CHAPTER XIII

_In the Burned Forest_

Tugh came limping forward. His cloak hung askew upon his thick

shoulders, one of which was much higher than the other, with the

massive head set low between. As he advanced, Migul moved aside.

"Master, I have done well. There is no reason to punish."

"Of course not, Migul. Well you have done, indeed. But I do not like

your ideas of mastery, and so I came just to make sure that you are

still very loyal to me. You have done well, indeed. Who is in this

other cage which follows us?"

"Master, Harl was in it. And the Princess Tina."

"Ah!"

"And a stranger. A man--"

"From 1935? Did they stop there?"

"Master, yes. But they stopped again, I think, in that same night of

1777, where I did your bidding. Master, the man Major Atwood is--"

"That is very good, Migul," Tugh said hastily. Mary and I standing

gazing at him, did not know then that Mary's father had been murdered.

And Tugh did not wish us to know it. "Very good, Migul." He regarded

us as though about to speak, but turned again to the Robot.

"And so Tina's cage follows us--as you hoped?"

"Yes, Master. But now there is only Harl in it. He approached us very

close a while in the past. He is alone."

"So?" Tugh glanced at the Time-dials. "Stop us where we planned. You

remember--in one of those years when this space was the big forest

glade."

* * * * *

He fronted Mary and me. "You are patient, young sir. You do not

speak."

His glittering black eyes held me. They were red-rimmed eyes, like

those of a beast. He had a strangely repulsive face. His lips were

cruel, and so thin they made his wide mouth like a gash. But there was

an intellectuality stamped upon his features.

He held the black cloak closely around his thick, misshapen form. "You

do not speak," he repeated.

I moistened my dry lips. Tugh was smiling now, and suddenly I saw the

full inhuman quality of his face--the great high-bridged nose, and

high cheek-bones; a face Satanic when he smiled.

I managed, "Should I speak, and demand the meaning of this? I do. And

if you will return this girl from whence she came--"

"It will oblige you greatly," he finished ironically. "An amusing

fellow. What is your name?"

"George Rankin."

"Migul took you from 1935?"

"Yes."

"Well, as you doubtless know, you are most unwelcome.... You are

watching the dials, Migul?"

"Yes, Master."

"You can return me," I said. I was standing with my arm around Mary. I

could feel her shuddering. I was trying to be calm, but across the

background of my consciousness thoughts were whirling. We must escape.

This Tugh was our real enemy, and for all the gruesome aspect of the

pseudo-human Robot, this man Tugh seemed the more sinister, more

menacing.... We must escape. Tugh would never return us to our own

worlds. But the cage was stopping presently. We were loose: a sudden

rush--

Dared I chance it? Already I had been in conflict with Migul, and

lived through it. But this Tugh--was he armed? What weapons might be

beneath that cloak? Would he kill me if I crossed him?... Whirling

thoughts.

* * * * *

Tugh was saying, "And Mary--" I snapped from my thoughts as Mary

gripped me, trembling at Tugh's words, shrinking from his gaze.

"My little Mistress Atwood, did you think because Tugh vanished that

year the war began that you were done with him? Oh, no: did I not

promise differently? You, man of 1935, are unwelcome." His gaze roved

me. "Yet not so unwelcome, either, now that I think of it. Chain them

up, Migul; use a longer chain. Give them space to move; you are

unhuman."

He suddenly chuckled, and repeated it: "You are unhuman, Migul!"

Ghastly jest! "Did not you know it?"

"Yes, Master."

The huge mechanism advanced upon us. "If you resist me," it murmured

menacingly, "I will be obliged to kill you. I--I cannot be

controlled."

It chained us now with longer chains than before. Tugh looked up from

his seat at the instrument table.

"Very good," he said crisply. "You may look out of the window, you

two. You may find it interesting."

We were retarding with a steady drag. I could plainly see trees out of

the window--gray, spectral trees which changed their shape as I

watched them. They grew with a visible flow of movement, flinging out

branches. Occasionally one would melt suddenly down. A living, growing

forest pressed close about us. And then it began opening, and moving

away a few hundred feet. We were in the glade Tugh mentioned, which

now was here. There was unoccupied space where we could stop and

unoccupied space five hundred feet distant.

Tugh and Migul were luring the other cage into stopping. Tugh wanted

five hundred feet of unoccupied space between the cages when they

stopped. His diabolical purpose in that was soon to be disclosed.

"700 A. D.," Tugh called.

"Yes, Master. I am ready."

* * * * *

It seemed, as our flight retarded further, that I could distinguish

the intervals when in the winter these trees were denuded. There would

be naked branches; then, in an instant, blurred and flickering forms

of leaves. Sometimes there were brief periods when the gray scene was

influenced by winter snows; other times it was tinged by the green of

the summers.

"750, Migul.... Hah! You know what to do if Harl dares to follow and

stop simultaneously?"

"Yes, Master."

"It will be pleasant to have him dead, eh, Migul?"

"Master, very pleasant."

"And Tina, too, and that young man marooned in 1777!" Tugh laughed.

This meant little to Mary and me; we could not suspect that Larry was

the man.

"Migul, this is 761."

The Robot was at the door. I murmured to Mary to brace herself for the

stopping. I saw the dark naked trees and the white of a snow in the

winter of 761; the coming spring of 762. And then the alternate

flashes of day and night.

The now familiar sensations of stopping rushed over us. There was a

night seconds long. Then daylight.

We stopped in the light of an April day of 762 A. D. There had been a

forest fire: so brief a thing we had not noticed it is we passed. The

trees were denuded over a widespread area; the naked blackened trunks

stood stripped of smaller branches and foliage. I think that the fire

had occurred the previous autumn; in the silt of ashes and charred

branches with which the ground was strewn, already a new pale-green

vegetation was springing up.

Our cage was set now in what had been a woodland glade, an irregularly

circular space of six or eight hundred feet, with the wreckage of the

burned forest around it. We were on a slight rise of ground. Through

the denuded trees the undulating landscape was visible over a

considerable area. It was high noon, and the sun hung in a pale blue

sky dotted with pure white clouds.

Ahead of us, fringed with green where the fire had not reached, lay a

blue river, sparkling in the sunlight. The Hudson! But it was not

named yet; nearly eight hundred and fifty years were to pass before

Hendrick Hudson came sailing up this river, adventuring, hoping that

here was the way to China.

We were near the easterly side of the glade; to the west there was

more than five hundred feet of vacant space. It was there the other

cage would appear, if it stopped.

* * * * *

As Mary and I stood by the window at the end of the chain-lengths

which held us, Tugh and Migul made hurried preparations.

"Go quickly, near the spot where he will arrive. When he sees you, run

away, Migul. You understand?"

"Yes, Master." The Robot left our doorway, tramping with stiff-legged

tread across the glade. Tugh was in the room behind us, and I turned

to him and asked:

"What are you going to do?"

He was at the telespectroscope. I saw on its recording mirror the

wraith-like image of the other vehicle. It was coming! It would be

retarding, maneuvering to stop at just this Time when now we existed

here; but across the glade, where Migul now was leaning against a

great black tree-trunk, there was yet no evidence of it.

Tugh did not answer my question. Mary said quaveringly:

"What are you going to do?"

He looked up. "Do not concern yourself, my dear. I am not going to

hurt you, nor this young man of 1935. Not yet."

He left the table and came at us. His cloak parted in front and I saw

his crooked hips, and shriveled bent legs.

"You stay at the window, both of you, and keep looking out. I want

this Harl to see you, but not me. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I said.

"And if you gesture, or cry out--if you do anything to warn him,"--he

was addressing me, with a tone grimly menacing--"then I will kill you.

Both of you. Do you understand?"

I did indeed. Nor could I doubt him. "We will do what you want." I

said. What, to me, was the life of this unknown Harl compared to the

safety of Mary Atwood?

* * * * *

Tugh crouched behind the table. From around its edge he could see out

the doorway and across the glade. I was aware of a weapon in his hand.

"Do not look around again," he repeated. "The other cage is coming;

it's almost here."

I held Mary, and we gazed out. We were pressed against the bars, and

sunlight was on our heads and shoulders. I realized that we could be

plainly seen from across the glade. We were lures--decoys to trap

Harl.

How long an interval went by I cannot judge. The scene was very

silent, the blackened forest lying sullen in the noonday sunlight.

Against the tree, five hundred feet or so from us, the dark towering

metal figure of the Robot stood motionless.

Would the other cage come? I tried to guess in what part of this open

glade it would appear.

At a movement behind me I turned slightly. At once the voice of Tugh

hissed:

"Do not do that! I warn you!"

His shrouded figure was still hunched behind the table. He was peering

toward the open door. I saw in his hand a small, barrel-like weapon,

with a wire dangling from it. The wire lay like a snake across the

floor and terminated in a small metal cylinder in the room corner.

"Turn front," he ordered vehemently. "One more backward look

and--Careful! Here he comes!"

* * * * *

Strange tableau in this burned forest! We were on the space of New

York City in 762 A. D. There was no life in the scene. Birds, animals

and insects shunned this fire-denuded area. And the humans of the

forest--were there none of them here?

Abruptly I saw a group of men at the edge of the glade. They had come

silently creeping forward, hiding behind the blackened tree-trunks.

They were all behind Migul. I saw them like dark shadows darting from

the shelter of one tree-trunk to the next, a group of perhaps twenty

savages.

Migul did not see them, nor, in the heavy silence, did he seem to hear

them. They came, gazing at our shining cage like animals fascinated,

wondering what manner of thing it was.

They were the ancestors of our American Indians. One fellow stopped in

a patch of sunlight and I saw him clearly. His half-naked body had an

animal skin draped over it, and, incongruously, around his forehead

was a band of cloth holding a feather. He carried a stone ax. I saw

his face; the flat, heavy features showed his Asiatic origin.

Someone behind this leader impulsively shot an arrow across the glade.

It went over Migul's head and fell short of our cage. Migul turned,

and a rain of arrows thudded harmlessly against its metal body. I

heard the Robot's contemptuous laugh. It made no answering attack, but

stood motionless. And suddenly, thinking it a god whom now they must

placate, the savages fell prostrate before him.

Strange tableau! I saw a ball of white mist across the glade near

Migul. Something was materializing; an imponderable ghost of something

was taking form. In an instant it was the wraith of a cage; then,

where nothing had been, stood a cage. It was solid and substantial--a

metal cage-room, gleaming white in the sunlight.

* * * * *

The tableau broke into sound and action. The savages howled. One

scrambled to his feet; then others. The Robot pretended to attack

them. An eery roar came from it as it turned toward the savages, and

in a panic of agonized terror they fled. In a moment they had

disappeared among the distant trees, with Migul's huge figure tramping

noisily after them.

From the doorway of the cage across the glade, a young man was

cautiously gazing. He had seen Migul make off; he saw, doubtless, Mary

and me at the window of this other cage five hundred feet away. He

came cautiously out from the doorway. He was a small, slim young man,

bareheaded, with a pallid face. His black garments were edged with

white, and he seemed unarmed. He hesitated, took a step or two

forward, stopped and stood cautiously peering. In the silence I could

have shouted a warning. But I did not dare. It would have meant Mary's

and my death.

She clung to me. "George, shall we?" she asked.

Harl came slowly forward. Then suddenly from the room behind us there

was a stab of light. It leaped knee-high past us, out through our door

across the glade--a tiny pencil-point of light so brilliantly

blue-white that it stabbed through the bright sunlight unfaded. It

went over Harl's head, but instantly bent down and struck upon him.

There it held the briefest of instants, then was gone.

Harl stood motionless for a second; then his legs bent and he fell.

The sunlight shone full on his crumpled body. And as I stared in

horror, I saw that he was not quite motionless. Writhing? I thought

so: a death agony. Then I realized it was not that.

"Mary, don't--don't look!" I said.

There was no need to tell her. She huddled beside me, shuddering, with

her face pressed against my shoulder.

The body of Harl lay in a crumpled heap. But the clothes were sagging

down. The flesh inside them was melting.... I saw the white face

suddenly leprous; putrescent.... All in this moment, within the

clothes, the body swiftly, decomposed.

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!

_(To be continued.)_

When the Moon Turned Green

_By Hal K. Wells_

[Illustration: _The monster whirled to confront Dixon._]

[Sidenote: Outside his laboratory Bruce Dixon finds a world of living

dead men--and above, in the sky, shines a weird green moon.]

It was nearly midnight when Bruce Dixon finished his labors and

wearily rose from before the work-bench of his lonely mountain

laboratory, located in an abandoned mine working in Southern Arizona.

He looked like some weirdly garbed monk of the Middle Ages as he

stretched his tall, lithe figure. His head was completely swathed in a

hood of lead-cloth, broken only by twin eyeholes of green glass. The

hood merged into a long-sleeved tunic of the same fabric, while

lead-cloth gauntlets covered his hands.

The lead-cloth costume was demanded by Dixon's work with radium

compounds. The result of that work lay before him on the bench--a

tiny lead capsule containing a pinhead lump of a substance which Dixon

believed would utterly dwarf earth's most powerful explosives in its

cataclysmic power.

So engrossed had Dixon been in the final stages of his work that for

the last seventy-two hours he had literally lived there in his

laboratory. It remained now only for him to step outside and test the

effect of the little contact grenade, and at the same time get a badly

needed taste of fresh air.

He set the safety catch on the little bomb and slipped it into his

pocket. As he started for the door he threw back his hood, revealing

the ruggedly good-looking face of a young man in the early thirties,

with lines of weariness now etched deeply into the clean-cut features.

* * * * *

The moment that Dixon entered the short winding tunnel that led to the

outer air he was vaguely aware that something was wrong. There was a

strange and intangibly sinister quality in the moonlight that streamed

dimly into the winding passage. Even the cool night air itself seemed

charged with a subtle aura of brooding evil.

Dixon reached the entrance and stepped out into the full radiance of

the moonlight. He stopped abruptly and stared around him in utter

amazement.

High in the eastern sky there rode the disc of a full moon, but it was

a moon weirdly different from any that Dixon had ever seen before.

This moon was a deep and baleful green; was glowing with a stark

malignant fire like that which lurks in the blazing heart of a giant

emerald! Bathed in the glow of the intense green rays, the desolate

mountain landscape shone with a new and eery beauty.

Dixon took a dazed step forward. His foot thudded softly into a small

feathered body there in the sparse grass, and he stooped to pick it

up. It was a crested quail, with every muscle as stonily rigid as

though the bird had been dead for hours. Yet Dixon, to his surprise,

felt the slow faint beat of a pulse still in the tiny body.

Then a dim group of unfamiliar objects down in the shadows of a small

gully in front of him caught Dixon's eye. Tucking the body of the

quail inside his tunic for later examination, he hurried down into the

gully. A moment later he was standing by what had been the night camp

of a prospector.

The prospector was still there, his rigid figure wrapped in a blanket,

and his wide-open eyes staring sightlessly at the malignant green moon

in the sky above. Dixon knelt to examine the stricken man's body. It

showed the same mysterious condition as that of the quail, rigidly

stiff in every muscle, yet with the slow pulse and respiration of life

still faintly present.

* * * * *

Dixon found the prospector's horse and burro sprawled on the ground

half a dozen yards away, both animals frozen in the same baffling

condition of living death. Dixon's brain reeled as he tried to fathom

the incredible calamity that had apparently overwhelmed the world

while he had been hidden away in his subterranean laboratory. Then a

new and terrible thought assailed him.

If the grim effect of the baleful green rays was universal in its

extent, what then of old Emil Crawford and his niece, Ruth Lawton?

Crawford, an inventor like Dixon, had his laboratory in a valley some

five miles away.

An abrupt chill went over Dixon's heart at the thought of Ruth

Lawton's vivid Titian-haired beauty being forever stilled in the grip

of that eery living death. He and Ruth had loved each other ever

since they had first met.

Dixon broke into a run as he headed for a nearby ridge that looked out

over the valley. His pulse hammered with unusual violence as he

scrambled up the steep incline, and his muscles seemed to be tiring

with strange rapidity. He had a vague feeling that the rays of that

malignant green moon were beating directly into his brain, clouding

his thoughts and draining his physical strength.

Gaining the crest of the ridge, he stopped aghast as he looked down

the valley toward Emil Crawford's place. Near the site of Crawford's

laboratory home was an unearthly pyrotechnic display such as Dixon had

never seen before. An area several hundred yards in diameter seemed

one vivid welter of pulsing colors, with flashing lances of every hue

crisscrossing in and through a great central cloud of ever-changing

opalescence like a fiery aurora borealis gone mad.

* * * * *

Dixon fought back the ever-increasing lethargy that was benumbing his

brain, and groped dazedly for a key to this new riddle. Was it some

weird and colossal experiment of Emil Crawford's that was causing the

green rays of death from a transformed moon, an experiment the earthly

base of which was amid the seething play of blazing colors down there

in the valley?

The theory seemed hardly a plausible one. As far as Dixon knew,

Crawford's work had been confined almost entirely to a form of

radio-propelled projectile for use in war-time against marauding

planes.

Dixon shook his head forcibly in a vain effort to clear the stupor

that was sweeping over him. It was strange how the vivid rays of that

malevolent green moon seemed to sear insidiously into one's brain,

stifling thought as a swamp fog stifles the sunlight.

Then Dixon suddenly froze into stark immobility, staring with startled

eyes at the base of a rocky crag thirty yards away. Something was

lurking there in the green-black shadows--a great sprawling black

shape of abysmal horror, with a single flaming opalescent eye fixed

unwinkingly upon Dixon.

The next moment the vivid moon was suddenly obscured by drifting wisps

of cloud. As the green light blurred to an emerald haze, the creature

under the crag came slithering out toward Dixon.

He had a vague glimpse of a monster such as one should see only in

nightmares--a huge loathesome spider-form with a bloated body as long

as that of a man, and great sprawling legs that sent it half a dozen

yards nearer Dixon in one effortless leap.

* * * * *

The onslaught proved too much for Dixon's morale, half-dazed as he was

by the green moon's paralyzing rays. With a low inarticulate cry of

terror, he turned and ran, straining every muscle in a futile effort

to distance the frightful thing that inexorably kept pace in the

shadowy emerald gloom behind him.

Dixon's strength faded rapidly after his first wild sprint. Fifty

yards more, and his faltering muscles failed him utterly. The dread

rays of that grim green moon sapped his last faint powers of

resistance. He staggered on for a few more painful steps then sprawled

helplessly to the ground. His brain hovered momentarily upon the verge

of complete unconsciousness.

Then he was suddenly aware of a fluttering struggle, inside his tunic

where he had placed the body of the quail. A moment later and the bird

wriggled free. It promptly spread its wings and flew away, apparently

as vibrantly alive as before the mysterious paralysis had stricken

it.

The incident brought a faint surge of hope to Dixon as he dimly

realized the answer to at least part of the green moon's riddle. The

bird had recovered after being shielded in the lead-cloth of his

tunic. That could only mean one thing--the menace of those green moon

rays must in some unknown way be radioactive. If Dixon could only get

the lead-cloth hood over his own head again he also might cheat the

green doom.

He fumbled at the garment with fingers that seemed as stiff as wooden

blocks. There was a long moment of agony when he feared that his

effort had come too late. Then the hood finally slipped over his head

just as utter oblivion claimed him.

* * * * *

Dixon came abruptly back to life with the dimly remembered echo of a

woman's scream still ringing in his ears. For a moment he thought that

he was awakening on his cot back in the laboratory after an unusually

vivid and weird nightmare. Then the garish green moonlight around him

brought swift realization that the incredible happenings of the night

were grim reality.

The clouds were gone from the moon, leaving his surroundings again

clearly outlined in the flood of green light. Dixon lifted his head

and cautiously searched the scene, but he could see no trace of the

great spider-form that had pursued him.

Wondering curiously why the creature had abandoned the chase at the

moment when victory was within its grasp, Dixon rose lithely to his

feet. The protecting hood had brought a quick and complete recovery

from the devastating effects of the green moon's rays. His muscles

were again supple, and his brain once more functioned with clearness.

Then abruptly Dixon's blood froze as the sound of a woman's scream

came again. The cry was that of a woman in the last extremity of

terror, and Dixon knew with a terrible certainty that that woman was

Ruth Lawton!

He raced toward the small ridge of rocks from behind which the sound

had apparently come. A moment later he reached the scene, and stopped

horror-stricken.

Three figures were there in a small rock-walled clearing. One was old

Emil Crawford, sprawled unconscious on his side, the soft glow of a

small white globe in a strange head-piece atop his gray hair shining

eerily in the green moonlight.

Near Crawford's body loomed the giant spider-creature, and clutched

firmly in the great claspers just under the monster's terrible fanged

mouth was the slender body of Ruth Lawton. Merciful unconsciousness

had apparently overwhelmed the girl now, for she lay supinely in the

dread embrace, with eyes closed and lips silent.

* * * * *

As the monster dropped the girl's body to the ground and whirled to

confront Dixon, for the first time he had a clear view of the thing in

all its horror.

He shuddered in uncontrollable nausea. The incredible size of the

creature was repellent enough, but it was the grisly head of the

monstrosity that struck the final note of horror. That head was more

than half human!

The fangs and other mouth parts were those of a giant tarantula, but

these merged directly into the mutilated but unmistakable head of a

man--with an aquiline nose, staring eyes, and a touseled mop of dirty

brown hair. Resting on top of the head was a metallic head-piece

similar to the one worn by Emil Crawford, but the small globe in this

one blazed with a fiery opalescence.

The creature crouched lower, with its legs twitching in obvious

preparation for a spring. Dixon looked wildly about him for a possible

weapon, but saw nothing. Then he suddenly remembered the little lead

grenade in his pocket. The cataclysmic power of that little bomb

should be more than a match for even this monster.

His fingers closed over the grenade just as the great spider's

twitching legs straightened in a mighty effort that sent it hurtling

through the air straight toward him.

Dixon dodged to one side with a swiftness that caused the monster to

miss by a good yard. Dixon raced a dozen paces farther away, then

whirled to face the great spider. The creature's legs began scuttling

warily forward. It was to be no wild leap through the air this time,

but a swift rush over the ground that Dixon would be powerless to

evade.

Releasing the safety catch of the grenade, Dixon hurled the tiny

missile straight at the rock floor just under the feet of that vast

misshapen creature. There was a vivid flash of blinding blue flame,

then a terrific report. Dazed by the concussion, but unhurt, Dixon

cautiously went over to investigate the result of the explosion.

* * * * *

One brief glance was enough. The hideous mass of shattered flesh

sprawling there on the rocks would never again be a menace. The only

thing that had escaped destruction in that shattering blast was the

strange head-piece the thing had worn. Either the small shining globe

was practically indestructible, or else it had been spared by some odd

freak of the explosive, for it still blazed in baleful opalescence

atop the shattered head.

Dixon hurried back to where Emil Crawford and Ruth Lawton lay. The

girl's body was so rigidly inert that Dixon threw back his

encumbering hood and knelt over her for a swift examination. His fears

were quickly realized. Ruth was already a victim of the green moon's

dread paralysis.

"Dixon! Bruce Dixon!"

Dixon turned at the call. Emil Crawford, his face drawn with pain, had

struggled up on one elbow. The old man was obviously fighting off

complete collapse by sheer will power.

"Dixon! Replace Ruth's shining head-piece at once!" Crawford gasped.

"That will make her immune from the Green Death, and then we can--"

The old man's voice swiftly faded away into silence as he again

fainted.

Dixon hurriedly searched the scene and found Ruth's head-piece on the

ground where it had apparently fallen in her first struggle with the

giant spider, but the tiny white globe in the device was shattered and

dark.

Despair gripped Dixon for a moment. Then he remembered the unbroken

head-piece of the slain monster. True, the glow of its globe was

opalescent instead of white, but it seemed to offer its wearer the

same immunity to the green moon's rays.

He swiftly retrieved the head-piece from the spider-creature's body,

and set the light metal framework in place on Ruth's auburn curls.

* * * * *

Results came with incredible quickness. The rigidity left Ruth's body

immediately. Her breath came in fast-quickening gasps, and her eyes

fluttered open as Dixon knelt over her.

"It's Bruce, Ruth--Bruce Dixon," he said tenderly. "Don't you know me,

dear?"

But there was no trace of recognition in those wide-open blue eyes

staring fixedly up at him. For a moment Ruth lay there with muscles

strangely tense. Then with a lithe strength that was amazing she

suddenly twisted free of the clasp of Dixon's arms and sprang to her

feet.

The next minute Dixon gave ground, and he found himself battling for

his very life. This was not the Ruth Lawton whom he had known and

loved. This was a madwoman of savage menace, with soft lips writhing

over white teeth in a jungle snarl, and blue eyes that fairly

glittered with unrestrained, insensate hate.

He tried to close with the maddened girl, but instantly regretted his

rashness. Her slender body seemed imbued with the strength of a

tigress as she sent slim fingers clawing at his throat. He tore

himself free just in time. Dazed and shaken, he again gave ground

before the fury of the girl's attack.

He could not bring himself to the point of actively fighting back, yet

he knew that in another moment he would either have to mercilessly

batter his beautiful adversary into helplessness or else be himself

overcome. There was no middle course.

Then old Emil Crawford's voice came again as the old man rallied to

consciousness for another brief moment.

"Bruce, the opal globe is a direct link to those devils themselves!

Break it, Bruce, break it--for Ruth's sake as well as your own!"

* * * * *

Crawford had barely finished his gasped warning when Ruth again hurled

herself forward upon Dixon with tapering fingers curved like talons as

they sought his throat. Dixon swept her clutching hands aside with a

desperate left-handed parry, then snatched wildly at the gleaming

head-piece with his right hand.

The thing came away in his grasp, and in the same swift movement he

savagely smashed it against the rocky wall beside him. Whatever the

opalescent globe's eery powers might be, it was not indestructible. It

shattered like a bursting bubble, its fire dying in a tiny cloud of

particles that shimmered faintly for a moment, then was gone.

Again, the effect upon Ruth was almost instantaneous. Every trace of

her insane fury vanished. She swayed dizzily and would have fallen had

not Dixon caught her in his arms. For a moment she looked up into his

face with eyes in which recognition now shone unmistakably. Then her

eyelids slowly closed, and she again lapsed into unconsciousness.

Dixon looked over at Emil Crawford, and found that the old man had

again collapsed. Dixon knew of but one thing to do with the stricken

man and girl, and that was to take them to his laboratory. The

laboratory, apparently insulated by veins of lead ore in the mountain

surrounding it, was the one sure spot of refuge in this weird

nightmare world of paralyzing lunar rays and prowling monsters.

* * * * *

Flinging his tunic over Ruth's head to shield her as much as possible

from the moonlight, he carried her to the laboratory, then returned

for Emil Crawford. Safe within the subterranean retreat with the old

scientist, Dixon removed his encumbering lead costume and began doing

what he could for the stricken pair.

Ruth was still unconscious, but the cataleptic rigidity was already

nearly gone from her body, and her breathing was now the deep

respiration of normal sleep.

Emil Crawford's condition was more serious. Not only was the old man's

frail strength nearly exhausted, but he was also badly wounded. His

thin chest was seared by two great livid areas of burned flesh, the

nature of which puzzled Dixon as he began to dress the injuries. They

seemed of radioactive origin, yet in many ways they were unlike any

radium burns that Dixon had ever seen.

While Dixon was working over him, Crawford stirred weakly and opened

his eyes. He sighed in relief as he recognized his surroundings.

"Good boy, Bruce!" he commended wanly. "We are safe here among the

insulating veins of lead ore in the mountain. This is where Ruth and I

were trying to come after we escaped from those devils to-night. But,

Bruce, how did you guess the radioactive nature of the Green Sickness

in time to avoid falling a victim to it as soon as you left the

shelter of your laboratory?"

"My escape was entirely luck," Dixon admitted grimly. "To-night I left

my laboratory for the first time in three days. I found a world gone

mad, with a strange green moon blazing down upon a land of living dead

men, and with marauding monsters hideous enough to have been spawned

in the Pit itself. What in Heaven's name does it all mean?"

* * * * *

"I am afraid that it means the end of the world, Bruce," Crawford

answered quietly. "It was a little over forty-eight hours ago that the

incredible event first happened. Without a moment's warning, _the moon

turned green_! Hardly had the world's astronomers had time to

speculate upon this amazing phenomenon before the Green Sickness

struck--a pestilence of appalling deadliness that swept resistlessly

in the path of those weird green rays. Wherever the green moon shone,

every living creature succumbed with ghastly swiftness to the

condition of living death that you have seen.

"Westward with the racing moon sped the Green Sickness, and nothing

stayed its attack. The green rays pierced through buildings of wood,

stone, and iron as though they did not exist. A doomed world had

neither time nor opportunity to guess that lead was the one armor

against those dread rays. To-night, Bruce, we are in all probability

the only three human beings on this planet who are not slumbering in

the paralytic stupor of the Green Sickness.

"Ruth and I were stricken with the rest of the world," Crawford

continued. "We recovered consciousness hours later to find ourselves

captives in the Earth-camp of the invaders themselves. You probably

saw the display of lights that marks their camp down in the valley a

mile beyond my place. We have learned since that the space ship of the

invaders dropped silently down into the valley the night before the

moon turned green and established the camp as a sort of outpost and

observatory. They left two of their number there as pioneers, then the

rest of them departed in the space ship for their present post up near

the moon.

"Ruth and I were revived only that the two invaders in the camp might

question us regarding life on this planet. They have a science that is

based upon principles as utterly strange and incomprehensible to us as

ours probably is to them. They probed my brain with a thought machine.

It was an apparatus that worked both ways. What knowledge they got

from me I do not know, but I do know that they unwittingly told me

much in the bizarre and incredible mental pictures that the machine

carried from their brains to mine.

* * * * *

"They are refugees. Bruce, from a planet that circled about the star

that we know as Alpha Centauri, a star that is the nearest of all our

stellar neighbors, being only four and a third light years distant.

Their home planet was disrupted by a colossal engineering experiment

of the Centaurians themselves, the only survivors being a group of

fifty who escaped in a space ship just before the catastrophe.

"There were no other habitable planets in their own system, so in

desperation these refugees sped out across the void to our solar

system in the hope of finding a new home here. They reconnoitered our

Earth secretly and found it ideal. But first they believed that they

must conquer the life that already held this Earth. To do this, they

struck with the Green Sickness.

"The rays that are turning the moon green emanate from the space ship

hovering up there some fifty thousand miles from the moon itself. The

Centaurian's rays, blending with the sunlight striking the disc of the

full moon, are intensified in some unknown way, then reflected across

the quarter of a million miles to the Earth, to flood this planet with

virulent radiance.

"The green moonlight is radioactive in nature, and overcomes animal

life within a matter of fifteen minutes or less. The rays are most

powerful when the moon is in the sky, but their effect continues even

after it has set, because as long as the green moonlight strikes any

part of the Earth's atmosphere the entire atmospheric envelope of the

planet remains charged with the paralyzing radioactive influence.

"Earth's inhabitants are not dead. They are merely stupefied. If the

green rays were to cease now, most of the victims of the Green

Sickness would quickly recover with little permanent injury. But,

Bruce, if that evil green moon blazes on for twenty-four hours more,

the brain powers of Earth's millions will be forever shattered. So

weakened will they be by then that recovery will be impossible even

with the rays shut off, and the entire planet will be populated only

by mindless imbeciles, readily available material for the myriads of

monstrous hybrids that the invaders will create to serve them.

* * * * *

"To-night you saw the hybrid that the invaders sent to recapture Ruth and

me. It was a fit specimen of the grisly magic which those devils from

outer space work with their uncanny surgery and growth-stimulating

radioactive rays. The basic element of that monster was an ordinary

tarantula spider, with its growth incredibly increased in a few short

hours of intensive ray treatment in the Centaurian's camp. The half-head

grafted to it was that of a human being. They always graft the brain

cavity of a mammal to a hybrid--half heads of burros, horses, or even

dogs, but preferably those of human beings. I think that they prefer to

use as great a brain power as possible.

"The hybrids are controlled through the small opalescent globes on

their heads, globes that are in direct tune with a huge master globe

of opalescent fire in the invaders' camp. When Ruth attacked you after

you placed the opal head-piece upon her head, she was for the moment

merely another of the invaders' servants blindly obeying the broadcast

command to kill. The white globes that Ruth and I wore when we escaped

from the camp were identical with those worn by the invaders

themselves, being nothing more than harmless insulators against the

effect of the green moonlight."

A sudden spasm of pain convulsed Crawford's face. Dixon sprang forward

to aid him, but the old man rallied with an effort and weakly waved

Dixon back.

"I'm all right, Bruce," he gasped. "My strength is nearly exhausted,

that is all. Like a garrulous old fool I've worn myself out talking

about everything but the one important subject. Bruce, have you

developed that new and infinitely powerful explosive you were working

on?"

"Yes," Dixon answered grimly. "I have an explosive right here in the

laboratory that can easily blow the Centaurian's camp completely off

the map."

* * * * *

Crawford shook his head impatiently. "Destroying the camp would do no

good. We must shatter the space ship itself if we are to extinguish

those green rays in time to save our world."

"That is impossible if the space ship is hovering up there by the

moon!" Dixon protested.

"No, it is not impossible," Crawford answered confidently. "I have a

projectile in my laboratory that will not only hurtle across that

great gap with incredible speed, but will also infallibly strike its

target when it gets there. It is a projectile that is as irresistibly

drawn by radio waves as steel is by a magnet, and it will speed as

straight to the source of those waves as a bit of steel will to the

magnet.

"The Centaurians in the space ship," Crawford continued, "are in

constant communication with their camp through radio apparatus much

like our own. If you can pack a powerful contact charge of your

explosive in my projectile, I can guarantee that when the projectile

is released it will flash out into space and score a direct hit

against the walls of the space ship."

"I can pack the explosive in the projectile, all right," Dixon

answered grimly. "We will need only a lump the size of an egg, and a

small container of the heavy gas that activates it. The explosive

itself is a radium compound that, when allowed to come in contact with

the activating gas, becomes so unstable that any sharp blow will set

it off in an explosion that in a matter of seconds releases the

infinite quantities of energy usually released by radium over a period

of at least twelve hundred years. The cataclysmic force of that

explosion should be enough to wreck a small planet."

"Good!" Crawford commended weakly. "If you can only strike your blow

to-night, Bruce, our world still has a chance. If only you--" The old

man's voice suddenly failed. He sank back in utter collapse, his eyes

closed and his last vestige of strength spent.

* * * * *

Knowing that the old man would probably remain in his sleep of

complete exhaustion for hours, Dixon turned his attention to Ruth. To

his surprise, he found her sitting up, apparently completely

recovered.

"I'm quite all right again," she said reassuringly. "I've been

listening to what Uncle told you. Go ahead and prepare your explosive,

Bruce. I'll do what I can for Uncle while you're working."

Dixon donned his lead-cloth hood and tunic again and set to work. Ten

minutes later he turned to Ruth with a slender foot-long cylinder of

lead in his hand.

"Ruth, will this fit your Uncle's projectile?" he asked.

"Easily," she assured him. "But isn't it frightfully dangerous to

carry in that form?"

"No, it's absolutely safe now, and will be safe until this stud is

turned, releasing the activating gas from one compartment to mingle

with the radium compound in the other section. Then the cylinder will

become a bomb that any sharp jar will detonate."

"All right, let's go then," Ruth answered. "Have you any more of those

lead clothes that I can wear? I could wear the globe head-piece that

Uncle wore, but it would loom up in the dark like a searchlight."

Dixon did not protest Ruth's going with him. There was nothing further

that could be done for Emil Crawford for hours and in the hazardous

sally to Crawford's laboratory he knew that Ruth's cool courage and

quick wits would at least double their chances for success in their

desperate mission. He provided her with a reserve hood and tunic of

lead cloth, then handed her a tiny leaden pellet.

"Keep this for a last resort," he told her. "It's a contact bomb that

becomes ready to throw when this safety catch is snapped over. I wish

we had a dozen of them, but that's the last capsule I had and there's

no time to prepare more."

He fished a rusty old revolver out of a drawer, and placed it in his

pocket. "I'll use this gun for a last resort weapon myself," he said.

"The action only works about half the time, but it's the only firearm

in the place."

* * * * *

The green moon was still high in the sky as Ruth and Dixon emerged

from the tunnel, but it was already beginning to drop gradually down

toward the west. Dixon wheeled his disreputable flivver out of its

nearby shed. With engine silent they started coasting down the rough

winding road into the valley.

For nearly two miles they wound down the long grade. Then, just as

they reached the valley floor they saw, far up among the rocks to the

left of the road, the thing they had been dreading--the bobbing

opalescent globe that marked the presence of one of the Centaurians'

hideous hybrids. The shimmering globe paused for a moment, then came

racing down toward them.

The need for secrecy was past. Dixon threw the car in gear and

savagely pulled down the gas lever. With throttle wide open they

hurtled around the perilous curves of the narrow road, but always in

the rocks beside and above them they heard the scuttling progress of

some huge, many-legged creature that constantly kept pace with them.

They had occasional glimpses of the thing. Its pale jointed body was

some twenty feet in length, and had apparently been developed from

that of a centipede, with scores of racing legs that carried it with

startling speed over the rocky terrain.

The flivver raced madly on toward the blaze of kaleidoscopic colors

that marked the Centaurians' camp. Crawford's home loomed up now

barely a hundred yards ahead.

As though sensing that its quarry was about to escape, the hybrid

flashed a burst of speed that sent it on by the car for a full fifty

yards, then down into the road directly in front, where it whirled to

confront them. Dixon knew that he could never stop the car in the

short gap separating them from that huge upreared figure, and to

attempt swerving from the road upon either side was certain disaster.

He took the only remaining chance. With throttle wide open he sent the

little car hurtling straight for the giant centipede. He threw his

body in front of Ruth, to shield her as much as possible, just as they

smashed squarely into the hybrid.

The impact was too much for even that monstrous figure. It was hurled

bodily from the road to crash upon the jagged rocks at the bottom of a

thirty-foot gully. There it sprawled in a broken mass, too hopelessly

shattered to ever rise again.

The flivver skidded momentarily, then crumpled to a full stop against

the rocks at the side of the road. Dixon and Ruth scrambled from the

wreckage and raced for Crawford's home, scarcely fifty yards ahead.

* * * * *

They entered the laboratory and Ruth went directly over to where the

radio-projectile rested in a wall-rack. Dixon took the gleaming

cylinder down to examine it. Tapering to a rounded point at the front

end, it was nearly a yard long and about five inches in diameter.

"The mechanism inside the projectile is turned off now, of course,"

Ruth said. "If it were turned on, the projectile would have been on

its way to the space ship long ago, for the radio waves are as strong

here as at the Centaurians' camp."

The girl pointed to a small metal stud in the nose of the projectile.

"When that is snapped over, it makes the contact that sets the

magnetizing mechanism into action," she explained. "Then the

projectile will go hurtling directly for the source of any radio waves

within range. I don't know the nature of its mechanism. Uncle merely

told me that it is the application of an entirely new principle of

electricity."

Dixon laid the long projectile down on the work-bench, and began

packing his lead cylinder of explosive inside it. He had to release

the lead cylinder's safety catch before closing the projectile, which

made his work a thrillingly precarious one, for any sharp blow now

would detonate the unstable mixture of gas and radium compound in one

cataclysmic explosion.

He sighed in relief as he finally straightened up with the completed

projectile held carefully in both hands.

"All we have to do now, Ruth," he said, "is step out from under this

roof and snap that energizing stud. Then this little package of

destruction will be on its way to our Centaurian friends up there by

that pestilential green moon."

* * * * *

Ruth stepped ahead to open the door for him. With the end of their

task so near at hand, both forgot to be cautious.

Ruth threw the door open and took one step outside, then suddenly

screamed in terror as her shoulders were encircled by a long

snake-like object that came whipping down from some vast something

that had been lurking just outside. Dixon tried to dodge back, but too

late. Another great hairy tentacle came lashing around his shoulders,

pinning his arms tightly and jerking him out of the doorway.

He had a swift vague glimpse of a hybrid looming there in the green

moonlight--a tarantula hybrid that in size and horror dwarfed any of

the frightful products of Centaurian science that he had yet seen.

Before Dixon had time to note any of the details of his assailant

another tentacle curled around him, tearing the projectile from his

grasp. Then he was irresistibly drawn up toward that grisly head where

Ruth's body was also suspended in one of the powerful tentacles. The

next moment, bearing its burdens with amazing ease, the giant hybrid

started off.

Dixon tried with all his strength to squirm free enough to get a hand

upon the revolver in his pocket, but the constricting tentacle did not

give for even an inch. The only result of his effort was to twist his

hood to one side, leaving him as effectually blindfolded as though his

head were in a sack.

Long minutes of swaying, pitching motion followed as the hybrid sped

over the rocky ridges and gullies. It finally came to a halt, and for

another minute or so Dixon was held there motionless in mid-air, dimly

conscious of a subdued hum of activity all about him. Then he was

gently lowered to the ground again.

While one tentacle still held him securely, another tore away his hood

and tunic. Almost immediately the hood was replaced by one of the

protective white globe devices. Dixon blinked for a moment in

half-blinded bewilderment as he got his first glimpse of the

Earth-camp of the Centaurians.

* * * * *

The place, located on the smooth rock floor of a large natural basin,

seemed a veritable cauldron of seething colors which rippled and

blended in a dazzling maze of unearthly splendor. But Dixon forgot

everything else in that weird camp as his startled gaze fell upon the

creature standing directly in front of him.

He knew instinctively that the thing must be one of the Alpha

Centaurians, for in its alien grotesqueness the figure was utterly

dissimilar to anything ever seen upon Earth before.

Life upon the shattered planet of that far distant sun had apparently

sprung from sources both crustacean and reptilian. The Centaurian

stood barely five feet in height. Its bulky, box-like body was

completely covered with a chitinous armor that gleamed pale yellowish

green.

Two short powerful legs, scaled like those of a lizard, ended in feet

that resembled degenerated talons. Two pairs of slender arms emanated

from the creature's shoulders, with their many-jointed flexible length

ending in delicate three-pronged hands.

The scaly hairless head beneath the Centaurian's white globe device

bore a face that was blankly hideous. Two great lidless eyes, devoid

of both pupils and whites, stared unblinkingly at Dixon like twin

blobs of red-black jelly. A toothless loose-lipped mouth slavered

beneath.

Dixon averted his gaze from the horror of that fearful alien face, and

looked anxiously around for Ruth. He saw her almost at once, over at

his right. She was tethered by a light metallic rope that ran from her

waist to one of the metal beams supporting the great shimmering ball

of opalescent fire which formed the central control of the hybrids.

One of the white globe devices had been placed upon Ruth's head and

she was apparently unhurt, for she pluckily flashed a reassuring smile

at Dixon.

* * * * *

Directly in front of Dixon and some forty yards away there was a large

pen-like enclosure, with vari-colored shafts of radiance from banks of

projectors constantly sweeping through it. Dixon drew in his breath

sharply as he saw the frightful life lying dormant in that pen. It was

a solid mass of hybrids--great loathesome figures fashioned from a

score of different worms, insects, and spiders. The globes upon the

gruesome mammalian half-heads were still dark and unfired with

opalescence.

The invaders had apparently raided most of the surrounding country in

obtaining those grafted half-heads. Near where Dixon stood there was a

tragic little pile of articles taken from the Centaurians'

victims--prospectors' picks, shovels, axes, and other tools.

Over to the left of the dormant hybrids stood the second Alpha

Centaurian, curiously examining Dixon's projectile. The creature

apparently suspected the deadly nature of the gleaming cylinder for it

soon laid it carefully down and packed cushions of soft fabric around

it to shield it from any possible shock.

Then at an unspoken command from the first Centaurian the great hybrid

whirled Dixon around to face a small enclosure just behind him in

which were located banks of control panels and other apparatus. One of

the pieces of mechanism, with a regularly spaced stream of sparks

snapping between two terminals, was apparently a radio receiver

automatically recording the broadcast from the space ship. Dixon was

unable to even guess the nature of the remaining apparatus.

"Bruce, be careful!" Ruth called in despairing warning. "He is going

to put the thought-reading machine on your brain. Then he'll learn

what the projectile is for, and everything will be lost!"

* * * * *

Dixon's mind raced with lightning speed in the face of this new

danger. He stealthily slipped a hand over the revolver in his pocket.

There was one vulnerable spot in the great hybrid holding him, and

that was the opalescent globe on the creature's head. If he could only

smash that globe with one well-directed shot, he might be able to

elude the Centaurians for the precious minute necessary to send the

projectile on its deadly journey.

The hybrid began maneuvering Dixon toward the instrument enclosure.

For a fleeting second the grip of the tentacles upon his shoulders

loosened slightly. Dixon took instant advantage of it. Twisting

himself free from the loosened tentacle in one mighty effort, he

whirled and fired pointblank at the opalescent globe on the head

looming above him.

The bullet smashed accurately home, shattering the globe like a

bursting bubble. The great hybrid collapsed with startling suddenness,

its life force instantly extinguished as the globe burst.

Dixon leaped to one side and swung the gun into line with the

Centaurian's hideous face. He pulled the trigger--but there was no

response. The rusty old firearm had hopelessly jammed.

Dixon savagely flung the revolver at the Centaurian. The creature

tried to dodge, but the heavy gun struck its body a glancing blow.

There was a slight spurt of body fluid as the chitinous armor was

partly broken.

Dixon's heart leaped exultantly. No wonder these creatures had to

create hybrids to fight for them. Their own bodies were as vulnerable

as that of a soft-shelled crab!

The Centaurian quickly drew a slender tube of dark green from a

scabbard in its belt. Dixon dodged back, looking wildly about him for

a weapon. There was an ax in the pile only a few yards away. Dixon

snatched the ax up, and whirled to give battle.

* * * * *

The other Centaurian had come hurrying over now to aid its mate. Dixon

was effectually barred from attempting any progress toward the

projectile by the two grotesque creatures as they stood alertly there

beside each other with their green tubes menacing him. Dixon waited

tensely at bay, remembering those searing radium burns upon Emil

Crawford's body.

Then the first Centaurian abruptly leveled a second and smaller tube

upon Dixon. A burst of yellow light flashed toward him, enveloping him

in a cloud of pale radiance before he could dodge.

There was a faint plop as the protecting white globe upon his head was

shattered. The yellow radiance swiftly faded, leaving Dixon unhurt,

but he realized that the first round in the battle had been won

decisively by the Centaurians. His only chance now, was to end the

battle before the paralyzing rays of the green moon sapped his

strength.

He warily advanced upon the Centaurians. Their green tubes swung into

line and twin bolts of violet flame flashed toward him. He dodged, and

the bolts missed by inches. Then Dixon nearly fell as his foot struck

a bundle of cloth on the ground.

The next moment he snatched the bundle up with a cry of triumph. It

was his lead-cloth tunic, torn and useless as a garment, but

invaluable as a shield against the searing effects of those bolts of

radioactive flame. He hurriedly wrapped the fabric in a rough bundle

around his left forearm. The next time the tubes' violet flames

flashed toward him he thrust his rude shield squarely into their path.

There was a light tingling shock, and that was all. The bolts did not

sear through.

With new confidence, Dixon boldly charged the two Centaurians. A weird

battle ensued in the garishly lighted arena.

The effective range of the violet flashes was only about ten feet, and

Dixon's muscular agility was far superior to that of his antagonists.

By constant whirling and dodging he was able to either catch the

violet bolts upon his shielded arm or else dodge them entirely.

Yet, in spite of the Centaurians' clumsy slowness, they maneuvered

with a cool strategy that constantly kept the Earth man's superior

strength at bay. Always as Dixon tried to close with one of them he

was forced to retreat when a flanking attack from the other threatened

his unprotected back. And always the Centaurians maneuvered to bar

Dixon from attempting any dash toward the projectile.

* * * * *

The minutes passed, and Dixon felt his strength rapidly ebbing, both

from his herculean exertions and from the paralyzing rays of the green

moon beating down upon his unprotected head. As his speed of foot

lessened the Centaurians began inexorably pressing their advantage.

Dixon was no longer escaping unscathed. In spite of his frantic

efforts to dodge, twice the violet bolts grazed his body in searing

flashes of exquisite agony.

His muscles stiffened still more in the attack of the Green Sickness.

Desperately dodging a Centaurian bolt, he stumbled and nearly fell. As

he staggered to regain his balance, one of his antagonists scrambled

to the coveted position behind him.

It was only Ruth's scream of warning that galvanized Dixon's numbed

brain into action in time to meet the imminent peril.

In one mighty effort he flung his ax at the Centaurian in front of

him. The heavy blade cut deep into the thinly armored body. Mortally

wounded, the creature collapsed.

Dixon whirled and flung up his shielded left arm just in time to

intercept the violet bolt of the other Centaurian. Warily backing

away, Dixon succeeded in retrieving his ax from beside the twitching

body of the fallen invader.

Then, with the heavy weapon again in his hand, he remorselessly

charged his remaining foe. The Centaurian's tube flashed in a

veritable hail of hurtling violet bolts, but Dixon caught the flashes

upon his shield and closed grimly in.

One final leap brought him to close quarters. The heavy ax whistled

through the air in a single mighty stroke that cleft the Centaurian's

frail body nearly in two.

Then Ruth's excited scream came again. "Bruce--the other one! Get it

quick!"

* * * * *

Dixon turned. The wounded invader, taking advantage of their

preoccupation in the final struggle with its mate, had dragged its

crippled body over to the instrument enclosure. Dixon staggered toward

it as fast as his half-paralyzed muscles would permit.

He was just too late. The Centaurian jerked a lever home a fraction of

a second before Dixon's smashing ax forever ended his activities. The

lever's action upon the pen of inert hybrids was immediate.

The sweeping lances of light vanished in a brief sheet of vivid flame

which kindled the dark globes on the hybrids' gruesome heads to steady

opalescence--and the dread horde came to life! Sprawling from the pen,

they came scuttling toward Dixon in a surging flood--a scene out of a

nightmare.

Dixon faced the oncoming horde in numb despair, knowing that his

nearly-paralyzed body had no chance in flight. Then, just as the

hybrids were nearly upon him, he heard Ruth's encouraging voice again.

"There's still one chance left, Bruce," she cried, "and I'll take it!"

Dixon turned. Ruth had in her hand the tiny contact grenade he had

given her for a last emergency. She snapped the safety catch on the

little bomb, then hurled it squarely at the giant opalescent globe

looming close beside her.

There was a terrific explosion and the great globe shattered to atoms.

Apparently stunned by the concussion but otherwise unhurt, Ruth was

flung clear of the wreckage.

With the shattering of the central globe the strange life force of the

hybrid horde vanished instantly and completely. Midway in their rush

they sprawled inert and dead, with their outstretched legs so close to

Dixon that he had to step over one or two to get clear.

* * * * *

Dixon's brain reeled in the reaction of relief from the horde's

hideous menace. Then he grimly fought to clear his fast-numbing senses

long enough for the one final task that he knew must still be done.

The projectile, cushioned as it was, had escaped detonation in the

blast. He had only to stagger across the twenty yards separating him

from it, then release the stud that would send it flashing out into

space.

But his last shred of reserve strength had nearly been sapped now by

the insidious rays of that malevolent green moon. Even as he started

toward the projectile, he staggered and fell. Unable to drag himself

to his feet again, he began grimly crawling with arms and legs as

stiff and dead as that much stone.

Only ten more yards to go now. And now only five. Grimly, doggedly,

with senses reeling and muscles nearly dead, the last survivor of a

dying planet fought desperately on under the malignant rays of the

vivid green moon!

One last sprawling convulsive effort--and Dixon had the projectile in

his hands. His stiff fingers fumbled agonizingly with the activating

stud. Then abruptly the stud snapped home. With a crescendo whistle of

sundered air the projectile flashed upward into the western sky.

Dixon collapsed upon his back, his dimming eyes fixed upon the grim

green moon. Minutes that seemed eternities dragged slowly by. Then his

heart leaped in sudden hope. Had there really glowed a small blue

spark up there beside the green moon--a spark marking the mighty

explosion of the radium bomb against the Centaurians' space ship?

A fraction of a second later, and doubt became glorious certainty. The

vivid green of the moonlight vanished. The silvery white sheen of a

normal moon again shone serenely up there in the western sky!

With the extinguishing of the dread green rays, new strength surged

swiftly through Dixon's tired body. He arose and hurried over to where

Ruth lay limp and still near the wreckage of the great globe. He

worked over her for many anxious minutes before the normal flush of

health returned to her white cheeks and her eyes slowly opened.

Then he took Ruth into his arms and for a long minute the two silently

drank in the beauty of that radiant silver moon above them, while

their hearts thrilled with a realization of the glorious miracle of

awakening life that they knew must already be beginning to rejuvenate

a stricken world.

The Death-Cloud

_By Nat Schachner and Arthur L. Zagat_

[Illustration: _Someone at a huge switchboard turned toward me. I

pressed the trigger._]

[Sidenote: The epic exploit of one who worked in the dark and alone,

behind the enemy lines, in the great Last War.]

We sat, Eric Bolton and I, at a parapet table atop the 200-story

General Aviation Building. The efficient robot waiter of the Sky Club

had cleared away the remnants of an epicurean meal. Only a bowl of

golden fruit remained--globes of nectar picked in the citrus groves of

California that morning.

My eye wandered over the scene spread before us, the vast piling of

masonry that is New York. The dying beams of the setting sun glinted

golden from the roofs of the pleasure palaces topping the soaring

structures. Lower, amid interlacing archings of the mid-air

thoroughfares, darkness had already piled its blackness. Two thousand

feet below, in the region of perpetual night, the green-blue factory

lights flared.

On three sides, the unbroken serration of the Empire City's beehives

stretched in a semicircle of twenty miles radius. Long since, the

rivers that had made old Manhattan an island had been roofed over.

But, to the east, the heaving sea still stretched its green expanse.

On the horizon a vast cloud mountain billowed upward from the watery

surface, white, and pink and many shades of violet.

"That's just the way it looked," Bolton muttered, as he drew my

attention to the cloud mass. "See that air-liner just diving into it?

Just so I saw the _New York_--five thousand men--pride of the Air

Service--dive into that mountain of smoke. And she never came out!

Gone--like that!" And he snapped his fingers.

He fell silent again, gazing dreamily at the drifting rings of pipe

smoke. He smiled, the twisted smile which was the sole indication that

one side of his face was the master work of a great surgeon-sculptor.

A marvelous piece of work, that, but no less marvelous than the

protean changes that Bolton himself could make in his appearance. It

was this genius at impersonation that had won Bolton his commission in

the Intelligence Service, when, in 1992, the world burst into flame.

"Would you like to hear about it?" The obtuseness of the man!

"If you'd care to tell me." I spoke off-handedly. This was like

hunting birds on the wing: too abrupt a movement of the glider, and

the game was lost.

This is the story he told me, in the low, modulated voice of the

trained actor. He told it simply, with no dramatic tricks, no

stressing, no climatic crescendos. But I saw the scenes he described,

dodged with him through black caverns of dread, felt an icy hand

clutch my heart as the Ferret stared at me with his baleful glance;

was deafened, and stunned, and crushed by that final tremendous down

pouring of the waters.

* * * * *

I was standing--he began--on one of our rafts, watching the

installation of a new ray machine. A storm was raging, but the great

raft, a thousand feet long, and five hundred wide, was as steady as a

rock. We were 700 miles out; the great push of '92, that drove us back

to within 150 miles of our coast and almost ended the war, was still

eleven weeks off.

Suddenly the buzzer of my radio-receiver whirred against my chest.

"2--6--4"--my personal call. "2--2"--"Go to nearest communications

booth." "A--4"--"Use Intelligence Service intermitter 4." The secret

of that was known only to a half-dozen men in the field. Headquarters

wanted to talk to me on a supremely important matter.

There was a booth only a short distance away. I stepped to it and

identified myself to the guard. In a moment I was within and had swung

shut and sealed the sound-proof door. I set the intermitter switches

to the A--4 combination. Not even our own control officers could

eavesdrop now. Then I switched off the light, and waited.

A green glow grew out of the darkness. I was being inspected.

Headquarters was taking no chances. Out of the green haze before me

the general himself materialized. I could count every hair in his

grizzled beard. The little scar at the corner of his left eye

fascinated me with its distinctness.

I saluted. "Captain Bolton reporting, sir."

"At ease!" General Sommers' voice snapped with military precision. The

general was standing in his private office in Washington. I could see

his desk in the corner, and the great operations map on the wall.

There were new lines of worry in the general's grim face.

* * * * *

He went straight to the point. "Captain Bolton, we are confronted with

a problem that must be solved at once. While our information is

meagre, the Staff is convinced that a great danger menaces us. Of its

precise nature, or how it is to be combatted, we are unaware. I am

assigning you to secure the answer to these two questions.

"A week ago there appeared, ten miles east of the enemies' first line,

and directly opposite our raft 1264, what seemed at first to be merely

a peculiar cloud formation. It rose directly from the surface of the

water, and was shaped roughly like half an egg. The greatest

dimension, lying along the water, parallel to the battle line, was

about 5 miles; the height approximately a mile.

"When two or three days had passed, and no change in the shape or

dimensions of the strange mass had taken place, although wind and

weather conditions had been varied, we determined to investigate. This

was undoubtedly an artificial, not a natural, phenomenon. It was then

that we discovered that there was a concentration of defenses along

this portion of the front. Our scouts were unable to find any of the

usual gaps in either the ray network in the upper air, or the

gyro-knife barrier beneath the surface. At the same time, from

scouting parties and deserters at other points we learned that rumors

are rife throughout the enemy forces of some scheme now on foot that

will overwhelm us within a very short time. No details have been

given, but so widespread is the gossip, and so consistent, that we

have been forced to the conclusion that it cannot be reasonably

dismissed as mere morale-supporting propaganda.

"We have secretly developed a method of so equipping aircraft as to

render them immune to the enemy death ray. The device is complicated

and requires time to manufacture and install. After careful

consideration, we decided that the situation was sufficiently grave to

warrant revealing to the enemy our possession of this new device.

"The battle-airship _New York_ has been equipped with the new

protective equipment. To-morrow at sunrise she will make an attack in

force on whatever lies behind that screen.

"Your orders are these. You will proceed at once to raft 1264. You

will observe the attack made by the _New York_. If she fails, you will

then find some way to enter that area, discover what is going on

behind the screen, hamper or destroy the enemy plans if possible and

report back to me personally."

* * * * *

The general's face suddenly softened. His tones lost their military

precision. "I am afraid, Captain, that I am sending you to your death.

But--we must know what is going on. If the _New York_ fails, the task

will appear impossible, but you have already done the impossible."

The grim mask dropped again over the chief's features; again he became

the perfect military machine. "You will call on any officer of our

forces for whatever you may need. Here is your authority." He stepped

aside, and I heard the low burr of the tel-autograph at the side of

the screen before me. A moment, and the general was again visible.

"That will be all." Once more the momentary softening. "Good luck, my

boy." A final exchange of salutes, and the screen went blank.

I switched on the light. There in the little machine was a slip of

paper. I extracted it. The lines of type, the scrawled signature,

burned into my brain like letters of fire.

"To: All Officers of the Military Forces of the Americas.

Subject: Military Assistance. Eric Bolton, Captain M.I.S.,

M.F.A. is authorized to call upon you for any assistance.

You will comply with his requests.

Alton Sommers, Lieut. General Commanding M.I.S., M.F.A.

By authority of the Commander in Chief."

In the corner appeared my thumb-print.

I stood there for a long time, mulling the thing over. The Staff was

laying tremendous stress on the enemy's strange cloud formation, even

to the extent of disclosing the secret of the new defensive device.

The Easterners, too, had something novel, something that would cut off

absolutely the transmission of ether waves. Nothing either side had

yet produced would do that. What was happening behind that screen?

Would they break through our defenses at last?

A vision arose before me. Hordes of yellow men, of black, of white

renegades from the nations where the red flag waved dominant, pouring

over the Americas. The horrors that Britain had undergone, the last

European nation to hold out against the Red horde, flashed into my

mind. I shuddered. Never. It must not be.

* * * * *

I was hurled from my feet by an electric shock. A great flood of

sunlight burst in on me. A corner of the booth, three-foot concrete,

had been sheared away, whiffed into nothingness! I arose and dashed

into the open. A raid was in progress. The air was electric with the

clashing of opposing barrages. The terrible silence of the pitched

battles of that war oppressed me. I saw a squad, caught in the beam of

an Eastern ray-projector, destroyed. The end man must have been just

on the edge of the beams--half his right side lay twitching on the

ground. The rest of him, and the seven others, were smoking heaps of

blackened cinders.

High over No Man's Land--queer how those old phrases last--a covey of

enemy helicopters hung, waiting for the barrage to lift. A black hulk

broke the surface of the water, split open: then another. Enemy

sub-surface craft. The fight was being waged under water, too. A green

mass spilled its contents as it leaped over the waves and fell back.

One of ours.

A huge buzzing came from behind me. A cloud of wasplike forms flew

high overhead. It was reserve aircraft, hurrying up from the second

line raft, ten miles west.

But this was no affair of mine. I had my orders. I must be in the

North Atlantic by daybreak. I looked around. There at the further edge

my little Zephyr rested, intact. I hurried to her and sprang into the

cockpit. I was off the coast of Chile. Twelve thousand feet would

clear the highest range between. I set the height control. Today you

don't have to do that, but Mason hadn't perfected his automatic

elevator then. The starting indicator was already set for my position.

I adjusted the direction disk. The little green light showed that the

power broadcast was in operation. I snapped over the starting switch

and the whir of the helicopter vanes overhead told me all was well.

The machine leaped into the air. Nothing to do now till the warning

bell told me I was within a hundred miles of my destination. The

battle shot away from me, far below.

Darkness came swiftly. I was shooting into the eye of the sun at three

hundred miles an hour. I swallowed a few pellets of concentrated food,

then curled up in my bunk. There was no knowing how many hours would

pass till I slept again.

I fell asleep at once.

* * * * *

The strident clamor of the alarm bell woke me. Dawn was just breaking.

Far below me I could make out the heaving Atlantic, calm and peaceful.

A long line of the huge second-line rafts just underneath, stretching

north and south till it curved over the horizon. A bugle's clear notes

came drifting up to me, reveille. Then I was hovering over my goal,

raft 1264. The black rectangle was alive with activity unwonted at

this early hour. I took over the controls from the mechanical pilot,

sent my recognition signal and drifted downward.

The Zephyr settled on the raft with a soft hiss of the compressed air

shock absorbers. A guard came hurrying up. My credentials passed upon,

I alighted. Momentarily, it was getting brighter. I was just in time.

I looked eastward, toward the enemy rafts. Beyond them, there it was,

just as General Sommers had described it--a mountain of vapor,

gleaming white in the gathering light. Not at all disquieting; merely

a shifting, billowing cloud mass. Rather pretty. The rest of the sky

was clear, unspecked.

As I gazed a line of red fire ran around the edge of the cloud. A

violet glow suffused the whole, faded swiftly into pink. The sun was

rising. Behind me I heard a huge whirring. Turning, I saw her, just

rising, all the beautiful trim length of her. The _New York_! Pride of

our air fleet!

Fifty paces to my right a little knot of officers caught my attention.

I recognized Jim Bradley. I remembered, someone had told me he was a

major, and was commanding a raft. Good. Jim would work with me as he

had in the old days at Stanford U., when I coached the air polo team

that he captained. I walked over.

Time for only a hurried handclasp. The signal corps sergeant,

earphones clamped to his head, was intoning the airship's messages.

"We have reached the thousand-foot level. Will now head for the

objective. All well."

We watched her. She was through our barrage-line. A snapped order from

Jim restored the barrier, momentarily lifted to let her pass. A

curious shimmering blurred the ship's outlines. I called Jim's

attention to it. "That's the new device, a network of fine wires,

charged with neutralising vibrations. Worked like a charm in the

tests. But there's no telling how effective it is in actual service."

* * * * *

A cold shiver ran up my spine. Many a fine ship I had seen strike that

invisible network of rays, and puff into smoke. Was that to be the

_New York's_ fate?

"We are about to pass through the enemy barrage. All well," came the

sergeant's unemotional monotone, repeating the voice in his ears. I

knew that voice was being listened to in Washington by a little group

whose every shoulder bore the stars of high command. My thoughts

flashed to them, gazing breathless at the screen that imaged the very

scene before us.

My breath stopped. Now! She must be in it now. The next second would

tell the tale. A faint coruscation of sparks ran along the network,

but the craft kept steadily onward. Thank God!

"We have passed through the enemy first-line barrage. All well."

A faint whistling of released breath came from all about me. I was not

the only one who had agonised at that moment. The first test had been

passed; would the other be as successful?

"We are increasing our speed to the maximum. Objective dead ahead. All

well."

I saw the ship fairly leap through the sky. Five hundred miles an

hour was her greatest speed. Another moment--

"We are entering the cloud. Bow is invisible. All--"

She was in it. She lurched. Plunged forward. She was hidden. I turned

to the sergeant. Tremendous concentration was on his bronzed face. He

reached out, twirled a dial in the set before him, and shook his head

slightly. Twirled again. We were knotted around him, our faces

bloodless. He looked up. "The last sentence was cut off sharp, sir. I

can hear nothing more. Even the carrier wave is dead."

Jim ripped out an oath, snatched the phones, and clamped them over his

own ears. Dead silence.

At last he looked up. "Nothing, gentlemen."

* * * * *

We looked at each other, appalled.

Bradley handed the apparatus back to the sergeant. "Remain here,

listening carefully. Let me know at once if you hear anything." The

sergeant saluted.

Out there the white cloud billowed and gleamed in the sunlight. But

there was something ominous in its calm beauty now.

A thought struck me. I spoke, and my voice sounded flat, dead.

"Perhaps it's only the radio waves that are cut off. Maybe she's all

right, fighting there inside, smashing them." But I knew that it was

all over.

"God, I hope you're right. Five thousand men aboard her." Bradley's

lips were white, his hands trembling. "Come to my office, Eric; we'll

wait there. To your posts, gentlemen. Each of you will detail a man to

watch that cloud bank, and report to me any change in its appearance,

even the slightest."

We walked back to the concrete command-post. We didn't talk, though it

had been years since we had seen each other. My brain was numbed, I

know. I had seen plenty of fighting, watched many a man go to his

death in the seven months since the war began. But this, somehow, was

different.

An hour passed. Jim busied himself with routine paper work. At least

he had that relief. I paced about his tiny office. Already I was

making plans. Force had failed. Strategy must take its place. I must

get in there. But how?

Bradley looked up from his work, his face grim. "No news, Eric. If you

were right we should have heard something from the _New York_ by this

time. They're gone, all right."

"Yes, they're gone," I answered. "It's up to me, then."

* * * * *

He stared in surprise. "Up to you? What do you mean?"

"Just that. I'm going in there, God helping." I made sure the room was

shut tight against eavesdroppers. Then, briefly as I could, I told him

of my orders, showing him the document I had received the day before.

He shook his head.

"But it's impossible. Their ray network, and the undersea barrier,

are absolutely solid here. I don't think even a mouse could get

through. And even if you did get behind their lines, how on earth are

you going to get into the area underneath that devilish cloud. You saw

what happened to the _New York_, protected as she was."

"Yes. I know all that. Nevertheless it's got to be done." Just then I

got the glimmering of an idea. "Tell me, Jim, are they doing much

scouting here. Undersea, I mean."

"The usual one-man shell, radio-propelled. We get one once in a while.

Most of them, however, even if we do smash them, are pulled back on

the wave before we can grab them. It's a bit easier than most places,

though: our depth's only about six hundred feet."

"What! Why, I thought the bottom averaged three thousand all along

the line."

"It does. But what would be a mountain ridge, if this were dry land,

runs out from the mainland. We're over a big plateau here. It goes on

east another twenty-five miles, or so. See, here's the chart."

A warning bell seemed to ring somewhere within me. Had this peculiar

formation of the ocean bed anything to do with the problem at hand?

But I kept to the immediate step. My plan was rapidly taking shape in

my mind.

"What are the scouts--black, yellow, or--"

"Russians, mostly."

"Good. Now listen, Jim. Send down word that the next scout-sub that is

caught is not to be ripped, but simply held against the attraction of

the return wave. The television eye is to be smashed at once, and

radio communication jammed. Can you do it as if something had happened

to the shell?"

"Sure thing, but what's the big idea?"

"You'll see. I've worked the thing out now."

Just then a red light on Bradley's desk winked three times. "There's

one between the lines now!" he exclaimed.

"Quick, man, shoot my orders down."

He pressed a yellow button and spoke quietly but emphatically into a

mouth piece. "O.K. They understand."

"Now take me down."

He looked at me as if I had taken leave of my senses, but complied.

* * * * *

The door of the elevator that lowered us from the surface clanged

open. We stepped out on a balcony that ran around a large, steel-lined

room. The walls were dripping, and on the floor, twenty feet beneath,

a black pool sloshed about with the heaving of the raft, in whose

interior we were. Rubber-clad soldiers moved about in the blue glow of

the globes sending down their heatless light from the ceiling. One sat

at a desk near the elevator. As I spied him a green light glowed in

front of him twice.

"They've got him, sir, bringing him in."

A low-toned order. The soldiers sprang to their post. A whirring

signal. At the other end of the room the steel wall began to move

upward, and water rushed in. A tremendous vibration shook the chamber:

a ponderous thudding. The water rose to the level of the balcony and

stopped. I looked at Bradley.

"We're beneath the surface, aren't we?" I asked. "How is it that the

water doesn't fill the room?"

"Pumps," he replied. "Tremendous pumps that draw the water out just as

fast as it comes in, and shoot it out again into the sea. We can

maintain any desired level in here."

Then I noticed that the black flood was rushing by beneath me at a

terrific rate.

Something bulked in the opening. Two tiny subs drew in, a black and a

green. The steel wall rushed down again, and the vibration ceased.

From the green craft heavy grapples extended, clutching the black,

enemy scout. I saw a gaping hole in the black boat's nose, where its

eye had been smashed.

Men were clambering over both vessels' hulls, tugging at the hatchway

fastenings. The black one flew open. I leaped to the deck. Bradley

after me, and jumped down into the hold.

In the little cubby-hole that was all the machinery left space for, a

pale-faced form in green-gray crouched against the wall. His eyes

stared in fear. A Russian, praise be. And not far from my size and

build.

"Off with his clothes, quick!" I yelled, stripping mine as I spoke.

Bradley looked at me queerly, and shrugged his shoulders. "Quick, man!

Everything depends on speed!"

He shook his head, as one who listens to the vaporings of an imbecile,

but turned to obey. I was standing there--naked, studying the

Easterner's face, his body. No scars. Good.

* * * * *

Jim turned to me, the prisoner's clothing in his hands. An exclamation

burst from him. He looked back at the trembling Russ, then at me. "My

God, Eric, how did you do it?" he asked.

I smiled. "All right, is it?"

"You're his twin; no, you're himself! If I'd had a drink to-day I'd be

sure I was seeing double. How on earth--you had no make-up, no time--"

I was sliding into the Red's gear as I talked! "I've trained all the

little muscles in my face--muscles you others don't even know you

have. Started when I was a kid, then made a good living at it, acting.

Comes in handy now, damn handy. I can make anything of my face, and

hold it forever if I have to. Chink, Russ--anything. Distort my limbs

too, and change my voice. That won't be necessary now. Simple, but it

takes a lot of practice."

I was dressed by then, a counterpart of the enemy officer--I hoped. If

I wasn't--well, I wouldn't live much longer.

"Now, out with the Russ and my clothes. Don't leave a bit, if you

value my life."

A light of comprehension illumined Jim's face. "You're going to pass

yourself off as this man? You've got your nerve with you!" he

exclaimed.

"Exactly." The cubby-hole was clear now. "Now take that spanner, and

bang me over the head. Not too hard; I don't want a cracked skull,

only a splashed scalp. Then pile me where it will seem I crashed

against a projection of some kind when the grapples took hold. That

bunk edge will do. Batten the hatch, and cast off the grapples. I hope

their automatic control is still working, otherwise my scheme's

gaflooey."

Jim stuck out his great paw. "Good luck, Eric," he said, simply. Then

he clutched the spanner. I saw it go over my head....

* * * * *

Voices around me, harsh, guttural voices. Russian! By the Nine Dogs of

War, I had pulled it off! But what were they saying? I was inside the

lines, but was my deception successful? Or had my face relaxed with

the shock of the blow? I thanked my Russian grandmother then for all

the time she had spent teaching me her mother tongue.

"_Boszhe moi_, the poor fellow must have had an awful smash. He hasn't

come to yet."

"The doctor will be here in a minute. He'll revive him."

I breathed a prayer of gratitude. They didn't suspect! But I didn't

like this doctor business. Well, I'd have to stall through that as

best I could.

I seemed to be lying on hard rock. I opened my eyes, staring blankly,

straight up. A bearded face was bending over me, the captain's crossed

sickles on the shoulder straps just within my vision. Behind, and

above him, towering straight up--my God!--what was it? A green wall, a

vertical green wall, going up and up! It looked like--but no: how

could water stand straight up like that, for hundreds of feet?

I almost betrayed myself with a gasp! A dim bulk showed in the

translucent depths of the wall. It rushed toward me, took form. A

fish, a huge, blind fish, its cavernous mouth stretched wide. It came

straight for me, just above. In a second it would leap through. A

scream of terror trembled in my throat. Then it hit the edge of the

translucent green wall--and vanished! Was I dreaming? Had Jim hit me

too hard?

Something stirred in the back of my mind. I sensed dimly that here lay

the explanation of the disappearance of the _New York_, the very

mystery that I had come to solve. Almost I had it; then it slipped

away.

* * * * *

"Here's the doctor!" someone said. There was a little stir of activity

about me. I allowed my eyes to close, as if in utter weariness.

"What's all this? What have you got here?" A gruff voice, intolerant.

"One of our sub-sea scouts, sir. Just come back, after some delay. Her

eye was smashed, and there are grapple marks on her. Must have been

caught, and then slipped away. She was leaking badly. We got her

through the lock just in time." Jim had evidently added a few touches

of his own. "Comrade Pauloff seems to have been seriously injured.

He's got a bad cut on his scalp, and was unconscious till a moment

ago. Opened his eyes just as you came along."

"Hm. Let's see." I felt a none too gentle hand finger my wound. It

throbbed maddeningly. The doctor spoke again. "A nasty crack, but no

fracture. Here, you--wake up." I made no move. "Come on, wake up!" I

heard the plop of a cork being drawn from a bottle; a pungent odor

assailed my nostrils, choked me. I writhed, pulled at the hand holding

the bottle to my nose and opened my eyes.

"That's better. How do you feel now?"

I raised a hand to my injury and muttered, in Russian. "Hurts,

papashka." I kept my expression as blank, as uncomprehending, as I

could.

The doctor flashed an understanding glance at the captain, then turned

back to me. "What's your name?"

Memories of my grandmother's tales of her youth came flooding back to

me. "Pavel, son of Pauloff."

It was the formula of the Russian student, in his teens.

"Your rank?"

"Second year. Petrovski Gymnasium."

The physician turned away. "No use bothering him now. A clear case of

amnesia.

"He's been thrown back to his high school days. I've had a number of

cases like that among your scouts lately." Blessed inspiration! "Only

cure is rest. Get him over to the infirmary. We'll evacuate him to a

base hospital to-morrow."

* * * * *

I was in a cool white bed, in a low ceilinged room, white painted.

There were other beds, vacant. A uniformed male nurse puttered around.

There was an elusive green tinge to the light that poured in through

the one window.

The door opened and a sergeant came in. "Comrade Alexis!"

"Well, what is it now? Have they found another gold-bricking officer

to mess up my clean beds?"

"A party from corps headquarters will be here in fifteen minutes for

inspection."

"Let them come. They won't find any specks of rust on my instruments,

like they did on Comrade Borisoff's."

"They'd better not. You know what happened to him."

"Yeah. Chucked into the ray. Well, he didn't give the burial squad any

work." And the two laughed, a laugh that had more than a hint of

sadistic cruelty in it. "If I had my way," the nurse went on, "I'd do

the same with all these nuts that come back from the scout ships

raving of home and mother. It's my idea that they're all bluffing.

It's a good way to be shipped to the rear, where the captured dames

are. Say, did I tell you about the last time I was on leave--"

The two whispered, their heads close together. My brain was working

frantically. Things had gone well so far, but I had to get out of here

before the morning, or I'd be sent to the base and lose all that I had

gained by my daring.

The door snapped open. "_Smirnow!_" (Atten-_shun!_)

* * * * *

I was on my side, facing away from the wall. I remained so, staring

blankly across the room. I hoped the inspection would be over quickly.

The fewer the enemy officers I had looking me over, the better.

Someone back there was snapping questions. That voice--where had I

heard it before?

"Your patient. What's his trouble?"

"Amnesia, sir. One of the scouts."

"Oh, yes. Let's look at him."

Someone was walking across the room, then standing above me. His hand

was just at the level of my eyes--a hand with the little finger

twisted queerly into the palm. I knew that hand: it was the

_Ferret's_! A cold shiver ran up my back. I almost stopped breathing.

Of all the infernal luck in the world, to have the Ferret walk in

here! He was chief of the Red's Intelligence Service, the shrewdest,

sharpest, cruelest of them all. Many of our best men had gone west

because of his uncanny instinct for piercing disguise. They said he

could _smell_ an American. And many of our most strictly guarded plans

had been smashed through his infernally clever spying. Only a month

before I had him in my clutches; saw the very rope around his neck.

But he had slipped away, and left me empty-handed and kicking myself

for an ass.

I held my breath as I felt those gimlet eyes of his boring into me.

Would he sense who I was? Surely he could hear the pounding of my

heart. How long he stood there I don't know. It seemed like hours. I

tautened, waiting for him to call out, determined to sell my life as

dearly as I could.

But for once the Ferret was fooled. He turned away. "Take us into your

kitchen," he snapped at the nurse, then there was the tramping of feet

and the slamming of a door.

* * * * *

The breath whistled from me in relief. I turned cautiously. I was

alone. Now was my chance. I jumped from the bed and started toward the

window. Once out, I'd find some place to hide. I let my face relax;

there was no use for that particular disguise any longer. The window

was up. I was on the sill. Another second and I'd be out in the open.

"Just where do you think you're going?" came the Ferret's silky, cruel

voice. I whirled. There he was, just inside the door. His little black

eyes glinted dangerously over his hooked nose and sharp chin.

"Oh--Bolton! Something made me turn back. Glad to see you."

His hand flashed to the ray-tube in his belt. At the same moment I

left the window sill in a desperate leap. Clear across the room I

sprang, and before he had time to pull his weapon I had one hand

clamped around his wrist, the other clutching his throat. We crashed

to the ground.

I was in pyjamas, barefooted, he fully clothed. His leather shoes

drove into me viciously, even as his face turned purple. The pain was

excruciating, but I dared not cry out. His left thumb found my eye,

was digging in.

The crash of our fall must have been heard outside; another moment and

all would be lost. I was momentarily on top as we rolled across the

floor. With a supreme effort I pulled his head away from the floor,

then crashed it down. He slumped; lay still.

The door knob was turning as I jumped frantically through the window.

I heard a cry behind me. Rough, uneven ground. No one about. To my

right was a rocky cliff, and at its base what looked like the mouth of

a cave. Any port in a storm: I dived into it.

It was a cave, all right, or rather a narrow tunnel winding some

distance into the cliff. I ran back at top speed, till I crashed into

the end of the passage.

* * * * *

I crouched there, panting. It was beastly cold, and the dampness

struck into my bones. I shivered, then laughed grimly. I wouldn't

shiver long. When the Ferret came to and revealed that Eric Bolton was

around, there wouldn't be a stone left unturned till I was found.

Those birds had good cause to want me rubbed out.

Already I could hear faint shouts from without. The chase was on. I

was caught, right enough. Trapped like any rat.

I felt around me in the darkness and my hand lighted on a round stone.

It just fitted my fist. Well, I'd get one of them, anyway, when they

found me. Cold comfort in that, but I didn't feel like giving in

tamely.

Footsteps sounded out at the tunnel end. So soon! I gripped my rock

tightly, and waited.

But--it sounded like only one man. I drew myself together. Maybe I had

a chance. A dim glow showed where the passage curved, then a disk of

light flashed on the wall and flitted about. The fool!

The steps came on, slowly, stumblingly. The disk of light grew

smaller as its source drew nearer. Then he was around the corner,

bulked for a moment against his own light as it was reflected from the

wet wall. That moment was enough! The stone left my hand with all the

force I possessed. It went straight to its mark: a sickening thud told

me that. The form dropped, and the flashlight clinked on the rocks.

I listened. Still the shouts from without, but no steps inside. I was

safe for a time. But the searcher would surely be missed, and others

would come looking for him. I had only one chance. I shrugged my

shoulders. I couldn't lose anything. If I stayed here my goose was

cooked.

By the light of the flashlight I examined my quarry. A renegade

Frenchman, apparently. A private. In a trice I had his uniform on me

and had twisted my features to match his. Little did I think when I

acted under the Klieg lights that the fate of two continents would

some day depend on this gift of mine.

He stirred; groaned. I hesitated. Then--well, I couldn't chance his

crawling out. His ray-tube was newly charged. I left a heap of ashes

there as I walked away....

* * * * *

I was outside the cave. I darted a glance around. My refuge was not

the only hole in sheer rock; it was literally honeycombed. From one,

then another of the cavern mouths a soldier emerged. Each strode

across the uneven, rocky plain to where an officer stood with what was

apparently a map in his hand. As each searcher saluted and reported,

the officer made a mark on the map. Someone came out from the

cave-mouth next to mine. I fell in behind him.

"No one in cave twenty-one, sir."

"To your post."

The private turned on his heel and marched off to take his place in a

company formation that was rapidly taking shape near by. My turn was

next. What was the number of my cave? A mistake now, and I was

through.

I saluted. "No one in cave twenty, sir."

"To your post."

Had I hit it? When the final check-up came would there be two reports

for one cave, none for another?

A front rank man moved aside. Good: that meant my place was just

behind him. My luck was holding. And never did a man need luck more!

Now was my first chance to look about, to discover what sort of place

this was. It was an oval plain, roughly a mile wide by five miles

long. Buildings, squat structures of corrugated iron, were scattered

here and there. In the distance, to my left, what seemed a great hole

in the ground glowed; a huge disk of light.

Dry land, here, where there should be nothing but a waste of waters!

* * * * *

Puzzled, I strained to see what bordered the plain. It was a tall

cliff, running all around, and towering high in the air. But it wasn't

rock, for it glowed strangely green in the flood of light that

illumined the place. And it was clean cut, rising sheer from the

unevenness of the ground.

Then I remembered. The vertical green wall that soared above me as I

lay dazed from Jim's blow. The translucent green wall in whose depths

I had seen the blind fish rushing toward me. Water! The sea!

Impossible! There were scientific miracle-workers in the enemy's

ranks, but they couldn't have hollowed out a pit such as this in

mid-ocean; forced back the very ocean to create this amphitheatre,

this dry plain on the Atlantic's very bottom: held back the

unthinkable weight of Earth's waters by a nothingness. Incredible!

Yet the accomplished fact stared me in the face.

My eyes traveled up that impossible wall. It must have been at least

six hundred feet high. At its summit, in a murky haze that heaved and

billowed, I made out strange, dim bulks that hung, unsupported. A long

line of them, a long ellipse following closely the curving of the

cliff. Underneath the nearest, barely perceptible, I could make out a

lens-shaped cage of wire. I began to understand.

Overarching everything was a great dome of heaving cloud.

"_Smirn-ow!_"

The long line snapped into immobility.

"By the left flank, march!"

We were moving, marching. Then my ruse had succeeded. I had chosen the

right cave number. I breathed a sigh of relief.

* * * * *

The command for route order was given, and at once a buzz of talk

broke out around me. "Damn them, they're sending us right off to work!

We missed our mess, hunting for that damned spy. But that don't mean

anything. It's back to the tunnel for ours."

"Oh, quit your bellyaching, Andreyeff. Another week, and we'll be in

New York. Just think of it, the richest city in the world to loot! And

women! Why, they tell me the American women are to the Frenchies and

the cold English-women as the sun is to the stars. What's a meal more

or less when you think of that?"

An obscene laugh swept through the ranks. Guttural voices boasted of

past exploits--black deeds and sadistic cruelties that had marked the

trail of the hordes sweeping over Europe from the windy Asiatic

steppes.

As we marched, I noticed a peculiarity of the rocky floor. There were

no sharp edges, no sudden cleavages in the uneven terrain. It looked,

for all the world, as though the stone had been melted, then frozen

again in a moment. An unbelievable pattern was forming itself in my

mind. If what I thought were true--!

The command came to halt.

We had reached the blazing disk I had seen from afar. It was a

tremendous shaft, dropping straight into the very bowels of the earth.

Two hundred feet across, a blinding glare streamed up from the pit.

From far beneath came shoutings, the clank of machinery, a growling

roar.

Other companies marched up and halted at the pit edge. My outfit were

whites--Russians, French, Germans. But the others were black, brown,

yellow--all the motley aggregation of races that formed the Red

cohorts, the backbone of the Great Uprising. As the "At ease" order

snapped out a babel of tongues rose on the air. Every language of

Earth was there save English. The Anglo-Saxons had chosen tortured

death rather than submission to the commands of their conquerors.

A huge platform rose slowly up in the shaft and came to a stop at the

ground level. It was solidly packed with another throng of soldiers in

the gray-green of the enemy. They marched off and we took their place.

* * * * *

Down, down, we went, till it seemed that our destination was the

center of the earth. Louder and louder grew the growling roar, the

ponderous thud and clank of huge machines.

We were in a huge chamber, hollowed out of the solid rock. Thousands

of men bustled out among great piles of lumber and steel rails. Huge

cranes rolled here and there, swinging their ponderous loads.

Officers shouted crisp orders. Green-uniformed privates sprang to

obey.

But no time was given me to get more than a glimpse of all this

activity. From out the gaping mouth of a hundred-foot-wide tunnel a

long train of flat cars came gliding. It halted and swayed on the

single rail, and the whir of the gyroscopic balancers filled the

cavern. A sharp order, and my companions leaped for the cars, lay

prone on the steel car-beds, and passed their belts through projecting

loops. I wondered, but imitated them. I buried my face in my arms, as

the others were doing.

There came the eery shriek of a siren: the train was moving. Swiftly

it gathered speed till it seemed as though my protesting body was

being forced through a wall of air grown suddenly solid. Myriad

fingers pulled at me, seeking to hurl me to destruction. Even through

my protecting arms my breath was forced back into my lungs, choking

me. The wind howled past with the wail of a thousand souls in torment.

Just as the limit of endurance was reached the terrific speed

slackened, and the long train ground to a halt. "All off! Lively now!"

came the command.

* * * * *

We were at the rail-head, and before me was the face of the tunnel.

Queer, hooded figures were there bending over wheeled tripods,

manipulating what appeared to be searchlights. But no shafts of light

leaped from the lenses. The tripods were rolling steadily forward.

I looked at the tunnel face again, then, startled, back to the hooded

men. I rubbed my eyes. Was I seeing things? No, by all that was holy,

it was so! The distance between the machines and the end wall of the

passage had not changed, but men and rock were ten--fifteen--twenty

feet away! They were boring; boring into the solid rock at tremendous

speed. _And the rock was melting, vanishing, disappearing into

nothingness in the awful blast projected from those machines!_

I gaped--my pose, my danger, forgotten. Almost as fast as a man could

run, the tunnel extended itself. It was phantasmal, incredible!

A rough hand seized me from behind. I whirled, my heart in my mouth.

It was the burly sergeant. "What the hell are you dreaming about,

Renaud? Hop to it. Over there, on that shoring job. Get busy now,

or--" The threat in that unfinished sentence chilled me by its very

vagueness.

My squad was hauling heavy timbers, setting them up where a fault

showed in the rocky roof of the tunnel. I joined them but my thoughts

were a madly whirling chaos.

The pattern was complete now. The long, curving under-water ridge on

Jim's chart--this tunnel was boring through it. Whatever it was that

those tripods projected--a new ray it must be--it was _melting_ a

passage six hundred miles long. Under our rafts, under our fleets,

under our coast defenses--to come up far behind our lines. The ridge

joined the coast just south of New York. Some night, while our

generals slept in smug complacency, all that gray green horde of

wolves would belch forth--from the very earth.

And the Americans would follow Europe into hell!

* * * * *

Five minutes passed. I looked again at the face of the tunnel, drawn

by an irresistible fascination. It had advanced a full quarter of a

mile. Like fog before a cloud-piercing searchlight, the age-old rock

was dissolving before the ray. At this rate America's doom would be

sealed in a week. And I, alone among these thousands, was helpless to

avert the climaxing menace.

A howl of rage came from the sergeant. I turned. A diminutive German,

his face pale green with fatigue, had stumbled and fallen under the

weight of a heavy timber.

The swarthy non-com was kicking him with a cruel boot. "Get up, you;

get up before I brain you!"

The sprawling man looked up, fear staring from his deep-sunk eyes.

"_Aber, ich bin krank._"--"I am sick; I can't stand the work; it is

too _schwer_, too heavy," he faltered.

"Sick?" the Russian roared. "Sick? I'll sick you! You're lazy, too

damned lazy to do a little work. I'm tired of this gold-bricking

around here. I'm going to make an example of you that the rest of you

dogs won't forget in a hurry." His face was purple with rage. He bent,

seized the fallen man and dragged him out from under the crushing

bulk. Then, raising the struggling wretch over his head as lightly as

though he were an infant, he ran forward, toward the ray projectors.

Shriek after shriek pierced the hot air, such howls of utter fear and

agony, as I hope never to hear again. The little figure, held high in

the huge paws, writhed and tossed, to no avail.

The sergeant reached the nearest tripod. His brawny arms flexed;

straightened. The German swept up and over the head of the operator,

and dropped in front of the machine. Then--he vanished. Nothing,

absolutely nothing, was there between projector and rapidly retreating

wall!

A horrible retching tore my stomach; I swayed dizzily. The utter

brutality, the finality of the thing! "And any more of you carrion

that I catch slacking will get the same thing," the Russian said.

"You, Renaud, I've got my eye on you. Watch out!" The sergeant's voice

rasped through the mist about me. I shoved my shoulder under one end

of an eight by eight and plunged into the back breaking labor. But one

thought hammered at my reeling brain: "The _New York_! That's what

happened to her!"

* * * * *

The long hours of toil at last ended. We were again in the entrance

cavern, waiting for the elevator platform. It was unaccountably

delayed: the last batch had gone up fifteen minutes before. The men

about me chafed and swore. They were impatient for mess and bed.

Bit by bit I had reconstructed all the elements of this unprecedented

operation. The ray, the blasting ray that whiffed into non-existence

all that it touched, was the keynote. The great plain had been cleared

by the ray. The dim shapes floating high in that far-circling ellipse

were pouring down the dreadful vibrations, thus holding back the sea

in a marvelous green wall. I remembered the sea-monster that had

dashed at me and vanished. That proved it. The dome of cloud was

camouflage, or the product of the processes of destruction going on

underneath: it didn't matter. What mattered was that it was interlaced

by a network of ray beams. It was an impenetrable wall, a perfect

defense. Boxed in on all sides by such a barrier, how was I to get out

word of the menace? How was it to be combatted even if our forces knew

of the danger? A hundred plans flooded my wearied brain, to be

rejected one by one.

A mocking, ribald cheer arose from the men around me. The platform was

ascending. Why the long delay? A premonition of disaster chilled me. I

shrugged it aside.

We were at the top. A long line of soldiers curved about the mouth of

the pit. The next shift waiting to go down? No--they made no move to

approach. And each one was holding his ray-tube at the ready. This was

the guard. At a table nearby a knot of officers was gathered. Papers

of some sort were piled high on it. Again the icy finger of dread

touched me. One of the officers moved aside, revealing the profile of

his companion. The Ferret. Then I knew I was done for!

My eyes darted here and there, seeking escape. No hope--the heavily

armed guard was all around; the platform blocked the shaft mouth. A

dash would be self-betrayal--suicide.

* * * * *

Mechanically I obeyed the sergeant's barked commands. We were in

single file. We were moving toward that ominous table where the Ferret

stood, a sardonic smile on his sharp-featured face. I could make out a

livid weal across his throat. I had left my mark on him. That was some

satisfaction.

The head of the line reached the table. They were fingerprinting the

leader! A lieutenant extracted a paper from the pile and handed it to

the Ferret. He made momentary comparison of something on the paper

with the mark the soldier had just made. Then the next man stepped up,

while the first made off across the plain.

Of course! Simple: how very simple! And yet it had caught me! The

service records of the men had their fingerprints, just as in our own

forces. And each man in the area was being checked up. Trust the

Ferret to think of that. He knew that I'd be somewhere in their ranks,

impersonating one of their men. Well, I was in for it. The last trick

in our long game was his.

My turn. No use going through the motions. I bent down a moment, then

straightened. "Oh, hello, Bolton," the Ferret said, thrusting out his

hand, the one with the twisted finger. I had resumed my own visage.

"Didn't think you could get away with it, did you?"

Chagrined as I was, I put a good face on it. The Ferret and I had run

up against each other many many times. Cheerfully, either of us would

have cut the other's throat. But--we played the game.

"Hello, Rubinoff," I responded. "You seem to have me, just now. But

try and hold me."

The Ferret threw back his head and laughed. "Oh, I think you'll find

it a little difficult to get away this time." I thought so, too, but

did not voice my thought.

The smile left Rubinoff's face. He snapped an order. A squad advanced

from the guard. Handcuffs clicked around my wrists, the mates of each

were fastened to the arms of two guardsmen. I was securely chained.

They were taking no chances.

"Take him to the special cell in the guard-house." The lieutenant

saluted. I was marched off. Then I was not to be summarily executed. I

was not as much relieved as you might think. You see, I knew the

Ferret. We had raided one of his hangouts once; just missed him. But

we found an M.I.S. man there whom Rubinoff had been--questioning. We

thanked God when he died.

* * * * *

We tramped across the plain. My eyes kept roving about: there wasn't

much hope for me, but miracles have happened. Most of the scattered

structures were hastily thrown together sheds of sheet iron. Barracks,

they looked like. But, every so often I spied spheres of concrete, the

wide open doors revealing yard-thick walls. What could be their

purpose?

Something bothered me. Something about the ray projectors and the

other machinery I had seen. I glanced up at one of the balloons

floating high above. All these needed a power supply; tremendous power

to accomplish what the ray was doing. And there were no cables

running to them. How did the power get to them?

There was only one answer. Radio transmission. The required energy,

perhaps the very ray vibrations themselves, were being broadcast to

the points of projection. That meant a power-house and a control room

somewhere in the area. _The vulnerable points!_ Where were they?

I stumbled, and was jerked roughly to my feet. The lieutenant slapped

me. "Scared, Americansky? You well may be. We'll have rare sport when

they throw what the Ferret leaves of you into the ray." I shuddered.

To go out that way! I'll be honest--I was horribly afraid. The men to

whom I was shackled laughed.

A dull throbbing beat at my ears, a vibration just too low to be

sound. I looked about for its source. It came from my left--a concrete

building, low lying, about a hundred yards long by as many feet wide.

At the further end a squat smokestack broke the flat line of the roof.

Guards, many guards, were pacing their slow patrol about it. From the

center of the side nearest me, cables thick as a man's trunk issued

forth. I followed them with my eye. They ended in a marble slab on

which rested a concrete sphere, somewhat larger than the others. The

door of this one was closed. On the roof of the queer edifice was a

peculiar arrangement of wires, gleaming in the artificial daylight.

This building, too, was heavily guarded.

I had found what I sought--the power-house and the transmitting

station. Much good it did me--now.

* * * * *

My warders turned sharply to the right. I glimpsed another concrete

structure. A heavy steel door opened, then clanged shut, behind us.

The fetid odor that means only one thing the world over, folded round

me.

I sprawled on the steel floor of the cell into which I was thrust. A

wave of utter fatigue engulfed me. I felt great weariness of body and

despair of soul. I had failed in my mission. The fate of my country

had been entrusted to me--and here I was in a steel-floored,

steel-walled prison cell. And that tunnel was rushing toward New York

at three miles an hour; over seventy miles a day.

I think I slept from sheer exhaustion. But something startled me into

awaking. The dim light filtering in from the tiny air-hole high up on

one wall showed me that I was still alone. I lay, listening. There it

was again, a wailing scream of agony that rose and fell and died away.

I heard a grating sound at the door, and it opened and shut. Rubinoff,

the Ferret, had entered. "Comfortable, Captain Bolton?" he asked, and

there was more than a hint of mockery in the velvety voice. In the

hand with the twisted finger was his ray-tube. It pointed steadily at

me.

I got to my feet. I was in no mood for trifling, for that scream had

shaken me. "Cut the comedy, Rubinoff." I growled. "Kill me, and let's

have done with it."

He raised a deprecating hand. "Oh, come now. There's really no

absolute necessity for that. You can save yourself, very easily."

"What do you mean?"

"I can use you, if you're amenable to reason."

"I don't understand."

"You're the cleverest of the American Intelligence men. The rabble

they give me are well-nigh useless. Cast your lot in with us, and in a

week you'll have the riches of your greatest city to dip your hands

in. It's easy. There is certain information we need. Give it to us.

Then I'll get you back into your lines: we'll cook up a good tale for

Sommers. You can resume your post and send us information only when it

is of extreme importance. Come, now, be sensible."

* * * * *

At first blush this was an astounding proposal. But I knew my man. He

needed to know something. Once he had extracted the knowledge he

sought from me, I should be disposed of. He'd never let me get back

into our lines with what I had found out. It might have been policy to

play him--but what was the use?

"No, Rubinoff. You know I won't do it."

He sighed. "Just as I thought. Honor, country, and so on. Well, it's

too bad. We should have made a wonderful team. However, you'll tell me

what I want to know. What are the defenses within fifty miles of New

York?"

I laughed derisively.

"You'll save yourself a lot of trouble if you tell me, Bolton. After

all, death in the ray isn't so bad. Whiff--and you're gone. Don't

force me to other measures." There was a grim threat in his voice. But

I simply shook my head.

"Stubborn, like all the other Anglo-Saxons. Well, I've got something

to show you." He raised his weapon and glanced at it. "Pretty little

thing, this. Not the ordinary ray-tube. Only field officers have

these. Look."

He pointed it at the wall from behind which that scream had come and

pressed the trigger button. A tiny round hole appeared in the steel.

"Neat, isn't it? Utilizes the same ray you saw at work in the tunnel.

The Zeta-ray we call it. Just think what that would do to human

flesh." I said nothing.

"But that isn't what I had in mind. Just look through that hole."

* * * * *

I wanted to see what was on the other side, so I obeyed. The Thing

that lay on the floor within--could it ever have been a man? I whirled

back to the Ferret in a fury, my fists clenched.

His infernal weapon was pointing straight at me. "Softly, Bolton,

softly. You'd never get to me." I checked my spring, for he was right.

"How'd you like that?" he purred.

"Some of your work, I suppose," I growled.

"The poor fool was fomenting a mutiny. We wanted to know the other

plotters. He was stubborn. What would you? Necessity knows no law....

What are the defenses around New York?" He advanced menacingly.

No answer.

"Why be a fool? This ray hurts, I tell you, when it's properly

applied. How would you like to be melted away, piece by little piece,

till you're like that in there?"

I shrugged my shoulders, but kept silent.

"I tell you it hurts. You don't believe me? That in there is

unconscious, seven-eighths dead. Listen."

He bored another hole in the steel, keeping his finger pressed on the

trigger. Again that heart-rending scream of agony rang out, tearing

its way through me. My brain exploded in red rage. I leaped for the

fiend, reckless of consequences. My fist drove into the leering face

with all the force of my spring, with all the insane fury that his

heartless cruelty had roused in me. Smack!--he catapulted across the

floor and crashed into the wall! I was on him, my hand clutching for

his tube. But there was no need. He was out--dead to the world. So

sudden, so unexpected was my mad attack that even he had not had time

to meet it.

I worked fast. In a minute I was in Rubinoff's uniform and had assumed

his face. I was a little taller; no matter. But the finger--that

would be noticed immediately. There was only one thing to do. I stuck

my little finger through one of the holes he had made in the wall and

twisted. Crack! Beads of agony stood out on my forehead, but the break

was just right. By bending the other fingers slightly I could hold

that one in just the position of his.

I picked up the ray-tube with my left hand. If I went out through the

guard-house entrance I might meet other officers and be engaged in

conversation. That might lead to discovery. My cell was on the side of

the prison away from the road; I had noticed no buildings behind it:

I'd chance it. Luck had been with me so far.

* * * * *

I carved out a hole in the wall pierced by the air-hole. It was like

cutting through butter with a red hot knife. I stepped out.

There was no one about. I walked carelessly around the corner of the

building, my hand, holding the tube, buried deep in my pocket. Not far

away was the spherical structure I had spotted as the control room. I

returned salutes. No one stopped to talk to me. Would the guard before

that building require a pass-word?

I heard a shout behind me. My escape was discovered! At once I broke

into a run and dashed past the guard, shouting: "Prisoner escaped!

Came this way!" The man gaped. The shouting behind me grew louder. I

heard the thud of many feet, running. I flung open the door, slammed

it shut behind me, and turned the key.

A long row of giant electrode bulbs, as tall as a man, stretched

before me--the source of the Zeta-ray. From here came the power that

held back the waters, that bored the tunnel. A thunderous knocking

shook the door. Someone at a huge switchboard turned toward me.

Instantly my hand was out of my pocket, and the ray-tube leveled at

the nearest bulb. I pressed the trigger. The bulb crashed. I swept

down the line. Crash, crash, crash--they were all gone.

I whirled to meet the expected attack. It was wholly instinctive, for

in a second we'd all be dead anyway. The waters would be down on us.

But the switchboard operator wasn't springing at me. Instead, he was

tugging frantically, at a long lever that came down from above. There

was a clang, and a steel shutter dropped across the door.

* * * * *

Then came a sound of crashing thunder that split my eardrums with its

unbearable clamor. Then a mightier roar, as the mountain-high sea,

held back so long by the invisible ray, poured its countless millions

of tons of deep green water down into the man-made hole.

The impact was terrific. The yards-thick concrete shuddered and

strained. The tremendous pressure forced trickles of water into the

concrete shell: the roaring of the elements was indescribably

deafening.

I was in pitch darkness, expecting every moment to be crushed under

miles of ocean, when suddenly I was thrown from my feet. The floor was

heaving drunkenly beneath me. In a moment I was slammed breathlessly

against the shattered remnants of a huge vacuum tube. The jagged glass

slashed my arms and face. I grabbed with my hand to steady myself;

came in contact with an iron bar: clung like grim death.

For a huge concrete sphere was whirling, tossing, gyrating in a welter

of waters. The din was terrific. I rolled over and over, my arms

almost pulled out of their sockets. Then, like a ton of brick,

something collided with my head. There was a blinding flare in the

black void, and I knew no more.

* * * * *

Slowly I came out of a hideous nightmare.

My head ached frightfully, and my wounds smarted and stung. It was

dark, but a faint luminescence from somewhere enabled me to faintly

discern my surroundings. I was wedged between a steel cable-bracket

and the curving wall. Across the glass strewn floor a body lay,

sprawling queerly.

The room was swaying in long undulations, or was it my head? I lay

helpless, unable to move. A leg dangled uselessly. There was a bump,

the sound of scraping. I heard confused sounds penetrating the walls,

and the jar of steady impacts.

A half an hour passed so; maybe an hour: I had no means of telling. I

was weak from pain and loss of blood, and slightly delirious.

A faint whirring noise, a sudden intensity in the illumination caused

me to turn my head. The steel shutter was glowing red, then a shower

of white sparks broke through. The heavy steel was melting away into

incandescence. It crashed.

A group of men stumbled cautiously in. Now I was sure I was delirious.

For the men wore khaki uniforms! Americans! Then, in my fever, I

thought I heard a familiar voice cry out my name. It was Jim's voice.

A roaring curtain of blackness shut down on me.

* * * * *

When I awoke again I was lying in a clean-sheeted hospital bed. Jim

was sitting at the side, staring at me with gloomy eyes.

"Hello, Jim," I gasped weakly. "How did I get here?"

It was touching to see the instantaneous delight on his weathered

countenance.

"So you came to at last, you old son-of-a-gun! Thought you were

cashing in on us for a while. How did you get here? That's just what

I want to know. How in hell _did_ you get here?"

I was still pretty weak. "You pulled me out. What happened?"

"We're still trying to puzzle it out. Wouldn't be surprised if you had

a hand in it, you blighter. We were watching that damned cloud,

worrying ourselves to death. What with the _New York_ going out like a

light, and not hearing anything from you, we were pretty low.

"Then, suddenly, there was a tremendous detonation. The whole cloud

mass collapsed like a pricked bubble, and a bottomless pit yawned

underneath the ocean--and, next thing we knew, our raft was yanked

from under our feet, plunging and bucking in a swirl of waters.

"I just had time to grab hold of a stanchion, when we were sucked down

into a whirlpool such as I never hope to see again. Round and round we

spun, the tumbling waters mountain high above us. I was buried most of

the time in crashing billows; my arms were almost pulled out of their

sockets.

* * * * *

"I never expected to see daylight again," Jim went on. "My hold was

being broken when at last we were spewed out somehow onto a sea that

looked as if a thousand hurricanes were blowing down.

"I managed to get my men together--what was left of them. There were

pitifully few. Later, I heard that our losses were enormous. Over

seventy-five per cent of our rafts on a 50-mile front were lost, and

the enemies' were almost totally wiped out.

"When the mile-high seas had toned down a bit, we saw a huge concrete

ball tossing about like a cork. Couldn't make out what the devil it

was. Then someone noticed a door. We got that open, but there was a

steel one inside. We had to slice it with an oxy-hydrogen flame.

Inside, snug as a bug in a rug, were you.

"Now come on, tell me how in blazes you got in there. If you don't

spill it quick, I'll bust."

I sat up in my excitement. "Don't you see, they were afraid the ray

might fail. They had those concrete balls stuck all around so that the

officers at least could escape, if it did. Their best technical men

must have been running the control room. They made sure to have that

specially strong. And the wave caused by the water pouring into the

hole swept me right over here, just where I started from."

Jim had both hands on my shoulders, was pushing me down. "Whoa, baby,

whoa. That's just as clear as a darkness-rayed area. Count up to ten,

and start all over again."

"'Ten-_shun_!"

The general himself strode into the room. And then I _had_ to tell my

story straight.

A BEE'S BREATH

The breath of a bee, important because of its indication of the health

of the insect in winter and of the efficiency of the sweet-producing

hive in summer, was recently measured by Prof. G. H. Vansell of the

University of California. To do this he conducted the air coming from

the hive through a tube into bulbs containing absorbent chemicals.

Allowing for the natural carbon dioxide and water of the outside air,

he weighed these bulbs, getting an analysis of the breath of the hive

by the amount of water vapor and carbon dioxide the chemicals in the

bulbs had picked up.

He found that in winter when the bees were inactive the average hourly

water loss from the entire hive was thirty six millionths of an ounce.

In summer when the insects were hard at work making honey and

gathering nectar the water loss was twenty five times as great. The

carbon dioxide output, however, did not even double in summer.

_A Meeting Place for Readers of_ Astounding Stories

[Illustration: The Readers' Corner]

_And That's That_

Dear Editor:

May I have just a little room in "The Readers' Corner" to

answer Mr. Meek's argument and defend myself from the charge

of hasty reading? You will remember that I did not write my

letter immediately after the publication of the first

Heaviside Layer story, but waited until the appearance of

the second, a "cooling-off" period of three months. In that

time I re-read the story and considered it at length. I

don't call that hasty reading. Besides, the flaw in the

story is so obvious that even a "hasty" reading should

suffice to find it.

I can't argue about the matter of meteors because Mr. Meek

has not given any figures concerning the density or

viscosity of his medium. But I can say that to my way of

thinking any astronomer could detect the effect of such

friction on the action of meteors. They should certainly be

consumed much more rapidly than if they merely struck thin

air.

That, however, is a minor point and I wouldn't even mind

conceding it to Mr. Meek. The point I now wish to make is

much more important and in my mind establishes the falsity

of Mr. Meek's premises. In the July issue of Astounding

Stories, page seven, paragraph four, sentences fourteen and

fifteen, he states that the Heaviside Layer is composed of a

liquid of high viscosity. By definition a liquid is more

dense than a gas. Therefore the Heaviside Layer, according

to Mr. Meek, is denser than the atmosphere of the earth

since the former is a liquid and the latter is a gas. The

increased refraction of light as it entered our atmosphere

would then be noticeable. Astronomers can even now detect

refraction due to the air. The sun remains visible for some

time after it has actually descended below the horizon, due

to refraction. If there was a denser substance than air

surrounding the earth the refraction would be much greater.

Finally, how could the atmosphere support a denser substance

like the Heaviside Layer? I'd sure make for cover if I

really believed that such a menace existed right over my

head.

Sorry to take up your space so much by an argument, but your

comments on my letter really called for a defense. Hope you

can find room for this.--Philip Waite, 3400 Wayne Ave, New

Your, N. Y.

Dear Editor:

Since Mr. Waite has so generously admitted the validity of

my answer to his criticism as regards meteors, I can do no

less than admit that he scored one against me in his second

argument. I used the word liquid. It was careless diction.

Had I used the phrase "composed of a SUBSTANCE of high

viscosity, of low specific gravity and with a coefficient of

refraction identical with that of air," there would have

been no argument. I am sure that Mr. Waite will admit after

reflection that such a substance could be held in position,

if its specific gravity were low enough, by a combination of

gravity and centrifugal force, somewhat in the same manner

as the ring of Saturn is held in place. Of course, any idea

that the layer rested on the air and was supported in place

by it, would be untenable. As I said in my previous letter,

I don't believe such a layer exists. If it does, I hope that

no one proves it before I get some characters off on a space

flyer for an interplanetary adventure or two.--S. P. Meek,

Capt., Ord. Dept., U. S. A.

_Right from the Shoulder_

Dear Editor:

I know for a fact that Astounding Stories is the best

Science Fiction magazine on the stands. I have read it every

issue except the first three, and have not yet found a bad

story. The characters in other Science Fiction magazines

seem like machines, but Astounding Stories' characters seem

like intimate friends. Why do ---- [censored] like some

write in and start bellyaching about the cover, pages, the

size, the edges and many other things that no one but ----

[censored] would notice? If they know so much why don't they

start a magazine and put all other publications out of

business? If they liked the stories they would not care if

the color of the cover was black or red, white and blue. I

get so interested in the stories that the edges of the paper

do not amount to anything; and people that bellyache about

such minor things prove that they do not care for the

stories, and furthermore they prove that they are ----

[censored] and ---- [censored] ready for the booby hatch.

There is only one thing wrong with the perfect magazine: it

does not come out twice a month. I have never known a bunch

of Editors that have the intelligence of the Staff of

Astounding Stories [uncensored--Ed.]. They have never

published a single story that any intelligent Reader could

kick about.

About reprints: whether the Editors think that they should

publish some or not, it is all the same to me, as they know

what they are doing. I should like very much to see some

stories by Burroughs, though.

If I were to name your best authors, I would have to name

every one that ever wrote a story for your wonderful

magazine.--H. N. Sager, R. F. D. 6, Box 419, Bessemer, Ala.

_Disposing of Old Stories_

Dear Editor:

I have observed that numerous readers request reprints. I

have a collection that goes back to 1900! Since I have no

more use for them, I have decided to dispense with them.

Here is an infinitesimal list:

A. Merritt: "Thru the Dragon Glass," "The Moon Pool," "The

Metal Monster" and "The Ship of Ishtar."

Homer Eon Flint: "Out of the Moon," "The Planeteer," "The

King of Conserve Island," "The Blind Spot" and "Flint and

Hall."

Jules Black: "Beyond the Earth Atom" and "Marooned in

Space."

John Louis Hill: "The Dimension Wizard" and "The Challenge

from Beyond."

Davidson Mortimer: "Lost in Time" and "The Amazing Empire

Lost in Time" (sequel to story previously mentioned).

Booth Langell: "The Moons of Lanisar."

As I said before, this is but a small part of the Science

Fiction stories I have. Anyone desiring stories mentioned

above, or any others, please write to me.--George Zambock,

459 E. 155th St., New York, N. Y.

_A Kind Offer_

Dear Editor:

I'm sure you will sympathize with me for reading your

magazine in study hall.

It is so very dull--I have three S.H.'s in a row--that I

have to do something to relieve the monotony, so, seeing the

latest copy of A. S. at my newsdealer's, I brought it back

to school after dinner. I am speaking of the February

number. I very much enjoyed the Dr. Bird story. Capt. Meek

is always good. "Phalanxes of Atlans" promises to be an

excellent story, also.

What I want to know is, why are so many mossbacks throwing

brickbats? What does it matter if some of the stories are

not on the scientific chalk line? A very wise man once said

that "Variety is the spice of life," so why not take a hint,

some of you would-be brickbat pitchers, and pipe down?

I have read every issue of Astounding Stories published so

far, and have not a brickbat to report as yet. I notice in

one letter to "The Readers' Corner" a request for a

department on rocket propulsion. I presume the writer meant

on propelling rocket planes. I have experimented on rocket

ships for the past three years and can give some data on

these as to the construction of models (for when I say ships

I really mean model airplanes). I have had this as my hobby

for the past four and a half years, and can give extensive

information on model building. I specialize in models

powered by power other than rubber; and I took second place

at the Atlantic City Tournament held in October by the

National Play-ground Association, in the Annual National

Championships.

Anyone desiring information on the rocket ship or any other

type of model plane will be promptly answered by addressing

their letter to me.

I hope you will find room to publish this, as I like nothing

better than helping someone get started on my favorite

hobby, aviation. I have, however, several hobbies, including

football, basket-ball, tennis, swimming, boating and hiking.

I live within ten miles of the Great Smoky Mountains

National Park, and can see from the study hall window, which

I now am seated near to, three ranges of the mountains all

covered with more than ten inches of snow.--Richard M.

Evans, Box 305, Maryville, Tenn.

_To the Defense_

Dear Editor:

Some of the letters you have printed in "The Readers'

Corner" almost burn me up. Edwin C. Magnuson asks you what

you print there: only letters praising your magazine to the

skies? or occasional brickbats? Well, I might say one thing,

and that is: if you did print all brickbats, as he seems to

want you to, the Readers would think that your magazine

wasn't of much account if that was the kind of letters you

got all the time, and would probably quit reading it.

He also said he felt like quitting several times because the

stories weren't scientific. Well, if he can show me anywhere

on your magazine where it says it is a scientific magazine,

I'll certainly beg his most humble pardon on bended knee. He

also crabbed about your artists. If he can do better, I

advise you to hire him. He also says that the paper is

rotten, and that after a few handlings goes to pieces. I

still have all my magazines, and have lent them several

times, and the paper is still there. On his fifth statement

I agree with him: you should have an editorial. Also I would

certainly like to have reprints, as there are about six

issues I didn't get, and I imagine there are several other

Readers in the same boat.

Hume V. Stephani makes a very good suggestion about a

quarterly. I certainly think it would be appreciated and

would go over big. And Robert J. Hyatt, I most certainly

agree with you in your letter printed in the February issue;

and if this letter is printed (which I hope it is) I hope

you will see it, and know that at least one person has the

same views on the magazine that you do.--Buel Godwin,

101--3rd Avenue, S. E. Le Mars, Iowa.

"_Now a Real Pest_"

Dear Editor:

I have recently been initiated into the reading of Science

Fiction, and as a result I am now a real pest to the

magazine vendor, from asking for the next copy of Astounding

Stories. I have just finished your February copy and words

can't express my enjoyment.

"The Tentacles from Below" is indeed a Science Fiction

masterpiece. I devour eagerly Captain S. P. Meek's stories

about Dr. Bird. As long as you keep Meek you can be assured

that I will purchase this magazine. "The Pirate Planet"

proved to be a story worthy to be kept as a reprint for

future issues. In fact, many of your stories are so good

that it is a shame that others can't enjoy them in future

issues of Astounding Stories.

Wesso is a great artist and I appreciate to the fullest

extent his remarkable pictures.

Yours for a continuation of your present success in editing

and publishing remarkable stories--Lester P. Lieber, 542

Dalzell St., Shreveport, La.

_Stands Pat_

Dear Editor:

Although this is my first letter to "The Readers' Corner" of

your publication, I have nevertheless been a consistent

Reader of the magazine since its inception. Contrary to many

of your correspondents I have nothing to say against your

magazine or policy. I like its size, its artists and most of

its stories. I shall not bother to name those I do not like

because I do not believe that there is a magazine to be

found that can publish stories to suit all its Readers.

I enjoy the serials and your two-part novelettes since it

gives one something to look forward to each month. I enjoyed

"The Pirate Planet" by Charles W. Diffin so much I was sorry

to see it end, and I hope there will be more of his work in

the future. I am particularly glad to see such writers as

Captain S. P. Meek, Ray Cummings, Miles J. Breuer, Victor

Rousseau and Harl Vincent as regular contributors to your

pages, but there are also a number of other writers whom I

miss seeing in "our" mag. Of these are A. Hyatt-Verrill who

writes so well of the Incas, Otis Adelbert Kline who also

gives us excellent stories and Leslie F. Stone whose "Men

with Wings" and "Women with Wings" appeared in another

magazine and which I enjoyed exceedingly. I believe that to

have these writers as regular contributors would add much to

the interest of the publication.

With the compliments of an avid reader of Science Fiction. I

salute you.--Theodore Morris, 1412 S. W. 13th St., Miami,

Fla.

"_Under My Collar_"

Dear Editor:

I have been reading Astounding Stories for a good while and

I like it fine. I noticed in your last issue that a fellow

by the name of Edwin C. Magnuson was kicking about "The

Readers' Corner." Some of his reasons, I think, for not

liking this magazine are as follows: first, the

illustrations are poor. I believe they are good. Second, he

says that he doesn't like stories such as those written by

Charles W. Diffin, Jackson Gee, Murray Leinster and Victor

Rousseau. He also has in his letter a list of authors whose

works he likes. I do not think they are so hot, with the

exception of Capt. S. P. Meek. Mr. Magnuson also says he is

disgusted with Astounding Stories and would like to quit

reading it. Well, why doesn't he?

I want to say it is a fine mag. I don't like to be a critic,

but that fellow got under my collar. The only thing that

could be done is to publish at least twice a month.

Well, reckon I will sign off. Here is to Astounding Stories.

A better mag can't be found!--Boyd H. Goodman, 2008 McKinney

Ave., Dallas, Texas.

_From Franklin to Poe_

Dear Editor:

As a Reader of Astounding Stories from the first number I

would like to comment on your magazine regarding your

stories and the subject of reprints.

First, you are publishing one of the best Science Fiction

magazines on the market, and I read three of them. And

although I agree with Mr. Magnuson and others on the subject

of reprints, I do not agree with the former that the paper

is rotten and falls to pieces. I have a complete file of

Astounding Stories to date and I have not noticed any signs

of disintegration amongst them as yet.

You could easily follow the suggestion of Mr. Stephani, and

have a space for good reprints and charge a nickel more. I

believe most of your Readers would approve of it.

The story, "The Sunken Empire," was fine, and it is to the

credit of Science Fiction that in addition to interesting

Readers in other worlds it has also created an interest in

the fate of lands from which the Atlantic Ocean received its

name. This story is reminiscent of a story which appeared in

The Saturday Evening Post about three years ago called

"Maracot Deep." In this story a party of men (three, I

believe) descended to the bottom of the Atlantic and found a

surviving colony from Atlantis, and saw reproduced on a

screen events leading up to the sinking of Atlantis. It was

written by the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the only

weak spot was that Sir Arthur had to change the submergence

of Atlantis from a natural catastrophe into a "judgment" of

the gods, whose sense of propriety was outraged by the

"wickedness" of the Atlanteans. If you reprinted this story

your Readers would eat it up.

I hope that you publish this letter because I want to reply

through your "Readers' Corner" to Mr. Richard Lewis of

Knoxville, Iowa, on the subject of reprints.

Mr. Lewis says he has read most of the classic scientific

stories referred to. Well, so have I, but I should like to

read many of them again as would many of your Readers. I

have for the last twenty years been reading literary

classics but when I receive my copies of Good Literature or

The Golden Book I do not consider myself cheated because I

find some stories in them that I have read before. The best

are always worth reading at least twice.

As an illustration, has Mr. Lewis ever read the following:

the "Kasidah," by Sir Richard Burton, who gave the world its

best literal translation of "The Arabian Nights," which

differs as daylight from dark in comparison with the Lane

and Payne translations which are only edited for children to

read? Or has he read the chapter which Benjamin Franklin

added to the Bible? If Mr. Lewis read these for the first

time in any magazine he takes he would no doubt consider

them well worth the price of the magazine or more, yet they

would be reprints, the last one about as old as the United

States.

The "Kasidah" is a long poem on philosophic aspects of

evolution in which almost all Science Fiction Readers are

interested. In contains lines like the following:

"Conscience was bred

When man had shed

His fur, his tail

And pointed ears."

And as a dissertation on our caveman ancestors:

"They fought for women as for food.

When 'Mays' awoke to warm desire;

And this the lust that changed to love

When fancy lent a purer fire."

Regarding the Franklin chapter, it is stated that "Wise Old

Ben" used to insert it between the pages of the Bible and

read it to his friends in the City of Brotherly Love, and

great was the consternation of many who thought they knew

the Scriptures from "cover to cover."

Any new readers of Science Fiction would be glad to read

"The Girl in the Golden Atom," "The Fire People" and "The

Man Who Mastered Time," by Ray Cummings. I like to read this

author's work, but I believe when he wrote this trilogy of

Matter, Space and Time that he reached the heights of his

writing. I have never read any subsequent writings of his

that I thought exceeded them.

Speaking of the necessity of authors eating, Mr. Lewis

states that good stories have never been written on an empty

stomach.

Edgar Allan Poe who wrote "Shades" was one of the most

brilliant of American writers, and his stomach was empty

most of the time. And when this master of ratiocination had

on rare occasions a full stomach it was invariably full of

"hooch."

As Mr. Lewis speaks as a pedagogue, is it not a

physiological fact that an empty stomach clears the mind by

diverting the blood stream from the necessity of digesting

food? And while I am not advocating any fast cures for

authors, some of them (although few in Astounding Stories)

would be greatly benefited by trying it.

In conclusion I should like to say to Mr. Lewis and others

who take the same slant on reprints, that there are many of

the finest writings in Science Fiction and the classics

which you and I have never even heard of, much less read.

I will close with best wishes for your continued

success--Joseph R. Barnes, Cache Junction, Utah.

_Now Feeling Better_

Dear Editor:

Well, I guess I've just about gotten you exasperated with

all the brickbats I've been cannoning into your office.

However, I believe this letter will make you feel a little

better.

The latest issue was fine. There wasn't a story in it that I

didn't enjoy. "The Tentacles from Below" was a surprisingly

good story, especially when you consider that I don't like

sea stories. I liked this one very much.

Another extremely great surprise was "Werewolves of War."

From the few notes about it I surmised that it was another

one of those hero-dying-and-saving-his-country stories; and

it was--but not the kind I expected it to be. The author's

narrative and descriptive abilities were such that I forgot

all about the plot running throughout the story. Hang on to

that fellow.

The other complete story was also good. The conclusion of

the "The Pirate Planet" was also good, as were its preceding

instalments. The first instalment of "Phalanxes of Atlans"

was unusual. That's gonna turn out to be one of the best

stories you've yet published, or I miss my bet.--G.

Kirschner, Box 301, Temple, Texas.

"_Paper Is Durable_"

Dear Editor:

While reading "The Readers' Corner" in your January issue I

noticed a bit of criticism by Edwin Magnuson of Duluth,

Minn. In it he said that you have printed some stories

containing little or no science. But, first, most of your

Readers like a little change in a subject and I advise one

or two of these about two or three months apart. Second, the

paper is of durable material, for I pass my magazine to my

friends who read it and then return it with very few pages

torn. Third, I agree that reprints would be a blessing, for

most of your readers have not read stories by Cummings,

Breuer, Wells and Vincent. Fourth, the fact that some

stories have not a sound scientific basis is quite all right

because every fair reader likes his stories fired with some

imagination.--Walter Witte, 960 Duchess St., St. Paul,

Minn.

_Suggestions_

Dear Editor:

Although I have read every issue of A. S. since it came out,

I have never written about it, and this is what I have to

say:

First, it is just as good or better than two other Science

Fiction magazines that I can name.

Second, in my opinion you have some of the best modern

authors, such as Cummings, Meek, Rousseau, Diffin, Vincent

and Hamilton. Also others.

The stories have been A-1 with the exception of "Murder

Madness," which, in my opinion, does not belong in a

magazine of this type, but in a detective story magazine,

because that is all it was--a detective story. And when are

you going to have a sequel to "The Gray Plague," by L. A.

Eshbach which appeared in the November issue? It deserves

one.

The best author on your staff is Captain S. P. Meek, whose

Dr. Bird stories cannot be equalled. They are science

stories plus.

A few suggestions: an occasional reprint. It would not

affect the living conditions of our present day authors and

would give us all a chance to read a classic of yesterday.

Do not change the size (i. e. width and length); but as for

enlarging it in the thickness direction, you have my

heartiest encouragement. I notice that one of the other

magazines has changed its size, so now you are not alone.

Evening up the edges of the sheets would improve the looks,

however. And now that you have had your first birthday, when

are you going to start a quarterly? In it you could publish

a complete book length novel and seven novelettes. By novel,

I mean a story of about one hundred pages or more of your

present size, and novelettes fifty pages or more. You could

double the price because a quarterly is worth double what a

monthly is worth.

Your artists are great, but you could still improve by

having them make a full page illustration at the start and

one more exciting one as the story progresses.

Well, I think I've said enough good things about you and

enough suggestions, so until January 1932, adios, au revoir,

etc.--Henry Benner, Cowithe, Wash.

_Ouch!_

Dear Editor:

Personally I would rather read a good short story than the

ten pages of instructions by Readers published in the March

issue. Two pages are plenty, especially when half the

criticisms concern paper, size, edges of paper, etc. A. S.

is O. K!

How about that other short?--Don Ward, 6 Ketchel St.,

Auburn, N. Y.

_Likes Action_

Dear Editor:

I have just finished the February issue of Astounding

Stories. All of the stories were so good I couldn't tell you

which one is the best. "The Phalanxes of Atlans" and "The

Tentacles from Below" were very good. I liked "The Black

Lamp," too. It is up to the standard of the rest of the Dr.

Bird stories. "The Pirate Planet" ended very beautifully.

However, I did not like that about Sykes getting killed.

"Werewolves of War" was good. It ended differently from most

of the other stories. Most of them end with the hero

escaping, but in this the hero was killed. It had a very

good plot.

I got my first copy of Astounding Stories last July and I

haven't missed a copy since. Why not put out Astounding

Stories twice a month, or make it a weekly? I hate to have

to wait a whole month before I get another copy.

I believe that the best story I have ever read in this

magazine was "The Invisible Death," by Victor Rousseau.

The reason I like Astounding Stories better than any other

Science Fiction magazine is that most of the other magazines

have too much science and not enough action.--Dale Griffith,

437 Carson St., San Antonio, Texas.

"_To Satisfy Myself_"

Dear Editor:

It has been long since I read the February issue of your

magazine and I'm waiting anxiously for the March issue.

The February issue had some very good stories, and I just

must say that the story entitled "Werewolves of War," is the

best story of its type I have ever read. Unlike most of

these stories there is more future truth than fiction.

Perhaps you didn't expect to hear from me so soon again, but

I am interested in this type of story as I used to write

this kind in my English class back in high school. My

stories were of this type, but always different from any

that the rest of the class wrote. Another thing, I love to

be writing, so I take this way to satisfy myself. I do hope

you will excuse me.

I have one more thing to say and that is: I only wish your

magazine was put out every two weeks instead of every four;

or print more stories and raise the price to twenty five

cents. I'm sure people will pay if they are as interested as

I.--Ken F. Haley, 36 Mechanic St., Lebanon, N.H.

"_Easier to Turn_"

Dear Editor:

I have just read "The Readers' Corner" of the March issue

and noticed that bright remark about that super-rotten

story, "Skylark Three." Anyone who liked that story is

certainly not hard to please. It does not compare with the

worst story ever published. I also read that "other

magazine" and I say that it has disgraced itself by "Skylark

Three."

Everything is perfect about your magazine except that there

are not enough stories in each issue. The uneven edges are

just fine, for it makes the pages easier to turn. The covers

are not too gaudy. The covers should depict a thrilling

incident in a story; they do.

"Phalanxes of Atlans" offered a good theory as to the

whereabouts of the descendants of the Atlanteans and the

Lost Tribes of Israel. It was keen.

I conclude my letter with a warning: do not change your

type. Also do not change your order of issue; I mean, do not

make your magazine into a bi-monthly as I see some magazines

of this type have done.--Robert Leonard Russell, 825 Casey

Ave., Mt. Vernon, Illinois.

_You Tell 'Em!_

Dear Editor:

I have always considered the drawings of H. W. Wesso far

superior to those of all other Science Fiction artists, and,

indeed, much better than the work of most pulp magazine

illustrators. But his cover for the March issue of

Astounding Stories was remarkable even for him; it was a

veritable masterpiece.

So enthralled was I by the first sight of this eye-arresting

picture that I stared at it for minutes on end. This

snarling titan with his mighty arm outstretched toward the

tiny figures just beyond his reach--what a gripping tableau!

Free from the superfluous, uninteresting machinery and

apparatus that clutter up most illustrations in other

Science Fiction magazines, your March cover remained

fantastic, but human--a picture that expressed the very

essence of super-scientific fiction as presented in

Astounding Stories. Vivid in color, striking in subject,

dramatic in treatment and drawn with consummate skill, that

cover must have attracted many new Readers to this magazine.

And the promise held out by the cover was more than

fulfilled by the contents of that issue--one of your best to

date. The only discordant note in the entire magazine was

the yapping and ranting of certain dissatisfied ----

[censored] too ---- [censored] to appreciate the finest,

most worthy publication in its field to-day.--Booth Cody,

Bronx, New York.

"_Nothing Is Automatic_"

Dear Editor:

First, I wish to congratulate you on the increasing quality

of your magazine since its first issue. It surpasses all

other Science Fiction magazines, and I haven't missed a

single issue and don't intend to!

What prompted me to write this letter was an article, "A

Robot Chemist," published in your March, 1931, issue. In the

article it states that a mechanical robot performed several

experiments without human supervision. But, I am sorry to

say, I disagree. Nothing is automatic. Foolishly, after

perfecting anything that performs its work afterwards by

itself, man calls it an automaton. But it is not! Did he not

have to work and slave hour after hour, day after day and

month after month to perfect it? He did! Ever since man

became civilized he has deceived himself by calling, for

instance, machinery in a factory, automatons. The quest for

automatic machinery is as hopeless as the quest for

perpetual motion!

What is my idea of an automaton? Well, take a robot for

instance. Man calls it an automaton in spite of the fact

that he had to slave to put it together before it did its

work.

My idea is this: the iron ore would come out itself, smelt

itself, form itself in the various shapes and parts needed

to construct a robot, then take its correct place and rivet

itself. Then the radio brain, electrical eyes and magnet

hands take their place; and when it has constructed itself

it will conduct the experiments--if a chemical

robot--without human supervision. Thus, the latter clause

would be true! That's my conception of an automatic robot!

Otherwise, its just some metal doing the bidding of a

master's brain.

Another thing: the novelette "Beyond the Vanishing Point,"

by Ray Cummings, is preposterous. The flesh might shrink or

grow, but the bone would not! If one shrunk as did George

Randolph, one's bones would burst through the flesh.

But in spite of all that, I like the stories that way.

Science, in the years to come might discover how to shrink

or grow both flesh and bones. I guess I'm taking too much of

your time, so adios!--Jay Zee, Chicago, Illinois.

_Hot Times in the Fire-House_

Dear Editor:

The first Thursday in each month I make a bee-line for the

newsstand--and Astounding Stories. It may interest you to

know that I have every issue on file that you have put out.

There have been some mighty good yarns in those issues, but

the one just at hand contains the best story you have ever

published--"Terrors Unseen," by Harl Vincent. There's an

author for you; but evidently I don't have to tell you so,

as you have given us quite a number of his splendid stories.

"Vagabonds of Space" was a wow. Like some of the others who

have written in, I would like to see a sequel to this. Harl

Vincent is my favorite of all your authors.

A close second is Charles W. Diffin. He is good, too. As

your authors appeal to me, in order, I mean. I would line

them up in this way: Harl Vincent, Charles W. Diffin, R. F.

Starzl, Ray Cummings, Capt. S. P. Meek, Jack Williamson and

Murray Leinster.

I agree with Jim Nicholson of San Francisco that you should

give us some stories by Francis Flagg. Here is an author you

never have published, and, to my way of looking at things,

he has more fresh material than most of the authors put

together. Many of the things that have been copied widely

and used extensively (I don't mean that whole stories have

been stolen, or anything like that) were originated by this

fine writer. By all means get Francis Flagg. [We have just

bought a story--a good one--from him!--Ed]. He would stand

about third in my list if you had used his work before. I

made it up from those whose work has been used.

Two or three things I notice, that I would have you correct.

All your stories seem to be of standardized length, either

around 10,000 words or 25,000 words. Eliminate all

restrictions as to word length but make your writers boil

down their work. Most stories are too long, and could be

told better if cut down quite a bit. The paper and the page

size of the magazine are okay, but why not smooth edges? And

it is hard to keep the covers on. I wouldn't object to more

pages or an extra nickel in price. Or if not that, how about

publishing "our" magazine twice a month?

After fighting a fire, there's nothing like Astounding

Stories with which to "unlax." You're doing a fine job, and

I only make these suggestions because I want a "perfect"

magazine instead of one that bats 97% all the time. Hope

you'll have room for all this. And, oh yes, keep on with

your program of "No reprints." Your new yarns are better

than the old ones. Let's have the new ones, and encourage

our fine string of authors to do even better work.--Gayl

Whitman, Fireman, Co. No. 11, Main at 22nd, Columbus, Ohio.

_Correspondents Wanted_

Dear Editor:

Another critic is going to take his pen in hand and give you

a bouquet. I have just finished reading the March issue of

A. S. and think it was fine.

Of all the stories you have published I liked "The Gray

Plague" the best. I don't care much for reprints because I

like new stories the best.

I would like to correspond with some of the Readers of A. S.

I will answer any or all letters I receive.--L. B. Knutson,

629--3rd Ave., So, Minneapolis, Minn.

_A Heroine a la Mode_

Dear Editor:

I'm with J. H. Nicholson, who advises those who are

indifferent to the scientifically possible in order to give

the author a broader field in which to lay his plot. As he

says, they should feel right at home with their noses stuck

into a volume of Anderson's Fairy Tales. However, this

letter is more to express the science lovers' viewpoint than

to sling mud at the authors. For us, the plot loses much of

its kick if the science is not reasonable.

Suppose for once that one of these Readers who waives

scientific possibility aside as secondary should pick up a

plot-distorted story in which the heroine should be

described something as follows:

"Hers was a tall superbly built figure combining the

strength of a horse with the gentle curves of a hippo. When

she spoke, her sweetly modulated voice was as pleasant to

the ear as the bray of a Spanish jackass. Her hair hung to

her waist and was the convenient nesting place for several

English sparrows. She was slightly cockeyed from birth and

had had her nose squashed in a saloon brawl. She carried

herself with the graceful dignity of an African orang-utan

and was always much sought after, having a quaint habit of

slapping every new male she met a resounding whack on the

back that loosened their bridge work. Being a veteran

tobacco chewer and having high blood pressure she could spit

one hundred feet against a fifty-mile wind. When she ate in

company, she had an amusing way of gargling her soup in

G-flat. Her--"

It's unnecessary to go further. Such a character would be

every bit as reasonably possible as some of the science

these science-conniving Readers are willing to sanction.

Here are some of the seemingly impossible feats of a recent

story: 1--a diver in an ordinary diving dress is able to

stand the pressure at three miles down; 2--(granting the

above is possible) a diver shoots up three miles without

stopping and still does not become a victim of the bends;

3--(granting the above two possible) a diver after shooting

from such a great depth and pressure to a depth of

comparatively low pressure would not be able to lower the

pressure inside his dress, since it would be held so rigid

that he would not be able to bend his arms; 4--a man or

animal suddenly released from the enormous pressure of about

three hundred tons to the square inch to atmospheric

pressure, it seems, would most certainly burst before the

internal pressure could equalize itself.

Please notice that I said seemingly wrong. I'm for A. S.

just one hundred per cent and would prefer to have it as

right as possible. I don't like crank letter writing and

would never have written this now if it hadn't been for

several of the letters in the March issue that gave me a

touch of hades under the collar. S'long. Maybe I'll write

again sometime when I get some more "ham science"

ideas.--William S. Lotsch, 1 Morrison Ave., Troy, N. Y.

_You Make Them Adequate_

Dear Editor:

Thanks. Of course I accept your invitation to "The Readers'

Corner." I have been a constant Reader of your magazine

since its appearance on the Science Fiction horizon, and I

have yet to meet a story that I failed to read in its

entirety or that I didn't like.

To merely write a letter and say that this story was good,

the other story was fair, and oh my! how poor the third

story was, is futile. But as it is the usual custom to do so

here goes:

Excellent stories--all of the first five volumes; good

stories--who's interested?; poor stories--where are they?;

good authors--takes up too much room and time; poor

authors--got tired looking for them.

All I want to say is, Astounding Stories is the best or one

of the best magazines on the market. Gee, but aren't words

futile when you describe something great and

wonderful!--Herbert Goodket, 707 Jackson Avenue, New York,

N. Y.

_Ain't It Too Awful!_

Dear Editor:

I knew it. It was bound to come. At last my efforts have

been rewarded. Fame has sought me out--even in Brooklyn. It

was suggested in the March issue of Astounding Stories that

I, Louis Wentzler, as one of the active contributors to "The

Readers' Corner," regale your Readers with a description of

myself, my interest in Science Fiction and how I got that

way. A picture was also requested, but this had better be

omitted. As for my personal history, bend an ear:

At the tender age of four, while making mud pies on the

doorstep of my home, I was beaned by a brick hurled by an

uncouth ruffian across the street. The results were not

fatal--who said "unfortunately?"--but from that moment I

developed a taste for Science Fiction. Had it not been for

that incident I might have grown up a normal lad; but the

caress of that brick on my cranium did things to me, and I

have been a Science Fiction addict since.

Of course, I do not contend that all Science Fiction fans

were hit by bricks, though a lot of them should be. I do

believe, however, that a slight concussion of the brain

helps one appreciate Science Fiction the more. Anyway, once

imbued with the urge I took to Science Fiction like a Hindu

to hashish. Such stories were rare in those days, but I

started to collect all I could find.

Then came the war. I was too young to fight, but I did my

bit making canteens out of old sieves. That was how my mind

worked, you see. Well, the war ended--I forgot who won--and

I went back to my beloved Science Fiction. Years have passed

since then, and I have a fine collection of stories now.

Should any of you care to see them, come around to the local

booby-hatch some time: you'll find me in Padded Cell No.

17.--Louis Wentzler, 1935 Woodbine St., Brooklyn, N. Y.

_Hurrah!_

Dear Editor:

Except for a brief letter of criticism in the August, 1930,

number of Astounding Stories, I have been a silent but loyal

follower of the magazine since its first issue. My silence

was that of profound satisfaction. Almost all the stories

suited me to perfection; and the few I did not like were

hardly worth commenting on. Since the magazine has grown

better with every issue I would probably have kept my peace;

but there is one disturbing factor which impels me to write

again.

I refer to the irresponsible outbursts of certain ----

[censored] who squeeze into "The Readers' Corner" and

sputter out senseless denunciations of the magazine, its

appearance, its policies, and so on. I do not object to

logical, well-founded criticism, but I most decidedly do

object to the ---- [censored] remarks and invidious

comparisons indulged in by various ---- [censored] Readers.

It's about time someone told them where to head in, and, by

your leave, I'll do it.

The most recent offender is J. Vernon Shea, Jr., a

Pittsburgh lad of eighteen who, in the March issue, ventures

to criticize the grammar of Ray Cummings, call the Editor

harsh names, and demand that the magazine conform to his own

dizzy notions. He concedes that Astounding Stories prints

consistently interesting tales, but charges that the Editor

is indifferent to "the advancement of Science Fiction." Mr.

Shea, can't you see that the publication of first-class

stories, as in this magazine, is the best possible way to

popularize Science Fiction? Or do you simply prefer inferior

stuff?

Then there's D. R. Guthrie, from way back in Idaho, who

liked a yarn in another magazine so much he had to tell us

all about it--as if we didn't have the best Science Fiction

ever written right here in Astounding Stories. Guthrie's

another who seems to prefer brass to gold.

Going back an issue or two, we note a letter from Edwin

Magnuson, a deluded denizen of Duluth, who says he's plumb

disgusted because Astounding Stories receives far more

bouquets than brickbats, when according to him the mag

deserves to be panned plenty. Get in step, Edwin, you're

falling way behind!

And I mustn't forget M. Clifford Johnston of the Newark

Johnstons, who calls Astounding Stories trash and its

Readers morons. Well, there are various degrees of mental

incompetence, and the moron is far above the idiot, Mr.

Johnston!

Now that I've taken a few hasty pokes at those who most

deserved them, I'll give my own comments on some of your

latest stories--and anyone who feels like telling me where I

get off is welcome to do so.

First, let me take my hat off to Jack Williamson. I never

thought much of his stuff in other mags, but his "The Meteor

Girl" was a mighty fine piece of work. Evidently you've got

to be good to crash Astounding Stories. Interesting as it

was, though, Williamson's yarn contained a noticeable error.

In the story, the narrator and his friend witness an event

occurring twelve hours in the future at a distant place.

They then travel to that place, reaching it at a time

exactly corresponding to the time of the event witnessed.

Therefore, they should have seen themselves in the future

scene--an obvious fact which the author either failed to

consider or conveniently ignored. [But--by the story, they

did not arrive at the rock until just AFTER the events they

witnessed by means of the fourth dimension. Thus, everything

is O. K. Take another look.--Ed.] Despite this flaw the

story embodied several original ideas, had plenty of action,

and was well told. We can stand more of Williamson.

"Phalanxes of Atlans," by F. V. W. Mason, was a corker. When

writers of Mason's standing turn to Science Fiction, we fans

have much to be thankful for. Is there any chance of our

getting a story by Fred MacIsaac, Theodore Roscoe, or Erle

Stanley Gardner? All of them are first-class writers, and

they can handle Science Fiction better than many who have

specialized in that field. The only other suggestion I can

offer for improving the magazine is to have additional

illustrations within the stories, such as Wide World

Adventures used to have.

Satisfied as I am with Astounding Stories it will probably

be a long time before I write again--unless I feel called

upon to administer a few more verbal spankings to certain

obstreperous individuals!--Sears Langell, 1214 Boston Road,

New York, N. Y.

"_The Readers' Corner_"

All Readers are extended a sincere and cordial invitation to "come

over in 'The Readers' Corner'" and join in our monthly discussion of

stories, authors, scientific principles and possibilities--everything

that's of common interest in connection with our Astounding Stories.

Although from time to time the Editor may make a comment or so, this

is a department primarily for Readers, and we want you to make full

use of it. Likes, dislikes, criticisms, explanations, roses,

brickbats, suggestions--everything's welcome here: so "come over in

'The Readers' Corner'" and discuss it with all of us!

_The Editor._

* * * * *

End of Project Gutenberg's Astounding Stories, May, 1931, by Various