CHAPTER XIII

_The Horror Passes_

Slowly consciousness returned to Bentley, and his first thought was

one of horror. From somewhere distinct came a doleful wailing sound.

He thought he knew what it was--the mourning of great apes over a

member that had died.

He had read somewhere that the great apes sorrowed when any of their

members died. Bentley opened his eyes. He could make out the ceiling

of a room that he recognized. It was the room that had been first

assigned him in the dwelling of Barter.

Ellen Estabrook would be somewhere nearby. He opened his lips to call

to her. Then he remembered. He'd tried to call to her before--and had

merely bellowed like an ape. No, there was something he must know

first.

His arms and hands seemed as heavy as lead, but he lifted them and

looked at them--and a great feeling of peace descended upon him.

Manape-Bentley was gone, and he was plain Lee Bentley again. There was

his own ring, which Apeman had worn, and besides he had just spoken

aloud, softly, for no ears save his own, and the voice had been Lee

Bentley's voice.

Yes, Barter had kept his promise, and Lee Bentley was Lee Bentley

again.

But he was very weak, and his body was racked with pain. His hands and

arms were covered with bandages. His body seemed packed in concrete,

so moveless was it, and when he raised his voice it was terribly weak.

"Ellen," he managed to call; and again, "Ellen, darling!"

Instantly there came a swift patter of feet and Ellen was beside his

bed, on her knees, covering his face--what there was of it

unbandaged--with kisses. There was really no need for words between

these two.

"Lee," she whispered, "I've been so afraid. You've been like this for

a week, despite the miraculous knowledge and skill of Professor

Barter. I've waited in fear and trembling, praying for you to live,

and now you are Lee again, and will live on. Professor Barter has

promised me. All you need now is food, and care, and I shall shower

you with both. Barter has instructed me so carefully that I could

manage even to care for you, sick as you are, without him here at

all."

"And Manape?" Bentley's voice seemed to be stronger.

"He is dead," whispered Ellen. "I shall never forget him. There was

something great, something even better than human about him, Lee! Oh,

I know that he was you--but where would all three of us have been had

it not been for the powerful body of Manape, the great ape? Manape is

dead, and in the jungle hereabouts the great apes mourn his passing.

They've been wailing almost like human beings for a week.

Manape--well, Professor Barter told me that you too would have died,

had Manape reached his door five minutes later. As it was, he, and

you, were just in time!"

"It's amazing," whispered Bentley, "that the great apes stay around

here now that Manape is dead."

"Yes. It's strange--and terrible I think. There have been times when I

felt they were waiting for something, for Professor Barter, perhaps.

I've had the feeling they believe he killed their leader."

Now the two became silent, and Ellen held the bruised and broken hands

of Bentley in both her own, and their eyes said things, one to the

other, which eyes say so much better than lips do. They kissed each

other softly, and Ellen crooned with ecstasy, her cheek against

Bentley's.

* * * * *

Then Caleb Barter entered.

"Well, well," he said, "when a man is in condition to make love to a

woman, he is well on the road to recovery. It won't hurt you to talk

now, Bentley, and before I begin asking questions, let me assure you

that you will suffer no ill effects from your experience."

"What of my memories?" asked Bentley softly.

"Forget them!" snapped Barter tartly. "That is, after you have told me

everything that has happened. Miss Estabrook has already told me her

angle of the experiment. Now, talk please--and then I shall make you

well, and you shall both go into the world with me, and tell people

that what I have to tell is true!"

So Bentley talked. Barter wrote like a man possessed. His fingers

raced over the paper, repeating the words which fell from the lips of

Lee Bentley, beside whom Ellen sat, holding his hands. Now and again

Barter uttered an ejaculation of fierce joy. He was like a child with

a toy that pleased him beyond words. He could scarcely wait for the

words to spill from the lips of Lee Bentley.

When Bentley paused for breath, Barter exclaimed impatiently, and

urged him to greater speed. He thought of but one thing, his

experiment.

And so at last Bentley had finished.

"That's all, Professor Barter!" he said softly.

"All!" cried Barter. "Everything! Fame! Wealth! Adulation! There is

nothing in the world Caleb Barter may not have when this story is

told! I can scarcely contain myself. You must hurry to be well in

order that the world may be told at once."

Laughing immoderately, Barter piled the manuscript he had written, and

weighted it with a piece of rock. His face was a constant grin. His

fingers trembled with eagerness. He could not contain himself.

Finally, as though from sheer joy of what he had accomplished, he

raced from the cabin, and out across the clearing. Ellen and Bentley

smiled at each other. Moments passed. Still came to their ears the

mourning wails of the great apes.

* * * * *

Then suddenly there broke a sound so utterly appalling that the two

were frozen with terror for a moment. First it was the laughter of

Caleb Barter. Then, mingled with the laughter, the bellowing,

frightful and paralyzing, of man apes challenging a hated enemy. The

drumming of ape fists on huge barrel chests. Then the laughter of

Barter, dying away, ironic, terrible, into silence. Immediately

afterward, high-pitched, mighty as the jungle itself, the concerted

cries of half a dozen apes, as if bellowing their joy of the kill.

"They--they--" began Ellen in a choked voice. "The apes must have got

Professor Barter!"

Silently Bentley nodded, and pointed.

Coiled on a nail near the door was Barter's whip. In his excitement he

had gone into the jungle without it for the first--and last--time.

"There is one thing to do," whispered Ellen, "before we prepare to get

you fully well. I shall care for you, and we shall both try to forget.

And then we shall return to our own people."

"And the one thing?" asked Bentley.

The strained silence was suddenly broken by the bellowing of the great

apes, which now charged into the cabin. Bentley and Ellen cringed back

from the murderous brutes to no avail. There was no denying them.

Their slavering jaws, drooled below flaring nostrils, their eyes

emitted sparks of animal fury. Bentley leaped to the girl and

interposed his body between hers and the vanguard of the apes, who now

were surging into the room through the open door, and spreading apart

within like water released from a dam.

The apes were bent on murder, there could be no doubt.

A very monster towered over Bentley. His jaws were wide, his little

red eyes fixed on the white man's neck. His great arms were coming

forward to gather in both Ellen and Bentley--whom he could crush as

easily as he crushed the grubs which were his food.

Bentley was helpless and knew it. This was the end for Ellen and

himself. He must meet it unafraid. He tensed, awaiting the descent of

bestial destruction. His eyes met the murderous gleam in the eyes of

the ape leader unflinchingly. And then the miracle happened.

The brute became suddenly and inexplicably hesitant. His bellow died

away to a gurgling murmur in which there seemed somehow a hint of

apology. The fire went out of his eyes. His jaws closed with a snap.

His great arms, already about Bentley, slid harmlessly over Bentley's

shoulders; dropped to his shaggy side.

The brute's little eyes looked long and in puzzled fashion into the

eyes of Bentley. Then he began to chatter, and in a moment the other

apes ambled grotesquely toward the door and out. Ellen and Bentley

were alone together once more, unharmed--though numbed by realization

of the near passing of disaster.

"I don't understand it," muttered Bentley, brushing the beads of

perspiration from his brow. "It was a miracle!"

"Lee," Ellen answered, "I think I know, and it _is_ a sort of miracle.

Somehow the apes felt that you were--whatever your guise--Manape. They

did not recognize you by any of their means of recognition; yet that

beast knew! How? Only God Himself might answer. But the beasts knew,

and did not slay us. The inner voice which whispers inside us in times

of crises, whispers also to the great apes! Barter, then must have

understood their somehow spiritual kinship with us. His experiments--"

Her words reminded Bentley of what she had been saying when the great

apes had charged in upon them, murder bent. He interrupted her,

gently.

"And the one thing we must do?" he rallied her.

Ellen rose, and her face was white and strained as she gathered

together Barter's manuscript. This she carried to the fireplace. She

applied a match and returned to Bentley's bedside. Then, side by side,

the two who would never forget in any case watched the record of

Barter's unholy experiment burn slowly to ashes, while the screams of

the great apes died away second by second, proof that they were

leaving this section of the jungle--going deeper and deeper into the

forest gloom which was their rightful heritage, and from which no man

had a right to take them.

[Advertisement]

Holocaust

_By Charles Willard Diffin_

[Illustration: It passed beneath the planes, that were motionless by

contrast.]

[Sidenote: The extraordinary story of "Paul," who for thirty days was

Dictator of the World.]

I am more accustomed to the handling of steel ingots and the

fabrication of ships than to building with words. But, if I cannot

write history as history is written, perhaps I can write it the way it

is lived, and that must suffice.

This account of certain events must have a title, I am told. I have

used, as you see: "Holocaust." Inadequate!--but what word can tell

even faintly of that reign of terror that engulfed the world, of those

terrible thirty days in America when dread and horror gripped the

nation and the red menace, like a wall of fire, swept downward from

the north? And, at last--the end!

It was given to me to know something of that conflict and of its

ending and of the man who, in that last day, took command of Earth's

events and gave battle to Mars, the God of War himself. It was against

the background of war that he stood out; I must tell it in that way;

and perhaps my own experience will be of interest. Yet it is of the

man I would write more than the war--the most hated man in the whole

world--that strange character, Paul Stravoinski.

You do not even recognize the name. But, if I were to say instead the

one word, "Paul"--ah, now I can see some of you start abruptly in

sudden, wide-eyed attention, while the breath catches in your throats

and the memory of a strange dread clutches your hearts.

'Straki,' we called him at college. He was never "Paul," except to me

alone; there was never the easy familiarity between him and the crowd

at large, whose members were "Bill" and "Dick" and other nicknames

unprintable.

But "Straki" he accepted. "_Bien, mon cher ami_," he told me--he was

as apt to drop into French as Russian or any of a dozen other

languages--"a name--what is it? A label by which we distinguish one

package of goods from a thousand others just like it! I am unlike: for

me one name is as good as another. It is what is here that

counts,"--he tapped his broad forehead that rose high to the tangle of

black hair--"and here,"--and this time he placed one hand above his

heart.

"It is for what I give to the world of my head and my heart that I

must be remembered. And, if I give nothing--then the name, it is less

than nothing."

* * * * *

Dreamer--poet--scientist--there were many Paul Strakis in that one

man. Brilliant in his work--he was majoring in chemistry--he was a

mathematician who was never stopped. I've seen him pause, puzzled by

some phase of a problem that, to me, was a blank wall. Only a moment's

hesitation and he would go way down to the bed-rock of mathematics and

come up with a brand new formula of his own devising. Then--"_Voila!

C'est fini!_ let us go for a walk, friend Bob; there is some poetry

that I have remembered--" And we would head out of town, while he

spouted poetry by the yard--and made me like it.

I wish you could see the Paul Straki of those days. I wish I could

show him to you; you would understand so much better the "Paul" of

these later times.

Tall, he seemed, though his eyes were only level with mine, for his

real height was hidden beneath an habitual stoop. It let him conceal,

to some extent, his lameness. He always walked with a noticeable limp,

and here was the cause of the only bitterness that, in those days, was

ever reflected in his face.

"Cossacks!" he explained when he surprised a questioning look upon my

face. "They went through our village. I was two years old--and they

rode me down!"

But the hard coldness went from his eyes, and again they crinkled

about with the kindly, wise lines that seemed so strange in his young

face. "It is only a reminder to me," he added, "that such things are

all in the past; that we are entering a new world where savage

brutality shall no longer rule, and the brotherhood of man will be the

basis upon which men shall build."

And his face, so homely that it was distinctive, had a beauty all its

own when he dared to voice his dreams.

* * * * *

It was this that brought about his expulsion from college. That was in

1935 when the Vornikoff faction brought off their coup d'etat and

secured a strangle hold on Russia. We all remember the campaign of

propaganda that was forced into the very fibre of every country, to

weaken with its insidious dry-rot the safe foundations of our very

civilization. Paul was blinded by his idealism, and he dared to speak.

He was conducting a brilliant research into the structure of the atom;

it ended abruptly with his dismissal. And the accepted theories of

science went unchallenged, while men worked along other lines than

Paul's to attempt the release of the tremendous energy that is latent

in all matter.

I saw him perhaps three times in the four years that followed. He had

a laboratory out in a God-forsaken spot where he carried on his

research. He did enough analytical work to keep him from actual

starvation, though it seemed to me that he was uncomfortably close to

that point.

"Come with me," I urged him; "I need you. You can have the run of our

laboratories--work out the new alloys that are so much needed. You

would be tremendously valuable."

He had mentioned Maida to me, so I added: "And you and Maida can be

married, and can live like a king and queen on what my outfit can pay

you."

He smiled at me as he might have done toward a child. "Like a king and

queen," he said. "But, friend Bob, Maida and I do not approve of kings

and queens, nor do we wish to follow them in their follies.

"It is hard waiting,"--I saw his eyes cloud for a moment--"but Maida

is willing. She is working, too--she is up in Melford as you know--and

she has faith in my work. She sees with me that it will mean the

release of our fellow-men and women from the poverty that grinds out

their souls. I am near to success; and when I give to the world the

secret of power, then--" But I had to read in his far-seeing eyes the

visions he could not compass in words.

* * * * *

That was the first time. I was flying a new ship when next I dropped

in on him. A sweet little job I thought it then, not like the old

busses that Paul and I had trained in at college, where the top speed

was a hundred and twenty. This was an A. B. Clinton cruiser, and the

"A.B.C.'s" in 1933 were good little wagons, the best there were.

I asked Paul to take a hop with me and fly the ship. He could fly

beautifully; his lameness had been no hindrance to him. In his

slender, artist hands a ship became a live thing.

"Are you doing any flying?" I asked, but the threadbare suit made his

answer unnecessary.

"I'll do my flying later," he said, "and when I do,"--he waved

contemptuously toward my shining, new ship--"you'll scrap that piece

of junk."

The tone matched the new lines in his face--deep lines and bitter.

This practical world has always been hard on the dreamers.

Poverty; and the grinding struggle that Maida was having; the

expulsion from college when he was assured of a research scholarship

that would have meant independence and the finest of equipment to work

with--all this, I found, was having its effect. And he talked in a way

I didn't like of the new Russia and of the time that was near at hand

when her communistic government should sweep the world of its curse of

capitalistic control. Their propaganda campaign was still going on,

and I gathered that Paul had allied himself with them.

I tried to tell him what we all knew; that the old Russia was gone,

that Vornikoff and his crowd were rapacious and bloodthirsty, that

their real motives were as far removed from his idealism as one pole

from the other. But it was no use. And I left when I saw the light in

his eyes. It seemed to me then that Paul Stravoinski had driven his

splendid brain a bit beyond its breaking point.

* * * * *

Another year--and Paris, in 1939, with the dreaded First of May

drawing near. There had been rumors of demonstrations in every land,

but the French were prepared to cope with them--or so they

believed.... Who could have coped with the menace of the north that

was gathering itself for a spring?

I saw Paul there. It lacked two days of the First of May, and he was

seated with a group of industrious talkers at a secluded table in a

cafe. He crossed over when he saw me, and drew me aside. And I noticed

that a quiet man at a table nearby never let us out of his sight. Paul

and his companions, I judged, were under observation.

"What are you doing here _now_?" he asked. His manner was casual

enough to anyone watching, but the tense voice and the look in his

eyes that bored into me were anything but casual.

My resentment was only natural. "And why shouldn't I be here attending

to my own affairs? Do you realize that you are being rather absurd?"

He didn't bother to answer me directly. "I can't control them," he

said. "If they would only wait--a few weeks--another month! God, how I

prayed to them at--"

He broke off short. His eyes never moved, yet I sensed a furtiveness

as marked as if he had peered suspiciously about.

Suddenly he laughed aloud, as if at some joking remark of mine; I

knew it was for the benefit of those he had left and not for the quiet

man from the _Surete_. And now his tone was quietly conversational.

"Smile!" he said. "Smile, Bob!--we're just having a friendly talk. I

won't live another two hours if they think anything else. But, Bob, my

friend--for God's sake, Bob, leave Paris to-night. I am taking the

midnight plane on the Transatlantic Line. Come with me--"

One of the group at the table had risen; he was sauntering in our

direction. I played up to Paul's lead.

"Glad I ran across you," I told him, and shook his extended hand that

gripped mine in an agony of pleading. "I'll be seeing you in New York

one of these days; I am going back soon."

* * * * *

But I didn't go soon enough. The unspoken pleading in Paul

Stravoinski's eyes lost its hold on me by another day. I had work to

do; why should I neglect it to go scuttling home because someone who

feared these swarming rats had begged me to run for cover? And the

French people were prepared. A little rioting, perhaps; a pistol shot

or two, and a machine-gun that would spring from nowhere and sweep the

street--!

We know now of the document that the Russian Ambassador delivered to

the President of France, though no one knew of it then. He handed it

to the portly, bearded President at ten o'clock on the morning of

April thirtieth. And the building that had housed the Russian

representatives was empty ten minutes later. Their disguises must have

been ready, for if the sewers of Paris had swallowed them they could

have vanished no more suddenly.

And the document? It was the same in substance as those delivered in

like manner in every capital of Europe: twenty-four hours were given

in which to assure the Central Council of Russia that the French

Government would be dissolved, that communism would be established,

and that its executive heads would be appointed by the Central

Council.

And then the bulletins appeared, and the exodus began. Papers floated

in the air; they blew in hundreds of whirling eddies through the

streets. And they warned all true followers of the glorious Russian

faith to leave Paris that day, for to-morrow would herald the dawn of

a new heaven on earth--a Communistic heaven--and its birth would come

with the destruction of Paris....

I give you the general meaning though not the exact words. And, like

the rest, I smiled tolerantly as I saw the stream of men and women and

frightened children that filtered from the city all that day and

night; but I must admit that our smiles were strained as morning came

on the First of May, and the hour of ten drew near.

Paris, the beautiful--that lovely blossom, flowering on the sturdy

stalk that was _La Belle France_! Paris, laughing to cover its

unspoken fears that morning in May, while the streets thudded to the

feet of marching men in horizon blue, and the air above was vibrant

with the endless roar of planes.

This meant war; and mobilization orders were out; yet still the deadly

menace was blurred by a feeling of unreality. A hoax!--a huge

joke!--it was absurd, the thought of a distant people imposing their

will upon France! And yet ... and yet....

* * * * *

There were countless eyes turned skyward as a thousand bells rang out

the hour of ten; and countless ears heard faintly the sound of gunfire

from the north.

My work had brought me into contact with high officials of the French

Government; I was privileged to stand with a group of them where a

high-roofed building gave a vantage point for observation. With them I

saw the menacing specks on the horizon; I saw them come on with deadly

deliberation--come on and on in an ever-growing armada that filled the

sky.

Wireless had brought the report of their flight high over Germany; it

was bringing now the story of disaster from the northern front. A

heavy air-force had been concentrated there; and now the steady stream

of radio messages came on flimsy sheets to the group about me, while

they clustered to read the incredible words. They cursed and glared at

one another, those French officials, as if daring their fellows to

believe the truth; then, silent and white of face, they reached numbly

for each following sheet that messengers brought--until they knew at

last that the air-force of France was no more....

The roar of the approaching host was deafening in our ears. Red--red

as blood!--and each unit grew to enormous proportions. Armored

cruisers of the air--dreadnaughts!--they came as a complete surprise.

"But the city is ringed with anti-aircraft batteries," a uniformed man

was whispering. "They will bring the brutes down."

The northern edge of the city flamed to a roaring wall of fire; the

batteries went into action in a single, crashing harmony that sang

triumphantly in our ears. A few of the red shapes fell, but for each

of these a hundred others swept down in deadly, directed flight.

A glass was in my hand; my eyes strained through it to see the silvery

cylinders that fell from the speeding ships. I saw the red cruisers

sweep upward before the inferno of exploding bombs raged toward them

from below. And where the roar of batteries had been was only

silence.

* * * * *

The fleet was over the city. We waited for the rain of bombs that must

come; we saw the red cloud move swiftly to continue the annihilation

of batteries that still could fire; we saw the armada pass on and lose

itself among cloud-banks in the west.

Only a dozen planes remained, high-hung in the upper air. We stared in

wonderment at one another. Was this mercy?--from such an enemy? It was

inconceivable!

"Mercy!" I wonder that we dared to think the word. Only an instant

till a whistling shriek marked the coming of death. It was a single

plane--a giant shell--that rode on wings of steel. It came from the

north, and I saw it pass close overhead. Its propeller screamed an

insolent, inhuman challenge. Inhuman--for one glance told the story.

Here was no man-flown plane: no cockpit or cabin, no gunmounts. Only a

flying shell that swerved and swung as we watched. We knew that its

course was directed from above; it was swung with terrible certainty

by a wireless control that reached it from a ship overhead.

Slowly it sought its target: deliberately it poised above it. An instant,

only, it hung, though the moment, it seemed, would never end--then

down!--and the blunt nose crashed into the Government buildings where at

that moment the Chamber of Deputies was in session ... and where those

buildings had been was spouting masonry and fire.

A man had me by the arm; his fingers gripped into my flesh. With his

other hand he was pointing toward the north. "Torpedoes!" he was

saying. "Torpedoes of a size gigantic! _Ah, mon Dieu! mon Dieu!_ Save

us for we are lost!"

They came in an endless stream, those blood-red projectiles; they

announced their coming with shrill cries of varying pitch; and they

swung and swerved, as the ships above us picked them up, to rake the

city with mathematical precision.

Incendiary, of course: flames followed every shattering burst. Between

us and the Seine was a hell of fire--a hell that contained unnumbered

thousands of what an instant before had been living folk--men and

women clinging in a last terrified embrace--children whose white faces

were hidden in their mothers' skirts or buried in bosoms no longer a

refuge for childish fears. I saw it as plainly as if I had been given

the far-reaching vision of a god ... and I turned and ran with

stumbling feet where a stairway awaited....

* * * * *

Of that flight, only a blurred recollection has stayed with me. I pray

God that I may never see it more clearly. There are sights that mortal

eyes cannot behold with understanding and leave mortal brain intact.

It is like an anaesthetic at such times, the numbness that blocks off

the horrors the eyes are recording--like the hurt of the surgeon's

scalpel that never reaches to the brain.

Dimly I see the fragmentary scenes: the crashing fall of buildings

that come crumbling and thundering down, myself crawling like an

insect across the wreckage--it is slippery and wet where the stones

are red, and I stumble, then see the torn and mangled thing that has

caused me to fall.... A face regards me from another mound. I see the

dust of powdered masonry still settling upon it: the dark hair is

hardly disturbed about the face, so peaceful, so girlishly serene: I

am still wondering dully why there is only the head of that girl

resting on the shattered stone, as I lie there exhausted and watch the

next torpedo crash a block behind me.... The air is shrill with flying

fragments. I wonder why my hands are stained and sticky as I run and

crawl on my way. The red rocks are less slippery now, and the rats,

from the sewers of Paris!--they have come out to feed!

Fragments of pictures--and the worst of them gone! I know that night

came--red night, under a cloud of smoke--and I found myself on the

following day descending from a fugitive peasant's cart and plodding

onward toward the markings of a commercial aerodrome.

They could not be everywhere, those red vultures of the sky, and they

had other devils'-work to do. I had money, and I paid well for the

plane that carried me through that day and a night to the Municipal

Airport of New York.

* * * * *

The Red Army of occupation was halfway across communist Germany,

hailed as they went as the saviors of the world. London had gone the

way of Paris; Rome had followed; the countries of France and England

and Italy were beaten to their knees.

"We who rule the air rule the world!" boasted General Vornikoff. The

Russian broadcasting station had the insolence to put on the air his

message to the people of America. I heard his voice as plainly as if

he stood in my office; and I was seeing again the coming of that

endless stream of aerial torpedoes, and the red cruisers hanging in

the heights to pick up control and dash the messengers of death upon a

helpless city. But I was visioning it in New York.

"The masses of the American people are with us," said the complacently

arrogant voice. "For our fellow-workers we have only brotherly

affection; it is your capitalist-dominated Government that must

submit. And if it does not--!" I heard him laugh before he went on:

"We are coming to the rescue of you, our brothers across the sea. Now

we have work to do in Europe; our gains must be consolidated and the

conquests of our glorious air-force made secure. And then--! We warn

you in advance, and we laugh at your efforts to prepare for our

coming. We even tell you the date: in thirty days the invasion begins.

It will end only at Washington when the great country of America, its

cruel shackles cast off from the laboring masses, joins the

Brotherhood--the Workers of the World!"

There was a man from the War Department who sat across from me at my

desk; my factories were being taken over; my electric furnaces must

pour out molten metal for use in war. He cursed softly under his

breath as the voice ceased.

"The dirty dog!" he exclaimed. "The lying hypocrite! He talks of

brotherhood to us who know the damnable inquisition and reign of

terror that he and his crowd have forced on Russia! Thirty days! Well,

we have three thousand planes ready for battle to-day; there'll be

more in thirty days! Now, about that vanadium steel--"

But I'll confess I hardly heard him; I was hearing the roar of an

armada of red craft that ensanguined the sky, and I was seeing the

curving flight of torpedoes, each an airplane in itself....

* * * * *

Thirty days!--and each minute of each hour must be used. In close

touch with the War Department, I knew much that was going on, and all

that I knew was the merest trifle in the vast preparations for

defense. My earlier apprehensions were dulled; the sight I had of the

whole force of a mighty nation welded into one driving power working

to one definite end was exhilarating.

New York and Washington--these, it was felt, would be the points of

first attack; they must be protected. And I saw the flights of planes

that seemed endless as they converged at the concentration camps.

Fighters, at first--bombers and swift scouts--they came in from all

parts of the land. Then the passenger planes and the big mail-ships.

Transcontinental runs were abandoned or cut to a skeleton service of a

ship every hour for the transport of Government men. Even the slower

craft of the feeder lines were commandeered; anything that could fly

and could mount a gun.

And the three thousand fighting ships, as the man from Washington had

said, grew to three times that number. Their roaring filled the skies

with thunder, and beneath them were other camps of infantry and

artillery.

The Atlantic front was an armed camp, where highways no longer carried

thousands of cars on pleasure bent. By night and day I saw those

familiar roads from the air; they were solid with a never-ending line

of busses and vans and long processions of motorized artillery and

tanks, whose clattering bedlam came to me a thousand feet above.

Yes, it was an inspiring sight, and I lost the deadly oppression and

the sense of impending doom--until our intelligence service told us of

the sailing of the enemy fleet.

* * * * *

They had seized every vessel in the waters of Europe. And--God pity

the poor, traitorous devils who manned them--there were plenty to

operate the ships. Two thousand vessels were in that convoy. Ringed in

as they were by a guard of destroyers and fighting craft of many

kinds, whose mast-heads carried the blood-red flag now instead of

their former emblems, our submarines couldn't reach them.

But our own fleet went out to measure their strength, and a thousand

Navy planes took the air on the following day.

Uppermost in my own mind, and in everyone's mind, I think, was the

question of air-force.

Would they bring the red ships? What was their cruising range? Could

they cross the Atlantic with their enormous load of armored hull, or

must they be transported? Were the air-cruisers with the fleet, or

would they come later?

How Vornikoff and his assassins must have laughed as they built the

monsters, armored them, and mounted the heavy guns so much greater

than anything they would meet! The rest of us--all the rest of the

world!--had been kept in ignorance.... And now our own fliers were

sweeping out over the gray waters to find the answer to our questions.

I've tried to picture that battle; I've tried to imagine the feelings

of those men on the dreadnaughts and battle-cruisers and destroyers.

There was no attempt on the enemy's part to conceal his position; his

wireless was crackling through the air with messages that our

intelligence department easily decoded. Our Navy fliers roared out

over the sea, out and over the American fleet, whose every bow was a

line of white that told of their haste to meet the oncoming horde.

The plane-carriers threw their fighters into the air to join the

cavalcade above--and a trace of smoke over the horizon told that the

giant fleet was coming into range.

* * * * *

And then, instead of positions and ranges flashed back from our own swift

scouts, came messages of the enemy's attack. Our men must have seen them

from the towers of our own fleet; they must have known what the red swarm

meant, as it came like rolling, fire-lit smoke far out in the sky--and

they must have read plainly their own helplessness as they saw our

thousand planes go down. They were overwhelmed--obliterated!--and the red

horde of air-cruisers was hardly checked in its sweep.

Carnage and destruction, those blue seas of the north Atlantic have

seen; they could tell tales of brave men, bravely going to their death

in storm and calm but never have they seen another such slaughter as

that day's sun showed.

The anti-aircraft guns roared vainly; some few of our own planes that

had escaped returned to add their futile, puny blows. The waters about

the ships were torn to foam, while the ships themselves were changed

to furnaces of bursting flame--until the seas in mercy closed above

them and took their torn steel, and the shattered bodies that they

held, to the silence of the deep....

We got it all at Washington. I sat in a room with a group of

white-faced men who stared blindly at a radiocone where a quiet voice

was telling of disaster. It was Admiral Graymont speaking to us from

the bridge of the big dreadnaught, _Lincoln_, the flagship of the

combined fleet. Good old Graymont! His best friend, Bill Schuler,

Secretary of the Navy, was sitting wordless there beside me.

"It is the end," the quiet voice was saying; "the cruiser squadrons

are gone.... Two more battleships have gone down: there are only five

of us left.... A squadron of enemy planes is coming in above. Our men

have fought bravely and with never a chance.... There!--they've got

us!--the bombs! Good-by, Bill, old fellow--"

The radiocone was silent with a silence that roared deafeningly in our

ears. And, beside me, I saw the Secretary of the Navy, a Navy now

without ships or men, drop his tired, lined face into his hands, while

his broad shoulders shook convulsively. The rest of us remained in our

chairs, too stunned to do anything but look at one another in horror.

* * * * *

We expected them to strike at New York. I was sent up there, and it

was there that I saw Paul again. I met him on lower Broadway, and I

went up to him with my hand reaching for his. I didn't admire Paul's

affiliations, but he had warned me--he had tried to save my life--and

I wanted to thank him.

But his hand did not meet mine. There was a strange, wild look in his

eyes--I couldn't define it--and he brought his gaze back from far off

to stare at me as if I were a stranger.

Then: "Still got that A.B.C. ship?" he demanded.

"Yes," I answered wonderingly.

"Junk it!" he said. And his laugh was as wild and incomprehensible as

his look had been. I stared after him as he walked away. I was

puzzled, but there were other things to think of then.

A frenzy of preparation--and all in vain. The enemy fooled us; the

radio brought the word from Quebec.

"They have entered the St. Lawrence," was the message it flashed.

Then, later: "The Red fleet is passing toward Montreal. Enemy planes

have spotted all radio towers. There is one above us now--" And that

ended the message from Quebec.

But we got more information later. They landed near Montreal; they

were preparing a great base for offensive operations; the country was

overrun with a million men; the sky was full of planes by night and

day; there was no artillery, no field guns of any sort, but there were

torpedo-planes by tens of thousands, which made red fields of waiting

death where trucks placed them as they took them from the ships.

And there were some of us who smiled sardonically in recollection of

the mammoth plants the Vornikoff Reds had installed in Central Russia,

and the plaudits that had greeted their plans for nitrogen fixation.

They were to make fertilizers; the nitrates would be distributed

without cost to the farms--this had pacified the Agrarians--and here

were their "nitrates" that were to make fertile the fields of Russia:

countless thousands of tons of nitro-explosives in these flying

torpedoes!

* * * * *

But if we smiled mirthlessly at these recollections we worked while we

chewed on our cud of bitterness. There came an order: "Evacuate New

England," and the job was given to me.

With planes--a thousand of them--trucks, vans, the railroads, we

gathered those terrified people into concentration camps, and took

them over the ground, under the ground, and through the air to the

distributing camp at Buffalo, where they were scattered to other

points.

I saw the preparations for a battle-front below me as I skimmed over

Connecticut. Trenches made a thin line that went farther than I could

see! Here was the dam that was expected to stop the enemy columns from

the north. I think no one then believed that our air-force could check

the assault. The men of the fighting planes were marked for death; one

read it in their eyes; but who of us was not?

How those giant cruisers would be downed no man could say, but we

worked on in a blind desperation; we would hold that invading army as

long as men could sight a gun; we would hold them back; and somehow,

someway, we must find the means to repel the invasion from the air!

I saw the lines of track that made a network back to the trenches.

Like the suburban lines around New York, they would carry thousands of

single cars, each driven at terrific speed by the air plane propeller

at its bow. With these, the commanders could shift their forces to

whatever sector was hardest pressed. They would be bombed, of course,

but the hundreds of tracks would not all be destroyed--and the line

must be held!

The line! it brought a strangling lump to my throat as I saw those

thin markings of trenches, the marching bodies of troops, the brave,

hopeless, determined men who went singing to their places in that

line. But my planes were winging past me; my job was ahead, where a

multitude still waited and prayed for deliverance.

* * * * *

We never finished the job; in two days the red horde was upon us.

Their swarming troops were convoyed by planes, but no effort was made

to fly over our lines and launch an attack. Were they feeling their

way? Did they think now that they would find us passive and

unresisting? Did they want to take our cities undamaged? Oh, we asked

ourselves a thousand questions with no answer to any--except the

knowledge that a million men were marching from the north; that their

fleet of planes would attack as soon as the troops encountered

resistance; that our batteries of anti-aircraft guns would harry them

as they came, and our air-fleet, held back in reserve, would take what

the batteries left....

My last planes with their fugitive loads passed close to the lines of

red troops. There were red planes overhead, but they let us pass

unhindered. Fleeing, driving wildly toward the south, we were

unworthy, it seemed, of even their contemptuous attention. But I was

sick to actual nausea at sight of the villages and cities where only a

part of the population had escaped. The roads, in front of the red

columns, were jammed with motors and with men and women and children

on foot: a hopeless tangle.

I was watching the pitiful flight below me, cursing my own impotence

to be of help, when a shrill whistling froze me rigid to my controls.

I had heard it before--there could be no mistaking the cry of that

oncoming torpedo--and I saw the damnable thing pass close to my ship.

I was doing two hundred--my motor was throttled down--but this inhuman

monster passed me as if my ship were frozen as unmoving as myself. It

tore on ahead. I saw an enemy plane above it some five thousand feet.

The torpedo was checked; I saw it poise; then it curved over and down.

And the screaming motor took up its cry that was like a thousand

devils until its sound was lost in the screams from below and the

infernal blast of its own explosion.

Only a trial flight--an experiment to test their controls! No need for

me to try to tell you of the thoughts that tore me through and through

while I struggled to bring my ship to an even keel in the hurricane of

explosion that drove up at me from below. But I spat out the one word:

"Brotherhood!" and I prayed for a place in the front line where I

might send one shot at least against so beastly a foe.

* * * * *

That was somewhere in Massachusetts. Their foremost columns were close

behind. They came to a stop some fifty miles from our waiting line of

battle: I learned this when I got to Washington. And the reason, too,

was known; it was published in all the papers. There had been messages

to the President, broadcast to the world from an unknown source:

"To the President of the United States--warning! This war must end.

You, as Commander-in-Chief of the American forces can bring it to a

close. I have prevailed upon the Red Army of the Brotherhood to halt.

They have listened to me. You, also, must take heed.

"You will issue orders at once to withdraw all resistance. You will

disband your army, ground all your planes; bring all your artillery

into one place and prepare to turn the government of this country over

to the representatives of the Central Council. You will act at once."

"This war is ended. All wars are ended forevermore. I have spoken."

And the strange message was signed "Paul."

The wild words of a maniac, it was thought at first. Yet the fact

remained that the enemy's advance had ceased. Who was this "Paul" who

had "prevailed upon the Red Army" to halt?

And then the obvious answer occurred; it was a ruse on the part of the

Reds. They feared to attack; their strength was not as great as we had

thought--officers and men of all branches of the service took new

heart and plunged more frenziedly still into the work of preparation.

There were direction-finders that had taken the message from several

stations; their pointers converged upon one definite location in

southern Ohio. Over an area of twenty square miles, that place was

combed for a sending radio where the message could have

originated--combed in vain.

* * * * *

The next demand came at ten on the following morning.

"To the President of the United States: You have disregarded my

warning. You will not do so again; I have power to enforce my demands.

I had hoped that bloodshed and destruction might cease, but it is

plain that only that will save you from your own headstrong folly. I

must strike. At noon to-day the Capitol in Washington will be

destroyed. See that it is emptied of human life. I have spoken. Paul."

A maniac, surely; yet a maniac with strange powers. For the graphs of

the radio direction-finders showed a curve. And when they were

assembled the reading could only mean that the instrument that had

sent the threat had moved over fifty miles during the few minutes of

its sending. This, I think, was what brought the order to vacate the

big domed building in Washington.

Of course the Capitol Building had been searched; there was not a nook

nor corner from roof to basement but had been gone over in search of

an explosive machine. And now it was empty, and a guard of soldiers

made a solid cordon surrounding it. No one could approach upon the

ground; and, above, a series of circling patrol-planes, one squadron

above another, guarded against approach by air. With such a defense

the Capitol and its grounds seemed impregnable.

My watch said 11:59; I held it in my hand and watched the seconds tick

slowly by. The city was hushed; it seemed that no man was so much as

breathing ... 11:59 :60!--and an instant later I heard the shriek of

something that tore the air to screaming fragments. I saw it as it

came on a straight, level line from the east; a flash like a meteor of

glistening white. It passed beneath the planes, that were motionless

by contrast, drove straight for the gleaming Capitol dome, passed

above it, and swept on in a long flattened curve that bent outward and

up.

It was gone from my sight, though the shrieking air was still tearing

at my ears, when I saw the great building unfold. Time meant nothing;

my racing mind made slow and deliberate the explosion that lifted the

roofs and threw the walls in dusty masses upon the ground. So slow it

seemed!--and I had not even seen the shell that the white meteor-ship

had fired. Yet there was the beautiful building, expanding,

disintegrating. It was a cloud of dust when the concussion reached me

to dash me breathless to the earth....

* * * * *

The white meteor was the vehicle of "Paul," the dictator. From it had

come the radio message whose source had moved so swiftly. I saw this

all plainly.

There was a conference of high officials at the War Department

Building, and the Secretary summed up all that was said:

"A new form of air-flight, and a new weapon more destructive than any

we have known! That charge of explosive that was fired at the Capitol

was so small as to be unseen. We can't meet it; we can only fight.

Fight on till the end."

A message came in as we sat there, a message to the Commander-in-Chief

who had come over from the White House under military guard.

"Surrender!" it demanded; "I have shown you my power; it is

inexhaustible, unconquerable. Surrender or be destroyed; it is the

dawn of a new day, the day of the Brotherhood of Man. Let bloodshed

cease. Surrender! I command it! Paul."

The President of the United States held the flimsy paper in his hand.

He rose slowly to his feet, and he read it aloud to all of us

assembled there; read it to the last hateful word. Then:

"Surrender?" he asked. He turned steady, quiet eyes upon the big flag

whose red and white and blue made splendid the wall behind him--and

I'll swear that I saw him smile.

* * * * *

We have had many presidents since '76; big men, some of them; tall,

handsome men; men who looked as if nature had moulded them for a high

place. This man was small of stature; the shortest man in all that

room if he had stood, but he was big--big! Only one who is great can

look deep through the whirling turmoil of the moment to find the

eternal verities that are always underneath--and smile!

"Men must die,"--he spoke meditatively; in seeming communing with

himself, as one who tries to face a problem squarely and

honestly--"and nations must pass; time overwhelms us all. Yet there is

that which never dies and never surrenders."

He looked about the room now, as if he saw us for the first time.

"Gentlemen," he said quietly, "we have here an ultimatum. It is backed

by power which our Secretary of War says is invincible. We are faced

by an enemy who would annihilate these United States, and this new

power fights on the side of the enemy.

"Must we go the way of England, of France, of all Europe? It would

seem so. The United States of America is doomed. Yet each one of us

will meet what comes bravely, if, facing our own end, we know that the

principles upon which this nation is founded must go on; if only the

Stars and Stripes still floats before our closing eyes to assure us

that some future day will see the resurrection of truth and of honor

and kindness among men.

"We will fight, as our Secretary of War has said--fight on to the end.

We will surrender--never! That is our answer to this one who calls

himself 'Paul.'"

We could not speak; I do not know how long the silence lasted. But I

know that I left that room a silent man among many silent men, in

whose eyes I saw a reflection of the emotion that filled my own heart.

It was the end--the end of America, of millions of American homes--but

this was better than surrender to such a foe. Better death than

slavery to that race of bloodthirsty oppressors.

* * * * *

But who was "Paul?" This question kept coming repeatedly to my mind.

The press of the country echoed the President's words, then dipped

their pens in vitriol to heap scorching invective upon the head of

the tyrant. The power of the Reds we might have met--or so it was

felt--but this new menace gave the invaders a weapon we could not

combat. It was power!--a means of flight beyond anything known!--an

explosive beside which our nitro compounds were playthings for a

child.

"Who is Paul?" It was not only myself who asked the question through

those next long hours, but perhaps I was the only one in whose mind

was a disturbing certainty that the answer was mine if I could but

grasp it.

I was remembering Paris; I was thinking of that peaceful, happy city

before the First of May, before the world had gone mad and a raging,

red beast had laid it waste and overrun it. And of Paul

Stravoinski--my friend "Straki" of college days--who had warned me. He

had known what was coming. He himself had said that he had prayed to

"them" for delay; that in a few weeks he would do--what?... And

suddenly I knew.

Paul had succeeded; his research had ended in the dissection of the

atom; he had unleashed the sub-atomic power of matter. Only this could

explain the wild flight through the sky, the terrific explosion at the

Capitol. It was Paul--my friend, Paul Stravoinski--who was imposing

his will upon the world.

I said nothing as I took off; the swiftest plane was at my command. I

might be wrong; I must not arouse false hopes; but I must find Paul.

And the papers were black with scareheads of another threat as I left

Washington:

"You have twenty-four hours to surrender. There shall be one last day

of grace." Signed: "Paul."

There was more of the wild talk of the beauties of this new

dispensation--a mixture of idealistic folly and of threats of

destruction. I needed no more to prove the truth of my suspicions. No

one but the Paul I had known could cling so tenaciously to his dreams;

no one but he could be so blind to the actual horror of the new

oligarchy he would impose upon the world.

I flew alone; no one but myself must try to hunt him out. I paid no

attention to the radio direction of the last message; he would fly far

afield to send it; distance meant nothing to one who held his power. I

must look for him at his laboratory, that cluster of deserted

buildings that stood all alone by a distant railway siding; it was

there he had worked.

* * * * *

He met me with a pistol in his hand--a tiny gun that fired only a .22

calibre bullet.

"Put down your pop-gun," I told him and brushed through the open door

into the room that had been his laboratory. "I am unarmed, and I'm

here to talk business.

"You are 'Paul'!" I shot the sentence at him as if it were a bullet

that must strike him down.

He did not answer directly; just nodded in confirmation of some

unspoken thought.

"You have found me," he said slowly; "you were the only one I feared."

Then he came out with it, and his eyes blazed with a maniacal light.

"Yes, I am Paul! and this 'pop-gun' in my hand is the weapon that

destroyed your Capitol at Washington. The bullet contained less than a

grain of tritonite; that is the name I have given my explosive."

He aimed the little pistol toward me where I stood. "These bullets are

more lightly charged--they are to protect myself--and the one

ten-thousandth of a milligram in the end of each will blow you into

bits! Sit down. I will not be checked now. You will never leave this

place alive!"

"Less than a grain of tritonite!"--and I had seen a great building go

down to dust at its touch! I sat down in the chair where he directed,

and I turned away from the fanatical glare of Paul's eyes to look

about me.

There was poverty here no longer; no makeshift apparatus greeted my

eyes, but the finest of laboratory equipment. Paul read my thoughts.

"They have been liberal," he told me; "the Central Council has

financed my work--though I have kept my whereabouts a secret even from

them. But they would not wait. I told you in Paris, and you did not

believe. And now--now I have succeeded! the research is done!"

* * * * *

He half turned to pick up a flake of platinum no larger than one's

finger-nail; it was a weight that was used on a delicate balance.

"Matter is matter no longer," he said; "I have resolved it into

energy. I hold here in my hand power to destroy an army, or to drive a

fleet of ships. I, Paul, will build a new world. I will give to man a

surcease from labor; I will give him rest; I will do the work of the

world. My tritonite that can destroy can also create; it shall be used

for that alone. This is the end of war. Here is wealth; here is power;

I shall give it to mankind, and, under the rule of the Brotherhood, a

united world will arise and go forward to new growth, to a greater

civilization, to a building of a new heaven on earth."

He was pacing up and down the room. His hands were shaking; the

muscles of his face that twitched and trembled were moulded into deep

lines. I sat there and realized that within that room, directly before

my eyes, was the Dictator of the World. It was true--I could not doubt

it--Paul Straki of college days had made his dreams come true; his

research was ended. And this new "Paul" who held in those trembling

hands the destinies of mankind, at whose word kings and presidents

trembled, was utterly mad!

I tried to talk and tell him of the truth we knew was true. He would

have none of it; his dreams possessed him. In the bloody flag of this

new Russia he could see only the emblem of freedom; the men who

marched beneath that banner were his brothers, unwitting in the

destruction they wrought. It was all that they knew. But they fought

for the right. They would cease fighting now, and would join him in

the work of moulding a new race. And even their leaders, who had

sometimes opposed--were they not kind at heart? Had they not checked

the advance of an irresistible army to give him and his new weapon an

opportunity to open the eyes of the people? Theirs was no wish to

destroy; their hearts ached for their victims who refused to listen

and could be convinced only by force.

And as he talked on there passed before my eyes the vision of an

aerial torpedo and a blood-red ship above, where these "kindly" men

who were Paul's allies turned the instrument of death upon huddled,

screaming folk--and laughed, no doubt, at such good sport.

* * * * *

I thought of many things. I was tensed one moment to throw myself upon

the man; and an instant later I was searching my mind for some

argument, some gleam of reason, with which I could tear aside the

illusions that held him. I saw him cross the room where a radio stood,

and he switched on the instrument for the news-broadcast service. The

shouting of an excited voice burst into the room.

"The Reds have advanced," said the voice. "Their armies have crossed

the Connecticut line. They are within ten miles of the American

forces. The twenty-four hours of grace promised by the tyrant 'Paul'

was a lie. The battle is already on."

I saw the tall figure of Paul sink to its former stoop; the lameness

that had vanished in the moment of his exaltation had returned. He

limped a pace or two toward me.

"They said they would wait!" His voice was a hoarse whisper. "General

Vornikoff himself gave me his promise!"

I was on my feet, then. "What matter?" I shouted. "What difference

does it make--a few hours or a day? Your damned patriots, your dear

brothers in arms--they are destroying us this instant! And not one of

our men but is worth more than the whole beastly mob!"

I was wild with the picture that came so clear and plain before my

eyes. I had my pistol in my hand; I was tempted to fire. It was his

whisper that stopped me.

"They have crossed Massachusetts! And Maida is there in Melford!"

* * * * *

There was no resisting his strength that tore my weapon from me. His

tritonite pistol was pressed into my side, and his hand upon my collar

threw me ahead of him toward a rear room, then out into a huge shed. I

had only a quick glimpse of the airplane that was housed there. It was

a white cylinder, and the stern that was toward me showed a

funnel-shaped port.

I was thrown by that same furious strength through a door of the ship;

I saw Paul Stravoinski seat himself before some curious controls. The

ship that held me rose; moved slowly through an opened door; and with

a screech from the stern it tore off and up into the air.

I have said Paul could fly; but the terrific flight of the screaming

thing that held us seemed beyond the power of man to control. I was

stunned with the thundering roar and the speed that held me down and

back against a cabin wall.

How he found Melford, I cannot know; but he found it as a homing

pigeon finds its loft. He checked our speed with a sickening swiftness

that made my brain reel. There were red ships above, but they let the

white ship pass unchallenged. There were no Red soldiers on the

ground--only the marks where they had passed.

From the distance came a never-ceasing thunder of guns. The village

was quiet. It still burned, blazing brightly in places, again

smouldering sluggishly and sending into the still air smoke clouds

whose fumes were a choking horror of burned flesh. There were bodies

in grotesque scattering about the streets; some of them were black and

charred.

Paul Stravoinski took me with him as he dashed for a house that the

flames had not touched. And I was with him as he smashed at the door

and broke into the room.

* * * * *

There was splintered furniture about. A cabinet, whose glass doors had

been wantonly smashed, leaned crazily above its fallen books, now

torn, scuffed and muddy upon the floor. Through a shattered window in

the bed-room beyond came a puff of the acrid smoke from outside to

strangle the breath in my throat. On the floor in a shadowed corner

lay the body of a woman--a young woman as her clotted tangle of golden

hair gave witness. She stirred and moaned half-consciously.... And the

lined face of Paul Stravoinski was a terrible thing to see as he went

stumblingly across the room to gather that body into his arms.

I had known Maida; I had seen their love begin in college days. I had

known a laughing girl with sunshine in her hair, a girl whose soft

eyes had grown so tenderly deep when they rested upon Paul--but this

that he took in his arms, while a single dry sob tore harshly at his

throat, this was never Maida!

There were red drops that struck upon his hands or fell sluggishly to

the floor; the head and face had taken the blow of a clubbed rifle or

a heavy boot. The eyes in that tortured face opened to rest upon

Paul's, the lips were moving.

"I told them of you," I heard her whisper. "I told them that you would

come--and they laughed." Unconsciously she tried to draw her torn clothing

about her, an instinctive reaction to some dim realization of her

nakedness. She was breathing feebly. "And now--oh, Paul!--Paul!--you--have

come--too late!"

* * * * *

I hardly think Paul knew I was there or sensed that I followed where

he carried in his arms the bruised body that had housed the spirit of

Maida. He flew homeward like a demon, but he moved as one in a dream.

Only when I went with him into the room where he had worked, did he

turn on me in sudden fury.

"Out!" he screamed. "Get out of my sight! It is you who have done

this--your damned armies who would not do as I ordered! If you had not

resisted, if you had--"

I broke in there.

"Did we do that?" I outshouted him, and I pointed to the torn body on

a cot. His eyes followed my shaking hand. "No, it was your

brothers--your dear comrades who are bringing the brotherhood of men

into the world! Well, are you proud? Are you happy and satisfied--with

what your brothers do with women?"

It must be a fearful thing to have one's dreams turn bitter and

poisonous. Paul Stravoinski seemed about to spring upon me. He was

crouched, and the muscles of his thin neck were like wire; his face

was a ghastly thing, his eyes so staring bright, and the sensitive

mouth twisting horribly. But he sprang at last not at me but toward

the door, and without a word from his tortured lips he opened it and

motioned me out.

Even there I heard echoes of distant guns and the heavier, thudding

sounds that must be their aerial torpedoes. My feet were leaden as I

strained every muscle to hurry toward my ship. Through my mind was

running the threat of the Russian, Vornikoff: "We even tell you the

date: in thirty days." And this was the thirtieth day--thirty days

that a state of war had existed.

* * * * *

The battle was on; the radio had spoken truly. I saw its raging fires

as I came up from our rear where the gray-like smoke clouds shivered

in the unending blast. But I saw stabbing flames that struck upward

from the ground to make a wall of sharp, fiery spears, and I knew that

every darting flame was launching a projectile from our anti-aircraft

guns.

The skies were filled with the red aircraft of the enemy, but their

way was an avenue of hell where thousands of shells filled the air

with their crashing explosions. There were torpedoes, the unmanned

airships whose cargo was death, and they were guided to their marks

despite the inferno that raged about the red ships above.

I saw meteors that fell, the red flames that enveloped them no redder

than the bodies of the ships. And, as I leaped from my plane that I

had landed back of our lines, I sensed that the enemy was withdrawing.

There was a colonel of artillery--I had known him in days of

peace--and he threw his arms around me and executed a crazy dance.

"We've beaten them back, Bob!" he shouted, and repeated it over and

over in a delirium of joy.

I couldn't believe it; not those cruisers that I had seen over Paris.

Another brief moment showed my fears were all too rational.

A shrieking hailstorm of torpedoes preceded them; the ships were

directing them from afar. And, while some of the big shells went wild

and overshot our lines, there were plenty that found their mark.

I was smashed flat by a stunning concussion. Behind me the place where

Colonel Hartwell had stood was a smoking crater; his battery of guns

had been blasted from the earth. Up and down the whole line, far

beyond the range of my sight, the eruption continued. The ground was a

volcano of flame, as if the earth had opened to let through the

interior fires, and the air was filled with a litter of torn bodies

and sections of shattered guns.

No human force could stand up under such a bombardment. Like others

about me, I gripped tight upon something within me that was my

self-control, and I marveled that I yet lived while I waited for the

end.

* * * * *

Beyond the smoke clouds was a hillside, swarming with figures in red;

solid masses of troops that came toward us. Above was the red fleet,

passing safely above our flame-blasted lines; there were bombs falling

upon those batteries here and there whose fire was unsilenced. And

then, from the south, came a roar that pierced even the bedlam about

me. The sun shone brightly there where the smoke-clouds had not

reached, and it glinted and sparkled from the wings of a myriad of our

planes.

There was something that pulled tight at my throat; I know I tore at

it with fumbling hands, as if that something were an actual band that

had clamped down and choked me, while I stared at that true line of

sharp-pointed V's. The air-force of the United States had been ordered

in; and they were coming, coming--to an inevitable death!

I tried to tear my eyes away from that oncoming fleet, but I could not

move. I saw their first contact with the enemy; so small, they were,

in contrast with the big red cruisers. They attacked in formations;

they drove down and in; and they circled and whirled before they

fluttered to earth....

Dimly, through the stupor that numbed my brain, I heard men about me

shouting with joy. I felt more than saw the fall of a monster red

craft; it struck not far away. The voices were thanking God--for what?

Another red ship fell--and another; and through all the roaring

inferno a sound was tearing--a ripping, terrible scream that went on

and on. And above me, when I forced my eyes upward, was a flash of

white.

It darted like a live thing among the red ones whose guns blazed

madly--and the red ships in clotted groups fell away and over and down

as the white one passed. They had been burst open where some power had

blasted them, and their torn hulls showed gaping as they fell.

For a time the air was silent and empty above; the white, flashing

thing had passed from sight, for the line of red ships was long. Then

again it returned, and it threw itself into the mad whirl in the south

where the air-force of the American people was fighting its last

fight.

I was screaming insanely as I saw it come back. The white ship!--the

blast of vapor from its funneled stern--It was Paul!--Paul

Stravoinski!--Paul the Dictator!--and he was fighting on our side!

* * * * *

His ship had been prepared; I had seen the machine-guns on her bow.

Paul was working them from within, and every bullet was tipped with

the product of his brain--the deadly tritonite!

The white flash swung wide in a circle that took it far away. It came

back above the advancing army of the Reds. It swerved once wildly,

then settled again upon its course, and the raging hell that the Reds

had turned loose upon our lines was as nothing to the destruction that

poured upon the Red troops from above.

A messenger of peace, that ship; I knew well why Paul had painted it

white. And, instead of peace--!

He was flying a full mile from our lines, yet the torn earth and great

boulders crashed among us even then. There were machine-guns firing

ceaselessly from the under side of the ship. What charges of tritonite

had the demented man placed in those shells?

Below and behind it, as it flashed across our view, was a fearful,

writhing mass where the earth itself rose up in unending, convulsive

agony. A volcano of fire followed him, a fountain of earth that ripped

and tore and stretched itself in a writhing, tortured line across the

land as the white ship passed.

No man who saw that and lived has found words to describe the progress

of that monstrous serpent; the valley itself is there for men to see.

The roar was beyond the limit of men's strained nerves. I found myself

cowering upon the ground when the white ship came back; I followed it

fearfully with my eyes until I saw it swoop falteringly down. Such

power seemed not for men but for gods; I could not have met Paul

Stravoinski then but in a posture of supplication. But I leaped to my

feet and raced madly across the torn earth as I saw the white ship

touch the ground--rise--fall again--and end its flight where it

ploughed a furrow across a brown field....

* * * * *

I raised Paul Stravoinski's head in my arms where I found him in the

ship. An enemy shell had entered that cabin; it must have come early

in the fight, but he had fought gamely on. And the eyes that looked up

into mine had none of the wild light I had seen. They were the eyes of

Paul Straki, the comrade of those few long years before, and he smiled

as he said: "_Voila_, friend Bob: _c'est fini!_ And now I go for a

long, long walk. We will talk of poetry, Maida and I...."

But his dreams were still with him. He opened his eyes to stare

intently at me. "You will see that it is not in vain?" he questioned;

then smiled as one who is at peace, as he whispered: "Yes, I know you

will--my friend, Bob--"

And his fixed gaze went through and beyond me, while he tried, in

broken sentences, to give the vision that had been his. So plain it

was to him now.

"The wild work--of a mistaken people. America will undo it.... A world

at peace.... The vast commerce--of the skies--I see it--so clearly....

It will break down--all barriers.... A beautiful, happy world...."

His lips moved feebly at the last. I could not speak; could not even

call him by name; I could only lean my head closer to hear.

One whispered word; then another: a fragment of poetry! I had heard

him quote it often. But the whispered words were not for me. Paul was

speaking to someone beside him--someone my blind, human eyes could not

see....

* * * * *

I am writing these words at my desk in the great Transportation

Building in New York. It stands upon the site of the Chrysler Building

that towered here--until one of the flying torpedoes came over to hunt

it out. They landed several in New York; how long ago it all seems

that the threat of utter destruction hung over the whole nation--the

whole world.

And now from my window I see the sparkling flash of ships. The air is

filled with them; I am still unaccustomed to their speed. But a wisp

of vapor from each bell-shaped stern throws them swiftly on their way;

it marks the continuous explosion of that marvel of a new

age--tritonite! There are tremendous terminals being built; the

air-transport lines are being welded into efficient units that circle

the world; and the world is becoming so small!

The barriers are gone; all nations are working as one to use wisely

this strange new power for the work of this new world. No more

poverty; no more of the want and desperate struggle that leads a whole

people into the insane horrors of war; it is a glorious world of which

we dream and which is coming slowly to be....

But I think we must dream well and work well to bring to actuality the

beautiful visions in those far-seeing eyes of the man called

Paul--Dictator, one time, of the whole world.

LISTENING TO ANTS

Two scientists of the University of Pittsburgh recently perfected an

apparatus for detecting the sounds of underground communications among

ants. A block of wood was placed upon the diaphragm of an ordinary

telephone transmitter, which in turn was connected through batteries

and amplifiers to a pair of earphones. When the termites crawled over

the block of wood the transmitter was agitated, resulting in sound

vibrations which were clearly heard by the listener at the headset.

When the ants became excited over something or other their soldiers

were found to hammer their heads vigorously on the wood. This action

could be clearly seen and heard at the same time. The investigators

found that the ants could hear sound vibrations in the air very poorly

or not at all, but were extremely sensitive to vibrations underground.

For this reason it was thought that the head hammering was a method of

communication.

Because of this sensitivity to substratum vibrations, ants are seldom

found to infest the ties of railroads carrying heavy traffic, or

buildings containing machinery.

The Earthman's Burden

_By R. F. Starzl_

[Illustration: _And then he jumped._]

[Sidenote: There is foul play on Mercury--until Denny Olear of the

Interplanetary Flying Police gets after his man.]

Denny Olear was playing blackjack when the colonel's orderly found

him. He hastily buttoned his tunic and in a few minutes, alert and

very military, was standing at attention in the little office on the

ground floor of the Denver I. F. P. barracks. His swanky blue uniform

fitted without a wrinkle. His little round skullcap was perched at the

regulation angle.

"Olear," said the colonel, "they're having a little trouble at the

Blue River Station, Mercury."

"Trouble? Uh-huh," Olear said placidly.

The colonel looked him over. He saw a man past his first youth.

Thirty-five, possibly forty. Olear was well-knit, sandy-haired, not

over five feet six inches in height. His hair was close-cropped, his

features phlegmatic, his eyes a light blue with thick, short,

light-colored lashes, his teeth excellent. A scar, dead white on a

brown cheekbone, was a reminder of an "encounter" with one of the

numerous sauriens of Venus.

"I'm sending you," explained the colonel, "because you're more

experienced, and not like some of these kids, always spoiling for a

fight. There's something queer about this affair. Morones, factor of

the Blue River post, reports that his assistant has disappeared.

Vanished. Simply gone. But only three months ago the former

factor--Morones was his assistant--disappeared. No hide nor hair of

him. Morones reported to the company, the Mercurian Trading

Concession, and they called me. Something, they think, is rotten."

"Yes, sir."

"I guess I needn't tell you," the colonel went on, "that you have to

use tact. People don't seem to appreciate the Force. What with the

lousy politicians begrudging every cent we get, and a bunch of

suspicious foreign powers afraid we'll get too good--"

"Yeah, I know. Tact, that's my motto. No rough stuff." He saluted,

turned on his heel.

"Just a minute!" The colonel had arisen. He was a fine, ascetic type

of man. He held out his hand.

"Good-by, Olear. Watch yourself!"

When Olear had taken his matter-of-fact departure the colonel ran his

fingers through his whitening hair. In the past several months he had

sent five of his best men on dangerous missions--missions requiring

tact, courage, and, so it seemed, very much luck. And only two of the

five had come back. In those days the Interplanetary Flying Police did

not enjoy the tremendous prestige it does now. The mere presence of a

member of the Force is enough, in these humdrum days of interplanetary

law and order, to quell the most serious disturbance anywhere in the

solar system. But it was not always thus. This astounding prestige

had to be earned with blood and courage, in many a desperate and

lonely battle; had to be snatched from the dripping jaws of death.

* * * * *

Olear checked over his flying ovoid, got his bearings from the port

astronomer, set his coordinate navigator and shoved off. Two weeks

later he plunged into the thick, misty atmosphere on the dark side of

Mercury.

Ancient astronomers had long suspected that Mercury always presented

the same side to the sun, though they were ignorant that the little

planet had water and air. Its sunward side is a dreary, sterile, hot

and hostile desert. Its dark side is warm and humid, and resembles to

some extent the better known jungles and swamps of Venus. But it has a

favored belt, some hundreds of miles wide, around its equator, where

the enormous sun stays perpetually in one spot on the horizon. Sunward

is the blinding glare of the desert; on the dark side, enormous banks

of lowering clouds. On the dark margin of this belt are the

"ringstorms," violent thunderstorms that never cease. They are the

source of the mighty rivers which irrigate the tropical habitable belt

and plunge out, boiling, far into the desert.

Olear's little ship passed through the ringstorms, and he did not take

over the controls until he recognized the familiar mark of the trading

company, a blue comet on the aluminum roof of one of the larger

buildings. Visibility was good that day, but despite the unusual

clarity of the atmosphere there was a suggestion of the sinister about

the lifeless scene--the vast, irresistible river, the riotously

colored jungle roof. The vastness of nature dwarfed man's puny work.

One horizon flashed incessantly with livid lightning, the other was

one blinding blaze of the nearby sun. And almost lost below in the

savage landscape was man's symbol of possession, a few metal sheds in

a clear, fenced space of a few acres.

Olear cautiously checked speed, skimmed over the turbid surface of the

great river, and set her down on the ground within the compound. With

his pencil-like ray-tube in his hand he stepped out of the hatchway.

* * * * *

A Mercurian native came out of the residence, presently, his hands

together in the peace sign. For the benefit of Earthlubbers whose only

knowledge of Mercury is derived from the teleview screen, it should be

explained that Mercurians are _not_ human, even if they do slightly

resemble us. They hatch from eggs, pass one life-phase as frog-like

creatures in their rivers, and in the adult stage turn more human in

appearance. But their skin remains green and fish-belly white. There

is no hair on their warty heads. Their eyes have no lids, and have a

peculiar dead, staring look when they sleep. And they carry a

peculiar, fishy odor with them at all times.

This Mercurian looked at Olear seemingly without interest.

"Where is Morones?" the officer inquired.

"Morones?" the native piped, in English. "Inside. He busy."

"All right. I'm coming in."

"He busy."

"Yeah, move over."

Though the native was a good six inches taller than Olear he stepped

aside when the officer pushed him. Men--and Mercurians--had a way of

doing that when they looked into those colorless eyes. They were not

as phlegmatic as the face. Morones was sitting in his office.

"Well, I'm here," Olear announced, helping himself to a chair.

"Yes"--sourly. "Who invited you?"

Olear looked at the factor levelly, appraising him. A big man, fat,

but the fat well distributed. Saturnine face, dark hair, dark and

bristly beard. The kind that thrived where other men became weak and

fever-ridden. Also, to judge by his present appearance, an unpleasant

companion and a nasty enemy.

"Don't see what difference it makes to you," Olear answered in his own

good time; "but the company invited me."

"They would!" Morones growled. His eyes flickered to the door, and

quick as a cat, Olear leaped to one side, his ray-pencil in his hand.

Morones had not moved, and in the door stood the native, motionless

and without expression. Morones laughed nastily.

"Kind of jumpy, eh? What is it, Nargyll?"

* * * * *

Nargyll burst into a burbling succession of native phrases, which

Olear had some difficulty following.

"Nargyll wants to move your ship into one of the sheds, but the

activator key's gone."

"Yeah, I know," Olear assented casually. "I got it. Leave the ship

till I get ready. Then I'll put it away. Get out, Nargyll."

The native, hesitated, then on the lift of Morones' eyebrows departed.

Olear shifted a chair so that he could watch both Morones and the

door. He reopened the conversation easily:

"Well, we understand each other. You don't want me here and I'm here.

So what are you going to do about it?"

Morones flushed. He struggled to keep his temper down.

"What do you want to know?"

"What happened to the factor who was here before you?"

"I don't know. The translucene wasn't coming in like it should. Sammis

went out into the jungle for a palaver with the chiefs to find out

why. And he didn't come back."

"You didn't find out where he went?"

"I just told you," Morones said impatiently, "he went out to see the

native chiefs."

"Alone?"

"Of course, alone. There were only two of us Earthmen here. Couldn't

abandon this post to the wogglies, could we? Not that it'd make much

difference. Except for Nargyll, none'll come near."

"You never heard of him again?"

"No! Dammit, no! Say, didn't they have any dumber strappers around

than you? I told you once--I tell you again--I never saw hide nor hair

of him after that."

"Aw-right, aw-right!" Olear regarded Morones placidly. "And so you

took the job of factor and radioed for an assistant, and when the

assistant came he disappeared."

Morones grunted, "He went out to get acquainted with the country and

didn't come back."

* * * * *

Olear masked his close scrutiny of the factor under his idle and

expressionless gaze. He was not ready to jump to the conclusion that

Morones' uneasiness sprang from a sense of guilt. Guilty or not, he

had a right to feel uneasy. The man would be dense indeed if he did

not realize he was in line for suspicion, and he did not look dense.

Indeed, he was obviously a shrewd character.

"Let me see your 'lucene."

Morones rose. Despite his bulk he stepped nimbly. He had the

nimbleness of a Saturnian bear, which is great, as some of the earlier

explorers learned to their dismay.

"That's the first sensible question you've asked," Morones snorted.

"Take a look at our 'lucene. Ha! Have a good look!"

He led the way across the compound, waved his hand before the door of

a strongly built shed in a swift, definite combination, and the door

opened, revealing the interior. He waved invitingly.

"You go first," Olear said.

With a sneer Morones stepped in. "You're safe, boy, you're safe."

Olear looked at the small pile on the floor in astonishment. Instead

of the beautiful, semi-transparent chips of translucene, the dried sap

of a Mercurian tree which is invaluable to the world as the source of

an unfailing cancer cure, there were only a few dirty, dried up

shavings, hardly worth shipping back to Earth for refining. The full

significance of the affair began to dawn on the officer. The

translucene trees grew only in this favored section of Mercury, and

the Earth company had a monopoly of the entire supply. Justly, for

only on Earth was cancer known, and it was on the increase. That

small, almost useless pile on the floor connoted a terrible drug

famine for the human race.

* * * * *

Morones' smile might have been a grin of satisfaction, at Olear's

question:

"Is that all you've bought since the last freighter was here?"'

"It is," he replied. "The last load went off six months ago, and this

here shed should be full to the eaves. There'll be hell to pay."

"It may not be tactful," Olear remarked, "but if you've got your

takings cached away somewhere to hold up the Earth for a big ransom,

you'd better come across right now. You can't get by with it, fellow.

You should have close to six million dollars' worth of it, and you

can't get away. You just can't."

Morones controlled his anger with an effort.

"Like any dumb strapper, you've got your mind made up, ain't you?

Well, go ahead. Get something on me. Here I was almost set to give you

a lead that might get you somewhere. And you come shooting

off--trying to make out I stole the 'lucene and killed those two

fellows, eh? Go ahead! Get something on me! But not on Company

grounds. You're leaving now!"

With that he made a lunge at the officer, quite beside himself with

rage. Olear could have burnt him down, but he was far too experienced

for such an amateurish trick. Instead he ducked to evade Morones'

blow. But the big man was as agile as a panther. In mid-air, so it

seemed, he changed his direction of attack. The big fist swept

downward, striking Olear's head a glancing blow.

But the men of the Force have always been fighters, whatever their

shortcomings as diplomats. Olear countered with a strong right to the

body, thudding solidly, for Morones' softness did not go far below the

surface. The factor whirled instantly, but not quite fast enough to

bar the door. Olear was out and inside his ship in a few seconds,

slamming the hatch.

"Tact!" he grinned to himself, inserting the activator key. "Tact is

what a fella needs." The little space flier shot aloft, until the tiny

figure of the factor stopped shaking its fist and entered the

residence. The post had a flier of its own, of course, but Morones was

too wise to use it in pursuit.

Olear considered what was best to do. Of course he could have placed

Morones under arrest; could still do it; but that would not solve the

mystery of the two deaths and the missing 'lucene. If the choleric

factor was really guilty of the crimes, it would be better to let him

go his way in the hope that he would betray himself. Olear regretted

that he had not kept his tongue under closer curb. But there was no

use regretting. Perhaps, after all, he ought to turn back to pump

Morones for some helpful information.

* * * * *

His mind made up, he descended again until he was hovering a few feet

from the ground.

"Morones!" he called. "Morones!" He held the hatch open.

Morones came to the door of the residence. He had a tube in his hand,

a long-range weapon.

"Morones," Olear declared pompously. "I place you under arrest!"

The effect was instantaneous. Morones lifted the tube, and a

glimmering, iridescent beam sprang out. The ship was up and away in a

second, lurching and shivering uncomfortably every time the beam

struck it in its upward flight. A good few seconds continued

impingement....

But a miss is as good as a light-year. Miles high, Olear looked into

his telens. Morones had laid aside his tube and was working with an

instrument like a twin transit. Plotting the ship's course, naturally.

Olear set his course for the Earth, and kept on it for a good

twenty-four hours. Morones, if he was still watching him, would think

he'd gone back for reinforcements. Such an assumption would be

incredible now, but that was before the I. F. P. had achieved its

present tremendous reputation.

Beyond observation range, Olear curved back toward Mercury again, and

was almost inside its atmosphere when he made a discovery that caused

him to lose for a moment his natural indifference, and to clamp his

jaws in anger. The current oxygen tank became empty, and when he

removed it from the rack and put in a new one he found someone had let

out all of this essential gas. The valve of every one of the spare

tanks had been opened. Had Olear actually continued on his way to

Earth he would have perished miserably of suffocation long before he

could have returned to the Mercurian atmosphere. The officer whistled

tunelessly through his teeth as he considered this fact.

The visibility was by this time normal; that is, so poor it would have

been possible to land very close to the trading station. Olear was

taking no chances, however, and came down a good three Earth miles

away. The egg-shaped hull sank through the glossy, brilliant treetops,

through twisted vines, and was buried in the dank gloom of the jungle.

Here it might remain hidden for a hundred years.

* * * * *

The twilight of the jungle was almost darkness. Landmarks were not.

But Olear made a few small, inconspicuous marks on trees with his

knife until he came to an outcropping rock. He had noticed the

scarlike white of it slashing through the jungle from the air, and

used it as a guide to direct his stealthy return to the trading post.

His belt chronometer told him it would be about time for Morones to

get up from his "night's" sleep. A little discreet observation might

tell much.

Long before he reached the compound, Olear heard the rushing of the

great Blue River in its headlong plunge to the corrosive heat of the

desert. And then, through the mists, he glimpsed the white metal walls

of the Company sheds.

He climbed a tree and for a long time watched patiently, lying prone on

a limb. Blood-sucking insects tortured him, and flat tree-lice,

resembling discs with legs, crawled over him inquisitively. Olear

tolerated them with stoic indifference until at last his patience was

rewarded. Morones was coming out of the compound. He was alone and

obviously did not suspect that he was being watched, for he stepped

out briskly. Once in the jungle he walked even faster, watching out

warily for the panther-like carnivora that were the most dangerous to

man on Mercury.

Olear shinned to the ground and followed cautiously. Morones had his

ray-tube with him, as any traveler in these jungles did. Olear could

and did draw fast, but a dead trader would be valueless to him in his

investigation, so he stalked him with every faculty strained to

maintain complete silence. Often, in occasional clearings where the

brown darkness grew less, he had to grovel on the slimy ground,

picking up large bacteria that could be seen with the naked eye, and

which left tiny, festering red marks on the skin. Mercury has no

snakes.

The trader seemed to be heading for higher ground, for the path led

ever upward, though not far from the tossing waters of the river. And

then, suddenly, he disappeared.

Olear did not immediately hurry after him. A canny fugitive, catching

sight of his pursuer, might suddenly drop to the ground and squirm to

the side of the trail, there to wait and catch his pursuer as he

passed. So Olear sidled into the all but impenetrable underbrush and

slowly, with infinite caution, wormed his way along.

* * * * *

Presently he came to the little rise of ground where Morones had

disappeared, but a painstaking search did not reveal the factor. There

were, however, a number of other trails that joined the very faint

trail he had been following, and now there was a well-defined track

which continued to lead upward. With a grimace of disgust Olear again

plunged into the odorous underbrush and traveled parallel to the

trail. It was well he did so, for several Mercurians passed swiftly,

intent, so it seemed, in answering a shrill call that at times came

faintly to the ear. They carried slender spears.

Several more Mercurians passed. The growth was thinning out, and Olear

did not dare to proceed further. However, from his hiding place he

could discern a number of irregular cave openings, apparently leading

downward. They were apparently the entrances to one of the native

cavern colonies, or possibly of a meeting place. No Earthman had ever

entered one, but it was thought they had underground openings into the

river.

As the cave openings were obviously natural, Olear conjectured that

there might be others that were not used. After an anxious search he

found one, narrow and irregular, well hidden under the broad, glossy

leaves of some uncatalogued vegetation. As it showed no evidence of

use, Olear unhesitatingly slid down into it. It was very narrow and

irregular, so that often he was barely able to squeeze through. The

roots of trees choked the passage for a dozen feet or so, requiring

the vigorous use of a knife. Bathed in sweat, his uniform a filthy

mass of rags, Olear at last saw light.

The passage ended abruptly near the roof of a large natural cavern.

Lights glistened on stalactites which cut off Olear's larger view, and

voices came from below. By craning his neck the officer could look

between the pendent icicles of rock and see a fire burning on a huge

oblong block of stone. Figures were sitting on the floor around this

block--hundreds of Mercurians. The leaping flames made their white and

green faces and bodies look frog-like and less human than usual.

* * * * *

But the figure that dominated the whole assemblage, both by its own

hugeness and the magnetic power that flowed from it, was not of

Mercury but of Pluto. For the benefit of those who have never seen a

stuffed Plutonian in our museums--and they are very rare--let me refer

you to the pious books still to be found in ancient library

collections. The ancients personified their fears and hates in a being

they called the Devil. The resemblance between the Devil of their

imagination and a Plutonian is really astounding. Horns, hoofs,

tail--almost to the smallest detail, the resemblance is there.

Philosophers have written books on the "coincidence" in appearance of

the ancient Devil and the modern decadent Plutonians. The Plutonians

were once numerous and far advanced in science, and no doubt they

called on the Earth many times, in prehistoric days, and the so-called

Devil was a true picture of those vicious invaders, who are somewhat

less human than usually portrayed. What was once classed as

superstition was therefore a true racial memory. Long before our

ancestors came out of their caves to build houses, the Plutonians had

mastered interplanetary travel--only to forget the secret until human

ingenuity should reveal it once more.

The modern Plutonian in that dank cave was over ten feet tall, and it

is easy to see why he dominated the assemblage. His black visage was

set in an evil smile; his ebony body glistened in the firelight. He

held a three-pronged spear in one hand, and sat on a pile of rocks, a

sort of rough throne, so that he towered magnificently above all

others.

He spoke the Mercurian language, although the liquid intonations came

harshly from his sneering lips.

"Are ye assembled, frogfolk, that ye may hear the decision of your

Thinking Ones?" he asked.

* * * * *

A respectful peeping chorus signified assent. But in that there was a

hint of unrest; even of fear.

"Speak, ye Thinking One, your commands!"

"Hear me first!" An old Mercurian, unusually tall, faded and dry

looking, his thick hide wrinkled like crushed leather, rose slowly to

his feet and stepped before the oblong stone. His back was to the

Plutonian, his face to the crescent of chiefs.

"The Old Wise One!" A twittering murmur went around the assemblage.

"Hear the Old Wise One!"

"My people, I like this not!" began the ancient. "The Lords of the

Green Star[1] have dealt with us fairly. Each phase[2] they have

brought us the things we wanted"--he touched his spear and a few gaudy

ornaments on his otherwise naked body--"in exchange for the worthless

white sap of our trees. If we longer offend the Lords of the Green

Star--"

[Footnote 1: In their various languages, almost all solar races call

Earth "The Green Star." Although conditions on Mercury are

unfavorable, Earth can be seen from the dark star, on mountain tops,

during occasional dispersals of the cloud masses.]

[Footnote 2: The Mercurians had no conception of time before the

Earthmen came. A "phase" is the time between calls of the freight

ships, and is therefore variable; but in those days it was about six

or seven months.]

A raucous laugh interrupted the Mercurian's feeble voice, and it

echoed eerily from the walls of the chamber.

"Valueless ye call the white sap?" sneered the Plutonian. "Hear me.

That sap you call valueless is dearer than life itself to the Lords of

the Green Star. For they are afflicted in great numbers with a

stinking death they call cancer. It destroys their vitals, and

nothing--nothing in this broad universe can help them save this white

sap ye give them. In your hands ye have the power to bring the proud

Lords of the Green Star to their knees. They would fill this chamber

many times with their most priceless treasures for the sap ye give

them so freely. Withhold the sap, and your Thinking Ones may go to the

Green Star itself to rule over its Lords. They are desperate. Their

emissaries may even now be on the way to beg your pleasure. Speak,

Thinking Ones! Would ye not rule the Green Star?"

* * * * *

But the chiefs failed to become enthused. One of them rose and

addressed the Plutonian:

"O Lord of the Outer Orbit! For near one full phase have ye dwelt

among us. And well should ye know we have no desire for conquest. We

fear to go to the Green Star to rule."

"Then let me rule for ye!" exclaimed the Plutonian instantly. "My

brothers will abide with ye as your guests--shall see that ye receive

a fair reward for the white sap; and I will convey your commands to

the Lords of the Green Star."

The Old Wise One raised his withered hands, so that the uncertain

twittering of voices which followed the Plutonian's suggestion

subsided.

"My children," piped the feeble old voice, "the Black Lord has spoken

cunning words, but they are false. It is plain to see that he desires

to rule the Green Star, and our welfare does not concern him."

"If so it be that the white sap is of great value to the Lords of the

Green Star, it is still of no value to us; and if the gifts they bring

to us are of no value to them, they are dear to us."

The Plutonian sneered.

"Dearer than the Paste of Strange Dreams?"

A startled hush fell among the assembled Mercurians. They looked

guiltily at one another, avoiding the eyes of the Old Wise One.

"What is this?" shrilled he, turning furiously to the Plutonian. "Have

ye brought the paste of evil to our abode, knowing well the strict

proscription of our tribe? Fool! Your death is upon ye!"

* * * * *

But the Plutonian only grinned and spread his glistening, black hands

in a careless gesture. High overhead, peering through the

stalactites, Olear instantly understood the Plutonian's strange power,

the Paste of Strange Dreams, a fearsome narcotic of that far-swinging

dark planet. More insidious and devastating than any drug ever

produced on Earth, it had wrought frightful havoc among many solar

races. The Earthmen had opened the lanes, broken the age-old barriers

of distance, so that the harpies of evil could traffic their poison

from planet to planet. So the Paste of Strange Dreams was added to the

Earthman's burden.

"Seize him--the Evil One!" shrieked the old chief, but the Mercurians

sat sullen and silent, and the Plutonian sneered.

Finally one of the chiefs arose and with an effort faced the Old Wise

One and said:

"The Strange Dreams are dearer to us than all else. Do as he says."

The piping voices rose in eager acclamation, but the Old Wise One held

up his claws, waiting until silence returned.

"Wait! Wait! Before ye commit this folly, hear the Green Star man.

Many times has he demanded audience. Let him come in."

"It is not permitted," demurred one of the chiefs.

"Ye permitted this being of evil to enter; let him enter also."

"He is in the outer chambers now," one of the guards spoke. "His face

is like the center of a ringstorm."

"Let him enter!"

* * * * *

Morones strode into the room angrily. Blinded by the fire after the

darkness of the antechambers, he did not at first see the Plutonian.

He strode up to the ancient chief and glared at him.

"Does the Old Wise One learn wisdom at last?" he rasped. The ancient

shrank away from him, as did the nearer of the lesser chiefs.

"The Old Wise One thinks less of his wisdom," he replied wearily.

"Behold!" He pointed to the enthroned Plutonian.

Morones started. His hand flashed to his side, and came away empty.

Deft fingers had extracted his ray-tube. But he was a man of courage.

Never could it be said to his shame that an Earthman cringed in the

sight of lesser races.

"So it's you, my sooty friend!" he snarled in English. The Plutonian,

accomplished linguist, replied:

"As you see. You don't look very happy, Mr. Morones."

Morones regarded him impassively, his eyes frosty.

"That explains everything," he said at last with cold deliberation.

"First Sammis, then Boyd. Going to finish me next, I suppose?"

The Plutonian twisted the end of an eyebrow and smiled.

"Interested in them?"

"What'd you do with the bodies?"

The Plutonian jerked his thumb carelessly. "The river you call the

Blue is swift and deep. But before you follow them there is certain

information I wish to get from you. Where is the soldier who came to

visit you?"

A crafty light came into Morones' face.

"He is not far from here, waiting for me."

* * * * *

Olear, in his cramped hiding place, could not help feeling a warm glow

of admiration for Morones' nerve, because Morones thought him well on

his way to Earth.

"Nargyll, what did your master do with the visitor?"

"Drove him back to the Green Star," Nargyll said promptly.

"And the oxygen tanks. Did you empty them?"

"I let them hiss." Nargyll's grin was sharkish.

"News to you, eh, Morones? Your officer's corpse has probably dropped

into the sun by this time. Tell me, why did you drive him off?"

Morones sagged perceptibly. To gain a little time he said truthfully:

"I knew I should be blamed and ruined for life. I didn't know you were

here, damn you! I hoped to get this mess with the natives straightened

up before he'd come back with reinforcements."

"Yes. Well, you owe some months of life already. Your presence here

has been more or less embarrassing, but I had to let you live or I'd

have had the whole I. F. P. here to investigate. Now that you've

failed in keeping them from getting interested you may do me one more

service." The black giant grinned.

"I've often wondered at the Earthman's prestige all over the solar

system. Even to-night, soft and helpless as you are, these natives

fear you. You will, therefore, be an object lesson in the helplessness

of Earthmen."

* * * * *

Morones was pale but courageous. With contempt in every line of him he

watched some of the less frightened chiefs, at the command of the

Plutonian, push aside some of the blazing blocks of fungus on the

stone, to make room for his body. At last he raised his hand.

"Frogfolk!" he cried, "if ye do this thing, the Lords of the Green

Star will come. They will come with fires hotter than the sun; they

will blast your rivers with a power greater than the thunder of the

ringstorms; they will fill your caves with a purple smoke that turns

your bones to water--"

Shrill cries of fear almost drowned out his words. All the Mercurians

had seen evidences of the dreadful power of the Earthmen. They began

milling around, then stood rooted by the roar of the Plutonian's

voice.

"Lies! Lies!" he bellowed. "See, they are weak as egglets!" He stepped

down, picked Morones up by one shoulder, and held him, dangling, high

over the heads of all. Morones clawed and tore at the brawny arm. He

made a ludicrous picture. Soon the simple natives made a sniffling

sound of mirth, and the Plutonian, satisfied at last, set him down

again.

"He tells truth!" The Old Wise One had climbed to the top of the stone

block. "The Lords of the Green Star have their power not in their

bodies, but it is great. It is greater far than the frogfolk. It is

greater than the Lords of the Outer Orbit. They will come even as the

surly one has said, and great shall be our sorrow. It is not yet too

late. Release him, and deliver to him the white sap. Seize this evil

one--"

The feeble, fickle minds were being swayed again. In a gust of

impatience, the Plutonian stepped down, seized the aged chief's skinny

body in his great black hands, and snapped him in two. There was a

tearing of tough cords and tissue, and the two halves fell into the

fire.

For an instant the Mercurians were stunned. Then some of them vented

hissing sounds of rage, while others prostrated themselves on the

floor. The black giant watched them narrowly for a moment, then turned

his attention to Morones. He seized him by the arm and drew him slowly

and irresistibly to him.

* * * * *

The murder of the Old Wise One had been done so quickly that Olear was

unable to prevent it. Had he been able to use his ray weapon he could

have burned the Plutonian down, but it had been bent at one of the

narrow turns of the crevice he had come down. The need for extreme

lightness in weapons was rather overdone in those early times, and a

little rough handling made them useless.

So now Olear, weaponless except for the service knife at his belt,

began the hazardous undertaking of climbing among the stalactites to a

position approximately above the Plutonian's head. The job required

judgment. Some of the stone masses were insecurely anchored and would

crash down at the lightest touch. Some were spaced so closely together

that he could not get between them. Others were so far apart that it

was difficult to get from one to another.

Yet he made it somehow, and unnoticed, for all eyes were turned on the

tense drama being enacted below. From almost directly overhead he saw

Morones being drawn upward.

"You saw," the Plutonian was saying triumphantly in Mercurian, "--you

saw me unmake your Old Fool. And now you will see that a Lord of the

Green Star is even softer, even weaker--"

Morones, in that pitiless grasp, turned his face to the hateful

grinning visage above him. In his last extremity he was still angry.

"You devil!" Morones shouted. "You may murder me, but they'll get you!

They'll get you!"

"Who'll get me?" the Plutonian purred silkily, deferring the pleasure

of the kill for another moment. Morones was having trouble with his

breathing. His red face lolled from side to side, his eyes rolled in

agony. Suddenly he saw Olear. Unbelieving, he relaxed.

"I'm seein' things!" he breathed.

"Who'll get me?" persisted the Plutonian, applying a little more

pressure.

"The I. F. P.!" Morones gasped.

"Well, you little son-of-a-gun!" Olear thought, and then he jumped.

He landed a-straddle the neck of the Plutonian, which was almost like

forking a horse. One brawny arm seized a horn. The other, with a

lightning-swift dart, brought the point of the long service-knife to

the pulsing black throat.

"Put him down!" Olear spoke into the great pointed ear. "Easy!"

Back on his feet, Morones began bellowing at the Mercurians. Utterly

demoralized, they fled pell-mell. Morones came back. He said:

"Nothing to tie him up with."

"That's all right," Olear replied, studiously keeping the knife point

at exactly the right place, "I'll ride him in. Get going, you, and be

tactful when you go through the door, or this sticker of mine might

slip!" With extreme care the Plutonian did exactly as Olear ordered

him to.

* * * * *

It was necessary to radio for one of the larger patrol ships to take

Olear's enormous prisoner back to Earth for his trial. The officer

testified, of course, and the Plutonian was duly sentenced to death

for the murder of the old Mercurian. Execution by dehydration was

decreed, so that the body would be uninjured for scientific study; and

to-day it is considered one of the finest specimens extant.

In his testimony, however, Olear so minimized his own connection with

the case that he received no public recognition. It was not until some

months afterward, when Morones, on leave, rode back with a shipload of

translucene, that the whole story came out, emphatically and

profanely. Olear finally consented to speak a few words for the

Telephoto News Co. As he stepped off the little platform deferential

hands tried to push him back.

"You haven't told them who you are," protested the announcer. "Give

your name and rank."

"Aw, they don't have to know that!" Olear rejoined, keeping on going.

"They know it's one of the Force. That's all they have to know.

Besides there's a blackjack game going on and I'm losing money every

minute I'm out of it."

The Exile of Time

PART THREE OF A FOUR-PART NOVEL

_By Ray Cummings_

WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE

[Illustration: _"Look!" exclaimed Larry._]

[Sidenote: Larry and George from 1935, Mary from 1777--all are caught

up in the treacherous Tugh's revolt of the Robots, in the Time-world

of 2930.]

There came a girl's scream, and muffled, frantic words.

"Let me out! Let me out!"

Then we saw her white face at the basement window. This, which was the

start of the extraordinary incidents, occurred on the night of June

8-9, 1935.

My name is George Rankin, and with my friend, Larry Gregory, we

rescued the girl who was imprisoned in the deserted house on Patton

Place, New York City. We thought at first that she was demented--this

strangely beautiful girl in long white satin dress, white powdered wig

and a black beauty patch on her check. She said she had come from the

year 1777, that her father was Major Atwood, of General Washington's

staff! Her name was Mistress Mary Atwood.

It was a strange story she had to tell us. A cage of shining metal

bars had materialized in her garden, and a mechanical man had come

from it--a Robot ten feet tall. It had captured her; brought her to

1935; left her, and vanished saying it would return.

We went back to that house on Patton Place. The cage did return, and

Larry and I fought the strange monster. We were worsted, and the Robot

seized Mary and me and whirled us back into Time in its room-like cage

of shining bars. Larry recovered his senses, rushed into Patton

Place, and there encountered another, smaller, Time-traveling cage,

and was himself taken off in it.

But the occupants of Larry's smaller cage were friendly. They were a

man and a girl of 2930 A.D.! The girl was the Princess Tina, and the

man, Harl, a young scientist of that age. With an older scientist--a

cripple named Tugh--Harl had invented the Time-vehicles.

* * * * *

We had heard of Tugh before. Mary Atwood had known him in the year

1777. He had made love to her, and when repulsed had threatened

vengeance against her father. And in 1932, a cripple named Tugh had

gotten into trouble with the police and had vowed some strange weird

vengeance against the city officials and the city itself. More than

that, the very house on Patton Place from which we had rescued Mary

Atwood, was owned by this man named Tugh, who was wanted by the police

but could not be found!

Tugh's vengeance was presently demonstrated, for in June, 1935, a

horde of Robots appeared. With flashing swords and red and violet

light beams the mechanical men spread about the city massacring the

people; they brought midsummer snow with their frigid red rays; and

then, in a moment, torrid heat and boiling rain. Three days and nights

of terror ensued; then the Robots silently withdrew into the house on

Patton Place and vanished. The New York City of 1935 lay wrecked; the

vengeance of Tugh against it was complete.

Larry, going back in Time now, was told by Harl and Princess Tina that

a Robot named Migul--a mechanism almost human from the Time-world of

2930--had stolen the larger cage and was running amuck through Time.

The strange world of 2930 was described to Larry--a world in which

nearly-human mechanisms did all the work. These Robots, diabolically

developed, were upon the verge of revolt. The world of machinery was

ready to assail its human masters!

Migul was an insubordinate Robot, and Harl and Tina were chasing it.

They whirled Larry back into Time, and they saw the larger cage stop

at a night in the year 1777--the same night from which Mary Atwood had

been stolen. They stopped there. Harl remained in the little cage to

guard it, while Tina and Larry went outside.

It was night, and the house of Major Atwood was nearby. British

redcoats had come to capture the colonial officer; but all they found

was his murdered body lying in the garden. Migul the Robot had chained

Mary and me to the door of his cage; had briefly stopped in the garden

and killed the major, and then had departed with us.

* * * * *

We now went back to the Beginning of Time, for the other cage was

again chasing us. Reaching the Beginning, we swept forward, and the

whole vast panorama of the events of Time passed in review before us.

Suddenly we found that Tugh himself was hiding in our cage! We had not

known it, nor had Migul, our Robot captor. Tugh was hiding here, not

trusting Migul to carry out his orders!

We realized now that all these events were part of the wild vengeance

of this hideously repulsive cripple. Migul was a mere machine carrying

out Tugh's orders. Tugh, in 2930, was masquerading as a friend of the

Government; but in reality it was he who was fomenting the revolt of

the Robots.

Tugh now took command of our cage. The smaller cage had only Harl in

it now, for Larry and Tina were marooned in 1777. Harl was chasing us.

Tugh stopped us in the year 762 A.D. We found that the space around

us now was a forest recently burned. Five hundred feet from us was the

space which held Harl's cage.

Presently it materialized! Mary and I were helpless. We stood watching

Tugh, as he crouched on the floor of our cage near its opened doorway.

A ray cylinder was in his hand, with a wire running to a battery in

the cage corner. He had forced Mary and me to stand at the window

where Harl would see us and be lured to approach.

From Harl's cage, five hundred feet across the blackened forest glade

of that day of 762, Harl came cautiously forward. Abruptly Tugh fired.

His cylinder shot a horizontal beam of intense actinic light. It

struck Harl full, and he fell.

Swiftly his body decomposed; and soon in the sunlight of the glade lay

a sagging heap of black and white garments enveloping the skeleton of

what a moment before had been a man!