad, should doubt my 
genius !” 

Great tears trickled down his nose. 

“Come, Giles!” cried Jay Kalam. 
“Show him.” 

The three of them lifted Giles Habi- 
bula — an easier task than it would once 
have been — so he could reach the barred 
grating, ten feet above the floor. 

He looked at the black case of the 
lock, fingered it with his oddly sure, 
oddly delicate hands. He set his ear 
against the case, tapped it with his fin- 
gers, reached up through the bars and 
moved something, listening. 

“My mortal eyes!” he at last sighed 
plaintively. “I never saw such a blessed 



THE LEGION OF SPACE 



127 



leek as this. Combination. The case is 
precious tight. No place to insert an 
instrument, to feel it out. And the thing 
has levers, instead of cylinders. Never 
was a lock like this in the system !” 

Again he listened intently to little 
clickings from the lock, resting the tips 
of sensitive fingers against the case, now 
here, now there, as if vibration revealed 
the inner mechanism. 

“Bless my poor old bones!” he mut- 
tered once. “A mortal new idea, here! 
If we were back in the system, the 
patents on it would earn me the fame 
and wealth I’ve been cheated of. A 
lock that challenges even the genius of 
Giles Habibula!” 

Abruptly he gasped, stooping. 

“Let me down ! A fearful creature, 
coining !” 

They lowered him to the floor. And 
a huge greenish hemisphere floated over 
the grating. A gross mass of glistening, 
slimy, translucent flesh, palpitating with 
strange, slow life. An immense, ovoid 
eye stared v at them, so unearthly, so hor- 
ribly fascinating, that John Star felt it 
must be reading their very minds. 

A dark tentacle dropped four little 
brown bricks through the grating. Eric 
Ulnar, breaking from his apathy, 
snatched one of them, gnawed it eagerly. 

“Food,” he said. “This is all they 
give us.” 

A cube of dark, moist jelly, John Star 
found one of them to be. picking it up 
to taste it, with an odd, unpleasant odor, 
an insipid lack of flavor. 

“Food !” wept Giles Habibula, biting 
into another. “Mortal me, if they call 
this food, I’ll eat my blessed boots first, 
as I did in the prison on Mars!” 

“But we must eat it,” said Jay 
Kalarn. “Even if it isn't palatable. We 
shall need strength.” 

The Medusa presently floated away 
from above the grating; they lifted Giles 
Habibula, to resume his battle with the 
lock. 

He muttered under his voice from 



time to time ; his breath, in the absorp- 
tion of his effort, became slow and pant- 
ing. Sweat stood out on his face, glis- 
tening in the green light that shone 
through the bars. 

There was, at last, a louder click. He 
sighed and raised his face against the 
bars. Then shook his head, whispered: 

“Let me down.” 

“You can’t open it?” asked John Star 
anxiously. 

“Ah. lad, so still you doubt?” he 
breathed sadly. “The blessed price a 
man must pay for a mortal spark of 
genius ! There was never a lock de- 
signed that Giles Habibula couldn’t open. 
Though many a locksmith has tried, life 
knows !” 

“Then it is open ?” 

“Ah, yes ! The bolts just went back. 
The blessed door is unlocked. But I 
didn't open it.” 

“Why?” 

“Because the mortal monster is wait- 
ing up there in the hall. Hanging still 
over a blessed queer contraption on a 
tripod of black metal. Its purple eyes 
would see any move.” 

“Tripod?” shrilled Eric Ulnar, voice 
edged with the panic of hysteria. 
“Tripod? That’s the machine they use 
for communication with me. They’ve 
brought it again, to make me get the 
secret from Aladoree. They’ll kill us 
all when she tells !” 

XXII. 

“LIFT ME,” said John Star, and Hal 
Samdu’s great hands swung him up. 

Through the square metal bars of the 
grating, he could see the walls and ceil- 
ing of the vast hall, twenty feet wide, 
twice that in height, made all of the 
dead-black metal and illuminated by lit- 
tle green, shining spheres strung along 
the middle of the ceiling. 

The Medusa was in view, hanging 
ever the cell and a little to one, side A 
bulging, fifteen-fuot hemisphere of 
greenish flesh, slimy, half transparent, 



128 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



throbbing. Ovoid, foot-long purple eyes, 
protruding a little, rimmed with ragged 
black membranes — hypnotic eyes of evil 
enigma. Scores of black tentacles hang- 
ing from the edge of the hemisphere, 
motionless, lifeless. 

Beside it was the tripod mechanism. 
Three heavy, spike-pointed legs of black 
metal, supporting a little cabinet, from 
which hung cables fastened to little ob- 
jects that must have been electrodes and 
transmitter, for picking up Eric’s voice 
and the strange etheric emanations of 
the Medusae. 

At a sign, the giant lowered him. 

“There’s a chance,” he whispered. “If 
there are no others in sight — and if we 
can be quick enough.” 

He told what he had seen, outlined 
his plan. Jay Kalam nodded, grave ap- 
proval. In quick, breathless whispers, 
they discussed the details, down to the 
smallest movement. 

Then Jay Kalam gave the word, and 
Hal Samdu swung John Star up again. 
This time he seized the grating, slid it 
swiftly and noiselessly back, in a mo- 
ment was on his feet in the hall above. 
Without the loss of an instant he leaped 
toward the tripod. 

Jay Kalam meanwhile came through 
the opening after him, catapulted by the 
arms of the giant, and helped Hal 
Samdu to follow. 

But an instant after the grating had 
opened, the three stood beside the open- 
ing, working with savage haste to dis- 
member the tripod. Even so the guard- 
ing Medusa had already moved. The 
green dome of it swept swiftly toward 
them, thin black appendages whipping 
out like angry snakes. 

Hal Samdu wrenched apart the mech- 
anism. One heavy, sharp-pointed leg he 
thrust to John Star, another to Jay 
Kalam. The third, with the heavy black 
case still fastened to it, he brandished 
like a great mace. 

Holding the pointed leg like a pike, 
John Star lunged at a purple eye. 



Instinctive terror smote him, the same 
strangely numbing fear that had struck 
him twice before from the luminous eyes 
of the Medusae, the touching off of an 
age-old response to elemental horror. He 
felt tingling chills where hair sought to 
rise, ice of sudden sweat, abrupt pause 
of heart and breath, disconcerting stif- 
fening of his muscles. 

Immobility of instinctive terror — in- 
heritance from some primeval pro- 
genitor, that had found safety in keeping 
quiet. Useful, perhaps, to a creature too 
small to do battle and too slow to run 
away. But now — deadly ! 

He had known that it was coming. 
He had braced himself to meet it, as he 
had met other perils. He would be ruled 
by his brain, not by age-old instinct pat- 
terns ! 

A moment it checked him — just a 
moment. Then his numbed body re- 
sponded to desperately urging nerves. 
He went on, metal point swinging up 
before him. 

Yet the Medusa had taken full ad- 
vantage of the small delay. The black 
whip of a tentacle, small as his finger, 
but cruelly hard, pitilessly strong, 
snapped around his neck, constricted 
with merciless, suffocating force. 

In spite of it, he carried out the lunge. 
Fighting down the blinding agony from 
his throat, he completed, with every 
atom of weight and strength behind it, a 
forward rush, an upward swing. 

The point reached the eye, ripped 
through its transparent outer coat, 
plunged deep into the sinister purple 
well of it, between the fringes of black 
membrane. A pendulous blob of clear 
jelly burst out, a quick rush of purple- 
black blood; and the great socket was 
sunken, sightless, hideous. 

Abruptly increasing its fearful pres- 
sure on his larynx, the choking tentacle 
hurled him forward with a jerk that 
almost snapped vertebrae, flung him 
dazed and blind against the metal floor. 

With a dogged will that ignored dan- 

AST— 8 



THE LEGION OF SPACE 



129 



ger and physical pain, he clung to con- 
sciousness, clung to his weapon. Before 
he could see he was scrambling back to 
his feet, dimly aware of the blows of 
Hal Samdu’s club — great soft thuds 
against boneless, palpitating flesh. 

He got his sight back, saw the giant, 
head and shoulders towering from a 
very mass of tightening black appen- 
dages, gasping with agony and effort, 
muscles knotting terrifically as he swung 
the metal mace. 

He saw Jay Kalam lunge, as he had 
lunged, drive his point deep into a pur- 
ple eye. Saw him instantly wrapped in 
ferocious black whips, that squeezed his 
body and twisted it and flung it savagely 
against the black metal wall. 

He was staggering forward again. 
Black ropes caught his knees, before he 
came in thrusting distance, tripped him. 
They snatched him aloft, with resistless 
strength, whirled him up to dash his 
head against the black floor. 

A huge, malevolent purple eye came 
before him, as he was flung up — one of 
the two that remained to the creature. 
It was too far to reach with a lunge. 
But he threw his weapon, hurled it at 
the immense eye with a twisting swing 
of his whole body, a long sweep of his 
free arm. 

It went deep, deep into the purple 
well. And the tentacles dropped him, to 
grasp it, tug at it. 

On hands and knees he sprawled, be- 
side Jay Kalam, who was still motion- 
less, groaning, weapon at his side. John 
Star snatched it as he got to his feet, 
straightening fairly underneath the crea- 
ture, surrounded by whipping, agonized 
appendages. 

On the under surface of the huge 
hemisphere, a circle of soft green flesh, 
was a curious organ. A circular area, 
three feet wide, slightly bulging, that 
glowed with soft, golden iridescence. 
The light wavered, pulsed rhythmically, 
with the regular palpitations of the mon- 
strous body. 

AST— 9 



With the quick intuition that it must 
be some vital part, he thrust at it. 

SENSING his attack, the creature 
fought to avoid it. Hal Samdu, dazed, 
was flung down at his feet. Black ten- 
tacles cut at him. One whipped about 
his waist, tightened fiercely. The weapon 
that he had flung into the great eye, now 
grasped in thin tentacles, flailed at him, 
struck his head with a blinding burst of 
agony. 

He drove on; his point pierced the 
golden, shimmering circle. 

The yellow light went out of it at 
once. And the Medusa fell, a helpless 
mountain of quaking green flesh. Only 
by a desperate, sidewise fling did he get 
his body from beneath it in time; even 
so it caught his legs. 

The glowing organ, he was later sure, 
must have been the agency of its re- 
markable power of locomotion, perhaps 
emitting some radiant force that lifted 
and propelled it ; perhaps giving it a 
grasp, in some manner yet inexplicable, 
upon the curvature of space itself. 

Half under it he lay for a while un- 
able to extricate himself. Still the crea- 
ture was not completely dead ; black ap- 
pendages were whipping and writhing 
about him in aimless, spasmodic agony. 

It was Hal Samdu who reeled back to 
his feet, ended the struggles of the pal- 
pitating horror with a few mighty blows 
of his club, and dragged John Star from 
beneath it. 

A moment they stood gazing at it in 
dread ; a quivering mountain of greenish 
protoplasm, helpless, twitching, tall as 
Hal Samdu's head, the yet-twitching 
tentacles sprawling away from the edge 
of it, three sightless eyes staring hor- 
ribly. 

Utterly hideous as it was, both of them 
were moved by a contrary impulse of 
pity for it, in its manifest agony of 
death. 

“It had tortured her!” gasped Hal 
Samdu. “It deserved to die!” 



130 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



They turned from it, then, lifted Jay 
Kalam, already returning to conscious- 
ness, struggling to sit up. 

‘‘Stunned !” he muttered. “So it’s fin- 
ished ? Good ! We must get on to 
Aladoree. Before others come. If it 

called for aid Hal. please help Giles 

and Ulnar out of the cell. Must — work 
fast !” 

He dropped back again. He had, John 
Star saw, been cruelly hurt when the 
tentacles flung him down. Grave face 
white, eyes closed, gasping, he lay there 
a moment, then whispered: 

“John? Find her. I’ll be all right. 
We must be quick!” 

John Star left him, ran around the 
quaking mountain of horror, found an- 
other grating in the floor. He dropped 
to his knees, peered into darkness faintly 
relieved by the green rays that streamed 
through the bars from the hall, made 
out a slight form, lying on the bare floor, 
sleeping. 

“Aladoree!” he called. “Aladoree 
Anthar !” 

The slender dim shape of her did not 
stir, he heard her quiet breathing — it 
seemed strange to him that she should 
be sleeping so innocently, so like a child, 
when the fate of the system depended 
on a thing she knew. 

“Aladoree !” He spoke louder. “Wake 
up !” 

She rose, then, quickly. Her quiet 
voice showed complete possession of her 
faculties, though it was dull, weary, 
hopeless. 

“Yes. Who are you, here?” 

“John Ulnar, and your ” 

“John Ulnar!” Her low, tired voice 
cut him off, cold with scorn. “You’ve 
come, I suppose, to help your cowardly 
kinsman make me betray the specifica- 
tions for AKKA? I’ll warn you now 
that you’re going to be disappointed. 
The human race is not all your own 
cowardly breed. Do what you like. I 
can keep the secret till I die — that, I 
think, won’t be very long!” 



“No, Aladoree !” he appealed, shocked 
and inexpressibly hurt by her bitter 
scorn. “No, Aladoree, you mustn’t 

think that. We’ve come ” 

“John Ulnar ” her voice cut him, 

hard with contempt. 

Then Giles Habibula and Hal Samdu 
dropped by the grating. 

“Bless my eye, lass! It’s a mortal 
time since old Giles has heard your 
voice. A mortal time ! How are you, 
lass?” 

“Giles! Giles Habibula?” 

In her voiceless cry that came up from 
darkness through the bars was incredu- 
lous relief, ineffable joy, that brought a 
quick, throbbing ache to John Star’s 
heart. All the contemptuous scorn was 
gone ; only pure delight was left, tremu- 
lous, complete. 

“Ah, yes, lass, it’s Giles. Old Giles 
Habibula, come on a mortal perilous 
journey to set you free, lass. Just wait 
a few blessed moments, while he works 
another precious lock.” 

Already he was on his knees by the 
sliding grille, his thick fingers, curiously 
deft and steady, moving over the little 
strange levers that projected from the 
case of the mechanism. 

“Aladoree!” cried Hal Samdu, an 
odd, yearning eagerness in his voice. 
“Aladoree — have they — hurt you ?” 
“Hal?” came her glad, trembling cry. 
“Hal, too?” 

“Of course! You think I wouldn’t 
come ?” 

“Hal!” she sobbed again joyously. 
“And where’s Jay?” 

“He’s ” began John Star, when 

Jay Kalam’s grave tones, weak and un- 
even, came beside him: 

“Here, Aladoree — at your command.” 
He reeled to the edge of the grating, 
sank beside it, still weak and white with 
pain, though smiling. 

“I’m so — glad !” her voice came from 
darkness, broken with sobs of pure joy. 
“I knew — you’d try. But it was — so 



THE LEGION OF SPACE 



131 



far! And the plot — so clever — so 
diabolical ” 

“Ah, lass, don’t weep so!” urged Giles 
Habibula. “It’s all right, now. Old 
Giles will have this mortal door open in 
a moment, and you out in the precious 
light of day again, lass!” 

John Star abruptly sensed something 
amiss. Quickly he looked up and down 
the long, high-walled black hall. The 
vast bulk of the dead Medusa lay mo- 
tionless, tentacles sprawling. The flood 
of green light revealed nothing moving, 
no enemy. Yet something, he knew it 
intuitively, was wrong. 

Suddenly it struck him. 

“Eric Ulnar!” he gasped. “Did you 
help him out of the cell?” 

“Ah, yes, lad,” wheezed Giles Habi- 
bula. “We couldn’t leave the mortal 
wreck of him for the monsters to tor- 
ture.” • 

“Of course,” rumbled Hal Samdu. 
“Where is ” 

“He’s gone!” whispered John Star. 
“Gone! Still a coward and a traitor. 
He’s gone to give the alarm !” 

XXIII. 

“AH, NOW!” wheezed Giles Habi- 
bula. “Ready, lass, to come?” 

The lock had snapped; he slid back 
the barred door. 

“Please go down, John,” said Jay 
Kalam. “Help her.” 

John Star swung through the opening, 
hung by his arms, dropped lightly on the 
floor of the cell beside Aladoree. Her 
gray eyes watched him doubtfully in the 
gloom, 

“John Ulnar,” she asked, her scornful 
dislike less open, yet still cutting him to 
the quick, “you came with them?” 

“Aladoree!” he pleaded. “You must 
trust me !” 

“I told you once,” she said, “that I 
could never trust a man named Ulnar. 
That very day you locked up my loyal 
men, betrayed me to your traitorous 
kinsman !” 



“I know!” he whispered bitterly. “I 
was a dupe, a fool ! But come ! I’ll lift 
you.” 

“I was the fool,” she said, “to trust 
an Ulnar.” 

“Come! We’ve no time.” 

“You must be more clever than Eric, 
if you have the confidence of my men. 
You Purples ! You’re trying, John Ul- 
nar, to get the better of them and the 
Medusae, too !” 

“Don’t!” It was a pained cry. 

“Please be quick!” urged Jay Kalam 
from above. 

She came to him, then, still doubtful. 
John Star slipped an arm about her 
slight body, lifted her foot, swung her 
upward, to Hal Samdu’s reaching arms ; 
then leaped, himself, to catch them. 

They stood in the immense, silent hall. 

Aladoree was thin, John Star saw, 
under the green light, pale, her white 
face drawn with anxiety and suffering, 
gray eyes burning, with a fire too 
bright, ringed with blue shadows. 
Her startled outcry at sight of the 
hideous mountain of the dead Medusa 
showed nerves strained to the point of 
breakdown; yet her erect bearing re- 
vealed courage, decision, determination. 

Torture had not conquered her. 

“We’re here, Aladoree,” said Jay 
Kalam. “But we’ve no ship to leave in. 
No means, even, to get out of the city. 
And no proper weapons. We’re de- 
pending on you. On AKKA.” 

Disappointment shadowed her worn 
face. 

“I’m afraid, then,” she said, “that you 
have sacrificed your lives in vain.” 

“Why?” Jay Kalam asked apprehen- 
sively. “Can’t you build the weapon?” 

Wearily, she shook her head. 

“I think not. Not in time. Simple as 
it is, I must have certain material. And 
several hours to set it up and adjust it.” 

“We’ve the thing they used for com- 
munication with Eric Ulnar.” He 
pointed to Hal Samdu’s mace. “Rather 



132 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



battered, now. It was electrical. Wires, 
and so on.” 

Again she shook her head. 

“I don’t think it would do. Not for 
’everything. I could try. But it would 
take hours. And the creatures will soon 
find us.” 

‘‘We must take it along,” said Jay 
Kalam. 

Hal Samdu unfastened it from the 
head of the tripo.d, slung it to his body 
by the connecting wires. 

‘‘We must do — something!” cried 
John Star. ‘‘Right away. Eric must 
have gone to give the alarm.” 

‘‘We must somehow get outside the 
city,” agreed Jay Kalam. “Aladoree, 
you know any way ” 

“No. That way,” she pointed, “the 
hall leads into a great shop, laboratory. 
Many of them are always there, work- 
ing. Eric went that way, I suppose, to 
tell them. The other end is outside. A 
mile high— no way to get down, without 
wings,” 

“There might be,” mused Jay Kalam. 
“I remember— a drain, it looked to be. 
We must see.” 

They ran three hundred feet to a great 
door at the end of the hall, an immense, 
sliding grate of heavy black bars, 
crossed, close-set, fastened with a mas- 
sive lock. Through the bars they saw 
the black city again — a storm raging 
over it. 

Looming mountains of ebon metal, 
fantastic, colossal machines, all piled in 
titanic confusion, with no visible order, 
no regularity of shape or size or posi- 
tion. No streets; chasms merely, doors 
opening startlingly into them. 

It was lashed with the hurricane. The 
four had weathered other storms, on 
their epic trek across the black continent, 
always toward the end of the week-long 
day, when swiftly chilling air caused 
precipitation. But they had seen no such 
cataclysm as this. 

It was almost dark. A lurid pall of 
scarlet gloom shrouded the city’s ebon, 



nightmare masses. Wind shrieked with 
maniacal fury. Rain fell in sluicing 
sheets ; it drenched them, stung them 
with its icy whip, even in the shelter of 
the bars. Blinding lightning flamed con- 
tinually overhead, stabbed red swords 
down incessantly at the tops of black 
buildings that loomed like tortured 
giants. 

Below the door was a mile-deep 
chasm, walled in completely by black, 
irregular buildings, no way visible to 
leave its mysty, flood-drenched floor. 

Aladoree shrank back instinctively 
from the chill rain that lashed through 
the bars, from the luridly ominous glow 
of the sky and the fearful bellow of the 
wind and thunder. Giles Habibula 
hastily retreated, muttering: 

“Mortal me! I never saw such ” 

“The lock, Giles !” Jay Kalam re- 
quested urgently. . 

“Bless my bones, Jay!” he howled 
above the roaring elements. “We can't 
just stroll out into that — the storm and 
a blessed pit a mile deep!” 

“Please!” 

“Ah, if you will, Jay. It is easier, 
now.” 

His deft, steady fingers manipulated 
the levers of the lock, more surely, this 
time, more confidently. Almost at once 
it clicked ; the four men set their shoul- 
ders to the bars, slid the huge grille 
aside. 

STAGGERING against wind and 
rain that now drove in with multiplied 
force, they peered over the square metal 
ledge. The blank, black wall dropped 
sheer under them for a long mile, sluiced 
with rain. Jay Kalam braced himself 
against the howling, gusty wind, pointed, 
shouted into the roar of thunder: 

“The drain !” 

They saw it, beside them, 4 en feet 
away. A huge, square tube, supported 
at close intervals by a metal flange that 
surrounded it. fastened it against the 



THE LEGION OF SPACE 



133 



wall. Straight into the pit it fell, dwin- 
dling to a thin line. 

“The flanges!” Rather by watching 
his lips than by sound they caught the 
words. “A ladder. Too far apart. In- 
convenient shape. But we can climb 
them. Down.” 

“Bless my bones !” howled Giles Habi- 
bula, into the tempest. “We can’t do 
that — not in the storm. We can’t even 
reach the mortal flanges ! Poor old 
Giles Habibula ” 

“John ” Jay Kalam’s lips moved, 

his face a question. 

“I’ll try!” he screamed. 

He was the lightest, the quickest, of 
the four, he knew ; he could do the thing 
if any of them could. He nodded to 
Hal Samdu, smiling grimly. The giant’s 
hands took him up, hurled him out over 
the chasm, into wild rain and bellowing, 
gusty wind. 

His arms stretched out, his fingers 
caught the edge of a metal flange. But 
the savage wind had his body; it flung 
him out, over the abysm. Fingers 
strained. Shoulders throbbed. Muscles 
cracked. But he hung on. 

The merciless gust released him, left 
him clinging to the flange, drenched, 
strangled, in roaring rain. He tried the 
flanges ; found that they would serve, 
however awkwardly, as a ladder ; nodded 
at the others. 

He braced himself, then, standing on 
one leg, the other knee hooked over the 
flange above ; waited, arms free. Jay 
Kalam was flung out and he caught him. 
helped him to a higher position. Then 
Giles Habibula, green-faced, gasping. 

And Aladoree, who said in a queer, 
muffled tone, “Thank you, John Ulnar,” 
when he caught her in his arms. 

Hal Samdu then passed out the gory 
legs of the tripod, which they slung to 
their belts ; standing on the narrow ledge, 
he closed the sliding grate, so the lock 
snapped, in hope of confusing pursuit. 
Then he leaped, through blinding sheets 



of rain, and John Star leaned out to 
catch him. 

His great weight was an intolerable 
burden, in John Star’s cramped position; 
a furious downward gust of wind in- 
creased it; he felt, as he clung to the 
giant’s wet hand, that his body must be 
torn in two. But he kept his hold. Hal 
Samdu caught a flange with his free 
hand, was safe. And they started down 
the drain. 

The bracing flanges were uncomfort- 
ably spaced ; it would have been no 
slight feat to climb down a mile of them 
in the most favorable circumstances. 
Now rain fell in blinding, suffocating 
sheets from the crimson, roaring sky; 
demoniac gusts of wind tore at them. 
All of them were already half exhausted. 
And apprehension of inevitable pursuit 
drove them to reckless haste. 

In only one way was the storm an 
advantage, John Star thought; it had 
driven the Medusae to shelter from 
above the buildings and the monstrous 
machines; there seemed no danger of 
accidental discovery, before pursuit 
started from above. But that advantage 
they paid for dearly in the battle with 
the mad fury of wind and rain. 

They were halfway down, perhaps, 
when Aladoree fainted from sheer ex- 
haustion. 

John Star, just below her, had been 
watching her, afraid that she would slip 
from the wet flanges. He caught her, 
held her until she revived, protested 
stubbornly that she was able to climb 
again. Then Hal Samdu lifted her to 
his shoulders, made her cling to him 
pickaback, and they climbed on down. 

The great chasm’s floor, as they de- 
scended, became more distinctly visible 
through the gloom and the mist of fall- 
ing water. A vast square pit, a full 
thousand feet on an edge. Black, blank 
sides of huge buildings walled in, with- 
out a break. The floor was flooded with 
yellow water from the rain. All the 
water on the planet appeared yellow in 



134 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



volume, carrying in solution the insidi- 
ous red gas. 

Anxiously scanning the flooded floor, 
as they approached it, their descent 
slowed with fatigue, John Star could see 
no possible avenue of escape from it — 
unless they should climb another of the 
drains that were discharging their floods 
into the pit. And they were all too near 
exhaustion, he knew, to make such a 
climb, even if it promised safety. 

The torrential rain slacked suddenly, 
when they were near the bottom. The 
rumble of thunder diminished ; the scar- 
let sky grew swiftly brighter; the cold 
wind beat at them with decreasing 
violence. 

John Star’s feet had just touched the 
cold standing water on the floor, when 
Giles Habibula gasped the warning: 

“My mortal eye! The bloody Me- 
dusae !” 

Looking upward, he saw the greenish, 
black-fringed half moons, drifting one 
by one from the hall they had left, float- 
ing down swiftly. 

XXIV. 

STANDING in foot-deep water, as 
the others were finishing the descent be- 
hind him, John Star looked desperately 
about for some possible way of escape 
from the pit. 

Before him lay the sheet of yellow 
flood water, a thousand feet square. 
Above it, on every side, stood glistening 
black walls of Cyclopean buildings, the 
lowest two thousand feet high. Here 
and there the abrupt high doors broke 
them, but none that he saw could be 
reached by any but a flying creature. 

Against the little red rectangle of sky 
above the chasm, the pursuing Medusae 
were drifting down, little dark disks 
against the scarlet. 

“There’s no way !” he muttered to Jay 
Kalam, splashing down beside him. “For 
once — none ! I suppose they’ll kill us, 
now.” 

“There is one way,” said Jay Kalam, 



his voice swift and strained. “If we’ve 
time to reach it. Not safe. Not pleas- 
ant. A grim and desperate chance. But 
better than waiting for them to slaughter 
us. 

“Come !” he called, as Giles Habibula, 
the last, clambered down into the chill 
water. “No time to waste!” 

“Where?” demanded Hal Samdu, 
splashing after him through the yellow 
water, Aladoree still clinging wearily to 
his back. “There’s no way.” 

“The flood water,” Jay Kalam ob- 
served succinctly, “manages to find an 
exit from the city.” 

At a splashing run, he led the way to 
an intake of the flood drains. A yellow 
whirlpool, ten feet across, roaring down 
through a heavy metal grating. 

“My mortal eye!” wheezed Giles 
Habibula. “Must we dive into the 
blessed sewers?” 

“We must,” Jay Kalam assured him, 
“unless we want to wait for the Me- 
dusae to kill us.” 

“Bless my bones !” he wailed. “To be 
sucked down and drowned like a pre- 
cious rat! And then vomited out, life 
knows, to be torn and swallowed by the 
monsters in the yellow river. Ah, Giles, 

it was a mortal evil day ” 

“We must lift the lid,” urged Jay 
Kalam, “if we can!” 

Hal Samdu had set down Aladoree, 
weary, uncertain. Almost swept off 
their feet by the swirling yellow water, 
the four gathered along one side of the 
circular black grating, grasped it, 
strained their muscles. It did not move. 

“A mortal hasp!” cried Giles Habi- 
bula, feeling along the edge. 

Staggering in the mad current that 
buffeted his feet, Hal Samdu hammered 
and pried at the fastening with one of 
the tripod legs. John Star, glancing up 
at the square of crimson sky, saw the 
dark circles of the Medusae, larger now, 
midway to them. 

The giant still beat and pried at the 
hasp, in vain. John Star tried futilely 



THE LEGION OF SPACE 



135 



to help him, and Jay Kalam. The furi- 
ous swirl of yellow water rushed over it, 
hindering their efforts, making it almost 
impossible even to stand. 

“It was Eric Ulnar who warned 
them,’’ said Aladoree, her voice icy with 
bitter scorn. “One of them is carrying 
him. I see him pointing at us.” 

They renewed their efforts to break 
the hasp with their clumsy tools, pant- 
ing, too busy to look up at approaching 
danger. At last the twisted metal broke. 

“Now !” muttered Hal Samdu. 

They gripped the bars again, lifted. 
The grate stirred a little to their united 
strength, settled back under the pressure 
of the roaring torrent. 

They tried again, Giles Habibula pant- 
ing, purple-faced, Hal Samdu’s great 
muscles bulging, quivering with strain, 
even Aladoree adding her efforts. Still 
it did not rise. 

The Medusae were fast drifting down 
upon them. Stealing an apprehensive 
glance, John Star saw a full score of 
them, some carrying black implements 
that must have been weapons, one bear- 
ing Eric Ulnar, gesticulating, seated in 
a swing of woven tentacles. 

“We must lift it !” 

They tried again, in new positions, 
straining fiercely. The grating came up 
suddenly, relatively light when above the 
water. They flung it back. 

The open pit yawned before them, 
eight feet across. Mad, swirling water 
leaped into it in an unbroken sheet, from 
every side ; it was a yellow funnel, foam- 
lined. Ominous, furious, deafening, the 
yell of wild waters came up out of it. 

John Star paused, staring into its spin- 
ning, savage yellow maw with a sicken- 
ing wave of horror. It seemed very 
suicide to dive into that bellowing vor- 
tex, suicide in a singularly fearful guise. 
He shuddered at images of being sucked 
down that tawny, foaming throat, 
whirled helpless through the sewers be- 
low, drowning, battered against the 



walls, finally belched into the horrors of 
the great river. 

And Aladoree ! It was impossible. 

“We can’t !” he shouted to Jay Kalam, 
above the snarling, sinister roar of it. 
“We can’t drag her into that!” 

“Mortal me!” hoarsely breathed Giles 
Habibula, the color of his face fading to 
a pallid, unhealthy greenish hue. “It’s 
death ! Blessed, howling death, suffoca- 
tion !” 

He reeled back, staggering in the 
water that tore at his feet. 

Jay Kalam glanced at the Medusae 
drifting down, very close, now, with 
their black weapons and Eric Ulnar 
clinging to his cradle of tentacles; he 
looked gravely at Aladoree, a silent ques- 
tion on his face. 

She glanced up at them, her pale face 
momentarily hardening with scorn. Her 
gray eyes, still cool and steady, though 
too bright and dark-rimmed with weari- 
ness, looked deliberately from one to an- 
other of the four, and then down into 
the thundering whirlpool. 

A moment she hesitated. She smiled, 
then, oddly; made a little fleeting ges- 
ture of farewell. And dived into the 
roaring yellow funnel. 

JOHN STAR was dazed by the sud- 
denness of her action, by the cold, reck- 
less courage of it, so astounding in a 
girl. It was a moment before he could 
recover his faculties, put down his own 
horror of that avid, howling maw. He 
tossed aside his improvised weapon, 
then; gasped a last full breath of air; 
followed. 

Twenty feet down, he fell with the 
yellow, foaming vortex into a plunging 
river. 

The red light of the sky had been gone 
in an instant. In complete darkness he 
was whirled along, beneath the black 
city. After a little time his struggles 
brought him to the surface. The drain 
was racing almost full. His fending 
arm was bruised against the top of the 



136 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



tube. But he was able to inhale a gasp 
of foul, reeking air. 

He caught breath, once, to shout Ala- 
doree’s name, then realized the utter 
futility of it. Whirling ahead of him 
through the darkness, in the mad tor- 
rent, she could never hear him above its 
angry roar. Nor would it serve any 
good if she did. 

The passage turned presently ; he was 
strangled in the smother of foam below 
the angle. 

Again, after an indefinite time of ^-ait- 
ing, fighting to keep afloat, breathing 
when he could, he was flung into a 
deeper, yet swifter current. Here the 
drain was all hut full. The mad water 
washed and splashed against the roof 
of it, was beaten into foam ; it was sel- 
dom he could find an open space from 
which to fill his lungs. 

On and on he was rushed, until he 
felt that he had been fighting the savage 
torrent for hours, until his bruised, 
weary body screamed for relaxation, un- 
til his lungs shrieked for pure air again, 
not the foul, foam-filled pockets above 
the thundering tide. 

The nightmare journey could not pos- 
sibly last another moment, he was think- 
ing, before he reached the river, when 
he plunged into a still wider channel. The 
current sucked him under. For seeming 
hours, deadly, lung-tortured, he fought 
for the surface, only to rise under racing 
metal, no air beneath it. 

His body went limp, refused to make 
another effort. But he set his teeth, 
battled with every atom of his conscious- 
ness to keep water from his lungs, as the 
wild flood bore him on and on. He had 
reached, he felt, the very limit of en- 
durance, when air was above him again, 
he could breathe. 

On and on he was whirled, making 
feeble efforts to keep on the surface, 
gasping a breath of dank air at every 
opportunity. It seemed that dull, weary 
ages came and went, seemed that he 



must be floating under the whole black 
continent. 

Could Aladoree, he wondered, have 
endured all this? And the three behind 
him, if they had dived before the Me- 
dusae came, could they be still alive? 

Abruptly he was in wild fury of con- 
flicting currents, drawn resistlessly down 
until a cruel weight of water bore on his 
agonized lungs. Fighting a weary way 
upward once more, he realized, too 
nearly lifeless to feel any glow of 
triumph, that light was in the water. 

Up he broke through yellow foam, 
gratefully sucked in the clear reviving 
air of the open — quite oblivious, for the 
moment, of its insidious taint of the red 
gas. 

Above, on the one side, was the 
planet’s sky, sullenly crimson, washed to 
its full, sinister brilliance by the storm. 
On the other was the mile-high metal 
wall of the unearthly black metropolis, 
rising grimly black to the very zenith. 
He had been discharged into the surging 
flood of the yellow river. 

Boiling, scarred with lighter lines of 
foam, pitted with vortexes of angry 
whirlpools, its turbid tide reached away 
from him, ten miles wide, so wide that 
the low, dark line of jungle on the far- 
ther bank was all but lost in red haze. 

For miles below him, it rushed tur- 
bulently along the base of the mighty 
wall, until it reached the not-less-for- 
bidding barrier of the black thorn 
jungle. 

For months he had voyaged that yel- 
low tide, had learned to face its thou- 
sand perils. But the others had been 
with him ; they had been on board the 
raft, a crude ship, but navigable ; they 
had been armed against the weird, fe- 
rocious life of river and air and jungle, 
rudely, but effectively. And he had not 
been half dead of' exhaustion. 

Anxiously, he looked about him for 
Aladoree — in vain. 

When he had breath, he shouted her 
name. His voice was a thin, useless 



THE LEGION OF SPACE 



137 



sound, weak and hoarse, drowned in the 
roar from the chaos where the flood 
from the drains met the river’s mighty 
tide. 

But he saw her, presently, a hundred 
yards below him. Her head a tiny thing, 
bobbing upon the boiling yellow surface. 
Her body too small, he realized, too frail, 
too weary, to struggle long against the 
savage might of the river. 

He swam toward her, slowly, wearily, 
his limbs all but dead. 

The turbid current moved her toward 
him, carried her farther again, faster 
than he could swim, mocking him, taunt- 
ing him, until, in the near-delirium of 
exhaustion, he gasped curses at it as if 
it had been a sentient, malicious thing. 

She saw him, struggled feebly toward 
him, through rough yellow foam, as they 
raced along in the overwhelming shadow 
of the Medusae’s walls. 

He glanced back, sometimes; hoping 
that one of the three others might have 
come through alive; saw none of them. 

Aladoree vanished before his eyes, 
when he was not a dozen feet from her, 
sucked down by. a pitiless current, ap- 
peared again as he was about to dive 
hopelessly for her, fighting with her last 
energy. 

He reached her, caught her arm, 
dragged it across his shoulder. 

“Hang on !” he gasped. And, with a 
last grim spark of spirit: “If you can 
trust an Ulnar.” 

With the brief, wan ghost of a smile 
of relief, she clung to him. 

The yellow, swirling, foaming tide 
bore them on, under the mighty, march- 
ing walls, toward the river bank below, 
with its savage, horror-haunted jungle 
of thorns. 

XXV. 

JOHN STAR had never any clear 
recollection of the time upon the river. 
In the ultimate stages of exhaustion, 
driven far beyond the normal limits of 
endurance, he was more machine than 



man. With the mechanical efficiency of 
an automaton, he kept himself afloat, 
and Aladoree. But he was less than 
half conscious. 

The feel of gravel beneath his feet 
brought purpose briefly back. He waded 
and crawled up out of the yellow water, 
on the edge of a wide, smooth bar of 
black sand, dragging limp, unconscious 
Aladoree. 

Three hundred yards across the dark 
bare sand rose the jungle; a barrier of 
black thorns, closely interwoven, tower- 
ing two hundred feet against the crim- 
son sky. A gloomy, forbidding rampart, 
it was splashed with huge, vivid blooms 
of flaming violet that gave it a certain 
terrible beauty, and it hid death in many 
guises. 

The open sand, John Star knew, was 
a no man’s land, menaced from the river 
and the jungle and the air. But he had 
scant heed left for danger. Pulling the 
exhausted girl safely out of the yellow 
shallows, into the dubious shelter of a 
mass of driftwood lodged against a sand- 
buried snag, he fell beside her on the 
sand bank, sank into the oblivion that 
his tortured, overdriven body had craved 
so long. 

He knew, when he woke, that many 
hours had passed. The sinister, huge 
disk of the red sun was cut in half by 
the edge of the jungle; the air already 
chill with a grim threat of the fearful 
night approaching. 

Aladoree lay still beside him, on the 
black sand, sleeping. Looking at her 
slight, defenseless form, breathing so 
slowly and so quietly, he felt a queer 
throb in his chest. How many times, he 
wondered, as they had lain there, had 
death passed by on the yellow river, or 
stared at their uncertain shelter from 
the wall of thorns, had eyed them, un- 
armed, sleeping — and spared them, and 
AKKA, that meant humanity’s chance 
to carry on! 

He tried to sit up, sank back with a 
gasp of pain. Every individual muscle 



138 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



in his body was stiffly painful, protesting 
movement with agonizing stabs. Yet he 
forced himself up, rubbed his limbs un- 
til some flexibility returned to them, got 
unsteadily to his feet. 

First he picked Aladoree up in his 
arms, still sleeping, and carried her 
higher on the bar, beyond the unseen 
peril that might strike from the shal- 
lows. He made a flimsy little screen of 
driftwood, to hide them, and found a 
heavy club, and waited by her, to watch 
until she woke. 

With wary glance he scanned the 
river’s tawny flood, flowing away until 
the farther dark jungle wall was dim in 
red haze. He eyed the bare waste of 
somber sand ; the grim barrier of thorn 
jungle behind it; the mighty ebon ram- 
parts of the Medusae’s city, miles up- 
river, just visible above the jungle. But 
it was out of the crimson sky that danger 
came, gliding on silent wings. 

The creature was low when he saw 
it, diving at the sleeping girl behind her 
little screen of branches. Somewhat it 
resembled a dragon fly grown to mon- 
strous size. It had four thin wings, 
spreading twenty feet ; its slender body, 
sinisterly graceful, was large as a man’s. 
It was, he saw, like the creature that 
Giles Habibula had once battled for his 
bottle of wine. 

Beautiful, it was. Strangely and sav- 
agely beautiful. The frail wings were 
blue, blue of a singular, vivid intensity. 
They were translucent; they glittered 
like thin sheets of dark sapphire. Ribs 
of scarlet veined them. The slim, grace- 
ful body was black, oddly and strikingly 
patched with bright yellow. The one 
enormous eye was like a jewel of pol- 
ished jet. 

A single pair of limbs stiffened under 
it, cruel yellow talons spread to clutch 
the girl’s body. And its tail, a thin 
yellow whip, scorpionlike, armed with a 
keen black barb, arched forward to sting. 

John Star leaped straight in the path 
of it, swung his club for the jet-black 



eye. But the brilliant wings tilted a 
little, the creature swerved up, striking 
at him in place of the girl. His blow 
missed the great, solitary eye; the thin, 
pitiless lance of its curving sting was 
driven straight at him. 

He flung his body down, twisting his 
blow to fend away the stabbing barb. 
He felt the impact as the club struck the 
slender, whipping tail ; the venomed 
point was driven aside, yet it grazed his 
shoulder with a flash of blinding pain. 

Scrambling instantly back to his feet, 
in spite of the searing pain from the 
sting, he saw the creature rise and turn 
and glide back toward him, ineffably 
graceful upon translucent blue-and- 
scarlet wings. Again it dived, talons set. 
This time, he saw, the barbed tail was 
hanging at a sharp angle; his club, he 
realized, had broken it. 

Staggered with agony, he aimed his 
blow again at the bright jet disk of the 
eye. And this time the creature did not 
swerve. It plunged straight at him, 
merciless yellow talons grasping. In 
the last instant, dizzy and half blind with 
pain from its venom, he realized that 
the talons would strike his body with the 
full force of its dive. 

Fiercely, he sought to steady his reel- 
ing world, put every ounce of his 
strength behind the heavy piece of drift- 
wood, felt it crush solidly home against 
the huge black glittering disk. Then his 
sensations dissolved in the acid of pain. 

Half dazed, he was presently dimly 
aware that it had not carried him away, 
but was floundering spasmodically about 
on the sand, dragging his helpless body 
still fastened in its locked talons. His 
last blow, he vaguely realized, had been 
fatal. 

Presently the death struggles ceased, 
the furry body collapsed upon him. The 
pitiless yellow talons, even in death, were 
still set in his arm and shoulder. One 
by one, when the pain from the sting 
began to ebb a little, he strained his fin- 



THE LEGION OF SPACE 



139 



gers to open them ; he staggered at last 
to his feet, faint, sick, bleeding some- 
what. 

Even dead, the thing was beautiful. 
Narrow wings, lying unbroken on the 
black sand ; glistening, luminous sheets 
of sapphire, ruby-veined. Slender, curv- 
ing body, covered with short, soft fur, 
patterned in yellow and black. Only the 
bloody talons and the broken sting were 
hideous — and the head of it, pulped un- 
der his last blow. 

Weakly, he reeled away from it, too 
faint even to pick up his club. He sank 
down beside Aladoree, still quietly 
breathing in the dead sleej5 of exhaus- 
tion, peacefully unaware of the death 
that had been so near. 

SUNK IN listless, hopeless apathy of 
fatigue and suffering, at first John Star 
did not even move when he saw three 
tiny figures toiling along the edge oUthe 
sand bar. They must be, he realized 
dimly, at last, Jay Kalam and Hal Samdu 
and Giles Habibula, come alive, by 
some miracle of courage and endurance, 
through the drains and out of the yellow 
river. But he was too deep in exhaus- 
tion to feel any hope or interest. 

He sat there, by the sleeping girl and 
the brilliant dead thing, aimlessly watch- 
ing them come wearily over the black 
sand, out of hazy red distance. 

Three strange, haggard men, each 
with a few tattered bits of cloth still 
clinging to a worn, exposure-browned 
body. Bearded men, long-haired, shag- 
gily unkempt. They walked close to- 
gether. Each of them carried a club or 
a thorn spear. Their sunken, gleaming 
eyes looked ever about, with unending 
wariness. They were like three primi- 
tive savages, hunting in the shadow of 
some primordial jungle; three elemental 
beasts, cautious and alert. 

It was strange to think of them as 
survivors of the crushed, betrayed legion 
of space, splendid fighting body of a far- 
spread', civilized system, battling to de- 



fend it from the age-old science of an 
alien star. Could these shaggy animals 
decide an interstellar war? 

John Star at last found spirit to stand, 
wave at them. They saw him, hurried 
to him over the bar. 

Hal Samdu, he saw as they came near, 
still carried the black mechanism from 
the tripod, slung about his great shoul- 
ders by its connecting wires. He had 
dived into the drains, burdened with it; 
swam with it out of the yellow river. 

“Aladoree ?” he rasped, hoarse, weary, 
anxious, stalking up ahead of the others. 

“Asleep.” John Star found energy 
for the one word, the gesture. 

The giant dropped beside her, eagerly 
solicitous, a smile of relief on his hag- 
gard, red-bearded face. 

“You carried her out?” he rasped. 
“And killed — that?” 

John Star could only nod. His eyes 
closed, but he knew that Jay Kalam and 
Giles Habibula were coming up, heard 
the latter wheezing weakly. 

“Ah, mortal me! Washed through 
the sewers like a blessed bit of garbage, 
and flung to die amid the precious hor- 
rors of the mortal yellow river. Ah, 
poor old Giles Habibula ! It was a mor- 
tal evil day ” 

His voice changed. 

“Ah, the lass ! The lass has not been 
harmed. And this blessed, glittering 
monster ! John must have killed it. Ah, 
old Giles knows how you feel, lad! A 
mortal bitter time, we’ve all been 
through !” 

His voice brightened again. 

“This creature — the flesh of it would 
be good to eat ! It is like the one with 
which I once battled so mortal hard for 
my bottle of wine — that I never got to 
taste! We must have a fire. I’m pre- 
cious weak from starvation. Ah, mortal 
hungry !” 

John Star drifted away, then, a second 
time, into blissful oblivion. 

It was colder, still, when he woke. 
His body was numb and stiff, though a 



140 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



sheltered fire of driftwood blazed beside 
him. Dread night was coming apace; 
the sun’s angry disk completely gone, the 
sky a low dome of baleful crimson twi- 
light. Bitter wind blew across the river, 
toward the jungle. 

Giles Habibula was by the fire, grill- 
ing meat he had cut from the dead flying 
thing. John Star was gnawingly hun- 
gry ; it must have been the fragrance of 
the roast, he realized, that had awakened 
him. But he did not eat at once. 

Jay Kalam and Hal Samdu were be- 
side Aladoree, beyond the fire. The lit- 
tle mechanism that the giant had carried 
so far, they had taken apart. The pieces 
of it were spread out before them, on a 
flat slab of driftwood; coils of wire and 
curious little bits of metal. 

He stood up, hastily, despite the stiff- 
ness of his body, went to them. In their 
absorption, they did not look up. Before 
Aladoree was an odd little device, assem- 
bled from the black metal parts, from 
rudely carved fragments of wood. She 
was fingering the remaining bits of 
metal, anxiously, one by one, rejecting 
each with a little hopeless shake of her 
head. 

“You’re setting it up?” John Star 
whispered eagerly. “AKKA?” 

“Trying to,” breathed Jay Kalam ab- 
stractedly. 

John Star glanced across the black 
jungle top, toward the towers and the 
fantastic mechanisms of the Medusae's, 
unearthly city, looming ominously, in 
the far distance, against red twilight. It 
was sheer impossibility, he felt, that the 
crude little device on the sand should 
ever do injury to those colossal walls. 

“I must have iron,” said Aladoree. “A 
tiny bit of it, the size of a nail, would 
do. But I must have it for the mag- 
netic element. But for that, there’s 



everything I need. But I can’t find any 
iron. There’s none here.” 

She laid the little mechanism down 
hopelessly. 

“We must find ore, then,” said John 
Star. “Build a furnace, smelt it.” 

Jay Kalam shook his head gravely, 
wearily. 

“Can’t do that. No iron on the planet. 
The Medusae, you know, were first go- 
ing to conquer our system for the Pur- 
ples, just for a little iron. In all our 
wanderings, 1 saw no trace of iron de- 
posits.” 

“We can’t build the weapon, then,” 
Aladoree said slowly. “Not here. If 

we could get back to the system ” 

“The ship is lying wrecked, some- 
where on the bottom of the ocean.” 

A little hopeless group, they stood 
there, shivering in the chill wind that 
rose in the darkening crimson twilight, 
bitter with its threat of the long fearful 
night. Across the dark, hostile jungle 
they stared, at the somber walls and 
towers and unguessable mechanisms of 
the Medusae’s stronghold, alien, omi- 
nous, colossal, looming portentously 
against fatal gloom. 

From walls and towers, abruptly, 
flared eerie green flames. They saw 
titanic forms rising, the strange huge 
shapes of the Medusae’s interstellar 
fliers. In a vast black swarm they 
ascended, like monstrous insects, as the 
far thunder of the green flames rolled 
over the jungle and the river; and van- 
ished at last in the blood-red sky. 

“Their fleet!” whispered Aladoree. 
“Flying away to the system, with their 
fearful hordes, to occupy our planets as 
they destroy humanity. Their fleet, al- 
ready gone! If we had found a bit of 
iron But it’s too late. We’ve al- 

ready failed.” 



To be concluded next month. 




The greatest collation of factual data on 
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PART FIVE 



XI. 

T HE STANDARDIZED expla- 
nation of mysterious human 
strangers, who have appeared at 
points upon this earth, acting as one 
supposes inhabitants of some other 
world would act, if arriving here, or 
acting as inhabitants of other parts of 
this earth, transported in a state of 
profound hypnosis, would probably act, 
is that of imposture. Having begun 
with a pretty liberal view of the preval- 
ence of impostors, I am not going much 
to say that the characters of our data 
were not impostors, but am going to 
examine the reasons for saying that 



they were. If, except fraudulently, 
some of them never have been explained 
conventionally, we are just where we 
are in everything else that we take up, 
and that is in the position of having to 
pretend to think for ourselves. 

The earliest of the alleged impostors 
in my records — for which, though not 
absolutely, I draw a dead line at the 
year 1800 — is the Princess Caraboo, if 
not Mary Willcocks, though possibly 
Mrs. Mary Baker, but perhaps Mrs. 
Mary Burgess, who, the evening of 
April 3, 1817, appeared at the door of a 
cottage, near Bristol, England, and in 
an unknown language asked for food. 

But I am not so much interested in 



142 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



whether the Princess, or Mary, was a 
rascal, as I am in the reasons for saying 
that she was. It does not matter 
whether we take up a theorem in celes- 
tial mechanics, or the case of a girl 
who jabbered, we come upon the bam- 
boozlements by which conventional 
thought upon this earth is made and 
preserved. 

The case of the angles in a triangle 
that equal two right angles has never 
been made out; no matter what refine- 
ments of measurement would indicate, 
ultrarefinement would show that there 
had been errors. Because of continuity, 
and because of discontinuity, nothing 
has ever been proved. If only by making 
a very bad error to start with, Professor 
Einstein’s prediction of the curvature 
of lights worked out as it should work 
out, we suspect before taking up the 
case of the Princess Caraboo that the 
conventional conclusion in her case was 
a product of mistakes. 

That the Princess Caraboo was an 
impostor — first we shall take up the 
case, as it has been made out : 

London Observer, June 10, 1923 — 
that the girl, who spoke unintelligibly, 
was taken before a magistrate, Samuel 
Worrall, of Knowle Park, Bristol, who, 
instead of committing her as a vagrant, 
took her to his home. It is not recorded 
just what Mrs. Worral thought of that. 
It is recorded that the girl was at least 
what is said to be “not unprepossessing.’’ 

When questioned the “mysterious 
stranger” wrote in unknown characters, 
many of which looked like representa- 
tions of combs. Newspaper corre- 
spondents interviewed her. She re- 
sponded with a fluency of “combs,” and 
a smattering of “bird cages” and 
“frying pans.” The news spread, and 
linguists traveled far to try their 
knowledge, and finally one of them was 
successful. He was a “gentleman from 
the East Indies,” and, speaking in the 
Malay tongue to the girl, he was 
answered. To him she told her story. 



Her name was Caraboo, and one day 
while walking in her garden in Java, 
she was seized by pirates, who carried 
her aboard a vessel, from which, after 
a long imprisonment, she escaped to the 
coast of England. 

The story was colorful with details 
of Javanese life. But then Mrs. Will- 
cocks, not of Java, but of a small town 
in Devonshire, appeared and identified 
her daughter Mary. Mary broke down 
and confessed. She was not prosecuted 
for her imposture; instead, Mrs. Wor- 
rall was so kind as to pay her passage 
to America. 

MOSTLY our concern is in making 
out that this case was not made out — 
or, more widely, that neither this nor 
any other case ever has been made cut 
- — but I notice a little touch of human 
interest entering here. I notice that we 
feel a disappointment, because Mary 
broke down and confessed. We much 
prefer to hear of impostors who stick 
to their impostures. If no absolute line 
can be drawn between morality and 
immorality, I can show, if I want to, 
that this touch of rascality in all of us— 
or at any rate in me— is a virtuous 
view, instead. So when an impostor 
sticks to his imposture, and we are 
pleased, it is that we approve a reso- 
lutely attempted consistency, even when 
applied to a fabric of lies. 

Provided I can find material enough, 
I can have no trouble in making it 
appear “reasonable,” as we call it, to 
accept that Mary, or the Princess, con- 
fessed, or did not confess, or question- 
ably confessed. 

Chambers’ Journal, 66-753 — that 

Caraboo, the impostor, had told her 
story of alleged adventures in the Malay 
language. 

Further along, in this account — that 
the girl had spoken in an unknown 
language. 

This is an inconsistency worth noting 
We’re on the trail of bamboozlement, 



LO! 



143 



though we don’t have to go away back 
to the year 1817 to get there. We hunt 
around. We come upon a pamphlet, 
entitled “Caraboo,” published by J. M. 
Cutch, of Bristol, in the year 1817. We 
learn in this account, which is an at- 
tempt to show that Caraboo was 
unquestionably an impostor, that it was 
not the girl, but the “gentleman from 
the East Indies,” whose name was 
Manuel Eyenesso, who was the im- 
postor, so far as went the whole 
Javanese story. To pose as a solver 
of mysteries, he had pretended that, to 
his questions, the girl was answering 
him in the Malay language, and pre- 
tending to translate her gibberish, he 
had made up a fanciful story of his 
own. 

Caraboo had not told any story, in 
any known language, about herself. 
Her writings were not in Malay char- 
acters. They were examined by 
scientists, who could not identify them. 
Specimens were sent to Oxford, where 
they were not recognized. Consequently, 
the “gentleman from the East Indies” 
disappeared. We are told in the pam- 
phlet that every Oxford scholar who 
examined the writings, “very properly 
and without' a moment’s hesitation, 
pronounced them to be humbug.” That 
is swift propriety. 

If the elaborate story of the Javanese 
princess had been attributed to a girl 
who had told no understandable story 
of any kind, it seems to us to be worth 
while to look over the equally elaborate 
confession, which has been attributed to 
her. It may be that regretfully we shall 
have to give up a notion that a girl had 
been occultly transported from the 
planet Mars, or from somewhere up in 
Orion or Leo, but we are seeing more 
of the ways of suppressing mysteries, 
the mad fishmonger of Worcester 
shovels his periwinkles everywhere. 

According to what is said to be the 
confession, the girl was Mary Will- 
cocks, born in the village of Witheridge, 



Devonshire, in the year 1791, from 
which at the age of sixteen she had 
gone to London, where she had married 
twice. It is a long, detailed story. 
Apparently the whole story of Mary’s 
adventures, from the time of her de- 
parture from Witheridge to the time of 
her arrival in Bristol, is told in what is 
said to be the confession. Everything 
is explained — and then too much is 
explained. We come to a question that 
would be an astonisher, if we weren’t 
just a little sophisticated by this time: 

By what freak of accomplishment did 
a Devonshire girl learn to speak 
Javanese? 

The author of the confession explains 
that she had picked up with an East 
Indian, who had taught her the lan- 
guage. 

If we cannot think that a girl, who 
had not even pretended to speak Java- 
nese, would explain how she had picked 
up Javanese, it is clear enough that this 
part of the alleged confession is 
forgery. I explain it by thinking that 
somebody had been hired to write a 
confession, • and with too much of a 
yarn for whatever skill he had, had over- 
looked the exposed imposture of the 
“gentleman from the East Indies.” 

All that I can make of the story is 
that a girl mysteriously appeared. It 
cannot be said that her story was im- 
posture, because she told no intelligible 
story. It may be doubted that she con- 
fessed, if it is accepted that at least part 
of the alleged confession was forgery. 
Her mother did not go to Bristol and 
identify her, as, for the sake of a neat 
and convincing finish, the conventional- 
ized story goes. Mrs. Worrall told that 
she had gone to Witheridge, where she 
had found the girl’s mother, who had 
verified whatever she was required to 
verify. Caraboo was shipped away on 
the first vessel that sailed to America; 
or, as told in the pamphlet, Mrs. Wor- 
rall, with forbearance and charity, paid 
her passage far away. 



144 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



In Philadelphia, somebody took 
charge of her affairs, and, as if having 
never heard that she was supposed to 
have confessed, she gave exhibitions, 
writing in an unknown language. And 
I wouldn’t give half this space to the 
story of the Princess Caraboo, were it 
not for the epitomization, in her story, 
of all history. 

I SHOULD like to think that in- 
habitants of other worlds, or other parts 
of one existence, have been teleported 
to this earth. How I’d like it, if I 
were teleported the other way, has noth-' 
ing to do with what I’d like to think has 
befallen somebody else. But I can't 
say that our own stories, anyway so far, 
have the neat and convincing finish of 
the conventional stories. 

Toward the end of the year 1850, a 
stranger, or I should say a “mysterious 
stranger,” was found wandering in a 
village near Frankfort-on-the-Oder. 
How he got there, nobody knew. See 
the Athenaeum, April 15, 1851. We 
are told that his knowledge of German 
was imperfect. If the imperfections 
were filled out by another Manuel 
Eyenesso, I fear me that suggestions of 
some new’ geographical, or cosmo- 
graphical, knowledge can’t develop. The 
man was taken to Frankfort where he 
told his story, or where, to pose as a 
linguist, somebody told one for him. 
It was told that his name was Joseph 
Vorin, and that he had come from 
Laxaria. Laxaria is in Sakria, and 
Sakria is far from Europe — "beyond 
vast oceans.” 

In the London Daily Mail, September 
18, 1905, and following -issues, are 
accounts of a young man who had been 
arrested in Paris, charged with va- 
grancy. It was impossible to understand 
him. In vain had he been tried with 
European and Asiatic languages, but, by 
means of signs, he had made known 
that he had come from Lisbian. Eisar 
was the young man’s word for a chair ; 



a table was a lotoba, and his sonar was 
his nose. 

Mr. George R. Sims, well-known 
criminologist, as well as a story-writer, 
took the matter up scientifically. As 
announced by him, the mystery had been 
solved by him. The young man, an 
impostor, had transposed letters in fash- 
ioning his words. So the w’ord “raise,” 
transposed, becomes eisar. But what 
has a raise to do with a chair? It is 
said that true science is always simple. 
A chair raises one, said Mr. Sims, 
simply. Now take the w’ord sonar. As 
we see, when Mr. Sims points it out to 
us, that W’ord is a transposition of the 
word “snore,” or is almost. That's 
noses, or relation to noses. 

The criminologists are not banded like 
some scientists. In Paris, the unbanded 
w’ise men said that Mr. Sims’ trans- 
positions were far-fetched. With a 
freedom that would seem reckless to 
more canny scientists, or without wait- 
ing three or four months to find out 
what each was going to say, they ex- 
pressed opinions. The savants at 
Glozel, in the year 1927, were cannier, 
but one can’t say that their delays 
boosted the glories of science. 

One of the wise men of Paris, who 
accused Mr. Sims of fetching too far, 
was the eminent scientist, M. Haag. 
“Take the young man’s word Odir, for 
‘God,’” said M. Haag; “transpose that, 
and we have Dio, or very nearly. Dio 
is Spanish for God. The young man 
is Spanish.” Another distinguished 
wise man was M. Roty. He rushed into 
print, while M. Haag was still explain- 
ing. “Consider the word sacar, for 
‘house,’ said M. Roty. Unquestionably 
we have a transposition of the word 
casa, with a difference of only one 
letter, and casa is Italian for ‘house.’ 
The young man is Italian.” Le Temps, 
September 18 — -another wise man, a 
distinguished geographer, this time, 
identified the young man as one of the 
Russian Dukhobors. 

AST-9 



LO! 



145 



Where would we be, and who would 
send the young ones to school, if all 
the other wise men of our tribes had 
such independence? If it was not for a 
conspiracy that can be regarded as 
nothing short of providential, so that 
about what is taught in one school is 
taught in the other schools, one would 
spend one’s lifetime, learning and un- 
learning, in school after school. As it 
is, the unlearning can be done, after 
leaving one school. 

The young man was identified by the 
police, as Rinaldo Agostini, an Austrian, 
whose fingerprints had been taken 
several times before, somewhere else, 
when he had been arrested for vagrancy. 

Whether the police forced this 
mystery to a pseudo-conclusion, or not, 
a suggestive instance is told of in the 
London Daily Express, October 16, 
1906. 

A young woman had been arrested in 
Paris, charged with picking pockets, 
and to all inquiries she answered in an 
unknown language. Interpreters tried 
her with European and Asiatic lan- 
guages, without success, and the magis- 
trate ordered her to be kept under 
surveillance, in a prison infirmary. 
Almost immediately, watchers reported 
that she had done exactly what they 
wanted to report that she had done — 
that she had talked in her sleep, not 
mumbling in any way that might be 
questionable, but speaking up “in fluent 
French, with the true Parisian accent.” 
If anybody thinks that this book is an 
attack upon scientists, as a distinct order 
of beings, he has a more special idea 
of it than I have. As I’m seeing things, 
everybody’s a scientist. 

IF THERE ever have been instances 
of teleportations of human beings from 
somewhere else to this earth, an exam- 
ination of inmates of infirmaries and 
workhouses and asylums might lead 
to some marvelous astronomical dis- 
closures. I suppose I shall be blamed 

AST— 10 



for a new nuisance, if after the publi- 
cation of these notions, mysterious 
strangers start cropping up, and when 
asked about themselves, point up to 
Orion or Andromeda. 

Suppose any human being ever should 
be translated from somewhere else to 
this earth and should tell about it. Just 
about what chance would he have for 
some publicity? I neglected to note the 
date, but early in the year 1928, a man 
did appear in a town in New Jersey, 
and did tell that he had come from the 
planet Mars. Wherever he came from, 
everybody knows where, he went, after 
telling that. 

But if human beings ever have been 
teleported to this earth from some- 
where else, I should think that their 
clothes, different in cut and texture, 
would attract attention. Clothes were 
thought of by Manuel Eyenesso. He 
pretended that Caraboo had told him 
that, before arriving in Bristol, she had 
exchanged her gold-embroidered Java- 
nese dress for English clothes. What- 
ever the significance may be, I have 
noted a number of mysterious strangers, 
or “wild men,” who were naked. 

A case that is mysterious, and that 
may associate with other mysteries, was 
reported in the London newspapers — 
Daily Mail, April 2 ; Daily News, April 
3, 1923. It was at the time that Lord 
Carnarvon was dying, in Cairo, Egypt, 
of a disease that physicians said was 
septic pneumonia, but that, in some 
minds, was associated with the opening 
of Tut-Ankh-Amen’s tomb. 

Upon Lord Carnarvon’s estate, near 
Newbury, Hampshire, a naked man was 
running wild, often seen, but never 
caught. He was first seen upon March 
17th. Upon March 17th, Lord Car- 
narvon fell ill, and he died upon April 
5th. About April 5th, the wild man of 
Newbury ceased to be reported. 

If human beings from somewhere 
else have been translated to this 
earth - 



146 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



There are mysteries at each end, and 
in between, in the story of Cagliostro. 

He appeared in London, and then in 
Paris, and spoke with an accent that 
never has been identified with any 
known language of this earth. If, 
according to most accounts of him, he 
was Joseph Balsamo, a Sicilian criminal, 
who, after a period of extraordinarily 
successful imposture, was imprisoned in 
Rome until he died, that is his full 
life-story. 

The vagueness of everything — and 
the merging of all things into every- 
thing else, so that stories that we, or 
some of us, have been taking as “abso- 
lutely proved” turn out to be only 
history, or merely science. Hosts of 
persons suppose that the exposure of 
Cagliostro, as an impostor, is as firmly, 
or rationally, established, as are the 
principles of geology or astronomy. 
And it is my expression that they are 
right about this. 

Wanted — well, of course, if we could 
find data to support our own notions — 
but, anyway, wanted — data for at least 
not accepting the conventionalized story 
of Cagliostro: 

See Trowbridge’s story of Cagliostro. 
According to Trowbridge, the identify 
cation of Cagliostro was fraudulent. 
At the time of the “Necklace Affair,” 
the police of Paris, needing a scapegoat, 
so “identified” him, in order to dis- 
credit him, according to Trowbridge. 
No witness appeared to identify him. 
There was no evidence, except that 
handwritings were similar. There was 
suggestion in the circumstance that 
Balsamo had an uncle, whose name was 
Guiseppe Cagliostro. 

One supposes that a police official, 
whose labors were made worth while 
by contributions from the doctors of 
Paris, searched records until he came 
upon an occurrence of the name of 
Cagliostro in the family of a criminal, 
and then went on from that "finding. 



Then it was testified that the hand- 
writings of Balsamo and Cagliostro 
were similar. For almost everybody’s 
belief that of course Cagliostro was 
identified as Joseph Balsamo, there is 
no more than this for a base. 

In February, 1928, the New York 
newspapers told of a graphologist, who 
had refused to identify handwriting 
according to the wishes of the side that 
employed him. According to all other 
cases that I have ever read of, anybody 
can get, for any handwriting, any 
identification that he pays for. If in 
any court, in any land, any scientific 
pronouncement should be embarrassing 
to anybody, that is because he has been 
too stingy to buy two expert opinions. 

Cagliostro appeared, and nothing 
more definite can be said of his origin. 
He rose and dominated, as somebody 
from Europe, if transported to a South 
Sea island, might be expected to capi- 
talize his superiority. He was hounded 
by the medical wise men, as Mesmer 
was hounded by them, and as anybody 
who, to-day, would interfere with flows 
of fees, would be hounded by them. 
Whether in their behalf, or because 
commonplace endings of all mysteries 
must be published, we are told, in all 
conventional accounts, that Cagliostro 
was an impostor, whose full life story 
is known and is without mystery. 

It is said that, except where women 
were concerned, where not much can 
be expected, anyway, Cagliostro had 
pretty good brains. Yet we are told 
that, having been identified as an 
Italian criminal, he went to Italy. 

There are two accounts of the dis- 
appearance of Cagliostro. One is a 
matter of mere rumors ; that he had been 
seen in Aix-les-Bains ; that he had been 
seen in Turin. The other is a definite 
story that he went to Rome, where, as 
Joseph Balsamo, he was sent to prison. 
A few years later, when Napoleon’s 
forces were in Rome, somebody went 
to the prison and investigated. Cag- 



LO! 



147 



liostro was not there. Perhaps he had 
died. 

XII. 

HERE is the shortest story that I 
know of : St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 
November 2, 1886 — a girl stepped from 
her home, to go to a spring. 

Still, though we shall have details 
and comments, I know of many 
occurrences of which, so far as definitely 
finding out anything is concerned, no 
more than that can be told. 

After all, I can tell a shorter story: 
He walked around the horses. 

Upon November 25, 1809, Benjamin 
Bathurst, returning from Vienna, 
where, at the court of the Emperor 
Francis, he had been representing the 
British government, was in the small 
town of Perleberg, Germany. In the 
presence of his valet and his secretary, 
he was examining horses, which were to 
carry his coach over more of his journey 
back to England. Lender observation, 
he walked around to the other side of 
the horses. He vanished. For details, 
see the Cornhill Magazine, 55-279. 

I have not told much of the dis- 
appearance of Benjamin Bathurst, 
because so many accounts are easily 
available; but the Reverend Sabine 
Baring-Gould in “Historic Oddities” 
"tells of a circumstance that is not 
findable in all other accounts that I have 
read. It is that, upon January 23, 1810, 
in a Hamburg newspaper appeared a 
paragraph telling that Bathurst was safe 
and well, his friends having received a 
letter from him. But his friends had 
received no such letter. 

Wondering as to the origin of this 
paragraph and the reason for it, Baring- 
Gould asks : “Was it inserted to make 
the authorities abandon the search?” 
Was it an inquiry-stopper? is the way 
I word this. Some writers have thought 
that, for political reasons, at the instiga- 
tion of Napoleon Bonaparte, Bathurst 



was abducted. Bonaparte went to the 
trouble to deny that this was so. 

In the Literary Digest, 46-922, it is 
said that the police records of London 
show that 170,472 persons mysteriously 
disappeared in the years 1907-13, and 
that nothing had been found out in 
3,260 of the cases. Anybody who has 
an impression of 167,212 cases, all ex- 
plained ordinarily, may not think much 
of 3,260 cases left over. But some of 
us, now educated somewhat, or at least 
temporarily, by experience with pseudo- 
endings of mysteries, will question that 
the 167,212 cases were so satisfactorily 
explained, except relatively to not very 
exacting satisfactions. If it’s a matter of 
remarriage and collection of insurance, 
half a dozen bereft ones may “identify” 
a body found in a river or cast up by 
the sea. They settle among themselves 
which shall marry again and collect. 
Naturally enough, wherever Cupid is, 
cupidity is not far away, and both haunt 
morgues. Whether our astronomical 
and geological and biological knowledge 
is almost final or not, we know very little 
about ourselves. 

THERE have been many mysterious 
disappearances of human beings. Here 
the situation is what it is in every other 
subject, or so-called subject, if there 
is no subject that has independent 
existence. Only those who know little 
of a matter can have a clear and definite 
opinion upon it. Whole civilizations 
have vanished. There are statistical 
reasons for doubting that five sixths of 
the tribes of Israel once upon a time 
disappeared, but that is tradition, any- 
way. Historians tell us what became 
of the Jamestown colonists, but what 
becomes of historians? Persons as 
well-known as Bathurst have dis- 
appeared. As to the disappearance of 
Conant, one of the editors of Harper’s 
Weekly, see the New York newspapers 
beginning with January 29, 1885. 

Nothing was found out. For other 



148 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



instances of well-known persons who 
have disappeared, see the New York 
Tribune, March 29, 1903, and Harper’s 
Magazine, 38-504. 

Chicago Tribune, January 5, 1900 — 
“Sherman Church, a young man em- 
ployed in the Augusta Mills, Battle 
Creek, Michigan, has disappeared. He 
was seated in the company's office, when 
he arose and ran into the mill. He has 
not been seen since. The mill has been 
almost taken to pieces by the searchers, 
and the river, woods, and country have 
been scoured, but to no avail. Nobody 
saw Church leave town, nor is there 
any known reason for his doing so.” 

Because of the merging of everything 
— without entity, identity, or soul of its 
own — into everything else, anything, or 
what is called anything, can somewhat 
reasonably be argued any way. Any- 
body who feels so inclined will be as 
well justified, as anybody can be, in 
arguing about all mysterious disappear- 
ances in terms of Mrs. Christie’s 
mystery. 

In December, 1926, Mrs. Agatha 
Christie, a writer of detective stories, 
disappeared from her home in England. 
The newspapers, noting her occupation, 
commented good-naturedly, until it was 
reported that, in searching moors and 
forests and villages and towns, the 
police had spent ten thousand pounds. 
Then the frugal Englishmen became 
aware of the moral aspect of the affair, 
and they were severe. Mrs. Christie 
was found. But, according to a final 
estimate, the police had spent only 
twenty-five pounds. Then everybody 
forgot the moral aspect and was good- 
natured again. 

It was told that Mrs. Christie, in a 
hotel somewhere else in England, hav- 
ing been keen about getting newspapers 
every morning, had appeared at the 
hotel, telling fictions about her identity. 
She was taken home by her husband. 
She remenil>ered nobody, her friends 
said, but, thinking this over, they then 



said that she remembered nobody but 
her husband. Several weeks later, a 
new book by Mrs. Christie was pub- 
lished. It seems to have been a some- 
what readable book and was pleasantly 
reviewed by frugal Englishmen, who 
are very good-humored and tolerant, 
unless put to such expense as to make 
them severe and moral. 

Late in the year 1913, Ambrose 
Bierce disappeared. It was explained. 
He had gone to Mexico to join Villa 
and had been killed at the Battle of 
Torreon. New York Times, April 3, 
1915 — mystery of Bierce’s disappear- 
ance solved — he was upon Lord Kitch- 
ener’s staff, in the recruiting service, 
in London. New York Times, April 7, 
1915 — no knowledge of Bierce, at the 
war office. London. In March, 1920, 
newspapers published a dispatch from 
San Francisco telling that Bierce had 
gone to Mexico to fight against Villa 
and had been shot. 

It would be a fitting climax to the 
life of this broad-minded writer to be 
widely at work in London, while in 
Mexico, and to be killed while fighting 
for and against Villa. But that is pretty 
active for one, who, as Joseph Lewis 
French points out in Pearson’s Maga- 
zine, 39-245, was incurably an invalid 
and was more than seventy years old. 
For the latest, at this writing, see the 
New York Times, January 1, 1928. 
Here there is an understandable expla- 
nation of the disappearance. It is that 
Bierce had criticized Villa. 

London Daily Chronicle, September 
29, 1920 — a young man, evening of 
September 27th, walking in a street, in 
South London 

Magic — houses melting — meadows ap- 
pearing — 

Or there was a gap between percep- 
tions. 

However he got there, he was upon 
a road, with fields around. The young 
man was frightened. He might be far 
away and unable to return. It was 



LO! 



149 



upon a road, near Dunstable, thirty 
miles from London, and a policeman 
finding him exclaiming, pacing back and 
forth, took him to the station house. 
Here he recovered sufficiently to tell 
that he was Leonard Wadharn, of Wal- 
worth, South London, where he was 
employed by the ministry of health. As 
to how he got to this point near Dun- 
stable, he could tell nothing. 

EARLY in the year 1905, there were 
many mysterious disappearances in 
England. Here we have an account of 
one of them. I take it from the Liver- 
pool Echo, February 8. Upon February 
4th, a woman was found, lying uncon- 
scious, upon the shore near Douglas, 
Isle of Man. No one had seen her 
before, but it was supposed that she had 
arrived by the boat from England, upon 
February 3rd. She died, without re- 
gaining consciousness. 

There were many residents of the 
island who had, in their various callings, 
awaited the arrival of this boat, and had, 
in their various interests, looked more 
than casually at the passengers ; but two 
hundred Manxmen visited the mortuary 
and not one of them could say that he 
had seen this woman arrive. 

The news was published, and then 
came an inquiry from Wigan, Lanca- 
shire. A woman had “mysteriously 
disappeared" in Wigan, and by her 
description the body found near Douglas 
was identified as that of Mrs. Alice 
Hilton, aged sixty-six, of Wigan. As 
told, in the Wigan Observer, somebody 
said that Mrs. Hilton had been iast seen, 
upon February 2nd, on her way to Ince, 
near Wigan, to visit a cousin. But 
nobody saw her leave Wigan, and she 
had no known troubles. According to 
the verdict at the inquest, Mrs. Hilton 
had not been drowned, but had died 
of the effects of cold and exposure upon 
her heart. 

I wonder whether Ambrose Bierce 
ever experimented with self-teleporta- 



tion. Three of his short stories are of 
“mysterious disappearances." He must 
have been uncommonly interested to re- 
peat so. 

Upon September 4, 1905, London 
newspapers reported the disappearance, 
at Ballycastle, County Antrim, Ireland, 
of Professor George A. Simcox, Senior 
Fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford. 
Upon August 28th, Professor Simcox 
had gone for a walk and had not 
returned. There was a search, but 
nothing was learned. 

Several times before, Professor 
Simcox had attracted attention by dis- 
appearing. The disappearance at Bally- 
castle was final. 

XIII. 

AS INTERPRETERS of dreams, I 
can’t say that we have ambitions, but I 
think of one dream that many persons 
have had repeatedly, and it may hava 
relation to our present subject. One is 
snoring along, amid the ordinary mar- 
vels of dreamland — and there one is, 
naked, in a public place, with no im- 
pression of how one got there. I’d like 
to know what underlies the prevalence 
of this dream, and its disagreeableness, 
which varies, I suppose, according to 
one's opinion of oneself. I think that 
it is subconscious awareness of some- 
thing that has often befallen human be- 
ings, and that in former times was com- 
moner. It may be that occult transporta- 
tions of human beings do occur, and 
that, because of their selectiveness, 
clothes are sometimes not included. 

“Naked in the street — strange con- 
duct by a strange man.” See the 
Chatham (Kent. England) News, Janu- 
tiary 10, 1914. Early in the evening of 
January 6th — “weather bitterly cold” — 
a naked man appeared, from nowhere 
that could be found out, in High Street, 
Chatham. 

The man ran up and down the street, 
until a policeman caught him. He could 
tell nothing about himself. “Insanity,” 



150 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



said the doctors, with their customary 
appearance of really saying something. 

This naked man of Chatham ap- 
peared suddenly. Nobody had seen him 
on his way to his appearing point. His 
clothes were searched for, but could not 
be found. Nowhere near Chatham was 
anybody reported missing. 

Little frogs, showers of stones, and 
falls of water — and they have repeated, 
indicating durations of transportory 
currents to persisting appearing points, 
suggesting the existence of persisting 
disappearing points somewhere else. 
There is an account, in the London 
Times, January 30, 1874, of repeating 
disappearances of young men in Paris. 
Very likely, as a development of femin- 
ism, there will be female Bluebeards, 
but I don’t think of them away back in 
the year 1874. “In every case, their 
relatives and friends declare that they 
were unaware of any reason for eva- 
sion, and the missing persons seem to 
have left their homes for their usual 
avocations.” 

A field, somewhere near Salem, Vir- 
ginia, in the year 1885 — and that in this 
field there was a suction. In the New 
York Sun, April 25, 1885, it is said that 
Isaac Martin, a young farmer, living 
near Salem, Virginia, had gone into a 
field, to work, and that he had disap- 
peared. It is said that in this region 
there had been other mysterious disap- 
pearances. 

In Montreal, in July and August, 
1892, there were so many unaccountable 
disappearances that in the newspapers 
the headline “Another Missing Man” 
became common. In July, 1883, there 
was a similar series, in Montreal. Lon- 
don Evening Star, November 2, 1926 — 
“mysterious series of disappearances— 
eight persons missing, in a few days.” 
It was in and near Southend. First 
went Mrs. Kathleen Munn and her two 
small children. Then a girl aged fif- 
teen, girl aged sixteen, girl aged seven- 
teen, another girl aged sixteen. An- 



other girl, Alice Stevens, disappeared. 
“She was found in a state of collapse, 
and was taken to hospital.” 

New York Sun, August 14, 1902 — 
disappearances, in about a week, of five 
men, in Buffalo, New York. 

Early in August, 1895, in the city of 
Belfast, Ireland, a little girl named 
Rooney disappeared. Detectives investi- 
gated. While they were investigating, a 
.little boy named Webb disappeared. An- 
other child disappeared. September 
10th — disappearance of a boy, aged 
seven, named Watson. Two days later, 
a boy named Brown disappeared. See 
the Irish Neu's, Belfast, September 
20th. In following issues of this news- 
paper, no more information is findable. 

London Daily Mirror, August 5, 1920 
— “Belfast police are in possession of 
the sensational news that eight girls, all 
under twelve years of age, are missing 
since last Monday week, from the New- 
townards Road, East Belfast.” 

In August, 1869, English newspapers 
reported disappearance of thirteen chil- 
dren, in Cork, Ireland. I take from the 
Tiverton Times, August 31st. It may 
be that the phenomenon cannot be ex- 
plained in terms of local kidnapers, be- 
cause somewhere else, at the same time, 
children were disappearing. London 
Daily News, August 31st — excitement 
in Brussels, where children were disap- 
pearing. 

Five “wild men” and a “wild girl” ap- 
peared in Connecticut, about the first of 
January, 1888. See the St. Louis Globe- 
Democrat, January 5, and the New 
York Times, January 9, 1888. 

I have records of six persons, who, 
between January 14, 1920, and Decem- 
ber 9, 1923, were found wandering in 
or near the small town of Romford, Es- 
sex, England, unable to tell how they 
got there, or anything else about them- 
selves. I have satisfactorily come upon 
no case in which somebody has stated 
that he was walking, say, in a street in 



LO! 



151 



New York, and was suddenly seized 
upon and set down somewhere, say in 
Siberia, or Romford. I have come upon 
many cases like that of a man who told 
that he was walking along Euston Road, 
London, and — but nine months later — 
when next he was aware of where he 
was, found himself working on a farm 
in Australia. If human beings ever 
have been teleported, and, if some mys- 
terious appearances of human beings 
be considered otherwise unaccountably, 
an effect of the experience is efface- 
ment of memory. 

THERE have been mysterious ap- 
pearances of- children in every land. In 
India, 'the explanation of appearances 
of children of an unknown past is that 
they had been brought up by she wolves. 

There have been strange fosterings — 
young rabbits adopted by cats, and 
young pigs welcomed to strangely for- 
eign founts. But these cases are of 
maternal necessity, and of unlikely 
benevolence, and we’re asked to believe 
in benevolent she wolves. I don’t deny 
that there is, to some degree, benev- 
olence in wolves, cats, human beings, 
ants ; but benevolence is erratic and not 
long to be depended upon. Sometimes 
I am benevolent, myself, but pretty 
soon get over it. The helplessness of a 
human infant outlasts the suckling 
period of a wolf, flow long do she 
wolves, or any of the rest of us, keep 
on being unselfish, after nothing’s made 
by unselfishness? 

For an account of one of- the later of 
the “wolf-children” of India — year 1914 
- — see Nature, 93-566. In the Zoologist, 
3-12-87, is an account of a number of 
them, up to the year 1852. In the Field, 
November 9, 1895, the story of the 
“wolf-child” of Oude is told by an as- 
sistant commissioner, who had seen it. 
It was a speechless, little animal, about 
four years old. Policemen said that, in 
a wolf’s den, they had found this child, 
almost devoid of human intelligence. 



The child grew up and became a police- 
man. 

In Human Nature, 7-302, is a story 
of two “wolf-children” that were found 
at different times near Agra, Northern 
India. Each was seven or eight years 
old. For a recent case, see the London 
Observer, December 5, 1926. Hindus 
had brought two “wolf-children,” one 
aged two, and the other about eight 
years old, to the Midnapore Orphanage. 
The idea of abandonment of young 
idiots does not look so plausible, in cases 
of more than one child. Also, in a case^ 
of several children, a she wolf would 
seem very graspingly unselfish. The 
children crawled about on all fours, ate 
only raw meat, growled, and avoided 
other inmates of the orphanage. I sup- 
pose that they ate only raw meat, be- 
cause to confirm a theory that was all 
they got. 

London Daily Mail, April 6, 1927 — 
another “wolf-child” — boy aged seven — 
found in a cave, near Allahabad. For 
an instance that is the latest, at this 
writing, see the New York Times, July 
16, 1927. Elephant youngsters and 
rhinoceros brats have still to be heard 
of, but, in the London Morning Post, 
December 31, 1926, is a story of a “tiger- 
child.” A “leopard-boy” and a “mon- 
key-girl” are told of in the London 
Observer, April 10, 1927. 

Our data are upon events that have 
astonished horses and tickled spring- 
boks. They have shocked policemen. 

I have notes upon an outbreak of ten 
“wild men” who appeared in different 
parts of England in that period of 
extraordinary phenomena, the winter of 
1904-5. One of them, of origin that 
could not be found out, appeared in a 
street in Cheadle. He was naked. An 
indignant policeman, trying to hang his 
overcoat about the man, tried to rea- 
son with him, but had the same old trou- 
ble that Euclid and Newton and Darwin 
had, and that everybody else has, when 
trying to be rational, or when trying, 



152 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



in the inorganic, or scientific, way, to 
find a base to argue upon. I suppose 
the argument was something like this: 

Wasn't he ashamed of himself? 

Not at all. Some persons might have 
reasons for being ashamed of them- 
selves, but he had no reason for being 
ashamed of himself. What’s wrong 
with nakedness? Don’t cats and horses 
and dogs go around without clothes on? 

But they are clothed with natural, 
furry protections. 

Well, Mexican dogs, then. 

Let somebody else try — somebody 
who thinks that, as products of logic, the 
teachings of astronomy, biology, geology, 
or anything else are pretty nearly final, 
though with debatable minor points, to 
be sure. Try this simple little problem 
to start with. Why shouldn’t the man 
walk around naked? One is driven to 
argue upon the basis of conventionality. 
But we are living in an existence, which 
itself may be base, but in which there 
are not bases. Argue upon the basis of 
conventionality, and one is open to well- 
known counter-arguments. What is all 



progress but defiance of conventional- 
ity? 

The policeman, in Euclid’s state of 
desperation, took it as self-evident dis- 
gracefulness. Euclid put theorems in 
bags. He solved problems by incasing 
some circumstances in an exclusion of 
whatever interfered with a solution. 
The policeman of Cheadle adopted the 
classical method. He dumped the “wild 
man’’ into a sack, which he dragged to 
the station house. 

Another of these ten “wild men” 
spoke in a language that nobody had 
ever heard of before and carried a book 
in which were writings that could not 
be identified, at Scotland Yard. Like a 
traveler from far away, he had made 
sketches of things that he had seen 
along the roads. At Scotland Yard, it 
was said of the writings : “They are not 
French, German, Dutch, Italian, Span- 
ish, Hungarian, Turkish. Neither are 
they Bohemian, Greek, Portuguese 
Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, nor Russian.” 
See London newspapers, and the East 
Anglian Daily Times, January 12, 1905. 




V. 




A Final Word on Colossus 

Dear Editor: 

It was the little controversy in your 
May issue between a fellow collegian, 
Alburger of Swarthmore, and your enjoy- 
able author Wandrei that finally crystal- 
lized my intention to write you. In a 
somewhat undiplomatic manner Alburger 
criticized a specific transgression of the 
author, without however going into any 
detail as to the general principle under 
which it warranted criticism. Hence 
Wandrei’s natural-enough mystification, 
for of course a difference in preference 
concerning two theories designed to ex- 
plain the same facts is not enough to 
justify such stern criticism of an author 
for choosing the unorthodox one. 

Let me state my thesis. Science-fic- 
tion is a game that differs from science 
itself in but one fundamental respect: 
it is entitled to assume a successful out- 
come of the experiments it devises for 
the testing of its theories. In the postu- 
lation of the theories themselves, how- 
ever, they are' subject to exactly the same 
limitations, two of which are particu- 
larly important. First, known facts 
must not be denied. (This applies mainly 
to positive facts. We assume many nega- 
tive facts but hardly any have been 
proved, perhaps none outside of mathe- 
matics. Certainly no critic could, merely 
because something never had happened, 
assume to forbid a Science-Fictionist’s 



postulating that at a different time or 
under other conditions it did happen. 
Neither, of course, are axioms facts. In- 
deed, an axiom may be defined as some- 
thing assumed as true because it is im- 
possible to prove it.) Second, in putting 
forward a new theory its author should 
show where it also explains the im- 
portant facts explained by any accepted 
theory which the new one contradicts. 

Now to discuss a few special cases in 
the light of the above. Take the Al- 
burger-Wandrei case first. Wandrei is, 
of course, defending his position as a 
fictionist, not as a scientist, for if his 
complete ignorance of the facts which 
the Fitzgerald-Lorenz theory was in- 
vented to explain was not made plain by 
his using an expansion instead of a con- 
traction, it certainly was by his refer- 
ence to the Michelson-Morley experi- 
ment as a theory. The trouble is that 
Wandrei has unknowingly violated my 
second rule. Alburger cannot complain 
merely because Wandrei has taken a new 
theory instead of an old, and indeed does 
not. What Wandrei did do was to take 
the exact opposite of a theory that ex- 
plained certain experimental facts. If, 
then, the facts fitted in with a contrac- 
tion, it is up to the man proposing an ex- 
pansion either to explain away the sup- 
posed facts, or to prove where the fallacy 
lay in the logic of the old theory. Wan- 
drei blandly failed to do either. It is 
really a good deal simpler and safer to 




154 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



invent something quite new, for the 
rules of the game impose certain obliga- 
tions on the contradicter of an accepted 
theory, which he cannot evade without 
considerable loss of face. 

I have set up a high standard; unless 
an author confined himself to mighty 
simple things he would have to be a real 
scientist of no mean magnitude to live 
up to it. But things are not all black 
and white. I feel that infringements of 
my rules are culpable only in proportion 
to the number of people who know 
enough to be offended by them. In ex- 
treme cases I might add the number of 
those who are misled by them in what 
ought to be a matter of common knowl- 
edge. Personally I think that the fun- 
damental idea of Colossus was splendid, 
and I doubt if many of your readers were 
familiar enough with relativistic me- 
chanics to be annoyed seriously by Wan- 
drei's fudging in the method he used for 
translating his human being into the su- 
peruniverse. I enjoyed the story tre- 
mendously in spite of it. — Dr. E. C. Scott, 
Sweet Briar, Va. 



From Cal Tech 

Dear Editor: 

As I was an ardent fan of the old 
A. S., it was with a great deal of regret 
that I saw its passing. And it was with 
a correspondingly great pleasure that I 
received the news of its resurrection. 

The other day, as I came back from 
the store with my latest copy of A. S. 
in my hand, I stopped and watched the 
unloading here at the institute of the 
great 120-inch mirr*r. It was very in- 
teresting to watch the handling of the 
ten-foot disc of glass. It weighed five 
tons. 

I might mention, for the benefit of 
those who are interested in the institute, 
that I am here because of an interest in 
science, derived from the reading of this 
type of magazine. For quite a while be- 
fore the old A. S. came out, I read the 
other two on the market. Then I got all 
three, but soon dropped the other two. 
In all the time of its publication, I missed 
but one issue of Astounding. 

It is my opinion that your thought- 
variant stories constitute one of the most 
original and best ideas in the history of 
science-fiction. 

Lo! is proving intensely interesting to 
me. My mother has mentioned seeing 



the aftermath of a rain of frogs an inch 
and a half or so long. There was a frog 
for every square foot of ground. I 
wonder whether or not these matters will 
ever be fully, or at all, explained. One 
reading this collection of data is re- 
minded of the falling of manna. How 
many Biblical miracles are happening 
to-day? Miraculous healing seem to be 
among us at Lourdes. And there are 
others. 

With best wishes for the greatest suc- 
cess of our magazine. — Hugh Gilmore, 
Jr., Blacker House, California Institute 
of Technology, Pasadena, California. 



Can Any One Beat This? 

Dear Editor: 

I wonder whether any of your readers 
can challenge my contention of being 
the world’s largest individual holder of 
scientific-fiction magazines. 

I am the proud possessor of about 
1,700 copies, which I have been col- 
lecting for years, as I think they will 
have quite some value in time. — Leon 
Pois, 2101 Grand Concourse, New York 
City. 



Why Not Four Years? 

Dear Editor: 

The type of stories in your magazine 
is getting better and better. I have 
only two complaints. It isn’t on the 
news stands often enough. Couldn’t it 
be issued bi-monthly? Secondly, couldn’t 
an astounding story, no matter how wild 
or absurd, be played on a perfectly sub- 
stantial stage? In your June issue your 
authors, two of them, have not based 
their stories on solid facts. In Crater 
17, Near Tycho, Mr. Kelly informs us 
that the Isis was a Mars-Earth freight 
space ship capable of a speed of one 
thousand miles per Earth hour. At 
Mars’ closest approach to Earth, every 
seventeen years, it would require a little 
over four years for the Isis to go from 
Mars to Earth. Evidently its freight 
was worth waiting for. It would seem 
as though its entire cargo would of ne- 
cessity be fuel and supplies for itself. 
Mr. Kelly also states, that on their way 
to the Moon, the ship had been on its 
way two days and a half, sixty hours, yet 
Brand remarked: “We’ve held even all 



BRASS TACKS 



155 



the way from atmosphere at one thou- 
sand per. Thirty-six thousand miles 
gone.” If death were certain, why did 
Gar and Jorgensen trouble themselves 
donning space suits? 

In Mr. Gallun’s The World Wrecker, 
this statement appears. “Jets of lique- 
fied hydrogen, inside this case, keep its 
contents three degrees above zero Centi- 
grade.” The inside of the case was cov- 
ered with frost. As zero Centigrade is 
the freezing point of water, would ice 
and frost form at three above? 

He Never Slept and The Emperor’s 
Heart were the best stories I ever read. 
— Elmer C. La Lone, Route 1, Norfolk, 
New York. 



“ Good Ideas, Plus Good Writing” 

Dear Editor: 

Here comes my monthly letter, with its 
customary praises and knocks. Mostly, 
I can praise you, because you’ve pro- 
gressed further in your nine months of 
life, in proportion of good stories, than 
any of the other science-fiction maga- 
zines. But I have some knocks too, and 
truthfully, I am glad of that, for a maga- 
zine that was perfect would hardly have 
an interest for me. For example, look 
at the large number of readers who seem 
to like the imperfectly written, imper- 
fectly scienced stories of Harl Vincent 
and Jack Williamson. I’m not saying 
that all these two writers write is badly 
written, but a lot of it is. Of the two, 
I like Williamson better. 

The Legion Of Space will stand out 
for a long time above other stories of a 
like nature. The story is really good. 
Then in the last, the June issue, we have 
Rex, by Vincent, the best short story he 
has ever written. A surprise ending, a 
different handling of an old theme, and 
the development of a new type of char- 
acter. How about a tale of a robot and 
a man working together as close friends 
to overcome some monstrous difficulty? 

Sidewise In Time, by Leinster, was 
very good. He handled an idea which 
I have had for many years, very well. 
Undoubtedly a “th-v.” (I wonder if my 
abbreviation for that apt term, of your 
making, will go over?) Frank K. Kelly’s 
story was very well done, and seemed 
to imply a coming sequel. I’m willing to 
have it. The Thing In The Pond, by 
Paul Ernst, was good, but all the same, 
the idea has been used time and again. 



in the same manner; a hackneyed plot. 
Try to avoid them. He Never Slept was 
O. K., but I don’t think Fearn is so good 
as to have stories by him every month. 

The Emperor’s Heart, by Henry Kost- 
kos, was clever, but rather too fantastic. 
I’m wondering where the emperor’s ex- 
cess flesh went when he dwindled to the 
proportions of an embryo girl. The 
World Wrecker, by Raymond Z. Gallun, 
I thought would turn out to be another 
earth-invasion story, but it was different. 

So much for the stories, which, you 
notice, I have said were all well done. 
You are doing what other magazines 
sometimes do not think necessary — 
coupling good ideas with good writing. 

Now, of course, the biggest thing in 
the June Astounding was the announce- 
ment of the coming of The Skylark Of 
Valeron! Thanks a lot. With that 
story, there will be no doubt as to which 
is the best science-fiction magazine on 
the market. I have long known, in fact 
ever since I read the first and third in- 
stallments of The Skylark Of Space in 
1928, that Edward E. Smith would come 
to be the greatest writer of interplane- 
tary stories. 

I see that Smith is writing, in his new- 
est story, of the fourth dimension. I 
have always wondered why he didn’t 
tackle the subject, because I am certain 
that he can present a more logical expla- 
nation than any other writer. He just 
seems to have that gift of doing every- 
thing best. Some day, I hope he turns 
his attention to a good explanation of 
time traveling. 

When I started the letter, I had knocks 
aplenty stored up for you, but I guess 
they will have to remain stored up. Keep 
up your present rate of progress, though, 
and you will probably erase from ex- 
istence all my proposed brickbats. — Paul 
Cahendon, 322 W. 4th Street, Cincinnati, 
Ohio. 



No Reprints, Rest Assured 

Dear Editor: 

First, no reprints. If you want A. S. 
to be valued as the best science-fiction 
magazine on the market, keep publishing 
your original stories. 

Then, as to serials. As for me, I don’t 
mind them in the least. In fact, I like 
the serial type of story. If you should 
publish a book-length novel every month, 
you would barely have room for a few 



156 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



tiny short stories. But if you published 
all short stories, they would become 
boresome. Please don’t change! 

The story I liked best in your June 
issue was Rex. It contained some good 
scientific ideas. 

Next in line comes the thought-vari- 
ant, Sidewise In Time. A very good 
scientific idea. 

My interest was captured by the story, 
He Never Slept. The idea of dreams 
from some long past or future in the sub- 
conscious mind is a pet of mine. Maybe 
you’ll hear of my ideas some time. 

Come on, you August! — Thomas R. 
Daniel, 232 Olive Street, Claremont, 
California. 



Can Any One Supply These Issues? 

Dear Editor: 

The dead have risen for me. I read 
the old Astounding Stories until it was 
discontinued and when I heard of that I 
felt as if a very dear friend had died. 

Then a fortnight ago I learned from a 
pen-friend that Astounding had been re- 
born last October. Was I glad? And 
how! The new magazine is about 50% 
better than the old, and to think what I 
have been missing for the last seven 
months! The purpose of this letter is 
to ask if I can obtain these missed issues 
(October, November, December, ’33; 
January, February, March, April, ’34), 
and at what price? 

If all your issues were like the May 
issue, yours is a super science-fiction 
magazine. — Philip S. Hetherington, “Ty- 
cooly,” Southwaite, Carlisle, Cumber- 
land. 



“Serials O. K.” 

Dear Editor: 

I have just finished my first issue of 
Astounding Stories and I am certainly 
delighted to find such a fine magazine! I 
have often seen Astounding on the stands, 
but for no reason at all neglected to try 
it. Now, after my first issue, I can 
hardly wait for the next, and I certainly 
hope that Astounding thrives for years 
to come. Many people seem to think that 
most any magazine with a so-called 
“flashy” cover is junk. I only wish this 
view could be changed, because I can 
perfectly honestly say that I have en- 
joyed your magazine easily as much as 
some two- or three-dollar books I have 
read. 



Anybody, regardless of who he is, who 
reads these stories and says they are 
“crazy,” I consider as being too ignorant 
fully to comprehend them as being the 
fact stories of the near future! 

I like all your' stories, but especially 
Sidewise In Time, Crater 17, Near Tycho 
and The Legion of Space. I think serials 
are O. K. — George M. Clark, Jr., 26 Pier- 
repont St., Brooklyn, N. Y. 



Back Issues Wanted 

Dear Editor: 

I am a fairly old veteran (I hope not) 
of science-fiction reading. During 1933 
all science-fiction was at a low tide. 
To my surprise (and delight) Astound- 
ing Stories came out then, just as I was 
about to give up science-fiction in despair 
and try some other line of reading. When 
I found it was under the Street & Smith 
banner, I knew it would be good. Now 
I am an Astounding Stories reader for 
life. 

Some people believe it is the authors 
who make the magazine what it is. I do 
and I don’t. That is to say, the authors 
contribute 80% of the magazine and the 
editor the remaining 20%. A good editor 
gets good stories if he wishes his maga- 
zine to succeed. I believe you are a 
better editor than either of the editors 
of your two rival magazines. Their 
magazines prove it. 

I would like to trade for back issues 
of Astounding to complete my files. I 
have lost many by lending them out. 
Any one who wishes to trade their 
Astoundings for one or more of my mag- 
azines, some of which are 1929 and 1930 
issues of science-fiction magazines, please 
write me, sending a list of what they 
wish to trade. Remember, first come, 
first served! 

I will end with a plea for more sto- 
ries by Jack Williamson, Harl Vincent, 
Clark Ashton Smith and David H. Keller. 
— Henry Ackermann, 5200 Maple Ave- 
nue, “Pimlico,” Baltimore. Maryland. 



The American Rocket Society 

Dear Editor: 

For your information, I write you 
about the American Interplanetary So- 
ciety. 



BRASS TACKS 



157 



This is prompted by an inquiry I have 
seen made on page 157, column two, of 
the June, 1934, issue. 

The original name of this society was 
the American Interplanetary Society. 
This has very recently been changed to 
the American Rocket Society. The office 
of the secretary is held at present by 
Dr. Lichtenstein, 147 West 86th St., 
New York City. 

This is a sober, serious-minded organi- 
zation whose fundamental purpose is the 
development of the science of astro- 
nautics. It publishes a monthly bulletin 
on the progress being made by mem- 
bers in developing rocketry. In fact 
much has remained unpublished. We 
have for instance two experimental rock- 
ets almost completed and they soon will 
be fired. The secretary, Dr. Lichten- 
stein, or I will be glad to answer any 
inquiries. — Nathan Carver, 47 Norfolk 
St., N. Y. C. 



A Challenge for Jack 

Dear Editor: 

Hooray! That word expresses my ex- 
act sentiments for Astounding Stories. 
Ever since it has come under the Street 
& Smith banner, it has been better with 
each issue. Mr. Editor, every single 
reader is indebted to you. I bet that 
even the worst cranks are admitting that 
Astounding is improving. I have been a 
constant reader ever since the change, 
and it certainly has been going places! 

The June issue is the best yet. How- 
ard V. Brown certainly knows how to 
paint cover illustrations. I would much 
rather see Elliot Dold doing most of 
the inside ones. 

The line-up of authors for June is 
marvelous. Every story has a kick to it. 
Murray Leinster surely opened a new 
field of speculation with his plot in 
Sidewise In Time. Ask Frank K. Kelly 
to write a sequel to Crater 17, Near 
Tycho. The Emperor’s Heart was a 
nifty little story. It was a little classic 
all by itself. 

I would like to see a science depart- 
ment. The thing that I would like most 
is comments by the editor at the end 
of each letter. 

I was terribly surprised when Jack 
Darrow said that He From Procyon was 
Nat Schachner’s best story. Oh, Jack! 



How could you? — David A. Kyle, 22 Cot- 
tage Street, Monticello, New York. 



Smooth Edges 

Dear Editor: 

Congratulations, editor, for securing 
for the readers E. E. Smith. The Sky- 
lark Of Valeron! It seems only natural 
that you should be the one to print this 
story. 

I’ve only read three stories in this 
number, but they are enough to keep the 
magazine up to the high standard it’s 
setting. 

Of the three stories I’ve read, Crater 
17, Near Tycho was the best. Then, 
The Emperor’s Heart and The Thing In 
The Pond. 

Here’s a suggestion for the readers: 
Instead of pestering the editor about 
smooth edges, take the magazines to 
any large printing concern in your city 
and they will trim the magazine for prac- 
tically nothing. — Olon F. Wiggins, 2418 
Stout Street, Denver, Colorado. 



“Undoubtedly the Best” 

Dear Editor: 

I should say you did have an announce- 
ment for us, your readers, this month. 
And what an announcement! Dr. E. E. 
Smith’s third Skylark story starting with 
the August issue of good old Astound- 
ing. That is really something to shout 
about. If The Skylark Of Valeron is 
even half as entertaining as its prede- 
cessors, it’ll be a wow! 

The current Williamson serial gets 
better every installment; I believe it’s 
his best. 

Sidewise In Time shows Leinster at 
his peak and is, in my humble opinion, 
your most excellent thought-variant to 
date. 

Frank K. Kelly’s Crater 17, Near Ty- 
cho, while readable, wasn’t what I hoped 
for. 

The Thing In The Pond, by Paul 
Ernst, appeared to me to be far more 
suited to a weird magazine than Astound- 
ing. Yet it was a good story — much bet- 
ter than He Never Slept and Rex. 

Astounding Stories is the best science- 



156 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



fiction magazine on the market to-day— 
undoubtedly. — Alvin Earl Perry, Box 265, 
Rockdale. Texas. 



A Final (?) Broadside 

Dear Editor: 

The biggest announcement of the year 
has exceeded expectations. I know, in 
advance, that The Skylark Of Valeron 
will be the best story ever printed in 
Astounding Stories.' If it is better than 
the two previous Skylark stories, it will 
be the best story ever published any- 
where. Mr. Editor, if you stretch this 
story to more than four parts, I’ll shoot. 

I, also, would not care to have The 
Skylark Of Space and Skylark Three 
reprinted in magazine form. I would, 
however, like to have them in perma- 
nent book form. Why not have. Chelsea 
House do it? 

At any rate, to show my appreciation 
of the big announcement, I’m giving 
away a copy of the August issue of 
Astounding to some one who has not 
yet had the pleasure of reading the maga- 
zine, as yet. 

The June issue I found very enjoy- 
able. Sidewise In Time is one of Lein- 
ster’s best. It certainly was a great tale. 

Crater 17, Near Tycho is Frank K. 
Kelly’s best to date. 

The Legion Of Space is coming along 
fine. I still wish you had made it four 
parts. 

The Emperor’s Heart I found a very 
absorbing tale. 

The other shorts were good also. 

The cover for June is a fine one 
indeed. Howard V. Brown is a good 
artist for covers, but his drawings are 
not so good. 

And now I must bring up the subject 
of Wesso again, perhaps for the last time. 
I know that you want to put out the 
best science-fiction magazine possible. 
Your efforts have shown that you are in 
earnest. No other science-fiction maga- 
zine publishes better stories than does 
Astounding to-day. In illustrations you 
have improved. You have a fine cover 
artist in Brown. You have fine interior 
decorators in Dold and Marchioni. Still 
the readers ask for their old favorites, 
Wesso and Paul. And don’t you want to 
please the greater number of your read- 
ers? 



Well — how about it? — Jack Darrow, 
4224 N. Sawyer Avenue, Chicago, Illi- 
nois. 



Awards 

Dear Editor: 

For about six years, I have been read- 
ing science-fiction. For six years I have 
watched with great delight the constantly 
increasing interest in this new type of 
literature. When I had finished reading 
the March issue of Astounding Stories, 
I felt that, at last, I had found the per- 
fect magazine, and I was not wrong. 

Over a period of six months, your 
magazine has jumped from last position 
in its field to first. Congratulations to 
so fine an editor. 

You should feel honored — whether you 
do or not makes no difference — for the 
first time I am writing to an editor, and 
for the first time I have become really 
enthused over a story, or rather a short 
novelette, printed in your magazine. 

Ever since March I have eagerly 
awaited the appearance of Astounding 
Stories on the news stands. Yesterday I 
bought the May issue and to-night I am 
a rabid fan of Charles Diffin’s The Long 
Night. For its special type, it is a mas- 
terpiece. Mr. Diffin, I would advise you 
to tackle a sequel to this story. 

Now for some other fine authors. To 
you, Donald Wandrei, goes a medal for 
honor. Your writing is clear; your plots 
are original; your heroes live and 
breathe. To you, Nat Schachner, whom 
I have followed for two years, goes the 
medal for perseverance. You have im- 
proved your writing 100% since I read 
your first novel. To Stanton Coblentz 
goes a medal for artistry. Your works 
are finished with a high polish. 

Concerning the thought-variant type — 
a wonderful idea. The editor’s, I pre- 
sume. Keep the motheaten plots at bay 
and the standard high. Colossus tops 
them all, for it creates the emotion de- 
sired — how insignificant we are, after all. 

In closing, may I say that my personal 
library consists of almost every classic 
written in English, yet I find great en- 
joyment in Astounding? The simple ex- 
planation? Why, it causes one to think 
— and I don’t mean maybe. Archaeology 
is one of my hobbies. A novel on Mu 
or Atlantis would be my idea of a grand 
treat. — Donald N. Bradley, Roxbury 
School, Cheshire, Connecticut. 



BRASS TACKS 



159 



Is Brass Tacks Large Enough Now? 

Dear Editor: 

Congratulations on your June issue of 
Astounding. You have done a fine job 
on your magazine. It is more than you 
promised us. You have come up the 
ladder quickly and surely and we now 
have a really great science-fiction maga- 
zine, with new things showing up all the 
time. Just what we wanted and hoped 
for. I really can’t see how you did such 
a fine job in the short time from the 
first issue. 

I can really say I have never h-'d the 
pleasure of reading such a fine magazine 
as Astounding Stories is at present. 

I have no brickbats to throw. I have 
one or two requests to make. Please 
enlarge Brass Tacks. We all like to 
know just how the other fellow feels 
and enjoy reading his opinions. 

Have Elliot Dold do all the inside 
illustrations. He’s great! 

One more thing; I enjoy your page, 
when you tell us how things are coming 
along and what to expect. It is excel- 
lent. I read this the first thing. — Lewis 
C. Duff, Jr., 5 Central Avenue, Bradford, 
Massachusetts. 



Here They Are! 

Dear Editor: 

I’ve just purchased the June issue of 
our magazine, and it’s some issue! Look 
at those names on the contents page: 
Fearn, Leinster, Kelly, Williamson, Vin- 
cent, Gallun, Kcstkos and Ernst. 

And the cover! Wesso couldn’t have 
done any better. • The story illustrations 
by Dold are also good. 

Was I excited! The cause? The Sky- 
lark Of Valeron! Any one who has read 
the magnificent chronicle of the Skylarks 
can appreciate my feelings. I had al- 
ways longed for more adventures with 
the immortal Seaton and Crane. And 
now they are here, in 85,000 words! In 
my opinion, Skylark Three was the great- 
est science-fiction story ever published. 
— William H. Kennedy, 31 Wellesley 
Park, Dorchester, Massachusetts. 



Scissors — Smooth Edges 

Dear Editor: 

Congratulations on copping E. E. 
Smith’s latest addition to the Skylark 



series, before any other science-fiction 
magazine could lay hands on it. How- 
ever, when you say this new story sur- 
passes the Doc’s two former stories, I’m 
from Missouri. The Skylark Of Space 
is, beyond question, the greatest inter- 
planetary story of all time. While there 
have been, literally, hundreds of imita- 
tions, none has even approached the 
original. 

I’m not going to attempt to criticize 
or rate the stories in the June issue ac- 
cording to their degree of excellence. 
I’ve finally reached the conclusion that 
each person has his own separate and 
distinct opinions and ideas about every 
story. I will say, though, that The Em- 
peror’s Heart, by Henry Kostkos, was an 
entertaining, extremely plausible surgi- 
cal story, up to the last couple of pages, 
when it descended to the absurd. Of 
course, that’s only my personal opinion 
of it. 

In conclusion, let me say that, as far 
as I am concerned, you don’t have to 
bother to trim down your cover to fit 
the inside pages. I quickly remedy this 
situation with a pair of scissors as soon 
as I get the magazine home. — Robert 
Tufts, 61 Rathbun Avenue, White Plains, 
New York. 



We Thank You 

Dear Editor: 

I was overjoyed to hear that The Sky- 
lark Of Valeron is to be published. 
Chiefly, this is what made me write to 
you. When you said that the most im- 
portant announcement of the year was 
to be made, I expected that it would be 
a quarterly. But to my disappointment, 
a quarterly was not even mentioned. 
Really, now, are you going to issue a 
quarterly? 

I make a very strong appeal for it, 
and I am sure that most of the readers 
agree with me. You could charge double 
the present price of A. S. and use new 
stories. I’m sure every one would co- 
operate. 

By the way, you say that if every 
reader would interest one more reader, 
this magazine would reach way over a 
hundred thousand times above par in a 
year. So far, I have interested three 
people who never even knew Astounding 
existed — and they do enjoy it. 

The thought-variant idea is a knock- 



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160 



ASTOUNDING STORIES 



out. My only favorite author is Stanton 
A. Coblentz. He usually runs a humor- 
ous vein through his stories, but I don’t 
know what is happening to him at the 
present moment. I guess it’s the short- 
ness of the story, where a person can 
hardly get anything that is really suit- 
able to fit right in. 

Wallace West also writes in a smooth 
fashion, which I like. For the artists, 
keep Brown on the cover and Elliot 
Dold and Thompson for the inside. Keep 
up your present editorials; it’s pretty 
good to hear how the magazine is pro- 
gressing. — Alexander Novak, 921 Hud- 
son Street; Trenton, N. J. 



Smack! 

Dear Editor: 

Three cheers! You have got Astound- 
ing Stories back to the level again. 
Every story in it is good this month. 

Get Ziska and Diffin and Schachner to 
write again. They are good. Say, tell 
Earl Perry he’s crazy. Black Death was 
the BEST in March. 

Tell N. H. Bordon he shouldn’t take 
some of these stories so hard. Is he a 
cream puff or something? The edges 
are all right for the rest of us. He’s not 
the only guy who’s fifteen, either. — 
Perrin Bailey, 27 Central Terrace, Au- 
burndale, Massachusetts. 



Splash o’ Ink Wanted 

Dear Editor: 

Howard Brown is one of the best cover 
artists on the market, when speaking in 
terms of a science-fiction colorist, but 
he is a poor interior sketcher. The tech- 
nique of black and white is not quite his. 

So far, I’m against the sequels asked 
for in Brass Tacks. 

I like the new ideas of most of the 
stories. I don’t care how unusual or 
unorthodox they are. There are too 
many people saying a rule cannot be 
broken. It would be all right if 'we 
knew all the fundamentals of the uni- 
verse and their variations, but we don’t. 
Lo! is a good example of this. Am glad 
you are publishing Fort’s stuff. 

If there are any of you guys and you 
gals in the audience who would care to 
write to an old sniffer-out of science- 



fiction, I’d welcome a splash o’ ink.— 
Kenneth B. Pritchard, 82 Second Street, 
Pittsfield, Massachusetts. 



Short and Sweet 

Dear Editor: 

Congratulations! Your magazine is 
the best that money can buy. 

In all my science-fiction career — five 
years — I have never read better stories 
in any science magazine (all three) than 
in Astounding. It is hardly possible to 
rank the yarns. 

There is no use wishing you luck. You 
have it. I hope it continues. — Jack De 
Pargher, 47 Crescent Avenue, Long 
Beach, California. 



Thanks! 

Dear Editor: 

My opinions pro and con on the May 
issue are as follows: 

Stories, very good. Illustrations, all 
good except Mr. Brown’s, which were all 
rotten. 

Stories: 1. Brain Of Light — excel- 

lent, a super-scientific story. Come again, 
Mr. Fearn. 

2. Blinding Shadows — very good in- 
deed. Keep Mr. Wandrei on your staff. 

3. The Long Night — good, but slightly 
muddled in parts. 

4. Succubus — very good. It resem- 
bled White Lady in the January, 1933; 
issue of Strange Tales. By the way, will 
you please let me know whether you are 
going to re-issue that wonderful maga- 
zine, Strange Tales. 

5. The Legion Of Space — good. 

6. The 100th Generation — good. Mr. 
Schachner is better when writing these 
stories than the thought-variants. His 
T. V. themes are too similar. 

7. The Wall — good. Now — look out — 
a brickbat — whee— crash !! ! Your fea- 
ture artist — Mr. Brown. Awful. Your 
best two artists — M. Marchioni — Dold, 
very good. 

On the whole your May issue was not 
quite as good as the April issue, because 
of Mr. Brown. 

I’ve just got you a new reader. He 
lives in Carlisle, Cumberland (look it up 
in an Atlas), which is about 90 miles 
from Liverpool. — E. Sutcliffe, 3 Ballan- 
tyne Road, West Derby, Liverpool, 13, 
England. 



AST— 1 0