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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March
+1930, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: August 4, 2009 [EBook #29607]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTOUNDING STORIES, MARCH 1930 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Katherine Ward, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+ASTOUNDING STORIES OF SUPER-SCIENCE
+
+
+_On Sale the First Thursday of Each Month_
+
+  W. M. CLAYTON, Publisher
+  HARRY BATES, Editor
+  DOUGLAS M. DOLD, Consulting Editor
+
+The Clayton Standard on a Magazine Guarantees:
+
+_That_ the stories therein are clean, interesting, vivid; by leading
+writers of the day and purchased under conditions approved by the
+Authors' League of America;
+
+_That_ such magazines are manufactured in Union shops by American
+workmen;
+
+_That_ each newsdealer and agent is insured a fair profit;
+
+_That_ an intelligent censorship guards their advertising pages.
+
+
+_The other Clayton magazines are_:
+
+ACE-HIGH MAGAZINE, RANCH ROMANCES, COWBOY STORIES, CLUES, FIVE-NOVELS
+MONTHLY, WIDE WORLD ADVENTURES, ALL STAR DETECTIVE STORIES, FLYERS,
+RANGELAND LOVE STORY MAGAZINE, SKY-HIGH LIBRARY MAGAZINE, WESTERN
+ADVENTURES, MISS 1930, and FOREST AND STREAM
+
+_More Than Two Million Copies Required to Supply the Monthly Demand for
+Clayton Magazines._
+
+
+  VOL. I, No. 3                CONTENTS                     MARCH, 1930
+
+  COVER DESIGN                 H. W. WESSOLOWSKI
+  _Painted in Water-colors from a Scene in "Brigands of the Moon."_
+
+  COLD LIGHT                   CAPTAIN S. P. MEEK                   295
+  _How Could a Human Body Be Found Actually Splintered--Broken
+  into Sharp Fragments Like a Shattered Glass! Once Again Dr. Bird
+  Probes Deep into an Amazing Mystery._
+
+  BRIGANDS OF THE MOON         RAY CUMMINGS                         306
+  _Black Mutiny and Brigandage Stalk the Space-ship Planetara as
+  She Speeds to the Moon to Pick Up a Fabulously Rich Cache of
+  Radium-ore._
+
+  THE SOUL MASTER              WILL SMITH AND R. J. ROBBINS         350
+  _Desperately O'Hara Plunged into Prof. Kell's Mysterious Mansion.
+  For His Friend Skip Was the Victim of the Eccentric Scientist's
+  De-astralizing Experiment, and Faced a Fate More Hideous than
+  Death._
+
+  FROM THE OCEAN'S DEPTHS      SEWELL PEASLEE WRIGHT                376
+  _Man Came from the Sea. Mercer, by His Thought-telegraph, Learns
+  from the Weirdly Beautiful Ocean-maiden of a Branch that Returned
+  There._
+
+  VANDALS OF THE STARS         A. T. LOCKE                          390
+  _A Livid Flame Flares Across Space--and Over Manhattan Hovers
+  Teuxical, Vassal of Malfero, Lord of the Universe, Who Comes with
+  Ten Thousand Warriors to Ravage and Subjugate One More Planet for
+  His Master._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Single Copies, 20 Cents (In Canada, 25 Cents)
+  Yearly Subscription, $2.00
+
+Issued monthly by Publishers' Fiscal Corporation, 80 Lafayette St., New
+York, N. Y. W. M. Clayton, President; Nathan Goldmann, Secretary.
+Application for entry as second-class mail pending at the Post Office at
+New York under Act of March 3, 1879. Application for registration of
+title as Trade Mark pending in the U. S. Patent Office. Member Newsstand
+Group--Men's List. For advertising rates address E. R. Crowe & Co.,
+Inc., 25 Vanderbilt Ave., New York; or 225 North Michigan Ave.,
+Chicago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Cold Light
+
+_By Capt. S. P. Meek_
+
+    How could a human body be found actually splintered--broken into
+    sharp fragments like a shattered glass! Once again Dr. Bird
+    probes deep into an amazing mystery.
+
+[Illustration: "_The bodies had broken into pieces, as though they had
+been made of glass._"]
+
+
+"Confound it, Carnes, I am on my vacation!"
+
+"I know it, Doctor, and I hate to disturb you, but I felt that I simply
+had to. I have one of the weirdest cases on my hands that I have ever
+been mixed up in and I think that you'll forgive me for calling you when
+I tell you about it."
+
+Dr. Bird groaned into the telephone transmitter.
+
+"I took a vacation last summer, or tried to, and you hauled me away from
+the best fishing I have found in years to help you on a case. This year
+I traveled all the way from Washington to San Francisco to get away from
+you and the very day that I get here you are after me. I won't have
+anything to do with it. Where are you, anyway?"
+
+"I am at Fallon, Nevada, Doctor. I'm sorry that you won't help me out
+because the case promises to be unusually interesting. Let me at least
+tell you about it."
+
+Dr. Bird groaned louder than ever into the telephone transmitter.
+
+"All right, go ahead and tell me about it if it will relieve your mind,
+but I have given you my final answer. I am not a bit interested in it."
+
+"That is quite all right, Doctor, I don't expect you to touch it. I
+hope, however, that you will be able to give me an idea of where to
+start. Did you ever see a man's body broken in pieces?"
+
+"Do you mean badly smashed up?"
+
+"No indeed, I mean just what I said, broken in pieces. Legs snapped off
+as though the entire flesh had become brittle."
+
+"No, I didn't, and neither did anyone else."
+
+"I have seen it, Doctor."
+
+"Hooey! What had you been drinking?"
+
+Operative Carnes of the United States Secret Service chuckled softly to
+himself. The voice of the famous scientist of the Bureau of Standards
+plainly showed an interest which was quite at variance with his words.
+
+"I was quite sober, Doctor, and so was Hughes, and we both saw it."
+
+"Who is Hughes?"
+
+"He is an air mail pilot, one of the crack fliers of the Transcontinental
+Airmail Corporation. Let me tell you the whole thing in order."
+
+"All right. I have a few minutes to spare, but I'll warn you again that
+I don't intend to touch the case."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Suit yourself, Doctor. I have no authority to requisition your
+services. As you know, the T. A. C. has been handling a great deal of
+the transcontinental air mail with a pretty clean record on accidents.
+The day before yesterday, a special plane left Washington to carry two
+packages from there to San Francisco. One of them was a shipment of
+jewels valued at a quarter of a million, consigned to a San Francisco
+firm and the other was a sealed packet from the War Department. No one
+was supposed to know the contents of that packet except the Chief of
+Staff who delivered it to the plane personally, but rumors got out, as
+usual, and it was popularly supposed to contain certain essential
+features of the Army's war plans. This much is certain: The plane
+carried not only the regular T. A. C. pilot and courier, but also an
+army courier, and it was guarded during the trip by an army plane armed
+with small bombs and a machine-gun. I rode in it. My orders were simply
+to guard the ship until it landed at Mills Field and then to guard the
+courier from there to the Presidio of San Francisco until his packet was
+delivered personally into the hands of the Commanding General of the
+Ninth Corps Area.
+
+"The trip was quiet and monotonous until after we left Salt Lake City at
+dawn this morning. Nothing happened until we were about a hundred miles
+east of Reno. We had taken elevation to cross the Stillwater Mountains
+and were skimming low over them, my plane trailing the T. A. C. plane by
+about half a mile. I was not paying any particular attention to the
+other ship when I suddenly felt our plane leap ahead. It was a fast
+Douglas and the pilot gave it the gun and made it move, I can tell you.
+I yelled into the speaking tube and asked what was the reason. My pilot
+yelled back that the plane ahead was in trouble.
+
+"As soon as it was called to my attention I could see myself that it
+wasn't acting normally. It was losing elevation and was pursuing a very
+erratic course. Before we could reach it it lost flying speed and fell
+into a spinning nose dive and headed for the ground. I watched,
+expecting every minute to see the crew make parachute jumps, but they
+didn't and the plane hit the ground with a terrific crash."
+
+"It caught fire, of course?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"No, Doctor, that is one of the funny things about the accident. It
+didn't. It hit the ground in an open place free from brush and literally
+burst into pieces, but it didn't flame up. We headed directly for the
+scene of the crash and we encountered another funny thing. We almost
+froze to death."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Exactly what I say. Of course, it's pretty cold at that altitude all
+the time, but this cold was like nothing I had ever encountered. It
+seemed to freeze the blood in our veins and it congealed frost on the
+windshields and made the motor miss for a moment. It was only momentary
+and it only existed directly over the wrecked plane. We went past it and
+swung around in a circle and came back over the wreck, but we didn't
+feel the cold again.
+
+"The next thing we tried to do was to find a landing place. That country
+is pretty rugged and rough and there wasn't a flat place for miles that
+was large enough to land a ship on. Hughes and I talked it over and
+there didn't seem to be much of anything that we could do except to go
+on until we found a landing place. I had had no experience in parachute
+jumping and I couldn't pilot the plane if Hughes jumped. We swooped down
+over the wreck as close as we dared and that was when we saw the
+condition of the bodies. The whole plane was cracked up pretty badly,
+but the weird part of it was the fact that the bodies of the crew had
+broken into pieces, as though they had been made of glass. Arms and legs
+were detached from the torsos and lying at a distance. There was no sign
+of blood on the ground. We saw all this with our naked eyes from close
+at hand and verified it by observations through binoculars from a
+greater height.
+
+"When we had made our observations and marked the location of the wreck
+as closely as we could, we headed east until we found a landing place
+near Fallon. Hughes dropped me here and went on to Reno, or to San
+Francisco if necessary, to report the accident and get more planes to
+aid in the search. I was wholly at sea, but it seemed to be in your line
+and as I knew that you were at the St. Francis, I called you up."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What are your plans?"
+
+"I made none until I talked with you. The country where the wreck
+occurred is unbelievably wild and we can't get near it with any
+transportation other than burros. The only thing that I can see to do is
+to gather together what transportation I can and head for the wreck on
+foot to rescue the packets and to bring out the bodies. Can you suggest
+anything better?"
+
+"When do you expect to start?"
+
+"As soon as I can get my pack train together. Possibly in three or four
+hours."
+
+"Carnes, are you sure that those bodies were broken into bits? An arm or
+a leg might easily be torn off in a complete crash."
+
+"They were smashed into bits as nearly as I could tell, Doctor. Hughes
+is an old flier and he has seen plenty of crashes but he never saw
+anything like this. It beats anything that I ever saw."
+
+"If your observations were accurate, there could be only one cause and
+that one is a patent impossibility. I haven't a bit of equipment
+here, but I expect that I can get most of the stuff I want from the
+University of California across the bay at Berkeley. I can get a
+plane at Crissy Field. I'll tell you what to do, Carnes. Get your burro
+train together and start as soon as you can, but leave me half a
+dozen burros and a guide at Fallon. I'll get up there as soon as I can
+and I'll try to overtake you before you get to the wreck. If I don't,
+don't disturb anything any more than you can help until my arrival. Do
+you understand?"
+
+"I thought that you were on your vacation, Doctor."
+
+"Oh shut up! Like most of my vacations, this one will have to be
+postponed. I'll move as swiftly as I can and I ought to be at Fallon
+to-night if I'm lucky and don't run into any obstacles. Burros are
+fairly slow, but I'll make the best time possible."
+
+"I rather expected you would, Doctor. I can't get my pack train together
+until evening, so I'll wait for you right here. I'm mighty glad that you
+are going to get in on it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Silently Carnes and Dr. Bird surveyed the wreck of the T. A. C. plane.
+The observations of the secret service operative had been correct. The
+bodies of the unfortunate crew had been broken into fragments. Their
+limbs had not been twisted off as a freak of the fall but had been
+cleanly broken off, as though the bodies had suddenly become brittle and
+had shattered on their impact with the ground. Not only the bodies, but
+the ship itself had been broken up. Even the clothing of the men was in
+pieces or had long splits in the fabric whose edges were as clean as
+though they had been cut with a knife.
+
+Dr. Bird picked up an arm which had belonged to the pilot and examined
+it. The brittleness, if it had ever existed, was gone and the arm was
+limp.
+
+"No _rigor mortis_," commented the Doctor. "How long ago was the
+wreck?"
+
+"About seventy-two hours ago."
+
+"Hm-m! What about those packets that were on the plane?"
+
+Carnes stepped forward and gingerly inspected first the body of the army
+courier and then that of the courier of the T. A. C.
+
+"Both gone, Doctor," he reported, straightening up.
+
+Dr. Bird's face fell into grim lines.
+
+"There is more to this case than appears on the surface, Carnes," he
+said. "This was no ordinary wreck. Bring up that third burro; I want to
+examine these fragments a little. Bill," he went on to one of the two
+guides who had accompanied them from Fallon, "you and Walter scout
+around the ground and see what you can find out. I especially wish to
+know whether anyone has visited the scene of the wreck."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The guides consulted a moment and started out. Carnes drove up the burro
+the Doctor had indicated and Dr. Bird unpacked it. He opened a mahogony
+case and took from it a high powered microscope. Setting the instrument
+up on a convenient rock, he subjected portions of the wreck, including
+several fragments of flesh, to a careful scrutiny. When he had completed
+his observations he fell into a brown study, from which he was aroused
+by Carnes.
+
+"What did you find out about the cause of the wreck, Doctor?"
+
+"I don't know what to think. The immediate cause was that everything was
+frozen. The plane ran into a belt of cold which froze up the motor and
+which probably killed the crew instantly. It was undoubtedly the
+aftermath of that cold which you felt when you swooped down over the
+wreck."
+
+"It seems impossible that it could have suddenly got cold enough to
+freeze everything up like that."
+
+"It does, and yet I am confident that that is what happened. It was no
+ordinary cold, Carnes; it was cold of the type that infests interstellar
+space; cold beyond any conception you have of cold, cold near the range
+of the absolute zero of temperature, nearly four hundred and fifty
+degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale. At such temperatures, things
+which are ordinarily quite flexible and elastic, such as rubber, or
+flesh, become as brittle as glass and would break in the manner which
+these bodies have broken. An examination of the tissues of the flesh
+shows that it has been submitted to some temperature that is very low in
+the scale, probably below that of liquid air. Such a temperature would
+produce instant death and the other phenomena which we can observe."
+
+"What could cause such a low temperature, Doctor?"
+
+"I don't know yet, although I hope to find out before we are finished.
+Cold is a funny thing, Carnes. Ordinarily it is considered as simply the
+absence of heat; and yet I have always held it to be a definite negative
+quantity. All through nature we observe that every force has its
+opposite or negative force to oppose it. We have positive and negative
+electrical charges, positive and negative, or north and south, magnetic
+poles. We have gravity and its opposite apergy, and I believe cold is
+really negative heat."
+
+"I never heard of anything like that, Doctor. I always thought that
+things were cold because heat was taken from them--not because cold was
+added. It sounds preposterous."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Such is the common idea, and yet I cannot accept it, for it does not
+explain all the recorded phenomena. You are familiar with a searchlight,
+are you not?"
+
+"In a general way, yes."
+
+"A searchlight is merely a source of light, and of course, of heat,
+which is placed at the focus of a parabolic reflector so that all of the
+rays emanating from the source travel in parallel lines. A searchlight,
+of course, gives off heat. If we place a lens of the same size as the
+searchlight aperture in the path of the beam and concentrate all the
+light, and heat, at one spot, the focal point of the lens, the
+temperature at that point is the same as the temperature of the source
+of the light, less what has been lost by radiation. You understand that,
+do you not?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Suppose that we place at the center of the aperture of the searchlight
+a small opaque disc which is permeable neither to heat nor light, in
+such a manner as to interrupt the central portion of the beam. As a
+result, the beam will go out in the form of a hollow rod, or pipe, of
+heat and light with a dark, cold core. This core will have the
+temperature of the surrounding air plus the small amount which has
+radiated into it from the surrounding pipe. If we now pass this beam of
+light through a lens in order to concentrate the beam, both the pipe of
+heat and the cold core will focus. If we place a temperature measuring
+device near the focus of the dark core, we will find that the
+temperature is lower than the surrounding air. This means that we have
+focused or concentrated cold."
+
+"That sounds impossible. But I can offer no other criticism."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Nevertheless, it is experimentally true. It is one of the facts which
+lead me to consider cold as negative heat. However, this is true of
+cold, as it is of the other negative forces; they exist and manifest
+themselves only in the presence of the positive forces. No one has yet
+concentrated cold except in the presence of heat, as I have outlined.
+How this cold belt which the T. A. C. plane encountered came to be there
+is another question. The thing which we have to determine is whether it
+was caused by natural or artificial forces."
+
+"Both of the packets which the plane carried are gone, Doctor," observed
+Carnes.
+
+"Yes, and that seems to add weight to the possibility that the cause was
+artificial, but it is far from conclusive. The packets might not have
+been on the men when the plane fell, or someone may have passed later
+and taken them for safekeeping."
+
+The doctor's remarks were interrupted by the guides.
+
+"Someone has been here since the wreck, Doctor," said Bill. "Walter and
+I found tracks where two men came up here and prowled around for some
+time and then left by the way they came. They went off toward the
+northwest, and we followed their trail for about forty rods and then
+lost it. We weren't able to pick it up again."
+
+"Thanks, Bill," replied the doctor. "Well, Carnes, that seems to add
+more weight to the theory that the spot of cold was made and didn't just
+happen. If a prospecting party had just happened along they would either
+have left the wreck alone or would have made some attempt to inter the
+bodies. That cold belt must have been produced artificially by men who
+planned to rob this plane after bringing it down and who were near at
+hand to get their plunder. Is there any chance of following that
+trail?"
+
+"I doubt it, Doc. Walter and I scouted around quite a little, but we
+couldn't pick it up again."
+
+"Is there any power line passing within twenty miles of here?"
+
+"None that Walter and I know of, Doc."
+
+"Funny! Such a device as must have been used would need power and lots
+of it for operation. Well, I'll try my luck. Carnes, help me unpack and
+set up the rest of my apparatus."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the aid of the operative, Dr. Bird unpacked two of the burros and
+extracted from cases where they were carefully packed and padded some
+elaborate electrical and optical apparatus. The first was a short
+telescope of large diameter which he mounted on a base in such a manner
+that it could be elevated or depressed and rotated in any direction. At
+the focal point of the telescope was fastened a small knot of wire from
+which one lead ran to the main piece of apparatus, which he sat on a
+flat rock. The other lead from the wire knot ran into a sealed container
+surrounded by a water bath under which a spirit lamp burned. From the
+container another lead led to the main apparatus. This main piece
+consisted of a series of wire coils mounted on a frame and attached to
+the two leads. The doctor took from a padded case a tiny magnet
+suspended on a piece of wire of exceedingly small diameter which he
+fastened in place inside the coils. Cemented to the magnet was a tiny
+mirror.
+
+"What is that apparatus?" asked Carnes as the doctor finished his set-up
+and surveyed it with satisfaction.
+
+"Merely a thermocouple attached to a D'Arsonval galvanometer," replied
+the doctor. "This large, squat telescope catches and concentrates on the
+thermocouple and the galvanometer registers the temperature."
+
+"You're out of my depth. What is a thermocouple?"
+
+"A juncture of two wires made of dissimilar metals, in this case of
+platinum and of platinum-iridium alloy. There is another similar
+junction in this case, which is kept at a constant temperature by the
+water bath. When the temperatures of the two junctions are the same, the
+system is in equilibrium. When they are at different temperatures, an
+electrical potential is set up, which causes a current to flow from one
+to the other through the galvanometer. The galvanometer consists of a
+magnet set up inside coils through which the current I spoke of flows.
+This current causes the magnet to rotate and by watching the mirror, the
+rotation can be detected and measured.
+
+"This device is one of the most sensitive ever made, and is used to
+measure the radiation from distant stars. Currents as small as
+.000000000000000000000000001 ampere have been detected and measured.
+This particular instrument is not that sensitive to begin with, and has
+its sensitivity further reduced by having a high resistance in one of
+the leads."
+
+"What are you going to use it for?"
+
+"I am going to try to locate somewhere in these hills a patch of local
+cold. It may not work, but I have hopes. If you will manipulate the
+telescope so as to search the hills around here, I will watch the
+galvanometer."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For several minutes Carnes swung the telescope around. Twice Dr. Bird
+stopped him and decreased the sensitiveness of his instrument by
+introducing more resistance in the lines in order to keep the magnet
+from twisting clear around, due to the fluctuations in the heats
+received on account of the varying conditions of reflection. As Carnes
+swung the telescope again the magnet swung around sharply, nearly to a
+right angle to its former position.
+
+"Stop!" cried the doctor. "Read your azimuth."
+
+Carnes read the compass bearing on the protractor attached to the frame
+which supported the telescope. Dr. Bird took a pair of binoculars and
+looked long and earnestly in the indicated direction. With a sigh he
+laid down the glasses.
+
+"I can't see a thing, Carnesy," he said. "We'll have to move over to the
+next crest and make a new set-up. Plant a rod on the hill so that we can
+get an azimuth bearing and get the airline distance with a range
+finder."
+
+On the hilltop which Dr. Bird had pointed out the apparatus was again
+set up. For several minutes Carnes swept the hills before an exclamation
+from the doctor told him to pause. He read the new azimuth, and the
+doctor laid off the two readings on a sheet of paper with a protractor
+and made a few calculations.
+
+"I don't know," he said reflectively when he had finished his
+computations. "This darned instrument is still so sensitive that you may
+have merely focused on a deep shadow or a cold spring or something of
+that sort, but the magnet kicked clear around and it may mean that we
+have located what we are looking for. It should be about two miles away
+and almost due west of here."
+
+"There is no spring that I know of, Doc, and I think I know of every
+water hole in this country," remarked Bill.
+
+"There could hardly be a spring at this elevation, anyway," replied the
+doctor. "Maybe it is what we are seeking. We'll start out in that
+direction, anyway. Bill, you had better take the lead, for you know the
+country. Spread out a little so that we won't be too bunched if anything
+happens."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For three-quarters of an hour the little group of men made their way
+through the wilderness in the direction indicated by the doctor.
+Presently Bill, who was in the lead, held up his hand with a warning
+gesture. The other three closed up as rapidly as cautious progress would
+allow.
+
+"What is it, Bill?" asked the doctor in an undertone.
+
+"Slip up ahead and look over that crest."
+
+The doctor obeyed instructions. As he glanced over he gave vent to a low
+whistle of surprise and motioned for Carnes to join him. The operative
+crawled up and glanced over the crest. In a hollow before them was a
+crude one-storied house, and erected on an open space before it was a
+massive piece of apparatus. It consisted of a number of huge metallic
+cylinders, from which lines ran to a silvery concave mirror mounted on
+an elaborate frame which would allow it to be rotated so as to point in
+any direction.
+
+"What is it?" whispered Carnes.
+
+"Some kind of a projector," muttered the doctor. "I never saw one quite
+like it, but it is meant to project something. I can't make out the
+curve of that mirror. It isn't a parabola and it isn't an ellipse. It
+must be a high degree subcatenary or else built on a transcendental
+function."
+
+He raised himself to get a clearer view, and as he did so a puff of
+smoke came from the house, to be followed in a moment by a sharp crack
+as a bullet flattened itself a few inches from his head. The doctor
+tumbled back over the crest out of sight of the house. Bill and Walter
+hurried forward, their rifles held ready for action.
+
+"Get out on the flanks, men," directed the doctor. "The man we want is
+in a house in that hollow. He's armed, and he means business."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bill and Walter crawled under the shelter of the rocks to a short
+distance away and then, rifles ready, advanced to the attack. A report
+came from the hollow and a bullet whined over Bill's head. Almost
+instantly a crack came from Walter's rifle and splinters flew from the
+building in the hollow a few inches from a loophole, through which
+projected the barrel of a rifle.
+
+The rifle barrel swung rapidly in a circle and barked in Walter's
+direction; but as it did so, Bill's gun spoke and again splinters flew
+from the building.
+
+"Good work!" ejaculated Dr. Bird as he watched the slow advance of the
+two guides. "If we just had rifles we could join in the party, but it's
+a little far for effective pistol work. Let's go ahead, and we may get
+close enough to do a little shooting."
+
+Pistols in hand, Carnes and the doctor crawled over the crest and joined
+the advance. Again and again the rifle spoke from the hollow and was
+answered by the vicious barks of the rifles in the hands of the guides,
+Carnes and the doctor resting their pistols on rocks and sending an
+occasional bullet toward the loophole. The conditions of light and the
+moving target were not conducive to good marksmanship on the part of the
+besieged man, and none of the attackers were hit. Presently Walter
+succeeded in sending a bullet through the loophole. The rifle barrel
+suddenly disappeared. With a shout the four men rose from their cover
+and advanced toward the building at a run.
+
+As they did so an ominous whirring sound came from the apparatus in
+front of the house and a sudden chill filled the air.
+
+"Back!" shouted Dr. Bird. "Back below the hill if you value your
+lives!"
+
+He turned and raced at full speed toward the sheltering crest of the
+hill, the others following him closely. The whirring sound continued,
+and the concave reflector turned with a grating sound on its gears. As
+the path of its rays struck the ground the rocks became white with frost
+and one rock split with a sharp report, one fragment rolling down the
+slope, carrying others in its trail.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With panic-stricken faces the four men raced toward the sheltering
+crest, but remorselessly the reflector swung around in their direction.
+The intense cold numbed the racing men, cutting off their breath and
+impeding their efforts for speed.
+
+"Stop!" cried the doctor suddenly. "Fire at that reflector! It's our
+only chance!"
+
+He set the example by turning and emptying his pistol futilely at the
+turning mirror. Bill, Walter and Carnes followed his example. Nearer
+and nearer to them came the deadly ray. Bill was the nearest to its
+path, and he suddenly stiffened and fell forward, his useless gun still
+grasped in his hands. As his body struck the ground it rolled down hill
+for a few feet, the deadly ray following it. His head struck a rock, and
+Carnes gave a cry of horror as it broke into fragments.
+
+Walter threw his rifle to his shoulder and fired again and again at the
+rotating disc. The cold had became intense and he could not control the
+actions of his muscles and his rifle wavered about. He threw himself
+flat on the ground, and, with an almost superhuman effort, steadied
+himself for a moment and fired. His aim was true, and with a terrific
+crash the reflector split into a thousand fragments. Dr. Bird staggered
+to his feet.
+
+"It's out of order for a moment!" he cried. "To the house while we
+can!"
+
+As swiftly as his numbed feet would allow him, he stumbled toward the
+house. The muzzle of the rifle again projected from the loophole and
+with its crack the doctor staggered for a moment and then fell. Walter's
+rifle spoke again and the rifle disappeared through the loophole with a
+spasmodic jerk. Carnes stumbled over the doctor.
+
+"Are you hit badly?" he gasped through chattering teeth.
+
+"I'm not hit at all," muttered the doctor. "I stumbled and fell just as
+he fired. Look out! He's going to shoot again!"
+
+The rifle barrel came slowly into view through the loophole. Walter
+fired, but his bullet went wild. Carnes threw himself behind a rock for
+protection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rifle swung in Walter's direction and paused. As it did so, from the
+house came a strangled cry and a sound as of a blow. The rifle barrel
+disappeared, and the sounds of a struggle came from the building.
+
+"Come on!" cried Carnes as he rose to his feet, and made his stumbling
+way forward, the others following at the best speed which their numbed
+limbs would allow.
+
+As they reached the door they were aware of a struggle which was going
+on inside. With an oath the doctor threw his massive frame against the
+door. It creaked, but the solid oak of which it was composed was proof
+against the attack, and he drew back for another onslaught. From the
+house came a pistol shot, followed by a despairing cry and a guttural
+shout. Reinforced by Carnes, the doctor threw his weight against the
+door again. With a rending crash it gave, and they fell sprawling into
+the cabin. The doctor was the first one on his feet.
+
+"Who are you?" asked a voice from one corner. The doctor whirled like a
+flash and covered the speaker with his pistol.
+
+"Put them up!" he said tersely.
+
+"I am unarmed," the voice replied. "Who are you?"
+
+"We're from the United States Secret Service," replied Carnes who had
+gained his feet. "The game is up for you, and you'd better realize it."
+
+"Secret Service! Thank God!" cried the voice. "Get Koskoff--he has the
+plans. He has gone out through the tunnel!"
+
+"Where is it?" demanded Carnes.
+
+"The entrance is that iron plate on the floor."
+
+Carnes and the doctor jumped at the plate and tried to lift it, without
+result. There was no handle or projection on which they could take
+hold.
+
+"Not that way," cried the voice. "That cover is fastened on the inside.
+Go outside the building; he'll come out about two hundred yards north.
+Shoot him as he appears or he'll get away."
+
+The three men nearly tumbled over each other to get through the doorway
+into the bitter cold outside. As they emerged from the cabin the gaze of
+the guide swept the surrounding hills.
+
+"There he goes!" he cried.
+
+"Get him!" said Carnes sharply.
+
+Walter ran forward a few feet and dropped prone on the ground, cuddling
+the stock of his rifle to his cheek. Two hundred yards ahead a figure
+was scurrying over the rocks away from the cabin. Walter drew in his
+breath and his hand suddenly grew steady as his keen gray eyes peered
+through the sights. Carnes and the doctor held their breath in
+sympathy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Suddenly the rifle spoke, and the fleeing man threw up his arms and fell
+forward on his face.
+
+"Got him," said Walter laconically.
+
+"Go bring the body in, Carnes," exclaimed the doctor. "I'll take care of
+the chap inside."
+
+"Did you get him?" asked the voice eagerly, as the doctor stepped
+inside.
+
+"He's dead all right," replied the doctor grimly. "Who the devil are
+you, and what are you doing here?"
+
+"There is a light switch on the left of the door as you come in," was
+the reply.
+
+Dr. Bird found the switch and snapped on a light. He turned toward the
+corner from whence the voice had come and recoiled in horror. Propped in
+the corner was the body of a middle-aged man, daubed and splashed with
+blood which ran from a wound in the side of his head.
+
+"Good Lord!" he ejaculated. "Let me help you."
+
+"There's not much use," replied the man rather faintly. "I am about done
+in. This face wound doesn't amount to much, but I am shot through the
+body and am bleeding internally. If you try to move me, it may easily
+kill me. Leave me alone until your partners come."
+
+The doctor drew a flask of brandy from his pocket and advanced toward
+the corner.
+
+"Take a few drops of this," he advised.
+
+With an effort the man lifted the flask to his lips and gulped down a
+little of the fiery spirit. A sound of tramping feet came from the
+outside and then a thud as though a body had been dropped. Carnes and
+Walter entered the cabin.
+
+"He's dead as a mackerel," said Carnes in answer to the doctor's look.
+"Walter got him through the neck and broke his spinal cord. He never
+knew what hit him."
+
+"The plans?" came in a gasping voice from the man in the corner.
+
+"We got them, too," replied Carnes. "He had both packets inside his
+coat. They have been opened, but I guess they are all here. Who the
+devil are you?"
+
+"Since Koskoff is dead, and I am dying, there is no reason why I
+shouldn't tell you," was the answer. "Leave that brandy handy to keep up
+my strength. I have only a short time and I can't repeat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"As to who I am or what I was, it doesn't really matter. Koskoff knew me
+as John Smith, and it will pass as well as any other name. Let my past
+stay buried. I am, or was, a scientist of some ability; but fortune
+frowned on me, and I was driven out of the world. Money would
+rehabilitate me--money will do anything nowadays--so I set out to get
+it. In the course of my experimental work, I had discovered that cold
+was negative heat and reacted to the laws which governed heat."
+
+"I knew that," cried Dr. Bird; "but I never could prove it."
+
+"Who are you?" demanded John Smith.
+
+"Dr. Bird, of the Bureau of Standards."
+
+"Oh, Bird. I've heard of you. You can understand me when I say that as
+heat, positive heat is a concomitant of ordinary light. I have found
+that cold, negative heat, is a concomitant of cold light. Is my
+apparatus in good shape outside?"
+
+"The reflector is smashed."
+
+"I'm sorry. You would have enjoyed studying it. I presume that you saw
+that it was a catenary curve?"
+
+"I rather thought so."
+
+"It was, and it was also adjustable. I could vary the focal point from a
+few feet to several miles. With that apparatus I could throw a beam of
+negative heat with a focal point which I could adjust at will. Close to
+the apparatus, I could obtain a temperature almost down to absolute
+zero, but at the longer ranges it wasn't so cold, due to leakage into
+the atmosphere. Even at two miles I could produce a local temperature of
+three hundred degrees below zero."
+
+"What was the source of your cold?"
+
+"Liquid helium. Those cylinders contain, or rather did contain, for I
+expect that Koskoff has emptied them, helium in a liquid state."
+
+"Where is your compressor?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I didn't have to use one. I developed a cold light under whose rays
+helium would liquefy and remain in a state of equilibrium until exposed
+to light rays. Those cylinders had merely enough pressure to force the
+liquid out to where the sun could hit it, and then it turned to a gas,
+dropping the temperature at the first focal point of the reflector to
+absolute zero. When I had this much done, Koskoff and I packed the whole
+apparatus here and were ready for work.
+
+"We were on the path of the transcontinental air mail, and I bided my
+time until an especially valuable shipment was to be made. My plans,
+which worked perfectly, were to freeze the plane in midair and then rob
+the wreck. I heard of the jewel shipment the T. A. C. was to carry and I
+planned to get it. When the plane came over, Koskoff and I brought it
+down. The unsuspected presence of another plane upset us a little, and I
+started to bring it down. But we had been all over this country and knew
+there was no place that a plane could land. I let it go on in safety."
+
+"Thank you," replied Carnes with a grimace.
+
+"We robbed the wreck and we found two packets, one the jewels I was
+after, and the other a sealed packet, which proved to contain certain
+War Department plans. That was when I learned who Koskoff was. I had
+hired him in San Francisco as a good mechanic who had no principles. He
+was to get one-fourth of the loot. When we found these plans, he told me
+who he was. He was really a Russian secret agent and he wanted to
+deliver the plans to Russia. I may be a thief and a murderer, but I am
+not yet ready to betray my country, and I told him so. He offered me
+almost any price for the plans; but I wouldn't listen. We had a serious
+quarrel, and he overpowered me and bound me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"We had a radio set here and he called San Francisco and sent some code
+message. I think he was waiting here for someone to come. Had we
+followed our original plans, we would have been miles from here before
+you arrived.
+
+"He had me bound and helpless, as he thought, but I worked my bonds a
+little loose. I didn't let him know it, for I knew that the plane I had
+let get away would guide a party here and I thought I might be able to
+help out. When you came and attacked the house, I worked at my bonds
+until they were loose enough to throw off. I saw Koskoff start my cold
+apparatus to working and then he quit, because he ran out of helium.
+When he started shooting again, I worked out of my bonds and tackled
+him.
+
+"He was a better man than I gave him credit for, or else he suspected
+me, for about the time I grabbed him he whirled and struck me over the
+head with his gun barrel and tore my face open. The blow stunned me, and
+when I came to, I was thrown into this corner. I meant to have another
+try at it, but I guess you rushed him too fast. He turned and ran for
+the tunnel, but as he did so, he shot me through the body. I guess I
+didn't look dead enough to suit him. You gentlemen broke open the door
+and came in. That's all."
+
+"Not by a long shot, it isn't," exclaimed Dr. Bird. "Where is that cold
+light apparatus of yours?"
+
+"In the tunnel."
+
+"How do you get into it?"
+
+"If you will open that cupboard on the wall, you'll find an open knife
+switch on the wall. Close it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dr. Bird found the switch and closed it. As he did so the cabin rocked
+on its foundations and both Carnes and Walter were thrown to the ground.
+The thud of a detonation deep in the earth came to their ears.
+
+"What was that?" cried the doctor.
+
+"That," replied Smith with a wan smile, "was the detonation of two
+hundred pounds of T.N.T. When you dig down into the underground cave
+where we used the cold light apparatus, you will find it in fragments.
+It was my only child, and I'll take it with me."
+
+As he finished his head slumped forward on his chest. With an
+exclamation of dismay Dr. Bird sprang forward and tried to lift the
+prostrate form.
+
+In an agony of desire the Doctor tightened his grip on the dying man's
+shoulder. But Smith collapsed into a heap. Dr. Bird bent forward and
+tore open his shirt and listened at his chest. Presently he straightened
+up.
+
+"He is gone," he said sadly, "and I guess the results of his genius have
+died with him. He doesn't strike me as a man who left overmuch to
+chance. Carnes, is your case completed?"
+
+"Very satisfactorily, Doctor. I have both of the lost packets."
+
+"All right, then, come back to the wreck and help me pack my burros. I
+can make my way back to Fallon without a guide."
+
+"Where are you going, Doctor?"
+
+"That, Carnes, old dear, is none of your blankety blanked business.
+Permit me to remind you that I am on my vacation. I haven't decided yet
+just where I am going, but I can tell you one thing. It's going to be
+some place where you can't call me on the telephone."
+
+
+
+
+Brigands of the Moon
+
+(The Book of Gregg Haljan)
+BEGINNING A FOUR-PART NOVEL
+
+_By Ray Cummings_
+
+    Black mutiny and brigandage stalk the Space-ship Planetara as
+    she speeds to the Moon to pick up a fabulously rich cache of
+    radium-ore.
+
+[Illustration: _I stood on the turret-balcony of the Planetara with Dr.
+Frank, watching the arriving passengers._]
+
+
+_Foreword by Ray Cummings_
+
+I have been thinking that if, during one of those long winter evenings
+at Valley Forge, someone had placed in George Washington's hands one of
+our present day best sellers, the illustrious Father of our Country
+would have read it with considerable emotion. I do not mean what we call
+a story of science, or fantasy--just a novel of action, adventure and
+romance. The sort of thing you and I like to read, but do not find
+amazing in any way at all.
+
+But I fancy that George Washington would have found it amazing. Don't
+you? It might picture, for instance, a factory girl at a sewing machine.
+George Washington would be amazed at a sewing machine. And the girl,
+journeying in the subway to and from her work! Stealing an opportunity
+to telephone her lover at the noon hour; going to the movies in the
+evening, or listening to a radio. And there might be a climax, perhaps,
+with the girl and the villain in a transcontinental railway Pullman, and
+the hero sending frantic telegrams, or telephoning the train, and then
+chasing it in his airplane.
+
+George Washington would have found it amazing!
+
+And I am wondering how you and I would feel if someone were to give us
+now a book of ordinary adventure of the sort which will be published a
+hundred and fifty years hence. I have been trying to imagine such a book
+and the nature of its contents.
+
+Let us imagine it together. Suppose we walk down Fifth Avenue, a
+pleasant spring morning of May, 2080. Fifth Avenue, no doubt, will be
+there. I don't know whether the New York Public Library will be there or
+not. We'll assume that it is, and that it has some sort of books,
+printed, or in whatever fashion you care to imagine.
+
+The young man library attendant is surprised at our curiously antiquated
+aspect. We look as though we were dressed for some historical costume
+ball. We talk old-fashioned English, like actors in an historical play
+of the 1930 period.
+
+But we get the book. The attendant assures us it is a good average story
+of action and adventure. Nothing remarkable, but he read it himself, and
+found it interesting.
+
+We thank him and take the book. But we find that the language in which
+it is written is too strange for comfortable reading. And it names so
+many extraordinary things so casually! As though we knew all about them,
+which we certainly do not!
+
+So we take it to the kind-hearted librarian in the language division. He
+modifies it to old-fashioned English of 1930, and he puts occasional
+footnotes to help explain some of the things we might not understand.
+Why he should bother to do this for us I don't know; but let us assume
+that he does.
+
+And now we take the book home--in the pneumatic tube, or aerial moving
+sidewalk, or airship, or whatever it is we take to get home.
+
+And now that we are home, let's read the book. It ought to be
+interesting.
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+    _Tells of the Grantline Moon Expedition and of the Mysterious
+    Martian Who Followed Us in the City Corridor_
+
+One may write about oneself and still not be an egoist. Or so, at least,
+they tell me. My narrative went broadcast with a fair success. It was
+pantomimed and the public flashed me a reasonable approval. And so my
+disc publishers have suggested that I record it in more permanent form.
+
+I introduce myself, begging grace that I intrude upon your busy minutes,
+with my only excuse that perhaps I may amuse you. For what the
+commercial sellers of my pictured version were pleased to blare as my
+handsome face, I ask your indulgence. My feminine audience of the
+pantomimes was undoubtedly graciously pleased at my personality and
+physical aspect. That I am "tall as a Viking of old"--and "handsome as a
+young Norse God"--is very pretty talk in the selling of my product. But
+I deplore its intrusion into the personality of this, my recorded
+narrative. And so now, for preface, to all my audience I do give earnest
+assurance that Gregg Haljan is no conceited zebra, handsomely striped by
+nature, and proud of it. Not so. I am, I do beg you to believe, a very
+humble fellow, striving for your approval, hoping only to entertain
+you.
+
+My introduction: My name, Gregg Haljan. My age, twenty-five years. I
+was, at the time my narrative begins, Third Officer on the Space-Ship
+Planetara. Our line was newly established; in 2070, to be exact,
+following the modern improvements of the Martel Magnetic Levitation.[1]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our ship, whose home port was Great-New York, carried mail and passenger
+traffic to and from both Venus and Mars. Of astronomical necessity, our
+flights were irregular. This spring, with the two other planets both
+close to the earth, we were making two complete round trips. We had just
+arrived in Great-New York, this May evening, from Grebhar, Venus Free
+State. With only five hours in port here, we were departing the same
+night at the zero hour for Ferrok-Shahn, capital of the Martian Union.
+
+We were no sooner at the landing stage than I found a code-flash
+summoning Dan Dean and me to Divisional Detective Headquarters. Dan
+"Snap" Dean was one of my closest friends. He was radio-helio operator
+of the Planetara. A small, wiry, red-headed chap, with a quick, ready
+laugh and a wit that made everyone like him.
+
+The summons to Detective-Colonel Halsey's office surprised us. Snap eyed
+me.
+
+"You haven't been opening any treasury vaults, have you, Gregg?"
+
+"He wants you, also," I retorted.
+
+He laughed. "Well, he can roar at me like a traffic switchman and my
+private life will remain my own."
+
+We could not think why we should be wanted. It was the darkness of
+mid-evening when we left the Planetara for Halsey's office. It was not a
+long trip. We went direct in the upper monorail, descending into the
+subterranean city at Park-Circle 30.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We had never been to Halsey's office before. We found it to be a gloomy,
+vaultlike place in one of the deepest corridors. The door lifted.
+
+"Gregg Haljan and Daniel Dean."
+
+The guard stood aside. "Come in."
+
+I own that my heart was unduly thumping as we entered. The door dropped
+behind us. It was a small blue-lit apartment--a steel-lined room like a
+vault.
+
+Colonel Halsey sat at his desk. And the big, heavy-set, florid Captain
+Carter--our commander of the Planetara--was here. That surprised us: we
+had not seen him leave the ship.
+
+Halsey smiled at us gravely. Captain Carter said, "Sit down, lads."
+
+We took the seats. There was an alarming solemnity about this. If I had
+been guilty of anything that I could think of, it would have been
+frightening. But Halsey's first words reassured me.
+
+"It's about the Grantline Moon Expedition. In spite of our secrecy, the
+news has gotten out. We want to know how. Can you tell us?"
+
+Captain Carter's huge bulk--he was about as tall as I am--towered over
+us as we sat before Halsey's desk. "If you lads have told anyone--said
+anything--let slip the slightest hint about it--"
+
+Snap smiled with relief; but he turned solemn at once. "I haven't. Not a
+word!"
+
+"Nor have I," I declared.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Grantline Moon Expedition! We had not thought of that as a reason
+for this summons. Johnny Grantline was a close friend to us both. He had
+organized an exploring expedition to the Moon. Uninhabited, with its
+bleak, forbidding, airless, waterless surface, the Moon--even though so
+close to the Earth--was seldom visited. No regular ship ever stopped
+there. A few exploring parties of recent years had come to grief.
+
+But there was a persistent rumor that upon the Moon, mineral riches of
+fabulous wealth were awaiting discovery. The thing had already caused
+some interplanetary complications. The aggressive Martians would be only
+too glad to explore the Moon. But the U.S.W.[2] definitely warned them
+away. The Moon was World Territory, we announced, and we would protect
+it as such.
+
+The threatened conflict between the Earth and Mars had come to nothing.
+There was, this year of 2079, a thorough amity between all three of the
+inhabited planets. It still holds, and I pray that it may always hold.
+
+There was, nevertheless, a realization by our government, that whatever
+riches might be upon the Moon should be seized at once and held by some
+reputable Earth Company. And when Johnny Grantline applied, with his
+father's wealth and his own scientific record of attainment, the
+government was only too glad to grant him its writ.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Grantline Expedition had started six months ago. The Martian
+government had acquiesced in our ultimatum, yet brigands have been known
+to be financed under cover of a governmental disavowal. And so the
+expedition was kept secret.
+
+My words need give no offense to any Martian who comes upon them. I
+refer to the history of our earth only. The Grantline Expedition was on
+the Moon now. No word had come from it. One could not flash helios even
+in code without letting all the universe know that explorers were on the
+Moon. And why they were there, anyone could easily guess.
+
+And now Colonel Halsey was telling us that the news was abroad! Captain
+Carter eyed us closely; his flashing eyes under the white bushy brows
+would pry a secret from anyone.
+
+"You're sure? A girl of Venus, perhaps, with her cursed, seductive lure!
+A chance word, with you lads befuddled by alcolite?"
+
+We assured him we had been careful. By the heavens, I know that I had
+been. Not a whisper, even to Snap, of the name Grantline in six months
+or more.
+
+Captain Carter added abruptly, "We're insulated here, Halsey?"
+
+"Yes, talk as freely as you like. An eavesdropping ray will never get
+into these walls."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They questioned us. They were satisfied at last that, though the secret
+had escaped, we had not done it. Hearing it discussed, it occurred to me
+to wonder why Carter was concerned. I was not aware that he knew of
+Grantline's venture. I learned now the reason why the Planetara, upon
+each of her voyages, had managed to pass fairly close to the Moon. It
+had been arranged with Grantline that if he wanted help or had any
+important message, he was to flash it locally to our passing ship. And
+this Snap knew, and had never mentioned it, even to me.
+
+Halsey was saying, "Well, we can't blame you, but the secret is out."
+
+Snap and I regarded each other. What could anyone do? What would anyone
+dare do?
+
+Captain Carter said abruptly, "Look here, lads, this is my chance now to
+talk plainly to you. Outside, anywhere outside these walls, an
+eavesdropping ray may be upon us. You know that? One may never even dare
+whisper since that accursed ray was developed."
+
+Snap opened his mouth to speak but decided against it. My heart was
+pounding.
+
+Captain Carter went on, "I know I can trust you two more than anyone
+else under me on the Planetara--"
+
+"What do you mean by that?" I demanded. "What--"
+
+He interrupted me. "Nothing at all but what I say."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Halsey smiled grimly. "What he means, Haljan, is that things are not
+always what they seem these days. One cannot always tell a friend from
+an enemy. The Planetara is a public vessel. You have--how many is it,
+Carter?--thirty or forty passengers this trip to-night?"
+
+"Thirty-eight," said Carter.
+
+"There are thirty-eight people listed for the flight to Ferrok-Shahn
+to-night," Halsey said slowly. "And some may not be what they seem." He
+raised his thin dark hand. "We have information--" He paused. "I
+confess, we know almost nothing--hardly more than enough to alarm us."
+
+Captain Carter interjected, "I want you and Dean to be on your guard.
+Once on the Planetara it is difficult for us to talk openly, but be
+watchful. I will arrange for us to be doubly armed."
+
+Vague, perturbing words! Halsey said, "They tell me George Prince is
+listed for the voyage. I am suggesting, Haljan, that you keep your
+eye especially upon him. Your duties on the Planetara leave you
+comparatively free, don't they?"
+
+"Yes," I agreed. With the first and second officers on duty, and the
+captain aboard, my routine was more or less that of an understudy.
+
+I said, "George Prince! Who is he?"
+
+"A mechanical engineer," said Halsey. "An under-official of the
+Earth Federated Radium Corporation. But he associates with bad
+companions--particularly Martians."
+
+I had never heard of this George Prince, though I was familiar with the
+Federated Radium Corporation, of course. A semi-government trust, which
+controlled virtually the entire Earth supply of radium.
+
+"He was in the Automotive Department," Carter put in. "You've heard of
+the Federated Radium Motor?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We had, of course. A recent Earth invention which promised to
+revolutionize the automotive industry. An engine of a new type, using
+radium as its fuel.
+
+Snap demanded, "What in the stars has this got to do with Johnny
+Grantline?"
+
+"Much," said Halsey quietly, "or perhaps nothing. But George Prince some
+years ago mixed in rather unethical transactions. We had him in custody
+once. He is known now as unusually friendly with several Martians in New
+York of bad reputation."
+
+"Well--" began Snap.
+
+"What you don't know," Halsey went on quietly, "is that Grantline
+expects to find radium on the Moon."
+
+We gasped.
+
+"Exactly," said Halsey. "The ill-fated Ballon Expedition thought they
+had found it on the Moon some years ago. A new type of ore, as rich in
+radium as our gold-bearing sands are rich in gold. Ballon's first
+samples gave uranium atoms with a fair representation of ionium and
+thorium. A richly radio-active ore. A lode of the pure radium is there
+somewhere, without doubt."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He added vehemently, "Do you understand now why we should be suspicious
+of this George Prince? He has a criminal record. He has a thorough
+technical knowledge of radium ores. He associates with Martians of bad
+reputation. A large Martian Company has recently developed a radium
+engine to compete with our Earth motor. You know that? You know that
+there is very little radium available on Mars, and our government will
+not allow our own radium supply to be exported. That Martian Company
+needs radium. It will do anything to get radium. What do you suppose it
+would pay for a few tons of really rich radio-active ore--such as
+Grantline may have found on the Moon?"
+
+"But," I objected, "that is a reputable Martian company. It's backed by
+the government of the Martian Union. The government of Mars would not
+dare--"
+
+"Of course not!" Captain Carter exclaimed sardonically. "Not openly! But
+if Martian brigands had a supply of radium--I don't imagine where it
+came from would make much difference. That Martian Company would buy
+it."
+
+Halsey added, "And George Prince, my agents inform me, seems to know
+that Grantline is on the Moon. Put it all together, lads. Little sparks
+show the hidden current.
+
+"More than that: George Prince knows that we have arranged to have the
+Planetara stop at the Moon and bring back Grantline's radium-ore. This
+is your last voyage this year. You'll hear from Grantline this time,
+we're convinced. He'll probably give you the signal as you pass the Moon
+on your way out. Coming back, you'll stop at the Moon and transport
+whatever radium-ore Grantline has ready. The Grantline Flyer is too
+small for ore transportation."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Halsey's voice turned grimly sarcastic. "Doesn't it seem queer that
+George Prince and a few of his Martian friends happen to be listed as
+passengers for this voyage?"
+
+In the silence that followed, Snap and I regarded each other. Halsey
+added abruptly,
+
+"We had George Prince typed that time we arrested him four years ago.
+I'll show him to you."
+
+He snapped open an alcove, and said to his waiting attendant, "Get me
+the type of George Prince."
+
+The disc in a moment came through the pneumatic. Halsey, smiling wryly,
+adjusted it.
+
+"A nice looking fellow. Nicely spoken. Though at the time we made this
+he was somewhat annoyed, naturally. He is older now. Twenty-nine, to be
+exact. Here he is."
+
+The image glowed on the grids before us. His name, George Prince, in
+letters illumined upon his forehead, showed for a moment and then faded.
+He stood smiling sourly before us as he repeated the official formula:
+
+"My name is George Prince. I was born in Great-New York City twenty-five
+years ago."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I gazed at this life-size, moving image of George Prince. He stood
+somber in the black detention uniform. A dark, almost a girlishly
+handsome fellow, well below medium height--the rod beside him showed
+five feet four inches. Slim and slight. Long, wavy black hair, falling
+about his ears. A pale, clean-cut, really handsome face, almost
+beardless. I regarded it closely. A face that would have been femininely
+beautiful without its masculine touch of heavy black brows and firmly
+set jaw. His voice as he spoke was low and soft; but at the end, with
+the concluding words, "I am innocent!" it flashed into strong
+masculinity. His eyes, shaded with long, girlish black lashes, by chance
+met mine. "I am innocent." His curving sensuous lips drew down into a
+grim sneer....
+
+The type faded at its end. Halsey replaced the disc in its box and waved
+the attendant away. "Thank you."
+
+He turned back to Snap and me. "Well, there he is. We have nothing
+tangible against him now. But I'll say this: he's a clever fellow, one
+to be afraid of. I would not blare it from the newscasters' microphone,
+but if he is hatching any plot, he has been too clever for my agents."
+
+We talked for another half-hour, and then Captain Carter dismissed us.
+We left Halsey's office with Carter's final words ringing in our ears.
+"Whatever comes, lads, remember I trust you...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Snap and I decided to walk a portion of the way back to the ship. It was
+barely more than a mile through this subterranean corridor to where we
+could get the vertical lift direct to the landing stage.
+
+We started off on the lower level. Once outside the insulation of
+Halsey's office we did not dare talk of this thing. Not only electrical
+ears, but every possible eavesdropping device might be upon us. The
+corridor was two hundred feet or more below the ground level. At this
+hour of the night this business section was comparatively deserted. The
+through tube sounded over our heads with the passing of its occasional
+trains. The ventilators buzzed and whirred. At the cross intersections,
+the traffic directors dozed at their posts. It was hot and sticky down
+here, and gloomy with the daylight globes extinguished, and only the
+night lights to give a dim illumination. The stores and office arcades
+were all closed and deserted; only an occasional night-light burning
+behind their windows.
+
+Our footfalls echoed on the metal grids as we hurried along.
+
+"Nice evening," said Snap awkwardly.
+
+"Yes," I said, "isn't it?"
+
+I felt oppressed. As though prying eyes and ears were here. We walked
+for a time in silence, each of us busy with memory of what had
+transpired in Halsey's office.
+
+Suddenly Snap gripped me. "What's that?"
+
+"Where?" I whispered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We stopped at a corner. An entryway was here. Snap pulled me into it. I
+could feel him quivering with excitement.
+
+"What is it?" I demanded in a whisper.
+
+"We're being followed. Did you hear anything?"
+
+"No!" Yet I thought now I could hear something. Vague footfalls. A
+rustling. And a microscopic electrical whine, as though some device were
+near us.
+
+Snap was fumbling in his pocket. "Wait, I've got a pair of low-scale
+phones."
+
+He put the little grids against his ears. I could hear the sharp intake
+of his breath. Then he seized me, pulled me down to the metal floor of
+the entryway.
+
+"Back, Gregg! Get back!" I could barely hear his whisper. We crouched as
+far back into the doorway as we could get. I was armed. My official
+permit for the carrying of the pencil heat-ray allowed me to have it
+always with me. I drew it now. But there was nothing to shoot at. I felt
+Snap clamping the grids on my ears. And now I heard something! An
+intensification of the vague footsteps I had thought I heard before.
+
+There was something following us! Something out in the corridor there
+now! A street light was nearby. The corridor was dim, but plainly
+visible; and to my sight it was empty. But there was something there.
+Something invisible! I could hear it moving. Creeping towards us. I
+pulled the grids off my ears.
+
+Snap murmured, "You've got a local phone."
+
+"Yes! I'll get them to give us the street glare!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I pressed the danger signal, giving our location to the nearest
+operator. In a second or two we got the light. The street in all this
+neighborhood burst into a brilliant actinic glare. The thing menacing
+us was revealed! A figure in a black cloak, crouching thirty feet away
+across the corridor.
+
+Snap was on his feet. His voice rang shrilly, "There it is! Give it a
+shot, Gregg!"
+
+Snap was unarmed, but he flung his hands out menacingly. The figure,
+which may perhaps not have been aware of our city safeguard, was taken
+wholly by surprise. A human figure. Seven feet tall, at the least, and
+therefore, I judged, doubtless a Martian man. The black cloak covered
+his head. He took a step toward us, hesitated, and then turned in
+confusion.
+
+Snap's shrill voice was bringing help. The whine of a street guard's
+alarm whistle nearby sounded. The figure was making off! My pencil-ray
+was in my hand and I pressed its switch. The tiny heat-ray stabbed
+through the glare, but I missed. The figure stumbled, but did not fall.
+I saw a bare gray arm come from the cloak, flung up to maintain its
+balance. Or perhaps my pencil-ray of heat had seared the arm. The
+gray-skinned arm of a Martian.
+
+Snap was shouting, "Give him another!" But the figure passed beyond the
+actinic glare and vanished.
+
+We were detained in the turmoil of the corridor for ten minutes or more
+with official explanations. Then a message from Halsey released us. The
+Martian who had been following us in his invisible cloak was never
+caught.
+
+We escaped from the crowd at last and made our way back to the
+Planetara, where the passengers were already assembling for the outward
+Martian voyage.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+"_A Fleeting Glance_--"
+
+I stood on the turret-balcony of the Planetara with Captain Carter and
+Dr. Frank, the ship surgeon, watching the arriving passengers. It was
+close to the zero hour: the level of the stage was a turmoil of
+confusion. The escalators, with the last of the freight aboard, were
+folded back. But the stage was jammed with the incoming passenger
+baggage: the interplanetary customs and tax officials with their X-ray
+and Zed-ray paraphernalia and the passengers themselves, lined up for
+the export inspection.
+
+At this height, the city lights lay spread in a glare of blue and yellow
+beneath us. The individual local planes came dropping like birds to our
+stage. Thirty-eight passengers for this flight to Mars, but that
+accursed desire of every friend and relative to speed the departing
+voyager brought a hundred or more extra people to crowd our girders and
+bring added difficulty to everybody.
+
+Carter was too absorbed in his duties to stay with us long. But here in
+the turret Dr. Frank and I found ourselves at the moment with nothing
+much to do but watch.
+
+"Think we'll get away on time, Gregg?"
+
+"No," I said. "And this of all voyages--"
+
+I checked myself, with thumping heart. My thoughts were so full of what
+Halsey and Carter had told us that it was difficult to rein my tongue.
+Yet here in the turret, unguarded by insulation, I could say nothing.
+Nor would I have dared mention the Grantline Moon Expedition to Dr.
+Frank. I wondered what he knew of this affair. Perhaps as much as
+I--perhaps nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was a thin, dark, rather smallish man of fifty, this ship's surgeon,
+trim in his blue and white uniform. I knew him well: we had made several
+flights together. An American--I fancy of Jewish ancestry. A likable
+man, and a skillful doctor and surgeon. He and I had always been good
+friends.
+
+"Crowded," he said. "Johnson says thirty-eight. I hope they're
+experienced travelers. This pressure sickness is a rotten nuisance--keeps
+me dashing around all night assuring frightened women they're not
+going to die. Last voyage, coming out of the Venus atmosphere--"
+
+He plunged into a lugubrious account of his troubles with space-sick
+voyagers. But I was in no mood to listen. My gaze was down on the spider
+incline, up which, over the bend of the ship's sleek, silvery body, the
+passengers and their friends were coming in little groups. The upper
+deck was already jammed with them.
+
+The Planetara, as flyers go, was not a large vessel. Cylindrical of
+body, forty feet maximum beam, and two hundred and seventy-five feet in
+overall length. The passenger superstructure--no more than a hundred
+feet long--was set amidships. A narrow deck, metallic-enclosed, and with
+large bulls-eye windows, encircled the superstructure. Some of the
+cabins opened directly onto the deck. Others had doors to the interior
+corridors. There were half a dozen small but luxurious public rooms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rest of the vessel was given to freight storage and the mechanism
+and control compartments. Forward of the passenger structure the
+deck level continued under the cylindrical dome-roof to the bow. The
+forward watch-tower observatory was here; officers' cabins; Captain
+Carter's navigating rooms and Dr. Frank's office. Similarly, under
+the stern-dome, was the stern watch-tower and a series of power
+compartments.
+
+Above the superstructure a confusion of spider bridges, ladders and
+balconies were laced like a metal network. The turret in which Dr. Frank
+and I now stood was perched here. Fifty feet away, like a bird's nest,
+Snap's instrument room stood clinging to the metal bridge. The
+dome-roof, with the glassite windows rolled back now, rose in a
+mound-peak to cover this highest middle portion of the vessel.
+
+Below, in the main hull, blue-lit metal corridors ran the entire length
+of the ship. Freight storage compartments; gravity control rooms; the
+air renewal systems; heater and ventilators and pressure mechanisms--all
+were located there. And the kitchens, stewards' compartments, and the
+living quarters of the crew. We carried a crew of sixteen, this voyage,
+exclusive of the navigating officers, and the purser, Snap Dean, and Dr.
+Frank.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The passengers coming aboard seemed a fair representation of what we
+usually had for the outward voyage to Ferrok-Shahn. Most were Earth
+people--and returning Martians. Dr. Frank pointed out one. A huge
+Martian in a gray cloak. A seven-foot fellow.
+
+"His name is Set Miko," Dr. Frank remarked. "Ever heard of him?"
+
+"No," I said. "Should I?"
+
+"Well--" The doctor suddenly checked himself, as though he were sorry he
+had spoken.
+
+"I never heard of him," I repeated slowly.
+
+An awkward silence fell suddenly between us.
+
+There were a few Venus passengers. I saw one of them presently coming up
+the incline, and recognized her. A girl traveling alone. We had brought
+her from Grebhar, last voyage but one. I remembered her. An alluring
+sort of girl, as most of them are. Her name was Venza. She spoke English
+well. A singer and dancer who had been imported to Great-New York to
+fill some theatrical engagement. She'd made quite a hit on the Great
+White Way.
+
+She came up the incline, with the carrier ahead of her. Gazing up, she
+saw Dr. Frank and me at the turret window and waved her white arm in
+greeting. And flashed us a smile.
+
+Dr. Frank laughed. "By the gods of the airways, there's Alta Venza! You
+saw that look, Gregg? That was for me, not you."
+
+"Reasonable enough," I retorted. "But I doubt it--the Venza was nothing
+if not impartial."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I wondered what could be taking Venza now to Mars. I was glad to see
+her. She was diverting. Educated. Well-traveled. Spoke English with a
+colloquial, theatrical manner more characteristic of Great-New York than
+of Venus. And for all her light banter, I would rather put my trust in
+her than any Venus girl I had ever met.
+
+The hum of the departing siren was sounding. Friends and relatives of
+the passengers were crowding the exit incline. The deck was clearing. I
+had not seen George Prince come aboard. And then I thought I saw him
+down on the landing stage, just arrived from a private tube-car. A
+small, slight figure. The customs men were around him: I could only see
+his head and shoulders. Pale, girlishly handsome face; long, black hair
+to the base of his neck. He was bareheaded, with the hood of his
+traveling-cloak pushed back.
+
+I stared, and I saw that Dr. Frank was also gazing down. But neither of
+us spoke.
+
+Then I said upon impulse, "Suppose we go down to the deck, Doctor?"
+
+He acquiesced. We descended to the lower room of the turret and
+clambered down the spider ladder to the upper deck-level. The head of
+the arriving incline was near us. Preceded by two carriers who were
+littered with hand-baggage, George Prince was coming up the incline. He
+was closer now. I recognized him from the type we had seen in Halsey's
+office.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then, with a shock, I saw it was not so. This was a girl coming
+aboard. An arch-light over the incline showed her clearly when she was
+half way up. A girl with her hood pushed back; her face framed in thick
+black hair. I saw now it was not a man's cut of hair; but long braids
+coiled up under the dangling hood.
+
+Dr. Frank must have remarked my amazed expression.
+
+"Little beauty, isn't she?"
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+We were standing back against the wall of the superstructure. A
+passenger was near us--the Martian whom Dr. Frank had called Miko. He
+was loitering here, quite evidently watching this girl come aboard. But
+as I glanced at him he looked away and casually sauntered off.
+
+The girl came up and reached the deck. "I am in A 22," she told the
+carrier. "My brother came aboard two hours ago."
+
+Dr. Frank answered my whisper. "That's Anita Prince."
+
+She was passing quite close to us on the deck, following the carrier,
+when she stumbled and very nearly fell. I was nearest to her. I leaped
+forward and caught her as she went down.
+
+"Oh!" she cried.
+
+With my arm about her, I raised her up and set her upon her feet again.
+She had twisted her ankle. She balanced herself upon it. The pain of it
+eased up in a moment.
+
+"I'm--all right--thank you!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the dimness of the blue-lit deck, I met her eyes. I was holding her
+with my encircling arm. She was small and soft against me. Her face,
+framed in the thick, black hair, smiled up at me. Small, oval
+face--beautiful--yet firm of chin, and stamped with the mark of its own
+individuality. No empty-headed beauty, this.
+
+"I'm all right, thank you very much--"
+
+I became conscious that I had not released her. I felt her hands pushing
+at me. And then it seemed that for an instant she yielded and was
+clinging. And I met her startled, upflung gaze. Eyes like a purple night
+with the sheen of misty starlight in them.
+
+I heard myself murmuring, "I beg your pardon. Yes, of course!" I
+released her.
+
+She thanked me again and followed the carrier along the deck. She was
+limping slightly from the twisted ankle.
+
+An instant, while she had clung to me--and I had held her. A brief flash
+of something, from her eyes to mine--from mine back to hers. The poets
+write that love can be born of such a glance. The first meeting, across
+all the barriers of which love springs unsought, unbidden--defiant,
+sometimes. And the troubadours of old would sing: "A fleeting glance; a
+touch; two wildly beating hearts--and love was born."
+
+I think, with Anita and me, it must have been like that....
+
+I stood gazing after her, unconscious of Dr. Frank, who was watching me
+with his humorous smile. And presently, no more than a quarter beyond
+the zero hour, the Planetara got away. With the dome-windows battened
+tightly, we lifted from the landing stage and soared over the glowing
+city. The phosphorescence of the electronic tubes was like a comet's
+tail behind us as we slid upward.
+
+At the trinight hour the heat of our atmospheric passage was over. The
+passengers had all retired. The ship was quiet, with empty decks and
+dim, silent corridors. Vibrationless, with the electronic engines cut
+off and only the hum of the Martel magnetizers to break the unnatural
+stillness. We were well beyond the earth's atmosphere, heading out in
+the cone-path of the earth's shadow, in the direction of the moon.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_In the Helio-room_
+
+At six A. M., earth Eastern time, which we were still carrying, Snap
+Dean and I were alone in his instrument room, perched in the network
+over the Planetara's deck. The bulge of the dome enclosed us; it rounded
+like a great observatory window some twenty feet above the ceiling of
+this little metal cubby-hole.
+
+The Planetara was still in the earth's shadow. The firmament--black
+interstellar space with its blazing white, red and yellow stars--lay
+spread around us. The moon, with nearly all its disc illumined, hung, a
+great silver ball, over our bow quarter. Behind it, to one side, Mars
+floated like the red tip of a smoldering cigarillo in the blackness. The
+earth, behind our stern, was dimly, redly visible--a giant sphere,
+etched with the configurations of its oceans and continents. Upon one
+limb a touch of the sunlight hung on the mountain-tops with a crescent
+red-yellow sheen.
+
+And then we plunged from the cone-shadow. The sun, with the leaping
+Corona, burst through the blackness behind us. The earth lighted into a
+huge, thin crescent with hooked cusps.
+
+To Snap and me, the glories of the heavens were too familiar to be
+remarked. And upon this voyage particularly we were in no mood to
+consider them. I had been in the helio-room several hours. When the
+Planetara started, and my few routine duties were over, I could think of
+nothing save Halsey's and Carter's admonition: "Be on your guard. And
+particularly--watch George Prince."
+
+I had not seen George Prince. But I had seen his sister, whom Carter and
+Halsey had not bothered to mention. My heart was still pounding with the
+memory....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the passengers had retired and the ship quieted, I prowled through
+the passenger corridors. This was about the trinight hour.[3] Hot as the
+corridors of hell, with our hull and the glassite dome seething with the
+friction of our atmospheric flight. But the refrigerators mitigated
+that; the ventilators blasted cold air from the renewers into every
+corner of the vessel. Within an hour or two, with the cold of space
+striking us, it was hot air that was needed.
+
+Dr. Frank evidently was having little trouble with pressure-sick
+passengers[4]--the Planetara's equalizers were fairly efficient. I did
+not encounter Dr. Frank. I prowled through the silent metal lounges and
+passages. I went to the door of A 22. It was on the deck-level, in a
+tiny transverse passage just off the main lounging room. Its name-grid
+glowed with the letters: "_Anita Prince._" I stood in my short white
+trousers and white silk shirt, like a cabin steward gawping. Anita
+Prince! I had never heard the name until this night. But there was magic
+music in it now, as I murmured it to myself. Anita Prince....
+
+She was here, doubtless asleep, behind this small metal door. It seemed
+as though that little oval grid were the gateway to a fairyland of my
+dreams.
+
+I turned away. And thought of the Grantline Moon Expedition stabbed at
+me. George Prince--Anita's brother--he whom I had been told to watch.
+This renegade--associate of dubious Martians, plotting God knows what.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I saw, upon the adjoining door, "A 20, _George Prince_." I listened. In
+the humming stillness of the ship's interior there was no sound from
+these cabins. A 20 was without windows, I knew. But Anita's room had a
+window and a door which gave upon the deck. I went through the lounge,
+out its arch, and walked the deck length. The deck door and window of
+A 22 were closed and dark.
+
+The ten-foot-wide deck was dim with white starlight from the side ports.
+Chairs were here, but they were all empty. From the bow windows of the
+arching dome a flood of moonlight threw long, slanting shadows down the
+deck. At the corner where the superstructure ended, I thought I saw a
+figure lurking as though watching me. I went that way, but it vanished.
+
+I turned the corner, went the width of the ship to the other side. There
+was no one in sight save the observer on his spider bridge, high in the
+bow network, and the second officer, on duty on the turret balcony
+almost directly over me.
+
+As I stood and listened, I suddenly heard footsteps. From the direction
+of the bow a figure came. Purser Johnson.
+
+He greeted me. "Cooling off, Gregg?"
+
+"Yes," I said.
+
+He went past me and turned into the smoking room door nearby.
+
+I stood a moment at one of the deck windows, gazing at the stars; and
+for no reason at all I realized I was tense. Johnson was a great one for
+his regular sleep--it was wholly unlike him to be roaming about the ship
+at such an hour. Had he been watching me? I told myself it was nonsense.
+I was suspicious of everyone, everything, this voyage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I heard another step. Captain Carter appeared from his chart-room which
+stood in the center of the narrowing open deck space near the bow. I
+joined him at once.
+
+"Who was that?" he half-whispered.
+
+"Johnson."
+
+"Oh, yes." He fumbled in his uniform; his gaze swept the moonlit deck.
+"Gregg--take this." He handed me a small metal box. I stuffed it at once
+into my shirt.
+
+"An insulator," he added, swiftly. "Snap is in his office. Take it to
+him, Gregg. Stay with him--you'll have a measure of security--and you
+can help him to make the photographs." He was barely whispering. "I
+won't be with you--no use making it look as though we were doing
+anything unusual. If your graphs show anything--or if Snap picks up any
+message--bring it to me." He added aloud, "Well, it will be cool enough
+presently, Gregg."
+
+He sauntered away toward his chart-room.
+
+"By heavens, what a relief!" Snap murmured as the current went on. We
+had wired his cubby with the insulator; within its barrage we could at
+last talk with a degree of freedom.
+
+"You've seen George Prince, Gregg?"
+
+"No. He's assigned A 20. But I saw his sister. Snap, no one ever
+mentioned--"
+
+Snap had heard of her, but he hadn't known that she was listed for this
+voyage. "A real beauty, so I've heard. Accursed shame for a decent girl
+to have a brother like that."
+
+I could agree with him there, but I made no comment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was now 6 A. M. Snap had been busy all night with routine cosmo-radios
+from the earth, following our departure. He had a pile of them beside
+him. Many were for the passengers; but anything that savored of a code
+was barred.
+
+"Nothing queer looking?" I suggested.
+
+"No. Not a thing."
+
+We were at this time no more than some sixty-five thousand miles from
+the moon's surface. The Planetara presently would swing upon her direct
+course for Mars. There was nothing which could cause passenger comment
+in this close passing of the moon; normally we used the satellite's
+attraction to give us additional starting speed.
+
+It was now or never that a message would come from Grantline. He was
+supposed to be upon this earthward side of the moon. While Snap had
+rushed through with his routine, I had searched the moon surface with
+our glass, as I knew Carter was searching it--and also the observer in
+his tower, very possibly.
+
+But there was nothing. Copernicus and Kepler lay in full sunlight. The
+heights of the lunar mountains, the depths of the barren, empty seas
+were etched black and white, clear and clean. Grim, forbidding
+desolation, this unchanging moon! In romance, moonlight may shimmer and
+sparkle to light a lover's smile; but the reality of the moon is cold
+and bleak. There was nothing to show my prying eyes where the intrepid
+Grantline might be.
+
+"Nothing at all, Snap."
+
+And Snap's helio mirrors, attuned for an hour now to pick up the
+faintest signal, were motionless.
+
+"If he has concentrated any appreciable amount of radio-active ore,"
+said Snap, "we should get an impulse from its Gamma rays."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But our receiving shield was dark, untouched. We tried taking hydrogen
+photographic impressions of the visible moon surface. A sequence of
+them, with stereoscopic lenses, forty-eight to the second. Our
+mirror-grid gave the magnified images; the spectro-heliograph, with its
+wave-length selection, pictured the mountain-levels, and slowly
+descended into the deepest seas.
+
+There was nothing.
+
+Yet in those moon caverns--a million million recesses amid the crags of
+that tumbled, barren surface--the pin-point of movement which might have
+been Grantline's expedition could so easily be hiding! Could he have the
+ore insulated, fearing its Gamma rays would betray its presence to
+hostile watchers?
+
+Or might disaster have come to him? Or he might not be upon this
+hemisphere of the moon at all....
+
+My imagination, sharpened by fancy of a lurking menace which seemed
+everywhere about the Planetara this voyage, ran rife with fears for
+Johnny Grantline. He had promised to communicate this voyage. It was
+now, or perhaps never.
+
+Six-thirty came and passed. We were well beyond the earth's shadow now.
+The firmament blazed with its vivid glories; the sun behind us was a
+ball of yellow-red leaping flames. The earth hung, opened to a huge,
+dull-red half-sphere.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We were within some forty thousand miles of the moon. Giant white
+ball--all of its disc visible to the naked eye. It poised over the bow,
+and presently, as the Planetara swung upon her course for Mars, it
+shifted sidewise. The light of it glared white and dazzling in our tiny
+side windows.
+
+Snap, with his habitual red celluloid eyeshade shoved high on his
+forehead, worked over our instruments.
+
+"Gregg!"
+
+The receiving shield was glowing a trifle! Gamma rays were bombarding
+it! It glowed, gleamed phosphorescent, and the audible recorder began
+sounding its tiny tinkling murmurs.
+
+Gamma rays! Snap sprang to the dials. The direction and strength were
+soon obvious. A richly radio-active ore body, of considerable size, was
+concentrated upon this hemisphere of the moon! It was unmistakable.
+
+"He's got it, Gregg! He's--"
+
+The tiny helio mirrors began quivering. Snap exclaimed triumphantly,
+"Here he comes! By God, the message at last! Bar off that light!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I flung on the absorbers. The moonlight bathing the little room went
+into them and darkness sprang around us. Snap fumbled at his instrument
+board. Actinic light showed dimly in the quivering, thumbnail mirrors.
+Two of them. They hung poised on their cobweb wires, infinitely
+sensitive to the infra-red light-rays Grantline was sending from the
+moon. The mirrors in a moment began swinging. On the scale across the
+room the actinic beams from them were magnified into sweeps of light.
+
+The message!
+
+Snap spelled it out, decoded it.
+
+"_Success! Stop for ore on your return voyage. Will give you our
+location later. Success beyond wildest hopes--_"
+
+The mirrors hung motionless. The shield, where the Gamma rays were
+bombarding, went suddenly dark.
+
+Snap murmured, "That's all. He's got the ore! 'Success beyond wildest
+hopes.' That must mean an enormous quantity of it available!"
+
+We were sitting in darkness, and abruptly I became aware that across our
+open window, where the insulation barrage was flung, the air was faintly
+hissing. An interference there! I saw a tiny swirl of purple sparks.
+Someone--some hostile ray from the deck beneath us, or from the spider
+bridge that led to our little room--someone out there trying to pry
+in!
+
+Snap impulsively reached for the absorbers to let in the outside
+light--it was all darkness to us outside. But I checked him.
+
+"Wait!" I cut off our barrage, opened our door and stepped to the narrow
+metal bridge.
+
+"Wait, Snap! You stay there." I added aloud, "Well, Snap, I'm going to
+bed. Glad you've cleaned up that batch of work."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I banged the door upon him. The lacework of metal bridges and ladders
+seemed empty. I gazed up to the dome, and forward and aft. Twenty feet
+beneath me was the metal roof of the cabin superstructure. Below it,
+both sides of the deck showed. All patched with moonlight.
+
+No one visible down there. I descended a ladder. The deck was empty. But
+in the silence something was moving! Footsteps moving away from me down
+the deck! I followed; and suddenly I was running. Chasing something I
+could hear, but could not see. It turned into the smoking room.
+
+I burst in. And a real sound smothered the phantom. Johnson the purser
+was sitting here alone in the dimness. He was smoking. I noticed that
+his cigar held a long, frail ash. It could not have been him I was
+chasing. He was sitting there quite calmly. A thick-necked, heavy
+fellow, easily out of breath. But he was breathing calmly now.
+
+He sat up with amazement at my wild-eyed appearance, and the ash jarred
+from his cigar.
+
+"Gregg! What in the devil--"
+
+I tried to grin. "I'm on my way to bed--worked all night helping Snap
+with those damn Earth messages."
+
+I went past him, out the door into the main interior corridor. It was
+the only way the invisible prowler could have gone. But I was too late
+now--I could hear nothing. I dashed forward into the main lounge. It
+was empty, dim and silent, a silence broken presently by a faint
+click--a stateroom door hastily closing. I swung and found myself in a
+tiny transverse passage. The twin doors of A 22 and A 20 were before
+me.
+
+The invisible eavesdropper had gone into one of these rooms! I listened
+at each of the panels, but there was only silence within.
+
+The interior of the ship was suddenly singing with the steward's
+siren--the call to awaken the passengers. It startled me. I moved
+swiftly away. But as the siren shut off, in the silence I heard a soft,
+musical voice:
+
+"Wake up, Anita--I think that's the breakfast call."
+
+And her answer: "All right, George. I hear it."
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_A Burn on a Martian Arm_
+
+I did not appear at that morning meal. I was exhausted and drugged with
+lack of sleep. I had a moment with Snap, to tell him what had occurred.
+Then I sought out Carter. He had his little chart-room insulated. And we
+were cautious. I told him what Snap and I had learned: the Gamma rays
+from the moon, proving that Grantline had concentrated a considerable
+ore-body. I also told him the message from Grantline.
+
+"We'll stop on the way back, as he directs, Gregg." He bent closer to
+me. "At Ferrok-Shahn I'm going to bring back a cordon of Interplanetary
+Police. The secret will be out, of course, when once we stop at the
+moon. We have no right, even now, to be flying this vessel as unguarded
+as it is."
+
+He was very solemn. And he was grim when I told him of the invisible
+eavesdropper.
+
+"You think he overheard Grantline's message?"
+
+"I don't know," I said.
+
+"Who was it? You seem to feel it was George Prince?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+I was convinced that the prowler had gone into A 20. When I mentioned
+the purser, who seemed to have been watching me earlier in the night,
+and again was sitting in the smoking room when the eavesdropper fled
+past, Carter looked startled.
+
+"Johnson is all right, Gregg."
+
+"Is he? Does he know anything about this Grantline affair?"
+
+"No--no," said the captain hastily. "You haven't mentioned it, have
+you?"
+
+"Of course I haven't. I've been wondering why Johnson didn't hear that
+eavesdropper. I could hear him when I was chasing him. But Johnson sat
+perfectly unmoved and let him go by. What was he sitting there for,
+anyway, at that hour of the morning?"
+
+"You're too suspicious, Gregg. Overwrought. But you're right--we can't
+be too careful. I'm going to have that Prince suite searched when I
+catch it unoccupied. Passengers don't ordinarily travel with invisible
+cloaks. Go to bed, Gregg--you need a rest."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I went to my cabin. It was located aft, on the stern deck-space, near
+the stern watch-tower. A small metal room, with a desk, a chair and
+bunk. I made sure no one was in it. I sealed the lattice grill and the
+door, set the alarm trigger against any opening of them, and went to
+bed.
+
+The siren for the mid-day meal awakened me. I had slept heavily. I felt
+refreshed. And hungry.
+
+I found the passengers already assembled at my table when I arrived in
+the dining salon. It was a low-vaulted metal room of blue and yellow
+tube-lights. At the sides its oval windows showed the deck, with its
+ports of the dome-side, through which a vista of the starry firmament
+was visible. We were well on our course to Mars. The moon had dwindled
+to a pin-point of light beside the crescent earth. And behind them our
+sun blazed, visually the largest orb in the heavens. It was some
+sixty-eight million miles from the earth to Mars, this voyage. A flight,
+under ordinary circumstances, of some ten days.
+
+There were five tables in the dining salon, each with eight seats. Snap
+and I had one of the tables. We sat at the ends, with three passengers
+on each of the sides.
+
+Snap was in his seat when I arrived. He eyed me down the length of the
+table.
+
+"Good morning, Gregg. We missed you at breakfast. Not pressure-sick, I
+hope?"
+
+There were three passengers already seated at our table--all men. Snap,
+in a gay mood, introduced me.
+
+"This is our third officer, Gregg Haljan. Big, handsome fellow, isn't
+he? And as pleasant as he is good-looking. Gregg, this is Sero Ob
+Hahn."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I met the keen, dark-eyed somber gaze of a Venus man of middle age. A
+small, slim, graceful man, with sleek black hair. His pointed face,
+accentuated by the pointed beard, was pallid. He wore a white and purple
+robe; upon his breast was a huge platinum ornament, a device like a star
+and cross entwined.
+
+"I am happy to meet you, sir." His voice was soft and sleek.
+
+"Ob Hahn," I repeated. "I should have heard of you, no doubt. But--"
+
+A smile plucked at his thin, gray lips. "That is the error of mine, not
+yours. My mission is that all the universe shall hear of me."
+
+"He's preaching the religion of the Venus Mystics," Snap explained.
+
+"And this enlightened gentleman," said Ob Hahn ironically, "has just
+termed it fetishism. The ignorance--"
+
+"Oh, I say!" protested the man at Ob Hahn's side. "I mean, you seem to
+think I intended something opprobrious. As a matter of fact--"
+
+"We've an argument, Gregg," laughed Snap. "This is Sir Arthur Coniston,
+an English gentleman, lecturer and sky-trotter--that is, he will be a
+sky-trotter; he tells us he plans a number of voyages."
+
+The tall Englishman in his white linen suit bowed acknowledgment.
+"My compliments, Mr. Haljan. I hope you have no strong religious
+convictions, else we will make your table here very miserable!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The third passenger had evidently kept out of the argument. Snap
+introduced him as Rance Rankin. An American--a quiet, blond fellow of
+thirty-five or forty.
+
+I ordered my breakfast and let the argument go on.
+
+"Won't make me miserable," said Snap. "I love an argument. You said, Sir
+Arthur?...
+
+"I mean to say, I think I said too much. Mr. Rankin, you are more
+diplomatic."
+
+Rankin laughed. "I am a magician," he said to me. "A theatrical
+entertainer. I deal in tricks--how to fool an audience--" His keen,
+amused gaze was on Ob Hahn. "This gentleman from Venus and I have too
+much in common to argue."
+
+"A nasty one!" the Englishman exclaimed. "By Jove! Really, Mr. Rankin,
+you're a bit too cruel!"
+
+I could see we were doomed to have turbulent meals this voyage. I like
+to eat in quiet; arguing passengers always annoy me. There were still
+three seats vacant at our table; I wondered who would occupy them. I
+soon learned the answer--for one seat at least. Rankin said calmly:
+
+"Where is the little Venus girl this meal?" His glance went to the empty
+seat at my right hand. "The Venza--wasn't that her name? She and I are
+destined for the same theater in Ferrok-Shahn."
+
+So Venza was to sit beside me. It was good news. Ten days of a religious
+argument three times a day would be intolerable. But the cheerful Venza
+would help.
+
+"She never eats the mid-day meal," said Snap. "She's on the deck, having
+orange juice. I guess it's the old gag about diet, eh?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My attention wandered about the salon. Most of the seats were occupied.
+At the captain's table I saw the objects of my search. George Prince and
+his sister sat one on each side of the captain. I saw George Prince in
+the life now as a man who looked hardly twenty-five. He was at this
+moment evidently in a gay mood. His clean-cut, handsome profile, with
+its poetic dark curls, was turned toward me. There seemed little of the
+villain about him.
+
+And I saw Anita Prince now as a dark-haired, black eyed little beauty,
+in feature resembling her brother very strongly. She presently finished
+her meal. She rose, with him after her. She was dressed in Earth
+fashion--white blouse and dark jacket, wide, knee-length trousers of
+gray, with a red sash her only touch of color. She went past me, flashed
+me her smile and nod.
+
+My heart was pounding. I answered her greeting, and met George Prince's
+casual gaze. He, too, smiled, as though to signify that his sister had
+told him of the service I had done her. Or was his smile an ironical
+memory of how he had eluded me this morning when I chased him?
+
+I gazed after his small, white-suited figure as he followed Anita from
+the salon. And thinking of her, I prayed that Carter and Halsey might be
+wrong. Whatever plotting against the Grantline Expedition might be going
+on, I hoped that George Prince was innocent of it. Yet I knew in my
+heart it was a futile hope. Prince had been that eavesdropper outside
+the helio-room. I could not really doubt it. But that his sister must be
+ignorant of what he was doing, I was sure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My attention was brought suddenly back to the reality of our table. I
+heard Ob Hahn's silky voice:
+
+"We passed quite close to the moon last night, Mr. Dean."
+
+"Yes," said Snap. "We did, didn't we? Always do--it's a technical
+problem of the exigencies of interstellar navigation. Explain it to
+them, Gregg--you're an expert."
+
+I waved it away with a laugh. There was a brief silence. I could not
+help noticing Sir Arthur Coniston's queer look, and I think I have never
+seen so keen a glance as Rance Rankin shot at me. Were all these people
+aware of Grantline's treasure on the moon? It suddenly seemed so. I
+wished fervently at that instant that the ten days of this voyage were
+over and we were safely at Ferrok-Shahn. Captain Carter was absolutely
+right. Coming back we would have a cordon of interplanetary police
+aboard.
+
+Sir Arthur broke the awkward silence. "Magnificent sight, the moon, from
+so close a viewpoint--though I was too much afraid of pressure-sickness
+to be up to see it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had nearly finished my hasty meal when another incident shocked me.
+The two other passengers at our table came in and took their seats. A
+Martian girl and man. The girl had the seat at my left, with the man
+beside her. All Martians are tall. This girl was about my own
+height--that is, six feet, two inches. The man was seven feet or more.
+Both wore the Martian outer robe. The girl flung hers back. Her limbs
+were encased in pseudo-mail. She looked, as all Martians like to look, a
+very warlike Amazon. But she was a pretty girl. She smiled at me with a
+keen-eyed, direct gaze.
+
+"Mr. Dean said at breakfast that you were big and handsome. You are."
+
+They were brother and sister, these Martians. Snap introduced them as
+Set Miko and Setta Moa.[5]
+
+This Miko was, from our Earth standards, a tremendous, brawny giant. Not
+spindly, like most Martians, this fellow, for all his seven feet of
+height, was almost heavy-set. He wore a plaited leather jerkin beneath
+his robe, and knee pants of leather out of which his lower legs showed
+as gray, hairy pillars of strength. He had come into the salon with a
+swagger, his sword-ornament clanking.
+
+"A pleasant voyage so far," he said to me as he started his meal. His
+voice had the heavy, throaty rasp characteristic of the Martian. He
+spoke perfect English--both Martians and Venus people are by heritage
+extraordinary linguists. Miko and his sister Moa had a touch of Martian
+accent, worn almost away by living for some years in Great-New York.
+
+The shock to me came within a few minutes. Miko, absorbed in attacking
+his meal, inadvertently pushed back his robe to bare his forearm. An
+instant only, then it dropped again to his wrist. But in that instant I
+had seen, upon the gray flesh, a thin sear turned red. A very recent
+burn--as though a pencil-ray of heat had caught his arm.
+
+My mind flung back. Only last night in the City Corridor, Snap and I had
+been followed by a Martian. I had shot at him with the heat-ray; I
+thought I had hit him on the arm. Was this the mysterious Martian who
+had followed us from Halsey's office?
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_Venza the Venus Girl_
+
+It was shortly after that mid-day meal when I encountered Venza sitting
+on the starlit deck. I had been in the bow observatory; taken my routine
+castings of our position and worked them out. I was, I think, of the
+Planetara's officers the most expert handler of the mathematical
+mechanical calculators. The locating of our position and charting the
+trajectory of our course was, under ordinary circumstances, about all I
+had to do. And it took only a few minutes each twelve hours.
+
+I had a moment with Carter in the isolation of his chart-room.
+
+"This voyage! Gregg, I'm getting like you--too fanciful. We've a normal
+group of passengers, apparently; but I don't like the look of any of
+them. That Ob Hahn, at your table--"
+
+"Snaky-looking fellow," I commented. "He and the Englishman are great on
+arguments. Did you have Prince's cabin searched?"
+
+My breath hung on his answer.
+
+"Yes. Nothing unusual among his things. We searched both his room and
+his sister's."
+
+I did not follow that up. Instead I told him about the burn on Miko's
+thick gray arm.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stared. "I wish to the Almighty we were at Ferrok-Shahn. Gregg,
+to-night when the passengers are asleep, come here to me. Snap will be
+here, and Dr. Frank. We can trust him."
+
+"He knows about--about the Grantline treasure?"
+
+"Yes. And so do Balch and Blackstone."
+
+Balch and Blackstone were our first and second officers.
+
+"We'll all meet here, Gregg--say about the zero hour. We must take some
+precautions."
+
+He suddenly felt he should say no more now. He dismissed me.
+
+I found Venza seated alone in a secluded corner of the starlit deck. A
+porthole, with the black heavens and the blazing stars, was before her.
+There was an empty seat nearby.
+
+"Hola-lo,[6] Gregg! Sit here with me. I have been wondering when you
+would come after me."
+
+I sat down beside her. "What are you doing--going to Mars, Venza? I'm
+glad to see you."
+
+"Many thanks. But I am glad to see you, Gregg. So handsome a man.... Do
+you know, from Venus to the earth and I have no doubt on all of Mars, no
+man will please me more."
+
+"Glib tongue," I laughed. "Born to flatter the male--every girl of your
+world." And I added seriously, "You don't answer my question? What
+takes you to Mars?"
+
+"Contract. By the stars, what else? Of course, a chance to make a voyage
+with you--"
+
+"Don't be silly, Venza."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I enjoyed her. I gazed at her small, slim figure gracefully reclining in
+the deck chair. Her long, gray robe parted--by design, I have no
+doubt--to display her shapely, satin-sheathed legs. Her black hair was
+coiled in a heavy knot at the back of her neck; her carmined lips were
+parted with a mocking, alluring smile. The exotic perfume of her
+enveloped me.
+
+She glanced at me sidewise from beneath her sweeping black lashes.
+
+"Be serious," I added.
+
+"I am serious. Sober. Intoxicated by you, but sober."
+
+I said, "What sort of a contract?"
+
+"A theater in Ferrok-Shahn. Good money, Gregg. I'm to be there a year."
+She sat up to face me. "There's a fellow here on the Planetara, Rance
+Rankin, he calls himself. At our table--a big, good-looking blond
+American. He says he is a magician. Ever hear of him?"
+
+"That's what he told me. No, I never heard of him."
+
+"Nor did I. And I thought I had heard of everyone of any importance. He
+is listed for the same theater where I'm going. Nice sort of fellow."
+She paused, and added suddenly, "If he's a professional entertainer, I'm
+a motor-oiler."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It startled me. "Why do you say that?"
+
+Instinctively my gaze swept the deck. An Earth woman and child and a
+small Venus man were in sight, but not within earshot.
+
+"Why do you look so furtive?" she retorted. "Gregg, there's something
+strange about this voyage. I'm no fool, nor you, and you know it as well
+as I do."
+
+"Rance Rankin--" I prompted.
+
+She leaned closer toward me. "He could fool you. But not me--I've known
+too many real magicians." She grinned. "I challenged him to trick me.
+You should have seen him trying to evade!"
+
+"Do you know Ob Hahn?" I interrupted.
+
+She shook her head. "Never heard of him. But he told me plenty at
+breakfast. By Satan, what a flow of words that devil-driver can muster!
+He and the Englishman don't mesh very well, do they?"
+
+She stared at me. I had not answered her grin; my mind was too busy with
+queer fancies. Halsey's words: "Things are not always what they seem--"
+Were these passengers masqueraders? Put here by George Prince? And then
+I thought of Miko the Martian, and the burn upon his arm.
+
+"Come back, Gregg! Don't go wandering off like that!" She dropped her
+voice to a whisper. "I'll be serious. I want to know what in the hell is
+going on aboard this ship. I'm a woman, and I'm curious. You tell me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What do you mean?" I parried.
+
+"I mean a lot of things. What we've just been talking about. And what
+was the excitement you were in just before breakfast this morning?"
+
+"Excitement?"
+
+"Gregg, you may trust me." For the first time she was wholly serious.
+Her gaze made sure no one was within hearing. She put her hand on my
+arm. I could barely hear her whisper: "I know they might have a ray upon
+us--I'll be careful."
+
+"They?"
+
+"Anyone. Something's going on. You know it--you are in it. I saw you
+this morning, Gregg. Wild-eyed, chasing a phantom--"
+
+"You?"
+
+"And I heard the phantom! A man's footsteps. A magnetic reflecting
+invisible cloak. You couldn't fool an audience with that--it's too
+commonplace. If Rance Rankin tried--"
+
+I gripped her. "Don't ramble, Venza! You saw me?"
+
+"Yes. My stateroom door was open. I was sitting with a cigarillo. I saw
+the purser in the smoking room. He was visible from--"
+
+"Wait! Venza, that prowler went through the smoking room!"
+
+"I know he did. I could hear him."
+
+"Did the purser hear him?"
+
+"Of course. The purser looked up, followed the sound with his gaze. I
+thought that was queer. He never made a move. And then you came along
+and he acted innocent. Why? What's going on, that's what I want to
+know!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I held my breath. "Venza, where did the prowler run to? Can you--"
+
+She whispered calmly, "Into A 20. I saw the door open and close--I even
+think I could see the blurred outline of him. Those magnetic cloaks!"
+She added, "Why should George Prince be sneaking around with you after
+him? And the purser acting innocent? And who is this George Prince,
+anyway?"
+
+The huge Martian, Miko, with his sister Moa came strolling along the
+deck. They nodded as they passed us.
+
+I whispered, "I can't explain anything now. But you're right, Venza:
+there is something going on. Listen! Whatever you learn--anything you
+encounter which looks unusual--will you tell me? I--well, I do trust
+you--really I do!--but the thing isn't mine to tell."
+
+The somber pools of her eyes were shining. "You are very lovable, Gregg.
+I won't question you." She was trembling with excitement. "Whatever it
+is, I want to be in it. Here's something I can tell you now. We've two
+high-class gold-leaf gamblers aboard. Did you know that?"
+
+"No. Who are--"
+
+"Shac and Dud Ardley. Let me state every detective in Great-New York
+knows them. They had a wonderful game with that Englishman, Sir Arthur
+Coniston, this morning. Stripped him of half a pound of eight-inch
+leaves--a neat little stack. A crooked game, of course. Those fellows
+are more nimble-fingered than Rance Rankin ever dared to be!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I sat staring at her. She was a mine of information, this girl.
+
+"And Gregg, I tried my charms on Shac and Dud. Nice men, but dumb.
+Whatever's going on, they're not in it. They wanted to know what kind of
+a ship this was. Why? Because Shac has a cute little eavesdropping
+microphone of his own. He had it working in the night last night. He
+overheard George Prince and that big giant Miko arguing about the
+moon!"
+
+I gasped. "Venza, softer!"
+
+Against all propriety of this public deck she pretended to drape herself
+upon me. Her hair smothered my face as her lips almost touched my ear.
+
+"Something about treasure on the moon--Shac couldn't understand what.
+And they mentioned you. He didn't hear what they said because the purser
+joined them." Her whispered words tumbled over one another. "A hundred
+pounds of gold leaf--that's the purser's price. He's with them, whatever
+it is. He promised to do something for them."
+
+She stopped. "Well?" I prompted.
+
+"That's all. Shac's current was interrupted."
+
+"Tell him to try it again, Venza! I'll talk with him. No! I'd better let
+him alone. Can you get him to keep his mouth shut?"
+
+"I think he might do anything I told him. He's a man."
+
+"Find out what you can."
+
+She sat away from me suddenly. "There's Anita and George Prince."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They came to the corner of the deck, but turned back. Venza caught my
+look. And understood it.
+
+"So you love Anita Prince so much as that, Gregg?" Venza was smiling. "I
+wish you--I wish some man handsome as you would gaze after me like
+that."
+
+She turned solemn. "You may be interested to know that she loves you. I
+could see it. I knew it when I mentioned you to her this morning."
+
+"Me? Why, we've hardly spoken!"
+
+"Is it necessary? I never heard that it was."
+
+I could not see Venza's face; she stood up suddenly. And when I rose
+beside her, she whispered,
+
+"We should not be seen talking so long. I'll find out what I can."
+
+I stared after her slight robed figure as she turned into the lounge
+archway and vanished.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_A Traitor, and a Passing Asteroid_
+
+Captain Carter was grim. "So they've bought him off, have they? Go bring
+him in here, Gregg. We'll have it out with him now."
+
+Snap, Dr. Frank, Balch, our first officer, and I were in the captain's
+chart-room. It was 4 P. M.--our Earth starting time. We were sixteen
+hours upon our voyage.
+
+I found Johnson in his office in the lounge. "Captain wants to see you.
+Close up."
+
+He closed his window upon an American woman passenger who was demanding
+details of Martian currency, and followed me forward. "What is it,
+Gregg?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+Captain Carter banged the slide upon us. The chart-room was insulated.
+The hum of the current was obvious. Johnson noticed it. He started at
+the hostile faces of the surgeon and Balch. And he tried to bluster.
+
+"What is this? Something wrong?"
+
+Carter wasted no words. "We have information, Johnson--there's some
+under cover plot here aboard. I want to know what it is. Suppose you
+tell us frankly."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The purser looked blank. "What do you mean? We've gamblers aboard, if
+that's--"
+
+"To hell with that," growled Balch. "You had a secret interview with
+that Martian, Set Miko, and with George Prince!"
+
+Johnson scowled from under his heavy brows, and then raised them in
+surprise.
+
+"Did I? You mean changing their money? I don't like your tone, Balch.
+I'm not your under-officer!"
+
+"But you're under me," roared the captain. "By God, I'm master here!"
+
+"Well, I'm not disputing that," said the purser mildly. "This fellow
+Balch--"
+
+"We're in no mood for argument," Dr. Frank cut in. "Clouding the
+issue."
+
+"I won't let it be clouded," the captain exclaimed. I had never seen
+Carter so choleric. He was evidently under a tremendous strain. He
+added,
+
+"Johnson, you've been acting suspiciously. I don't give a damn whether
+I've proof of it or not--I say it. Did you, or did you not meet George
+Prince and that Martian last night?"
+
+"No, I did not. And I don't mind telling you, Captain Carter, that your
+tone also is offensive!"
+
+"Is it?" Carter suddenly seized him. They were both big men. Johnson's
+heavy face went purplish red.
+
+"Take your hands!--" They were struggling. Carter's hands were fumbling
+at the purser's pockets. I leaped, flung an arm around Johnson's neck,
+pinning him.
+
+"Easy there! We've got you, Johnson!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Snap tried to help me. "Go on, bang him on the head, Gregg. Now's your
+chance!"
+
+We searched him. A heat-ray cylinder--that was legitimate. But we found
+a small battery and eavesdropping microphone similar to the one Venza
+had mentioned that Shac the gambler was carrying.
+
+"What are you doing with that?" the captain demanded.
+
+"None of your business! Is it criminal? Carter, I'll have the Line
+officials dismiss you for this! Take your hands off me, all of you!"
+
+"Look at this!" exclaimed Dr. Frank.
+
+From Johnson's breast pocket the surgeon drew a folded document. It was
+the scale drawing of the Planetara's interior corridors, the lower
+control rooms and mechanisms. It was always kept in Johnson's safe. And
+with it, another document: the ship's clearance papers--the secret code
+pass-words for this voyage, to be used if we should be challenged by any
+interplanetary police ship.
+
+Snap gasped. "My God, that was in my helio-room strong box! I'm the only
+one on this vessel except the captain who's entitled to know those
+pass-words!"
+
+Out of the silence, Balch demanded, "Well, what about it, Johnson?"
+
+The purser was still defiant. "I won't answer your questions, Balch. At
+the proper time, I'll explain--Gregg Haljan, you're choking me!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I eased up. But I shook him. "You'd better talk."
+
+He was exasperatingly silent.
+
+"Enough!" exploded Carter. "He can explain when we get to port.
+Meanwhile I'll put him where he'll do no more damage. Gregg, lock him in
+the cage."
+
+We ignored his violent protestations. The cage--in the old days of
+sea-vessels on Earth, they called it the brig--was the ship's jail. A
+steel-lined, windowless room located under the deck in the peak of the
+bow. I dragged the struggling Johnson there, with the amazed watcher
+looking down from the observatory window at our lunging, starlit forms.
+
+"Shut up, Johnson! If you know what's good for you--"
+
+He was making a fearful commotion. Behind us, where the deck narrowed at
+the superstructure, half a dozen passengers were gazing in surprise.
+
+"I'll have you thrown out of the Service, Gregg Haljan!"
+
+I shut him up finally. And flung him down the ladder into the cage and
+sealed the deck trap-door upon him. I was headed back for the chart-room
+when from the observatory came the lookout's voice.
+
+"An asteroid, Haljan! Officer Blackstone wants you."
+
+I hurried to the turret bridge. An asteroid was in sight. We had
+attained nearly our maximum speed now. An asteroid was approaching, so
+dangerously close that our trajectory would have to be altered. I heard
+Blackstone's signals ringing in the control rooms; and met Carter as he
+ran to the bridge with me.
+
+"That scoundrel! We'll get more out of him, Gregg. By God, I'll put the
+chemicals on him--torture him, illegal or not!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We had no time for further discussion. The asteroid was rapidly
+approaching. Already, under the glass, it was a magnificent sight. I had
+never seen this tiny world before--asteroids are not numerous between
+the Earth and Mars, or in toward Venus. I never expected to see this one
+again. How little of the future can we humans fathom, for all our
+science! If I could only have looked into the future, even for a few
+short hours! How different then would have been the outcome of this
+tragic voyage!
+
+The asteroid came rushing at us. Its orbital velocity, I later computed,
+was some twenty-two miles a second. Our own, at the present maximum, was
+a fraction over seventy-seven. The asteroid had for some time been under
+observation by the lookout. He gave his warning only when it seemed that
+our trajectory should be altered to avoid a dangerously close passing.
+
+At the combined speeds of nearly a hundred miles a second the asteroid
+swept into view. With the naked eye, at first it was a tiny speck of
+star-dust, unnoticed in the gem-strewn black velvet of Space. A speck.
+Then a gleaming dot, silver white, with the light of our Sun upon it.
+
+Five minutes. The dot grew to a disc. Expanding. A full moon,
+silver-white. Brightest world in the firmament--the light from it bathed
+the Planetara, illumined the deck, painting everything with silver.
+
+I stood with Carter and Blackstone on the turret bridge. It was obvious
+that unless we altered our course, the asteroid would pass too close for
+safety. Already we were feeling its attraction; from the control rooms
+came the report that our trajectory was disturbed by this new mass so
+near.
+
+"Better make your calculations now, Gregg," Blackstone suggested.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I cast up the rough elements from the observational instruments in the
+turret. It took me some ten or fifteen minutes. When I had us upon our
+new course, with the attractive and repulsive plates in the Planetara's
+hull set in their altered combinations, I went out to the bridge again.
+
+The asteroid hung over our bow quarter. No more than twenty or thirty
+thousand miles away. A giant ball now, filling all that quadrant of the
+heavens. The configurations of its mountains--its land and water
+areas--were plainly visible. Its axial rotation was apparent.
+
+"Perfectly habitable," Blackstone said. "But I've searched all over this
+hemisphere with the glass. No sign of human life--certainly nothing
+civilized--nothing in the fashion of cities."
+
+A fair little world, by the look of it. A tiny globe: Blackstone had
+figured it at some eight hundred miles in diameter. There seemed a
+normal atmosphere. We could see areas where the surface was obscured by
+clouds. And oceans, and land masses. Polar icecaps. Lush vegetation at
+its equator.
+
+Blackstone had roughly cast its orbital elements. A narrow ellipse. No
+wonder we had never encountered this fair little world before. It had
+come from the outer region beyond Neptune. At perihelion it would reach
+inside Mercury, round the Sun, and head outward again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We swept past the asteroid at a distance of some six thousand miles.
+Close enough, in very truth--a minute of flight at our combined speeds
+totaling a hundred miles a second. I had descended to the passenger
+deck, where I stood alone at a window, gazing.
+
+The passengers were all gathered to view the passing little world. I
+saw, not far from me, Anita, standing with her brother; and the giant
+figure of Miko with them.
+
+Half an hour since, first with the naked eye, this wandering little
+world had shown itself; it swam slowly past, began to dwindle behind us.
+A huge half moon. A thinner, smaller quadrant. A tiny crescent, like a
+silver bar-pin to adorn some lady's breast. And then it was a dot, a
+point of light indistinguishable among the myriad others hovering in
+this great black void.
+
+The incident of the passing of the asteroid was over. I turned from the
+deck window. My heart leaped. The moment for which all day I had been
+subconsciously longing was at hand. Anita was sitting in a deck chair,
+momentarily alone. Her gaze was on me as I looked her way, and she
+smiled an invitation for me to join her.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+_Unspoken Love_
+
+Unspoken love! I think if I had yielded to the impulse of my heart, I
+would have poured out all those protestations of a lover's ecstasy,
+incongruous here upon this starlit public deck, to a girl I hardly knew.
+I think, too, she might have received them with a tender acquiescence.
+The starlight was mirrored in her dark eyes. Misty eyes, with great
+reaches of unfathomable space in their depths. Yet I felt their
+tenderness.
+
+Unfathomable strangeness of love! Who am I to write of it, with all the
+poets of all the ages striving to express the unexpressible? A bond,
+strangely fashioned by nature, between me and this little dark-haired
+Earth beauty. As though marked by the stars we were destined to be
+lovers....
+
+Thus ran the romance of my unspoken thoughts. But I was sitting quietly
+in the deck chair, striving to regard her gentle beauty impersonally.
+And saying:
+
+"But Miss Prince, why are you and your brother going to Ferrok-Shahn?
+His business--"
+
+Even as I voiced it, I hated myself for such a question. So nimble is
+the human mind that mingled with my rhapsodies of love was my need for
+information of George Prince....
+
+"Oh," she said, "this is pleasure, not business, for George." It seemed
+to me that a shadow crossed her expressive face. But it was gone in an
+instant, and she smiled. "We have always wanted to travel. We are alone
+in the world, you know--our parents died when we were children."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I filled in her pause. "You will like Mars--so many interesting things
+to see."
+
+She nodded. "Yes, I understand so. Our Earth is so much the same all
+over, cast all in one mould."
+
+"But a hundred or two hundred years ago it was not, Miss Prince. I have
+read how the picturesque Orient, differing from--well, Great-New York,
+or London, for instance--"
+
+"Transportation did that," she interrupted eagerly. "Made everything the
+same--the people all look alike--dress alike."
+
+We discussed it. She had an alert, eager mind, childlike with its
+curiosity, yet strangely matured. And her manner was naively earnest.
+Yet this was no clinging vine, this little Anita Prince. There was a
+firmness, a hint of masculine strength in her chin, and in her manner.
+
+"If I were a man, what wonders I could achieve in this marvelous age!"
+Her sense of humor made her laugh at herself. "Easy for a girl to say
+that," she added.
+
+"You have greater wonders to achieve, Miss Prince," I said impulsively.
+
+"Yes? What are they?" She had a very frank and level gaze, devoid of
+coquetry.
+
+My heart was pounding. "The wonders of the next generation. A little
+son, cast in your own gentle image--"
+
+What madness, this clumsy brash talk! I choked it off.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But she took no offense. The dark rose-petals of her cheeks were mantled
+deeper red, but she laughed.
+
+"That is true." She turned abruptly serious. "I should not laugh. The
+wonders of the next generation--conquering humans marching on...." Her
+voice trailed away. My hand went to her arm. Strange tingling something
+which poets call love! It burned and surged from my trembling fingers
+into the flesh of her forearm.
+
+The starlight glowed in her eyes. She seemed to be gazing, not at the
+silver-lit deck, but away into distant reaches of the future. And she
+murmured:
+
+"A little son, cast in my own gentle image. But with the strength of his
+father...."
+
+Our moment. Just a breathless moment given us as we sat there with my
+hand burning her arm, as though we both might be seeing ourselves joined
+in a new individual--a little son, cast in his mother's gentle image and
+with the strength of his father. Our moment, and then it was over. A
+step sounded. I sat back. The giant gray figure of Miko came past, his
+great cloak swaying, with his clanking sword-ornament beneath it. His
+bullet head, with its close-clipped hair, was hatless. He gazed at us,
+swaggered past, and turned the deck corner.
+
+Our moment was gone. Anita said conventionally, "It has been pleasant to
+talk with you, Mr. Haljan."
+
+"But we'll have many more," I said. "Ten days--"
+
+"You think we'll reach Ferrok-Shahn on schedule?"
+
+"Yes. I think so.... As I was saying, Miss Prince, you'll enjoy Mars. A
+strange, aggressively forward-looking people."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An oppression seemed on her. She stirred in her chair.
+
+"Yes, they are," she said vaguely. "My brother and I know many Martians
+in Great-New York." She checked herself abruptly. Was she sorry she had
+said that? It seemed so.
+
+Miko was coming back. He stopped this time before us.
+
+"Your brother would see you, Anita. He sent me to bring you to his
+room."
+
+The glance he shot me had a touch of insolence. I stood up, and he
+towered a head over me.
+
+Anita said, "Oh yes. I'll come."
+
+I bowed. "I will see you again, Miss Prince. I thank you for a pleasant
+half-hour."
+
+The Martian led her away. Her little figure was like a child with a
+giant. It seemed, as they passed the length of the deck with me staring
+after them, that he took her arm roughly. And that she shrank from him
+in fear.
+
+And they did not go inside. As though to show me that he had merely
+taken her from me, he stopped at a distant deck window and stood talking
+to her. Once he picked her up as one would pick up a child to show it
+some distant object through the window.
+
+"A little son with the strength of his father...." Her words echoed in
+my mind. Was Anita afraid of this Martian's wooing? Yet held to him by
+some power he might have over her brother? The vagrant thought struck
+me.
+
+Was it that?
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+_A Scream in the Night_
+
+We kept, on the Planetara, always the time and routine of our port of
+departure. The rest of that afternoon and evening were a blank of
+confusion to me. Anita's words; the touch of my hand upon her arm; that
+vast realm of what might be for us, like a glimpse of a magic land of
+happiness which I had seen in her eyes, and perhaps she had seen in
+mine--all this surged within me.
+
+I wandered about the vessel. I was not hungry. I did not go to the
+dining salon for dinner. I carried Johnson food and water to his cage;
+and sat, with my heat-cylinder upon him, listening to his threats of
+what would happen when he could complain to the Line's higher
+officials.
+
+But what was Johnson doing carrying a plan of the ship's control rooms
+in his pockets? And worse: How had he dared open Snap's box in the
+helio-room and abstract the code pass-words for this voyage? Without
+them we would be an outlawed vessel, subject to arrest if any patrol
+hailed us. Had Johnson been planning to sell those pass-words to Miko? I
+thought so. I tried to get the confession out of him, but could not.
+
+I had a brief consultation with Captain Carter. He was genuinely
+apprehensive now. The Planetara carried no long-range guns, and very few
+side-arms. A half-dozen of the heat-ray hand projectors; a few
+old-fashioned weapons of explosion-rifles and automatic revolvers. And
+hand projectors with the new Benson curve-light. We had models of this
+for curved vision, so that one might see around a corner, so to speak.
+And with them, we could project the heat-ray in a curve as well.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The weapons were all in Carter's chart-room, save the few we officers
+always carried. Carter was apprehensive, but of what he could not say.
+He had not thought that our plan to stop at the Moon for treasure could
+affect this outward voyage. Any danger would be upon the way back, when
+the Planetara would be adequately guarded with long-range electronic
+guns, and manned with police-soldiers.
+
+But now we were practically defenseless....
+
+I had a moment with Venza, but she had nothing new to communicate to
+me.
+
+And for half an hour I chatted with George Prince. He seemed a gay,
+pleasant young man. I could almost have fancied I liked him. Or was it
+because he was Anita's brother? He told me how he looked forward to
+traveling with her on Mars. No, he had never been there before, he
+said.
+
+He had a measure of Anita's earnest naive personality. Or was he a very
+clever scoundrel, with irony lurking in his soft voice, and a chuckle
+that he could so befool me?
+
+"We'll talk again, Haljan. You interest me--I've enjoyed it."
+
+He sauntered away from me, joining the saturnine Ob Hahn, with whom
+presently I heard him discussing religion.
+
+The arrest of Johnson had caused considerable comment among the
+passengers. A few had seen me drag him forward to the cage. The incident
+had been the subject of passenger discussion all afternoon. Captain
+Carter had posted a notice to the effect that Johnson's accounts had
+been found in serious error, and that Dr. Frank for this voyage would
+act in his stead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was near midnight when Snap and I closed and sealed the helio-room
+and started for the chart-room, where we were to meet with Captain
+Carter and the other officers. The passengers had nearly all retired. A
+game was in progress in the smoking room, but the deck was almost
+deserted.
+
+Snap and I were passing along one of the interior corridors. The
+stateroom doors, with the illumined names of the passengers, were all
+closed. The metal grid of the floor echoed our footsteps. Snap was in
+advance of me. His body suddenly rose in the air. He went like a balloon
+to the ceiling, struck it gently, and all in a heap came floating down
+and landed on the floor!
+
+"What in the infernal!--"
+
+He was laughing as he picked himself up. But it was a brief laugh. We
+knew what had happened: the artificial gravity-controls in the base of
+the ship, which by magnetic force gave us normality aboard, were being
+tampered with! For just this instant, this particular small section of
+this corridor had been cut off. The slight bulk of the Planetara,
+floating in space, had no appreciable gravity pull on Snap's body, and
+the impulse of his step as he came to the unmagnetized area of the
+corridor had thrown him to the ceiling. The area was normal now. Snap
+and I tested it gingerly.
+
+He gripped me. "That never went wrong by accident, Gregg! Someone down
+there--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We rushed to the nearest descending ladder. In the deserted lower room
+the bank of dials stood neglected. A score of dials and switches were
+here, governing the magnetism of different areas of the ship. There
+should have been a night operator, but he was gone.
+
+Then we saw him lying nearby, sprawled face down on the floor! In the
+silence and dim lurid glow of the fluorescent tubes, we stood holding
+our breaths, peering and listening. No one here.
+
+The guard was not dead. He lay unconscious from a blow on the head. A
+brawny fellow. We had him revived in a few moments. A broadcast flash of
+the call-buzz brought Dr. Frank in haste from the chart-room.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+We pointed at the unconscious man. "Someone was here," I said hastily.
+"Experimenting with the magnetic switches. Evidently unfamiliar with
+them--pulling one or another to test their workings and so see the
+reactions on the dials."
+
+We told him what had happened to Snap in the upper corridor.
+
+Dr. Frank revived the guard in a moment. He was no worse off for the
+episode, save a lump on his head, and a nasty headache.
+
+But he had little to tell us. He had heard a step. Saw nothing--and
+then had been struck on the head, by some invisible assailant.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We left him nursing his head, sitting belligerent at his post. Armed now
+with my heat-ray cylinder which I loaned him.
+
+"Strange doings this voyage," he told us. "All the crew knows it--all
+been talkin' about it. I stick it out now, but when we get back home I'm
+done with this star travelin'. I belong on the sea anyway. A good old
+freighter is all right for me."
+
+We hurried back to the upper level. We would indeed have to plan
+something at this chart-room conference. This was the first tangible
+attack our adversaries had made.
+
+We were on the passenger deck headed for the chart-room when all three
+of us stopped short, frozen with horror. Through the silent passenger
+quarters a scream rang out! A girl's shuddering, gasping scream. Terror
+in it. Horror. Or a scream of agony. In the silence of the dully
+vibrating ship it was utterly horrible. It lasted an instant--a single
+long scream; then was abruptly stilled.
+
+And with blood pounding my temples and rushing like ice through my
+veins, I recognized it.
+
+Anita!
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_The Murder in A 22_
+
+"Good God, what was that?" Dr. Frank's face had gone white in the
+starlight. Snap stood like a statue of horror.
+
+The deck here was patched as always, silver radiance from the deck
+ports. The empty deck chairs stood about. The scream was stilled, but
+now we heard a commotion inside--the rasp of opening cabin doors;
+questions from frightened passengers; the scurry of feet.
+
+I found my voice. "Anita! Anita Prince!"
+
+"Come on!" shouted Snap. "Was it the Prince girl? I thought so too! In
+her stateroom, A 22!" He was dashing for the lounge archway.
+
+Dr. Frank and I followed. I realized that we passed the deck door and
+window of A 22. But they were dark, and evidently sealed on the inside.
+The dim lounge was in a turmoil; passengers standing at their cabin
+doors. I heard Sir Arthur Coniston:
+
+"I say, what was that?"
+
+"Over there," said another man. "Come back inside, Martha." He shoved
+his wife back. "Mr. Haljan!" He plucked at me as I went past.
+
+I shouted, "Go back to your rooms! We want order here--keep back!"
+
+We came to the twin doors of A 22 and A 20. Both were closed. Dr. Frank
+was in advance of Snap and me. He paused at the sound of Captain
+Carter's voice behind us.
+
+"Was it from in there? Wait a moment!"
+
+Carter dashed up; he had a large heat-ray projector in his hand. He
+shoved us aside. "Let me in first. Is the door sealed? Gregg, keep those
+passengers back!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The door was not sealed. Carter burst into the room. I heard him gasp,
+"Good God!"
+
+Snap and I shoved back three or four crowding passengers, and in that
+instant Dr. Frank had been in the room and out again.
+
+"There's been an accident! Get back, Gregg! Snap, help him keep the
+crowd away." He shoved me forcibly.
+
+From within, Carter was shouting, "Keep them out! Where are you, Frank?
+Come back here! Send a flash for Balch--I want Balch!"
+
+Dr. Frank went back into the room and banged the cabin door upon Snap
+and me. I was unarmed--I had loaned my cylinder to the guard in the
+lower corridor. Weapon in hand, Snap forced the panic-stricken
+passengers back to their rooms.
+
+"It's all right! An accident! Miss Prince is hurt."
+
+Snap reassured them glibly; but he knew no more about it than I. Moa,
+with a night-robe drawn tight around her thin, tall figure, edged up to
+me.
+
+"What has happened, Set Haljan?"
+
+I gazed around for her brother Miko, but did not see him.
+
+"An accident," I said shortly. "Go back to your room. Captain's
+orders."
+
+She eyed me and then retreated. Snap was threatening everybody with his
+cylinder. Balch dashed up. "What in the hell? Where's Carter?"
+
+"In there." I pounded on A 22. It opened cautiously. I could see only
+Carter, but I heard the murmuring voice of Dr. Frank through the
+interior connecting door to A 20.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The captain rasped, "Get out, Haljan! Oh, is that you, Balch? Come in."
+He admitted the older officer and slammed the door again upon me. And
+immediately reopened it.
+
+"Gregg, keep the passengers quiet. Tell them everything's all right.
+Miss Prince got frightened, that's all. Then go up to the turret. Tell
+Blackstone what's happened."
+
+"But I don't know what's happened," I protested miserably.
+
+Carter was grim and white. He whispered, "I think it may turn out to be
+murder, Gregg! No, not dead yet--Dr. Frank is trying--Don't stand there
+like an ass, man! Get to the turret! Verify our trajectory--no--wait--"
+
+The captain was almost incoherent. "Wait a minute, I don't mean that!
+Tell Snap to watch his helio-room. Gregg, you and Blackstone stay in the
+chart-room. Arm yourselves and guard our weapons. By God, this murderer,
+whoever he is--"
+
+I stammered, "If--if she dies--will you flash us word?"
+
+He stared at me strangely. "I'll be there presently, Gregg."
+
+He slammed the door upon me.
+
+I followed his orders, but it was like a dream of horror. The turmoil of
+the ship gradually quieted. Snap went to the helio-room; Blackstone and
+I sat in the tiny steel chart-room. How much time passed, I do not
+know. I was confused. Anita hurt! She might die.... Murdered.... But
+why? By whom? Had George Prince been in his own room when the attack
+came? I thought now I recalled hearing the low murmur of his voice in
+there with Dr. Frank and Carter.
+
+Where was Miko? It stabbed at me. I had not seen him among the
+passengers in the lounge.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Carter came into the chart-room. "Gregg, you get to bed--you look like a
+ghost!"
+
+"But--"
+
+"She's not dead--she may live. Dr. Frank and her brother are with her.
+They're doing all they can." He told us what had happened. Anita and
+George Prince had both been asleep, each in their respective rooms.
+Someone unknown had opened Anita's corridor door.
+
+"Wasn't it sealed?" I demanded.
+
+"Yes. But the intruder opened it."
+
+"Burst it? I didn't think it was broken."
+
+"It wasn't broken. The assailant opened it somehow, and assaulted Miss
+Prince--shot her in the chest with a heat-ray. Her left lung."
+
+"She is conscious?" Balch demanded.
+
+"Yes. But she did not see who did it. Nor did Prince. Her scream
+awakened him, but the intruder evidently fled out the corridor door of
+A 22, the way he entered."
+
+I stood weak and shaken at the chart-room entrance. "A little son, cast
+in the gentle image of his mother. But with the strength of his
+father...." But Anita--dying, perhaps; and all my dreams were fading
+into a memory of what might have been.
+
+"You go to bed, Gregg--we don't need you."
+
+I was glad enough to get away. I would lie down for an hour, and then go
+to Anita's stateroom. I'd demand that Dr. Frank let me see her, if only
+for a moment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I went to the stern deck-space where my cubby was located. My mind was
+confused, but some instinct within me made me verify the seals of my
+door and window. They were intact. I entered cautiously, switched on the
+dimmer of the tube-lights, and searched the room. It had only a bunk, my
+tiny desk, a chair and clothes robe.
+
+There was no evidence of any intruder here. I set my door and window
+alarm. Then I audiphoned to the helio-room.
+
+"Snap?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+I told him about Anita. Carter cut in on us from the chart-room. "Stop
+that, you fools!"
+
+We cut off. Fully dressed, I flung myself on my bed. Anita might
+die....
+
+I must have fallen into a tortured sleep. I was awakened by the sound of
+my alarm buzzer. Someone was tampering with my door! Then the buzzer
+ceased; the marauder outside must have found a way of silencing it. But
+it had done its work--awakened me.
+
+I had switched off the light; my cubby was Stygian dark. A heat-cylinder
+was in the bunk-bracket over my head; I searched for it, pried it loose
+softly.
+
+I was fully awake. Alert. I could hear a faint sizzling--someone outside
+trying to unseal the door. In the darkness, cylinder in hand, I crept
+from the bunk. Crouched at the door. This time I would capture or kill
+this night prowler.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sizzling was faintly audible. My door-seal was breaking. Upon
+impulse I reached for the door, jerked it open.
+
+No one there! The starlit segment of deck was empty. But I had leaped,
+and I struck a solid body, crouching in the doorway. A giant man. Miko!
+
+His electronized metallic robe burned my hands. I lunged against him--I
+was almost as surprised as he. I shot, but the stab of heat evidently
+missed him.
+
+The shock of my encounter close-circuited his robe; he materialized in
+the starlight. A brief, savage encounter. He struck the weapon from my
+hand. He had dropped his hydrogen torch, and tried to grip me. But I
+twisted away from his hold.
+
+"So it's you!"
+
+"Be quiet, Gregg Haljan! I only want to talk."
+
+Without warning, a stab of radiance shot from a weapon in his hand. It
+caught me. Ran like ice through my veins. Seized and numbed my limbs.
+
+I fell helpless to the deck. Nerves and muscles paralyzed. My tongue was
+thick and inert. I could not speak, nor move. But I could see Miko
+bending over me. And hear him:
+
+"I don't want to kill you, Haljan. We need you."
+
+He gathered me up like a bundle in his huge arms; carried me swiftly
+across the deserted deck.
+
+Snap's helio-room in the network under the dome was diagonally overhead.
+A white actinic light shot from it--caught us, bathed us. Snap had been
+awake; had heard the slight commotion of our encounter.
+
+His voice rang shrilly: "Stop! I'll shoot!" His warning siren rang out
+to arouse the ship. His spotlight clung to us.
+
+Miko ran with me a few steps. Then he cursed and dropped me, fled away.
+I fell like a sack of carbide to the deck. My senses faded into
+blackness....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"He's all right now."
+
+I was in the chart-room, with Captain Carter, Snap and Dr. Frank bending
+over me. The surgeon said,
+
+"Can you speak now, Gregg?"
+
+I tried it. My tongue was thick, but it would move. "Yes."
+
+I was soon revived. I sat up, with Dr. Frank vigorously rubbing me.
+
+"I'm all right." I told them what had happened.
+
+Captain Carter said abruptly, "Yes, we know that. And it was Miko also
+who killed Anita Prince. She told us before she died."
+
+"Died!..." I leaped to my feet. "She ... died...."
+
+"Yes, Gregg. An hour ago, Miko got into her stateroom and tried to force
+his love on her. She repulsed him--he killed her."
+
+It struck me blank. And then with a rush came the thought, "He says Miko
+killed her...."
+
+I heard myself stammering, "Why--why we must get him!" I gathered my
+wits; a surge of hate swept me; a wild desire for vengeance.
+
+"Why, by God, where is he? Why don't you go get him? I'll get him--I'll
+kill him, I tell you!"
+
+"Easy, Gregg!" Dr. Frank gripped me.
+
+The captain said gently, "We know how you feel, Gregg. She told us
+before she died."
+
+"I'll bring him in here to you! But I'll kill him, I tell you!"
+
+"No you won't, lad. You're hysterical now. We don't want him killed, not
+attacked even. Not yet. We'll explain later."
+
+They sat me down, calming me.
+
+Anita dead. The door of the shining garden was closed. A brief glimpse,
+given to me and to her of what might have been. And now she was
+dead....
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+_A Speck of Human Earth-dust, Falling Free...._
+
+I had not been able at first to understand why Captain Carter wanted
+Miko left at liberty. Within me there was that cry of vengeance, as
+though to strike Miko down would somehow lessen my own grief at
+Anita's loss. Whatever Carter's purpose, Snap had not known it. But
+Balch and Dr. Frank were in the captain's confidence--all three of
+them working on some plan of action. Snap and I argued it, and thought
+we could fathom it; and in spite of my desire to kill Miko, the thing
+looked reasonable.
+
+It was obvious that at least two of our passengers were plotting with
+Miko and George Prince; trying during this voyage to learn what they
+could about Grantline's activities on the Moon; scheming doubtless to
+seize the treasure when the Planetara stopped at the Moon on the return
+voyage. I thought I could name those masquerading passengers. Ob Hahn,
+supposedly a Venus Mystic. And Rance Rankin, who called himself an
+American magician. Those two, Snap and I agreed, seemed most suspicious.
+And there was the purser.
+
+With my hysteria still on me, I sat for a time on the deck outside the
+chart-room with Snap. Then Carter summoned us back, and we sat listening
+while he, Balch and Dr. Frank went on with their conference. Listening
+to them I could not but agree that our best plan was to secure evidence
+which would incriminate all who were concerned in the plot. Miko, we
+were convinced, had been the Martian who followed Snap and me from
+Halsey's office in Great-New York. George Prince had doubtless been the
+invisible eavesdropper outside the helio-room. He knew, and had told the
+others, that Grantline had found radium-ore on the Moon--that the
+Planetara would stop there on the way home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But we could not incarcerate George Prince for being an eavesdropper.
+Nor had we the faintest tangible evidence against Ob Hahn or Rance
+Rankin. And even the purser would probably be released by the
+Interplanetary Court of Ferrok-Shahn when it heard our evidence.
+
+There was only Miko. We could arrest him for the murder of Anita. But
+the others would be put on their guard. It was Carter's idea to let Miko
+remain at liberty for a time and see if we could not identify and
+incriminate his fellows. The murder of Anita obviously had nothing to do
+with any plot against the Grantline Moon treasure.
+
+"Why," exclaimed Balch, "there might be--probably are--huge Martian
+interests concerned in this thing. These men here aboard are only
+emissaries, making this voyage to learn what they can. When they get to
+Ferrok-Shahn they'll make their report, and then we'll have a real
+danger on our hands. Why, an outlaw ship could be launched from
+Ferrok-Shahn that would beat us back to the Moon--and Grantline is
+entirely without warning of any danger!"
+
+It seemed obvious. Unscrupulous, moneyed criminals in Ferrok-Shahn would
+be dangerous indeed, once these details of Grantline were given them.
+And so now it was decided that in the remaining nine days of our outward
+voyage, we would attempt to secure enough evidence to arrest all these
+plotters.
+
+"I'll have them all in the cage when we land," Carter declared grimly.
+"They'll make no report to their principals. The thing will end, be
+stamped out!"
+
+Ah, the futile plans of men!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet we thought it practical. We were all doubly armed now. Explosive
+bullet-projectors and the heat-ray cylinders. And we had several
+eavesdropping microphones which we planned to use whenever occasion
+offered.
+
+It was now, Earth Eastern Time, A. M. Twenty-eight hours only of this
+eventful voyage were passed. The Planetara was some six million miles
+from the Earth; it blazed behind us, a tremendous giant.
+
+The body of Anita was being made ready for burial. George Prince was
+still in his stateroom. Glutz, effeminate little hairdresser, who waxed
+rich acting as beauty doctor for the women passengers, and who in his
+youth had been an undertaker, had gone with Dr. Frank to prepare the
+body.
+
+Gruesome details. I tried not to think of them. I sat, numbed, in the
+chart-room.
+
+An astronomical burial--there was little precedent for it. I dragged
+myself to the stern deck-space where, at five A. M., the ceremony took
+place. Most of the passengers were asleep, unaware of all this--which
+was why Carter hastened it.
+
+We were a solemn little group, gathered there in the checkered starlight
+with the great vault of the heavens around us. A dismantled electronic
+projector--necessary when a long-range gun was mounted--had been rigged
+up in one of the deck ports.
+
+They brought out the body. I stood apart, gazing reluctantly at the
+small bundle, wrapped like a mummy in a dark metallic screen-cloth. A
+patch of black silk rested over her face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Four cabin stewards carried her. And beside her walked George Prince. A
+long black robe covered him, but his head was bare. And suddenly he
+reminded me of the ancient play-character of Hamlet. His black, wavy
+hair; his finely chiseled, pallid face, set now in a stern, patrician
+cast. And staring, I realized that however much of a villain this man
+not yet thirty might be, at this instant, walking beside the body of his
+dead sister, he was stricken with grief. He loved that sister with whom
+he had lived since childhood; and to see him now, with his set white
+face, no one could doubt it.
+
+The little procession stopped in a patch of starlight by the port. They
+rested the body on a bank of chairs. The black-robed Chaplain, roused
+from his bed and still trembling from excitement of this sudden,
+inexplicable death on board, said a brief, solemn little prayer. An
+appeal: That the Almighty Ruler of all these blazing worlds might guard
+the soul of this gentle girl whose mortal remains were now to be
+returned to Him.
+
+Ah, if ever God seemed hovering close, it was now at this instant, on
+this starlit deck floating in the black void of space.
+
+Then Carter for just a moment removed the black shroud from her face. I
+saw her brother gaze silently; saw him stoop and implant a kiss--and
+turn away. I did not want to look, but I found myself moving slowly
+forward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She lay, so beautiful. Her face, white and calm and peaceful in death.
+My sight blurred. Words seemed to echo: "A little son, cast in the
+gentle image of his mother...."
+
+"Easy, Gregg!" Snap was whispering to me. He had his arm around me.
+"Come on away!"
+
+They tied the shroud over her face. I did not see them as they put her
+body in the tube, sent it through the exhaust-chamber, and dropped it.
+
+But a moment later I saw it--a small black oblong bundle--hovering
+beside us. It was perhaps a hundred feet away, circling us. Held by the
+Planetara's bulk, it had momentarily become our satellite. It swung
+around us like a moon. Gruesome satellite, by nature's laws forever to
+follow us.
+
+Then from another tube at the bow, Blackstone operated a small
+Zed-co-ray projector. Its dull light caught the floating bundle,
+neutralizing its metallic wrappings.
+
+It swung off at a tangent. Speeding. Falling free in the dome of the
+heavens. A rotating black oblong. But in a moment distance dwindled it
+to a speck. A dull silver dot with the sunlight on it. A speck of human
+Earth-dust, falling free....
+
+It vanished. Anita--gone. In my heart was an echo of the prayer that the
+Almighty might watch over her and guard her always....
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+_The Electrical Eavesdropper_
+
+I turned from the deck. Miko was near me! So he had dared to show
+himself here among us! But I realized that he could not be aware we knew
+he was the murderer. George Prince had been asleep, had not seen Miko
+with Anita. Miko, with impulsive rage, had shot the girl and escaped. No
+doubt now he was cursing himself for having done it. And he could very
+well assume that Anita had died without regaining consciousness to tell
+who had killed her.
+
+He gazed at me now, here on the deck. I thought for an instant he was
+coming over to talk to me. Though he probably considered he was not
+suspected of the murder of Anita, he realized, of course, that his
+attack on me was known; he must have wondered what action Captain Carter
+would take.
+
+But he did not approach me; he moved away, and went inside. Moa had been
+near him; and as though by pre-arrangement with him she now accosted
+me.
+
+"I want to speak to you, Set Haljan."
+
+"Go ahead."
+
+I felt an instinctive aversion for this Martian girl. Yet she was not
+unattractive. Over six feet tall, straight and slim. Sleek blond hair.
+Rather a handsome face. Not gray, like the burly Miko, but pink and
+white. Stern-lipped, yet feminine, too. She was smiling gravely now. Her
+blue eyes regarded me keenly. She said gently:
+
+"A sad occurrence, Gregg Haljan. And mysterious. I would not question
+you--"
+
+"Is that all you have to say?" I demanded, when she paused.
+
+"No. You are a handsome man, Gregg--attractive to women--to any Martian
+woman."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She said it impulsively. Admiration for me was on her face, in her
+eyes--a man cannot miss it.
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"I mean, I would be your friend. My brother Miko is so sorry about what
+happened between you and him this morning. He only wanted to talk to
+you, and he came to your cubby door--"
+
+"With a torch to break its seal," I interjected.
+
+She waved that away. "He was afraid you would not admit him. He told you
+he would not hurt you."
+
+"And so he struck me with one of your cursed Martian paralyzing rays!"
+
+"He is sorry...."
+
+She seemed gauging me, trying, no doubt, to find out what reprisal would
+be taken against her brother. I felt sure that Moa was as active as a
+man in any plan that was under way to capture the Grantline treasure.
+Miko, with his ungovernable temper, was doing things that put their
+plans in jeopardy.
+
+I demanded abruptly, "What did your brother want to talk to me about?"
+
+"Me," she said surprisingly. "I sent him. A Martian girl goes after what
+she wants. Did you know that?"
+
+She swung on her heel and left me. I puzzled over it. Was that why Miko
+had struck me down, and was carrying me off? Was my accursed masculine
+beauty so attractive to this Martian girl? I did not think so. I could
+not believe that all these incidents were so unrelated to what I knew
+was the main undercurrent. They wanted me, had tried to capture me. For
+something else than because Moa liked my looks....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dr. Frank found me mooning alone.
+
+"Go to bed, Gregg! You look awful."
+
+"I don't want to go to bed."
+
+"Where's Snap?"
+
+"I don't know. He was here a while ago." I had not seen him since the
+burial of Anita.
+
+"The captain wants him." The surgeon left me.
+
+Within an hour the morning siren would arouse the passengers. I was
+seated in a secluded corner of the deck, when George Prince came along.
+He went past me, a slight, somber, dark-robed figure. He had on high,
+thick boots. A hood was over his head, but as he saw me he pushed it
+back and dropped down beside me.
+
+But for a moment he did not speak. His face showed pallid in the pallid
+star-gleams.
+
+"She said you loved her." His soft voice was throaty with emotion.
+
+"Yes." I said it almost against my will. There seemed a bond springing
+between this bereaved brother and me. He added, so softly I could
+barely hear him, "That makes you, I think, almost my friend. And you
+thought you were my enemy."
+
+I held my answer. An incautious tongue running under emotion is a
+dangerous thing. And I was sure of nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He went on, "Almost my friend. Because--we both loved her, and she loved
+us both." He was hardly more than whispering. "And there is aboard--one
+whom we both hate."
+
+"Miko!" It burst from me.
+
+"Yes. But do not say it."
+
+Another silence fell between us. He brushed back the black curls from
+his forehead. And his dark eyes searched mine.
+
+"Have you an eavesdropping microphone, Haljan?"
+
+I hesitated. "Yes."
+
+"I was thinking...." He leaned closer toward me. "If, in half an hour,
+you could use it upon Miko's cabin--I would rather tell you than the
+captain or anyone else. The cabin will be insulated, but I shall find a
+way of cutting off that insulation so that you may hear."
+
+So George Prince had turned with us! The shock of his sister's
+death--himself allied to her murderer!--had been too much for him. He
+was with us!
+
+Yet his help must be given secretly. Miko would kill him in an instant
+if it became known.
+
+He had been watchful of the deck. He stood up now.
+
+"I think that is all."
+
+As he turned away, I murmured, "But I do thank you...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The name Set Miko glowed upon the small metal door. It was in a
+transverse corridor similar to A 22. The corridor was forward of the
+lounge: it opened off the small circular library.
+
+The library was unoccupied and unlighted, dim with only the reflected
+lights from the nearby passages. I crouched behind a cylinder-case. The
+door of Miko's room was in sight, being some thirty feet away from me.
+
+I waited perhaps five minutes. No one entered. Then I realized
+that doubtless the conspirators were already there. I set my tiny
+eavesdropper on the library floor beside me; connected its little
+battery; focused its projector. Was Miko's room insulated? I could not
+tell. There was a small ventilating grid above the door. Across its
+opening, if the room were insulated, a blue sheen of radiance
+would be showing. And there would be a faint hum. But from this
+distance I could not see or hear such details, and I was afraid to
+approach closer. Once in the transverse corridor, I would have no
+place to hide, no way of escape; if anyone approached Miko's door, I
+would be discovered.
+
+I threw the current into my little apparatus. I prayed, if it met
+interference, that the slight sound would pass unnoticed. George Prince
+had said he would make opportunity to disconnect the room's insulation.
+He had evidently done so. I picked up the interior sounds at once; my
+headphone vibrated with them. And with trembling fingers on the little
+dial between my knees as I crouched in the darkness behind the
+cylinder-case, I synchronized.
+
+"Johnson is a fool." It was Miko's voice. "We must have the pass-words."
+
+"He got them from the helio-room." A man's voice; I puzzled over it at
+first, then recognized it. Rance Rankin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miko said, "He is a fool. Walking around this ship as though with
+letters blazoned on his forehead--'Watch me--I need watching--' Hah! No
+wonder they apprehended him!"
+
+Was George Prince in there? Rankin's voice said: "He would have turned
+the papers over to us. I would not blame him too much. What harm--"
+
+"Oh, I'll release him," Miko declared. "What harm? That braying ass did
+us plenty of harm. He has lost the pass-words. Better he had left them
+in the helio-room."
+
+Moa was in the room. Her voice said: "We've got to have them. The
+Planetara, upon such an important voyage as this, may be watched. How do
+we know--"
+
+"It is, no doubt," Rankin said quietly. "We ought to have the
+pass-words. When we are in control of this ship...."
+
+It sent a shiver through me. Were they planning to try and seize the
+Planetara? Now? It seemed so.
+
+"Johnson undoubtedly memorized them," Moa was saying. "When we get him
+out--"
+
+"Hahn is to do that, at the signal." Miko added, "George could do it
+better, perhaps."
+
+And then I heard George Prince for the first time. He murmured, "I will
+try."
+
+"No need," said Miko. "I praise where praise is deserved. And I have
+little praise for you now, George!"
+
+I could not see what happened. A look, perhaps, which Prince could not
+avoid giving this man he had come to hate. Miko doubtless saw it, and
+the Martian's hot anger leaped.
+
+Rankin said hurriedly, "Stop that!"
+
+And Moa: "Let him alone! Sit down, you fool!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I could hear the sound of a scuffle. A blow--a cry, half suppressed,
+from George Prince.
+
+Then Miko: "I will not hurt him. Craven coward! Look at him! Hating
+me--frightened!"
+
+I could fancy George Prince sitting there with murder in his heart, and
+Miko taunting him:
+
+"Hates me now, because I shot his sister!"
+
+Moa: "Hush!"
+
+"I will not! Why should I not say it? I will tell you something else,
+George Prince. It was not Anita I shot at, but you! I meant nothing for
+her, but love. If you had not interfered--"
+
+This was different from what we had figured. George Prince had come in
+from his own room, had tried to rescue his sister, and in the scuffle,
+Anita had taken the shot intended for George.
+
+"I did not even know I had hit her," Miko was saying. "Not until I heard
+she was dead." He added sardonically, "I hoped it was you I had hit,
+George. And I will tell you this: You hate me no more than I hate you.
+If it were not for your knowledge of radium ores--"
+
+"Is this to be a personal wrangle?" Rankin interrupted. "I thought we
+were here to plan--"
+
+"It is planned," Miko said shortly. "I give orders, I do not plan. I am
+waiting now for the moment--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He checked himself. Moa said, "Does Rankin understand that no harm is to
+come to Gregg Haljan?"
+
+"Yes," said Rankin. "And Dean. We need them, of course. But you cannot
+make Dean send messages if he refuses, nor make Haljan navigate."
+
+"I know enough to check on them," Miko said grimly. "They will not fool
+me. And they will obey me, have no fear. A little touch of sulphuric--"
+His laugh was gruesome. "It makes the most stubborn very willing."
+
+"I wish," said Moa, "we had Haljan safely hidden. If he is hurt--killed--"
+
+So that was why Miko had tried to capture me? To keep me safe so that I
+might navigate the ship.
+
+It occurred to me that I should get Carter at once. A plot to seize the
+Planetara? But when?
+
+I froze with startled horror.
+
+The diaphragms at my ears rang with Miko's words: "I have set the time
+for now! In two minutes--"
+
+It seemed to startle both Rankin and George Prince almost as much as I.
+Both exclaimed:
+
+"No!"
+
+"No? Why not? Everyone is at his post!"
+
+Prince repeated: "No!"
+
+And Rankin: "But can we trust them? The stewards--the crew?"
+
+"Eight of them are our own men! You didn't know that, Rankin? They've
+been aboard the Planetara for several voyages. Oh, this is no
+quickly-planned affair, even though we let you in on it so recently. You
+and Johnson. By God!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I crouched tense. There was a commotion in the stateroom. Miko had
+discovered that his insulation was cut off! He had evidently leaped to
+his feet; I heard a chair overturn. And the Martian's roar: "It's off!
+Did you do that, Prince? By God, if I thought--"
+
+My apparatus went suddenly dead as Miko flung on his insulation. I lost
+my wits in the confusion; I should have instantly taken off my
+vibrations. There was interference; it showed in the dark space of the
+ventilator grid over Miko's doorway; a snapping in the air there, a
+swirl of sparks.
+
+I heard with my unaided ears Miko's roar over his insulation: "By God,
+they're listening!"
+
+The scream of a hand-siren sounded from his stateroom. It rang over the
+ship. His signal! I heard it answered from some distant point. And then
+a shot; a commotion in the lower corridors....
+
+The attack upon the Planetara had started!
+
+I was on my feet. The shouts of startled passengers sounded, a turmoil
+beginning everywhere.
+
+I stood momentarily transfixed. The door of Miko's stateroom burst open.
+He stood there, with Moa, Rankin and George Prince crowding behind him.
+
+He saw me. "You, Gregg Haljan!"
+
+He came leaping at me.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+_The Weightless Combat_
+
+I was taken wholly by surprise. There was an instant when I stood
+numbed, fumbling for a weapon at my belt, undecided whether to run or
+stand my ground. Miko was no more than twenty feet from me. He checked
+his forward rush. The light from an overhead tube was on him; I saw in
+his hand the cylinder projector of his paralyzing ray.
+
+I plucked my heat-cylinder from my belt, and fired without taking aim.
+My tiny heat-beam flashed. I must have grazed Miko's hand. His roar of
+anger and pain rang out over the turmoil. He dropped his weapon; then
+stooped to pick it up. But Moa forestalled him. She leaped and seized
+it.
+
+"Careful! Fool--you promised not to hurt him!"
+
+A confusion of swift action. Rankin had turned and darted away. I saw
+George Prince stumbling half in front of the struggling Miko and Moa.
+And I heard footsteps beside me; a hand gripped me, jerked at me.
+
+Over the turmoil Prince's voice sounded: "Gregg--Haljan!"
+
+I recall I had the impression that Prince was frightened; he had half
+fallen in front of Miko. And there was Miko's voice:
+
+"Let go of me!"
+
+And Moa: "Come!"
+
+It was Balch gripping me. "Gregg! This way--run! Get out of here! He'll
+kill you with that ray--"
+
+Miko's ray flashed, but George Prince had knocked at his arm. I did not
+dare fire again. Prince was in the way. Balch, who was unarmed, shoved
+me violently back.
+
+"Gregg--the chart-room!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I turned and ran, with Balch after me. Prince had fallen, or been felled
+by Miko. A flash followed me. Miko's weapon, but again it missed. He did
+not pursue me; he ran the other way, through the port-side door of the
+library.
+
+Balch and I found ourselves in the lounge. Shouting, frightened
+passengers were everywhere. The place was in wild confusion, the whole
+ship ringing now with shouts.
+
+"To the chart-room, Gregg!"
+
+I called to the passengers: "Get back to your rooms!"
+
+I followed Balch. We ran through the archway to the deck. In the
+starlight I saw figures scurrying aft, but none were near us. The deck
+forward was dim with heavy shadows. The oval window and door of the
+chart-room were blue-yellow from the tube-lights inside. No one seemed
+on the deck there; and then, as we approached, I saw, further forward in
+the bow, the trap-door to the cage standing open. Johnson had been
+released.
+
+From one of the chart-room windows a heat-ray sizzled. It barely missed
+us. Balch shouted, "Carter--don't!"
+
+The captain called, "Oh--you, Balch--and Haljan--"
+
+He came out on the deck as we rushed up. His left arm was dangling
+limp.
+
+"God--this--" He got no further. From the turret overhead a tiny
+search-beam came down and disclosed us. Blackstone was supposed to be on
+duty up there, with a course-master at the controls. But, glancing up, I
+saw, illumined by the turret lights, the figures of Ob Hahn in his
+purple-white robe, and Johnson the purser. And on the turret balcony,
+two fallen men--Blackstone and the course-master.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Johnson was training the spotlight on us. And Hahn fired a Martian ray.
+It struck Balch beside me. He dropped.
+
+Carter was shouting, "Inside! Gregg, get inside!"
+
+I stopped to raise up Balch. Another beam came down. A heat-ray this
+time. It caught the fallen Balch full in the chest, piercing him
+through. The smell of his burning flesh rose to sicken me. He was dead.
+I dropped his body. Carter shoved me into the chart-room.
+
+In the small, steel-lined room, Carter and I slid the door closed. We
+were alone here. The thing had come so quickly it had taken Captain
+Carter, like us all, wholly unawares. We had anticipated spying
+eavesdroppers, but not this open brigandage. No more than a minute or
+two had passed since Miko's siren in his stateroom had given the signal
+for the attack. Carter had been in the chart-room. Blackstone was in the
+turret. At the outbreak of confusion, Carter dashed out to see Hahn
+releasing Johnson from the cage. From the forward chart-room window now
+I could see where Hahn with a torch had broken the cage-seal. The torch
+lay on the deck. There had been an exchange of shots; Carter's arm was
+paralyzed; Johnson and Hahn had escaped.
+
+Carter was as confused as I. There had simultaneously been an encounter
+up in the turret. Blackstone and the course-master were killed. The
+lookout had been shot from his post in the forward observatory. His body
+dangled now, twisted half in and half out of his window.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We could see several of Miko's men--erstwhile members of our crew and
+steward-corps--scurrying from the turret along the upper bridges toward
+the dark and silent helio-room. Snap was up there. But was he? The
+helio-room glowed suddenly with dim light, but there was no evidence of
+a fight there. The fighting seemed mostly below the deck, down in the
+hull-corridors. A blended horror of sounds came up to us. Screams,
+shouts, and the hissing and snapping of ray weapons. Our crew--such of
+them as were loyal--were making a stand down below. But it was brief.
+Within a minute it died away. The passengers, amidships in the
+superstructure, were still shouting. Then above them Miko's roar
+sounded.
+
+"Be quiet! Go in your rooms--you will not be harmed."
+
+The brigands in these few minutes were in control of the ship. All but
+this little chart-room, where, with most of the ship's weapons, Carter
+and I were intrenched.
+
+"God, Gregg, that this should come upon us!"
+
+Carter was fumbling with the chart-room weapons. "Here, Gregg, help me.
+What have you got? Heat-ray? That's all I had ready."
+
+It struck me then as I helped him make the connections that Carter in
+this crisis was at best an inefficient commander. His red face had gone
+splotchy purple; his hands were trembling. Skilled as captain of a
+peaceful liner, he was at a loss now. Nor could I blame him. It is easy
+to say we might have taken warning, done this or that, and come
+triumphant through this attack. But only the fool looks backward and
+says, "I would have done better."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I tried to summon my wits. The ship was lost to us, unless Carter and I
+could do something. Our futile weapons! They were all here--four or
+five heat-ray hand projectors that could send a pencil-ray a hundred
+feet or so. I shot one diagonally up at the turret where Johnson was
+leering down at our rear window, but he saw my gesture and dropped back
+out of sight. The heat-beam flashed harmlessly up and struck the turret
+roof. Then across the turret window came a sheen of radiance--an
+electro-barrage. And behind it, Hahn's suave, evil face appeared. He
+shouted down:
+
+"We have orders to spare you, Gregg Haljan--or you would have been
+killed long ago!"
+
+My answering shot hit his barrage with a shower of sparks, behind which
+he stood unmoved.
+
+Carter handed me another weapon. "Gregg, try this."
+
+I levelled the old explosive bullet projector; Carter crouched beside
+me. But before I could press the trigger, from somewhere down the
+starlit deck an electro-beam hit me. The little rifle exploded, burst
+its breech. I sank back to the floor, tingling from the shock of the
+hostile current. My hands were blackened from the exploding powder.
+
+Carter seized me. "No use! Hurt?"
+
+"No."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The stars through the dome-windows were swinging. A long swing--the
+shadows and starlit patches on the deck were all shifting. The Planetara
+was turning. The heavens revolved in a great round sweep of movement,
+then settled as we took our new course. Hahn at the turret controls had
+swung us. The earth and the sun showed over our bow quarter. The
+sunlight mingled red-yellow with the brilliant starlight. Hahn's signals
+were sounding; I heard them answered from the mechanism rooms down
+below. Brigands there--in full control. The gravity plates were being
+set to the new positions; we were on our new course. Headed a point or
+two off the Earth-line. Not headed for the moon? I wondered.
+
+Carter and I were planning nothing. What was there to plan? We were
+under observation. A Martian paralyzing ray--or electronic beam, far
+more deadly than our own puny police weapons--would have struck us the
+instant we tried to leave the chart-room.
+
+My swift-running thoughts were interrupted by a shout from down the
+deck. At a corner of the cabin superstructure some fifty feet from our
+windows the figure of Miko appeared. A barrage-radiance hung around him
+like a shimmering mantle. His voice sounded:
+
+"Gregg Haljan, do you yield?"
+
+Carter leaped up from where he and I were crouching. Against all reason
+of safety he leaned from the low window, waving his hamlike fist.
+
+"Yield? No! I am in command here, you pirate! Brigand--murderer!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I pushed him back. "Careful!"
+
+He was spluttering, and over it Miko's sardonic laugh sounded. "Very
+well--but you will talk? Shall we argue about it?"
+
+I stood up. "What do you want to say, Miko?"
+
+Behind him the tall, thin figure of his sister showed. She was plucking
+at him. He turned violently.
+
+"I won't hurt him! Gregg Haljan--is this a truce? You will not shoot?"
+He was shielding Moa.
+
+"No," I called. "For a moment, no. A truce. What is it you want to
+say?"
+
+I could hear the babble of passengers who were herded in the cabin with
+brigands guarding them. George Prince, bareheaded, but shrouded in his
+cloak, showed in a patch of light behind Moa. He looked my way and then
+retreated into the lounge archway.
+
+Miko called, "You must yield. We want you, Haljan."
+
+"No doubt," I jeered.
+
+"Alive. It is easy to kill you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I could not doubt that. Carter and I were little more than rats in a
+trap, here in the chart-room. But Miko wanted to take me alive: that was
+not so simple. He added persuasively:
+
+"We want you to help us navigate. Will you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Will you help us, Captain Carter? Tell your cub, this Haljan, to yield.
+You are fools. We understand that Haljan has been handling the ship's
+mathematics. Him we need most."
+
+Carter roared: "Get back from there! This is no truce!"
+
+I shoved aside his levelled bullet-projector. "Wait a minute!" I called
+to Miko. "Navigate--where?"
+
+"Oh," he retorted, "that is our business, not yours. When you lay down
+your weapons and come out of there, I will give you the course."
+
+"Back to the earth?" I suggested.
+
+I could fancy him grinning behind the sheen of his barrage at my
+question.
+
+"The earth? Yes--shall we go there? Give me your orders, Gregg Haljan.
+Of course I will obey them."
+
+His sardonic words were interrupted. And I realized that all this parley
+was a ruse of Miko's to take me alive. He had made a gesture. Hahn,
+watching from the turret window, doubtless flashed a signal down to the
+hull-corridors. The magnetizer control under the chart-room was
+altered, our artificial gravity cut off. I felt the sudden lightness; I
+gripped the window casement and clung. Carter was startled into
+incautious movement. It flung him out into the center of the chart-room,
+his arms and legs grotesquely flailing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And across the chart-room, in the opposite window, I felt rather than
+saw the shape of something. A figure--almost invisible, but not
+quite--was trying to climb in! I flung the empty rifle I was holding. It
+hit something solid in the window; in a flare of sparks a black-hooded
+figure materialized. A man climbing in! His weapon spat. There was a
+tiny electronic flash, deadly silent. The intruder had shot at Carter;
+struck him. Carter gave one queer scream. He had floated to the floor;
+his convulsive movement when he was hit hurled him to the ceiling. His
+body struck, twitched; bounced back and sank inert on the floor-grid
+almost at my feet.
+
+I clung to the casement. Across the space of the weightless room the
+hooded intruder was also clinging. His hood fell back. It was Johnson.
+He leered at me.
+
+"Killed him, the bully! Well, he deserved it. Now for you, Mr. Third
+Officer Haljan!"
+
+But he did not dare fire at me--Miko had forbidden it. I saw him reach
+under his robe, doubtless for a low-powered paralyzing ray such as Miko
+already had used on me. But he never got it out. I had no weapon within
+reach. I leaned into the room, still holding the casement, and doubled
+my legs under me. I kicked out from the window.
+
+The force catapulted me across the space of the room like a volplane. I
+struck the purser. We gripped. Our locked, struggling bodies bounced out
+into the room. We struck the floor, surged up like balloons to the
+ceiling, struck it with a flailing arm or a leg and floated back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Grotesque, abnormal combat! Like fighting in weightless water. Johnson
+clutched his weapon, but I twisted his wrist, held his arm outstretched
+so that he could not aim it. I was aware of Miko's voice shouting on the
+deck outside.
+
+Johnson's left hand was gouging at my face, his fingers plucking at my
+eyes. We lunged down to the floor, then up again, close to the ceiling.
+
+I twisted his wrists. He dropped the weapon and it sank away. I tried to
+reach it, but could not. Then I had him by the throat. I was stronger
+than he, and more agile. I tried choking him, his thick bull-neck within
+my fingers. He kicked, scrambled, tore and gouged at me. Tried to shout,
+but it ended in a gurgle. And then, as he felt his breath stopped, his
+hands came up in an effort to tear mine loose.
+
+We sank again to the floor. We were momentarily upright. I felt my feet
+touch. I bent my knees. We sank further.
+
+And then I kicked violently upward. Our locked bodies shot to the
+ceiling. Johnson's head was above me. It struck the steel roof of the
+chart-room. A violent blow. I felt him go suddenly limp. I cast him off,
+and, doubling my body, I kicked at the ceiling. It sent me diagonally
+downward to the window, where I clung and regained stability.
+
+And I saw Miko standing on the deck with a weapon levelled at me!
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+_The Torture_
+
+"Haljan! Yield or I'll fire! Moa, give me the smaller one. This
+cursed--"
+
+He had in his hand too large a projector. Its ray would kill me. If he
+wanted to take me alive, he would not fire. I chanced it.
+
+"No!"
+
+I tried to draw myself beneath the window. An automatic bullet projector
+was on the floor where Carter had dropped it. I pulled myself down.
+Miko did not fire. I reached the revolver. The dead bodies of the
+captain and purser had drifted together on the floor in the center of
+the room.
+
+I hitched myself back to the window. With upraised weapon I gazed
+cautiously out. Miko had disappeared. The deck within my line of vision
+was empty.
+
+But was it? Something told me to beware. I clung to the casement, ready
+upon the instant to shove myself down. There was a movement in a shadow
+along the deck. Then a figure rose up.
+
+"Don't fire, Haljan!"
+
+The sharp command, half appeal, stopped the pressure of my finger on the
+trigger of the automatic. It was the tall lanky Englishman, Sir Arthur
+Coniston, as he called himself. So he too was one of Miko's band! The
+light through a dome-window fell full on him.
+
+"If you fire, Haljan, and kill me--Miko will kill you then, surely."
+
+From where he had been crouching he could not command my window. But
+now, upon the heels of his placating words, he abruptly shot. The
+low-powered ray, had it struck, would have felled me without killing.
+But it went over my head as I dropped. Its aura made my senses reel.
+
+Coniston shouted, "Haljan!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I did not answer. I wondered if he would dare approach to see if I had
+been hit. A minute passed. Then another. I thought I heard Miko's voice
+on the deck outside. But it was an aerial, microscopic whisper close
+beside me.
+
+"We see you, Haljan! You must yield!"
+
+Their eavesdropping vibrations, with audible projection, were upon me. I
+retorted aloud.
+
+"Come and get me! You cannot take me alive."
+
+I do protest if this action of mine in the chart-room may seem bravado.
+I had no wish to die. There was within me a very healthy desire for
+life. But I felt, by holding out, that some chance might come wherewith
+I might turn events against these brigands. Yet reason told me it was
+hopeless. Our loyal members of the crew were killed, no doubt. Captain
+Carter and Balch were killed. The lookouts and Course-masters also. And
+Blackstone.
+
+There remained only Dr. Frank and Snap. Their fate I did not yet know.
+And there was George Prince. He, perhaps, would help me if he could.
+But, at best, he was a dubious ally.
+
+"You are very foolish, Haljan," murmured the projection of Miko's voice.
+And then I heard Coniston:
+
+"See here, why would not a hundred pounds of gold-leaf tempt you? The
+code-words which were taken from Johnson--I mean to say, why not tell us
+where they are?"
+
+So that was one of the brigands new difficulties! Snap had taken the
+code-word sheet, that time we sealed the purser in the cage.
+
+I said, "You'll never find them. And when a police ship sights us, what
+will you do then?"
+
+The chances of a police ship were slim indeed, but the brigands
+evidently did not know that. I wondered again what had become of Snap.
+Was he captured--or still holding them off?
+
+I was watching my windows; for at any moment, under cover of this talk,
+I might be assailed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gravity came suddenly to the room. Miko's voice said. "We mean well by
+you, Haljan. There is your normality. Join us. We need you to chart our
+course."
+
+"And a hundred pounds of gold-leaf," urged Coniston. "Or more. Why, this
+treasure--"
+
+I could hear an oath from Miko. And then his ironic voice: "We will not
+bother you, Haljan. There is no hurry. You will be hungry in good time.
+And sleepy. Then we will come and get you. And a little acid will make
+you think differently about helping us...."
+
+His vibrations died away. The pull of gravity in the room was normal. I
+was alone in the dim silence, with the bodies of Carter and Johnson
+lying huddled on the grid. I bent to examine them. Both were dead.
+
+My isolation was no ruse this time. The outlaws made no further attack.
+Half an hour passed. The deck outside, what I could see of it, was
+vacant. Balch lay dead close outside the chart-room door. The bodies of
+Blackstone and the Course-master had been removed from the turret
+window. A forward lookout--one of Miko's men--was on duty in the nearby
+tower. Hahn was at the turret controls. The ship was under orderly
+handling, heading back upon a new course. For the Earth? Or the Moon? It
+did not seem so.
+
+I found, in the chart-room, a Benson curve-light projector which poor
+Captain Carter had very nearly assembled. I worked on it, trained it
+through my rear window, along the empty deck; bent it into the lounge
+archway. Upon my grid the image of the lounge interior presently
+focused. The passengers in the lounge were huddled in a group.
+Disheveled, frightened, with Moa standing watching them. Stewards were
+serving them with a meal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Upon a bench, bodies were lying. Some were dead. I saw Rance Rankin.
+Others were evidently only injured. Dr. Frank was moving among them,
+attending them. Venza was there, unharmed. And I saw the gamblers, Shac
+and Dud, sitting white-faced, whispering together. And Glutz's little
+be-ribboned, be-curled figure on a stool.
+
+George Prince was there, standing against the walls shrouded in his
+mourning cloak, watching the scene with alert, roving eyes. And by the
+opposite doorway, the huge towering figure of Miko stood on guard. But
+Snap was missing.
+
+A brief glimpse. Miko saw my Benson-light. I could have equipped a
+heat-ray, and fired along the curved Benson-light into that lounge. But
+Miko gave me no time.
+
+He slid the lounge door closed, and Moa leaped to close the one on my
+side. My light was cut off; my grid showed only the blank deck and
+door.
+
+Another interval. I had made plans. Futile plans! I could get into the
+turret perhaps, and kill Hahn. I had the invisible cloak which Johnson
+was wearing. I took it from his body. Its mechanism could be repaired.
+Why, with it I could creep about the ship, kill these brigands one by
+one perhaps. George Prince would be with me. The brigands who had been
+posing as the stewards and crew-members were unable to navigate; they
+would obey my orders. There were only Miko, Coniston and Hahn to kill.
+
+Futile plans! From my window I could gaze up to the helio-room. And now
+abruptly I heard Snap's voice:
+
+"No! I tell you--no!"
+
+And Miko: "Very well. We will try this."
+
+So Snap was captured, but not killed. Relief swept me. He was in the
+helio-room, and Miko was with him. But my relief was short-lived.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a brief interval there came a moan from Snap. It floated down from
+the silence overhead. It made me shudder.
+
+My Benson-beam shot into the helio window. It showed me Snap lying there
+on the floor. He was bound with wire. His torso had been stripped. His
+livid face was ghastly plain in my light.
+
+Miko was bending over him. Miko with a heat-cylinder no longer than a
+finger. Its needle-beam played upon Snap's naked chest. I could see the
+gruesome little trail of smoke rising; and as Snap twisted and jerked,
+there on his flesh was the red and blistered trail of the violet-hot
+ray.
+
+"Now will you tell?"
+
+"No!"
+
+Miko laughed. "No? Then I shall write my name a little deeper...."
+
+A black scar now--a trail etched in the quivering flesh.
+
+"Oh!--" Snap's face went white as chalk as he pressed his lips
+together.
+
+"Or a little acid? This fire-writing does not really hurt? Tell me what
+you did with those code-words!"
+
+"No!"
+
+In his absorption Miko did not notice my light. Nor did I have the wit
+to try and fire along it. I was trembling. Snap under torture!
+
+As the beam went deeper, Snap suddenly screamed. But he ended, "No! I
+will send--no message for you--"
+
+It had been only a moment. In the chart-room window beside me again a
+figure appeared! No image. A solid, living person, undisguised by any
+cloak of invisibility. George Prince had chanced my fire and had crept
+up upon me.
+
+"Haljan! Don't attack me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I dropped my light connections. As impulsively I stood up, I saw through
+the window the figure of Coniston on the deck watching the result of
+Prince's venture.
+
+"Haljan--yield."
+
+Prince no more than whispered it. He stood outside on the deck; the low
+window casement touched his waist. He leaned over it.
+
+"He's torturing Snap! Call out that you will yield."
+
+The thought had already been in my mind. Another scream from Snap
+chilled me with horror. I shouted,
+
+"Miko! Stop!"
+
+I rushed to the window and Prince gripped me.
+
+"Louder!"
+
+I called louder. "_Miko!_ Stop!" My upflung voice mingled with Snap's
+agony of protest. Then Miko heard me. His head and shoulders showed up
+there at the helio-room oval.
+
+"You, Haljan?"
+
+Prince shouted, "I have made him yield. He will obey you if you stop
+that torture."
+
+I think that poor Snap must have fainted. He was silent. I called,
+"Stop! I will do what you command."
+
+Miko jeered, "That is good. A bargain, if you and Dean obey me. Disarm
+him, Prince, and bring him out."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miko moved back into the helio-room. On the deck Coniston was advancing,
+but cautiously, mistrustful of me.
+
+"Gregg."
+
+George Prince flung a leg over the casement and leaped lightly into the
+dim chart-room. His small slender figure stood beside me, clung to me.
+
+"Gregg."
+
+A moment, while we stood there together. No ray was upon us. Coniston
+could not see us, nor could he hear our whispers.
+
+"Gregg."
+
+A different voice; its throaty, husky quality gone. A soft pleading.
+"Gregg--
+
+"Gregg, don't you know me? Gregg, dear...."
+
+Why, what was this? Not George Prince? A masquerader, yet so like George
+Prince.
+
+"Gregg, don't you know me?"
+
+Clinging to me. A soft touch upon my arm. Fingers, clinging. A surge of
+warm, tingling current was flowing between us.
+
+My sweep of instant thoughts. A speck of human Earth-dust, falling free.
+That was George Prince, who had been killed. George Prince's body,
+disguised by the scheming Carter and Dr. Frank, buried in the guise of
+his sister. And this black-robed figure who was trying to help us--
+
+"Anita! Dear God! Anita, darling! Anita!"
+
+"Gregg, dear one!"
+
+"Anita! Dear God!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My arms went around her, my lips pressed hers, and felt her tremulous,
+eager answer.
+
+"Gregg, dear."
+
+"Anita, you!"
+
+The form of Coniston showed at our window. She cast me off. She said,
+with her throaty swagger of assumed masculinity:
+
+"I have him, Sir Arthur. He will obey us."
+
+I sensed her warning glance. She shoved me toward the window. She said
+ironically, "Have no fear, Haljan. You will not be tortured, you and
+Dean, if you obey our commands."
+
+Coniston gripped me. "You fool! You caused us a lot of trouble, didn't
+you? Move along there!"
+
+He jerked me roughly through the window. Marched me the length of the
+deck. Out to the stern-space; opened the door of my cubby; flung me in
+and sealed the door upon me.
+
+"Miko will come presently."
+
+I stood in the darkness of my tiny room, listening to his retreating
+footsteps. But my mind was not on him....
+
+All the Universe in that instant had changed for me. Anita was alive!
+
+(_To be continued_)
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [1] As early as 1910 it was discovered that an object magnetized under
+      certain conditions was subject to a loss of weight, its gravity
+      partially nullified. The Martel discovery undoubtedly followed
+      that method.
+
+  [2] "United States of the World," which came into being in 2057 upon the
+      centenary of the Yellow War.
+
+  [3] Trinight Hour, i.e., 3 A. M.
+
+  [4] Pressure sickness. Caused by the difficulty of maintaining a
+      constantly normal air pressure within the vessel owing to the
+      sudden, extreme changes from heat to cold.
+
+  [5] "Set and Setta," the Martian equivalent of Mr. and Miss.
+
+  [6] A Venus form of jocular, intimate greeting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  _REMEMBER_
+  ASTOUNDING STORIES
+  _Appears on Newsstands_
+  THE FIRST THURSDAY IN EACH MONTH
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_In the Next Issue_
+
+  MONSTERS of MOYEN
+
+  _A Complete Novelet of a Half-God Half-Beast's Extraordinary Attempt
+  to Dominate the Earth_
+  _By_ Arthur J. Burks
+
+
+  _A Large Instalment of_
+
+  BRIGANDS of the MOON
+
+  _The Splendid Interplanetary Novel_
+  _By_ Ray Cummings
+
+
+  The RAY of MADNESS
+
+  _The Account of Another of Dr. Bird's Amazing Exploits_
+  _By_ Captain S. P. Meek
+
+  --_And Many Other Stories by Your Favorite Authors!_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+The Soul Master
+
+_By Will Smith and R. J. Robbins_
+
+    Desperately O'Hara plunged into Prof. Kell's mysterious mansion.
+    For his friend Skip was the victim of the eccentric scientist's
+    de-astralizing experiment, and faced a fate more hideous than
+    death.
+
+[Illustration: _A terrific force was emanating from that devilish globe
+above._]
+
+
+The train was slowing down for Keegan. A whistle from the locomotive
+ahead had warned the two alert young men in the smoker to that effect,
+and they arose to leave the train. Both were neatly and quietly dressed.
+One carried a medium-sized camera with the necessary tripod and
+accessory satchel. The other carried no impediments of any sort. Both
+were smoking cigars, evidently not of expensive variety, judging by the
+unaromatic atmosphere thereabouts.
+
+"Can't see what Bland shipped us up to this one-horse dump for,"
+grumbled Skip Handlon, the one who carried the camera. He was the
+slighter of the two and perhaps half a head shorter than the other. "Do
+you know anything about it?"
+
+"Not much," confessed the other as they alighted from the smoker. "All I
+can tell you is that Bland sent for me early this morning, told me to
+get a story out of this Professor Kell and to drag you along. After we
+get there you are to do as judgment dictates. But I remember that the
+Chief was specific as regards one thing. You are to get the proff's mug.
+Don't forget. The old fellow may growl and show fight, but it's up to
+you to deliver the goods--or, in this case, get them. Don't depend on me
+for help. I expect to have troubles of my own." Thus gloomed Horace
+Perry, star reporter for the Journal.
+
+"This Keegan place"--Handlon was using his eyes swiftly and
+comprehensively--"isn't worth much. Can't see how it manages to even
+rate a name. Some dump, all right!"
+
+"You said a couple mouthfuls."
+
+"How's the train service, if any?"
+
+"Rotten. Two trains a day." The other was anything but enthusiastic.
+"We've a nice long wait for the next one, you can bet. Now, just add to
+that a rough reception after we reach the old lion's lair and you get a
+nice idea of what Bland expects from his men."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Handlon made a wry face at this. "The bird who first applied the words
+'Hard Boiled' to the Chief's monniker knew something."
+
+"You don't know the half of it," retorted Perry encouragingly. "Just
+wait and see what a beaut of a fit he can throw for _your_ benefit if
+you fail to do your stuff--and I don't mean maybe."
+
+Old Man Bland owned the Journal, hired and fired his crew and did his
+own editing, with the help of as capable an office gang as could be
+gotten together. It is quite possible that "Hard Boiled" Bland demanded
+more from his men than any other editor ever has before or since.
+Nevertheless he got results, and none of his experienced underlings ever
+kicked, for the pay was right. If a hapless scribe had the temerity to
+enter the editorial sanctum with a negative report, the almost
+invariable reply had been a glare and a peremptory order, "Get the
+copy."
+
+And get it they did. If a person refused an interview these clever
+fellows generally succeeded in getting their information from the next
+most reliable source, and it arrived in print just the same.
+
+Of such a breed was Perry. Handlon, being a more recent acquisition to
+the staff, was not yet especially aggressive in his work. On this
+account the former took keen zest in scaring him into displaying a bit
+more sand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The train had disappeared around a bend and the two reporters felt
+themselves marooned. Keegan, without question, was a most forlorn
+looking spot. A dismal shanty, much the worse for weather, stood beside
+the track. In front, a few rotting planks proclaimed that once upon a
+time the place had boasted a real freight platform. Probably, back in
+some long-forgotten age, a station agent had also held forth in the
+rickety shanty. A sign hung on each end of the crumbling structure on
+which could still be deciphered the legend "KEEGAN." On the opposite
+side of the track was an old, disused siding. The only other feature of
+interest thereabouts was a well traveled country road which crossed the
+tracks near the shanty, wound sinuously over a rock-strewn hill and
+became lost in the mazes of an upland forest.
+
+There being no signboard of any kind to indicate their destination, the
+two, after a moment's hesitation, started off briskly in a chance
+direction. The air was hot and sultry, and in the open spaces the sun
+beat down mercilessly upon the two hapless ones. As they proceeded into
+the depths of the forest they were shielded somewhat from the worst of
+the heat. Gradually upon their city-bred nostrils there stole the odor
+of conifers, accompanied by a myriad of other forest odors. Both sniffed
+the air appreciatively.
+
+"This is sure the life," remarked Perry. "If I weren't so darn thirsty
+now...." He became lost in mournful thought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A considerable time passed. The newspaper men trudged wearily along
+until finally another bend brought them to the beginning of a steep
+descent. The forest had thinned out to nothing.
+
+"Seems to me I smell smoke," blurted out Handlon suddenly. "Must be that
+we are approaching the old party's lair. Remember? Bland said that
+he--"
+
+"Uh huh!" the other grunted, almost inaudibly. Now that they seemed to
+be arriving at their destination something had occurred to him. He had
+fished from his pocket a sheaf of clippings and was perusing them
+intently. "Bland said, 'Get the copy'," he muttered irrelevantly and
+half to himself.
+
+The clippings all related directly to Professor Kell or to happenings
+local to Keegan. Some were of peculiar interest. The first one was
+headlined thus:
+
+    MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF ROBERT MANION AND DAUGHTER STILL
+    UNSOLVED
+
+The piece contained a description of the missing man, a fairly
+prosperous banker who had been seen four days previously driving through
+Keegan in a small roadster, and one of the girl, who was in the car with
+him. It told that the banker and his daughter were last seen by a farmer
+named Willetts who lived in a shack on the East Keegan road, fleeing
+before a bad thunder storm. He believed the pair were trying to make the
+Kell mansion ahead of the rain. Nothing more of the Manions or their car
+had been seen, and their personal effects remained at their hotel in a
+nearby village unclaimed. The heavy rain had of course effectually
+obliterated all wheel tracks.
+
+Another clipping was fairly lengthy, but Perry glanced only at the
+headlines:
+
+    KELL STILL CARRYING ON HIS STRANGE EXPERIMENTS
+
+    Has Long Been Known to Have Fantastic Theories. Refuses to
+    Divulge Exact Methods Employed, or Nature of Results
+
+Still another appeared to be an excerpt from an article in an
+agricultural paper. It read:
+
+    A prize bull belonging to Alton Shepard, a Keegan cattle
+    breeder, has created considerable sensation by running amuck in
+    a most peculiar manner. While seemingly more intelligent than
+    heretofore, it has developed characteristics known to be utterly
+    alien to this type of animal.
+
+    Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of the case is the refusal
+    of the animal to eat its accustomed food. Instead it now
+    consumes enormous quantities of meat. The terrific bellow of
+    the animal's voice has also undergone a marked change, now
+    resembling nothing earthly, although some have remarked that it
+    could be likened to the bay of an enormous hound. Some of its
+    later actions have seemingly added further canine attributes,
+    which make the matter all the more mystifying. Veterinaries are
+    asking why this animal should chase automobiles, and why it
+    should carry bones in its mouth and try to bury them!
+
+The last one read in part:
+
+    Professor Kell has been questioned by authorities at Keegan
+    relative to the disappearance there last Tuesday of Robert
+    Manion and his daughter. Kell seemed unable to furnish clues of
+    any value, but officials are not entirely satisfied with the
+    man's attitude toward the questions.
+
+Somewhat bewildered by these apparently unrelated items, the reporter
+remained lost in thought for quite a space, the while he endeavored to
+map out his course of action when he should meet the redoubtable
+Professor. That many of the weird occurrences could be traced in some
+way to the latter's door had evidently occurred to Bland. Furthermore,
+the Old Man relied implicitly upon Perry to get results.
+
+It must be said that for once the star reporter was not overly
+enthusiastic with the assignment. Certain rumors aside from the
+clippings in his hand had produced in his mind a feeling of uneasiness.
+So far as his personal preference was concerned he would have been well
+satisfied if some cub reporter had been given the job. Try as he would,
+however, he could offer no tangible reason for the sudden wariness.
+
+He was aroused from his absorption by his companion.
+
+"Thought I smelled smoke a while back, and I was right. That's the
+house up in the edge of the pines. Deep grounds in front and all gone to
+seed; fits the description exactly. Thank Heaven we struck off from the
+station in the right direction. This stroll has been long enough. Come
+out of it and let's get this job finished."
+
+Suiting the action to the words Handlon started off at a brisk pace down
+the hill, followed at a more moderate rate by Perry. At length they came
+within full sight of the grounds. Extending for a considerable distance
+before them and enclosing a large tract of land now well covered with
+lush grass, was a formidable looking wall. In former days a glorious
+mantle of ivy had covered the rough stones; but now there was little
+left, and what there was looked pitifully decrepit. They continued their
+progress along this barrier, finally coming upon a huge iron gate now
+much the worse for rust. It stood wide open.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The road up to the house had long since become overgrown with rank grass
+and weeds. Faintly traceable through the mass of green could be seen a
+rough footpath which the two followed carefully. They met no one. As
+they approached the night of black pines the mass of the old mansion
+began to loom up before them, grim and forbidding.
+
+Instinctively both shivered. The silence of the place was complete and
+of an uncannily tangible quality. Nervously they looked about them.
+
+"How do you like it, Skip?" The words from Perry's previously silent
+lips broke upon the stillness like a thunderclap. The other started.
+
+"I should hate to die in it," Handlon answered solemnly. "I'll bet the
+old joint is haunted. Nobody but a lunatic would ever live in it."
+
+"I get a good deal the same impression myself," said Perry. "I don't
+wonder that Bland sent two of us to cover the job."
+
+As he spoke he mounted a flight of steps to a tumbledown veranda. There
+was no sign of a door bell on the weather-beaten portal, but an ancient
+knocker of bronze hanging forlornly before him seemed to suggest a means
+of attracting attention. He raised it and rapped smartly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No answer.
+
+Possessing all the attributes of the conventional reporter and a few
+additional ones, Perry did not allow himself to become disheartened, but
+merely repeated his summons, this time with more vim.
+
+"Well, Horace," grinned Handlon, "it does look as if we were not so very
+welcome here. However, seems to me if you were to pick up that piece of
+dead limb and do some real knocking with it.... The dear Professor may
+be deaf, you know, or maybe he's--"
+
+"Skip, my boy, I don't know as we ought to go in right now after all. Do
+you realize it will soon be dark?"
+
+"To tell you the truth, Horace, I'm not stuck on this assignment either.
+And I feel that after dark I should like it even less, somehow. But,
+gee, the Old Man...."
+
+"Oh, I'm not thinking of quitting on the job. We don't do that on the
+Journal." Perry smiled paternally at the photographer. Could it be he
+had purposely raised the other's hopes in order to chaff him some more?
+"But I was thinking that it might be a good idea to look about the
+outbuildings a bit while we have a little daylight. Eh?"
+
+Handlon looked disappointed, but nodded gamely. He delayed only long
+enough to deposit his camera and traps behind a grossly overgrown
+hydrangea by the steps, then, with a resigned air, declared himself
+ready to follow wherever the other might lead.
+
+Perry elected to explore the barn first. This was a depressing old pile,
+unpainted in years, with what had once been stout doors now swinging and
+bumping in the light breeze. As the two men drew nearer, this
+breeze--which seemed to sigh through the place at will--brought foul
+odors that told them the place was at least not tenantless. In some
+trepidation they stepped inside and stood blinking in the half
+darkness.
+
+"Pretty Polly!"
+
+"Good God! What was that?" Handlon whispered. He knew it was no parrot's
+voice. This was a far deeper sound than that, a sound louder than
+anything a parrot's throat could produce. It came from the direction of
+a ruinous stall over near a cobwebbed window. As Perry started fearfully
+toward this, there issued from it a curious scraping sound, followed by
+a fall that shook the floor, and a threshing as of hoofs. Now the great
+voice could be heard again, this time uttering what sounded strangely
+like oaths roared out in a foreign tongue. Yet when the newspaper men
+reached the stall they found it occupied only by a large mule.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The animal was lying on its side, its feet scraping feebly against the
+side of the stall. The heaving, foam-flecked body was a mass of hideous
+bruises, some of which were bleeding profusely. The creature seemed to
+be in the last stage of exhaustion, lying with lips drawn back and eyes
+closed. Beneath it and scattered all over the stall floor was a thick
+layer of some whitish seeds.
+
+"That's--why that's sunflower seed, Horace!" Handlon almost whimpered.
+"And look! Look in that crib! It's full of the same stuff! Where's the
+hay, Horace? Does this thing--"
+
+He was interrupted by a mighty movement of the beast--a threshing that
+nearly blinded the men in the cloud of bloodstained seeds it raised.
+With something between a curse and a sob, the mule lunged at its crib as
+if attempting to get bodily into it. But no: it was only trying to perch
+on its edge! Now it had succeeded. The ungainly beast hung there a
+second, two, three. From its uplifted throat issued that usually
+innocuous phrase, a phrase now a thing of delirious horror:
+
+"Pretty Polly!"
+
+With a crash the tortured creature fell to the floor, to lie there
+gasping and moaning.
+
+Skip Handlon left that barn. Perry retained just enough wit to do what
+he should have done the instant he first saw the animal. He whipped out
+his automatic and fired one merciful shot. Then he too started for the
+outside. He arrived in the yard perhaps ten seconds behind Handlon.
+
+"Good Heavens, Perry," gibbered Handlon. "I'm not going to stay around
+this place another minute. Just let me find where I left that suffering
+camera, that's all I ask."
+
+"Easy now." Perry laid a hand on his companion's shoulder. "I guess
+we're up against something pretty fierce here, but we're going to see it
+through, and you know it. So let's cut out the flight talk and go raise
+the Professor."
+
+Handlon tried earnestly to don a look of determination. If Perry was set
+on staying here the least he could do was stay with him. However, could
+Perry have foreseen the events which were to entangle them, he probably
+would have led the race to the gate. As it was, he grasped a stick and
+marched bravely up toward the front door.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sudden commotion behind him caused him to wheel sharply around.
+Simultaneously a yell burst from Handlon.
+
+"Look out, Horace!"
+
+What he saw almost froze the blood in his veins. From a tumbledown coach
+house had issued an enormous wolf-hound which was now almost upon then,
+eyes flaming, fangs gleaming horribly.
+
+So unexpected was the attack that both men stood rooted in their tracks.
+The next moment the charging brute was upon them, and had bowled
+Handlon off his equilibrium as if he were a child. The unfortunate
+photographer made a desperate attempt to prevent injury to his precious
+camera, which he had but a moment earlier succeeded in retrieving, and
+in doing so fell rather violently to the ground. Every moment he
+expected to feel the powerful jaws crunch his throat, and he made no
+effort to rise. For several seconds he remained thus, until he could
+endure the suspense no longer. He glanced around only to see Perry,
+staring open-mouthed at the animal which had so frightened them.
+Apparently it had forgotten the presence of the two men.
+
+Handlon regained his feet rather awkwardly, the while keeping a watchful
+eye on the beast, of whose uncertain temper he was by now fully aware.
+In an undertone he addressed his companion.
+
+"What do you make of it?" he wanted to know. "Did the critter bite
+you?"
+
+"No. That's the queer part of it. Neither did he bite you, if you were
+to think it over a minute. Just put his nose down and _rammed_ you, head
+on."
+
+The photographer was flabbergasted. Involuntarily his gaze stole again
+in the direction of the offending brute.
+
+"What on earth--" he began. "Is he sharpening his teeth on a rock
+preparatory to another attack upon us? Or--What the deuce _is_ he
+doing?"
+
+"If you ask me," came astonishingly from the watchful Perry, "he's
+eating grass, which is my idea of something damn foolish for a perfectly
+normal hound, genus lupo, to be--Look out!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The animal, as if suddenly remembering the presence of the men, suddenly
+charged at them again, head down, eyes blazing. As before, it made no
+effort to bite. Though both men were somewhat disconcerted by the great
+brute they held their ground, and when it presented the opportunity the
+older reporter planted a terrific kick to the flank which sent the
+animal whimpering back to its shed behind.
+
+"Score one," breathed Handlon. "If we--" At a sudden grating sound
+overhead, he stopped.
+
+Both turned to face the threatening muzzle of an ancient blunderbuss.
+Behind it was an irate countenance, nearly covered by an unclipped beard
+of a dirty gray color. In the eyes now glaring at them malevolently
+through heavily concaved spectacles they read hate unutterable. The
+barrel of the blunderbuss swung slightly as it covered alternately one
+and the other. Both sensed that the finger even now tightening on the
+trigger would not hesitate unduly. Being more or less hardened to
+rebuffs of all kinds in the pursuance of their calling, the reporters
+did not hesitate in stating their purpose.
+
+"What?" yelled the old man. "You dare to invade my grounds and disturb
+me at my labors for such a reason? Reporters! My scientific research
+work is not for publicity, sirs; and futhermore I want it understood
+that I am not to be dragged from my laboratory again for the purpose of
+entertaining you or any others of your ilk. Get away!"
+
+Without further ado the window was slammed down, a shutter closed on the
+inside, and once more the silence of the dead descended upon the spot.
+The two men grinned ruefully at each other, Handlon finally breaking the
+stillness.
+
+"My idea of the world's original one-sided conversation. We simply
+didn't talk--and yet we're supposed to be reporters. You've got to hand
+it to the Proff, Horace, for the beautiful rock-crusher he just handed
+us."
+
+"You didn't think we had anything easy, did you?" said Perry irritably.
+"He'll change his tune presently, when--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Handlon's jaw dropped. "You don't mean you're going to take any more
+chances! Would you rouse him again after the way he treated us with
+that gun? Besides, the train...."
+
+Perry bent a scathing glance at his companion. "What on earth has the
+train to do with our getting the Professor's confession of crime or
+whatever he has to offer? You evidently don't know Bland--much. I deduce
+that a lot of my sweetness has been wasted on the desert air. Once more,
+let me assure you that if you propose to go back without the Proff's mug
+on one of those plates you might as well mail your resignation from
+_here_. Get me?"
+
+The other wilted.
+
+"I wonder," Perry ruminated as he stared in the direction of the shed
+wherein the canine monstrosity had disappeared. "Do you suppose that you
+can get a snap of the old boy's mug if I can get him to the window
+again? If you can do that, just leave the rest to me. I've handled these
+crusty birds before. What say?"
+
+"Go as far as you like." The photographer was once more grinning as he
+unslung his camera and carefully adjusted a plate in place. Everything
+at last to his satisfaction he gripped flash pan and bulb.
+
+"I'm going to make some racket now," announced Perry grimly. "If Kell
+shows up, work fast. He may shoot at you, but don't get excited. It's
+almost dark, so his aim _might_ be poor."
+
+At this suggestion his companion showed signs of panic, but the other
+affected not to notice this. There came a deafening hullaballoo as Perry
+beat a terrific tattoo on the ancient door. Followed a deep silence,
+while Perry leaped back to stand in front of Skip and his camera. After
+perhaps a full minute's wait he once more opened up his bombardment, to
+jump quickly back to the camera as before. This time he had better
+success. The window was again opened and the muzzle of the blunderbuss
+put in its appearance. Handlon stood close behind Perry as he silently
+swung the camera into a more favorable position for action. The face at
+the window was purple with wrath.
+
+"You damned pests! Leave my grounds at once or I shall call my hound and
+set him upon you. And when--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Crack! Flash! Click! Perry had made a sudden sidewise movement as
+Handlon went into action.
+
+"Much obliged, Professor," said Perry politely. "Your pose with that old
+cannon is going to be very effective from the front page. The write-up
+will doubtless be interesting too. Probably the story won't be quite so
+accurate as it would be had you told it to us yourself; but we shall get
+as many of the details from the natives hereabouts as we can. Good-day
+to you, sir!"
+
+Motioning to the other he turned on his heel and started down the
+driveway. It was an old trick, and for a long moment of suspense he
+almost feared that it would fail. Another moment--
+
+"Wait!" The quavering voice of the irascible old villain had lost some
+of its malice. "Come back here a minute."
+
+With simulated reluctance the two slowly retraced their steps. "Is there
+something else, sir?"
+
+"Perhaps...." The old man hesitated, as if pondering upon his words.
+"Perhaps if you care to step in I can be of assistance to you after all.
+It occurs to me that possibly I have been too abrupt with you."
+
+"I am very glad that you have decided to cooperate with us, Professor
+Kell," answered the reporter heartily, as they ascended the steps. The
+old man's head disappeared from the window and shortly the sound of
+footsteps inside told of his approach. Finally the oaken door swung
+open, and they were silently ushered into the musty smelling hallway.
+Though outwardly accepting the Professor's suddenly pacific attitude,
+Perry made up his mind to be on his guard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As they entered what had evidently been the parlor in bygone days, an
+oppressive, heavy odor smote their nostrils, telling of age-old carpets
+and of draperies allowed to decay unnoticed. On the walls hung several
+antique prints, a poorly executed crayon portrait of a person doubtless
+an ancestor of the present Kell, and one or two paintings done in oil,
+now badly cracked and stained. Everything gave the impression of an era
+long since departed, and the two men felt vaguely out of place. Their
+host led them to a pair of dilapidated chairs, which they accepted
+gratefully. The ride to Keegan after a hard day's work had not tended to
+improve their spirits.
+
+"Now to business." Perry went straight to the point, desiring to get the
+interview over as soon as possible. "We have heard indirectly of various
+happenings in this vicinity which many think have some connection with
+your scientific experiments. Any statement you may care to make to us in
+regard to these happenings will be greatly appreciated by my paper.
+Inasmuch as what little has already been printed is probably of an
+erroneous nature, we believe it will be in your own best interest to
+give us as complete data as possible." Here he became slightly
+histrionic. "Of course we do not allow ourselves to take the stories
+told by the local inhabitants too literally, as such persons are too
+liable to exaggerate, but we must assume that some of these stories have
+partial basis in fact. Any information relative to your scientific work,
+incidentally, will make good copy for us also."
+
+Perry gazed steadily at the patriarch as he spoke. For a moment, a
+crafty expression passed over the old man's face, but as suddenly it
+disappeared. Evidently he had arrived at a decision.
+
+"Come with me," he wheezed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The two newspaper men exchanged swift glances, the same thought in the
+mind of each. Were they about to be led into a trap? If the old man's
+shady reputation was at all deserved they would do well to be wary.
+Perry thought swiftly of the clippings he had read and of what gossip he
+had heard, then glanced once more in the direction of Handlon. That
+worthy was smiling meaningly and had already arisen to follow the
+Professor. Reluctantly Perry got to his feet and the three proceeded to
+climb a rickety stairway to the third floor. The guide turned at the
+head of the stairs and entered a long dark corridor. Here the floor was
+covered with a thick carpet which, as they trod upon it, gave forth not
+the slightest sound.
+
+The hall gave upon several rooms, all dark and gloomy and giving the
+same dismal impression of long disuse. How could the savant endure such
+a depressing abode! The accumulation of dust and cobwebs in these long
+forgotten chambers, the general evidence of decay--all told of possible
+horrors ahead. They became wary.
+
+But they were not wary enough!
+
+The uncouth figure ahead of them had stopped and was fumbling with the
+lock of an ancient door. Instinctively Perry noted that it was of great
+thickness and of heavy oak. Now the Professor had it open and was
+motioning for them to enter. Handlon started forward eagerly, but
+hurriedly drew back as he felt the grip of the other reporter's hand on
+his arm.
+
+"Get back, you fool!" The words were hissed into the ear of the
+incautious one. Then, to the Professor, Perry observed: "If you have no
+objection we would prefer that you precede us."
+
+A look of insane fury leaped to the face of the old man, lingered but an
+instant and was gone. Though the expression was but momentary, both men
+had seen, and seeing had realized their danger.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They followed him into the chamber, which was soon illumined fitfully by
+a smoky kerosene lamp. Both took a rapid survey of the place.
+Conceivably it might have been the scene of scientific experiments, but
+its aspect surely belied such a supposition. The average imagination
+would instantly pronounce it the abode of a maniac, or the lair of an
+alchemist. Again, that it might be the laboratory of an extremely
+slovenly veterinary was suggested by the several filthy cages to be seen
+resting against the wall. All of these were unoccupied except one in a
+dark corner, from which issued a sound of contented purring, evidently
+telling of some well-satisfied cat.
+
+The air was close and foul, being heavy with the odor of musty, decaying
+drugs. In every possible niche and cranny the omnipresent dust had
+settled in a uniform sheen of gray which showed but few signs of recent
+disturbance.
+
+"Here, gentlemen," their host was saying, "is where I carry on my work.
+It is rather gloomy here after dark, but then I do not spend much time
+here during the night. I have decided to acquaint you with some of the
+details of one or two of my experiments. Doubtless you will find them
+interesting."
+
+While speaking he had, mechanically it seemed, reached for a glass
+humidor in which were perhaps a dozen cigars. Silently he selected one
+and extended the rest to the two visitors.
+
+After all three had puffed for a moment at the weeds, the old man began
+to talk, rapidly it seemed to them. Perry from time to time took notes,
+as the old man proceeded, an expression of utter amazement gradually
+overspreading his face. Handlon pulled away contentedly at his cigar,
+and on his features there grew an almost ludicrous expression of
+well-being. Was the simple photographer so completely at ease that he
+had at length forsaken all thought of possible danger?
+
+As Professor Kell talked on he seemed to warm to his subject. At the end
+of five minutes he began uncovering a peculiar apparatus which had
+rested beneath the massive old table before which they were sitting. The
+two men caught the flash of light on glass, and a jumble of coiled wires
+became visible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Was the air in the laboratory getting unbearably close? Or was the queer
+leaden feeling that had taken possession of Perry's lungs but an
+indication of his overpowering weariness? He felt a steadily increasing
+irritation, as if for some strange reason he suddenly resented the words
+of their host, which seemed to be pouring out in an endless stream. The
+cigar had, paradoxically, an oddly soothing quality, and he puffed away
+in silence.
+
+Why had the room suddenly taken on so hazy an aspect? Why did Handlon
+grin in that idiotic manner? And the Professor ... he was getting
+farther and farther away ... that perfecto ... or was it an El Cabbajo?
+What was the old archfiend doing to him anyhow?... Why was he laughing
+and leering at them so horribly?... Confound it all ... that cigar ...
+where was it?... Just one more puff....
+
+Blindly he groped for the missing weed, becoming aware of a cackle of
+amusement nearby. Professor Kell was standing near the spot where he had
+fallen and now began prodding him contemptuously with his toe.
+
+"Fools!" he was saying. "You thought to interfere with my program. But
+you are in my power and you have no hope of escape. I am unexpectedly
+provided with more subjects for my experiments. You will...." His words
+became hazy and unintelligible, for the hapless reporter was drifting
+off into a numb oblivion. He had long since lost the power to move a
+muscle. Out of the corner of an eye, just before he lost consciousness
+altogether, he perceived Handlon lying upon the floor still puffing at
+the fateful drugged cigar.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Eons passed.
+
+To the reporter came a vision of a throbbing, glaring inferno, wherein
+he was shaken and tossed by terrific forces. His very vital essence
+seemed to respond to a mighty vibration. Now he was but a part of some
+terrific chaos. Dimly he became aware of another being with whom he must
+contend. Now he was in a death struggle, and to his horror he found
+himself being slowly but surely overpowered. A demoniac grin played upon
+the features of the other as he forced the reporter to his knees. It was
+Handlon.... Once more he was sinking into soft oblivion, the while a
+horrid miasma assailed his nostrils. He was nothing....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Slowly, and with infinite effort, Perry felt himself returning to
+consciousness, though he had no clear conception of his surroundings.
+His brain was as yet but a whirling vortex of confused sounds, colors
+and--yes, odors. A temporary rift came in the mental cloud which
+fettered his faculties, and things began to take definite shape. He
+became aware that he was lying upon his back at some elevation from the
+floor. Again the cloudy incubus closed in and he knew no more.
+
+When he finally recovered the use of his faculties it was to discover
+himself the possessor of a violent headache. The pain came in such
+fearsome throbs that it was well nigh unendurable. The lamp still
+sputtered dimly where the professor had left it. At the moment it was on
+the point of going out altogether. The reporter noticed this, and over
+him stole a sense of panic. What if the light should fail altogether,
+leaving him lying in the dark in this frightful place! Still dizzy and
+sick, he managed to rise upon his elbows enough to complete a survey of
+the room. He was still in the laboratory of Professor Kell, but that
+worthy had disappeared. Of Handlon there was no sign. The mysterious
+apparatus, of which he now had but a vague remembrance, also had
+vanished.
+
+His thoughts became confused again, and wearily he passed a hand over
+his brow in the effort to collect all of his faculties. The lamp began
+to sputter, arousing him to action. Desperately he fought against the
+benumbing sensation that was even again stealing over him. Gradually he
+gained the ascendancy. He struggled dizzily to his feet and took a few
+tentative steps.
+
+Where was Handlon? He decided his friend had probably recovered from the
+drug first and was gone, possibly to get a doctor for him, Perry.
+However, he must make some search to determine if Skip had really left
+the premises.
+
+As he walked through the open door the lamp in his hand gave a last
+despairing flicker and went out. From there he was forced to grope his
+way down the dark hall to the stairs. Just how he reached the lower
+floor he was never able to remember, for as yet all the effect of the
+powerful drug had not worn off. He had a dim recollection of being
+thankful to the ancestor of Kell who had provided such thick carpets in
+these halls. Thanks to them his footsteps had been noiseless, at any
+rate.
+
+What was Kell's real object in giving them those drugged cigars? he
+wondered. How long had they been under the influence of the lethal
+stuff? Surely several hours. Upon glancing through a hall window he
+found that outside was the blackness of midnight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cautiously he explored the desolate chambers on the ground floor: the
+kitchen--where it could be plainly seen that cooking of a sort had been
+done--the barn, and woodshed. Not a living thing could he find, not even
+the huge wolf-hound which had attacked them in so strange a manner that
+afternoon.
+
+By now he was quite frankly worried on Handlon's account. At that
+moment, could he have known the actual fate that had overtaken his
+companion, it is quite probable he would have gone mad. He stumbled
+back and into the dark front hall, shouting his friend's name. The
+response was a hollow echo, and once or twice he thought he heard the
+ghost of a mocking chuckle.
+
+At length he gave up the search and started for the door, intent now
+only upon flight from the accursed place. He would report the whole
+thing to the office and let Bland do what he pleased about it. Doubtless
+Handlon had already left. Then he stumbled over Handlon's camera.
+Evidently the Professor had neglected to take possession of it. That
+must be rescued, at all costs. He picked it up and felt the exposed
+plate still inside. He started again for the door.
+
+What little light there was faded out and he felt stealing over him a
+horrid sensation of weakness. Again came a period of agony during which
+he felt the grip of unseen forces. Once more it seemed that he was
+engaged in mortal strife with Skip Handlon. Malevolently Handlon glared
+at him as he endeavored with all his strength to overcome Perry. This
+time, however, the latter seemed to have more strength and resisted the
+attack for what must have been hours. Finally the other drew away
+baffled.
+
+At this the mental incubus surrounding Perry's faculties broke. Dimly he
+became aware of a grinding noise nearby and a constant lurching of his
+body. At length his vision cleared sufficiently to enable him to
+discover the cause of the peculiar sensations.
+
+He was in a railroad coach!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He took a rapid glance around and noted a drummer sitting in the seat
+across the aisle, staring curiously at him. With an effort Perry assumed
+an inscrutable expression and determined to stare the other out of
+countenance. Reluctantly the man glanced away, and after a moment, under
+Perry's stony gaze, he suddenly arose and chose a new seat in front of
+the car. Perry took to the solace of a cigarette and stared out at the
+flying telegraph poles. From time to time he noted familiar landmarks.
+The train had evidently left Keegan far behind and was already nearly
+into the home town.
+
+For the balance of the ride the reporter experienced pure nightmare. The
+peculiar sensations of dizziness, accompanied by frightful periods of
+insensibility, kept recurring, now, however, not lasting more than ten
+or fifteen minutes at a time. At such times as he was conscious he found
+opportunity to wonder in an abstracted sort of way how he had ever
+managed to get on the train and pay his fare, which must have been a
+cash one, without arousing the conductor's suspicions. Discovery of a
+rebate in his pocket proved that he must have done so, however. The
+business of leaving the train and getting to the office has always been
+an unknown chapter in Perry's life.
+
+He came out of one of his mental fogs to find himself seated in the
+private editorial sanctum of the Journal. Evidently he had just arrived.
+Bland, a thick-set man with the jaw of a bulldog, was eyeing him
+intently.
+
+"Well! Any report to make?" The question was crisp.
+
+The reporter passed a hand across his perspiring forehead. "Yes, I guess
+so. I--er--that is--you see--"
+
+"Where's Handlon? What happened to you? You act as if you were drunk."
+Bland was not in an amiable mood.
+
+"Search me," Perry managed to respond. "If Skip isn't here old man Kell
+must have done for him. I came back alone."
+
+"You wha-a-t?" the irate editor fairly roared, half rising from his
+chair. "Tell me exactly what happened and get ready to go back there on
+the next train. Or--no, on second thoughts you'd better go to bed. You
+look all used up. Handlon may be dead or dying at this minute. That Kell
+could do anything." He pressed the button on his desk.
+
+"Johnny," he said to the office boy, "get O'Hara in here on the double
+quick and tell him to bring along his hat and coat."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He turned again to Perry, who was gazing nervously at the door. "Now
+tell me everything that happened and make it fast," he ordered.
+
+The reporter complied, omitting nothing except the little matter of his
+mental lapses at the house of Professor Kell and later on the train. The
+incident of the drugged cigars seemed to interest the Old Man hugely,
+and Perry did not forget to play up Handlon's exploits in getting the
+picture of the Professor. All through the recital he was in a sweat for
+fear that he might have a recurrence of one of his brain spells and that
+Bland would become cognizant of it. When would the Chief finish and let
+him escape from the office? Desperately he fought to prevent the numbing
+sensation from overcoming him. All that kept him from finally fleeing
+the place in panic was the entrance of Jimmie O'Hara.
+
+Slight, wiry and efficient looking, this individual was a specimen of
+the perfect Journal reporter. This is saying a good deal, for the news
+crew and editorial force of the paper were a carefully selected body of
+men indeed. Bland never hired a man unless experience had endowed him
+with some unusual qualification. Most of them could write up a story
+with realistic exactitude, being able in most cases to supply details
+gleaned from actual experience in one walk of life or another.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of this redoubtable crew probably the queerest was Jimmie O'Hara. Jimmie
+had just finished a sentence in the "pen" for safe-cracking at the time
+he landed the job with the Journal. Theoretically all men should have
+shunned him on account of his jailbird taint. Not so Bland. The Chief
+was independent in his ideas on the eternal fitness of things and
+allowed none of the ordinary conventions of humanity to influence his
+decisions. So Jimmie became one of the staff and worked hard to justify
+Bland in hiring him. His former profession gave him valuable sidelights
+upon crime stories of all kinds, and he was almost invariably picked as
+the man to write these up for the columns.
+
+"Jimmie," said the Chief, "we have need of an experienced strong-arm man
+and all around second story worker. You are the only man on the force
+who fills the bill for this job. Perry here has just returned from
+Keegan, where I sent him to interview Professor Kell. Skip Handlon went
+with him, but failed to return. We want to know what happened to Skip.
+That is your job. _Get Handlon!_ If he is dead let me know by long
+distance phone and I'll have a couple of headquarters men down there in
+a hurry. Get a good fast car and don't waste any time. That's all."
+
+O'Hara stopped long enough to get the location of Professor Kell's place
+fixed in his mind, then abruptly departed. Bland gazed after him
+musingly.
+
+"The Professor will have some job to put anything over on that bird," he
+said grimly. "Personally, I'm sorry for the old soul."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After leaving the Journal office Jimmie proceeded directly to a certain
+stable where he kept his private car. It was a long, low speedster with
+a powerful engine, and capable of eating up distance. It was the work of
+a minute to touch the starter and back out of the yard.
+
+For the next hour he held the wheel grimly while the car roared over the
+seventy-odd miles to Keegan. Would he be in time? At last a sign post
+told him that he was within five miles of the railroad crossing at
+Keegan. Now the headlights were picking out the black outlines of the
+freight shed, and the next moment he had swept over the tracks. The
+luminous dial on his wrist watch notified him that he had been on the
+road but little over an hour, but his spirits somehow refused to revive
+with the knowledge.
+
+About a mile beyond the station he drove the car into a dark wood road
+and parked it, turning off all lights. The rest of the way to the
+Professor's mansion he did on foot. Rather than approach from the front
+of the grounds he nimbly climbed a stone wall and, crossing a field or
+two, entered the stretch of woods which extended just behind the
+mansion. His pocket flashlight here came into use, and once or twice he
+gave a reassuring pat to a rear pocket where bulged a heavy Colt
+automatic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What was that? He had approached very close to the rear of the house
+now. No lights were visible as yet, but unless he was greatly mistaken
+he had heard a muffled scream. He stopped in his tracks and listened
+intently. Again it came, this time with a blood-curdling cadence ending
+in what he would have sworn was a choking sob.
+
+The little job of getting the old-fashioned rear window open was a mere
+nothing to the experienced O'Hara, and in a moment he was inside the
+house. His feet struck soft carpet. Catlike, he stepped to one side in
+order to prevent any hidden eyes from perceiving his form silhouetted in
+the dim light of the open window. He dared not use his flashlight for
+fear that the circle of light would betray his position, thus making him
+an excellent target for possible bullets. Following the wall closely he
+managed to circle the room without mishap. His searching fingers finally
+came in contact with a door frame, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
+Here there was nothing to bar his progress except some moth-eaten
+portieres. These he brushed aside.
+
+The room which he now entered was probably the same into which the
+Professor had ushered Handlon and Perry the day before. There being
+still no sign of life about, the reporter decided to throw caution to
+the winds. He brought his flash into play. Quickly casting the powerful
+beam around the chamber he examined the place with an all-searching
+glance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nothing.
+
+With a stifled oath he turned his attention to the other rooms in the
+immediate vicinity. The brilliant light revealed not the slightest trace
+of a person, living or dead. The sound must have come from the second
+story or from the cellar. He decided on the upper floor.
+
+Feverish with impatience because of the valuable time he had already
+lost, he bounded up the heavily carpeted stairs two at a time. Now to
+his keen ears came certain faint sounds which told him that he was on
+the right track. Before him extended a long, dusty hall, terminating in
+a single heavy door. Several other doors opened at intervals along the
+corridor. One or two of these were open, and he threw the beam from his
+flash hastily into one after another of them. He saw only dusty and
+mildewed chamber furnishings of an ancient massive style.
+
+Suddenly he pricked up his ears.
+
+The door ahead of him was creaking slowly open. Instantly he extinguished
+his torch and leaped into the nearest room. Whoever was opening that end
+door was carrying a lamp. What if the Professor had accomplices who
+might discover him and overpower him by force of numbers! O'Hara drew the
+automatic from his pocket, deriving a comforting assurance from the
+feel of the cold steel. Here was something no man could resist could he
+but get it into action. The light was now nearly abreast of his door, and
+for a sickening instant he thought the prowler was coming into the room.
+He held his breath. Now the lamp was at the open door, and now it was
+quickly withdrawn. After a breathless second he tip-toed forward and
+peered cautiously down the hallway.
+
+About here it was that James O'Hara began to realize that this was
+going to be a horrible night indeed. He had wondered why the progress of
+the light had been so deathly slow. Now he knew why, by reason of what
+he saw--and what he saw made him feel rather sick. The man with the
+lantern was quite plainly Professor Kell, bent nearly double with the
+weight of a grotesquely big thing on his back, a thing that flung a dim,
+contorted shadow on the ceiling. And that thing was a dead man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A corpse it was--the attitude proved that. With a numb relief O'Hara
+realized it was not the body of Skip Handlon. This had been a much
+larger man than Skip, and the clothing was different from anything
+Handlon had worn.
+
+The light was now disappearing down the stairway. For a moment O'Hara
+felt undecided as to his next move. Should he follow Kell and his
+burden, or should he not take advantage of this fine opportunity to
+continue his search of the upper story? That scream still rang in his
+ears; there had been a very evident feminine quality in it, and the
+remembrance of that fact reproached him. Had he been guilty of mincing
+daintily about in this old house while a woman was being done to death
+under his nose, when a little bolder action on his part might have saved
+her?
+
+Stepping once more into the hall he advanced to the door just closed
+behind the Professor and tried it, only to find it locked. Out of a
+pocket came several articles best known to the "profession"--a piece of
+stiff wire, a skeleton key and other paraphernalia calculated to reduce
+the obstinate mechanism to submission. For a minute, two, three, he
+worked at the ancient lock; then, without a creak, the door swung open.
+A touch of oil to the hinges had insured their silence. Jimmie O'Hara
+believed in being artistic in his work, especially when it came to fine
+points, and he was.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He found himself in the same room where the drugged cigars had been
+proved the undoing of Handlon and Perry. In order not to alarm the
+Professor unduly by chance noises and perhaps invite a surprise attack
+upon himself, O'Hara closed the laboratory door behind him and let the
+lock spring again. Hastily he made search of the place. No trace of the
+missing reporter could he find, except two half-consumed cigars in a
+corner whence the Professor had impatiently kicked them.
+
+On the big table in the center of the room, however, was an object which
+excited his interest. It was apparently nothing more or less than a
+giant Crookes tube, connected in some way with a complicated mechanism
+contained in a wooden cabinet under the table. Probably this apparatus
+was concerned in the Professor's weird experiments which had so aroused
+the countryside. He studied it curiously, his eyes for the moment closed
+in thought, until a slight sound somewhere near at hand caused him to
+open them wide. Was the Kell returning?
+
+Quickly he extinguished the lamp and glided to a nearby door, thinking
+to secrete himself here, and take Kell by surprise. To his consternation
+the door swung inward at a touch. He prepared instinctively for battle
+against any foe who might present himself. For a moment he held himself
+taut; then, nothing of an alarming nature having happened, he drew a
+swift breath of relief and flashed on his light. He gave vent to a low
+exclamation. The swiftly darting shaft from the torch had revealed the
+figure of a girl, bound and gagged.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The girl lay trembling on a wretched bed in a corner of the dilapidated
+old chamber. O'Hara crossed the room and bent over her. Still wary of a
+trap he glanced back in the direction of the laboratory door: all safe
+there. Jimmie made haste to remove the cruel gag from her mouth.
+
+"Courage," he whispered. "Half a minute and you will be free."
+
+He produced a knife with a suspiciously long blade and cut her bonds. He
+then assisted her to her feet, where she reeled dizzily. Realizing the
+need for fast action he made her sit down while he massaged the bruised
+arms and ankles, which were badly swollen from the tight ropes. The girl
+had apparently been in the grip of such terrible fright that she had
+temporarily lost her power of speech. Mentally he chalked up another
+score against the Professor as the girl made several ineffectual
+attempts to speak.
+
+"Easy, kid," Jimmie whispered. "Just sit tight, and when you feel able
+you can tell me all about it. I'm going to get him good for this, you
+can bank on that."
+
+She thanked him with a faint smile, and of a sudden she found her
+voice.
+
+"Who are you? Where is father? Oh, tell me, please! I am afraid that
+horrible man has murdered him. Are you a servant here? Oh, I don't know
+whom to trust."
+
+"My name is Jimmie O'Hara," replied the reporter briefly; "and I hope
+you won't worry about me. I am gunning for the Proff myself. Tell me as
+quickly as you can what you know about him." He still kept an eye on the
+door of the adjoining laboratory. Any moment he expected to hear the
+sound of the old man's approach. The room would make an ideal place to
+ambush the maniac, he had swiftly decided.
+
+"I am Norma Manion. Please don't delay, but see if you can locate
+father." The girl's voice was agonized. "I heard him groan a half-hour
+ago, and a little later came a terrific crash. Oh, I'm afraid he's
+dead!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Reluctantly Jimmie gave up the idea of ambushing the Professor.
+
+"Wait here," he commanded curtly. "If you hear a shot join me as soon as
+you can. I want to take him alive if I can, but...." With this parting
+hint he disappeared through the door into the laboratory. Down the
+carpeted hall he crept to the stairway. Here he stopped and listened,
+but to his sensitive ears came no sound from below.
+
+"Must have gone down the cellar with the body," he muttered. "Here goes
+for a general exploration."
+
+With more boldness than the occasion perhaps really justified he
+descended the stairs and proceeded to examine the ground floor rooms
+minutely. The first was the room through which he had made entrance to
+the house. It proved to be but a storeroom containing nothing of
+interest, and he soon decided to waste no more time on it.
+
+The adjoining chamber, however, yielded some surprising finds. He had
+pushed back a dusty portiere to find himself in what could be
+nothing less than the Professor's sleeping chamber. At present the
+bed was unoccupied, though it showed signs of recent use. The
+electric torch played swiftly over every possible corner which could
+constitute a hiding place for an assassin, revealing nothing. Now
+the ever-searching ray fell upon an old-fashioned dresser, on which
+was piled a miscellaneous array of articles. Here were combs, brushes,
+a wig, a huge magnifying glass, and a gold watch. With a barely
+suppressed exclamation, Jimmie pounced upon the gold timepiece.
+
+Handlon's! So well did he know the particular design of his watch that
+he could have recognized it in the dark by sense of touch alone. So the
+old man was not averse to robbery among his other activities! The former
+two-story man thought fast. Handlon had probably been done in, and the
+body had been disposed of in some weird manner. The only thing that
+remained to be done, since the unlucky photographer was evidently past
+human help, was to cut short the Professor's list of murders.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the intention of missing no essential detail O'Hara swept the ray
+of the searchlight around the chamber once more, but discovered no more
+of importance. Deciding that the sleeping chamber could yield no further
+clue he shut off the tell-tale ray and stepped noiselessly back into the
+next room. Here he groped his way around until he encountered a door,
+which stood open. A moment's cautious exploration with an outstretched
+foot revealed the top step of a descending staircase. No faintest
+glimmer of light was visible, but muffled sounds proceeding from the
+depths told him that someone was below.
+
+With infinite care, feeling his way gingerly over the rickety old steps
+and fearful that an unexpected creak from one of the ancient boards
+would at any moment prove his undoing, he commenced the descent. Once a
+board did groan softly, causing him to stop in his tracks and stand with
+bated breath. He listened for sign of a movement below, while his heart
+loudly told off a dozen strokes. Stealthily he continued his progress,
+until finally soft earth under his feet told him he had reached the
+cellar bottom.
+
+Now his straining eyes perceived a tiny bit of light, and simultaneously
+he became conscious of a deathly stench. The damp earth padding his
+footsteps, he advanced swiftly toward the source of light, which now
+seemed to lie in stripes across his line of vision. He soon saw that the
+stairs gave upon a small boarded-off section of the cellar proper, and
+light was seeping between the boards. Ah, and here was a rickety door,
+fortuitously equipped with a large knot-hole. O'Hara applied an eye to
+this--and what he saw nearly ruined even his cast iron nerve.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Professor was working beside a heavy wooden cask, from which issued
+the horrible stench. From time to time a sodden thud told that he was
+hacking something to pieces with an ax. Now and then he would strain
+mightily at a dark and bulky thing which lay on the floor, a thing that
+required considerable strength to lift. It seemed to be getting lighter
+after each spasm of frenzied chopping. For a second Kell's shadow
+wavered away from the thing, and the enervated newspaper man saw it
+plainly. His senses almost left him as he realized that he was
+witnessing the dismemberment of a human body.
+
+As he hacked the fragments of tissue from the torso the fiend carefully
+deposited each in the huge cask. At such times a faint boiling sound was
+heard, and there arose an effluvium that bade fair to overcome even the
+monster engaged in the foul work. At last the limbs and head had been
+entirely removed. The Professor evidently decided that the trunk should
+be left whole, and he put his entire strength into the job of getting it
+into the cask. It was almost more than he could negotiate, but finally a
+dull splash told that he had succeeded.
+
+At this moment Jimmie O'Hara came out of his trance. The horrible
+proceeding had left him faint and shaken, and he wished heartily that he
+could leave the disgusting place as fast as his legs could carry him.
+But there was still work to be done and he resolved to get it over.
+
+The lantern! First he must put that out of commission. The maniac would
+then be at his mercy. Slowly, steadily he stole through the doorway, his
+eyes glued to the Professor's back. Now he was within a yard of the
+lantern, and he drew back his foot for the kick.
+
+Next moment Jimmie found himself gazing into the glaring eyes of his
+intended victim. Instinctively he struck out with the clubbed automatic,
+but the blow must have fallen short, or else the Professor had developed
+an uncanny agility. Now to his horror he saw the flashing blade of the
+bloodstained ax raised on high. He had no time to dodge the blow. He
+pressed the trigger of the Colt from the position in which he held it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The bullet grazed the upraised arm. The ax fell toward O'Hara from
+fingers lacking strength to retain it, and he grasped it by the handle
+in midair. The next moment the assassin collected his wits and sprang at
+him. Silently, the breath of both coming in gasps, the two men strove,
+each clawing desperately at the other's throat. The reporter fought with
+the knowledge that should he lose he would never again see the light of
+day, the other with the fear of the justice that would deal with him.
+
+The maniac hugged his arms tightly about Jimmie, pinioning him so
+tightly that the reporter could not use his gun. At length their
+convulsive movements brought the men close to the lantern, and the next
+instant the cellar was plunged in darkness. A second later the Professor
+tripped over some hidden obstruction and fell, dragging his opponent
+with him to the earthen floor. To Jimmie's surprise there was no further
+movement from the body beneath him. Could the old villain be playing
+possum? He cautiously shifted his hold and grasped the hidden throat. He
+pressed the Professor's windpipe for a moment, but there was no
+answering struggle. Slowly the truth dawned upon him. The heavy fall to
+the floor had rendered the older man insensible.
+
+He must work fast. Reaching into his pocket he brought out the ever
+handy electric torch and flashed it over the features of his prisoner.
+Kell was breathing heavily. With dexterous hands O'Hara swiftly went
+through the old man's pockets, removing all which might tend to make
+that worthy dangerous--an ugly looking pistol of large caliber, a
+blackjack similar to his own and a small bottle.
+
+The latter item Jimmie examined curiously, finally uncorking it and
+inhaling the contents. He inhaled, not wisely but too well. The fumes
+from the vial were nigh overpowering, and he reeled back nauseated. The
+cork he hastily replaced. Just what the nature of the powerful stuff
+was he never attempted to discover. One acquaintance was enough.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He staggered to his feet and got the lantern lighted, then sat, gun in
+hand, waiting for his prisoner's return to his senses. This was becoming
+increasingly imminent, judging by certain changes in the Professor's
+respiration. Finally there came a series of shuddering movements as the
+man attempted to raise his battered body.
+
+"Get up, you damned butcher," ordered Jimmie, "and march upstairs. And
+just remember that I've got you covered; don't make any false moves." He
+prodded the prostrate form of the by now glaring fiend before him. The
+stench of the place was nearly overcoming him, and again he felt an
+overwhelming desire to dash madly from that den of evil, and once more
+breathe God's fresh air. Under the stimulus of several shoves the
+Professor finally won to his feet and stumbled up the stairs. Jimmie was
+taking no chances and kept the automatic sharply digging into the ribs
+of his prisoner. The fight, however, seemed temporarily to have been all
+taken out of the old man, and he made no resistance as the reporter
+drove him on up to the laboratory.
+
+The room he found exactly as he left it. At a word from him Norma Manion
+came from her hiding place in the horrible room where she had been kept
+prisoner.
+
+With an hysterical scream she fell limply to the floor. The sight of her
+father's murderer had proved too much for her. Forgetting his prisoner
+for the moment Jimmie sprang to the girl's side.
+
+Kell chose this moment to make a dash for freedom. His footsteps,
+however, were not as noiseless as he had intended, and O'Hara whirled
+just in time to see his quarry about to throw open the hall door. Jimmie
+dove for his gun, only to encounter the Professor's mysterious vial,
+which, though forgotten, still lay in his pocket. With no time to
+think, he acted purely upon instinct. His arm drew back and the bottle
+flew straight for the Professor's head.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By a miracle the missile missed its mark. Came a shivering crash, as the
+bottle struck a stud in the massive door. Of a sudden recalling the
+terrific potency of the contents of that particular bottle, Jimmie
+gasped in dismay. Norma Manion's safety drove every other thought from
+his mind. At any cost he must remove her from the proximity of those
+lethal fumes.
+
+Hastily and without a backward glance, he gathered the girl into his
+arms and dashed into the room where he had first found her. Ascertaining
+that she had but swooned he placed her gently on the bed. In some
+perplexity as to his next move he stared at the beautiful face now so
+wan and white. Queer that he hadn't noticed the fact before--she was
+beautiful. He even took a second look, then noting a continued absence
+of all sound from the laboratory decided to investigate.
+
+Gingerly he pushed open the door, sniffing the air cautiously as he
+advanced. To his nostrils gradually came a slight scent, which though
+almost imperceptible made his senses reel. As he approached the hall
+door he found the atmosphere heavy with the soporific vapors from the
+broken vial, and he staggered drunkenly.
+
+He gave a start of surprise. On the floor, lying in a grotesque huddle
+which suggested a most unpleasant possibility, was the inert body of
+Professor Kell.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jimmie bent over the body and put an experienced ear to the heart. Yes,
+there as a faint beat--very faint. Even as he listened he perceived a
+slight increase in the respiration. Now the breath began coming in
+great, choking gasps, only to die suddenly to next to nothing. At last
+with a rueful sigh Jimmie reached to his hip and produced the private
+O'Hara flagon. He stooped over the Professor's form once more and by
+dint of much prying at clenched jaws managed to force a sizeable charge
+of fiery liquid down the old man's throat. Jimmie had just begun to
+entertain a strong hope that this latter effort would bring the
+Professor to life, when his keen ear detected signs of a commotion
+below.
+
+He sprang from his position over the slowly reviving Kell and leaped to
+a vantage point beside the door. A blackjack miraculously appeared from
+some hidden part of his anatomy and the ever-dependable Colt also became
+in evidence. Now came the banging of a door, muffled voices, a crash as
+of a chair overturned in the dark. Up rolled a horrible oath, and the
+same was rendered in a voice to Jimmie sweetly familiar. Came the sound
+of footsteps on the stairway and several persons coming along the hall.
+
+"Where in hell is Jimmie?" roared a wicked voice. "If he's met with any
+monkey business in this hell-hole I'll see that the damned place burns
+to the ground before I leave it!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Delightedly Jimmie jerked open the door.
+
+"Still alive, Chief," he chirped as the Old Man strode into the
+laboratory. Bland was followed by Perry, who seemed to be in a sort of
+daze. Bringing up the rear were a pair of plainclothesmen whom Jimmie
+knew very well--almost too well. One of these gentlemen bore a lantern
+which reminded Jimmie strongly of some he had seen that night guarding
+an open ditch in the public highway.
+
+The Professor had fully regained consciousness and was struggling to his
+feet. As for Norma Manion, she had suddenly appeared, leaning weakly
+against the door casing, and was surveying the group in great alarm.
+
+After being assured by O'Hara that they were her friends she smiled
+wanly. To Bland and the others she was, of course, an unexpected factor
+in the weird night's doings, and for several moments they regarded her
+curiously.
+
+At length Jimmie, sensing the question in the Old Man's eyes, elected to
+offer a few words of explanation.
+
+"Miss Manion has just been through a terrible experience," he said.
+"She and her father have been for some time at the mercy of this
+monster"--indicating Kell--"and her nerves are completely shattered.
+We'd better get her out of this as quickly as we can."
+
+"Mike!" Hard Boiled Bland glared at one of the officers. "Don't stand
+there with your teeth in your gums like that. Take this girl out to my
+car and let her lie down. She needs a stimulant, too. If you search my
+car and find any red liquor in the left back door pocket, I don't know a
+thing about it. And stay with her so she won't be afraid to go to
+sleep."
+
+She smiled in silent gratitude and allowed the plainclothesman to lead
+her away from that chamber of horror.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The reporter lost no time in telling Bland of his failure to find Skip
+Handlon. He went on to acquaint his Chief with the facts of all that had
+occured while he had been at the Professor's house.
+
+The fiery old fellow listened grimly. When Jimmie came to the story of
+the corpse and the cask the editor breathed one word, "Manion!"
+
+Jimmie nodded sadly. All eyes turned to the dejected huddle on the floor
+that was Professor Kell. Finally Bland could wait no longer, but fixed a
+terrible eye on the murderer and demanded harshly, "Where's Handlon?"
+
+Now the Professor burst into a fit of insane laughter, laughter that
+curdled the blood of the listeners.
+
+"You ask me that! It's almost too good. Hee-hee! You sent your two
+precious reporters out to my house to pry into my secrets, and thought
+to display my name all over your yellow sheet; but you forgot that you
+were dealing with Professor Anton Kell, didn't you?" The last he fairly
+shrieked. "A lot of people have tried to intrude upon me before, but
+none ever escaped me!"
+
+"We know that," cut in Jimmie, for he was getting impatient and the old
+man's boastings seemed out of place. "You are slated for the rope
+anyway, after what I discovered down cellar." He jerked his eyes in the
+direction of the door significantly. "Now we propose to find Handlon,
+and the better it will be for you if you tell us what you have done with
+him. Otherwise...."
+
+"You can go to hell!" screamed the maniac. "If you are so clever, find
+out for yourselves. He isn't so far away that you couldn't touch him by
+reaching out your hand. In fact, he's been with you quite a while.
+Hee-hee-hee! Well, if you must know--there he is!" With an insane
+chuckle he pointed at Horace Perry. And Perry did a strange thing.
+
+"Yes, you fiend, here I am!" Whose voice was that? Was it Perry
+speaking, or was it Skip Handlon? Most assuredly Perry stood before
+them, but the voice, in a subtle manner, reminded the group strongly of
+poor old Skip.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As he spoke Perry had launched himself at the Professor's throat and had
+to be restrained by the others. Savagely he fought them but slowly and
+surely they overcame his struggles and placed him, writhing, in a
+chair.
+
+Of a sudden Bland leaned forward and scrutinized Perry's face sharply.
+Had the reporter gone insane too? The pupils of the eyes had taken on a
+sort of queer contraction, a fixed quality that was almost ludicrous. He
+looked like a man under hypnosis. He had gone limp in their grasp, but
+now suddenly he stiffened. The eyes underwent another startling change,
+this time glowing undoubtedly with the look of reason. Bland was
+mystified and waited for Perry to explain his queer conduct. The latter
+seemed finally to come to. Simultaneously he realized that his peculiar
+lapse from consciousness had been observed by the others.
+
+"Guess I may as well admit it," he said with a wry smile. "Ever since I
+came back from my assignment with Kell I have had a hell of a time. Half
+the time I have been in a daze and have not had the least idea what I
+was doing. Funny part of it is that I have seemed to keep right on doing
+things even while I was out of my head." He told briefly of the visions
+he had had in which he had seemed to contend with his brother reporter,
+the horrid sensations as he felt himself overcome, the black oblivion in
+which he then found himself, and the mysterious manner in which he had
+left Keegan on that ill-fated assignment.
+
+"What have you done to Handlon?" Jimmie's voice cut in. He was standing
+over the form of the maniac, rigid and menacing. "You have exactly two
+minutes to go."
+
+"Find out for yourself!" snarled the bruised and battered fiend.
+
+"I will," was the answer, and on the instant a horrible shriek rent the
+air. Jimmie had quickly grasped both of the Professor's arms at the
+wrists and was slowly twisting them in a grip of iron. Kell's face went
+white, the lips writhed back over toothless gums, the eyes closed in the
+supreme effort to withstand the excruciating pain. Then--
+
+"Enough, enough!" he screamed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+O'Hara eased the pressure slightly but retained his hold upon the
+clawlike hands. "Talk fast," he ordered.
+
+The old man struggled futilely in the grasp of the powerful reporter,
+finally glancing in the direction of the others. Would they show signs
+of pity? Surely not Hard Boiled Bland. The Chief was watching the
+struggles of the victim through a cloud of tobacco smoke which he was
+slowly exhaling through his nose. The plainclothesman displayed no sign
+of interest at all. The game was up!
+
+"Very well," he said sullenly. "Handlon and Perry are both occupying the
+same body."
+
+"Wh-a-a-t?" roared Bland. "Jimmie, I guess you'll have to put the screws
+to him some more. He's trying to make fools of us at the last minute!"
+
+"No, no!" screamed the Professor. "What I say is true. I have been
+working for years on my system of de-astralization. This last year I at
+length perfected my electric de-astralizer, which amplifies and exerts
+the fifth influence of de-cohesion."
+
+The whole party began to look uneasy and gazed apprehensively at the
+huge Crookes tube which still stood in its supporting frame on the
+table.
+
+"I have been forced to experiment on animals for the most part," the
+Professor continued. "I succeeded in de-astralizing a dog and a bull and
+caused them to exchange bodies. The bodies continued to function. I was
+enthusiastic. Other experiments took place of which I will not tell you.
+Finally I began to long for a human subject on which to try my fifth
+influence."
+
+"Just get down to cases, if you don't mind, Kell." The Chief wanted
+action. "Suppose you tell us just what you did to Handlon and where we
+can find him. I may as well mention that your life depends upon it. If
+we find that you have done for him, something worse than death may
+happen to you." The tone was menacing. Although Handlon was a
+comparatively late acquisition to the old Chief's staff, still he had
+been loyal to the paper.
+
+"When your two damned reporters entered my driveway," Kell resumed. "I
+saw them coming through a powerful glass which I always have on hand. I
+had no desire to see them, but they forced themselves upon me. At last I
+determined that they should furnish material for my experiments.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"If your men had looked into the grove behind the barn they would have
+found the automobile which furnished two more subjects I was keeping on
+hand in a room upstairs. Old Manion and his daughter gave me quite a bit
+of trouble, but I kept them drugged most of the time. He broke out of
+the room to-night though, and I had to kill him. It was self defense,"
+he added slyly.
+
+"Anyway, I found it was possible to make two astrals exchange bodies.
+But I also wanted to see if it were possible to cause two astrals to
+occupy the same body at the same time, and if so what the result would
+be. I found out. It was rare sport to watch your star reporter leave my
+house. He was damned glad to leave, I believe...." Again came the insane
+cackle.
+
+"Guess we have to believe him whether we want to or not." The detective
+came to life. "How about making him release Handlon's--what d'ye call
+it?--astral--from Perry's body?"
+
+"Just a moment." The voice now was unmistakably Handlon's, though it was
+issuing from the throat of Perry. "In the minute I have in consciousness
+let me suggest that before you do any more de-astralizing you _locate my
+body_. Until then, if I am released from this one I am a dead man."
+
+The words struck the group dumb. Where _was_ Handlon's body? Could the
+Professor produce it?
+
+That worthy looked rather haunted at that moment, and they began to see
+the fear of death coming upon him.
+
+"Mercy, mercy!" he begged as the four men started to advance upon him.
+"As soon as I had de-astralized Handlon I destroyed his body in my
+pickling barrel down cellar. But there is another way...." He paused,
+uncertain as to how his next words would be received. "Go out and get
+the Manion girl. She can be de-astralized and friend Handlon can have
+her body."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At this suggestion, advanced so naively, the four men recoiled in
+horror. It was entirely too much even for Hard Boiled Bland, and he
+could hardly restrain himself from applying the editorial fist to the
+leering face before him. Undoubtedly Professor Kell was hopelessly
+insane, and for that reason he held himself in leash.
+
+"Kell, you are slated to pull off one more stunt," Jimmie addressed the
+cringing heap. "You know what it is. Get busy. And just remember that I
+am standing over here"--he indicated a corner well separated from the
+rest--"with this cannon aimed in your direction. If things aren't just
+according to Hoyle, you get plugged. Get me?"
+
+"What about it, men?" Bland spoke up. "Is it going to be treating
+Handlon right to de-astralize him now? It will be his last chance to
+have a body on this earth."
+
+"Unfortunately that body never belonged to Handlon," said O'Hara. "Hence
+I fail to see why Perry should be discommoded for the balance of his
+life with a companion astral. Perry is clearly entitled to his own body,
+free and unhampered. Friend Skip is out of luck, unless--Well, I don't
+mind telling you, Kell, that you just gave me an idea. Snap into it
+now!"
+
+The Professor dragged himself to his feet and under the menace of the
+automatic fumbled under the table until he had located the intricate
+apparatus before mentioned.
+
+"Now if Mr. Perry--or Handlon--will kindly recline at full length on
+this table," he said with an obscene leer, "the experiment will begin."
+
+"Just remember, Kell, this is no experiment," advised Bland, fixing the
+Professor with an ugly eye. "You do as you're told."
+
+The other made no reply, but threw a hidden switch. Perry, lying flat on
+his back on the ancient table, suddenly found himself being bathed by
+what seemed to be a ray of light, and yet was not a ray of light. What
+was it? It was surely not visible, yet it was tangible. A terrific force
+was emanating from that devilish globe above him, drawing him out of
+himself--or--no--was he expanding? Again his ears became filled with
+confused, horrible sounds, the outlines of the room faded from sight,
+he felt a strange sense of inflation ... of lightness.... Oblivion!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From where the others sat a gasp of wonder went up. At the first contact
+of the switch there had been a momentary flash of greenish light within
+the bulb, and then a swift transition to a beautiful orange. It had then
+faded altogether, leaving the glass apparently inert and inactive.
+
+But it was not so! The form lying beneath the bulb was evidently being
+racked with untold tortures. The face became a thing of horror. Now it
+had twisted into a grotesque semblance of Handlon's--now it again
+resembled Perry's. The Professor quietly increased the pressure of the
+current. From the bulb emanated a steel gray exhalation of what must be
+termed light, and yet so real it was seemingly material. Assuredly it
+was not a ray of light as we understand light. It came in great beating
+throbs, in which the actual vibrations were entirely visible. Under each
+impact the body of Perry seemed to change, slowly at first, then with
+increasing speed. The body was now swelled to enormous size. Bland
+reached forward to touch it.
+
+"This de-cohering influence," the Professor was murmuring, almost
+raptly, "causes the atoms that go to make a living body repel one
+another. When the body is sufficiently nebulized, the soul--Back! Back,
+you fool!" he suddenly shrieked, grasping Bland by the arm. "Do you want
+to kill him?"
+
+Bland hurriedly retreated, convinced perforce that Kell's alarm was
+genuine. The editorial fingers had penetrated the subject's garments
+without resistance and sank into the body as easily as if it were so
+much soft soap!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The body continued to expand until at length even the hard-headed
+plainclothesman realized that it had been reduced to a mere vapor.
+Within this horrid vaporized body, which nearly filled the room and
+which had now lost all semblance to a man, could be discerned two faint
+shapes. Swiftly the Professor extinguished the lantern. The shapes,
+vague though they were, could be recognized as those of Horace Perry and
+Skip Handlon. And they were at strife!
+
+All eyes were now focused on Professor Kell, who was evidently waiting
+for something to happen. The two apparitions within the body-cloud were
+at death grips. One had been overcome and was temporarily helpless. It
+was that of Handlon. And then again the astral of Perry forcibly ousted
+that of Handlon from the cloud-cyst. And at that instant Professor Kell
+shut off the influence-tube.
+
+At once a terrific metamorphosis took place. There came a sharp sound
+almost like a clap of thunder, with the slight exception that this was
+occasioned by exactly the reverse effect. Instead of being an
+_ex_plosion it might more properly be termed an _in_plosion, for the
+mist-cloud suddenly vanished. The de-cohering influence having been
+removed, the cloud had condensed into the form of Perry. Apparently none
+the worse, he was even now beginning to recover consciousness. The
+astral of Handlon was no longer visible, though hovering in the
+vicinity.
+
+Perry's body was again his own.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At this time Jimmie O'Hara elected to start something new by hitting the
+Professor a workmanlike blow on the back of the head with the butt of
+his automatic. The next thing Bland or anyone else present knew the
+unconscious body of the Professor was on the table and Jimmie was
+groping for the concealed switch. At length he found it, and the green
+flash of light appeared in the bulb, followed by the brilliant orange
+manifestation.
+
+"What in hell are you doing?" gasped Bland.
+
+"De-astralizing the Professor," replied O'Hara cheerfully. "Don't you
+get the idea yet? Watch!"
+
+Fascinated, the four men saw the terrific emanation take its baleful
+effect. As before, the body commenced to expand and gradually took on a
+misty outline. Larger and larger it grew, until finally it had become a
+vast cloud of intangible nothingness which filled the room like some
+evil nebula.
+
+A cry of consternation from the detective aroused Jimmie. Skip Handlon's
+astral had appeared within the field of the nebula to fight for
+possession. There ensued what was perhaps the weirdest encounter ever
+witnessed. Though he was in poor physical shape, the Professor seemed to
+have an extremely powerful astral; and for some time the spectators
+despaired of Handlon's victory. Once the latter, evidently realizing
+that the powerful influence tube had rendered him visible, glanced
+sharply in Jimmie's direction. O'Hara was considerably puzzled at this,
+but watched the progress of the struggle tensely. At length the moment
+seemed to arrive which the reporter's astral had been awaiting. It
+turned tail and fled away from the astral of the Professor, disappearing
+beyond the outer confines of the nebula.
+
+Jimmie suddenly divined the other's purpose and dived for the hidden
+switch. As he had anticipated, Handlon had finally given up the attempt
+to overcome the astral of Kell by force and had made up his mind to
+accomplish his end by strategy. Almost on the instant that Jimmie's hand
+closed on the switch the reporter's astral again leaped into the field
+of the nebula. Fiercely it signalled to the former second story man to
+shut off the current, but the admonition was unnecessary, for Jimmie had
+already done so.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Swiftly the cloud-cyst faded. Even as the group caught a fleeting sight
+of Skip Handlon, the last that mortal eyes would ever see of him as he
+actually was, there came a violent disturbance at the edge of the
+shrinking nebula. Would the speed of condensation of the atoms which
+comprised the body of Professor Kell serve to shut out the pursuing
+astral of Kell?
+
+Even Bland held his breath!
+
+The cloud lost its luminous quality, the action of condensation
+increasing in speed. It was barely visible in the enshrouding gloom. An
+astral had long since been enveloped within the rapidly accumulating
+substance. Came a sudden clap of sound as before, and the final act of
+resolution had been accomplished. Whether the Professor had succeeded in
+regaining a position within the cloud-cyst before the crucial second
+none could say.
+
+Jimmie relighted the lantern. Apparently the effect of the love tap
+administered by his automatic was more or less of a lasting character,
+and the men were put to some ado to restore the body of Kell to
+consciousness. At length their efforts began to bear fruit, however, and
+it became expedient to remove the patient to the softer couch in the
+sitting room below. As they moved forward to lay hold of the limp body a
+figure appeared in the doorway to the hall. It was the plainclothesman,
+Riley.
+
+"How about getting under way for town," he wanted to know. "Is the old
+party croaked yet? Miss Manion has had a fierce time and says she won't
+stay near this house another minute. I don't like this place myself
+either. Do you know I just got kicked by a poll parrot? Let's get away
+from here."
+
+"Hold on, Riley, what are you talking about?" growled Bland. "Kicked by
+a poll parrot! You're--"
+
+"That's all right, Chief," broke in the now thoroughly cheerful Perry.
+"That jackass I shot could probably have told us all about it. I
+positively know the beast could talk."
+
+"Humph!" snorted Bland, "Well, if a donkey can talk, and a bull can
+bite, and a hound can hook, why shouldn't a parrot--Judas Priest, I'm
+getting as crazy as the rest of you! Hurry up and get Kell downstairs so
+we can see who he is. There I go again! Oh, go lie down, Riley."
+
+"But look, Bland, look!" Riley was pointing a demoralized finger at a
+cage in the corner. He tugged frantically at Bland's coat sleeve. "See
+what's in there, won't you? I--well, I did find some liquor in your car,
+and Miss Manion made me take some. I--I didn't know it would do this to
+me. Look in there; please, Mr. Bland!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bland gave Riley a dark look, but nevertheless he reached for O'Hara's
+flashlight. In the cage two yellow eyes blinked sleepily out at him.
+Perry began to laugh.
+
+"Why, there's nothing in there but a cat. Skip and I heard it purring
+when we first came in here this afternoon. Guess Riley--"
+
+"Great God, Jimmie, give me your gun!" Hard Boiled Bland for the moment
+failed to merit his sobriquet. The torch in his hand threw a trembling
+beam full into the cage. "It's a snake! And--there! It's doing it
+again!"
+
+A snake it was, indubitably, a huge black specimen with bright yellow
+stripes. Bland's frenzied yell seemed not to have excited it at all, for
+now the sleek fellow had arched its body neatly and was calmly licking
+its sides with a long forked tongue. After a moment it halted the
+operation long enough to rub its jaw against a bar of its cage, and gave
+vent to a sociable mew!
+
+Even this could not dash the spirits of Horace Perry. He laughed
+delightedly again as he laid Bland by the arm.
+
+"That creature is perfectly harmless, Chief," he told the editor.
+"Somewhere I suppose there's a mighty dangerous kitty cat at large, but
+there's no sense in taking it out on this poor reptile. Let's live and
+let live."
+
+With a show of reluctance Bland returned Jimmie's automatic, then strode
+over to where lay the form of Kell. Perry and O'Hara lingered by the
+cage long enough to arrange a plan to let the snake out doors as soon as
+opportunity offered, after which they joined their Chief. Riley went
+out to resume his vigil in Bland's car, while his fellow sleuth prepared
+to light the way downstairs. Under his guidance the sick man was carried
+below without mishap.
+
+Downstairs the now conscious form of the venerable Professor was laid
+out on the ancient sofa until his senses could clear a bit. Presently
+the eyelids fluttered open and a feeble voice asked, "Where the deuce am
+I, and how did all you guys get here?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A joyous gasp went up. That voice! Although uttered in somewhat the same
+vocal quality as Kell's the intonation and accents had strangely
+altered. O'Hara leaned eagerly over the figure on the couch. The
+question he asked was startling in its incongruity:
+
+"How are you feeling, _Skip_!"
+
+"Rotten," was the reply from the lips of Kell. "What hit me such a crack
+on the dome? I feel as if I had been dragged through a knot-hole. Lemme
+up."
+
+"Stay still," commanded O'Hara, kindly but firmly. "You aren't fit to
+move yet. You are going on a long ride and will need your strength.
+Don't talk, either."
+
+A half-hour later they left the house. In the front yard the editor
+called a hasty conclave which included the entire party. Hard Boiled
+Bland has never been known to talk so much at a stretch, before or
+since.
+
+"Before we start back," he began, "we had better come to an understanding.
+In the first place--Skip, come over here a minute."
+
+Norma Manion uttered an involuntary cry of fear as the aged form of Kell
+passed by her. Skip's instant response to his name had, of course, been
+perfectly natural to him. But it had an odd effect on the others.
+
+"Miss Manion, and gentlemen," Bland went on, with a bow of mock
+ceremony, "I want you to meet Mister--er, Mister--oh hell, call him
+Saunders. This is Mr. Kenneth Saunders, ladies and gentlemen. When he
+gets a shave and has his new face patched up I believe you will like his
+appearance much more than you do now.
+
+"Seriously though, folks, I hope that with a little fixing up the
+gentleman will hardly resemble Professor Anton Kell. Kell is dead.
+Obviously, however, this gentleman can hardly continue his existence as
+Skip Handlon. Hence--well, hence Mr. Saunders. And don't forget the
+name.
+
+"Now another little matter. This house has proven a curse to humanity.
+What has transpired here need never be known. Would it not be the wiser
+to eliminate all traces of to-night's happenings? There is a way." He
+looked significantly at the others.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You mean--" began Perry.
+
+"That we destroy all traces of Professor Kell's villainy. Although he is
+no more, still someone might notice that _his body actively remains_.
+And no one wants to do any explaining."
+
+"It's the only way we can protect Handlon," one of the sleuths
+ruminated, half to himself. "No judge would ever believe a word about
+this de-astralization business. The chances are we would all go to the
+booby hatch and Handlon would go to prison for Kell's crimes."
+
+"There were four of us that witnessed the fact of the--the soul
+transfusion, though," Perry objected. "Wouldn't that be enough to clear
+Skip? Besides, wouldn't it be possible for us to lead a jury out here
+and duplicate the experiment?"
+
+"Too much undesirable publicity," growled Bland, who for once in his
+life had found reason to keep something good out of the headlines. "What
+do you say, people?"
+
+"I move we move," from the detective who had had the uncomfortable job
+of attending to Norma Manion.
+
+"Gentleman, I believe we understand each other," said Jimmie quietly.
+"Now I am going into the barn"--significantly--"to see if everything's
+all right. While I am there something _might_ happen. You understand?"
+
+The others nodded silent assent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the snug seat of Jimmie's speedster Norma Manion shivered as she
+followed the direction indicated by her companion's finger. It was that
+darkest hour which comes just before the dawn.
+
+To the westward could be perceived a dull, red glow, which, even as they
+watched with fascinated eyes, developed into an intense glare. Gradually
+the fading stars became eclipsed in the greater glory.
+
+Three cars, motors throbbing as if eager to be gone, stood a space apart
+on the main road. The car behind O'Hara's was the Manion machine, now
+occupied by Bland and Riley. The remaining one was a touring car and
+contained the balance of the party. Perry was at the wheel, and beside
+him sat the Handlon-Kell-Saunders combination.
+
+"Thus passes a den of horror," whispered Jimmie to his companion.
+
+"It is the funeral pyre of my father," the girl answered simply. She had
+long since recovered from her initial outburst of grief at her loss, and
+now watched the progress of the conflagration dry-eyed. At length Jimmie
+slipped an arm protectingly about the trembling shoulders.
+
+"You have seen enough," he said. As the three cars raced from the scene
+of the holocaust, faint streamers in the east told of the rising orb of
+day.
+
+"Good-by, Keegan, forever," murmured Norma.
+
+"Amen," O'Hara devoutedly agreed.
+
+
+
+
+From the Ocean's Depths
+
+_By Sewell Peaslee Wright_
+
+    Man came from the sea. Mercer, by his thought-telegraph, learns
+    from the weirdly beautiful ocean-maiden of a branch that
+    returned there.
+
+[Illustration: _Her head was a little to one side, in the attitude of one
+who listens intently._]
+
+
+From somewhere out on the black, heaving Atlantic, the rapid, muffled
+popping of a speed-boat's exhaust drifted clearly through the night.
+
+I dropped my book and stretched, leaning back more comfortably in my
+chair. There was real romance and adventure! Rum-runners, seeking out
+their hidden port with their cargo of contraband from Cuba. Heading
+fearlessly through the darkness, fighting the high seas, still running
+after the storm of a day or so before, daring a thousand dangers for the
+sake of the straw-packed bottles they carried. Sea-bronzed men, with
+hard, flat muscles and fearless eyes; ready guns slapping their thighs
+as they--
+
+Absorbed in my mental picture of these modern free-booters, the sudden
+alarm of the telephone startled me like an unexpected shot fired beside
+my ear. Brushing the cigarette ashes from my smoking-jacket, I crossed
+the room and snatched up the receiver.
+
+"Hello!" I snapped ungraciously into the mouthpiece. It was after eleven
+by the ship's clock on the mantel, and if--
+
+"Taylor?" The voice--Warren Mercer's familiar voice--rattled on without
+waiting for a reply. "Get in your car and come down here as fast as
+possible. Come just as you are, and--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What's the matter?" I managed to interrupt him. "Burglars?" I had never
+heard Mercer speak in that high-pitched, excited voice before; his usual
+speech was slow and thoughtful, almost didactic.
+
+"Please, Taylor, don't waste time questioning me. If it weren't urgent,
+I wouldn't be calling you, you know. Will you come?"
+
+"You bet!" I said quickly, feeling rather a fool for ragging him when he
+was in such deadly earnest. "Have--"
+
+The receiver snapped and crackled; Mercer had hung up the instant he had
+my assurance that I would come. Usually the very soul of courtesy and
+consideration, that act alone would have convinced me that there was an
+urgent need for my presence at The Monstrosity. That was Mercer's own
+name for the impressive pile that was at once his residence and his
+laboratory.
+
+I threw off the smoking-jacket and pulled on a woolen golfing sweater,
+for the wind was brisk and sharpish. In two minutes I was backing the
+car out of the garage; a moment later I was off the gravelled drive and
+tearing down the concrete with the accelerator all the way down, and the
+black wind shrieking around the windshield of my little roadster.
+
+My own shack was out of the city limits--a little place I keep to live
+in when the urge to go fishing seizes me, which is generally about twice
+a year. Mercer picked the place up for me at a song.
+
+The Monstrosity was some four miles further out from town, and off the
+highway perhaps a half-mile more.
+
+I made the four miles in just a shade over that many minutes, and
+clamped on the brakes as I saw the entrance to the little drive that led
+toward the sea, and Mercer's estate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With gravel rattling on my fenders, I turned off the concrete and swept
+between the two massive, stuccoed pillars that guarded the drive. Both
+of them bore corroded bronze plates, "The Billows," the name given The
+Monstrosity by the original owner, a newly-rich munitions manufacturer.
+
+The structure itself loomed up before me in a few seconds, a rambling
+affair with square-shouldered balconies and a great deal of wrought-iron
+work, after the most flamboyant Spanish pattern. It was ablaze with
+light. Apparently every bulb in the place was burning.
+
+Just a few yards beyond the surf boomed hollowly on the smooth, shady
+shore, littered now, I knew, by the pitiful spoils of the storm.
+
+As I clamped on my brakes, a swift shadow passed two of the lower
+windows. Before I could leap from the car, the broad front door, with
+its rounded top and circular, grilled window, was flung wide, and Mercer
+came running to meet me.
+
+He was wearing a bathrobe, hastily flung on over a damp bathing suit,
+his bare legs terminating in a pair of disreputable slippers.
+
+"Fine, Taylor!" he greeted me. "I suppose you're wondering what it's all
+about. I don't blame you. But come in, come in! Just wait till you see
+her!"
+
+"Her?" I asked, startled. "You're not in love, by any chance, and
+bringing me down here like this merely to back up your own opinion of
+them eyes and them lips, Mercer?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He laughed excitedly.
+
+"You'll see, you'll see! No, I'm not in love. And I want you to help,
+and not admire. There are only Carson and myself here, you know, and the
+job's too big for the two of us." He hurried me across the broad
+concrete porch and into the house. "Throw the cap anywhere and come
+on!"
+
+Too much amazed to comment further, I followed my friend. This was a
+Warren Mercer I did not know. Usually his clean-cut, olive-tinted face
+was a polite mask that seldom showed even the slightest trace of
+emotion. His eyes, dark and large, smiled easily, and shone with
+interest, but his almost beautiful mouth, beneath the long slim
+mustache, always closely cropped, seldom smiled with his eyes.
+
+But it was his present excited speech that amazed me most. Mercer,
+during all the years I had known him, had never been moved before to
+such tempestuous outbursts of enthusiasm. It was his habit to speak
+slowly and thoughtfully, in his low, musical voice; even in the midst of
+our hottest arguments, and we had had many of them, his voice had never
+lost its calm, unhurried gentleness.
+
+To my surprise, instead of leading the way to the really comfortable,
+although rather gaudy living room, Mercer turned to the left, towards
+what had been the billiard room, and was now his laboratory.
+
+The laboratory, brilliantly illuminated, was littered, as usual, with
+apparatus of every description. Along one wall were the retorts, scales,
+racks, hoods and elaborate set-ups, like the articulated glass and
+rubber bones of some weird prehistoric monster, that demonstrated
+Mercer's taste for this branch of science. On the other side of the room
+a corresponding workbench was littered with a tangle of coils,
+transformers, meters, tools and instruments, and at the end of the
+room, behind high black control panels, with gleaming bus-bars and
+staring, gaping meters, a pair of generators hummed softly. The other
+end of the room was nearly all glass, and opened onto the patio and the
+swimming pool.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mercer paused a moment, with his hand on the knob of the door, a strange
+light in his dark eyes.
+
+"Now you'll see why I called you here," he said tensely. "You can judge
+for yourself whether the trip was worth while. Here she is!"
+
+With a gesture he flung open the door, and I stared, following his
+glance, down at the great tiled swimming pool.
+
+It is difficult for me to describe the scene. The patio was not large,
+but it was beautifully done. Flowers and shrubs, even a few small palms,
+grew in profusion in the enclosure, while above, through the movable
+glass roof--made in sections to disappear in fine weather--was the empty
+blackness of the sky.
+
+None of the lights provided for the illumination of the covered patio
+was turned on, but all the windows surrounding the patio were aglow, and
+I could see the pool quite clearly.
+
+The pool--and its occupant.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We were standing at one side of the pool, near the center. Directly
+opposite us, seated on the bottom of the pool, was a human figure, nude
+save for a great mass of tawny hair that fell about her like a silken
+mantle. The strangely graceful figure of a girl, one leg stretched out
+straight before her, the other drawn up and clasped by the interlocked
+fingers of her hands. Even in the soft light I could see her perfectly,
+through the clear water, her pale body outlined sharply against the jade
+green tiles.
+
+I tore myself away from the staring, curious eyes of the figure.
+
+"In God's name, Mercer, what is it? Porcelain?" I asked hoarsely. The
+thing had an indescribably eery effect.
+
+He laughed wildly.
+
+"Porcelain? Watch ... _look_!"
+
+My eyes followed his pointing finger. The figure was moving. Gracefully
+it arose to its full height. The great cloud of corn-colored hair
+floated down about it, falling below the knees. Slowly, with a grace of
+movement comparable only with the slow soaring of a gull, she came
+toward me, walking on the bottom of the pool through the clear water as
+though she floated in air.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Fascinated, I watched her. Her eyes, startlingly large and dark in the
+strangely white face, were fixed on mine. There was nothing sinister in
+the gaze, yet I felt my body shaking as though in the grip of a terrible
+fear. I tried to look away, and found myself unable to move. I felt
+Mercer's tense, sudden grip upon my arm, but I did not, could not, look
+at him.
+
+"She--she's smiling!" I heard him exclaim. He laughed, an excited,
+high-pitched laugh that irritated me in some subtle way.
+
+She was smiling, and looking up into my eyes. She was very close now,
+within a few feet of us. She came still closer, until she was at my very
+feet as I stood on the raised ledge that ran around the edge of the
+pool, her head thrown back, staring straight up at me through the
+water.
+
+I could see her teeth, very white between her coral-pink lips, and her
+bosom rising and falling beneath the veil of pale gold hair. She was
+breathing _water_!
+
+Mercer literally jerked me away from the edge of the pool.
+
+"What do you think of her, Taylor?" he asked, his dark eyes dancing with
+excitement.
+
+"Tell me about it," I said, shaking my head dazedly. "She is not
+human?"
+
+"I don't know. I think so. As human as you or I. I'll tell you all I
+know, and then you can judge for yourself. I think we'll know in a few
+minutes, if my plans work out. But first slip on a bathing suit."
+
+I didn't argue the matter. I let Mercer lead me away without a word. And
+while I was changing, he told me all he knew of the strange creature in
+the pool.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Late this afternoon I decided to go for a little walk along the beach,"
+Mercer began. "I had been working like the devil since early in the
+morning, running some tests on what you call my thought-telegraph. I
+felt the need of some fresh sea air.
+
+"I walked along briskly for perhaps five minutes, keeping just out of
+reach of the rollers and the spray. The shore was littered with all
+sorts of flotsam and jetsam washed up by the big storm, and I was just
+thinking that I would have to have a man with a truck come and clean up
+the shore in front of the place, when, in a little sandy pool, I
+saw--_her_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"She was laying face down in the water, motionless, her head towards the
+sea, one arm stretched out before her, and her long hair wrapped around
+her like a half-transparent cloak.
+
+"I ran up and lifted her from the water. Her body was cold, and deathly
+white, although her lips were faintly pink, and her heart was beating,
+faintly but steadily.
+
+"Like most people in an emergency. I forgot all I ever knew about first
+aid. All I could think of was to give her a drink, and of course I
+didn't have a flask on my person. So I picked her up in my arms and
+brought her to the house as quickly as I could. She seemed to be
+reviving, for she was struggling and gasping when I got here with her.
+
+"I placed her on the bed in the guest room and poured her a stiff drink
+of Scotch--half a tumblerful, I believe. Lifting up her head, I placed
+the glass to her lips. She looked up me, blinking, and took the liquor
+in a single draught. She did not seem to drink it, but sucked it out of
+the glass in a single amazing gulp--that's the only word for it. The
+next instant she was off the bed, her face a perfect mask of hate and
+agony.
+
+"She came at me, hands clutching and clawing, making odd murmuring or
+mewing sounds in her throat. It was then that I noticed for the first
+time that her hands were webbed!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Webbed?" I asked, startled.
+
+"Webbed," nodded Mercer solemnly. "As are her feet. But listen, Taylor.
+I was amazed, and not a little rattled when she came for me. I ran
+through the French windows out into the patio. For a moment she ran
+after me, rather awkwardly and heavily, but swiftly, nevertheless. Then
+she saw the pool.
+
+"Apparently forgetting that I existed, she leaped into the water, and as
+I approached a moment later I could see her breathing deeply and
+gratefully, a smile of relief upon her features, as she lay upon the
+bottom of the pool. Breathing, Taylor, on the bottom of the pool! Under
+eight feet of water!"
+
+"And then what, Mercer?" I reminded him, as he paused, apparently lost
+in thought.
+
+"I tried to find out more about her. I put on my bathing suit and dived
+into the pool. Well, she came at me like a shark, quick as a flash, her
+teeth showing, her hands tearing like claws through the water. I turned,
+but not quickly enough to entirely escape. See?" Mercer threw back the
+dressing robe, and I saw a ragged tear in his bathing suit on his left
+side, near the waist. Through the rent three deep, jagged scratches were
+clearly visible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"She managed to claw me, just once," Mercer resumed, wrapping the robe
+about him again. "Then I got out and called on Carson for help. I put
+him into a bathing suit, and we both endeavored to corner her. Carson
+got two bad scratches, and one rather serious bite that I have bandaged.
+I have a number of lacerations, but I didn't fare so badly as Carson
+because I am faster in the water than he is.
+
+"The harder we tried, the more determined I became. She would sit there,
+calm and placid, until one of us entered the water. Then she became a
+veritable fury. It was maddening.
+
+"At last I thought of you. I phoned, and here we are!"
+
+"But, Mercer, it's a nightmare!" I protested. We moved out of the room.
+"Nothing human can live under water and breathe water, as she does!"
+
+Mercer paused a moment, staring at me oddly.
+
+"The human race," he said gravely, "came up out of sea. The human race
+as we know it. Some may have gone back." He turned and walked away
+again, and I hurried after him.
+
+"What do you mean. Mercer? 'Some may have gone back?' I don't get it."
+
+Mercer shook his head, but made no other reply until we stood again on
+the edge of the pool.
+
+The girl was standing where we had left her, and as she looked up into
+my face, she smiled again, and made a quick gesture with one hand. It
+seemed to me that she invited me to join her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I believe she likes you, Taylor," said Mercer thoughtfully. "You're
+light, light skin, light hair. Carson and I are both very dark, almost
+swarthy. And in that white bathing suit--yes, I believe she's taken a
+fancy to you!"
+
+Mercer's eyes were dancing.
+
+"If she has," he went on, "it'll make our work very easy."
+
+"What work?" I asked suspiciously. Mercer, always an indefatigable
+experimenter, was never above using his friends in the benefit of
+science. And some of his experiments in the past had been rather trying,
+not to say exciting.
+
+"I think I have what you call my thought-telegraph perfected,
+experimentally," he explained rapidly. "I fell asleep working on it at
+three o'clock, or thereabouts, this morning, and some tests with Carson
+seem to indicate that it is a success. I should have called you
+to-morrow, for further test. Nearly five years of damned hard work to a
+successful conclusion, Taylor, and then this mermaid comes along and
+makes my experiment appear about as important as one of those breakers
+rolling in out there!"
+
+"And what do you plan to do now?" I asked eagerly, glancing down at the
+beautiful pale face that glimmered up at me through the clear water of
+the pool.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Why, try it on her!" exclaimed Mercer with mounting enthusiasm. "Don't
+you see, Taylor? If it will work on her, and we can direct her thoughts,
+we can find out her history, the history of her people! We'll add a page
+to scientific history--a whole big chapter!--that will make us famous.
+Man this is so big it's swept me off my feet! Look!" And he held out a
+thin, aristocratic brown hand before my eyes, a hand that shook with
+nervous excitement.
+
+"I don't blame you," I said quickly. "I'm no savant, and still I see
+what an amazing thing this is. Let's get busy. What can I do?"
+
+Mercer reached around the door into the laboratory and pressed a
+button.
+
+"For Carson," he explained. "We'll need his help. In the meantime, we'll
+look over the set-up. The apparatus is strewn all over the place."
+
+He had not exaggerated. The set-up consisted of a whole bank of tubes,
+each one in its own shielding copper box. On a much-drilled horizontal
+panel, propped up on insulators, were half a score of delicate meters of
+one kind and another, with thin black fingers that pulsed and trembled.
+Behind the panel was a tall cylinder wound with shining copper wire, and
+beside it another panel, upright, fairly bristling with knobs, contact
+points, potentiometers, rheostats and switches. On the end of the table
+nearest the door was still another panel, the smallest of the lot,
+bearing only a series of jacks along one side, and in the center a
+switch with four contact points. A heavy, snaky cable led from this
+panel to the maze of apparatus further on.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"This is the control panel," explained Mercer. "The whole affair, you
+understand, is in laboratory form. Nothing assembled. Put the different
+antennae plug into these jacks. Like this."
+
+He picked up a weird, hastily built contrivance composed of two
+semi-circular pieces of spring brass, crossed at right angles. On all
+four ends were bright silvery electrodes, three of them circular in
+shape, one of them elongated and slightly curved. With a quick, nervous
+gesture, Mercer fitted the thing to his head, so that the elongated
+electrode pressed against the back of his neck, extending a few inches
+down his spine. The other three circular electrodes rested on his
+forehead and either side of his head. From the center of the contrivance
+ran a heavy insulated cord, some ten feet in length, ending in a simple
+switchboard plug, which Mercer fitted into the uppermost of the three
+jacks.
+
+"Now," he directed, "you put on this one"--he adjusted a second
+contrivance upon my head, smiling as I shrank from the contact of the
+cold metal on my skin--"and think!"
+
+He moved the switch from the position marked "Off" to the second contact
+point, watching me intently, his dark eyes gleaming.
+
+Carson entered, and Mercer gestured to him to wait. Very nice old chap,
+Carson, impressive even in his bathing suit. Mercer was mighty lucky to
+have a man like Carson....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Something seemed to tick suddenly, somewhere deep in my consciousness.
+
+"Yes, that's very true: Carson is a most decent sort of chap." The words
+were not spoken. I did not _hear_ them, I _knew_ them. What--I glanced
+at Mercer, and he laughed aloud with pleasure and excitement.
+
+"It worked!" he cried. "I received your thought regarding Carson, and
+then turned the switch so that you received my thought. And you did!"
+
+Rather gingerly I removed the thing from my head and laid it on the
+table.
+
+"It's wizardry, Mercer! If it will work as well on _her_...."
+
+"It will, I know it will!--if we can get her to wear one of these,"
+replied Mercer confidently. "I have only three of them; I had planned
+some three-cornered experiments with you, Carson, and myself. We'll
+leave Carson out of to-night's experiment, however, for we'll need him
+to operate this switch. You see, as it is now wired only one person
+transmits thoughts at a time. The other two receive. When the switch is
+on the first contact, Number One sends, and Numbers Two and Three
+receive. When the switch is on Number Two, then he sends thoughts, and
+Numbers One and Three receive them. And so on. I'll lengthen these leads
+so that we can run them out into the pool, and then we'll be ready.
+Somehow we must induce her to wear one of these things, even if we have
+to use force. I'm sure the three of us can handle her."
+
+"We should be able to," I smiled. She was such a slim, graceful, almost
+delicate little thing; the thought that three strong men might not be
+able to control her seemed almost amusing.
+
+"You haven't seen her in action yet," said Mercer grimly, glancing up
+from his work of lengthening the cords that led from the antennae to the
+control panel. "And what's more, I hope you don't."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I watched him in silence as he spliced and securely taped the last
+connection.
+
+"All set," he nodded. "Carson, will you operate the switch for us? I
+believe everything is functioning properly." He surveyed the panel of
+instruments hastily, assuring himself that every reading was correct.
+Then, with all three of the devices he called antennae in his hand,
+their leads plugged into the control panel, he led the way to the side
+of the pool.
+
+The girl was strolling around the edge of the pool, feeling the smooth
+tile sides with her hands as we came into view, but as soon as she saw
+us she shot through the water to where we were standing.
+
+It was the first time I had seen her move in this fashion. She seemed to
+propel herself with a sudden mighty thrust of her feet against the
+bottom; she darted through the water with the speed of an arrow, yet
+stopped as gently as though she had merely floated there.
+
+As she looked up, her eyes unmistakably sought mine, and her smile
+seemed warm and inviting. She made again that strange little gesture of
+invitation.
+
+With an effort I glanced at Mercer. There was something devilishly
+fascinating about the girl's great, dark, searching eyes.
+
+"I'm going in," I said hoarsely. "Hand me one of your head-set things
+when I reach for it." Before he could protest, I dived into the pool.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I headed directly towards the heavy bronze ladder that led to the bottom
+of the pool. I had two reasons in mind. I would need something to keep
+me under water, with my lungs full of air, and I could get out quickly
+if it were necessary. I had not forgotten the livid, jagged furrows in
+Mercer's side.
+
+Quickly as I shot to the ladder she was there before me, a dim, wavering
+white shape, waiting.
+
+I paused, holding to a rung of the ladder with one hand. She came
+closer, walking with the airy grace I had noted before, and my heart
+pounded against my ribs as she raised one long, slim arm towards me.
+
+The hand dropped gently on my shoulder, pressed it as though in token
+of friendship. Perhaps, I thought quickly, this was, with her, a sign of
+greeting. I lifted my own arm and returned the salutation, if salutation
+it were, aware of a strange rising and falling sound, as of a distant
+humming, in my ears.
+
+The sound ceased suddenly, on a rising note, as though of inquiry, and
+it dawned on me that I had heard the speech of this strange creature.
+Before I could think of a course of action, my aching lungs reminded me
+of the need of air, and I released my hold on the ladder and let my body
+rise to the surface.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As my head broke the water, a hand, cold and strong as steel, closed
+around my ankle. I looked down. The girl was watching me, and there was
+no smile on her face now.
+
+"All right!" I shouted across the pool to Mercer, who was watching
+anxiously. Then, filling my lungs with air again, I pulled myself, by
+means of the ladder, to the bottom of the pool. The restraining hand was
+removed instantly.
+
+The strange creature thrust her face close to mine as my feet touched
+bottom, and for the first time I saw her features distinctly.
+
+She was beautiful, but in a weird, unearthly sort of way. As I had
+already noticed, her eyes were of unusual size, and I saw now that they
+were an intense shade of blue, with a pupil of extraordinary proportion.
+Her nose was well shaped, but the nostrils were slightly flattened, and
+the orifices were rather more elongated than I had ever seen before. The
+mouth was utterly fascinating, and her teeth, revealed by her engaging
+smile, were as perfect as it would be possible to imagine.
+
+The great mane of hair which enveloped her was, as I have said, tawny in
+hue, and almost translucent, like the stems of some seaweeds I have
+seen. And as she raised one slim white hand to brush back some wisps
+that floated by her face, I saw distinctly the webs between her
+fingers. They were barely noticeable, for they were as transparent as
+the fins of a fish, but they were there, extending nearly to the last
+joint of each finger.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As her face came close to my own, I became aware of the humming,
+crooning sound I had heard before, louder this time. I could see, from
+the movement of her throat, that I had been correct in assuming that she
+was attempting to speak with me. I smiled back at her and shook my head.
+She seemed to understand, for the sound ceased, and she studied me with
+a little thoughtful frown, as though trying to figure out some other
+method of communication.
+
+I pointed upward, for I was feeling the need for fresh air again, and
+slowly mounted the ladder. This time she did not grasp me, but watched
+me intently, as though understanding what I did, and the reasons for
+it.
+
+"Bring one of your gadgets over here, Mercer," I called across the pool.
+"I think I'm making progress."
+
+"Good boy!" he cried, and came running with two of the antennae, the
+long insulated cords trailing behind him. Through the water the girl
+watched him, evident dislike in her eyes. She glanced at me with sudden
+suspicion as Mercer handed me the two instruments, but made no hostile
+move.
+
+"You won't be able to stay in the water with her," explained Mercer
+rapidly. "The salt water would short the antennae, you see. Try to get
+her to wear one, and then you get your head out of water, and don yours.
+And remember, she won't be able to communicate with us by words--we'll
+have to get her to convey her thoughts by means of mental pictures. I'll
+try to impress that on her. Understand?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I nodded, and picked up one of the instruments. "Fire when ready,
+Gridley," I commented, and sank again to the bottom of the pool.
+
+I touched the girl's head with one finger, and then pointed to my own
+head, trying to convey to her that she could get her thoughts to me.
+Then I held up the antennae and placed it on my own head to show that it
+could not harm her.
+
+My next move was to offer her the instrument, moving slowly, and smiling
+reassuringly--no mean feat under water.
+
+She hesitated a moment, and then, her eyes fixed on mine, she slowly
+fixed the instrument over her own head as she had seen me adjust it upon
+my own.
+
+I smiled and nodded, and pressed her shoulder in token of friendly
+greeting. Then, gesturing toward my own head again, and pointing upward.
+I climbed the ladder.
+
+"All right, Mercer," I shouted. "Start at once, before she grows
+restless!"
+
+"I've already started!" he called back, and I hurriedly donned my own
+instrument.
+
+Bearing in mind what Mercer had said, I descended the ladder but a few
+rungs, so that my head remained out of water, and smiled down at the
+girl, touching the instrument on my head, and then pointing to hers.
+
+I could sense Mercer's thoughts now. He was picturing himself walking
+long the shore, with the stormy ocean in the background. Ahead of him I
+saw the white body lying face downward in the pool. I saw him run up to
+the pool and lift the slim, pale figure in his arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let me make it clear, at this point, that when I say that I saw
+these things, I mean only that mental images of them penetrated my
+consciousness. I visualized them just as I could close my eyes and
+visualize, for example, the fireplace in the living room of my own
+home.
+
+I looked down at the girl. She was frowning, and her eyes were very
+wide. Her head was a little on one side, in the attitude of one who
+listens intently.
+
+Slowly and carefully Mercer thought out the whole story of his
+experiences with the girl until she had plunged into the pool. Then I
+saw again the beach, with the girl's figure in the pool. The picture
+grew hazy; I realized Mercer was trying to picture the bottom of the
+sea. Then he pictured again the girl lying in the pool, and once again
+the sea. I was aware of the soft little tick in the center of my brain
+that announced that the switch had been moved to another contact point.
+
+I glanced down at her. She was staring up at me with her great, curious
+eyes, and I sensed, through the medium of the instrument I wore, that
+she was thinking of me. I saw my own features, idealized, glowing with a
+strange beauty that was certainly none of my own. I realized that I saw
+myself, in short, as she saw me. I smiled back at her, and shook my
+head.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A strange, dim whirl of pictures swept through my consciousness. I was
+on the bottom of the ocean. Shadowy shapes swept by silently, and from
+above, a dim bluish light filtered down on a scene such as mortal eyes
+have never seen.
+
+All around were strange structures of jagged coral, roughly circular as
+to base, and rounded on top, resembling very much the igloos of the
+Eskimos. The structures varied greatly in size, and seemed to be
+arranged in some sort of regular order, like houses along a narrow
+street. Around many of them grew clusters of strange and colorful
+seaweeds that waved their banners gently, as though some imperceptible
+current dallied with them in passing.
+
+Here and there figures moved, slim white figures that strolled along the
+narrow street, or at times shot overhead like veritable torpedoes.
+
+There were both men and women moving there. The men were broader of
+shoulder, and their hair, which they wore to their knees, was somewhat
+darker in color than that of the women. Both sexes were slim, and there
+was a remarkable uniformity of size and appearance.
+
+None of the strange beings wore garments of any kind, nor were they
+necessary. The clinging tresses were cinctured at the waist with a sort
+of cord of twisted orange-colored material, and some of the younger
+women wore bands of the same material around their brows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nearest of all the figures was the girl who was visualizing all this for
+us. She was walking slowly away from the cluster of coral structures.
+Once or twice she paused, and seemed to hold conversation with others of
+the strange people, but each time she moved on.
+
+The coral structures grew smaller and poorer. Finally the girl trod
+alone on the floor of the ocean, between great growths of kelp and
+seaweeds, with dim, looming masses of faintly tinted coral everywhere.
+Once she passed close to a tilted, ragged hulk of some ancient vessel,
+its naked ribs packed with drifted sand.
+
+Sauntering dreamily, she moved away from the ancient derelict. Suddenly
+a dim shadow swept across the sand at her feet, and she arrowed from the
+spot like a white, slim meteor. But behind her darted a black and
+swifter shadow--a shark!
+
+Like a flash she turned and faced the monster. Something she had drawn
+from her girdle shone palely in her hand. It was a knife of whetted
+stone or bone.
+
+Darting swiftly downward her feet spurned the yellow sand, and she shot
+at her enemy with amazing speed. The long blade swept in an arc, ripped
+the pale belly of the monster just as he turned to dart away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A great cloud of blood dyed the water. The white figure of the girl shot
+onward through the scarlet flood.
+
+Blinded, she did not see that the jutting ribs of the ancient ship were
+in her path. I seemed to see her crash, head on, into one of the
+massive timbers, and I cried out involuntarily, and glanced down at the
+girl in the water at my feet.
+
+Her eyes were glowing. She knew that I had understood.
+
+Hazily, then, I seemed to visualize her body floating limply in the
+water. It was all very vague and indistinct, and I understood that this
+was not what she had seen, but what she thought had happened. The
+impressions grew wilder, swirled, grew gray and indistinct. Then I had a
+view of Mercer's face, so terribly distorted it was barely recognizable.
+Then a kaleidoscopic maze of inchoate scenes, shot through with flashes
+of vivid, agonizing colors. The girl was thinking of her suffering,
+taken out of her native element. In trying to save her, Mercer had
+almost killed her. That, no doubt, was why she hated him.
+
+My own face appeared next, almost godlike in its kindliness and its
+imagined beauty, and I noticed now that she was thinking of me with my
+yellow hair grown long, my nostrils elongated like her own--adjusted to
+her own ideas of what a man should be.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I flung the instrument from my head and dropped to the bottom of the
+pool. I gripped both her shoulders, gently, to express my thanks and
+friendship.
+
+My heart was pounding. There was a strange fascination about this girl
+from the depths of the sea, a subtle appeal that was answered from some
+deep subterranean cavern of my being. I forgot, for the moment, who and
+what I was. I remembered only that a note had been sounded that awoke an
+echo of a long-forgotten instinct.
+
+I think I kissed her. I know her arms were about me, and that I pressed
+her close, so that our faces almost met. Her great, weirdly blue eyes
+seemed to bore into my brain. I could feel them throbbing there....
+
+I forgot time and space. I saw only that pale, smiling face and those
+great dark eyes. Then, strangling, I tore myself from her embrace and
+shot to the surface.
+
+Coughing, I cleared my lungs of the water I had inhaled. I was weak and
+shaking when I finished, but my head was clear. The grip of the strange
+fantasy that had gripped me was shaken off.
+
+Mercer was bending over me; speaking softly.
+
+"I was watching, old man," he said gently. "I can imagine what happened.
+A momentary, psychic fusing of an ancient, long since broken link. You,
+together with all mankind, came up out of the sea. But there is no
+retracing the way."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I nodded, my head bowed on my streaming chest.
+
+"Sorry, Mercer," I muttered. "Something got into me. Those big eyes of
+hers seemed to tug at threads of memory ... buried.... I can't describe
+it...."
+
+He slapped me on my naked shoulder, a blow that stung, as he had
+intended it to. It helped jerk me back to the normal.
+
+"You've got your feet on the ground again, Taylor," he commented
+soothingly. "I think there's no danger of you losing your grip on terra
+firma again. Shall we carry on?"
+
+"There's more you'd like to learn? That you think she can give us?" I
+asked hesitantly.
+
+"I believe," replied Mercer, "that she can give us the history of her
+people, if we can only make her understand what we wish. God! If we only
+could!" The name of the Deity was a prayer as Mercer uttered it.
+
+"We can try, old-timer," I said, a bit shakenly.
+
+Mercer hurried back to the other side of the pool, and I adjusted my
+head-set again, smiling down at the girl. If only Mercer could make her
+understand, and if only she knew what we wanted to learn!
+
+I was conscious of the little click that told me the switch had been
+moved. Mercer was ready to get his message to her.
+
+Fixing my eyes on the girl pleadingly, I settled myself by the edge of
+the pool to await the second and more momentous part of our experiment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The vision was vague, for Mercer was picturing his thoughts with
+difficulty. But I seemed to see again the floor of the ocean, with the
+vague light filtering down from above, and soft, monstrous growths
+waving their branches lazily in the flood.
+
+From the left came a band of men and women, looking around as though in
+search of some particular spot. They stopped, and one of the older men
+pointed, the others gathering around him as though in council.
+
+Then the band set to work. Coral growth were dragged to the spot. The
+foundation for one of the semi-circular houses was laid. The scene
+swirled and cleared again. The house was completed. Several other houses
+were in process of building.
+
+Slowly and deliberately, the scene moved. The houses were left behind.
+Before my consciousness now was only a vague and shadowy expanse of
+ocean floor, and in the sand dim imprints that marked where the strange
+people had trod, the vague footprints disappearing in the gloom in the
+direction from which the little weary band had come. To me, at least, it
+was quite clear that Mercer was asking whence they came. Would it be as
+clear to the girl? The switch clicked, and for a moment I was sure
+Mercer had not been able to make his question clear to her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The scene was the interior of one of the coral houses. There were
+persons there, seated on stone or coral chairs, padded with marine
+growths. One of the occupants of the room was a very old man; his face
+was wrinkled, and his hair was silvery. With him were a man and a woman,
+and a little girl. Somehow I seemed to recognize the child as the girl
+in the pool.
+
+The three of them were watching the old man. While his lips did not
+move, I could see his throat muscles twitching as the girl's had done
+when she made the murmuring sound I had guessed was her form of speech.
+
+The scene faded. For perhaps thirty seconds I was aware of nothing more
+than a dim gray mist that seemed to swirl in stately circles. Then,
+gradually, it cleared somewhat. I sensed the fact that what I saw now
+was what the old man was telling, and that the majestic, swirling mist
+was the turning back of time.
+
+Here was no ocean bottom, but land, rich tropical jungle. Strange exotic
+trees and dense growths of rank undergrowth choked the earth. The trees
+were oddly like undersea growths, which puzzled me for an instant. Then
+I recalled that the girl could interpret the old man's words only in
+terms of that which she had seen and understood. This was the way she
+visualized the scene.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a gray haze of mist everywhere. The leaves were glistening
+with condensed moisture; swift drops fell incessantly to the soaking
+ground below.
+
+Into the scene roamed a pitiful band of people. Men with massive frames,
+sunken in with starvation, women tottering with weakness. The men
+carried great clubs, some tipped with rudely shaped stone heads, and
+both men and women clothed only in short kittles of skin.
+
+They searched ceaselessly for something, and I guessed that something
+was food. Now and then one or the other of the little band tore up a
+root and bit at it, and those that did so soon doubled into a twitching
+knot of suffering and dropped behind.
+
+At last they came to the edge of the sea. A few yards away the water was
+lost in the dense steaming miasma that hemmed them in on all sides.
+With glad expressions on their faces, the party ran down to the edge of
+the water and gathered up great masses of clams and crabs. At first they
+ate the food raw, tearing the flesh from the shells. Then they made what
+I understood was a fire, although the girl was able to visualize it only
+as a bright red spot that flickered.
+
+The scene faded, and there was only the slowly swirling mist that I
+understood indicated the passing of centuries. Then the scene cleared
+again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I saw that same shore line, but the people had vanished. There was only
+the thick, steamy mist, the tropic jungle crowding down to the shore,
+and the waves rolling in monotonously from the waste of gray ocean
+beyond the curtain of fog.
+
+Suddenly, from out of the sea, appeared a series of human heads, and
+then a band of men and women that waded ashore and seated themselves
+upon the beach, gazing restlessly out across the sea.
+
+This was not the same band I had seen at first. These were a slimmer
+race, and whereas the first band had been exceedingly swarthy, these
+were very fair.
+
+They did not stay long on shore, for they were restless and ill at ease.
+It seemed to me they came there only from force of habit, as though they
+obeyed some inner urge they did not understand. In a few seconds they
+rose and ran into the water, plunged into it as though they welcomed its
+embrace, and disappeared. Then again the vision was swallowed up by the
+swirling mists of time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the scene cleared again, it showed the bottom of the sea. A group
+of perhaps a hundred pale creatures moved along the dim floor of the
+ocean. Ahead I could see the dim outlines of one of their strange
+cities. The band approached, seemed to talk with those there, and moved
+on.
+
+I saw them capture and kill fish for food, saw them carve the thick,
+spongy hearts from certain giant growths and eat them. I saw a pair of
+killer sharks swoop down on the band, and the quick, deadly accuracy
+with which both men and woman met the attack. One man, older than the
+rest, was injured before the sharks were vanquished, and when their
+efforts to staunch his wounds proved unavailing, they left him there and
+moved on. And as they left I saw a dim, crawling shape move closer,
+throw out a long, whiplike tentacle, and wrap the body in a hungry
+embrace.
+
+They came to and passed other communities of beings like themselves, and
+a city of their own, in much the way that Mercer had visualized it.
+
+Fading, the scene changed to the interior of the coral house again. The
+old man finished his story, and moved off into a cubicle in the rear of
+the place. Dimly, I could see there a low couch, piled high with soft
+marine growths. Then the scene shifted once more.
+
+A man and a woman hurried up and down the narrow streets of the strange
+city the girl had pictured when she showed us how she had met with the
+shark, and struck her head, so that for a long period she lost
+consciousness and was washed ashore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Others, after a time, joined them in their search, which spread out to
+the floor of the ocean, away from the dwellings. One party came to the
+gaunt skeleton of the ancient wreck, and found the scattered,
+fresh-picked bones of the shark the girl had killed. The man and the
+woman came up, and I looked closely into their faces. The woman's
+features were torn with grief; the man's lips were set tight with
+suffering. Here, it was easy to guess, were the mother and the father of
+the girl.
+
+A milling mass of white forms shot through the water in every direction,
+searching. It seemed that they were about to give up the search when
+suddenly, from out of the watery gloom, there shot a slim white
+figure--the girl!
+
+Straight to the mother and father she came, gripping the shoulder of
+each with frantic joy. They returned the caress, the crowd gathered
+around them, listening to her story as they moved slowly, happily,
+towards the distant city.
+
+Instead of a picture, I was conscious then of a sound, like a single
+pleading word repeated softly, as though someone said "Please! Please!
+Please!" over and over again. The sound was not at all like the English
+word. It was a soft, musical beat, like the distant stroke of a mellow
+gong, but it had all the pleading quality of the word it seemed to bring
+to mind.
+
+I looked down into the pool. The girl had mounted the ladder until her
+face was just below the surface of the water. Her eyes met mine and I
+knew that I had not misunderstood.
+
+I threw off the instrument on my head, and dropped down beside her. With
+both hands I grasped her shoulders, and, smiling, I nodded my head
+vigorously.
+
+She understood, I know she did. I read it in her face. When I climbed
+the ladder again, she looked after me, smiling confidently.
+
+Although I had not spoken to her, she had read and accepted the
+promise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mercer stared at me silently, grimly, as I told him what I wished.
+Whatever eloquence I may have, I used on him, and I saw his cold,
+scientific mind waver before the warmth of my appeal.
+
+"We have no right to keep her from her people," I concluded. "You saw
+her mother and father, saw their suffering, and the joy her return would
+bring. You will, Mercer--you will return her to the sea?"
+
+For a long time, Mercer did not reply. Then he lifted his dark eyes to
+mine, and smiled, rather wearily.
+
+"It is the only thing we can do, Taylor," he said quietly. "She is not a
+scientific specimen; she is, in her way, as human as you or I. She
+would probably die, away from her own kind, living under conditions
+foreign to her. And you promised her, Taylor, whether you spoke your
+promise or not." His smile deepened a bit. "We cannot let her receive
+too bad an opinion of her cousins who live above the surface of the
+sea!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so, just as the dawn was breaking, we took her to the shore. I
+carried her, unresisting, trustful, in my arms, while Mercer bore a huge
+basin of water, in which her head was submerged, so that she might not
+suffer.
+
+Still in our bathing suits we waded out into the ocean, until the waves
+splashed against our faces. Then I lowered her into the sea. Crouching
+there, so that the water was just above the tawny glory of her hair, she
+gazed up at us. Two slim white hands reached towards us, and with one
+accord, Mercer and I bent towards her. She gripped both our shoulders
+with a gentle pressure, smiling at us.
+
+Then she did a strange thing. She pointed, under the water, out towards
+the depths and with a broad, sweeping motion of her arm, indicated the
+shore, as though to say that she intended to return. With a last swift,
+smiling glance up into my face, she turned. There was a flash of white
+through the water. She was gone....
+
+Silently, through the silence and beauty of the dawn, we made our way
+back to the house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As we passed through the laboratory, Mercer glanced out at the empty
+pool.
+
+"Man came up from the sea," he said slowly, "and some men went back to
+it. They were forced back to the teeming source from whence they came,
+for lack of food. You saw that, Taylor--saw her forebears become
+amphibians, like the now extinct Dipneusta and Ganoideii, or the still
+existing Neoceratodus, Polypterus and Amia. Then their lungs became, in
+effect, gills, and they lost their power of breathing atmospheric air,
+and could use only air dissolved in water.
+
+"A whole people there beneath the waves that land-man never dreamed
+of--except, perhaps, the sailors of olden days, with their tales of
+mermaids, which we are accustomed to laugh at in our wisdom!"
+
+"But why were no bodies ever washed ashore?" I asked. "I would think--"
+
+"You saw why," interrupted Mercer grimly. "The ocean teems with hungry
+life. Death is the signal for a feast. It was little more than a miracle
+that her body came ashore, a miracle due perhaps to the storm which sent
+the hungry monsters to the greater depths. And even had a body come
+ashore it would have been buried as that of some unknown, unfortunate
+human. The differences between these people and ourselves would not be
+noticeable to a casual observer.
+
+"No, Taylor, we have been party to what was close to a miracle. And we
+are the only witnesses to it, you and Carson and myself. And"--he sighed
+deeply--"it is over."
+
+I did not reply. I was thinking of the girl's odd gesture, at parting,
+and I wondered if it were indeed a finished chapter.
+
+
+
+
+Vandals of the Stars
+
+_By A. T. Locke_
+
+    A livid flame flares across Space--and over Manhattan hovers
+    Teuxical, vassal of Malfero, Lord of the Universe, who comes
+    with ten thousand warriors to ravage and subjugate one more
+    planet for his master.
+
+[Illustration: _Many planes and Zeppelins were circling around the
+mysterious visitant._]
+
+
+It came suddenly, without warning, and it brought consternation to the
+people of the world.
+
+A filament of flame darted down the dark skies one moonless night and
+those who saw it believed, at first, that it was a meteor. Instead of
+streaking away into oblivion, however, it became larger and larger,
+until it seemed as though some vagrant, blazing star was about to plunge
+into the earth and annihilate the planet and every vestige of life upon
+it. But then it drew slowly to a stop high up in the atmosphere, where
+it remained motionless, glowing white and incandescent against the
+Stygian background of the overcast skies.
+
+In shape it resembled a Zeppelin, but its dimensions very apparently
+exceeded by far those of any flying craft that ever had been fabricated
+by the hand of man.
+
+As it hung poised high up in the air it gradually lost its dazzling glow
+and became scarlet instead of white. Then, as it continued to cool, the
+color swiftly drained from it and, in a few minutes, it shone only with
+the dull and ugly crimson of an expiring ember. In a half-hour after it
+first had appeared its effulgence had vanished completely and it was
+barely visible to the millions who were staring up toward it from the
+earth.
+
+It seemed to be suspended directly above Manhattan, and the inhabitants
+of New York were thrown into a feverish excitement by the strange and
+unprecedented phenomenon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For it scarcely had come to a stop, and certainly it had not been poised
+aloft for more than a few minutes, when most of those who had not
+actually witnessed its sensational appearance were apprised of the
+inexplicable occurrence by the radiovision, which were scattered
+throughout the vast metropolis. In theaters and restaurants and other
+gathering places, as well as in millions of homes, a voice from the
+Worldwide Broadcasting Tower announced the weird visitant. And its
+image, as it glowed in the night, was everywhere transmitted to the
+public.
+
+Only a short time after it first had been observed people were thronging
+roof-tops, terraces, and streets, and gazing with awe and wonder at the
+great luminous object that was floating high above them.
+
+There were those who thought that the world was coming to an end, and
+they either were dumb with fright or strident with hysteria. People with
+more judgment, and a smattering of scientific knowledge, dismissed the
+thing as some harmless meteorological manifestation that, while
+interesting, was not necessarily dangerous. And there were many,
+inclined to incredulity and skepticism, who believed that they were
+witnessing a hoax or an advertising scheme of some new sort.
+
+But as the moments went by the world commenced to become stirred and
+alarmed by the reports which came over the radiovisors.
+
+For powerful planes and metal-shelled Zeppelins had climbed swiftly
+aloft to investigate the incomprehensible Thing that was poised high
+above Manhattan, and almost unbelievable reports were being sent
+earthward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dirk Vanderpool had been sitting alone on the broad terrace of his
+apartment that occupied the upper stories of the great Gotham Gardens
+Building when he saw that streak of fire slip down against the darkness
+of the night.
+
+For a moment he, too, had believed that he was watching a meteor, but,
+when he saw it come to a slow stop and hang stationary in the heavens,
+he rose to his feet with an exclamation of surprise.
+
+For a while he gazed upward with an expression of astonishment on his
+face and then he turned as he heard someone walking softly in his
+direction. It was Barstowe, his valet, and the eyes of the man were
+alive with fear.
+
+"What is that thing, Mr. Vanderpool?" he asked in a voice that trembled
+with alarm. Barstowe was a man of middle age, diminutive in size, and he
+had the appearance of being nearly petrified with terror. "They are
+saying over the televisor that--"
+
+"What are they saying about it?" asked Dirk somewhat impatiently.
+
+"That no one can explain what it is," continued Barstowe. "It must be
+something terrible, Mr. Vanderpool."
+
+"Wheel out the luciscope," ordered Dirk.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Barstowe disappeared into the apartment and returned with a cabinet that
+was mounted on small, rubber-tired wheels. The top of it was formed of a
+metallic frame in which a heavy, circular, concave glass was fitted. The
+frame was hinged in front so that it could be raised from the rear and
+adjusted to any angle necessary to catch the light rays from any distant
+object. Within the cabinet the rays passed through an electrical device
+that amplified them millions of times, thus giving a clear, telescopic
+vision of the object on which the luciscope was focused.
+
+This instrument, years before, had supplanted entirely the old-fashioned
+telescopes which not only had been immense and unwieldly but which also
+had a very limited range of vision.
+
+Dirk adjusted the light-converger so that it caught the rays that were
+being emanated by the weird and shimmering mass that was suspended
+almost directly above the lofty terrace on which he was standing.
+
+Then he switched on the current and glanced into the eye-piece of the
+apparatus. For several moments he remained silent, studying the image
+that was etched so vividly on the ground-glass within the luciscope.
+
+"It is a queer thing, there is no doubt about that," he confessed when
+finally he raised his head. "It resembles a gigantic Zeppelin in shape
+but it does not seem to have any undercarriage or, as far as I can see,
+any indication of propellers or portholes. I would say, though,
+Barstowe, that it might be a ship from some other planet if it wasn't
+for the fact that it seems to be in an almost molten state."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dirk again looked into the luciscope and then he made a few adjustments
+with a thumb-screw that projected from the side of the apparatus.
+
+"It is up about forty thousand feet," he told Barstowe, "and it must be
+more than a half-mile in length. Probably," he added, "it is a planetary
+fragment of some odd composition that is less responsive to gravitation
+than the materials with which we are familiar. You will find, Barstowe,
+that there is nothing about it that science will not be able to explain.
+That will be all now," he concluded.
+
+Barstowe walked over the terrace and disappeared into the apartment.
+Dirk, left alone, wheeled the luciscope over by the chair in which he
+had been sitting and near which a radiovisor was standing.
+
+He switched on the latter and listened to the low but very distinct
+voice of the news-dispatcher.
+
+"--and planes and Zeppelins now are starting up to investigate the
+strange phenomenon--"
+
+Again Dirk placed an eye to the lens of the luciscope and once more the
+Thing leaped into his vision. The powerful machine brought it so close
+to him that he could see the heat waves quiver up from it.
+
+The light that it radiated illuminated the night for thousands of feet
+and Dirk could see, by means of that crimson glare, that many planes and
+Zeppelins were circling around the mysterious visitant. None of them,
+however, approached the alien freak, the heat apparently being too
+intense to permit close inspection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dirk himself was tempted for a moment to jump into a plane and go up and
+take a look at the fiery mass.
+
+But, after a moment's consideration, he decided, that it would be far
+more interesting and comfortable to remain right where he was and listen
+to the reports which were being sent down from above.
+
+"--thus far there seems to be no cause for alarm, and people are advised
+to remain calm--careful observations of the luminous monster are being
+made and further reports concerning it will be broadcast--"
+
+Dirk Vanderpool rose to his feet, walked to the coping of the terrace
+and peered into the magnascope that was set into the wall.
+
+He saw that the street, far below him, was jammed with struggling people
+and the device through which he was looking brought their faces before
+him in strong relief. Dirk was deeply interested and, at the same time,
+gravely concerned as he studied the upturned countenances in the mob.
+
+Fear, despair, reckless abandon, mirth, doubt, religious ecstasy and all
+the other nuances in the gamut of human emotions and passions were
+reflected in those distorted visages which were gazing skyward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The silvery humming of a bell diverted his attention from the scene of
+congestion below him and, turning away, he walked across the terrace and
+into the great living room of his luxurious abode.
+
+Stepping to the televisor, he turned a tiny switch, and the face of a
+girl appeared in the glass panel that was framed above the sound-box. He
+smiled as he lifted the receiver and placed it to his ear.
+
+"What is the matter, Inga?" he asked. "You look as if you were
+expecting--well, almost anything disastrous."
+
+"Oh, Dirk, what is that thing?" the girl asked. "I really am frightened!"
+
+He could see by the expression in her blue eyes that she, too, was
+becoming a victim of the hysteria that was taking possession of many
+people.
+
+"I wouldn't be alarmed, Inga," he replied reassuringly. "I don't know
+what it is, and no one else seems to be able to explain it."
+
+"But it is frightful and uncanny, Dirk," the girl insisted, "and I am
+sure that something terrible is going to happen. I wish," she pleaded,
+"that you would come over and stay with me for a little while. I am all
+alone and--"
+
+"All right, Inga," he told her. "I will be with you in a few minutes."
+
+He hung up the receiver of the televisor and clicked off the switch. The
+image of the golden-haired girl to whom he had been speaking slowly
+faded from the glass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Attiring himself for a short sixty-mile hop down Long Island, Dirk
+passed out to the landing stage and, stepping into the cabin of his
+plane, he threw in the helicopter lever. The machine rose straight into
+the air for a couple of hundred feet and then Dirk headed it westward to
+where the nearest ascension beam sent its red light towering toward the
+stars. It marked a vertical air-lane that led upward to the horizontal
+lanes of flight.
+
+Northbound ships flew between two and four thousand feet; southbound
+planes between five and seven thousand feet; those eastbound confined
+themselves to the level between nine and eleven thousand feet, while the
+westbound flyers monopolized the air between twelve and fourteen
+thousand feet.
+
+All planes flying parallel to the earth were careful to avoid those red
+beacons which marked ascension routes, and the shafts of green light
+down which descending planes dropped to the earth or into lower levels
+of travel.
+
+When Dirk's altimeter indicated seventy-five hundred feet he turned the
+nose of his ship eastward and adjusted his rheostat until his motors,
+fed by wireless current, were revolving at top speed.
+
+The great canyons of Manhattan, linked by arches and highways which
+joined and passed through various levels of the stupendous structures of
+steelite and quartzite, passed swiftly beneath him; and, after passing
+for a few minutes over the deserted surface of Long Island, he completed
+his sixty-mile flight and brought his ship to a rest on a landing stage
+that was far up on the side of a vast pile that rose up close to the
+shore of the Sound.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As soon as he stepped from the door of the cabin he was joined by a girl
+who, apparently, had been lingering there, awaiting his arrival.
+
+She was perhaps twenty years old, and she had the golden hair, the light
+complexion, and the blue eyes which still were characteristic of the
+women of northern Europe.
+
+The slender lines of her exquisite figure and the supple grace which she
+displayed when she moved toward Dirk were evidence, however, of the
+Latin blood which was in her veins.
+
+For Inga Fragoni, the daughter and heiress of Orlando Fragoni, seemed to
+be a culmination of all of the desirable qualities of the women of the
+south and those of the north.
+
+The terrace on which Dirk had landed was illuminated by lights which
+simulated sunshine, and their soft bright glow revealed the violet hue
+of her eyes and the shimmering gloss of her silken hair. She wore a
+sleeveless, light blue tunic which was gathered around her waist with a
+bejeweled girdle.
+
+On her tiny feet she wore sandals which were spun of webby filaments of
+gold and platinum.
+
+"Dirk, I am so glad that you are here!" she exclaimed. "I felt so much
+alone when I called you up. Dad is locked in the observatory with
+Professor Nachbaren and three or four other men and the servants--well,
+they all are so terrified that it simply alarms me to have them
+around."
+
+"But that is Stanton's plane there, isn't it?" asked Dirk, indicating a
+powerful looking machine that stood on the terrace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Yes, Dirk," the girl replied. "He arrived here three or four minutes
+before you did. I thought, at first, that it was you coming. And Dirk,"
+she continued, with a note of excitement in her voice, "he flew up to
+look at that thing, and I know that he is as frightened about it as I
+am."
+
+Dirk grunted, but he gave no expression of the dislike and distrust that
+Stanton aroused in him. The latter, he knew, was very much inclined to
+look with favor on Inga, and his presumption annoyed Dirk because, while
+he and the girl had not declared their intention of living together,
+they were very much in love with each other.
+
+"You will want to hear him tell about it, I know, Dirk," the girl said.
+"I left Stanton up on the garden terrace when I saw you coming down.
+Come; we will go and join him."
+
+Dirk and Inga strolled slowly along paths which were lined with exotic
+shrubbery and plants. Here and there a fountain tossed its glittering
+spray high into the air while birds, invisible in the feathery foliage,
+warbled and thrilled entrancingly. Soft music, transmitted from the
+auditoriums below, blended so harmoniously with the atmosphere of the
+terraces that it seemed to mingle with and be a part of the drifting,
+subtle scents of the abundant flowers which bloomed on every side.
+
+For these upper terraces of Fragoni's palace were enclosed, during
+inclement weather, with great glass plates which, at the touch of a
+button, automatically appeared or disappeared.
+
+Winding their way easily upward, Dirk and Inga came finally to a
+secluded terrace which overlooked the Sound. Here they saw Stanton, who
+was unaware of their approach, looking skyward at the dim and sinister
+shape which was outlined against the sky. Stanton's brow was contracted
+and his expression was filled with apprehension. He started suddenly
+when he became conscious of the presence of Dirk and the lovely daughter
+of Fragoni.
+
+He rose to his feet, a short man in his forties, stocky in build and
+somewhat swarthy in complexion. He contrasted very unfavorably with
+Dirk, who was tall and well-built and who had abundant blond hair and
+steady steel-blue eyes.
+
+"What do you make of that thing, Vanderpool?" he asked, almost ignoring
+the presence of Inga.
+
+"I don't know enough about it yet to be able to express an opinion,"
+Dirk replied. "We will find out about it soon enough," he added, "so why
+worry about it in the meantime?"
+
+"It is well enough to affect such an attitude," said Stanton, with a
+touch of sarcasm in his voice, "but let me tell you, Vanderpool, that
+there is good reason to worry about it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dirk frowned at the statement as he saw a shadow pass over the fair face
+of Inga.
+
+"That thing up there," continued Stanton, with conviction in his voice,
+"is not a natural phenomenon. I flew fairly close to it in my plane and
+I know what I am speaking about. That thing is some sort of a monster,
+Vanderpool, that is made of metal or of some composition that is an
+unearthly equivalent of metal. It is a diabolical creation of some sort
+that has come from out of the fathomless depths of the universe." He
+shuddered at the fantasy that his feverish imagination was creating. "It
+is metal, I tell you," he continued, "but it is metal that is endowed
+with some sort of intelligence. I was up there," he breathed swiftly,
+"and I saw it hanging there in the sky, quivering with heat and life."
+
+"You are nervous, Stanton," said Vanderpool coolly. "Get a grip on
+yourself, man, and look at the thing reasonably. If that thing has
+intelligence," he added, "we will find some way to slay it."
+
+"Slay it!" exclaimed Stanton. "How can you expect to slay a mad creation
+that can leap through space, from world to world, like a wasp goes
+darting from flower to flower? How can you kill a thing which not only
+defies absolute zero but also the immeasurable heat which its friction
+with the atmosphere generated when it plunged toward the earth? How can
+you kill a thing that seems to have brains and nerves and bones and
+flesh of some strange substance that is harder and tougher than any
+earthly compound we have discovered?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stopped speaking for a moment. They listened to the voice that was
+broadcasting from the Worldwide Tower.
+
+"--our planes have approached to within a few thousand feet of it
+and are playing their searchlights over the surface of the leviathan.
+It is not a meteorite of any kind that scientists have heretofore
+examined--its surface is smooth and unpitted and shows no apparent
+effect of the tremendous heat to which it was subjected during its drop
+through the atmosphere. It seems to be immune to gravity--its weight
+must be tremendous, and it is fully three-quarters of a mile long and
+between seven and eight hundred feet in diameter at its widest part, but
+it lies motionless--motionless--at about forty thousand feet."
+
+"It doesn't appear now as if it would prove very dangerous," remarked
+Dirk.
+
+"--and people are warned again to maintain their composure and to go to
+their homes and remain there for their own protection and the protection
+of others. Riots and serious disturbances are reported from cities in
+all parts of the world--mobs are swarming the streets of Manhattan and
+the other boroughs of New York, and the police are finding it difficult
+to restrain the frenzied populations in other centers...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a pause, then, of some moments, and then the voice of the
+broadcaster, vibrant with excitement, was heard again.
+
+"--a plane has made a landing on the surface of the monstrosity, which,
+it seems, has not only lost its heat but is becoming decidedly cold--"
+
+A servant appeared from among the shrubbery and paused before Dirk.
+
+"There is a call for you, Mr. Vanderpool," he said respectfully.
+
+Dirk excused himself and, entering the sumptuous apartment that opened
+from the terrace, went to the televisor. He saw the face of Sears, the
+chief secretary of Fragoni, in the glass panel.
+
+"There will be a meeting of the council at nine o'clock in the morning,
+Mr. Vanderpool," came the voice over the wire.
+
+"Thank you, Sears," replied Dirk. "It happens that Stanton is here at
+the present time. Shall I notify him of the conclave?"
+
+"If you will, please," Sears responded. "By the way, Mr. Vanderpool, is
+there anything wrong at your apartment? I tried to call you there before
+I located you here and I failed to get any response."
+
+"I guess that all of my servants have run out from under cover because
+of their fear of that thing in the sky," Dirk responded. "Do you know
+anything about it, Sears?" he asked.
+
+"It will be discussed at the meeting to-morrow morning," replied Sears
+shortly. "Good night, Mr. Vanderpool."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dirk, upon returning to the terrace, saw that both Stanton and Inga were
+silently and fearfully looking up into the night.
+
+"A meeting of the council at nine o'clock in the morning, Stanton," Dirk
+said abruptly. "I told Sears I would notify you."
+
+"I thought that we would be called together very soon," said Stanton.
+"It's concerning that damn thing up there."
+
+"Perhaps," agreed Dirk carelessly. "Well," he added, "I believe that I
+will hop home and get some sleep."
+
+"Sleep!" exclaimed Stanton. "Sleep? On a night like this?"
+
+"Oh, Dirk," pleaded Inga, "stay here with me, won't you? I am not going
+to bed because I just know that I wouldn't be able to close my eyes."
+
+"Let him go, Inga, if he wants to sleep," urged Stanton. "I will stay
+here and keep watch with you."
+
+"--and if order is not restored in the streets of Manhattan within the
+course of a short time, the authorities will resort to morphite gas to
+quell the turbulence and rioting--"
+
+"The streets must be frightfully congested," said Inga. "It is the first
+occasion in a long time that the police have had to threaten the use of
+morphite."
+
+"--we do not want to alarm people unnecessarily but we have to report,"
+came the hurried voice of the broadcaster, "that the monstrous mass that
+has been hanging above the city just made a sudden drop of five thousand
+feet and again came to a stop. It is now a little more than six miles
+over Manhattan and--again it has dropped. This time it fell like a
+plummet for twelve thousand feet. It is now about twenty thousand feet,
+some four miles, above Manhattan and--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A cry of alarm came from the lips of Inga as she gazed upward and saw
+that gigantic, ominous-appearing object loom dim and vast in the
+darkness above them.
+
+She went to Dirk and threw her arms around him, as if she were clinging
+to him for protection.
+
+"Don't leave me, Dirk," she whispered. "I can just feel that something
+terrible is going to happen, and I want you with me!"
+
+"I'll stay with you, of course," whispered Dirk. Something of that
+feeling of dread and apprehension which so fully possessed his two
+companions entered into his mind. "Don't tremble so, Inga," he pleaded.
+"It is a strange thing, but we will know more about it in the morning.
+Be calm until then, my dear, if you can."
+
+He looked over the shoulder of the girl, whose face was buried against
+his breast, and he saw a hundred great red and green shafts of light
+shooting up into the air. Fleeting shadows seemed to pass swiftly up and
+down them, and he knew that thousands of planes were abroad, some of
+them seeking the heights and others dropping down.
+
+The great towers of Long Island were all aglow, and it was apparent that
+few people were sleeping that night. The scarlet sky over Manhattan
+indicated that the center of the metropolis, too, was alive to the
+menace of the weird visitant that now was so plainly visible.
+
+All night long they remained on the terrace. Dirk and Inga seated close
+together and Stanton, at a distance, brooding alone over the disaster
+which he felt was impending.
+
+The illuminated dial of the great clock that was a part of the
+beacon-tower on the Metropole Landing Field told of the slow passing of
+the hours.
+
+All night long they listened to the reports that came through the
+radiovisor and watched that immobile, threatening monster of metal.
+
+But it remained static during the rest of the night. And, with the
+coming of a gray and sunless dawn, it still hung there, motionless,
+silent and sinister.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning the President of the United States of the World, from
+the capitol at The Hague, issued a proclamation of martial law, to
+become effective at once in all parts of the world.
+
+The edict forbade people to leave their homes, and it was vigorously
+executed, wherever the police themselves were not in a state of
+demoralization.
+
+At about the same time a special meeting of the Supreme Congress was
+called, the body to remain in session until some solution of the mystery
+had been arrived at.
+
+At the same time that martial law was declared, however, and the special
+assemblage of lawmakers convened, a statement was issued in which an
+attempt was made to eliminate from the minds of the people the idea that
+the undefinable object above the metropolis was at all dangerous.
+
+It was, indeed, suggested that it very probably was some sort of new
+device which had been constructed on the earth and which was being
+introduced to the people of the world in a somewhat sensational manner
+by the person or persons who were responsible for it.
+
+The fears of the populace were, to some extent, allayed by this means,
+and some degree of order restored.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At nine o'clock Dirk Vanderpool was shown into the council chamber in
+the palace of Orlando Fragoni, and he was closely followed by Stanton.
+Fragoni was already there, and he greeted the two men with a countenance
+that was serene but that, nevertheless, revealed indications of concern.
+He was a man past middle age, tall and strikingly handsome in
+appearance. His eyes were dark and penetrating and his forehead, high
+and wide, was crowned by an abundance of snow-white hair. His voice,
+while pleasing to the ear, was vibrant with life and energy, and he
+spoke with the incisive directness of one accustomed to command.
+
+For Orlando Fragoni, as nearly as any one man might be, was the ruler of
+the world.
+
+It was in the early part of the twentieth century that wealth had
+commenced to concentrate into a relatively few hands. This was followed
+by a period in which vast mergers and consolidations had been effected
+as a result of the financial power and genius for organization which a
+few men possessed. A confederation of the countries of the world was
+brought about by industrial kings who had learned, in one devastating
+war, that militarism, while it might bring riches to a few, was, in the
+final analysis, destructive and wasteful.
+
+Mankind the world over, relieved of the menace of war, made more
+progress in a decade than they had made in any previous century, but all
+the time the invisible concentration of power and money continued.
+
+And, in 1975, the affairs of the world were controlled by five men, of
+whom Orlando Fragoni was the most powerful and most important.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His grandfather had been a small banker, and out of his obscure
+transactions the great House of Fragoni had arisen. The money power of
+the world was now controlled by Orlando Fragoni. Dirk Vanderpool, partly
+as a result of a vast inheritance and partly through his own ability and
+untiring industry, dominated the transportation facilities of the world.
+Planes and Zeppelins, railroad equipment and ships, were built in his
+plants and operated by the many organizations which he controlled.
+
+Stanton had inherited the agricultural activities of the world and, in
+addition to this, he was the sovereign of distribution. He owned immense
+acreages in all of the continents; he not only cultivated every known
+variety of produce, but also handled the sale of his products through
+his own great chains of stores. His father had been one of the great
+geniuses of the preceding generation, but Stanton, while inheriting the
+commercial empire which he had ruled, had not inherited much of the
+ability which had gone into the establishment of it.
+
+There were two other members of that invisible council of Five, the
+very existence of which was not even suspected by the general populace
+of the world.
+
+Sigmund Lazarre was the world's mightiest builder, and millions of great
+structures, which were built of material from his own mines, were under
+his control. It was Lazarre, too, who owned the theaters and other
+amusement centers in which millions upon millions of people sought
+relaxation every day. The creation and application of electrical power
+made up the domain of Wilhelm Steinholt, who also owned the factories
+that made the machinery of the world.
+
+Absolute control of all of the necessities and luxuries of life, in
+fact, were in the hands of the five men, who used their vast power
+wisely and beneficently.
+
+Ostensibly the peoples of the world ruled themselves by means of a
+democratic form of government.
+
+In reality their lives were directed by a few men whose power and wealth
+were entirely unsuspected by any but those who were close to them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The council room in which Fragoni had received Dirk and Stanton was
+lofty and sumptuously appointed.
+
+The rugs which covered the floor were soft to the tread, and the walls
+and ceiling were adorned with a series of murals which represented the
+various heavenly constellations.
+
+At the far end of the chamber there was a staircase, and Dirk was among
+those who knew that it led up to the great observatory in which Fragoni
+and certain of his scientific associates spent so much of their time at
+night.
+
+For men had commenced to talk about the conquest of the stars, and it
+was generally believed that it would not be many years more before a way
+would be found to traverse the interplanetary spaces.
+
+"We are rather fortunate, my friends," Fragoni said to his two
+associates, "to have been the witnesses of the event that transpired
+last night."
+
+"Fortunate!" exclaimed Stanton. "Then you know that the thing is
+harmless?"
+
+A little smile lit the benign and scholarly countenance of Fragoni as he
+calmly regarded Stanton.
+
+"We know very little about it," he replied after a brief pause, "and, if
+our surmises are correct, it may be very far from harmless. It is
+intensely interesting, nevertheless," he continued, "because that thing,
+as you term it, unquestionably is directed by intelligence. Without the
+slightest doubt the people of the earth are about to behold a form of
+life from some far-away planet. What that form will be," he added, with
+an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders, "it is impossible to
+forecast."
+
+"But it was so hot," commenced Stanton, "that--"
+
+"True," agreed Fragoni, "but it also is large and it may be that only
+the outer shell of it was affected by friction with the atmosphere that
+surrounds the earth. Nachbaren," he continued, "is certain that there is
+intelligent life within it; and Nachbaren," he added dryly, "is usually
+right."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While Fragoni had been speaking, two more men had quietly joined them.
+
+"Good morning, Lazarre," Fragoni said, addressing a short, swarthy man
+who, very apparently, was of Jewish extraction.
+
+"Good morning," the other replied in a soft and mellifluous voice. "It
+seems," he continued, with a twinkle in his eyes, "as if some of my
+pretty buildings may be toppled over soon."
+
+"Maybe," agreed Fragoni. "And maybe," he added more seriously, "much
+more than your buildings will be toppled over, Lazarre."
+
+"That thing, then, is...?" questioned the heavy-set, slow-speaking,
+blue-eyed Teuton who had come into the room with Lazarre.
+
+"We do not know, Steinholt," admitted Fragoni, "but our knowledge
+undoubtedly will be increased considerably within the next few hours.
+And now," he said, "we will consider the problem at hand."
+
+"--the object which has created such unrest is slowly rising. It is now
+some twenty-five thousand feet above Manhattan. It is--"
+
+The voice from the radiovisor attracted the attention of the five men,
+and, with one accord, they rushed to the terrace and looked toward
+Manhattan. They saw the great leviathan high in the air for a moment,
+and then, suddenly, it seemed to vanish from sight.
+
+"It's gone!" exclaimed Stanton, with a sigh of relief. "It must have
+been some odd atmospheric freak, that's all."
+
+They searched the skies through the luciscope that was on the terrace,
+but failed to detect any trace of the monster.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"That seems to simplify matters," remarked Fragoni as they again walked
+back into the great conference room. But here, once more, they heard the
+voice from the Worldwide Tower.
+
+"--we are advised by Chicago that the thing, dull-red with heat, is
+hovering only a couple of thousand feet over the city. Thousands in the
+streets are being killed by the heat it is radiating--panic reigns,
+despite a rigorous enforcement of martial law. The strange object just
+rose suddenly to a high altitude and disappeared--"
+
+"It's another one of those damned things," asserted Stanton. "That
+couldn't go a thousand miles a minute!"
+
+"It can go faster than that, if I am not mistaken," said Fragoni. And it
+presently appeared that he was right, for in a couple of minutes the
+radiovisor transmitted the news that it was over San Francisco, where it
+remained for only a few seconds. It was not more than a minute later
+that word came from Shanghai that it had passed slowly over that city.
+Then again it was poised high over Manhattan, crimson with heat.
+
+"Is there any possible defense against it, Steinholt?" Fragoni asked.
+The Teuton shook his head with an air of finality.
+
+"None," he said, "as far as I can determine now. We can create and
+direct artificial lightning that would reduce this building to a mass of
+powdered stone and fused metal in a fraction of a second. But I am
+certain that it wouldn't leave as much as a scratch on that monster up
+there. We might try the Z-Rays on it, but an intelligence that could
+devise such a craft would undoubtedly have the wisdom to protect it
+against such an elementary menace as rays. Even the mightiest explosives
+that we have wouldn't send a tremor through that mighty mass."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Why not await developments?" asked Dirk. "We do not even know the
+nature of the thing we are trying to combat."
+
+"It's solid metal," insisted Stanton tenaciously. "It's a metal body
+with a metal brain."
+
+"Don't be ridiculous," said Steinholt. "It seems quite apparent that the
+craft has come from another planet, and, if I am not greatly mistaken,
+there are intelligent creatures inside it."
+
+"In any event," said Dirk, "it seems impractical to make any plans until
+we know more about it. I suggest that we empower Fragoni to act for the
+rest of us in this matter."
+
+"That is very agreeable to me," said Steinholt. "A crisis very possibly
+may arise in which the quick judgment of one man may be necessary to
+avert the danger that always is inherent in delay."
+
+"You hold my proxy," Lazarre said to Fragoni, "and I assume that Stanton
+is agreeable to this procedure."
+
+"--the thing is moving very slowly eastward in the direction of Long
+Island Sound. It is, at the same time, losing altitude. Its movements
+are being carefully watched. As yet we see no cause for immediate
+alarm--people are advised to remain calm--"
+
+"Yes, I am agreeable," said Stanton nervously and hastily. "If there are
+things in it with which we can compromise, I would suggest that we do
+not offend them."
+
+"I am, then, empowered to act for all of you," said Fragoni, ignoring
+the suggestion of Stanton.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He rose from his chair and walked out on the terrace. The others
+followed after him.
+
+Looking westward, they saw the mammoth craft descending slowly in their
+direction.
+
+Its vast dimensions became more and more apparent as, spellbound, they
+watched it approach closer and closer to them.
+
+The thing in the sky was now not more than three thousand feet above
+them and only a few miles to the westward.
+
+The observers on the terrace regarded it for a moment in silence as it
+drifted forward and downward.
+
+"It's colossal!" Steinholt then exclaimed, lost in scientific admiration
+of the mammoth craft. "Magnificent! Superb!"
+
+"But it's coming right toward us!" cried Stanton.
+
+"What makes it move, I wonder?" asked Dirk. "And how in the world is it
+controlled?"
+
+"It surely is not of this world," said Fragoni quietly. "That gigantic
+thing has come to us from somewhere out of the infinite and terrible
+depths of space."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another minute elapsed while they watched it, speechless with wonder.
+
+"Do you know," Lazarre then said calmly, "I believe that it is going to
+land in the waters of the Sound. It appears so to me, anyway."
+
+It was nearly opposite them by this time, and not more than a thousand
+feet above the water. A few planes which, very apparently, were being
+flown by intrepid and fearless flyers, were hovering close around it.
+
+Then finally it came to rest, as Lazarre had predicted, in the water
+some two miles off shore, and it was obscured by a great cloud of vapor
+for several minutes.
+
+"Steam," asserted Steinholt. "That trip around the world, which it made
+in a few minutes, generated considerable frictional heat in the shell."
+
+"Come," said Fragoni, "we'll fly out and look the thing over."
+
+Around the corner of the building, on the level of the terrace, there
+was a landing stage which was occupied by a number of planes of various
+sizes.
+
+Dirk entered the door of a small twenty passenger speedster, and the
+others filed in after him.
+
+"Ready?" he asked, after he had seated himself at the controls.
+
+"Ready!" replied Fragoni.
+
+The plane rose straight up into the air and then darted gracefully out
+over the Sound.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dirk swooped straight down at the leviathan which lay so quietly on the
+surface of the Sound and then slowly circled around it. No sign of an
+aperture of any sort could be seen in the craft. Then he dropped the
+plane lightly on the water, close to the metallic monster, which towered
+fully four hundred feet above them, despite the fact that more than half
+of it was submerged.
+
+"It must be hollow," remarked Steinholt, "or it wouldn't be so far out
+of the water. In fact, it most certainly would sink, if it was solid."
+
+At the touch of a lever which lay under one of Dirk's hands the plane
+rose straight out of the water, and he maneuvered it directly over the
+top of the strange enigma. Then he touched a button and the pontoons
+were drawn up into the undercarriage of the craft.
+
+"Shall I make a landing on it?" he asked, turning his head and
+addressing Fragoni.
+
+The latter nodded his head, and Dirk dropped the ship gently onto the
+smooth surface of the monster, the pneumatic gearing completely
+absorbing the shock of the landing.
+
+Dirk relinquished the controls and, opening the door of the cabin, he
+stepped out onto the rough and pitted substance of which the leviathan
+was compounded. He stood there while the others came out after him.
+
+A large area on the top of the monster was perfectly flat and, within a
+very few moments, Dirk discovered that it was decidedly warm. He had
+brought the plane down close to the middle of the length of the strange
+craft in the belief that there, if anywhere, some indication of an
+entrance might be found.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The voice of Steinholt, tense with suppressed excitement, appraised him
+that his surmise had been correct.
+
+"There is a manhole of some sort," the electrical wizard exclaimed. "And
+look, it is turning!"
+
+They saw, not far ahead of them, a circular twelve-foot section of the
+deck slowly revolving, and, even as they watched, it commenced to rise
+slowly upward as the threads with which it was provided turned gradually
+around.
+
+Almost involuntarily they retreated a few feet and stood there,
+spellbound, as they stared at the massive, revolving section of the
+deck.
+
+It continued to turn until fully ten feet of the mobile cylinder had
+been exposed. Then the bottom of it appeared. Even then it continued to
+revolve and rise on a comparatively small shaft which supported it and,
+at the same time, thrust it upward. Dirk and his companions kept their
+eyes on the rim of the well which had been exposed, and awaited the
+appearance of something, they knew not what. When the top of the great
+cylinder was fully twelve feet above the deck of the craft it slowly
+ceased to revolve.
+
+Moment succeeded moment as the members of the little group rigidly and
+almost breathlessly awaited developments.
+
+Then Dirk, with an impatient ejaculation, stepped forward toward the
+yawning hole and cautiously peered over the edge of it.
+
+He stood there for a moment, as if transfixed, and then, with an
+exclamation of horror, retreated swiftly to where his friends were
+standing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What is it?" gasped Steinholt. "What did you see when--"
+
+But the words died on his lips for, swarming swiftly over every side of
+the well, there poured an array of erect, piercing-eyed beings, who had
+all the characteristics of humans. They were clad in tight-fitting
+attire of thin and pliant metal which, with the exception of their
+faces, shielded them from head to foot. On their heads they wore
+close-fitting helmets, apparently equipped with visors which could be
+drawn down to cover their unprepossessing features.
+
+Each one of them carried a tube which bore a striking resemblance to a
+portable electric flashlight.
+
+Swiftly they advanced, in ranks of eight, toward Dirk and his companions
+who, gripped with amazement, held their positions.
+
+The first line came to a halt not more than four feet from the little
+group on the deck. The other lines halted, too, and formed a great
+platoon. Then a shrill whistle sounded and the formation parted in the
+middle, leaving an open path that led backward to the entrance, to the
+well.
+
+A moment later the watchers saw the regal figure of a man emerge from
+the orifice and, after a moment's pause, advance slowly in their
+direction with a stately stride.
+
+He was tall and muscular and blond and his attire, golden in texture,
+glittered with sparkling gems.
+
+As he approached them he raised his right hand and, inasmuch as his
+countenance was calm and benign, his gesture appeared to be one of
+peace and good-will.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Following close behind him there was a younger man who, very apparently,
+was of the same lineage. His expression, however, was petulant and
+haughty and it contained more than a suggestion of rapacity and evil.
+
+Behind him there were others of the same fair type, all of them
+sumptuously and ornately attired.
+
+Fragoni stepped forward, himself a dignified and striking figure, as the
+leader of the strange adventurers came forth from the lane that had been
+formed by his immobile guard of warriors.
+
+The two men confronted each other, one whose power and wealth gave him a
+dominate position on earth, and the other a personage from some domain
+that was remote in the abyss of space.
+
+Fragoni bowed and spoke a few friendly words of welcome and the
+stranger, to the utter amazement of the banker and his associates,
+responded in an English that was rather peculiar in accent but that they
+could understand without any difficulty.
+
+"From what part of the world do you come," asked the astounded Fragoni,
+"that you speak our language?"
+
+"We come from no part of this world," replied the stranger. "The empire
+of my ruler is infinitely far away. But language, my friend, is not a
+thing of accident. Life grows out of the substance of the universe and
+language comes out of life. The speech of mankind, in your state of
+development, varies but little throughout all space and I have heard
+your English, as you call it, spoken among those who dwell in many, many
+worlds."
+
+"And your world?" asked Steinholt with avid curiosity. "Tell us of the
+planet from which you come."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Fragoni, smiling at the eagerness of Steinholt, interposed with a
+kindly but arresting gesture.
+
+"My name is Fragoni," he said to the stranger, "and I would have you
+partake, of my hospitality and refresh yourself after your long journey.
+These," he added, "are my friends, Steinholt, Vanderpool and Lazarre."
+
+"I am Teuxical, vassal of his Supreme Highness, Malfero of Lodore," the
+other replied. "This is my son, Zitlan," he continued, indicating the
+young man behind him, "and the others are my high captains, Anteucan,
+Orzitza and Huazibar. More of my officers are below together with ten
+thousand armed and armored men such as you see before you."
+
+If the last part of the statement was intended as a threat or a warning,
+the expression on Fragoni's face gave no indication that he was aware of
+it.
+
+"You carry a large crew, sir," Fragoni replied, "but we gladly will make
+provisions for all of your men. As for yourself, your son, and your
+captains, if you will come with me...."
+
+He nodded in the direction of the plane which rested on the great
+interplanetary vessel and started to walk slowly in the direction of it.
+The leader of the skymen walked by his side and the other men from
+Lodore followed close after them.
+
+Dirk, Steinholt and Lazarre brought up the rear, while the soldiers
+remained motionless in their serried array.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Innumerable planes were circling overhead and hundreds of them had
+landed on the water in the vicinity. Dirk saw that the wanderers from
+the stars regarded them curiously as if they never before had seen
+aircraft of that particular type.
+
+When the cabin door of the plane was thrown open, Teuxical turned to one
+of his captains.
+
+"Remain here, Anteucan, with the soldiers," he commanded, "and await our
+return."
+
+Teuxical then entered the plane with his men and Fragoni, Steinholt and
+Lazarre followed after them. Then Dirk took his seat at the controls.
+
+"These are strange craft you use," he heard Teuxical say. "I have seen
+them in only one of the multitude of other worlds on which I have set my
+feet, worlds which all pay tribute to Malfero of Lodore. It is safer and
+swifter to ride the magnetic currents than it is to ride the unstable
+currents of the air."
+
+Dirk caught the significance of the reference to tribute and he admired
+the clever diplomacy of Teuxical while, at the same time, he wondered if
+the earth and all of those who dwelt upon it were doomed to fall under
+the sway of some remote and unseen despot.
+
+He also realized that the Lodorians had, in some way, devised a craft
+that rode the great magnetic streams which flowed through the universe
+in much the same way that men, in ships, navigated the streams of the
+earth.
+
+He threw on the helicopter switch and the plane rose swiftly into the
+air, the myriad other flying craft which were circling nearby keeping at
+a safe distance from it.
+
+"Land on the grand terrace," Fragoni directed. The flight was short and
+rapid and it was only a matter of seconds before Dirk brought the plane
+down on the landing stage which they had left only a scant half-hour
+before.
+
+He opened the cabin door and stepped out of the plane and the others
+filed out after him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Fragoni led the way along the stage, walking and chatting with Teuxical,
+and Dirk, following after the others, was the last to turn a corner that
+brought him a sweeping view of the magnificent terrace that fronted the
+private apartments of the banker and his daughter.
+
+And, when he did, he saw that Inga was standing there, superbly
+beautiful, with Stanton a few paces behind her.
+
+Her lovely eyes were alive with awe and wonder and her slender white
+hands were crossed over her heart.
+
+And Dirk saw, too, that Zitlan, son of Teuxical, had paused and was
+standing quite still, with his unwavering and insolent eyes fixed on
+the girl. Resentment, and a touch of apprehension, agitated Dirk when he
+saw the expression on the face of the young Lodorian.
+
+There was admiration in that disagreeable countenance, but it was
+blended with arrogance, haughtiness and ill-concealed desire.
+
+Dirk went quickly to Inga, standing between the girl and the one from
+Lodore who was staring at her so brazenly.
+
+"What does it all mean, Dirk?" she asked in a low voice. "Those strange
+people, where are they from?"
+
+Stanton had come quickly forward and had joined Inga and Dirk.
+
+"They are from some far-off world, Inga," he explained, "that we know
+nothing about as yet."
+
+"But what do they want?" she persisted. "What do they intend to do? I
+saw those horrible creatures through the magnascope when they came
+swarming out of the inside of that thing on the water and I thought, at
+first, that they were going to kill you all."
+
+"No, they seem to come in peace," Dirk replied. "Teuxical, their leader,
+seems to be gracious and kindly."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"We are all doomed," asserted Stanton, "unless something happens. They
+can crumble our cities with heat and bury us under the ruins of them."
+
+"Keep your silence!" breathed Dirk, quietly but tensely. "We will find a
+way to destroy those creatures if it becomes necessary."
+
+"That man who keeps staring at me, who is he?" asked Inga in a voice
+that betrayed her nervousness.
+
+Dirk turned and saw that Zitlan was still standing where he had paused
+and that he still was looking with searching eyes in the direction of
+the girl.
+
+He returned the insolent gaze of the young Lodorian with an impatient
+and threatening stare and the countenance of Zitlan at once became
+stern and menacing. He came striding in the direction of Inga, Dirk and
+Stanton and paused within a few feet of them, his rapacious eyes still
+fixed on the girl.
+
+"My lady," he said, "your beauty pleases me. I have walked on many
+worlds but never before have I seen one as lovely as yourself. Of the
+spoils of this world, all that I crave possession of is you. When we
+return to Lodore," he added with an air of finality, "I will take you
+with me and place you with my other women in the Seraglio of the
+Stars."
+
+Dirk swiftly stepped close to Zitlan and the latter quickly clasped a
+tube that hung at his side, a tube of the sort that the soldiers had
+carried.
+
+"Your words and your manner are insolent," asserted Dirk angrily, "and I
+warn you now to cease making yourself offensive."
+
+"Dog!" exclaimed Zitlan fiercely, leveling the metal tube, "I'll--"
+
+But the left fist of Dirk cut short his threat as it made a sudden
+impact with his chin, and the Lodorian went crashing backward into some
+exotic shrubbery with a look of surprise on his countenance.
+
+Then Dirk heard an odd hissing and crackling sound, and he felt himself
+becoming dizzy and weak.
+
+Darkness seemed to sweep in upon him; he felt that he was dropping
+swiftly through space, and then he lost consciousness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A vague and shadowy figure was standing close by his side and peering
+down into his face. After a while he realized that it was Steinholt.
+
+"Steinholt!" he gasped. "Why--why am I here--in Fragoni's? I must have
+had a dream--and yet...."
+
+He furrowed his brow in thought and, gradually, he commenced to remember
+what had happened.
+
+"It was no dream," said the scientist softly. "Do you remember the
+trouble that you had with Zitlan?"
+
+"Yes," replied Dirk. "I remember that he was insolent to Inga and that I
+lost my temper and struck him. But what happened to me? I don't recall
+that anybody hit me. I did hear sort of a peculiar sound just before I
+started to pass out, but--"
+
+"Teuxical took a shot at you," said Steinholt, "and you have been
+unconscious for over thirty-six hours."
+
+"Took a shot at me!" exclaimed Dirk. "What did he shoot me with?"
+
+"That is what we all would like to know," said Steinholt. "He leveled
+one of those damn tubes at you and pressed a button on it. There was a
+hissing sound, a flash of light, and you got groggy, and went out. He
+potted Zitlan, too," continued Steinholt, "and he apologized for the
+trouble that his son was responsible for. Do you know," he added, "I
+sort of like the old man."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lazarre, with a sympathetic smile on his face, entered the room at that
+moment and overheard the conversation.
+
+"Old man is right," he remarked, with a little note of awe in his voice.
+"Teuxical admits that he is three thousand years old and that he has at
+least two thousand more ahead of him. That Lodore must be a queer
+world," he commented, shaking his grizzly head.
+
+"It is not so queer when you take everything into consideration," said
+Steinholt. "It seems quite natural when Teuxical explains it. Lodore it
+seems, is something like a hundred thousand times as big as this
+miniature world we live on. It took Lodore infinitely longer to solidify
+from a gaseous state than it took this world, and its entire evolution
+has been relatively slower than ours. Therefore, according to Teuxical,
+the people up there live longer and, incidentally, know infinitely more
+than we do."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What time is it now?" asked Dirk, after a moment of thought.
+
+"It is just about twelve o'clock at night," Steinholt informed him.
+
+"Have these Lodorians made any demands yet?" Dirk asked. "Does anybody
+know what they are going to do or what they want?"
+
+"They are liable to do almost anything," said Lazarre, "and it looks as
+though they will be able to get anything that they want. Teuxical, as I
+understand it, just gave you a slight shock with his death-ray device.
+If he had pulled the trigger all the way you would have become just a
+little pile of dust that the first breeze would have blown away."
+
+"Our own death-rays are somewhat similar," said Steinholt, "but they are
+not a hundredth as powerful. And they won't work on the Lodorians,
+either," he added, "because those metal sheaths that they wear make them
+immune to all kinds of destructive rays."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It appears," remarked Lazarre morosely, "as if this little world of
+ours is going to be taken for a ride. And it's too bad, considering that
+it's the only world we've got. There has been no formal presentation of
+demands yet, but it seems to be sort of understood that the earth is
+going to become a tributary of Lodore. It is a good thing," he added,
+"that Teuxical, and not Zitlan, is the boss of that outfit. I don't like
+the looks of that young fellow. He's only twelve hundred years old and
+he is sort of hot-blooded, I guess."
+
+"I was talking with Anteucan," said Steinholt, "and he told me that the
+Lodorians usually make heavy levies on worlds which they discover and
+dominate. As soon as Teuxical returns to Lodore and announces a new
+discovery a fleet of those damned monsters is sent out to mop up the new
+planet. That Malfero, who is the emperor of Lodore, is considerable of a
+monarch, and it seems that he has a passion for piling up wealth. Gold
+and platinum are as precious on Lodore as they are here and he also
+likes pretty stones."
+
+"And what is worse," added Steinholt, "is his practice of enslaving
+entire populations and making toilers or warriors out of them. Those
+soldiers on the ship are not Lodorians. Millions of them were seized on
+some planet and converted into troops. It was a strange conversion,
+too," said Steinholt with a shudder. "Their brains were operated on and
+most of their faculties removed. They have no sense of fear, no
+consciences, no power of reasoning. They respond only to certain signals
+on a whistle and their only definite and active impulse is that of
+murder and destruction."
+
+"There is nothing to do," said Dirk positively, "but to kill all of
+these interlopers, if we hope to save our world from being desolated."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three men looked at each other in silence for a moment and then
+Dirk, somewhat weakly, rose into a sitting position in the bed which he
+had been occupying.
+
+"But how," asked Steinholt, "can we kill them? We might, of course, get
+rid of a few of them, but that simply would lead to our destruction by
+those who were left."
+
+"There must be some way," asserted Dirk, "and it is up to us to think of
+it without delay. If we let those Lodorians get a foothold on the world
+all will be lost."
+
+"The old man seems to be reasonable enough," said Lazarre. "He doesn't
+seem inclined to be destructive."
+
+"We must not trust him or any of the others," said Dirk imperatively.
+"We must rid the earth of every one of them. And the sooner we strike
+the better!"
+
+"It had best be soon if it is to be at all," said Steinholt. "Fragoni
+has arranged to have Teuxical appear before the Congress, and the
+meeting has been called for to-night when, I imagine, certain specific
+demands will be made upon us. We all will go to The Hague together on
+the ship of the Lodorians."
+
+"And we leave?" questioned Dirk.
+
+"The meeting is set for ten P. M., New York time," said Lazarre. "We
+will start east at about four o'clock in the morning, I guess, because
+it will only take a minute or so to arrive at our destination."
+
+"Is Fragoni going?" asked Dirk.
+
+"Naturally," replied Lazarre.
+
+"And Inga?"
+
+"I believe so," Lazarre told him. "Fragoni was both afraid to take her
+and to leave her behind, but finally he decided that he wanted her with
+him in case of trouble."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"And are they--the Lodorians--still here?" queried Dirk.
+
+"Yes," responded Lazarre. "Teuxical returned to his ship last night with
+Zitlan and his other followers, but they came back late this afternoon,
+and they are still here. Zitlan seemed to be all right this afternoon,
+too. They must have used some means of bringing him out of the daze that
+he was in. We did everything we could to revive you, but none of our
+measures were effective."
+
+"I'm all right now," asserted Dirk, as he finished attiring himself. "I
+want to see Fragoni at once."
+
+"We'll go out on the terrace then," said Steinholt. "They are all out
+there."
+
+Dirk, with his two companions, strolled out through the maze of rooms
+and corridors that led to the garden which hung so high above the city
+and the Sound below it.
+
+The first thing that Dirk saw, when he passed out onto the terrace, was
+the white tunic of Inga, who was leaning against a coping and talking
+with Zitlan.
+
+The latter was pointing skyward and, very apparently, he was telling her
+of worlds which circled high among the stars.
+
+As if she were suddenly aware of his presence, Inga turned and saw Dirk
+and he realized, by the expression on her face, that she was distraught
+and nervous. She came toward him quickly, after a few words to Zitlan,
+and the face of the latter darkened. There was hatred in his expression
+as he stared malevolently at Dirk.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Steinholt and Lazarre passed along and joined Fragoni and Teuxical, who
+were the center of a group that had formed in another part of the
+terrace.
+
+"Oh, Dirk," said Inga, "I am so afraid of that frightful Zitlan. He has
+been telling me again that he is going to take me back to his own world
+with him and it makes me shudder to think of it. He is so strange and
+queer and his eyes are so terrible. He can't be as young as he looks,
+because he speaks of years like we speak of minutes. I will die if I
+ever find myself in that monster's power! He has been telling me of all
+the creatures he has slain on the worlds on which he has landed, and I
+tell you, Dirk, that he is cruel and ruthless and horrible."
+
+"He will never have you!" swore Dirk. "And if I hear of any more of his
+insolence, I will throw him headlong from this terrace."
+
+"Please, Dirk," she begged, "don't do anything--not yet. He is utterly
+unscrupulous, Dirk. He told me that, even now, he is plotting against
+some Malfero who rules Lodore like a god, and that he is planning to
+seize the throne of the planet. He wants to make me the queen of that
+fearful world when he becomes king. He boasted that, if I were on the
+throne, millions of people from other worlds would be sacrificed in my
+honor in the temples of Lodore." Her voice trembled and her eyes were
+terror-stricken as she continued. "They tear out the hearts of living
+victims," she whispered, "and burn them on their high and mammoth
+pyramids."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rage took possession of Dirk and, casting a glance at Zitlan, he saw
+that the Lodorian was smiling insolently at him.
+
+"I'll kill that beast, if it's the last thing that I do!" he exclaimed
+to Inga.
+
+"Dirk, Dirk," she implored, "don't even look at him. He is proud and
+impetuous, and he will kill you in defiance of his own father."
+
+"We will find some way to rid the world of the scourge that has
+descended upon it," asserted Dirk confidently, "and he will die with the
+rest of that monstrous crew."
+
+"I am going in, Dirk," Inga said. "Please," she begged, "don't do
+anything rash. If--something--should happen to you, I would lose all the
+hope that I have and I would, I think, kill myself."
+
+"Don't lose hope, my dear," said Dirk reassuringly. "I believe that I
+know of a way to destroy the plague that menaces us."
+
+He pressed her hand and, after she left him, he walked over and joined
+the other men on the terrace. Zitlan, coming from the terrace wall,
+stretched out in a chair not far from Dirk.
+
+Teuxical regarded the latter with a countenance that was calm and
+amicable. "I am sorry, my young friend," he apologized, "that I had to
+intervene between you and my son." He paused a moment and sat in
+silence, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Ah," he then said, "what
+disasters have arisen out of the desire of men for women. In my
+wanderings over the starlit worlds, I have seen...." He ceased speaking,
+brooded for a moment, and then shook his head slowly. "But you cannot
+say that I was not just," he continued, addressing Dirk. "I punished
+Zitlan for his presumption. Fragoni tells me that the woman has pledged
+herself to you. Let her pledge be kept!" he exclaimed sternly, looking
+straight at Zitlan.
+
+"We are the conquerors," asserted the latter boldly, "and to us should
+belong the spoils of our daring!"
+
+"Silence!" thundered Teuxical. "My own son, above all others, shall be
+obedient to my commands! Or, like others have done, he shall die because
+of insubordination!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Zitlan, a defiant expression on his face, ceased to speak, but Dirk
+could see that he was livid with suppressed rage.
+
+"As I was saying," Teuxical remarked, turning to Fragoni, "I am getting
+old and long have I been weary of conquest. I have seen your world and
+it pleases me. It is a tiny and peaceful place, far removed from the
+strife and turbulence of the restless centers of the universe. So it is
+my will to leave you unscathed and return to Lodore for a brief time to
+ask of the mighty Malfero the grant of this little provincial land. And
+then, with his permission, I will return here and rule it with wisdom
+and benevolence.
+
+"I will bring to you much knowledge, and peace will be to the people of
+this earth and peace will be to me."
+
+"It is well," replied Fragoni. "No world, I am certain, could hope for a
+wiser and more just ruler than yourself, and our Congress surely will
+receive you with acclaim."
+
+Teuxical bowed in recognition of the compliment, and his countenance
+indicated that he was gratified.
+
+"We will go, now, back to our vessel," he said, addressing the other
+Lodorians. "We will return for you at the appointed hour and conduct you
+to our ship," he added, speaking to Fragoni.
+
+"We will be ready," Fragoni replied.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Zitlan had arisen with the rest of them and Dirk, with a look of
+contempt and amusement in his eyes, regarded him casually.
+
+"May I have the honor of conducting our guests back to their ship in a
+plane?" Stanton requested of Fragoni.
+
+The latter nodded and Stanton walked across the terrace in the direction
+of the landing stage.
+
+Zitlan, as he followed after the others, passed close to Dirk and,
+pausing for a moment, fixed his hateful eyes on him.
+
+"You dog," he whispered malignantly, "remember what I tell you! The
+time will come when I will cast you to the carnaphlocti in the dark and
+icy caverns of sunless Tiganda. You will die," he swore, "the death of a
+million agonies!"
+
+For a moment Dirk felt an almost irresistible impulse to hurl himself on
+the Lodorian and slay him.
+
+He managed to maintain his control, however, and only regarded Zitlan
+with disdain as the latter turned and went on his way.
+
+In another moment the plane, containing Stanton and the Lodorians, was
+high up in the darkness.
+
+Dirk glanced at the great clock that gleamed atop of the beacon-tower on
+the Metropole Landing Field.
+
+The hour was close to twelve-thirty A. M.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A moment of silence on the terrace followed the departure of the plane
+that bore the Lodorians back to their craft.
+
+For an hour the clouds had been gathering in the sky and now a fine,
+cold rain commenced to fall.
+
+A peal of thunder echoed above them after a sharp flash of lightning had
+streaked across the black night above them.
+
+A servant appeared from the entrance to the apartment and pressed a
+button close to the door.
+
+Protective plates of glass noiselessly enveloped the terrace, sheltering
+those upon it from the inclement weather.
+
+"It is well," remarked Fragoni, breaking the silence, "that we were
+found by a leader like Teuxical. Our tribute will not be unbearable, and
+he will bestow many benefits upon us."
+
+"But surely," protested Dirk, "you do not intend to surrender without a
+struggle! Nothing but disaster," he asserted earnestly, "will come upon
+the earth if you do. Teuxical may be honest and just but, after all, he
+neither is immortal nor all-powerful, and something may happen to him at
+any moment. And there are those like Zitlan who would turn the world
+over to ravage and rape, and then convert it into a blazing pyre, if
+they had their way. These vandals," he insisted, "must be slain one and
+all, or, mark my words, our world will be laid waste."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dirk spoke with such a sense of conviction that his words held his
+listeners spellbound.
+
+"Who is Teuxical," he asked, "but the vassal of a monarch whose
+corsairs, very apparently, are carrying on a war of conquest in the
+universe? It will be disastrous, I say, to place any dependence in the
+good will of this one Lodorian. If he, or any of his men, return to that
+far-off planet where they dwell word will be carried there of the
+existence of our world. But who can say that Teuxical ever will return
+here again? It may be the whim of his ruler to refuse his request, or
+any one of a thousand other events might arise to thwart his desire to
+live among us. No," concluded Dirk passionately, "it never will do to
+let that great engine of destruction rise into the skies again!"
+
+"He is right!" asserted Steinholt positively. "It will be far better to
+annihilate these raiders, if such a thing can be accomplished!"
+
+Lazarre was rather inclined to take sides with Fragoni.
+
+"But how," he demanded, "can such destruction be brought about? We know
+nothing of the capabilities of that monster that is lying down there in
+the Sound. It is undoubtedly equipped with the deadliest of devices and
+they all will be turned upon us if we fail in an effort to destroy the
+thing and those who have come from space upon it. If there was a way to
+smite them suddenly, to bring death to the Lodorians and to those
+swarming, mindless, murderous minions who act in obedience to them, I
+would favor doing it.
+
+"But, as it is," he concluded, "it seems like inviting disaster even to
+think of such an attempt, much less to try it."
+
+"It can be done, though," asserted Dirk, "or there is at least a
+fighting chance of accomplishing it. The electrosceotan--" He paused,
+and looked questioningly at Steinholt. "The top of that monster is open
+and...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Teuton furrowed his brow and considered the proposition for a
+moment.
+
+"Yes," he said, nodding his head, "it might be done." Again he silently
+gave the subject his thought. "It is well worth trying," he asserted
+with an air of decision. "But we will have to make haste," he warned,
+"if the thing is to be done before the flight to The Hague."
+
+"So be it," said Fragoni. "We will apply ourselves to the task at hand.
+I, too," he confessed, "had rather see these vandals destroyed like so
+much vermin rather than have them carry the news of the existence of
+this earth back into those strange worlds in the depth of space. I will
+only regret the passing of Teuxical, who could have taught us much
+wisdom. And now," he continued briskly, "I will place myself under your
+orders, Dirk. You are the one who suggested this plan and upon you will
+fall the responsibility of executing it. And, if it succeeds," he added,
+"the glory will be yours."
+
+"I care little for the glory," replied Dirk, "but I gladly accept the
+duties and the responsibilities. These," he said to Fragoni, "are my
+instructions to you. Inasmuch as Teuxical and his captains will return
+here at about four o'clock in the morning to convey us back to their
+craft, it will be necessary to have this building emptied of its
+inhabitants by that time. Let all of those who dwell here depart from
+it, a few at a time, so as not to excite suspicion. Inga, above all
+others, must leave and retreat to a place of safety. Then, as the hour
+approaches for the arrival of the Lodorians, we will escape by plane
+from one of the rear terraces. They will land in search of us
+and--well, then they will feel the force of our power."
+
+"I will follow your orders explicitly," promised Fragoni. "I wonder," he
+added, "where Stanton is? He should be advised of what we are going to
+attempt."
+
+"He will return in due time," replied Dirk. "And, if not, it will be the
+worse for him. Lazarre will remain here with you," he then told Fragoni,
+"and Steinholt and I will now go about our part of the task at hand."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dirk, followed by Steinholt, hurried across the terrace and, leaving the
+shelter of its quartzite plates, sought the landing stage.
+
+The rain still was falling and the heavens were congested with dark and
+heavy clouds.
+
+Dirk, selecting one of the smaller planes, entered the cabin and
+Steinholt, following after him, closed the door and threw on the
+lights.
+
+Swiftly they shot straight up into the air, Dirk ignoring all of the
+rules of flight in his haste to be under way. Once in the westbound
+lane, he headed his plane toward Manhattan and threw his rheostat wide
+open. In a few minutes they were skimming over the great city and past
+the three-thousand-foot steel tower of the Worldwide Broadcasting
+Station.
+
+For fifteen minutes more he kept the plane on a straight course and
+then, bringing it to a quick stop, he let it drop like a plummet toward
+the earth.
+
+It landed, among many other planes, on the transparent, quartzite roof
+of a vast building and, looking down into the interior, they could see
+several rows of great dynamos. Some of them were turning, and the
+humming that they made could be heard plainly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dirk and Steinholt ran rapidly across the roof until they came to a
+superstructure, which they entered. There was a shaft inside. Dirk
+pressed a button, and an elevator shot up and stopped at the door,
+which automatically flashed open.
+
+He closed it after he and his companion had entered the cage and,
+dropping rapidly downward, they came to a stop in a lighted chamber that
+was far below the surface of the ground.
+
+A stoop-shouldered old man greeted them, an expression of surprise on
+his face.
+
+"Gentlemen!" he exclaimed. "What is--"
+
+"Power, Gaeble!" commanded Steinholt tensely. "Power! Let every dynamo
+run its swiftest. To-night we have to use for the electrosceotan!"
+
+"But I thought it was peace that those from the stars desired," said the
+old electrician. "Through my radiovisor I heard--"
+
+"That was sent out," explained Steinholt, "to relieve the fears of the
+people and to keep them in order."
+
+Swiftly the distorted figure of the old man sped to a great switchboard,
+where he pressed button after button.
+
+The very ground commenced to vibrate around them and the massive
+structure seemed to be alive with straining power.
+
+Then Steinholt, going to a corner of the intricate board, adjusted a few
+levers, while his gnomelike companion watched him carefully.
+
+"And now, Gaeble," the scientist said impressively, "these are your
+orders. At precisely the hour of four o'clock in the morning make one
+connection with this switch."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He indicated, with a stubby finger, the lever to be operated.
+
+"Keep the circuit closed for just four seconds," he added slowly, "and
+then break it. Do you understand, Gaeble?" he demanded.
+
+"I do," replied the old man.
+
+"Then," continued Steinholt, "after you break that connection you
+quickly will close this next circuit. Keep it closed for four seconds
+and then, after opening it for one second, close it again for four
+seconds. Repeat the procedure twice more, Gaeble, after that, and then
+await my further instructions. Is everything clear?" he asked.
+
+"It is, sir," the old man replied. "I will follow your orders
+implicitly."
+
+"There is one thing more," Steinholt said. "Get the Worldwide Tower on
+the televisor and warn them of what is to happen."
+
+"I will do that immediately," Gaeble replied.
+
+Dirk and Steinholt shot up to the roof again and the building over which
+they walked seemed to be quivering with life.
+
+They could see that all of the mammoth dynamos beneath them were
+revolving and the humming which they had heard before had changed into
+an ugly, vibrant roar.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Again they took flight and, reaching Manhattan, they continued north and
+east to the shore of Long Island Sound.
+
+Long before the old East River had been filled in and the space which it
+had occupied reclaimed for building purposes. All indications of its
+former bed had been obliterated by mammoth terraced structures.
+
+When they reached their destination on the shore of the Sound a small
+submarine, which Dirk had ordered by radio, was awaiting them.
+
+"Submerge and proceed up the Sound," Dirk ordered the officer, "and take
+us directly under the craft of the Lodorians."
+
+In a few minutes they were skimming over the surface of the water and,
+when a sufficient depth had been gained, the tiny boat disappeared
+beneath the rain-rippled sea.
+
+Dirk sat at a port and watched the aquatic life as it was illuminated by
+the powerful aquamarine searchlights.
+
+Progress under the water was comparatively slow, as mankind had made but
+little progress in underwater navigation. Air liners long before had
+almost superseded travel by land and sea and the abolition of warfare
+had swept all of the old navies from the ocean.
+
+It was more than an hour before the officer in charge of the boat
+announced that the mammoth hull of the monster that was lying on the
+Sound was visible directly above them.
+
+Both Dirk and Steinholt donned diving apparatus, and the former
+carefully adjusted the mechanism that was contained in a metallic box
+about two feet square.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then they stepped up into a chamber in the conning tower of the boat
+and, after a door slipped shut beneath them, water slowly commenced to
+pour into the compartment.
+
+When it was full a sliding door that was in front of them slowly opened
+and they passed out onto the deck of the underwater craft.
+
+Steinholt had been provided with some welding apparatus and, in a few
+minutes, the box which Dirk had carried was attached securely to the
+bottom of the craft of the Lodorians.
+
+They then reentered the submarine by reversing the process which had
+attended their exit. Very soon they were in the cabin of the boat
+again.
+
+"If everything goes well," said Dirk, "those damned Lodorians will never
+know what struck them."
+
+"I only hope," said Steinholt, "that we don't destroy that leviathan
+altogether. We might solve the secret of it and then we, too, could ride
+out into the heart of the universe."
+
+"It is impossible to imagine what will happen," Dirk replied, "until
+after we launch our attack."
+
+Both of the men were silent during the return trip of the small undersea
+craft, which emerged at its dock a little before three-thirty in the
+morning.
+
+"We'll have to hurry," urged Dirk nervously, "because we will need a
+little time to make preparations after we get back to Fragoni's."
+
+They entered their plane and Dirk shot it swiftly up into the night,
+following the red shaft of light that rose almost directly from the
+point at which they had made their landing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then, having reached the eastbound level, he headed straight in the
+direction of the palace of Fragoni.
+
+Dirk cast a glance at the great city that lay far beneath him. High up
+into the heavens it tossed the fulgurant fires that betokened its wealth
+and power. And, down among those myriad lights, millions and millions of
+people were restless under the danger that menaced them. It was only a
+matter of moments now before their fate, and the fate of their great
+metropolis, would be decided. By dawn they would be free forever from
+the threat of subjugation and slavery or else they, and all that they
+had toiled and striven for, would be the veriest dust of dying embers.
+
+And whatever befell them likewise would befall the rest of the world and
+every living thing that moved upon it.
+
+Dirk was high above Fragoni's when he stopped the forward flight of the
+plane and, dropping it rapidly through the misty night, brought up
+easily on the landing stage. The other planes which had been there when
+he and Steinholt had taken their departure were gone and Dirk felt a
+sense of relief when he observed this. Inga, then, must have departed
+with the other occupants of the colossal structure. Things were going
+according to the plan that he had conceived. He stepped out of the
+cabin, followed by Steinholt, and proceeded hastily along the terrace
+and turned the corner into the garden.
+
+Then he came to an abrupt halt because there, before him, was Zitlan,
+with one of the deadly ray-tubes of the Lodorians in his hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dirk knew immediately that something unexpected had happened and that he
+was in the power of one who not only hated him but who had an unholy
+desire for Inga.
+
+He realized, too, that any show of resistance would be nothing short of
+suicide, for he was well aware of the deadliness of the strange weapon
+with which he and Steinholt were being menaced by the gloating
+Lodorian.
+
+"One false move and you die!" warned Zitlan. "Come forward, now, and
+join those two others over whom Anteucan and Huazibar are watching."
+
+Dirk and Steinholt promptly obeyed the command of Zitlan and walked over
+to where Fragoni and Lazarre were being guarded by two of the
+conquerors.
+
+The rain had ceased to fall, but the skies were dark and overcast with
+heavy clouds. There was an occasional flash of lightning, and thunder
+rolled and echoed through the night.
+
+The terrace, however, was brightly illuminated and every detail of the
+scene around him was visible to Dirk.
+
+He saw Stanton, on another part of the terrace, standing among some
+Lodorians he had not seen before. Stanton, apparently, was not being
+treated as a prisoner and Dirk wondered, rather vaguely, why this was.
+
+"What happened?" Dirk asked Fragoni quietly.
+
+"According to what I have heard," the latter replied, "Zitlan murdered
+his father in a fit of rage, and has taken over the command of the ship.
+Many of the Lodorians are his adherents and even those who do not favor
+him are so terrified that they will be obedient to his wishes."
+
+"And Inga?" questioned Dirk.
+
+"She is inside the apartment," said Fragoni, a note of desperation in
+his voice. "Zitlan surprised us completely and he and his men had us
+covered before we realized that Teuxical was not among them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Zitlan, in the meantime, had entered the suite of Fragoni and he now
+came out, Inga walking before him.
+
+She was silent and proudly erect but there was a pallor in her face that
+indicated her realization of the danger that she was threatened with.
+
+When Dirk saw her she gave him a brave smile, which he answered with a
+glance of reassurance.
+
+He could see the great clock in the Metropole Tower, and he noticed,
+with a feeling of grave apprehension, that it was twenty minutes to four
+o'clock.
+
+There were only a few minutes more in which to make a desperate and
+apparently a hopeless effort to save Inga, his friends and himself from
+a catastrophe which he had been instrumental in contriving.
+
+Then Zitlan stood before him, haughty and arrogant, his lowering
+countenance ugly with hatred.
+
+"So, dog," he said, "you who dared to defy Zitlan now stand before him a
+captive!"
+
+Neither Dirk nor any one of the three others who were guarded with him
+replied to the utterance.
+
+"You and that woman of yours," continued the Lodorian insolently, "both
+are my prisoners to do with as I please. Your fate," he continued, "I
+already have planned for you and I assure you that it will not be as
+pleasurable as the one to which she is destined. You will find that
+Tigana, on which you and those with you will be cast, is a world of
+terror such as you never could dream of. Even the monsters which crawl
+through the deliriums of the mind are not as horrible as those which
+infest the mad and haunted world of which I speak."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He paused a moment, a cruel smile on his face, as if he wished the full
+import of his words to sear themselves into the minds of the doomed
+men.
+
+"But the woman," he added, "will return to Lodore with me and be the
+queen of all women. And soon," he said savagely, "she may be queen of
+all Lodore, of the worlds which pay tribute to Lodore, and of other
+worlds which I will conquer and ravage. My father stood in my way and he
+died at my own hands. So will others perish who thwart my ambition, and
+I will become supreme in the universe!"
+
+A feeling of reckless fury possessed Dirk as he listened to the words of
+Zitlan and he felt an almost irresistible desire to drive a fist square
+between the mad, glittering eyes of the Lodorian.
+
+He glanced at the great clock, however, and he saw that the time to act
+had not yet come. At the last moment he would make one desperate attempt
+to frustrate the evil designs of Zitlan. If it failed--well, all would
+be lost. But it was a far better thing to die resisting the despicable
+Zitlan and his minions than it would be to live and to know that,
+without a struggle, he had abandoned to degradation the girl he loved.
+
+"This world of yours will be my world," he heard Zitlan boast, "and the
+spoils from it will add to my riches. This one here," he continued,
+indicating Stanton, "has offered to show me where all of the treasures
+of the earth may be found. And, as a reward, he will return to Lodore
+with me and there be elevated to a high position."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That, then, was why Stanton was not under guard like the rest of them.
+
+"Our good friend, Stanton," said Lazarre, "seems to have become
+something of a Judas."
+
+"And let his name be forever cursed, like the name of Judas," said
+Dirk.
+
+"Silence!" thundered the Lodorian. "I, Zitlan, am speaking." He paused a
+moment. "When I garner up the treasures of this world in the way of
+precious stones and metals I also shall gather more priceless loot in
+the way of women. And then, having taken all that I desire, I will lay
+waste to this earth so that those who survive will fear the name of
+Zitlan and will grovel before him like a god when once again he appears
+to them."
+
+While Zitlan had been speaking, Dirk had been studying the opponents
+with whom he soon had to clash.
+
+The two Lodorians who were standing guard over himself and his
+companions were close to his left side. Zitlan was directly in front of
+him, and there were seven of his minions clustered behind him.
+
+Again Dirk glanced at the great dial of the clock, and he saw that it
+was seven minutes of four.
+
+The moment had come to act if action was to prove of any avail.
+
+"I will--"
+
+But the words of Zitlan were interrupted by Dirk, who suddenly made a
+mighty sweep with his left arm and knocked the deadly tubes from the
+hands of Anteucan and Huazibar. Startled by the assault, they went
+reeling backward. At almost the same instant Dirk leaped forward and,
+seizing Zitlan, hurled him among those Lodorians who had been massed
+behind him. Then he threw himself violently into the tangled mass, his
+fists driving in and out with deadly strength!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out of the corner of one eye he saw Inga pass the melee and dart swiftly
+to the corner of the terrace. Instead of passing around to the landing
+stage, however, she lingered there and watched the combat.
+
+Dirk, as he fought, became conscious that Steinholt and Fragoni were at
+his side, battling with him against his enemies. He saw, too, that
+Stanton had retired to the far end of the terrace and that he was
+watching the struggle with frightened eyes.
+
+"We must reach the plane and get away," gasped Dirk. "In another three
+minutes--"
+
+He felled a Lodorian who, having lost his tube, was about to grapple
+with him. He saw Steinholt send another one of their opponents reeling
+backward.
+
+"Fragoni!" he exclaimed. "The plane! Get in with Inga! We will come!"
+
+Even as he spoke his fists were flailing back and forth between each one
+of his staccato commands.
+
+He saw beneath him a hand reaching toward a tube, and he kicked the
+instrument of death. It hurtled over in the direction of Stanton and
+landed close to his feet. Stanton might have picked it up and been in
+possession of the means of aiding his old friends or his new allies. But
+he shrunk away, panic-stricken, from the thing that lay so close to his
+reach.
+
+A Lodorian leaped upon Dirk's back in an effort to bring him to the
+ground, but he stooped swiftly forward and his assailant was catapulted
+over his head into those who were in front of him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He caught a flash of the contorted face of Zitlan flying through the
+air, and saw him land with a crash on the terrace, and lie there
+writhing in pain.
+
+"Steinholt, Lazarre!" he said convulsively. "We've got to strike once
+more! And then--run!"
+
+He plunged into their enemies with every bit of energy that he had left,
+and saw two of them toppling down. Then, like a flash, he turned to
+Lazarre, who was trying to fight off three of the Lodorians. Seizing one
+of them by the waist, Dirk hurled him backward and he disposed of
+another one in the same manner. His sheer desperation seemed to have
+given him unbounded strength and power.
+
+Lazarre sent his third opponent down with a blow under the chin and
+then, with Dirk at his side, they turned to the assistance of
+Steinholt.
+
+With one mad rush they crashed into a group of Lodorians and sent them
+reeling away like so many nine-pins.
+
+"Now! To the plane!" exclaimed Dirk, taking to his heels across the
+terrace. Steinholt and Lazarre followed after him and, turning the
+corner, they saw that the ship was in place and that Fragoni was
+anxiously waiting by the door of the cabin. Inga, Dirk knew, already was
+inside and safe. He stood aside while Steinholt and Lazarre leaped in.
+During the momentary wait he caught a glimpse of the great clock. It
+was one minute to four. Dirk jumping into the plane and switched on the
+helicopter without even waiting to close the cabin door.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The ship shot skyward like a rocket. When it reached an altitude of
+thirty-five hundred feet, he turned it north and raced at top speed in
+that direction.
+
+It was miles away from the palace of Fragoni in less than thirty
+seconds. Dirk then stopped the plane and held it poised in the air with
+the helicopter.
+
+The skies were turgid and black and the massed clouds, reflecting the
+lights of the great city below them, were permeated with an ugly,
+feverish, red glow.
+
+From where they were hanging in midair, the occupants of the plane could
+plainly see the sparkling palace of Fragoni towering high up into the
+darkness of the night.
+
+The lights of the magnificent mansion were reflected far out into the
+Sound where, looming in the golden ripples, lay the sinister monster
+from the terrible depths of unfathomable space.
+
+Dirk took a watch from his pocket and, after glancing at it, he hastily
+replaced it.
+
+"Two seconds more," he said, "and--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sharp and dazzling bolt of greenish fire came hurling suddenly out of
+the west and, with a thunderous concussion, seemed to fasten itself on
+the crest of Fragoni's palace.
+
+It trembled and quivered, as if endowed with some uncanny life and
+power, as it remained there against the darkness, throwing a weird,
+green tinge over the water and up into the skies.
+
+Blue waves of light could be seen pulsing and racing along the terrible
+beam and there, where it had fastened itself, they seemed to disappear
+in the vast and crumbling structure.
+
+For four seconds that destructive streak of light, one end of which was
+lost back in the mists that concealed Manhattan, tore at the proud
+pile.
+
+And, as the stone crumbled and the steelite fused under the mighty
+assault, an ominous roar swept through the night. The air was so
+violently agitated that the plane, miles away, tossed up and down like a
+tiny boat on a stormy sea.
+
+Then suddenly the bolt was gone, but its livid image still burned in the
+eyes of those who had been watching it.
+
+Once more, it came hurling out of the west and, like the fang of some
+great and deadly serpent, darted into the monster that lay in the waters
+of the Sound.
+
+Dirk and his companions could see plainly, by the light of the bolt
+itself, that it had crashed into the well from which the Lodorians first
+had appeared, and that it was beating and hammering its way into the
+very vitals of the craft.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dazzling, blinding fire seemed to pour from the aperture through which
+the bolt had passed. The clamor that arose was deafening.
+
+Then again the streak of fires was withdrawn, leaving the night
+intensely black until, in a moment more, it came thundering out of the
+west again and, with an impact that made the land and the sea and the
+very heavens tremble, hurled its way into the depths of the doomed
+leviathan.
+
+Twice again it fell, a fiery scimitar out of the darkness, and twice
+again it careened at the vitals of the stricken monster.
+
+Then, after the assault was over, the ship still floated on the surface
+of the Sound and its shell, as far as Dirk and the others could judge,
+still was unscathed.
+
+"We will soon know our fate," remarked Steinholt calmly. "If that didn't
+kill those beasts we might as well give up our ghosts."
+
+"I'll drop the plane a little lower and a little nearer to the ship,"
+said Dirk. "I don't believe that any life is surviving in that thing."
+
+"My beautiful palace is nothing but dust," sighed Fragoni, mournfully.
+"And all my beautiful treasures, too."
+
+"And that beautiful Zitlan," Lazarre reminded him, "and his beautiful
+boy friends, they are all dust too, thank God!"
+
+"It was a queer fate that Stanton met," suggested Dirk. "He thought that
+he would save his life by going over to our enemies, and, instead of
+that, he lost it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Poor Stanton," said Steinholt. "He was born that way, I suppose, and I,
+for one, am ready to forgive and forget him. And now," continued the
+Teuton, "I hope that we didn't do too much damage to that little boat of
+the Lodorians. If we could get just a little peep at the inside of it we
+might learn the secret of its contrivance. And then, my friends, we
+could do a little journeying ourselves."
+
+"Have you any theory regarding it?" asked Fragoni.
+
+"Teuxical intimated that it rode the magnetic currents which, of course,
+flow through all the suns and planets in the universe," replied
+Steinholt. "We have been working along that line ourselves, of course,
+and it probably won't be very long anyway before we have the solution of
+interplanetary travel."
+
+"Those Lodorians would have solved it for us if it hadn't been for
+that artificial lightning," said Lazarre. "That's powerful stuff,
+Steinholt."
+
+"Yes, with that three-thousand-foot Worldwide Tower to hurl it from,"
+agreed Steinholt, "we can get fair range with it. If the Lodorians
+hadn't left the well of their ship open, though, the lightning wouldn't
+have done us much good. I was afraid, too, for a time, that we might
+have trouble in welding that automatic wireless circuit box to the
+bottom of the ship."
+
+Dirk, in the meantime, had brought the plane down to within a half-mile
+of the leviathan, and he was holding it poised there.
+
+"It seems to me," he said, after scrutinizing the monster for a couple
+of minutes, "that it is moving in the water. It is!" he exclaimed.
+"Steinholt! Look!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Only a comparatively short time had elapsed since the last bolt of
+lightning had vanished back into the darkness.
+
+"It is still rocking with the force of the shock that we gave it,"
+asserted Steinholt. "You would be rocking, too, if you had been tickled
+by a bolt like that one."
+
+"It is rising, I tell you!" said Dirk. "The front end of it is slowly
+getting higher in the water!"
+
+"You're right, Dirk," said Fragoni, excitement straining his voice.
+"Look! It just dropped back into the water!"
+
+Then, as they watched, the movements of the leviathan became more and
+more agitated, until it was churning up the waves around it like a
+wounded and agonized monster of the sea.
+
+Suddenly the front end tilted upward and the monster rose clear of the
+water. It shot straight up into the air at a speed so terrific that they
+could scarcely follow it.
+
+"It's gone!" gasped Fragoni. "Those brainless, mindless automatons must
+have survived!"
+
+"No," remarked Steinholt thoughtfully. "I don't believe that there is
+any life left on that thing. No one had closed the well when it rose,
+and it would mean death to go out into space with the ship in that
+condition."
+
+"Then what made it go up?" demanded Lazarre. "Can the damn thing run
+itself, Steinholt?"
+
+"I imagine," recalled the Teuton, "that our bolts killed every living
+thing that was on the craft but that, at the same time, they set the
+mechanism of the monster into action. Ah," he moaned, "but that is too
+bad. We could have learned much by an examination of the interior of
+that liner of the air."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A cry from Inga startled them and they saw that she was looking skyward,
+with terror in her eyes.
+
+They followed her gaze and there, streaking through the black clouds,
+they saw a long trail of white fire.
+
+"It's that thing!" exclaimed Fragoni. "I tell you that those upon it
+still live and that they are about to wreak vengeance upon us."
+
+"No," said Steinholt positively. "You are wrong, Fragoni. What is
+happening may be almost as disastrous, though," he admitted. "That
+leviathan is in its death agonies; it is a metal monster gone mad, and
+none can say what will happen before it expires."
+
+"The place for us," asserted Dirk hurriedly, "is in the Worldwide Tower.
+There we can keep track of what is transpiring and try to decide what to
+do."
+
+The others agreed with him and, seeking the westward level of flight, he
+sped the plane in the direction of the mammoth pyramid from which the
+news of the world was broadcast.
+
+They reached the vast structure in a few minutes, and, after dropping
+the plane on a landing stage, they went into the operating room.
+
+Here they learned quickly that the craft of the Lodorians was doing
+incalculable damage, and that it was throwing the population of the
+world into an unprecedented panic.
+
+It was, apparently, following an erratic, uncertain orbit that took it
+far out into space and then back quite close to the surface of the earth
+again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It had passed through the very heart of Chicago within a few yards of
+the ground, and it had cut and burned a swath more than a mile wide
+through the buildings of that metropolis.
+
+Other cities in America had felt the devastating effects of its
+irresistible and molten heat and, within a short time, thousands of
+people had been slain by it.
+
+Time and again, from the terrace of the great tower, Dirk and his
+companions saw the skies above them light up as that terrible, blazing,
+projectile which, uncontrolled, went hurtling on its way through the
+night.
+
+For three hours it careened on its mad course and hysteria reigned
+throughout the cities of the whole civilized world.
+
+But then a report came from a rocket-liner that had left Berlin en route
+for San Francisco.
+
+"Either a great meteor or that leviathan of the Lodorians just swept
+down past us in mid-Atlantic and plunged into the sea. Apparently it has
+exploded, for it has thrown a great column of water for miles up into
+the air. We are stopping and standing by, although the heat is intense
+and clouds of steam are rising from the sea."
+
+As the minutes passed by after the report from the rocket-ship had been
+received, the disappearance from the sky of the flaming craft from space
+seemed to confirm the belief that it had been swallowed by the ocean.
+This was accepted as a certainty by eight o'clock in the morning.
+
+"Ah," sighed Steinholt, "if only it had crashed on land somewhere. If
+there only was enough of it left for us to--"
+
+"Enough of any damn contraption of that kind," swore Lazarre fervently,
+"is altogether too much. I hope, for one, that its fragments are
+scattered so far that we never can put them together again."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dirk and Inga leaned against one of the parapets that evening on a
+gardened terrace of his own great mansion in Manhattan.
+
+Their little party had gone there after leaving the Worldwide Tower in
+the morning.
+
+After resting during the day, Lazarre and Fragoni were somewhere
+together, discussing the plans for a new palace to take the place of the
+one that was destroyed so that Zitlan and his minions might die in its
+ruins.
+
+Steinholt, elsewhere, was delving into oceanography and submarine
+engineering, in an attempt to learn whether or not it would be feasible
+to fish for the remains of the lost ship of Lodore.
+
+"It seems like a dream, doesn't it, Dirk?" the girl remarked. "It is
+difficult to believe that we actually have seen and talked with people
+from some far-away world."
+
+Together they looked up into the crystalline skies, where mazes of
+shining stars gave testimony to the countless worlds which were wheeling
+around them.
+
+"And just to think, Dirk," Inga continued proudly, "that it was you who
+saved this world and all of its people from that horrible Zitlan and his
+horde."
+
+"I saved you," he told her gravely and tenderly, "and that somehow means
+more to me than saving all of this world and all of the other worlds
+which are rolling through the uncharted ways of time and space."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  COMING--
+  Murder Madness
+  _An Extraordinary Novel_
+
+  _By_ MURRAY LEINSTER
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber Notes
+
+Typographical inconsistencies have been changed and are listed below.
+
+Hyphenation standardized.
+
+Archaic and variable spelling is preserved.
+
+Authors' punctuation style is preserved.
+
+Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Passages in bold indicated by =equal signs=.
+
+
+Transcriber Changes
+
+The following changes were made to the original text:
+
+  Page 298: Changed =work= to =wreck= (wish to know whether anyone has
+            visited the scene of the =wreck=)
+
+  Page 299: Changed =focussed= to =focused= (This means that we have
+            =focused= or concentrated cold)
+
+  Page 317: Added beginning quotes (Its name-grid glowed with the
+            letters: ="_Anita Prince._"=)
+
+  Page 321: Changed =eavesdroopper= to =eavesdropper= (sitting in the
+            smoking room when the =eavesdropper= fled past)
+
+  Page 321: Changed =pressure-cick= to =pressure-sick= (We missed you at
+            breakfast. Not =pressure-sick=, I hope?)
+
+  Page 323: Changed =linquists= to =linguists= (people are by heritage
+            extraordinary =linguists=)
+
+  Page 324: Added end quote (Did you have Prince's cabin =searched?"=)
+
+  Page 328: Changed =elipse= to =ellipse= (Blackstone had roughly cast
+            its orbital elements)
+
+  Page 339: Changed =focussed= to =focused= (connected its little
+            battery; =focused= its projector)
+
+  Page 339: Changed =syncronized= to =synchronized= (as I crouched in
+            the darkness behind the cylinder-case, I =synchronized=)
+
+  Page 340: Removed extra quote after leaped (Miko doubtless saw it, and
+            the Martian's hot anger =leaped=)
+
+  Page 344: Changed =Mika= to =Miko= ("Wait a minute!" I called to
+            =Miko=. "Navigate--where?")
+
+  Page 344: Changed =catapaulted= to =catapulted= (The force
+            =catapulted= me across the space of the room like a
+            volplane)
+
+  Page 345: Changed =Halian= to =Haljan= ("If you fire, =Haljan=, and
+            kill me--Miko will kill you then, surely.")
+
+  Page 346: Changed =focussed= to =focused= (the image of the lounge
+            interior presently =focused=)
+
+  Page 357: Changed =terriffic= to =terrific= (Perry beat a =terrific=
+            tattoo on the ancient door)
+
+  Page 362: Removed comma (for the news crew and editorial force of the
+            =paper= were a carefully selected body of men indeed)
+
+  Page 367: Changed =villian= to =villain= (Could the old =villain= be
+            playing possum?)
+
+  Page 367: Removed 'the' (With dexterous =hands O'Hara= swiftly went
+            through the old man's pockets)
+
+  Page 367: Changed =similiar= to =similar= (an ugly looking pistol of
+            large caliber, a blackjack =similar= to his own and a small
+            bottle)
+
+  Page 369: Changed =and= to =any= (If you search my car and find =any=
+            red liquor in the left back door pocket, I don't know a
+            thing about it)
+
+  Page 372: Changed =Hanlon= to =Handlon= (could be recognized as those
+            of Horace Perry and Skip =Handlon=)
+
+  Page 372: Changed =focussed= to =focused= (All eyes were now =focused=
+            on Professor Kell)
+
+  Page 373: Changed =Kel= to =Kell= (Hurry up and get =Kell= downstairs
+            so we can see who he is)
+
+  Page 374: Changed =Rotton= to =Rotten= ("=Rotten=," was the reply from
+            the lips of Kell)
+
+  Page 393: Changed =ecstacy= to =ecstasy= (Fear, despair, reckless
+            abandon, mirth, doubt, religious =ecstasy= and all the other
+            nuances in the gamut of human emotions)
+
+  Page 394: Changed =scandals= to =sandals= (On her tiny feet she wore
+            =sandals= which were spun of webby filaments)
+
+  Page 395: Changed =knew= to =know= (fairly close to it in my plane and
+            I =know= what I am speaking about)
+
+  Page 397: Changed =Igna= to =Inga= (Dirk and =Inga= seated close
+            together and Stanton, at a distance)
+
+  Page 397: Changed =part= to =parts= (a proclamation of martial law, to
+            become effective at once in all =parts= of the world)
+
+  Page 399: Changed =melifluous= to =mellifluous= ("Good morning," the
+            other replied in a soft and =mellifluous= voice)
+
+  Page 401: Changed =Steinhold= to =Steinholt= ("It's colossal!"
+            =Steinholt= then exclaimed, lost in scientific admiration)
+
+  Page 412: Changed =fulgerant= to =fulgurant= (High up into the heavens
+            it tossed the =fulgurant= fires that betokened its wealth
+            and power)
+
+  Page 412: Changed =head= to =hand= (with one of the deadly ray-tubes
+            of the Lodorians in his =hand=)
+
+  Page 413: Changed =Lizarre= to =Lazarre= (walked over to where Fragoni
+            and =Lazarre= were being guarded by two of the conquerors)
+
+  Page 413: Changed =Igna= to =Inga= ("And =Inga=?" questioned Dirk.)
+
+  Page 414: Changed =stacatto= to =staccato= (flailing back and forth
+            between each one of his =staccato= commands.)
+
+  Page 417: Removed extra quote before =There= ("is in the Worldwide
+            Tower. =There= we can keep track of what is transpiring and
+            try to decide what to do.")
+
+  Page 417: Changed =irresisible= to =irresistible= (Other cities
+            in America had felt the devastating effects of its
+            =irresistible= and molten heat)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Astounding Stories of Super-Science,
+March 1930, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTOUNDING STORIES, MARCH 1930 ***
+
+***** This file should be named 29607.txt or 29607.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/6/0/29607/
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