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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30452 ***
+
+                              ASTOUNDING
+
+                               STORIES
+
+                                 20¢
+
+
+              _On Sale the First Thursday of Each Month_
+
+
+                       W. M. CLAYTON, Publisher
+                         HARRY BATES, Editor
+                  DOUGLAS M. DOLD, Consulting Editor
+
+
+The Clayton Standard on a Magazine Guarantees
+
+    _That_ the stories therein are clean, interesting, vivid, by leading
+           writers of the day and purchased under conditions approved by
+           the Authors' League of America;
+
+    _That_ such magazines are manufactured in Union shops by American
+           workmen;
+
+    _That_ each newsdealer and agent is insured a fair profit;
+
+    _That_ an intelligent censorship guards their advertising pages.
+
+
+_The other Clayton magazines are:_
+
+ACE-HIGH MAGAZINE, RANCH ROMANCES, COWBOY STORIES, CLUES, FIVE-NOVELS
+MONTHLY, ALL STAR DETECTIVE STORIES, RANGELAND LOVE STORY MAGAZINE,
+WESTERN ADVENTURES, and WESTERN LOVE STORIES.
+
+_More than Two Million Copies Required to Supply the Monthly Demand
+for Clayton Magazines._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VOL. VI, No. 1            CONTENTS            APRIL, 1931
+
+
+COVER DESIGN                  H. W. WESSO
+    _Painted in Water-Colors from a Scene in "Monsters of Mars."_
+
+MONSTERS OF MARS              EDMOND HAMILTON             4
+    _Three Martian-Duped Earth-Men Swing Open the Gates of Space That for
+     So Long Had Barred the Greedy Hordes of the Red Planet._
+     (A Complete Novelette.)
+
+THE EXILE OF TIME             RAY CUMMINGS               26
+    _From Somewhere Out of Time Come a Swarm of Robots Who Inflict on
+     New York the Awful Vengeance of the Diabolical Cripple Tugh._
+     (Beginning a Four-Part Novel.)
+
+HELL'S DIMENSION              TOM CURRY                  51
+    _Professor Lambert Deliberately Ventures into a Vibrational Dimension
+     to Join His Fiancée in Its Magnetic Torture-Fields._
+
+THE WORLD BEHIND THE MOON     PAUL ERNST                 64
+    _Two Intrepid Earth-Men Fight It Out with the Horrific Monsters of
+     Zeud's Frightful Jungles._
+
+FOUR MILES WITHIN             ANTHONY GILMORE            76
+    _Far Down into the Earth Goes a Gleaming Metal Sphere Whose Passengers
+     Are Deadly Enemies._  (A Complete Novelette.)
+
+THE LAKE OF LIGHT             JACK WILLIAMSON           100
+    _In the Frozen Wastes at the Bottom of the World Two Explorers Find a
+     Strange Pool of White Fire--and Have a Strange Adventure._
+
+THE GHOST WORLD               SEWELL PEASLEE WRIGHT     118
+    _Commander John Hanson Records Another of His Thrilling Interplanetary
+     Adventures with the Special Patrol Service._
+
+THE READERS' CORNER           ALL OF US                 134
+    _A Meeting Place for Readers of Astounding Stories._
+
+
+Single Copies, 20 Cents (In Canada, 25 Cents) Yearly Subscription,
+$2.00
+
+Issued monthly by Readers' Guild, Inc., 80 Lafayette Street, New York,
+N. Y. W. M. Clayton, President; Francis P. Pace, Secretary. Entered as
+second-class matter December 7, 1929, at the Post Office at New York,
+N. Y., under Act of March 3, 1879. Title registered as a Trade Mark in
+the U. S. Patent Office. Member Newsstand Group--Men's List. For
+advertising rates address E. R. Crowe & Co., Inc., 25 Vanderbilt Ave.,
+New York; or 225 North Michigan Ave., Chicago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Monsters of Mars
+
+A COMPLETE NOVELETTE
+
+_By Edmond Hamilton_
+
+[Illustration: _The Martian gestured with a reptilian arm toward the
+ladder._]
+
+[Sidenote: Three Martian-duped Earth-men swing open the gates of space
+that for so long had barred the greedy hordes of the Red Planet.]
+
+
+Allan Randall stared at the man before him. "And that's why you sent
+for me, Milton?" he finally asked.
+
+The other's face was unsmiling. "That's why I sent for you, Allan," he
+said quietly. "To go to Mars with us to-night!"
+
+There was a moment's silence, in which Randall's eyes moved as though
+uncomprehendingly from the face of Milton to those of the two men
+beside him. The four sat together at the end of a roughly furnished
+and electric-lit living-room, and in that momentary silence there came
+in to them from the outside night the distant pounding of the Atlantic
+upon the beach. It was Randall who first spoke again.
+
+"To Mars!" he repeated. "Have you gone crazy, Milton--or is this some
+joke you've put up with Lanier and Nelson here?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Milton shook his head gravely. "It is not a joke, Allan. Lanier and I
+are actually going to flash out over the gulf to the planet Mars
+to-night. Nelson must stay here, and since we wanted three to go I
+wired you as the most likely of my friends to make the venture."
+
+"But good God!" Randall exploded, rising. "You, Milton, as a physicist
+ought to know better. Space-ships and projectiles and all that are but
+fictionists' dreams."
+
+"We are not going in either space-ship or projectile," said Milton
+calmly. And then as he saw his friend's bewilderment he rose and led
+the way to a door at the room's end, the other three following him
+into the room beyond.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a long laboratory of unusual size in which Randall found
+himself, one in which every variety of physical and electrical
+apparatus seemed represented. Three huge dynamo-motor arrangements
+took up the room's far end, and from them a tangle of wiring led
+through square black condensers and transformers to a battery of great
+tubes. Most remarkable, though, was the object at the room's center.
+
+It was like a great double cube of dull metal, being in effect two
+metal cubes each twelve feet square, supported a few feet above the
+floor by insulated standards. One side of each cube was open, exposing
+the hollow interiors of the two cubical chambers. Other wiring led
+from the big electronic tubes and from the dynamos to the sides of the
+two cubes.
+
+The four men gazed at the enigmatic thing for a time in silence.
+Milton's strong, capable face showed only in its steady eyes what
+feelings were his, but Lanier's younger countenance was alight with
+excitement; and so too to some degree was that of Nelson. Randall
+simply stared at the thing, until Milton nodded toward it.
+
+"That," he said, "is what will flash us out to Mars to-night."
+
+Randall could only turn his stare upon the other, and Lanier chuckled.
+"Can't take it in yet, Randall? Well, neither could I when the idea
+was first sprung on us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton nodded to seats behind them, and as the half-dazed Randall sank
+into one the physicist faced him earnestly.
+
+"Randall, there isn't much time now, but I am going to tell you what I
+have been doing in the last two years on this God-forsaken Maine
+coast. I have been for those two years in unbroken communication by
+radio with beings on the planet Mars!
+
+"It was when I still held my physics professorship back at the
+university that I got first onto the track of the thing. I was
+studying the variation of static vibrations, and in so doing caught
+steady signals--not static--at an unprecedentedly high wave-length.
+They were dots and dashes of varying length in an entirely
+unintelligible code, the same arrangement of them being sent out
+apparently every few hours.
+
+"I began to study them and soon ascertained that they could be sent
+out by no station on earth. The signals seemed to be growing louder
+each day, and it suddenly occurred to me that Mars was approaching
+opposition with earth! I was startled, and kept careful watch. On the
+day that Mars was closest the earth the signals were loudest.
+Thereafter, as the red planet receded, they grew weaker. The signals
+were from some being or beings on Mars!
+
+"At first I was going to give the news to the world, but saw in time
+that I could not. There was not sufficient proof, and a premature
+statement would only wreck my own scientific reputation. So I decided
+to study the signals farther until I had irrefutable proof, and to
+answer them if possible. I came up here and had this place built, and
+the aerial towers and other equipment I wanted set up. Lanier and
+Nelson came with me from the university, and we began our work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Our chief object was to answer those signals, but it proved
+heartbreaking work at first. We could not produce a radio wave of
+great enough length to pierce out through earth's insulating layer and
+across the gulf to Mars. We used all the power of our great
+windmill-dynamo hook-ups, but for long could not make it. Every few
+hours like clockwork the Martian signals came through. Then at last we
+heard them repeating one of our own signals. We had been heard!
+
+"For a time we hardly left our instruments. We began the slow and
+almost impossible work of establishing intelligent communication with
+the Martians. It was with numbers we began. Earth is the third planet
+from the sun and Mars the fourth, so three represented earth and four
+stood for Mars. Slowly we felt our way to an exchange of ideas, and
+within months were in steady and intelligent communication with them.
+
+"They asked us first concerning earth, its climates and seas and
+continents, and concerning ourselves, our races and mechanisms and
+weapons. Much information we flashed out to them, the language of our
+communication being English, the elements, of which they had learned,
+with a mixture of numbers and symbolical dot-dash signals.
+
+"We were as eager to learn about them. They were somewhat reticent, we
+found, concerning their planet and themselves. They admitted that
+their world was a dying one and that their great canals were to make
+life possible on it, and also admitted that they were different in
+bodily form from ourselves.
+
+"They told us finally that communication like this was too
+ineffective to give us a clear picture of their world, or vice versa.
+If we could visit Mars, and then they visit earth, both worlds would
+benefit by the knowledge of the other. It seemed impossible to me,
+though I was eager enough for it. But the Martians said that while
+spaceships and the like were impossible, there was a way by which
+living beings could flash from earth to Mars and back by radio waves,
+even as our signals flashed!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Randall broke in in amazement. "By radio!" he exclaimed, and Milton
+nodded.
+
+"Yes, so they said, nor did the idea of sending matter by radio seem
+too insane, after all. We send sound, music by radio waves across half
+the world from our broadcasting stations. We send light, pictures,
+across the world from our television stations. We do that by changing
+the wave length of the light-vibrations to make them radio vibrations,
+flashing them out thus over the world, to receivers which alter their
+wave-lengths again and change them back into light-vibrations.
+
+"Why then could not matter be sent in the same way? Matter, it has
+been long believed, is but another vibration of the ether, like light
+and radiant heat and radio vibrations and the like, having a lower
+wave-length than any of the others. Suppose we take matter and by
+applying electrical force to it change its wave-length, step it up to
+the wave-length of radio vibrations? Then those vibrations can be
+flashed forth from the sending station to a special receiver that will
+step them down again from radio vibrations to matter vibrations. Thus
+matter, living or non-living, could be flashed tremendous distances in
+a second!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"This the Martians told us, and said they would set up a
+matter-transmitter and receiver on Mars and would aid and instruct us
+so that we could set up a similar transmitter and receiver here. Then
+part of us could be flashed out to Mars as radio vibrations by the
+transmitter, and in moments would have flashed across the gulf to the
+red planet and would be transformed back from radio vibrations to
+matter-vibrations by the receiver awaiting us there!
+
+"Naturally we agreed enthusiastically to build such a
+matter-transmitter and receiver, and then, with their instructions
+signalled to us constantly, started the work. Weeks it took, but at
+last, only yesterday, we finished it. The thing's two cubical chambers
+are one for the transmitting of matter and the other for its
+reception. At a time agreed on yesterday we tested the thing, placing
+a guinea pig in the transmitting chamber and turning on the actuating
+force. Instantly the animal vanished, and in moments came a signal
+from the Martians saying that they had received it unharmed in their
+receiving chamber.
+
+"Then we tested it the other way, they sending the same guinea pig to
+us, and in moments it flashed into being in our receiving chamber. Of
+course the step-down force in the receiving chamber had to be in
+operation, since had it not been at that moment the radio-vibrations
+of the animal would have simply flashed on endlessly in endless space.
+And the same would happen to any of us were we flashed forth and no
+receiving chamber turned on to receive us.
+
+"We signalled the Martians that all tests were satisfactory, and told
+them that on the next night at exactly midnight by our time we would
+flash out ourselves on our first visit to them. They have promised to
+have their receiving chamber operating to receive us at that moment,
+of course, and it is my plan to stay there twenty-four hours,
+gathering ample proofs of our visit, and then flash back to earth.
+
+"Nelson must stay here, not only to flash us forth to-night, but above
+all to have the receiving chamber operating to receive us at the
+destined moment twenty-four hours later. The force required to
+operate it is too great to use for more than a few minutes at a time,
+so it is necessary above all that that force be turned on and the
+receiving chamber ready for us at the moment we flash back. And since
+Nelson must stay, and Lanier and I wanted another, we wired you,
+Randall, in the hope that you would want to go with us on this
+venture. And do you?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As Milton's question hung, Randall drew a long breath. His eyes were
+on the two great cubical chambers, and his brain seemed whirling at
+what he had heard. Then he was on his feet with the others.
+
+"Go? Could you keep me from going? Why, man, it's the greatest
+adventure in history!"
+
+Milton grasped his hand, as did Lanier, and then the physicist shot a
+glance at the square clock on the wall. "Well, there's little enough
+time left us," he said, "for we've hardly an hour before midnight, and
+at midnight we must be in that transmitting chamber for Nelson to send
+us flashing out!"
+
+Randall could never recall but dimly afterward how that tense hour
+passed. It was an hour in which Milton and Nelson went with anxious
+faces and low-voiced comments from one to another of the pieces of
+apparatus in the room, inspecting each carefully, from the great
+dynamos to the transmitting and receiving chambers, while Lanier
+quickly got out and made ready the rough khaki suits and equipment
+they were to take.
+
+It lacked but a quarter-hour of midnight when they had finally donned
+those suits, each making sure that he was in possession of the small
+personal kit Milton had designated. This included for each a heavy
+automatic, a small supply of concentrated foods, and a small case of
+drugs chosen to counteract the rarer atmosphere and lesser gravity
+which Milton had been warned to expect on the red planet. Each had
+also a strong wrist-watch, the three synchronized exactly with the
+big laboratory clock.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they had finished checking up on this equipment the clock's
+longer hand pointed almost to the figure twelve, and the physicist
+gestured expressively toward the transmitting chamber. Lanier, though,
+strode for a moment to one of the laboratory's doors and flung it
+open. As Randall gazed out with him they could see far out over the
+tossing sea, dimly lit by the great canopy of the summer stars
+overhead. Right at the zenith among those stars shone brightest a
+crimson spark.
+
+"Mars," said Lanier, his voice a half-whisper. "And they're waiting
+out there for us now--out there where we'll be in minutes!"
+
+"And if they shouldn't be waiting--their receiving chamber not
+ready--"
+
+But Milton's calm voice came across the room to them: "Zero hour," he
+said, stepping up into the big transmitting chamber.
+
+Lanier and Randall slowly followed, and despite himself a slight
+shudder shook the latter's body as he stepped into the mechanism that
+in moments would send him flashing out through the great void as
+impalpable ether-vibrations. Milton and Lanier were standing silent
+beside him, their eyes on Nelson, who stood watchfully now at the big
+switchboard beside the chambers, his own gaze on the clock. They saw
+him touch a stud, and another, and the hum of the great dynamos at the
+room's end grew loud as the swarming of angry bees.
+
+The clock's longer hand was crawling over the last space to cover the
+smaller hand. Nelson turned a knob and the battery of great glass
+tubes broke into brilliant white light, a crackling coming from them.
+Randall saw the clock's pointer clicking over the last divisions, and
+as he saw Nelson grip a great switch there came over him a wild
+impulse to bolt from the transmitting chamber. But then as his
+thoughts whirled maelstromlike there came a clang from the clock and
+Nelson flung down the switch in his grasp. Blinding light seemed to
+break from all the chamber onto the three; Randall felt himself hurled
+into nothingness by forces titanic, inconceivable, and then knew no
+more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Randall came back to consciousness with a humming sound in his ears
+and with a sharp pain piercing his lungs at every breath. He felt
+himself lying on a smooth hard surface, and heard the humming stop and
+be succeeded by a complete silence. He opened his eyes, drawing
+himself to his feet as Milton and Lanier were doing, and stared about
+him.
+
+He was standing with his two friends inside a cubical metal chamber
+almost exactly the same as the one they had occupied in Milton's
+laboratory a few moments before. But it was not the same, as their
+first astounded glance out through its open side told them.
+
+For it was not the laboratory that lay around them, but a vast
+conelike hall that seemed to Randall's dazed eyes of dimensions
+illimitable. Its dull-gleaming metal walls slanted up for a thousand
+feet over their heads, and through a round aperture at the tip far
+above and through great doors in the walls came a thin sunlight. At
+the center of the great hall's circular floor stood the two cubical
+chambers in one of which the three were, while around the chambers
+were grouped masses of unfamiliar-looking apparatus.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Randall's untrained eyes it seemed electrical apparatus of very
+strange design, but neither he nor Milton nor Lanier paid it but small
+attention in that first breathless moment. They were gazing in
+fascinated horror at the scores of creatures who stood silent amid the
+apparatus and at its switches, gazing back at them. Those creatures
+were erect and roughly man-like in shape, but they were not human
+men. They were--the thought blasted to Randall's brain in that
+horror-filled moment--crocodile-men.
+
+Crocodile-men! It was only so that he could think of them in that
+moment. For they were terribly like great crocodile shapes that had
+learned in some way to carry themselves erect upon their hinder limbs.
+The bodies were not covered with skin, but with green bony plates. The
+limbs, thick and taloned at their paw-ends, seemed greater in size and
+stronger, the upper two great arms and the lower two the legs upon
+which each walked, while there was but the suggestion of a tail. But
+the flat head set on the neckless body was most crocodilian of all,
+with great fanged, hinged jaws projecting forward, and with dark
+unwinking eyes set back in bony sockets.
+
+Each of the creatures wore on his torso a gleaming garment like a coat
+of metal scales, with metal belts in which some had shining tubes.
+They were standing in groups here and there about the mechanisms, the
+nearest group at a strange big switch-panel not a half-dozen feet from
+the three men. Milton and Lanier and Randall returned in a tense
+silence the unwinking stare of the monstrous beings around them.
+
+"The Martians!" Lanier's horror-filled exclamation was echoed in the
+next instant by Randall's.
+
+"The Martians! God, Milton! They're not like anything we know--they're
+reptilian!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton's hand clutched his shoulder. "Steady, Randall," he muttered.
+"They're terrible enough, God knows--but remember we must seem just as
+grotesque to them."
+
+The sound of their voices seemed to break the great hall's spell of
+silence, and they saw the crocodilian Martians before them turning and
+speaking swiftly to each other in low hissing speech-sounds that were
+quite unintelligible to the three. Then from the small group nearest
+them one came forward, until he stood just outside the chamber in
+which they were.
+
+Randall felt dimly the momentousness of the moment, in which beings of
+earth and Mars were confronting each other for the first time in the
+solar system's history. The creature before them opened his great jaws
+and uttered slowly a succession of sounds that for the moment puzzled
+them, so different were they from the hissing speech of the others,
+though with the same sibilance of tone. Again the thing repeated the
+sounds, and this time Milton uttered an exclamation.
+
+"He's speaking to us!" he cried. "Trying to speak the English that I
+taught them in our communication! I caught a word--listen...."
+
+As the creature repeated the sounds, Randall and Lanier started to
+hear also vaguely expressed in that hissing voice familiar words:
+"You--are Milton and--others from--earth?"
+
+Milton spoke very clearly and slowly to the creature: "We are those
+from earth," he said. "And you are the Martians with whom we have
+communicated?"
+
+"We are those Martians," said the other's hissing voice slowly.
+"These"--he waved a taloned paw toward those behind him--"have charge
+of the matter-transmitter and receiver. I am of our ruler's council."
+
+"Ruler?" Milton repeated. "A ruler of all Mars?"
+
+"Of all Mars," the other said. "Our name for him would mean in your
+words the Martian Master. I am to take you to him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton turned to the other two with face alight with excitement.
+"These Martians have some supreme ruler they call the Martian Master,"
+he said quickly; "and we're to go before him. As the first visitors
+from earth we're of immense importance here."
+
+As he spoke, the Martian official before them had uttered a hissing
+call, and in answer to it a long shape of shining metal raced into
+the vast hall and halted beside them. It was like a fifty-foot
+centipede of metal, its scores of supporting short legs actuated by
+some mechanism inside the cylindrical body. There was a
+transparent-walled control room at the front end of that body, and in
+it a Martian at the controls who snapped open a door from which a
+metal ladder automatically descended.
+
+The Martian official gestured with a reptilian arm toward the ladder,
+and Milton and Lanier and Randall moved carefully out of the
+cube-chamber and across the floor to it, each of their steps being
+made a short leap forward by the lesser gravity of the smaller planet.
+They climbed up into the centipede-machine's control room, their guide
+following, and then as the door snapped shut, the operator of the
+thing pulled and turned the knob in his grasp and the long machine
+scuttled forward with amazing smoothness and speed.
+
+In a moment it was out of the building and into the feeble sunlight of
+a broad metal-paved street. About them lay a Martian city, seen by
+their eager eyes for the first time. It was a city whose structures
+were giant metal cones like that from which they had just come, though
+none seemed as large as that titanic one. Throngs of the hideous
+crocodilian Martians were moving busily to and fro in the streets,
+while among them there scuttled and flashed numbers of the
+centipede-machines.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As their strange vehicle raced along, Randall saw that the conelike
+structures were for the most part divided into many levels, and that
+inside some could be glimpsed ranks of great mechanisms and hurrying
+Martians tending them. Away to their right across the vast forest of
+cones that was the city the sun's little disk was shining, and he
+glimpsed in that direction higher ground covered with a vast tangle of
+bright crimson jungle that sloped upward from a great, half-glimpsed
+waterway.
+
+The Martian beside them saw the direction of his gaze and leaned
+toward him. "No Martians live there," he hissed slowly. "Martians live
+only in cities where canals meet."
+
+"Then there's no life in those crimson jungles?" Randall asked,
+repeating the question a moment later more slowly.
+
+"No Martians there, but life--living things," the other told him,
+searching for words. "But not intelligent, like Martians and you."
+
+He turned to gaze ahead, then pointed. "The Martian Master's cone," he
+hissed.
+
+The three saw that at the end of the broad metal street down which
+their vehicle was racing there loomed another titanic cone-structure,
+fully as large as the mighty one in which they first found themselves.
+As the centipede-machine swept up to its great door-opening and
+halted, they descended to the metal paving and then followed their
+reptilian guide through the opening.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They found themselves in a great hall in which scores of the Martians
+were coming and going. At the hall's end stood a row of what seemed
+guards, Martians grasping shining tubes such as they had already
+glimpsed. These gave way to allow their passage when their conductor
+uttered a hissing order, and then they were moving down a shorter hall
+at whose end also were guards. As these sprang aside before them, a
+great door of massive metal they guarded moved softly upward,
+disclosing a mighty circular hall or room inside. Their crocodilian
+guide turned to them.
+
+"The hall of the Martian Master," he hissed.
+
+They passed inside with him. The great hall seemed to extend upward to
+the giant cone's tip, thin light coming down from an opening there.
+Upon the dull metal of its looming walls were running friezes of
+lighter metal, grotesque representations of reptilian shapes that they
+could but vaguely glimpse. Around the walls stood rank after rank of
+guards.
+
+At the hall's center was a low dias, and in a semicircle around and
+behind it stood a half-hundred great crocodilian shapes. Randall
+guessed even at the moment that they were the council of which their
+conductor had named himself a member. But like Milton and Lanier, he
+had eyes in that first moment only for the dais itself. For on it
+was--the Martian Master.
+
+Randall heard Milton and Lanier choke with the horror that shook his
+own heart and brain as he gazed. It was not simply another great
+crocodilian shape that sat upon that dais. It was a monstrous thing
+formed by the joining of three of the great reptilian bodies! Three
+distinct crocodile-like bodies sitting close together upon a metal
+seat, that had but a single great head. A great, grotesque crocodilian
+head that bulged backward and to either side, and that rested on the
+three thick short necks that rose from the triple body! And that head,
+that triple-bodied thing, was living, its unwinking eyes gazing at the
+three men!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Martian Master! Randall felt his brain reel as he gazed at that
+mind-shattering thing. The Martian Master--this great head with three
+bodies! Reason told Randall, even as he strove for sanity, that the
+thing was but logical, that even on earth biologists had formed
+multiple-headed creatures by surgery, and that the Martians had done
+so to combine in one great head, one great brain, the brains of three
+bodies. Reason told him that the great triple brain inside that
+bulging head needed the bloodstreams of all three bodies to nourish
+it, must be a giant intellect indeed, one fitted to be the supreme
+Martian Master. But reason could not overcome the horror that choked
+him as he gazed at the awful thing.
+
+A hissing voice sounding before him made him aware that the Martian
+Master was speaking.
+
+"You are the Earth-beings with whom we communicated, and whom we
+instructed to build a matter-transmitter and receiver on earth?" the
+slow voice asked. "You have come safely to Mars by means of that
+station?"
+
+"We have come safely." Milton's voice was shaken and he could find no
+other words.
+
+"That is well. Long had we desired to have such a station built on
+earth, since with it there to flash back and forth between the two
+worlds is easy. You have come, then, to learn of this world and to
+take back what you learn to your races?"
+
+"That is why we came." Milton said, more steadily. "We want to stay
+only hours on this first visit, and then flash back to earth as we
+came."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The head's awful eyes seemed to consider them. "But when do you intend
+to go back?" its strange voice asked. "Unless the one at your earth
+station has its receiver operating at the right moment you will simply
+flash on endlessly as radio waves--will be annihilated."
+
+Milton found the courage to smile. "We started from earth at our
+midnight exactly, and at midnight exactly twenty-four earth hours
+later, we are to flash back and the receiver will be awaiting us."
+
+There was silence when he had said that, a silence that seemed to
+Randall's strained mind to have become suddenly tense, sinister. The
+great triple-bodied creature before them considered them again, its
+eyes moving over them, and when it again spoke the hissing words came
+very slowly.
+
+"Twenty-four earth hours," it said; "and then your receiver on earth
+will be awaiting you. That time we can measure to the moment, and that
+is well. For it is not you three Earth-beings who will flash back to
+earth when that moment comes! It will be Martians, the first of our
+Martian masses who have waited for ages for that moment and who will
+begin then our conquest of the earth!
+
+"Yes, Earth-beings, our great plan comes to its end now at last! At
+last! Age on age, prisoned on this dying, arid world, we have desired
+the earth that by right of power shall be ours, have sought for ages
+to communicate with its beings. You finally heard us, you hearkened to
+us, you built the matter-transmitting and receiving station on earth
+that was the one thing needed for our plan. For when the
+matter-receiver of that station is turned on in twenty-four of your
+hours, and ready to receive matter flashes from here, it will be the
+first of our millions who will flash at last to earth!
+
+"I, the Martian Master, say it. Those first to go shall seize that
+matter-receiver on earth when first they appear there, shall build
+other and larger receivers, and through them within days all our
+Martian hordes shall have been flashed to earth! Shall have poured out
+over it and conquered with our weapons your weak races of
+Earth-beings, who cannot stand before us, and whose world you have
+delivered at last into our hands!"
+
+For a moment, when the great monster's hissing voice had ceased,
+Milton and Randall and Lanier gazed toward it as though petrified, the
+whole unearthly scene spinning about them. And then, through the thick
+silence, the thin sound of Milton's voice:
+
+"Our world--our earth--delivered to the Martians, and by us! God--no!"
+
+With that last cry of agonized comprehension and horror, Milton did
+what surely had never any in the great hall expected, leaped onto the
+dais with a single spring toward the Martian Master! Randall heard a
+hundred wild hissing cries break from about him, saw the crocodilian
+forms of guards and council rushing forward even as he and Lanier
+sprang after Milton, and then glimpsed shining tubes levelled from
+which brilliant shafts of dazzling crimson light or force were
+stabbing toward them!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Randall the moment that followed was but a split-second flash and
+whirl of action. As his earthly muscles took him forward with Lanier
+after Milton in a great leap to the dais, he was aware of the
+brilliant red rays stabbing behind him closely, and knew that only the
+tremendous size of his leap had taken him past them. In the succeeding
+instant he was made aware of what he had escaped, for the
+hastily-loosed rays struck squarely a group of three or four Martian
+guards rushing to the dais from the opposite side, and they vanished
+from view with a sharp detonation as though clicked out of existence!
+
+Randall was not to know then, that the red rays were ones that
+annihilated matter by neutralizing or damping the matter-vibrations in
+the ether. But he did know that no more rays were loosed, for by then
+he and Milton and Lanier were on the dais and were wrapped in a
+hurricane combat with the guards that had rushed between them and the
+Martian Master.
+
+Gleaming fangs--great scaled forms--reaching talons--it was all a wild
+phantasmagoria of grotesque forms spinning around him as he struck
+with all the power of his earthly muscles and felt crocodilian forms
+staggering and going down beneath his frenzied blows. He heard the
+roar of an automatic close beside him in the melee as Milton
+remembered at last through the red haze of his fury the weapon he
+carried, but before either Randall or Lanier could reach their own
+weapons a new wave of crocodilian forms had poured onto them that by
+sheer pressing weight held them helpless, to be disarmed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hissing orders sounded, the arms and legs of the three were tightly
+grasped by great taloned paws, and the masses of Martians about them
+melted back from the dais. Held each by two great creatures, Milton
+and Randall and Lanier faced again the triple-bodied Martian Master,
+who in all that wild moment of struggle appeared not to have changed
+his position. The big monster's black eyes stared unmovedly down at
+them.
+
+"You Earth-beings seem of lower intelligence even than we thought,"
+his hissing voice informed them. "And those weapons--crude, very
+crude."
+
+Milton, his face set, spoke back: "It may be that you will find human
+weapons of some power if your hordes reach earth," he said.
+
+"But what compared with the power of ours?" the other asked coldly.
+"And since our scientists even now devise new weapons to annihilate
+the earth's races, I think they would be glad of three of those races
+to experiment with now. The one use we can make of you, certainly."
+
+The creature turned its bulging head a little towards the guards who
+held the three men, and uttered a brief hissing order. Instantly the
+six Martians, grasping the three tightly, marched them across the
+great hall and through a different door than that by which they had
+entered.
+
+They were taken down a narrow corridor that turned sharply twice as
+they went on. Randall saw that it was lit by squares inset in the
+walls that glowed with crimson light. It came to him as they marched
+on that night must be upon the Martian city without, since the sun had
+been sinking when they had crossed it in the centipede-machine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Through what seemed an ante-room they were taken, and then into a long
+hall instantly recognizable as a laboratory. There were many glowing
+squares illuminating it, and narrow windows high in the wall gave them
+a glimpse of the city outside, a pattern of crimson lights. Long metal
+tables and racks filled the big room's farther end, while along the
+walls were ranged shining mechanisms of unfamiliar and grotesque
+appearance. Fully a score of the crocodilian Martians were busy in the
+room, some intent on their work at the racks and tables, others
+operating some of the strange machines.
+
+The guards conducted the three to an open space by the wall, below one
+of the high window-openings and between two great cylindrical
+mechanisms. Then, while five of their number held the three men
+prisoned in that space by the threat of their levelled ray-tubes, the
+other moved toward one of the busy Martian scientists and held with
+him a brief interchange of hissing speech.
+
+Milton leaned to whisper to the other two: "We've got to get out of
+this while we're still living," he whispered. "You heard the Martian
+Master--in constructing that matter-receiver on earth, we've opened a
+door through which all the Martian millions will pour onto our world!"
+
+"It's useless, Milton," said Randall dully. "Even if we got clear of
+this the Martians will be at their matter-transmitter in hordes when
+the moment comes to flash back to earth."
+
+"I know that, but we've got to try," the other insisted. "If we or
+some of us could get clear of this, we might in some way hide near the
+matter-transmitter until the moment came and then fight to it."
+
+"But how to get out of the hands of these, even?" asked Lanier,
+nodding toward the alert guards before them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There's but one way," Milton whispered swiftly. "Our earthly muscles
+would enable us, I think, to get through this window-opening above us
+in a leap, if we had a moment's chance. Well, whichever of us they
+take to experiment with or examine first, must make a struggle or
+disturbance that will turn the guards' attention for a moment and give
+the other two a chance to make the attempt!"
+
+"One to stay and the other two to get away...." Randall said slowly;
+but Milton's tense whisper interrupted:
+
+"It's the only way, and even then a thousand to one chance! But it's
+we who have opened this gate for the Martian invasion of our world and
+it's we who must--"
+
+Before he could finish, the approach of hissing voices told them that
+the leader of the six guards and the Martian who seemed the chief of
+the experimenters in the hall were nearing them. The three men stood
+silent and tense as the two crocodilian monsters stopped before them.
+The scientist, who carried in his metal-belt, instead of a ray-tube a
+compact case of instruments, surveyed them as though in curiosity.
+
+He came closer, his quick reptilian eyes taking in with evident
+interest every feature of their bodily appearance. Intuitively the
+three knew that one of them was to be chosen for a first investigation
+by the Martian scientists, and that that one would have not even the
+slender hope of escape open to the other two. A strange lottery of
+life and death!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Randall saw the creature's gaze turn from one to another of them, and
+then heard the hiss of his voice as he pointed a taloned paw toward
+Milton. Instantly two of the guards had seized Milton and had jerked
+him out from the wall, the other guards holding back Randall and
+Lanier with threatening tubes. It was upon Milton that the fatal
+choice had fallen!
+
+Randall and Lanier made together a half-movement forward, but Milton,
+a tense message in his eyes, forced them back. The guards who held the
+physicist led him, at the direction of the Martian scientist, toward a
+great upright frame at the room's far end, upon which were clustered a
+score of dial-indicators. From these flexible cords led; and now the
+scientists began attaching these by clips to various spots on Milton's
+body. Some mechanical examination of his bodily characteristics were
+apparently to be made. Milton shot suddenly a glance at the two by the
+wall, and his head nodded in an almost imperceptible signal. The
+muscles of Lanier and Randall tensed.
+
+Then abruptly Milton seemed to go mad. He shouted aloud in a terrible
+voice, and at the same moment tore from him the cords just attached,
+his fists striking out then at the amazed Martians around him. As they
+leaped back from that sudden explosion of activity and sound on
+Milton's part the guards before Randall and Lanier whirled
+instinctively for an instant toward it. And in that instant the two
+had leaped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was upward they leaped, with all the force of their earthly
+muscles, toward the big window-opening a half-dozen feet in the wall
+above them. Like released steel springs they sat up, and Randall heard
+the thump of their feet as they struck the opening's sill, heard wild
+cries suddenly coming from beneath them, as the guards turned back
+toward them. Crimson rays clove up like light toward them, but the
+instant's surprise had been enough, and in it they had leaped on and
+through the opening, into the outside night!
+
+As they shot downward and struck the metal paving outside, Randall
+heard a wild babble of cries from inside. A moment he and Lanier gazed
+frenziedly around them, then were running with great leaps along the
+base of the building from which they had just escaped.
+
+In the darkness of night the Martian city stretched away to their
+right, its massive dark cone-structures outlined by points of glowing
+ruddy light here and there upon them. Beside the city's metal streets
+were illuminated by the brilliant field of stars overhead and by the
+soft light of the two moons, one much larger than the other, that
+moved among those stars.
+
+Along the street crocodilian Martians were coming and going still,
+though in small numbers, there being but few in sight in the dim-lit
+street's length. Lanier pointed ahead as they leaped onward.
+
+"Straight onward, Randall!" he jerked. "There seem fewer of the
+Martians this way!"
+
+"But the great cone of the matter-station is the other way!" Randall
+exclaimed.
+
+"We can't risk making for it now!" cried the other. "We've got to keep
+clear of them until the alarm is over. Hear them now?"
+
+For even as they leaped forward a rising clamor of hissing cries and
+rush of feet was coming from behind as scores of Martians poured out
+into the darkness from the great cone-building. The two fugitives had
+passed by then from the shadow of the mighty structure, and as they
+ran along the broad metal street toward the shadow of the next cone,
+through the light of the moons above, they heard higher cries and then
+glimpsed narrow shafts of crimson force cleaving the night around
+them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Randall, as the deadly rays drove past him, heard the low detonating
+sound made by their destruction of the air in their path, and the
+inrush of new air. But in the misty and uncertain moonlight the rays
+could not be loosed accurately, and before they could be swept
+sidewise to annihilate the two fleeing men they had gained, with a
+last great leap, the shadow of the next building.
+
+On they ran, the clatter of the Martian pursuit growing more noisy
+behind them. Randall heard Lanier gasping with each great leap, and
+felt himself at every breath a knife of pain stabbing through his
+lungs, the rarified atmosphere of the red planet taking its toll.
+Again from the darkness behind them the crimson rays clove, but this
+time were wide of their mark.
+
+With every moment the clamor of pursuit seemed growing louder, the
+alarm spreading out over the Martian city and arousing it. As they
+raced past cone after cone, Randall knew even the increased power of
+their muscles could not long aid them against the exhaustion which the
+thin air was imposing on them. His thoughts spun for a moment to
+Milton, in the laboratory behind, and then back to their own desperate
+plight.
+
+Abruptly shapes loomed in the misty light before them! A group of
+three great Martians, reptilian shapes that had been coming toward
+them and had stopped for an instant in amazement at sight of the
+running pair. There was no time to halt themselves, to evade the
+three, and with a mutual instinct Lanier and Randall seized together
+the last expedient open to them. They ran straight forward toward the
+astounded three, and when a half-score feet from them, leaped with all
+their force upward and toward them, their tensed bodies flying through
+the air with feet outstretched before them.
+
+Then they had struck the group of three with feet-foremost, and with
+the impetus of that great leap had knocked them sprawling to this side
+and that, while with a supreme effort the two kept their balance and
+leaped on. The cries of the three added to the din behind them as they
+threw themselves forward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They flung themselves past a last cone building to halt for an instant
+in utter amazement despite the nearing pursuit. Before them were no
+more streets and structures, but a huge smooth-flowing waterway! It
+gleamed in the moonlight and lay at right angles across their path,
+seeming to flow along the Martian city's edge.
+
+"A canal!" cried Lanier. "It's one of the canals that meet at this
+city and flow around it! We're trapped--we've reached the city's
+edge!"
+
+"Not yet!" Randall gasped. "Look!"
+
+As he pointed to the left Lanier shot a glance there; and then both of
+them were running in that direction, along the smooth metal paving
+that bordered the mighty canal. They came to what Randall had seen, a
+mighty metal arch that soared out over the waterway to its opposite
+side. A bridge!
+
+They were on it, were racing up the smooth incline of it. Randall
+glanced back as they reached the arch's summit. From that height the
+city stretched far away behind them, a lace of crimson lights in the
+night. He glimpsed the gleam of the giant waterway that encircled the
+city completely, one that was fed by other canals from far away that
+emptied into it, the great city's vital water-supply brought thus from
+this world's melting polar snows.
+
+There were moving lights behind now, too, pouring out onto the metal
+paving by the waterway, moving to and fro as though in confusion, with
+a babel of hissing cries. It was not until Randall and Lanier were
+running down the descending incline of the great arched bridge,
+though, that the lights and shouts of their pursuers began to move up
+on that bridge after them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Running off the bridge's smooth way, the two found themselves
+stumbling on through the darkness over more metal paving, and then
+over soft ground. There were no lights or buildings or sounds of any
+sort on this farther side of the great waterway. A tall dark wall
+seemed suddenly to loom up out of the darkness some distance ahead of
+the two.
+
+"The crimson jungle!" Randall cried. "The jungles we glimpsed from the
+city! It's a chance to hide!"
+
+They raced toward the protecting blackness of that wall of vegetation.
+They reached it, flung themselves inside, just as the pursuing
+Martians, a mass of running crocodilian shapes and of great racing
+centipede-machines, swept up over the bridge's arch behind. A moment
+the two halted in the thick vegetation's shelter, gasping for breath,
+then were moving forward through the jungle's denser darkness.
+
+Thick about them and far above them towered the masses of strange
+trees and plant life through which they made their way. Randall could
+see but dimly the nature of these plant-forms, but could make out that
+they were grotesque and unearthly in appearance, all leafless, and
+with masses of thin tendrils branching from them instead of leaves. He
+realized that it was only beside the arid planet's great canals that
+this profusion of plant life had sufficient moisture for existence,
+and that it was the broad bands of jungle bordering the canals that
+had made the latter visible to earth's astronomers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lanier and he halted for a moment to listen. The thick jungle about
+them seemed quite silent. But from behind there came through it a
+vague tumult of hissing calls; and then, as they glimpsed red flashes
+far behind, they heard the crashing of great masses of the leafless
+trees.
+
+"The rays!" whispered Lanier. "They're beating through the jungle with
+them and the centipede-machines after us!"
+
+They paused no more, but pushed on through the thick growths with
+renewed urgency. Now and then, as they passed through small clearings,
+Randall glimpsed overhead the fast-moving nearer moon and slower
+sailing farther moon of Mars, moving across the steady stars. In some
+of these clearings they saw, too, strange great openings burrowed in
+the ground as though by some strange animal.
+
+The crashing clamor of the Martians beating the jungle behind was
+coming close, ever closer, and as they came to still another misty-lit
+clearing, Lanier paused, with face white and tense.
+
+"They're closing in on us!" he said. "They're hunting us down by
+beating the jungle with those centipede-machines, and even if we
+escape them we're getting farther from the city and the matter-station
+each moment!"
+
+Randall's eyes roved desperately around the clearing; and then, as
+they fell on a group of the great burrowed openings that seemed
+present everywhere about them, he uttered an exclamation.
+
+"These holes! We can hide in one until they've passed over us, and
+then steal back to the city!"
+
+Lanier's eyes lit. "It's a chance!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They sprang toward the openings. They were each of some four feet
+diameter, extending indefinitely downward as though the mouths of
+tunnels. In a moment Randall was lowering himself into one, Lanier
+after him. The tunnel in which they were, they found, curved to one
+side a few feet below the surface. They crawled down this curve until
+they were out of sight of the opening above. They crouched silent,
+then, listening.
+
+There came down to them the dull, distant clamor of the
+centipede-machines crashing through the jungle, cutting a way with
+rays, their clamor growing ever louder. Then Randall, who was lowest
+in the tunnel, turned suddenly as there came to him a strange rustling
+sound from _beneath_ him. It was as though some crawling or creeping
+thing was moving in the tunnel below them!
+
+He grasped the arm of Lanier, beside and a little above him, to warn
+him, but the words he was about to whisper never were uttered. For at
+this moment a big shapeless living thing seemed to flash up toward
+them through the darkness from beneath, cold ropelike tentacles
+gripped both tightly; and then in an instant they were being dragged
+irresistibly down into the lightless tunnel's depths!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As they were pulled swiftly downward into the tunnel by the tentacles
+that grasped them an involuntary cry of horror came from Randall and
+Lanier alike. They twisted frantically in the cold grip that held
+them, but found it of the quality of steel. And as Randall twisted in
+it to strike frantically down through the darkness at whatever thing
+of horror held them, his clenched fist met but the cold smooth skin
+of some big, soft-bodied creature!
+
+Down--down--remorselessly they were being drawn farther into the black
+depths of the tunnel by the great thing crawling down below them.
+Again and again the two twisted and struck, but could not shake its
+hold. In sheer exhaustion they ceased to struggle, dragged helplessly
+farther down.
+
+Was it minutes or hours, Randall wondered afterward, of that horrible
+progress downward, that passed before they glimpsed light beneath? A
+feeble glow, hardly discernible, it was, and as they went lower still
+he saw that it was caused by the tunnel passing through a strata of
+radio-active rock that gave off the faint light. In that light they
+glimpsed for the first time the horror dragging them downward.
+
+It was a huge worm creature! A thing like a giant angleworm, three
+feet or more in thickness and thrice that in length, its great body
+soft and cold and worm-like. From the end nearest them projected two
+long tentacles with which it had gripped the two men and was dragging
+them down the tunnel after it! Randall glimpsed a mouth-aperture in
+the tentacled end of the worm body also, and two scarlike marks above
+it, placed like eyes, although eyes the monstrous thing had not.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But a moment they glimpsed it and then were in darkness again as the
+tunnel passed through the radio-active strata and lower. The horror of
+that moment's glimpse, though, made them strike out in blind
+repulsion, but relentlessly the creature dragged them after it.
+
+"God!" It was Lanier's panting cry as they were dragged on. "This worm
+monster--we're hundreds of feet below the surface!"
+
+Randall sought to reply, but his voice choked. The air about them was
+close and damp, with an overpowering earthy smell. He felt
+consciousness leaving him.
+
+A gleam of soft light--they were passing more radio-active patches. He
+felt the wild convulsive struggles of Lanier against the thing; and
+then suddenly the tunnel ended, debouched into a far-stretching,
+low-ceilinged cavity. It was feebly illuminated by radio-active
+patches here and there in walls and ceiling, and as the monster that
+held them halted on entering the cavity, Randall and Lanier lay in its
+grip and stared across the weird place with intensified horror.
+
+For it was swarming with countless worm monsters! All were like the
+one who held them, thick long worm bodies with projecting tentacles
+and with black eyeless faces. They were crawling to and fro in this
+cavern far beneath the surface, swarming in hordes around and over
+each other, pouring in and out of the awful place from countless
+tunnels that led upward and downward from it!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A world of worm monsters, beneath the surface of the Martian jungles!
+As Randall stared across that swarming, dim-lit cave of horror,
+physically sick at sight of it, he remembered the countless tunnel
+openings they had glimpsed in their flight through the jungle, and
+remembered the remark of the Martian who had first guided them across
+the city, that in the jungles were living things, of a sort. These
+were the things, worm monsters whose unthinkable networks of tunnels
+and burrows formed beneath the surface a veritable worm world!
+
+"Randall!" It was Lanier's thick exclamation. "Randall--those
+scar-marks on their--faces--you see--?"
+
+"See?"
+
+"Those marks! These creatures had eyes once but must have been forced
+down here by the Martians. These may once have been--ages ago--human!"
+
+At that thought Randall felt horror overcoming his senses. He was
+aware that the great worm monster holding them was dragging them
+forward through the cavern, that others of the swarms there were
+crowding around them, feeling them blindly with their tentacles,
+helping to drag them forward.
+
+Half-carried and half-dragged they went, scores of tentacles now
+holding them, great worm shapes crawling forward on all sides of them
+and accompanying them along the cavern's length. He glimpsed worm
+monsters here and there emerging from the upward tunnels with masses
+of strange plant stuff in their grasp that others blindly devoured.
+His senses reeled from the suffocating air, the great cavity being but
+a half-score feet in height, burrowed from the damp earth by these
+numberless things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The faint, strange light of the radio-active patches showed him that
+they were approaching the cavern's end. Tunnels opened from its end as
+from all its walls and floor, and into one Randall was dragged by the
+creatures, one before and one behind, grasping him, and Lanier being
+brought behind him in the same way. In the close tunnel the heavy air
+was deadly, and he was but partly conscious when again, after moments
+of crawling along it, he felt himself dragged out into another cavern.
+
+This earth-walled cavity, though, seemed to extend farther than the
+first, though of the same height as the first and with a few
+radio-active illuminating patches. In it seethed and swarmed literally
+hundreds on hundreds of the worm monsters, a sea of great crawling
+bodies. Randall and Lanier saw that they were being carried and
+dragged now toward the farther end of this larger cavity.
+
+As they approached it, pushing through the swarming creatures who felt
+them with inquisitive tentacles as their captors took them forward,
+the two men saw that a great shape was looming up in the faint light
+at the cave's far end. In moments they were close enough to discern
+its nature, and a horror and awe filled them at sight of it more
+intense than they had yet felt.
+
+For the looming shape was a huge earthen image or statue of a worm! It
+was shaped with a childish crudeness from the solid earth, a giant
+earthen worm shape whose body looped across the cave's end, and whose
+tentacled head or front end was reared upward to the cavity's roof.
+Before this awful earthen shape was a section of the cave's floor
+higher than the rest, and on it a great crudely shaped rectangular
+earthen block.
+
+"Lanier--that shape!" whispered Randall in his horror. "That earthen
+image, made by these creatures--it's the worm god they've made for
+themselves!"
+
+"A worm god!" Lanier repeated, staring toward it as they were dragged
+nearer. "Then that block...."
+
+"Its altar!" Randall exclaimed. "These things have some dim spark of
+intelligence or memory! They're brought us here to--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before he could finish, the clutching tentacles of the worm monsters
+about them had dragged them up onto the raised floor beside the block,
+beneath the looming earthen worm shape. There they glimpsed for the
+first time in the faint light another who stood there held tightly by
+the tentacles of two worm monsters. It was a Martian!
+
+The big crocodilian shape was apparently a prisoner like themselves,
+captured and brought down from above. His reptilian eyes surveyed
+Lanier and Randall quickly as they were dragged up and held beside
+him, but he took no other interest. To the two men, at the moment, it
+seemed that his great crocodilian shape was human, almost, so much
+more man-like was it than the grotesque worm monsters before them.
+
+With a half-dozen of the creatures holding the two men and the Martian
+tightly, another great worm monster crawled to the edge of the raised
+earth floor in front of the giant worm god's image, and then reared up
+the first third of his thick body into the air. By then the great,
+faint-lit cavity stretching before them was filled with countless
+numbers of the monsters, pouring into it from all the tunnels that
+opened into it from above and below, packing it thick with their
+grotesque bodies as far as the eye could reach in the dim light.
+
+They were seething and crawling in that great mass; but as the worm
+monster on the elevation upreared, all in the cavity seemed suddenly
+to quiet. Then the upreared eyeless thing began to move his long
+tentacles. Very slowly at first he waved them back and forth, and
+slowly the masses of monsters in the cavity, all turned by some sense
+toward him, did likewise, the cavity becoming a forest of upraised
+tentacles waving rhythmically back and forth in unison with those of
+the leader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Back and forth--back and forth--Randall felt caught in some torturing
+nightmare as he watched the countless tentacle-feelers waving thus
+from one side to the other. It was a ceremony, he knew--some strange
+rite springing perhaps from dim memory alone, that these worm monsters
+carried out thus before the looming shape of their worm god. Only the
+six that held the three captives never relaxed their grip.
+
+Still on and on went the strange and senseless rite. By then the
+close, damp air of that cavity far beneath Mars' surface was sinking
+Randall and Lanier deeper into a half-consciousness. The Martian
+beside them never moved or spoke. The upstretched tentacles of the
+leader and of the great worm horde before him never ceased swaying
+rhythmically from side to side.
+
+Randall, half-hypnotized by those swaying tentacles and but
+semi-conscious by then, could only estimate afterward how long that
+grotesque rite went on. Hours it must have endured, he knew, hours in
+which each opening of his eyes revealed only the dimly-illuminated
+cavern, the worm monsters that filled it, the forest of tentacles
+waving in unison. It was only toward the end of those hours that he
+noticed vaguely that the tentacles were waving faster and faster.
+
+And as the tentacles of leader and worm horde waved alike ever more
+swiftly an atmosphere of growing excitement and expectation seemed to
+hold the horde. At last the upstretched feelers were whipping back and
+forth almost too swiftly for the eye to follow. Then abruptly the worm
+leader ceased the motion himself, and while the horde before him
+continued it, turned and crawled to the three captives.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In an instant, as though in answer to a second command, the two worm
+monsters who held the Martian dragged him forward toward the great
+earthen block before the worm god's image. Two others of the creatures
+came from the side, and the four swiftly stretched the Martian flat on
+the block's top, each of the four grasping with their tentacles one of
+his four taloned limbs. They seemed to hesitate then, the worm leader
+beside them, the tentacles of the horde waving swiftly still.
+
+Abruptly the tentacles of the leader flashed up as though in a signal.
+There was a dull ripping sound, and in that moment Randall and Lanier
+saw the Martian on the block torn literally limb from limb by the four
+great worm monsters who had held his four limbs!
+
+The tentacles of the horde waved suddenly with increased, excited
+swiftness at that. Randall shrank in horror.
+
+"They've brought us here for that!" he cried. "To sacrifice us on that
+altar that way to their worm god!"
+
+But Lanier too had cried out, appalled, as he saw that awful
+sacrifice, and both strained madly against the grip of the worm
+creatures. Their struggles were in vain, and then in answer to another
+unspoken command the two monsters that held Randall were dragging him
+also to the earthen altar!
+
+He felt himself gripped by the four great creatures around the block,
+felt as he struggled with his last strength that he was being
+stretched out on the block, each of the four at one of its corners
+grasping one of his limbs. He heard Lanier's mad cries as though from
+a great distance, glimpsed as he was held thus on his back the great
+shape of the earthen worm god reared over him, and then glimpsed the
+leader of the monsters rearing beside him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dull sound of the swift-waving tentacles of the horde came to him,
+there was a tense moment of agony of waiting, and then the tentacles
+of the leader flashed up in the signal!
+
+But at the same moment Randall felt his limbs released by the four
+monsters that had held them! There seemed sudden wild confusion in the
+great cave. The strange rite broke off; the horde of worm monsters
+crawled frantically this way and that in it. Randall slipped off the
+block; staggered to his feet.
+
+The worm monsters in the cave were swarming toward the downward tunnel
+openings! The two captives forgotten, the creatures were pouring in
+crawling, fighting swarms toward those openings. And then, as Randall
+and Lanier stared stupefied, there came a red flash from one of the
+upward tunnels and a brilliant crimson ray stabbed down and mowed a
+path of annihilation in the cave's earthen side!
+
+The two heard great thumping sounds from above, saw the tunnels
+leading from above becoming suddenly many times greater in size as red
+rays flashed down along them to gouge the tunnel's walls. Then down
+from those enlarged tunnels there were bursting long shining shapes,
+great centipede-machines crawling down the tunnels which their rays
+made larger before them! And as the centipede-machines burst down into
+the cavern their crimson rays stabbed right and left to cut paths of
+annihilation among the worms.
+
+"The Martians!" Lanier cried. "They didn't find us above--they knew we
+must have been taken by these things--and they've come down after us!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Back, Lanier!" Randall shouted. "Quick, before they see us, behind
+this--"
+
+As he spoke he was jerking Lanier with him behind the looming earthen
+statue of the great worm god. Crouched there between the statue and
+the cave's wall they were hidden precariously from the view of those
+in the cavern. And now that cavern had become a scene of horror
+unthinkable as the centipede-machines pouring down into it blasted the
+frantically crawling worm monsters with their rays.
+
+The worm monsters attempted no resistance, but sought only to escape
+into their downward tunnels, and in moments those not caught by the
+rays had vanished in the openings. But the centipede-machines, after
+racing swiftly around the cavity, were following them, were going down
+into those downward tunnels also, their rays blasting down ahead of
+each to make the tunnel large enough for them to follow.
+
+In a moment all but one had vanished down into the openings, the
+remaining one having its front or head jammed in one of the openings
+from the failure of its operator to blast a large enough opening
+before him. As Lanier and Randall watched tensely they saw the
+machine's control room door open and a Martian descend. He inspected
+the tunnel opening in which his vehicle was jammed, then with a hand
+ray-tube began to disintegrate the earth around that opening to free
+his machine.
+
+Randall clutched his companion's arm. "That machine!" he whispered.
+"If we could capture it, it would give us a chance to get back to the
+city--to Milton and the matter-transmitter!"
+
+Lanier started, then nodded swiftly. "We'll chance it," he whispered.
+"For our twenty-four hours here must be almost up."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They hesitated a moment, then crept forward from behind the great
+earthen statue. The Martian had his back to them, his attention on the
+freeing of his mechanism. Across the dim-lit cavern they crept softly,
+and were within a dozen feet of the Martian when some sound made him
+wheel quickly to confront them with the deadly tube. But even as he
+whirled the two had leaped.
+
+The force of their leap sent them flying through that dozen feet of
+space to strike the Martian at the moment his tube levelled. One
+hissing call he uttered as they struck him, and then with all his
+strength Lanier had grasped the crocodilian body and bent it backward.
+Something in it snapped, and the Martian collapsed limply. The two
+looked wildly around.
+
+Nothing showed that the Martian's call had been heard, and after a
+moment's glance that showed the head of the centipede machine already
+freed, they were clambering up into its control room, closing the
+door. Randall seized the knob with which he had seen the machines
+operated. As he pulled it toward him the machine moved across the
+tunnel opening and raced smoothly over the cavern's floor. As he
+turned the knob the machine turned swiftly in the same direction.
+
+He headed the long mechanism toward one of the upward-curving tunnels
+which the Martians had blasted larger in descending. They were almost
+to it when there flashed up into the cavity from one of the downward
+tunnel openings a centipede-machine, and then another, and another.
+The Martians in their transparent-windowed control rooms took in at a
+glance the dead crocodilian on the floor, and then the three great
+machines were darting toward that of Randall and Lanier.
+
+"The Martian we killed!" Randall cried. "They heard his call and are
+coming after us!"
+
+"Turn to the wall!" Lanier shouted to him. "I have the rays--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At that moment there was a clicking beside Randall and he glimpsed
+Lanier pulling forth two small grips he had found, then saw that two
+crimson rays were stabbing from tubes in their machine's front toward
+the others even as their own rays darted back. The beams that had been
+loosed toward them grazed past them as Randall whirled their machine
+to the wall, and he saw one of the three attacking mechanisms vanish
+as Lanier's beams struck it.
+
+Around--back--with instinctive, lightninglike motions he whirled their
+centipede-machine in the great dim-lit cave as the two remaining ones
+leapt again to the attack. Their rays shot right and left to catch the
+two men's vehicle in a trap of death, and as Randall swung their own
+mechanism straight ahead he glimpsed at the cavern's far end the great
+earthen worm god still upreared.
+
+On either side of them the red beams burned as they leapt forward, but
+as though running a gauntlet of death Randall kept the machine racing
+forward in the succeeding second until the two others loomed on either
+side of it. Then Lanier's beams were driving in turn to right and left
+of them and the two vanished as though by magic as they were struck.
+
+"Up to the surface!" Lanier cried, his eyes on the glowing dial of his
+wrist-watch. "We've been held hours here--we've but a half-hour or
+more before earth midnight!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Randall sent their machine racing again toward one of the upward
+tunnels, and as the long mechanism began to climb smoothly up the
+darkness he heard Lanier agonizing beside him.
+
+"God, if we have only enough time to get to that matter-transmitter
+before the Martians start flashing to earth through it!"
+
+"But Milton?" Randall cried. "We don't know whether he's alive or
+dead! We can't leave him!"
+
+"We must!" said Lanier solemnly. "Our duty's to the earth now, man, to
+the world that we alone can save from the Martian invasion and
+conquest! At the hour of twelve Nelson will have the matter-receiver
+turned on and at that hour the Martian will start flashing to
+earth--unless we prevent!"
+
+Suddenly Randall grasped the knob in his hands more tightly as light
+showed above them. They had been climbing upward through the enlarged
+tunnel at their machine's highest speed, and now as the tunnel curved
+the light grew stronger. Suddenly they were emerging into the thin
+sunlight of the Martian day.
+
+In the crimson jungle about them were many Martians, milling excitedly
+to and fro, and other centipede-machines that were blasting their way
+down through tunnels to the worm world beneath.
+
+Randall and Lanier, breathless, crouched low in the
+transparent-windowed control room as they sent their mechanism racing
+through this scene of swarming activity. Both gasped as one of the
+centipede-machines clashed against their own in passing, its Martian
+driver turning to stare after them. But there came no alarm, and in a
+moment they had passed out of the swarm of Martians and machines and
+were heading through the jungle in the direction of the city.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Through the weird red vegetation their mechanism raced with them,
+Randall holding it at its highest speed, and in minutes they came out
+of the jungle and were racing over the clear space between it and the
+great canal. Beyond that canal loomed into the thin sunlight the
+clustering cones of the mighty Martian city, two towering above all
+the others--the cone of the Martian Master and the other cone in which
+was the matter-transmitter and receiver.
+
+It was toward the latter that Lanier pointed. "Head straight toward
+that cone, Randall--we've but minutes left!"
+
+They were racing now up over the great arch of the canal's metal
+bridge, and then scuttling smoothly off it and along the broad metal
+street through which they had fled in darkness hours before. In it
+Martians and centipede-machines were coming and going in great
+numbers, but none noticed the human forms of the two crouched low in
+their mechanism's control room.
+
+They were rushing then toward the looming cone of the Martian Master.
+As they flashed past it Randall saw Lanier's face working, knew the
+desire that tore at him even as at himself to burst inside and
+ascertain whether or not Milton still lived in the laboratories from
+which they had fled. But they were past it, faces white and grim, were
+rushing on through the Martian city at reckless speed toward the other
+mighty cone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seemed that all in the great city were heading toward the same
+goal, streams of crocodilian Martians and masses of shining
+centipede-machines filling the streets as they moved toward it. As
+they came closer to the mighty structure, hearts pounding, they saw
+that around it surged a mighty mass of Martians and machines. The
+hordes waiting to be released through the matter-transmitter inside
+upon the unsuspecting earth!
+
+"Try to get the machine inside!" Lanier whispered tensely. "If we can
+smash that transmitter yet...."
+
+Randall nodded grimly. "Keep ready at the ray-tubes," he told the
+other.
+
+As unobtrusively as possible he sent their long mechanism worming
+forward through the vast throng of machines and Martians, toward the
+great cone's door. Crouching low, the hands of their watches closing
+fast toward the twelfth figure, they edged forward in the long
+machine. At last they were moving through the mighty door, into the
+cone's interior.
+
+They moved slowly on through the mass of machines and crocodile forms
+inside, then halted. For at the great crowd's center was a clear
+circle hundreds of feet across, and as Randall gazed across it his
+heart seemed to leap once and then stop.
+
+At the center of that clear circle rose the two cubical metal chambers
+of the matter-transmitter and receiver. The transmitting chamber, they
+saw, was flooded with humming force, with white light pouring from its
+inner walls. It was already in operation, and the masses of Martians
+in the great cone were only waiting for the moment to sound when the
+receiver on earth would be operating also. Then they would pour into
+the chamber to be flashed in masses across the gulf to earth! The eyes
+of all in the cone seemed turned toward an erect dial-mechanism beside
+the chambers which was clocklike in appearance, and that would mark
+the moment when the first Martian could enter the transmitting-chamber
+and flash out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A little distance from the two metal chambers stood a low dais on
+which there sat the hideous triple-bodied form of the Martian Master.
+Around him were the massed members of his council, waiting like him
+for the start of their age-planned invasion of earth. And beside the
+dais was a figure between two crocodilian guards at sight of whom
+Randall forgot all else.
+
+"Milton! My God, Lanier, it's Milton!"
+
+"Milton! They've brought him here to torture or kill him if they find
+he's lied about the moment they could flash to earth!"
+
+Milton! And at sight of him something snapped in Randall's brain.
+
+With a single motion of the knob he sent their centipede-machine
+crashing out into the clear circle at the mighty cone's center. A wild
+uproar of hissing cries broke from all the thousands in it as he sent
+the mechanism whirling toward the dais of the Martian Master. He saw
+the crocodilian forms there scattering blindly before him, and then
+as his rays drove out and spun and stabbed in mad figures of crimson
+death through the astounded Martian masses he saw Milton looking up
+toward them, crying out crazily to them as his two guards loosed him
+for the moment.
+
+A high call from the Martian Master ripped across the hall and was
+answered by a shattering roar of hissing voices as Martians and
+machines surged madly toward them. Randall and Lanier in a single leap
+were out of the centipede-machine, and in an instant had half-dragged
+Milton with them in a great leap up to the edge of the humming
+transmitting chamber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton was shouting hoarsely to them over the wild uproar. To enter
+that transmitting chamber before the destined moment was annihilation,
+to be flashed out with no receiver on earth awaiting them. They
+turned, struck with all their strength at the first Martians rushing
+up to them. No rays flashed, for a ray loosed would destroy the
+chamber behind them that was the one gate for the Martians to the
+world they would invade. But as the Martian Master's high call hissed
+again all the countless crocodilian forms in the great cone were
+rushing toward them.
+
+Braced at the very edge of the humming, light-filled chamber, Randall
+and Lanier and Milton struck madly at the Martians surging up toward
+them. Randall seemed in a dream. A score of taloned paws clutched him
+from beneath; scaled forms collapsed under his insane blows.
+
+The whole vast cone and surging reptilian hordes seemed spinning at
+increasing speed around him. As his clenched fists flashed with waning
+strength he glimpsed crocodilian forms swarming up on either side of
+them, glimpsed Lanier down, talons reaching toward him, Milton
+fighting over him like a madman. Another moment would see it
+ended--reptilian arms reaching in scores to drag him down--Milton
+jerking Lanier half to his feet. The Martian Master's call
+sounded--and then came a great clanging sound at which the Martian
+hordes seemed to freeze for an instant motionless, at which Milton's
+voice reached him in a supreme cry.
+
+_"Randall--the transmitter!"_
+
+For in that instant Milton was leaping back with Lanier, and as
+Randall with his last strength threw himself backward with them into
+the humming transmitting-chamber's brilliant light, he heard a last
+frenzied roar of hissing cries from the Martian hordes about them.
+Then as the brilliant light and force from the chamber's walls smote
+them, Randall felt himself hurled into blackness inconceivable, that
+smashed like a descending curtain across his brain.
+
+The curtain of blackness lifted for a moment. He was lying with Milton
+and Lanier in another chamber whose force beat upon them. He saw a
+yellow-lit room instead of the great cone--saw the tense, anxious face
+of Nelson at the switch beside them. He strove to move, made to Nelson
+a gesture with his arm that seemed to drain all strength and life from
+him; and then, as in answer to it Nelson drove up the switch and
+turned off the force of the matter-receiver in which they lay, the
+black curtain descended on Randall's brain once more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two hours later it was when Milton and Randall and Lanier and Nelson
+turned to the laboratory's door. They paused to glance behind them. Of
+the great matter-transmitter and receiver, of the apparatus that had
+crowded the laboratory, there remained now but wreckage.
+
+For that had been their first thought, their first task, when the
+astounded Nelson had brought the three back to consciousness and had
+heard their amazing tale. They had wrecked so completely the
+matter-station and its actuating apparatus that none could ever have
+guessed what a mechanism of wonder the laboratory a short time before
+had held.
+
+The cubical chambers had been smashed beyond all recognition, the
+dynamos were masses of split metal and fused wiring, the batteries of
+tubes were shattered, the condensers and transformers and wiring
+demolished. And it had only been when the last written plans and
+blue-prints of the mechanism had been burned that Milton and Randall
+and Lanier had stopped to allow their exhausted bodies a moment of
+rest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now as they paused at the laboratory's door, Lanier reached and swung
+it open. Together, silent, they gazed out.
+
+It all seemed to Randall exactly as upon the night before. The shadowy
+masses in the darkness, the heaving, dim-lit sea stretching far away
+before them, the curtain of summer stars stretched across the heavens.
+And, sinking westward amid those stars, the red spark of Mars toward
+which as though toward a magnet all their eyes had turned.
+
+Milton was speaking. "Up there it has shone for centuries--ages--a
+crimson spot of light. And up there the Martians have been watching,
+watching--until at last we opened to them the gate."
+
+Randall's hand was on his shoulder. "But we closed that gate, too, in
+the end."
+
+Milton nodded slowly. "We--or the fate that rules our worlds. But the
+gate is closed, and God grant, shall never again be opened by any on
+this world."
+
+"God grant it," the other echoed.
+
+And they were all gazing still toward the thing. Gazing up toward the
+crimson spot of light that burned there among the stars, toward the
+planet that shone red, menacing, terrible, but whose menace and whose
+terror had been thrust back even as they had crouched to spring at
+last upon the earth.
+
+
+
+
+The Exile of Time
+
+BEGINNING A FOUR-PART NOVEL
+
+_By Ray Cummings_
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_Mysterious Girl_
+
+[Illustration: _Presently there was not one Robot, but three!_]
+
+[Sidenote: From somewhere out of Time come a swarm of Robots who
+inflict on New York the awful vengeance of the diabolical cripple
+Tugh.]
+
+
+The extraordinary incidents began about 1 A.M. in the night of June
+8-9, 1935. I was walking through Patton Place, in New York City, with
+my friend Larry Gregory. My name is George Rankin. My business--and
+Larry's--are details quite unimportant to this narrative. We had been
+friends in college. Both of us were working in New York; and with all
+our relatives in the middle west we were sharing an apartment on this
+Patton Place--a short crooked, little-known street of not particularly
+impressive residential buildings lying near the section known as
+Greenwich Village, where towering office buildings of the business
+districts encroach close upon it.
+
+This night at 1 A. M. it was deserted. A taxi stood at a corner; its
+chauffeur had left it there, and evidently gone to a nearby lunch
+room. The street lights were, as always, inadequate. The night was
+sultry and dark, with a leaden sky and a breathless humidity that
+presaged a thunder storm. The houses were mostly unlighted at this
+hour. There was an occasional apartment house among them, but mostly
+they were low, ramshackle affairs of brick and stone.
+
+We were still three blocks from our apartment when without warning the
+incidents began which were to plunge us and all the city into
+disaster. We were upon the threshold of a mystery weird and strange,
+but we did not know it. Mysterious portals were swinging to engulf
+us. And all unknowing, we walked into them.
+
+Larry was saying, "Wish we would get a storm to clear this air--_what
+the devil?_ George, did you hear that?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We stood listening. There had sounded a choking, muffled scream. We
+were midway in the block. There was not a pedestrian in sight, nor any
+vehicle save the abandoned taxi at the corner.
+
+"A woman," he said. "Did it come from this house?"
+
+We were standing before a three-story brick residence. All its windows
+were dark. There was a front stoop of several steps, and a basement
+entryway. The windows were all closed, and the place had the look of
+being unoccupied.
+
+"Not in there, Larry," I answered. "It's closed for the summer--" But
+I got no further; we heard it again. And this time it sounded, not
+like a scream, but like a woman's voice calling to attract our
+attention.
+
+"George! Look there!" Larry cried.
+
+The glow from a street light illumined the basement entryway, and
+behind one of the dark windows a girl's face was pressed against the
+pane.
+
+Larry stood gripping me, then drew me forward and down the steps of
+the entryway. There was a girl in the front basement room. Darkness
+was behind her, but we could see her white frightened face close to
+the glass. She tapped on the pane, and in the silence we heard her
+muffled voice:
+
+"Let me out! Oh, let me get out!"
+
+The basement door had a locked iron gate. I rattled it. "No way of
+getting in," I said, then stopped short with surprise. "What the
+devil--"
+
+I joined Larry by the window. The girl was only a few inches from us.
+She had a pale, frightened face; wide, terrified eyes. Even with that
+first glimpse, I was transfixed by her beauty. And startled; there was
+something weird about her. A low-necked, white satin dress disclosed
+her snowy shoulders; her head was surmounted by a pile of snow-white
+hair, with dangling white curls framing her pale ethereal beauty. She
+called again.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" Larry demanded. "Are you alone in there?
+What is it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She backed from the window; we could see her only as a white blob in
+the darkness of the basement room.
+
+I called, "Can you hear us? What is it?"
+
+Then she screamed again. A low scream; but there was infinite terror
+in it. And again she was at the window.
+
+"You will not hurt me? Let me--oh please let me come out!" Her fists
+pounded the casement.
+
+What I would have done I don't know. I recall wondering if the
+policeman would be at our corner down the block; he very seldom was
+there. I heard Larry saying:
+
+"What the hell!--I'll get her out. George, get me that brick.... Now,
+get back, girl--I'm going to smash the window."
+
+But the girl kept her face pressed against the pane. I had never seen
+such terrified eyes. Terrified at something behind her in the house;
+and equally frightened at us.
+
+I call to her: "Come to the door. Can't you come to the door and open
+it?" I pointed to the basement gate. "Open it! Can you hear me?"
+
+"Yes--I can hear you, and you speak my language. But you--you will not
+hurt me? Where am I? This--this was my house a moment ago. I was
+living here."
+
+Demented! It flashed to me. An insane girl, locked in this empty
+house. I gripped Larry; said to him: "Take it easy; there's something
+queer about this. We can't smash windows. Let's--"
+
+"You open the door," he called to the girl.
+
+"I cannot."
+
+"Why? Is it locked on the inside?"
+
+"I don't know. Because--oh, hurry! If he--if it comes again--!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We could see her turn to look behind her.
+
+Larry demanded, "Are you alone in there?"
+
+"Yes--now. But, oh! a moment ago he was here!"
+
+"Then come to the door."
+
+"I cannot. I don't know where it is. This is so strange and dark a
+place. And yet it was my home, just a little time ago."
+
+Demented! And it seemed to me that her accent was very queer. A
+foreigner, perhaps.
+
+She went suddenly into frantic fear. Her fists beat the window glass
+almost hard enough to shatter it.
+
+"We'd better get her out," I agreed. "Smash it, Larry."
+
+"Yes." He waved at the girl. "Get back. I'll break the glass. Get away
+so you won't get hurt."
+
+The girl receded into the dimness.
+
+"Watch your hand," I cautioned. Larry took off his coat and wrapped
+his hand and the brick in it. I gazed behind us. The street was still
+empty. The slight commotion we had made had attracted no attention.
+
+The girl cried out again as Larry smashed the pane. "Easy," I called
+to her. "Take it easy. We won't hurt you."
+
+The splintering glass fell inward, and Larry pounded around the
+casement until it was all clear. The rectangular opening was fairly
+large. We could see a dim basement room of dilapidated furniture: a
+door opening into a back room; the girl; nearby, a white shape
+watching us.
+
+There seemed no one else. "Come on," I said. "You can get out here."
+
+But she backed away. I was half in the window so I swung my legs over
+the sill. Larry came after me, and together we advanced on the girl,
+who shrank before us.
+
+Then suddenly she ran to meet us, and I had the sudden feeling that
+she was not insane. Her fear of us was overshadowed by her terror at
+something else in this dark, deserted house. The terror communicated
+itself to Larry and me. Something eery, here.
+
+"Come on," Larry muttered. "Let's get her out of here."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had indeed no desire to investigate anything further. The girl let
+us help her through the window. I stood in the entryway holding her
+arms. Her dress was of billowing white satin with a single red rose at
+the breast; her snowy arms and shoulders were bare; white hair was
+piled high on her small head. Her face, still terrified, showed parted
+red lips; a little round black beauty patch adorned one of her
+powdered cheeks. The thought flashed to me that this was a girl in a
+fancy dress costume. This was a white wig she was wearing!
+
+I stood with the girl in the entryway, at a loss what to do. I held
+her soft warm arms; the perfume of her enveloped me.
+
+"What do you want us to do with you?" I demanded softly. McGuire, the
+policeman on the block, might at any moment pass. "We might get
+arrested! What's the matter with you? Can't you explain? Are you
+hurt?"
+
+She was staring as though I were a ghost, or some strange animal. "Oh,
+take me away from this place! I will talk--though I do not know what
+to say--"
+
+Demented or sane, I had no desire to have her fall into the clutches
+of the police. Nor could we very well take her to our apartment. But
+there was my friend Dr. Alten, alienist, who lived within a mile of
+here.
+
+"We'll take her to Alten's," I said to Larry, "and find out what this
+means. She isn't crazy."
+
+A sudden wild emotion swept me, then. Whatever this mystery, more than
+anything in the world I did not want the girl to be insane!
+
+Larry said, "There was a taxi down the street."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It came, now, slowly along the deserted block. The chauffeur had
+perhaps heard us, and was cruising past to see if we were possible
+fares. He halted at the curb. The girl had quieted; but when she saw
+the taxi her face registered wildest terror, and she shrank against
+me.
+
+"No! No! Don't let it kill me!"
+
+Larry and I were pulling her forward. "What the devil's the matter
+with you?" Larry demanded again.
+
+She was suddenly wildly fighting with us. "No! That--that mechanism--"
+
+"Get her in it!" Larry panted. "We'll have the neighborhood on us!"
+
+It seemed the only thing to do. We flung her, scrambling and fighting,
+into the taxi. To the half-frightened, reluctant driver, Larry said
+vigorously:
+
+"It's all right; we're just taking her to a doctor. Hurry and get us
+away from here. There's good money in it for you!"
+
+The promise--and the reassurance of the physician's address--convinced
+the chauffeur. We whirled off toward Washington Square.
+
+Within the swaying taxi I sat holding the trembling girl. She was
+sobbing now, but quieting.
+
+"There," I murmured. "We won't hurt you; we're just taking you to a
+doctor. You can explain to him. He's very intelligent."
+
+"Yes," she said softly. "Yes. Thank you. I'm all right now."
+
+She relaxed against me. So beautiful, so dainty a creature.
+
+Larry leaned toward us. "You're better now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That's fine. You'll be all right. Don't think about it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was convinced she was insane. I breathed again the vague hope that
+it might not be so. She was huddled against me. Her face, upturned to
+mine, had color in it now; red lips; a faint rose tint in the pale
+cheeks.
+
+She murmured, "Is this New York?"
+
+My heart sank. "Yes," I answered. "Of course it is."
+
+"But when?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean, what year?"
+
+"Why, 1935!"
+
+She caught her breath. "And your name is--"
+
+"George Rankin."
+
+"And I,"--her laugh had a queer break in it--"I am Mistress Mary
+Atwood. But just a few minutes ago--oh, am I dreaming? Surely I'm not
+insane!"
+
+Larry again leaned over us. "What are you talking about?"
+
+"You're friendly, you two. Like men; strange, so very strange-looking
+young men. This--this carriage without any horses--I know now it won't
+hurt me."
+
+She sat up. "Take me to your doctor. And then to the general of your
+army. I must see him, and warn him. Warn you all." She was turning
+half hysterical again. She laughed wildly. "Your general--he won't be
+General Washington, of course. But I must warn him."
+
+She gripped me. "You think I am demented. But I am not. I am Mary
+Atwood, daughter of Major Charles Atwood, of General Washington's
+staff. That was my home, where you broke the window. But it did not
+look like that a few moments ago. You tell me this is the year 1935,
+but just a few moments ago I was living in the year 1777!"
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_From Out of the Past_
+
+"Sane?" said Dr. Alten. "Of course she's sane." He stood gazing down
+at Mary Atwood. He was a tall, slim fellow, this famous young
+alienist, with dark hair turning slightly grey at the temples and a
+neat black mustache that made him look older than he was. Dr. Alten at
+this time, in spite of his eminence, had not yet turned forty.
+
+"She's sane," he reiterated. "Though from what you tell me, it's a
+wonder that she is." He smiled gently at the girl. "If you don't mind,
+my dear, tell us just what happened to you, as calmly as you can."
+
+She sat by an electrolier in Dr. Alten's living room. The yellow light
+gleamed on her white satin dress, on her white shoulders, her
+beautiful face with its little round black beauty patch, and the curls
+of the white wig dangling to her neck. From beneath the billowing,
+flounced skirt the two satin points of her slippers showed.
+
+A beauty of the year 1777! This thing so strange! I gazed at her with
+quickened pulse. It seemed that I was dreaming; that as I sat before
+her in my tweed business suit with its tubular trousers I was the
+anachronism! This should have been candle-light illumining us; I
+should have been a powdered and bewigged gallant, in gorgeous satin
+and frilled shirt to match her dress. How strange, how futuristic we
+three men of 1935 must have looked to her! And this city through which
+we had whirled her in the throbbing taxi--no wonder she was
+overwrought.
+
+Alten fumbled in the pockets of his dressing gown for cigarettes. "Go
+ahead, Miss Mary. You are among friends. I promise we will try and
+understand."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She smiled. "Yes. I--I believe you." Her voice was low. She sat
+staring at the floor, choosing her words carefully; and though she
+stumbled a little, her story was coherent. Upon the wings of her words
+my fancy conjured that other Time-world, more than a hundred and fifty
+years ago.
+
+"I was at home to-night," she began. "To-night after dinner. I have no
+relatives except my father. He is General Washington's aide. We
+live--our home is north of the city. I was alone, except for the
+servants.
+
+"Father sent word to-night that he was coming to see me. The
+messenger got through the British lines. But the redcoats are
+everywhere. They were quartered in our house. For months I have been
+little more than a servant to a dozen of My Lord's Howe's officers.
+They are gentlemen, though: I have no complaint. Then they left, and
+father, knowing it, wanted to come to see me.
+
+"He should not have tried it. Our house is watched. He promised me he
+would not wear the British red." She shuddered. "Anything but that--to
+have him executed as a spy. He would not risk that, but wear merely a
+long black cloak.
+
+"He was to come about ten o'clock. But at midnight there was no sign
+of him. The servants were asleep. I sat alone, and every pounding
+hoof-beat on the road matched my heart.
+
+"Then I went into the garden. There was a dim moon in and out of the
+clouds. It was hot, like to-night. I mean, why it _was_ to-night. It's
+so strange--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the silence of Alten's living room we could hear the hurried
+ticking of his little mantle clock, and from the street outside came
+the roar of a passing elevated train and the honk of a taxi. This was
+New York of 1935. But to me the crowding ghosts of the past were here.
+In fancy I saw the white pillars of the moonlit Atwood home. A garden
+with a dirt road beside it. Red-coated British soldiers passing....
+And to the south the little city of New York extending northward from
+crooked Maiden Lane and the Bowling Green....
+
+"Go on, Mistress Mary."
+
+"I sat on a bench in the garden. And suddenly before me there was a
+white ghost. A shape. A wraith of something which a moment before had
+not been there. I sat too frightened to move. I could not call out. I
+tried to, but the sound would not come.
+
+"The shape was like a mist, a little ball of cloud in the center of
+the garden lawn. Then in a second or two it was solid--a thing like a
+shining cage, with crisscrossing white bars. It was like a room; a
+metal cage like a room. I thought that the thing was a phantom or that
+I was asleep and dreaming. But it was real."
+
+Alten interrupted. "How big was it?"
+
+"As large as this room; perhaps larger. But it was square, and about
+twice as high as a man."
+
+A cage, then, some twenty feet square and twelve feet high.
+
+She went on: "The cage door opened. I think I was standing, then, and
+I tried to run but could not. The--the _thing_ came from the door of
+the cage and walked toward me. It was about ten feet tall. It
+looked--oh, it looked like a man!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She buried her face in her hands. Again the room was silent. Larry was
+seated, staring at her; all of us were breathless.
+
+"Like a man?" Alten prompted gently.
+
+"Yes; like a man." She raised her white face. This girl out of the
+past! Admiration for her swept me anew--she was bravely trying to
+smile.
+
+"Like a man. A thing with legs, a body, a great round head and swaying
+arms. A jointed man of metal! You surely must know all about them."
+
+"A Robot!" Larry muttered.
+
+"You have them here, I suppose. Like that rumbling carriage without
+horses, this jointed iron man came walking toward me. And it spoke! A
+most horrible hollow voice--but it seemed almost human. And what it
+said I do not know, for I fainted. I remember falling as it came
+walking toward me, with stiff-jointed legs.
+
+"When I came to my senses I was in the cage. Everything was humming and
+glowing. There was a glow outside the bars like a moonlit mist. The iron
+monster was sitting at a table, with peculiar things--mechanical things--"
+
+"The controls of the cage-mechanisms," said Alten. "How long were you
+in the cage?"
+
+"I don't know. Time seemed to stop. Everything was silent except the
+humming noises. They were everywhere. I guess I was only half
+conscious. The monster sat motionless. In front of him were big round
+clock faces with whirling hands. Oh, I suppose you don't find this
+strange; but to me--!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Could you see anything outside the cage?" Alten persisted. "No. Just
+a fog. But it was crawling and shifting. Yes!--I remember now--I could
+not see anything out there, but I had the thought, the feeling, that
+there were tremendous things to see! The monster spoke again and told
+me to be careful; that we were going to stop. Its iron hands pulled at
+levers. Then the humming grew fainter; died away; and I felt a shock.
+
+"I thought I had fainted again. I could just remember being pulled
+through the cage door. The monster left me on the ground. It said,
+'Lie there, for I will return very soon.'
+
+"The cage vanished. I saw a great cliff of stone near me; it had
+yellow-lighted openings, high up in the air. And big stone fences
+hemmed me in. Then I realized I was in an open space between a lot of
+stone houses. One towered like a cliff, or the side of a pyramid--"
+
+"The back yard of that house on Patton Place!" Larry exclaimed. He
+looked at me. "Has it any back yard, George?"
+
+"How should I know?" I retorted. "Probably has."
+
+"Go on," Alten was prompting.
+
+"That is nearly all. I found a doorway leading to a dark room. I
+crawled through it toward a glow of light. I passed through another
+room. I thought I was in a nightmare, and that this was my home. I
+remembered that the cage had not moved. It had hardly lurched. Just
+trembled; vibrated.
+
+"But this was not my home. The rooms were small and dark. Then I
+peered through a window on a strange stone street. And saw these
+strange-looking young men. And that is all--all I can tell you."
+
+She had evidently held herself calm by a desperate effort. She broke
+down now, sobbing without restraint.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_Tugh, the Cripple_
+
+The portals of this mystery had swung wide to receive us. The tumbling
+events which menaced all our world of 1935 were upon us now. A
+maelstrom. A torrent in the midst of which we were caught up like tiny
+bits of cork and whirled away.
+
+But we thought we understood the mystery. We believed we were acting
+for the best. What we did was no doubt ill-considered; but the human
+mind is so far from omniscient! And this thing was so strange!
+
+Alten said, "You have a right to be overwrought, Mistress Mary Atwood.
+But this thing is as strange to us as it is to you. I called that iron
+monster a Robot. But it does not belong to our age: if it does I have
+never seen one such as you describe. And traveling through Time--"
+
+He smiled down at her. "That is not a commonplace everyday occurrence
+to us, I assure you. The difference is that in this world of ours we
+can understand--or at least explain--these things as being scientific.
+And so they have not the terror of the supernatural."
+
+Mary was calmer now. She returned his smile. "I realize that; or at
+least I am trying to realize it."
+
+What a level-headed girl was this! I touched her arm. "You are very
+wonderful--"
+
+Alten brushed me away. "Let's try and reduce it to rationality. The
+cage was--is, I should say, since of course it still exists--that cage
+is a Time-traveling vehicle. It is traveling back and forth through
+Time, operated by a Robot. Call it that. A pseudo-human monster
+fashioned of metal in the guise of a man."
+
+Even Alten had to force himself to speak calmly, as he gazed from one
+to the other of us. "It came, no doubt from some future age, where
+half-human mechanisms are common, and Time-traveling is known. That
+cage probably does not travel in Space, but only in Time. In the
+future--somewhere--the Space of that house on Patton Place may be the
+laboratory of a famous scientist. And in the past--in the year
+1777--that same Space was the garden of Mistress Atwood's home. So
+much is obvious. But why--"
+
+"Why," Larry burst out, "did that iron monster stop in 1777 and abduct
+this girl?"
+
+"And why," I intercepted, "did it stop here in 1935?" I gazed at Mary.
+"And it told you it would return?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alten was pondering. "There must be some connection, of course....
+Mistress Mary, had you never seen this cage before?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor anything like it? Was anything like that known to your Time?"
+
+"No. Oh, I cannot truly say that. Some people believe in phantoms,
+omens and witchcraft. There was in Salem, in the Massachusetts Colony,
+not so many years ago--"
+
+"I don't mean that. I mean Time-traveling."
+
+"There were soothsayers and fortune-tellers, and necromancers with
+crystals to gaze into the future."
+
+"We still have them," Alten smiled. "You see, we don't know much more
+than you do about this thing."
+
+I said, "Did you have any enemy? Anyone who wished you harm?"
+
+She thought a moment. "No--yes, there was one." She shuddered at the
+memory. "A man--a cripple--a horribly repulsive man of about one score
+and ten years. He lives down near the Battery." She paused.
+
+"Tell us about him," Larry urged.
+
+She nodded. "But what could he have to do with this? He is horribly
+deformed. Thin, bent legs, a body like a cask and a bulging forehead
+with goggling eyes. My Lord Howe's officers say he is very intelligent
+and very learned. Loyal to the King, too. There was a munitions plot
+in the Bermudas, and this cripple and Lord Howe were concerned in it.
+But Father likes the fellow and says that in reality he wishes our
+cause well. He is rich.
+
+"But you don't want to hear all this. He--he made love to me, and I
+repulsed him. There was a scene with Father, and Father had our
+lackeys throw him out. That was a year ago. He cursed horribly. He
+vowed then that some day he--he would have me; and get revenge on
+Father. But he has kept away. I have not seen him for a twelvemonth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We were silent. I chanced to glance at Alten, and a strange look was
+on his face.
+
+He said abruptly, "What is this cripple's name, Mistress Mary?"
+
+"Tugh. He is known to all the city as Tugh. Just that. I never heard
+any Christian name."
+
+Alten rose sharply to his feet. "A cripple named Tugh?"
+
+"Yes," she affirmed wonderingly. "Does it mean anything to you?"
+
+Alten swung on me. "What is the number of that house on Patton Place?
+Did you happen to notice?"
+
+I had, and wondering I told him.
+
+"Just a minute," he said. "I want to use the phone."
+
+He came back to us in a moment: his face was very solemn. "That house
+on Patton Place is owned by a man named Tugh! I just called a reporter
+friend; he remembers a certain case: he confirmed what I thought.
+Mistress Mary, did this Tugh in your Time ever consult doctors, trying
+to have his crippled body made whole?"
+
+"Why, of course he did. I have heard that many times. But his
+crippled, deformed body cannot be cured."
+
+Alten checked Larry and me when we would have broken in with
+astonished questions. He said:
+
+"Don't ask me what it means; I don't know. But I think that this
+cripple--this Tugh--has lived both in 1777 and 1935, and is traveling
+between them in this Time-traveling cage. And perhaps he is the human
+master of that Robot."
+
+Alten made a vehement gesture. "But we'd better not theorize; it's too
+fantastic. Here is the story of Tugh in our Time. He came to me some
+three years ago; in 1932, I think. He offered any price if I could
+cure his crippled body. All the New York medical fraternity knew him.
+He seemed sane, but obsessed with the idea that he must have a body
+like other men. Like Faust, who, as an old man, paid the price of his
+soul to become youthful, he wanted to have the beautiful body of a
+young man."
+
+Alten was speaking vehemently. My thoughts ran ahead of his words; I
+could imagine with grewsome fancy so many things. A cripple, traveling
+to different ages seeking to be cured. Desiring a different body....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alten was saying, "This fellow Tugh lived alone in that house on
+Patton Place. He was all you say of him, Mistress Mary. Hideously
+repulsive. A sinister personality. About thirty years old.
+
+"And, in 1932, he got mixed up with a girl who had a somewhat dubious
+reputation herself. A dancer, a frequenter of night-clubs, as they
+used to be called. Her name was Doris Johns--something like that. She
+evidently thought she could get money out of Tugh. Whatever it was,
+there was a big uproar. The girl had him arrested, saying that he had
+assaulted her. The police had quite a time with the cripple."
+
+Larry and I remembered a few of the details of it now, though neither
+of us had been in New York at the time.
+
+Alten went on: "Tugh fought with the police. Went berserk. I imagine
+they handled him pretty roughly. In the Magistrate's Court he made
+another scene, and fought with the court attendants. With ungovernable
+rage he screamed vituperatives, and was carried kicking, biting and
+snarling from the court-room. He threatened some wild weird revenge
+upon all the city officials--even upon the city itself."
+
+"Nice sort of chap," Larry commented.
+
+But Alten did not smile. "The Magistrate could only hold him for
+contempt of Court. The girl had absolutely no evidence to support her
+accusation of assault. Tugh was finally dismissed. A week later he
+murdered the girl.
+
+"The details are unimportant; but he did it. The police had him
+trapped in his house; had the house surrounded--this same one on
+Patton Place--but when they burst in to take him, he had inexplicably
+vanished. He was never heard from again."
+
+Alten continued to regard us with grim, solemn face. "Never heard
+from--until to-night. And now we hear of him. How he vanished, with
+the police guarding every exit to that house--well, it's obvious,
+isn't it? He went into another Time-world. Back to 1777, doubtless."
+
+Mary Atwood gave a little cry. "I had forgotten that I must warn you.
+Tugh told me once, before Father and I quarreled with him, that he had
+a mysterious power. He was a most wonderful man, he said. And there
+was a world in the future--he mentioned 1934 or 1935--which he hated.
+A great city whose people had wronged him; and he was going to bring
+death to them. Death to them all! I did not heed him. I thought he was
+demented, raving...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alten's little clock ticked with tumultuous heartbeat through another
+silence. The great city around us, even though this was two o'clock
+in the morning, throbbed with a myriad of blended sounds.
+
+A warning! Was the girl from out of the past giving us a warning of
+coming disaster to this great city?
+
+Alten was pacing the floor. "What are we to do--tell the authorities?
+Take Mistress Mary Atwood to Police Headquarters and inform them that
+she has come from the year 1777? And that, if we are not careful,
+there will be an attack upon New York?"
+
+"No!" I burst out. I could fancy how we would be received at Police
+Headquarters if we did that! And our pictures in to-morrow's
+newspapers. Mary's picture, with a jibing headline ridiculing us.
+
+"No," echoed Alten. "I have no intention of doing it. I'm not so
+foolish as that." He stopped before Mary. "What do you want to do?
+You're obviously an exceptionally intelligent, level-headed girl.
+Heaven knows you need to be."
+
+"I--I want to get back home," she stammered.
+
+A pang shot through me as she said it. A hundred and fifty years to
+separate us. A vast gulf. An impassible barrier.
+
+"That mechanism said it would return!"
+
+"Exactly," agreed Alten. An excitement was upon us all. "Exactly what
+I mean! Shall we chance it? Try it? There's nothing else I can think
+of to do. I have a revolver and two hunting rifles."
+
+"Just what do you mean?" I demanded.
+
+"I mean, we'll take my car and go to Tugh's house on Patton Place.
+Right now! And if that mechanical monster returns, we'll seize it!"
+
+Alten, the usually calm, precise man of science, was tensely vehement.
+"Seize it! Why not? Three of us, armed, ought to be able to overcome a
+Robot! Then we'll seize the Time-traveling cage. Perhaps we can
+operate it. If not, with it in our possession we'll at least have
+something to show the authorities; there'll be no ridicule then!"
+
+Our inescapable destiny was making us plunge so rashly into this
+mystery! With the excitement and the strange fantasy of it upon us, we
+thought we were acting for the best.
+
+Within a quarter of an hour, armed and with a long overcoat and a
+scarf to hide Mary Atwood's beauty, we took Alten's car and drove to
+Patton Place.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_The Fight With the Robot_
+
+Patrolman McGuire quite evidently had not passed through Patton Place
+since we left it; or at least he had not noticed the broken window.
+The house appeared as before, dark, silent, deserted, and the broken
+basement window yawned with its wide black opening.
+
+"I'll leave the car around on the other street," Alten said as slowly
+we passed the house. "Quick--no one's in sight; you three get out
+here."
+
+We crouched in the dim entryway and in a moment he joined us.
+
+I clung to Mary Atwood's arm. "You're not afraid?" I asked.
+
+"No. Yes; of course I am afraid. But I want to do what we planned. I
+want to go back to my own world, to my Father."
+
+"Inside!" Alten whispered. "I'll go first. You two follow with her."
+
+I can say now that we should not have taken her into that house. It is
+so easy to look back upon what one might have done!
+
+We climbed through the window, into the dark front basement room.
+There was only silence, and our faintly padding footsteps on the
+carpeted floor. The furniture was shrouded with cotton covers standing
+like ghosts in the gloom. I clutched the loaded rifle which Alten had
+given me. Larry was similarly armed; and Alten carried a revolver.
+
+"Which way, Mary?" I whispered. "You're sure it was outdoors?"
+
+"Yes. This way, I think."
+
+We passed through the connecting door. The back room seemed to be a
+dismantled kitchen.
+
+"You stay with her here, a moment," Alten whispered to me. "Come on,
+Larry. Let's make sure no one--nothing--is down here."
+
+I stood silent with Mary, while they prowled about the lower floor.
+
+"It may have come and gone," I whispered.
+
+"Yes." She was trembling against me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seemed to me an eternity while we stood there listening to the
+faint footfalls of Larry and Alten. Once they must have stood quiet;
+then the silence leaped and crowded us. It is horrible to listen to a
+pregnant silence which every moment might be split by some weird
+unearthly sound.
+
+Larry and Alten returned. "Seems to be all clear," Alten whispered.
+"Let's go into the back yard."
+
+The little yard was dim. The big apartment house against its rear wall
+loomed with a blank brick face, save that there were windows some
+eight stories up. Only a few windows overlooked this dim area with its
+high enclosing walls. The space was some forty feet square, and there
+was a faded grass plot in the center.
+
+We crouched near the kitchen door, with Mary behind us in the room.
+She said she could recall the cage having stood near the center of the
+yard, with its door facing this way....
+
+Nearly an hour passed. It seemed that the dawn must be near, but it
+was only around four o'clock. The same storm clouds hung overhead--a
+threatening storm which would not break. The heat was oppressing.
+
+"It's come and gone," Larry whispered; "or it isn't coming. I guess
+that this--"
+
+And then it came! We were just outside the doorway, crouching against
+the shadowed wall of the house. I had Mary close behind me, my rifle
+ready.
+
+"There!" whispered Alten.
+
+We all saw it--a faint luminous mist out near the center of the
+yard--a crawling, shifting ball of fog.
+
+Alten and Larry, one on each side of me, shifted sidewise, away from
+me. Mary stood and cast off her dark overcoat. We men were in dark
+clothes, but she stood in gleaming white against the dark rectangle of
+doorway. It was as we had arranged. A moment only, she stood there;
+then she moved back, further behind me in the black kitchen.
+
+And in that moment the cage had materialized. We were hoping its
+occupant had seen the girl, and not us. A breathless moment passed
+while we stared for the first time at this strange thing from the
+Unknown.... A formless, glowing mist, it quickly gathered itself into
+solidity. It seemed to shrink. It took form. From a wraith of a cage,
+in a second it was solid. And so silently, so swiftly, came this thing
+out of Time into what we call the Present! The dim yard a second ago
+had been empty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The cage stood there, a thing of gleaming silver bars. It seemed to
+enclose a single room. From within its dim interior came a faint glow,
+which outlined something standing at the bars, peering out.
+
+The doorway was facing us. There had been utter silence; but suddenly,
+as though to prove how solid was this apparition, we heard the clank
+of metal, and the door slid open.
+
+I turned to make sure that Mary was hiding well behind me. The way
+back to the street, if need for escape arose, was open to her.
+
+I turned again, to face the shining cage. In the doorway something
+stood peering out, a light behind it. It was a great jointed thing of
+dark metal some ten feet high. For a moment it stood motionless. I
+could not see its face clearly, though I knew there was a suggestion
+of human features, and two great round glowing spots of eyes.
+
+It stepped forward--toward us. A jointed, stiff-legged step. Its arms
+were dangling loosely; I heard one of its mailed hands clank against
+its sides.
+
+"Now!" Alten whispered.
+
+I saw Alten's revolver leveling, and my own rifle went up.
+
+"Aim at its face," I murmured.
+
+We pulled our triggers together, and two spurts of flame spat before
+us. But the thing had stooped an instant before, and we missed. Then
+came Larry's shot. And then chaos.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I recall hearing the ping of Larry's bullet against the mailed body of
+the Robot. At that it crouched, and from it leaped a dull red-black
+beam of light. I heard Mary scream. She had not fled but was clinging
+to me. I cast her off.
+
+"Run! Get back! Get away!" I cried.
+
+Larry shouted, as we all stood bathed in the dull light from the
+Robot:
+
+"Look out! It sees us!"
+
+He fired again, into the light--and murmured, "Why--why--"
+
+A great surprise and terror was in his tone. Beside me, with
+half-leveled revolver, Alten stood transfixed. And he too was
+muttering something.
+
+All this happened in an instant. And there I was aware that I was
+trying to get my rifle up for firing again; but I could not. My arms
+stiffened. I tried to take a step, tried to move a foot, but could
+not. I was rooted there; held, as though by some giant magnet, to the
+ground!
+
+This horrible dull-red light! It was cold--a frigid, paralyzing blast.
+The blood ran like cold water in my veins. My feet were heavy with the
+weight of my body pressing them down.
+
+Then the Robot was moving; coming forward; holding the light upon us.
+I thought I heard its voice--and a horrible, hollow, rasping laugh.
+
+My brain was chilling. I had confused thoughts; impressions, vague and
+dreamlike. As though in a dream I felt myself standing there with
+Mary clinging to me. Both of us were frozen inert upon our feet.
+
+I tried to shout, but my tongue was too thick; my throat seemed
+swelling inside. I heard Alten's revolver clatter to the stone
+pavement of the yard. And saw him fall forward--out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I felt that in another instant I too would fall. This damnable,
+chilling light! Then the beam turned partly away, and fell more fully
+upon Larry. With his youth and greater strength than Alten's or mine,
+he had resisted its first blast. His weapon had fallen; now he stooped
+and tried to seize it; but he lost his balance and staggered backward
+against the house wall.
+
+And then the Robot was upon him. It sprang--this mechanism!--this
+machine in human form! And, with whatever pseudo-human intelligence
+actuated its giant metal body, it reached under Larry for his rifle!
+Its great mailed hand swept the ground, seized the rifle and flung it
+away. And as Larry twisted sidewise, the Robot's arm with a sweep
+caught him and rolled him across the yard. When he stopped, he lay
+motionless.
+
+I heard myself thickly calling to Mary, and the light flashed again
+upon us. And then we fell forward. Clinging together, we fell....
+
+I did not quite lose consciousness. It seemed that I was frozen, and
+drifting off half into a nightmare sleep. Great metal arms were
+gathering Mary and me from the ground. Lifting us; carrying us....
+
+We were in the cage. I felt myself lying on the grid of a metal floor.
+I could vaguely see the crossed bars of the ceiling overhead, and the
+latticed walls around me....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the dull-red light was gone. The chill was gone. I was warming.
+The blessed warm blood again was coursing through my veins, reviving
+me, bringing back my strength.
+
+I turned over, and found Mary lying beside me. I heard her softly
+murmur:
+
+"George! George Rankin!"
+
+The giant mechanism clanked the door closed, and came with stiff,
+stilted steps back into the center of the cage. I heard the hollow
+rumble of its voice, chuckling, as its hand pulled a switch.
+
+At once the cage-room seemed to reel. It was not a physical movement,
+though, but more a reeling of my senses, a wild shock to all my being.
+
+Then, after a nameless interval, I steadied. Around me was a humming,
+glowing intensity of tiny sounds and infinitely small, infinitely
+rapid vibrations. The whole room grew luminous. The Robot, seated now
+at a table, showed for a moment as thin as an apparition. All this
+room--Mary lying beside me, the mechanism, myself--all this was
+imponderable, intangible, unreal.
+
+And outside the bars stretched a shining mist of movement. Blurred
+shifting shapes over a vast illimitable vista. Changing things;
+melting landscapes. Silent, tumbling, crowding events blurred by our
+movement as we swept past them.
+
+We were traveling through Time!
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_The Girl from 2930_
+
+I must take up now the sequence of events as Larry saw them. I was
+separated from Larry during most of the strange incidents which befell
+us later; but from his subsequent account of what happened to him I am
+constructing several portions of this history, using my own words
+based upon Larry's description of the events in which I personally did
+not participate; I think that this method avoids complications in the
+narrative and makes more clear my own and Larry's simultaneous
+actions.
+
+Larry recovered consciousness in the back yard of the house on Patton
+Place probably only a moment or two after Mary and I had been snatched
+away in the Time-traveling cage. He found himself bruised and
+battered, but apparently without injuries. He got to his feet, weak
+and shaken. His head was roaring.
+
+He recalled what had happened to him, but it seemed like a dream. The
+back yard was then empty. He remembered vaguely that he had seen the
+mechanism carry Mary and me into the cage, and that the cage had
+vanished.
+
+Larry knew that only a few moments had passed. The shots had aroused
+the neighborhood. As he stood now against the house wall, dizzily
+looking around, he was aware of calling voices from the nearby
+windows.
+
+Then Larry stumbled over Alten, who was lying on his face near the
+kitchen doorway. Still alive, he groaned as Larry fell over him; but
+he was unconscious.
+
+Forgetting all about his weapon, Larry's first thought was to rush out
+for help. He staggered through the dark kitchen into the front room,
+and through the corridor into the street.
+
+Patton Place, as before, was deserted. The houses were dark; the alarm
+was all in the rear. There were no pedestrians, no vehicles, and no
+sign of a policeman. Dawn was just coming; as Larry turned eastward he
+saw, in a patch of clearing sky, stars paling with the coming
+daylight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With uncertain steps, out in the middle of the street, Larry ran
+eastward through the middle of the street, hoping that at the next
+corner he might encounter someone, or find a telephone over which he
+might call the police.
+
+But he had not gone more than five hundred feet when suddenly he
+stopped; stood there wavering, panting, staring with whirling senses.
+Near the middle of the street, with the faint dawn behind it, a ball
+of gathering mist had appeared directly in his path. It was a
+luminous, shining mist--and it was gathering into form!
+
+In seconds a small, glowing cage of white luminous bars stood there in
+the street, where there had just been nothing! It was not the
+Time-traveling cage from the house yard he had just left. No--he knew
+it was not that one. This one was similar, but much smaller.
+
+The shock of its appearance held Larry for a moment transfixed. It had
+so silently, so suddenly appeared in his path that Larry was now
+within a foot or two of its doorway.
+
+The doorway slid open, and a man leaped out. Behind him, a girl peered
+from the doorway. Larry stood gaping, wholly confused. The cage had
+materialized so abruptly that the leaping man collided with him before
+either man could avoid the other. Larry gripped the man before him;
+struck out with his fists and shouted. The girl in the doorway called
+frantically:
+
+"Harl-no noise! Harl-stop him!"
+
+Then, suddenly the two of them were upon Larry and pulling him toward
+the doorway of the cage. Inside, he was jerked; he shouted wildly; but
+the girl slammed the door. Then in a soft, girlish voice, in English
+with a curiously indescribable accent and intonation, the girl said
+hastily:
+
+"Hold him, Harl! Hold him! I'll start the traveler!"
+
+The black garbed figure of a slim young man was gripping Larry as the
+girl pulled a switch and there was a shock, a reeling of Larry's
+senses, as the cage, motionless in Space, sped off into Time....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seems needless to encumber this narrative with prolonged details of
+how Larry explained himself to his two captors. Or how they told him
+who they were; and from whence they had come; and why. To Larry it was
+a fantastic--and confusing at first--series of questions and answers.
+An hour? The words have no meaning. They were traveling through Time.
+Years were minutes--the words meaning nothing save how they impressed
+the vehicle's human occupants. To them all it was an interval of
+mutual distrust which was gradually changing into friendship. Larry
+found the two strangers singularly direct; singularly forceful in
+quiet, calm fashion; singularly keen of perception. They had not meant
+to capture him. The encounter had startled them, and Larry's shouts
+would have brought others upon the scene.
+
+Almost at once they knew Larry was no enemy, and told him so. And in a
+moment Larry was pouring out all that had happened to him; and to
+Alten and Mary Atwood and me. This strange thing! But to Larry now,
+telling it to these strange new companions, it abruptly seemed not
+fantastic, but only sinister. The Robot, an enemy, had captured Mary
+Atwood and me, and whirled us off in the other--the larger--cage.
+
+And in this smaller cage Larry was with friends--for he suddenly found
+their purpose the same as his! They were chasing this other
+Time-traveler, with its semi-human, mechanical operator!
+
+The young man said, "You explain to him, Tina. I will watch."
+
+He was a slim, pale fellow, handsome in a queer, tight-lipped,
+stern-faced fashion. His close-fitting black silk jacket had a white
+neck ruching and white cuffs; he wore a wide white-silk belt, snug
+black-silk knee-length trousers and black stockings.
+
+And the girl was similarly dressed. Her black hair was braided and
+coiled upon her head, and ornaments dangled from her ears. Over her
+black blouse was a brocaded network jacket; her white belt,
+compressing her slim waist, dangled with tassels; and there were other
+tassels on the garters at the knees of her trousers.
+
+She was a pale-faced, beautiful girl, with black brows arching in a
+thin line, with purple-black eyes like somber pools. She was no more
+than five feet tall, and slim and frail. But, like her companion,
+there was about her a queer aspect of calm, quiet power and force of
+personality--physical vitality merged with an intellect keenly sharp.
+
+She sat with Larry on a little metal bench, listening, almost without
+interruption, to his explanation. And then, succinctly she gave her
+own. The young man, Harl, sat at his instruments, with his gaze
+searching for the other cage, five hundred feet away in Space, but in
+Time unknown.
+
+And outside the shining bars Larry could vaguely see the blurred,
+shifting, melting vistas of New York City hastening through the
+changes Time had brought to it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This young man, Harl, and this girl, Tina, lived in New York City in
+the Time-world of 2930 A. D. To Larry it was a thousand years in the
+future. Tina was the Princess of the American Nation. It was an
+hereditary title, non-political, added several hundred years
+previously as a picturesque symbol. A tradition; something to make
+less prosaic the political machine of Republican government. Tina was
+loved by her people, we afterward came to learn.
+
+Harl was an aristocrat of the New York City of Tina's Time-world, a
+scientist. In the Government laboratories, under the same roof where
+Tina dwelt, Harl had worked with another, older scientist, and--so
+Tina told me--together they had discovered the secret of
+Time-traveling. They had built two cages, a large and a small, which
+could travel freely through Time.
+
+The smaller vehicle--this one in which Larry now was speeding--was, in
+the Time-world of 2930, located in the garden of Tina's palace. The
+other, somewhat larger, they had built some five hundred feet distant,
+just beyond the palace walls, within a great Government laboratory.
+
+Harl's fellow scientist--the leader in their endeavors, since he was
+much older and of wider experience--was not altogether trusted by
+Tina. He took the credit for the discovery of Time-traveling; yet,
+said Tina, it was Harl's genius which in reality had worked out the
+final problems.
+
+And this older scientist was a cripple. A hideously repulsive fellow,
+named Tugh!
+
+"Tugh!" exclaimed Larry.
+
+"The same," said Tina in her crisp fashion. "Yes--undoubtedly the
+same. So you see why what you have told us was of such interest. Tugh
+is a Government leader in our world; and now we find he has lived in
+_your_ Time, and in the Time of this Mary Atwood."
+
+From his seat at the instrument table, Harl burst out: "So he murdered
+a girl of 1935, and has abducted another of 1777? You would not have
+me judge him, Tina--"
+
+"No one," she said, "may judge without full facts. This man here--this
+Larry of 1935--tells us that only a mechanism is in the larger
+cage--which is what we thought, Harl. And this mechanism, without a
+doubt, is the treacherous Migul."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was, in 2930, a vast world of machinery. The god of the machine
+had developed them to almost human intricacy. Almost all the work of
+the world, particularly in America, and most particularly in the
+mechanical center of New York City, was done by machinery. And the
+machinery itself was guided, handled, operated--even, in some
+instances, constructed--by other, more intricate machines. They were
+fashioned in pseudo-human form--thinking, logically acting,
+independently acting mechanisms: the Robots. All but human, they
+were--a new race. Inferior to humans, yet similar.
+
+And in 2930 the machines, slaves of idle human masters, had been
+developed too highly! They were upon the verge of a revolt!
+
+All this Tina briefly sketched now to Larry. And to Larry it seemed a
+very distant, very academic danger. Yet so soon all of us were plunged
+into the midst of it!
+
+The revolt had not yet come, but it was feared. A great Robot named
+Migul seemed fomenting it. The revolt was smouldering; at any moment
+it would burst; and then the machines would rise to destroy the
+humans.
+
+This was the situation when Harl and Tugh completed the Time-traveling
+vehicles in this world. They had been tested, but never used. Then
+Tugh had vanished; was gone now; and the larger of the two vehicles
+was also gone.
+
+Both Harl and Tina had always distrusted Tugh. They thought him allied
+to the Robots. But they had no proof; and suavely he denied it, and
+helped always with the Government activities struggling to keep the
+mechanical slaves docile and at work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tugh and the larger vehicle had vanished, and so had Migul, the
+insubordinate, giant mechanism--at which, unknown to the Government
+officials, Tina and Harl had taken the other cage and started in
+pursuit. It was possible that Tugh was loyal; that Migul had abducted
+him and stolen the cage.
+
+"Wait!" exclaimed Larry. "I'm trying to figure this out. It seems to
+hang together. It almost does, but not quite. When did Tugh vanish
+from your world?"
+
+"To our consciousness," Tina answered, "about three hours ago. Perhaps
+a little longer than that."
+
+"But look here," Larry protested: "according to my story and that of
+Mary Atwood, Tugh lived in 1935 and in 1777 for three years."
+
+Confusing? But in a moment Larry understood it. Tugh could have taken
+the cage, gone to 1777 and to 1935, alternated between them for what
+was to him, and to those Time-worlds, three years--then have returned
+to 2930 _on the same day of his departure_. He would have lived these
+three years; grown that much older; but to the Time-world of 2930
+neither he nor the cage would have been missed.
+
+"That," said Tina, "is what doubtless he did. The cage is traveling
+again. But you, Larry, tell us only Migul is in it."
+
+"I couldn't say that of my own knowledge," said Larry. "Mary Atwood
+said so. It held only the mechanism you call Migul. And now Migul has
+with him Mary and my friend George Rankin. We must reach them."
+
+"We want that quite as much as you do," said Harl. "And to find Tugh.
+If he is a friend we must save him; if a traitor--punish him."
+
+Larry began, "But can you get to the other cage?"
+
+"Only if it stops," said Tina. "_When_ it stops, I should say."
+
+"Come here," said Harl. "I will show you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Larry crossed the glowing room. He had forgotten its aspect--the
+ghostly unreality around him. He too--his body, like Harl's and
+Tina's--was of the same wraith-like substance.... Then, suddenly,
+Larry's viewpoint shifted. The room and its occupants were real and
+tangible. And outside the glowing bars--everything out there was the
+unreality.
+
+"Here," said Harl. "I will show you. It is not visible yet."
+
+Each of the cages was equipped with an intricate device, strange of
+name, which Larry and I have since termed a Time-telespectroscope.
+Larry saw it now as a small metal box, with tuning vibration dials,
+batteries, coils, a series of tiny prisms and an image-mirror--the
+whole surmounted by what appeared the barrel of a small telescope.
+Harl had it leveled and was gazing through it.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: The workings of the Time-telespectroscope involve all the
+intricate postulates and mathematical formulae of Time-traveling
+itself. As a matter of practicality, however, the results obtained are
+simple of understanding. The etheric vibratory rate of the vehicles
+while traveling through Time was constantly changing. Through the
+telespectroscope one cage was visible to the other across the five
+hundred feet of intervening Space when they approached a simultaneous
+Time; when they, so to speak, were tuned in unison.
+
+Thus, Harl explained, the other cage would show as a ghost, the
+faintest of wraiths, over a Time-distance of some five or ten years.
+And the closer in Time they approached it, the more solid it would
+appear.]
+
+The enemy cage was not visible, now. But Harl and Tina had glimpsed it
+on several occasions. What vast realms Time opens within a single
+small segment of Space! The larger vehicle seemed speeding back and
+forth. A dash into the year 1777! as Larry learned from Mary Atwood.
+
+And there had been several evidences of the cage halting in 1935.
+Larry's account explained two such pauses. But the others? Those
+others, which brought to the City of New York such amazing disaster?
+We did not learn of them until much later. But Alten lived through
+them, and presently I shall reconstruct them from his account.
+
+The larger cage was difficult to trace in its sweep along the
+corridors of Time. Never once had Tina and Harl been able to stop
+simultaneously with it, for a year has so many separate days and
+hours. The nearest they came was the halt in the night of June 8-9,
+when they encountered Larry, and, startled, seized him and moved on
+again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Harl continued to gaze through the eyepiece of the detecting
+instrument. But nothing showed, and the mirror-grid on the table was
+dark.
+
+"But--which way are we going?" Larry stammered.
+
+"Back," said Tina. "The retrograde.... Wait! Do not do that!"
+
+Larry had turned toward where the bars, less luminous, showed a dark
+rectangle like a window. The desire swept him to gaze out at the
+shining, changing scene.
+
+But Tina checked him. "Do not do that! Not yet! It is too great a
+shock in the retrograde. It was to me."
+
+"But where are we?"
+
+In answer she gestured toward a series of tiny dials on the table
+edge. There were at least two score of them, laid in a triple bank.
+Dials to record the passing minutes, hours, days; the years, the
+centuries! Larry stared at the small whirring pointers. Some were a
+blur of swift whirling movement--the hours and days. Tina showed Larry
+how to read them. The cage was passing through the year 1880. In a few
+moments of Larry's consciousness it was 1799. Then 1793. The infant
+American nation was here now. But with the cage retrograding, soon
+they would be in the Revolutionary War.
+
+Tina said. "The other cage may go back to 1777, if Tugh meant ill to
+Mary Atwood, or wants revenge upon her father, at you said. We shall
+see."
+
+They had reached 1790 when Harl gave a low ejaculation.
+
+"You see it?" Tina murmured.
+
+"Yes. Very faintly."
+
+Larry bent tensely forward. "Will it show on the mirror?"
+
+"Yes; presently. We are about ten years from it. If we get closer, the
+mirror will show it."
+
+But the mirror held dark. No--now it was glowing a trifle. A vague
+luminosity.
+
+Tina moved toward the instrument controls nearby. "Watch closely,
+Harl. I will slow us down."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seemed to Larry that the humming with which everything around him
+was endowed, now began descending in pitch. And his head suddenly was
+unsteady. A singular, wild, queer feeling was within him. An unrest. A
+tugging torment of every tiny cell of his body.
+
+Tina said. "Hold steady, Larry, for when we stop."
+
+"Will it shock me?"
+
+"Yes--at first. But the shock will not harm you: it is nearly all
+mental."
+
+The mirror held an image now--the other cage. Larry saw, on the
+six-inch square mirror surface, a crawling, melting scene of movement.
+And in the midst of it, the image of the other cage, faint and
+spectral. In all the mirrored movement, only the apparition of the
+cage was still. And this marked it; made it visible.
+
+Over an interval, while Larry stared, the ghostly image grew plainer.
+They were approaching its Time-factor!
+
+"It is stopping," Harl murmured. Larry was aware that he had left the
+eyepiece and joined Tina at the controls.
+
+"Tina, let us try to get it right this time."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In 1777; but which month, would you say?"
+
+"It has stopped! See?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Larry heard them clicking switches, and setting the controls for a
+stop. Then he felt Tina gently push him.
+
+"Sit here. Standing, you might fall."
+
+He found himself on a bench. He could still see the mirror. The ghost
+of the other cage was now lined more plainly upon it.
+
+"This month," said Tina, setting a switch. "Would not you say so? And
+this day."
+
+"But the hour, Tina? The minute?"
+
+The vast intricate corridors of Time!
+
+"It would be in the night. Hasten, Harl, or we will pass! Try the
+night--around midnight. Even Migul has the mechanical intelligence to
+fear a daylight pausing."
+
+The controls were set for the stop. Larry heard Tina murmuring, "Oh, I
+pray we may have judged with correctness!"
+
+The vehicle was rapidly coming to a stop. Larry gripped the table,
+struggling to hold firm to his reeling senses. This soundless,
+grinding halt! His swaying gaze strayed from the mirror. Outside the
+glowing bars he could now discern the luminous greyness separating.
+Swift, soundless claps of light and dark, alternating. Daylight and
+darkness. They had been blended, but now they were separating. The
+passing, retrograding days--a dozen to the second of Larry's
+consciousness. Then fewer. Vivid daylight. Black night. Daylight
+again.
+
+"Not too slowly, Harl; we will be seen!... Oh, it is gone!"
+
+Larry saw the mirror go blank. The image on it had flared to great
+distinctness, faded, and was gone. Darkness was around Larry. Then
+daylight. Then darkness again.
+
+"Gone!" echoed Harl's disappointed voice. "But it stopped here!...
+Shall we stop, Tina?"
+
+"Yes! Leave the control settings as they are. Larry--be careful, now."
+
+A dragging second of grey daylight. A plunge into night. It seemed to
+Larry that all the universe was soundlessly reeling. Out of the chaos,
+Tina was saying:
+
+"We have stopped. Are you all right, Larry?"
+
+"Yes," he stammered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stood up. The cage room, with its faint lights, benches and
+settles, instrument tables and banks of controls, was flooded with
+moonlight from outside the bars. Night, and the moon and stars out
+there.
+
+Harl slid the door open. "Come, let us look."
+
+The reeling chaos had fallen swiftly from Larry. With Tina's small
+black and white figure beside him, he stood at the threshold of the
+cage. A warm gentle night breeze fanned his face.
+
+A moonlit landscape lay somnolent around the cage. Trees were nearby.
+The cage stood in a corner of a field by a low picket fence. Behind
+the trees, a ribbon of road stretched away toward a distant shining
+river. Down the road some five hundred feet, the white columns of a
+large square brick house gleamed in the moonlight. And behind the
+house was a garden and a group of barns and stables.
+
+The three in the cage doorway stood whispering, planning. Then two of
+them stepped to the ground. They were Larry and Tina; Harl remained to
+guard the cage.
+
+The two figures on the ground paused a moment and then moved
+cautiously along the inside line of the fence toward the home of Major
+Atwood. Strange anachronisms, these two prowling figures! A girl from
+the year 2930; a man from 1935!
+
+And this was revolutionary New York, now. The little city lay well to
+the south. It was open country up here. The New York of 1935 had
+melted away and was gone....
+
+This was a night in August of 1777.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_The New York Massacre of 1935_
+
+Dr. Alten recovered consciousness in the back yard of the house on
+Patton Place just a few moments after Larry had encountered the
+smaller Time-traveling cage and been carried off by Harl and Tina.
+Previously to that, of course, the mysterious mechanism in the guise
+of a giant man had abducted Mary Atwood and me in the larger
+Time-cage.
+
+Alten became aware that people were bending over him. The shots we had
+taken at the Robot had aroused the neighborhood. A policeman arrived.
+
+The sleeping neighbors had heard the shots, but it seemed that none
+had seen the cage, or the metal man who had come from it. Alten said
+nothing. He was taken to the nearest police station where grudgingly,
+he told his story. He was laughed at; reprimanded for alcoholism.
+Evidently, according to the police sergeant, there had been a fight,
+and Alten had drawn the loser's end. The police confiscated the two
+rifles and the revolver and decided that no one but Alten had been
+hurt. But at best it was a queer affair. Alten had not been shot; he
+was just stiff with cold; he said a dull-red ray had fallen upon him
+and stiffened him with its frigid blast. Utter nonsense!
+
+Dr. Alten was a man of standing. It was a reprehensible affair, but he
+was released upon his own recognizance. He was charged with breaking
+into the untenanted home of one Tugh; of illegally possessing
+firearms; of disturbing the peace--a variety of offenses all rational
+to the year 1935.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Alten's case never reached even its hearing in the Magistrate's
+Court. He arrived home just after dawn, that June 9, still cold and
+stiff from the effects of the ray, and bruised and battered by the
+sweeping blow of Miguel's great iron arm. He recalled vaguely seeing
+Larry fall, and the iron monster bearing Mary Atwood and me away. What
+had happened to Larry, Alten could not guess, unless the Robot had
+returned, ignored him and taken his friend away.
+
+During that day of June 9 Alten summoned several of his scientific
+friends, and to them he told fully what had happened to him. They
+listened with a keen understanding and a rational knowledge of the
+possibility that what he said was true; but credibility they could not
+give him.
+
+The noon papers came out.
+
+     NOTED ALIENIST ATTACKED BY GHOST Felled by One of the
+     Fantastic Monsters of His Brain
+
+A jocular, jibing account. Then Alten gave it up. He had about decided
+to plead guilty in the Magistrate's Court to disorderly conduct and
+all the rest of it! That was preferable to being judged a liar, or
+insane.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then, at about 9 P.M. on the evening of June 9, the first of the
+mechanical monsters came stalking from the house on Patton Place--the
+beginning of the revenge which Tugh had threatened when arrested. The
+policeman at the corner--one McGuire--turned in the first hysterical
+alarm. He rushed into a little candy and stationery store shouting
+that he had seen a piece of machinery running wild. His telephone call
+brought a squad of his comrades. The Robot at first did no damage.
+
+McGuire later told how he saw it as it emerged from the entryway of
+the Tugh house. It came lurching out into the street--a giant thing of
+dull grey metal, with tubular, jointed legs; a body with a great
+bulging chest; a round head, eight or ten feet above the pavement;
+eyes that shot fire.
+
+The policeman took to his heels. There was a commotion in Patton Place
+during those next few minutes. Pedestrians saw the thing standing in
+the middle of the street, staring stupidly around it. The head
+wobbled. Some said that the eyes shot fire; others, that it was not
+the eyes, but more like a torch in its mailed hand. The torch shot a
+small beam of light around the street--a beam which was dull-red.
+
+The pedestrians fled. Their cries brought people to the nearby house
+windows. Women screamed. Presently bottles were thrown from the
+windows. One of these crashed against the iron shoulder of the
+monster. It turned its head: as though its neck were rubber, some
+said. And it gazed upward, with a human gesture as though it were not
+angry, but contemptuous.
+
+But still, beyond a step or two in one direction or another, it merely
+stood and waved its torch. The little dull-red beam of light carried
+no more than twenty or thirty feet. The street in a few moments was
+clear of pedestrians; remained littered with glass from the broken
+bottles. A taxi came suddenly around the corner, and the driver, with
+an almost immediate tire puncture, saw the monster. He hauled up to
+the curb, left his cab and ran.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Robot saw the taxicab, and stood gazing. It turned its torch-beam
+on it, and seemed surprised that the thing did not move. Then thinking
+evidently that this was a less cowardly enemy than the humans, it made
+a rush to it. The chauffeur had not turned off his engine when he
+fled, so the cab stood throbbing.
+
+The Robot reached it; cuffed it with a huge mailed fist. The
+windshield broke; the windows were shattered; but the cab stood
+purring, planted upon its four wheels.
+
+Strange encounter! They say that the Robot tried to talk to it. At
+last, exasperated, it stepped backward, gathered itself and pounced on
+it again. Stooping, it put one of its great arms down under the
+wheels, the other over the hood, and with prodigious strength heaved
+the cab into the air. It crashed on its side across the street, and in
+a moment was covered with flames.
+
+It was about this time that Patrolman McGuire came back to the scene.
+He shot at the monster a few times; hit it, he was sure. But the Robot
+did not heed him.
+
+The block was now in chaos. People stood at most of the windows,
+crowds gathered at the distant street corners, while the blazing
+taxicab lighted the block with a lurid glare. No one dared approach
+within a hundred feet or so of the monster. But when, after a time, it
+showed no disposition to attack, throngs at every distinct point of
+vantage tried to gather where they could see it. Those nearest
+reported back that its face was iron; that it had a nose, a wide,
+yawning mouth, and holes for eyes. There were certainly little lights
+in the eye-holes.
+
+A small, fluffy white dog went dashing up to the monster and barked
+bravely at its heels. It leaped nimbly away when the Robot stooped to
+seize it. Then, from the Robot's chest, the dull-red torch beam leaped
+out and down. It caught the little dog, and clung to it for an
+instant. The dog stood transfixed; its bark turned to a yelp; then a
+gurgle. In a moment it fell on its side; then lay motionless with
+stiffened legs sticking out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All this happened within five minutes. McGuire's riot squad arrived,
+discreetly ranged itself at the end of the block and fired. The Robot
+by then had retreated to the entryway of the Tugh house, where it
+stood peering as though with curiosity at all this commotion. There
+came a clanging from the distance: someone had turned in a fire alarm.
+Through the gathered crowds and vehicles the engines came tearing up.
+
+Presently there was not one Robot, but three: a dozen! More than that,
+many reports said. But certain it is that within half an hour of the
+first alarm, the block in front of Tugh's home held many of the iron
+monsters. And there were many human bodies lying strewn there, by
+then. A few policemen had made a stand at the corner, to protect the
+crowd against one of the Robots. The thing had made an unexpected
+infuriated rush....
+
+There was a panic in the next block, when a thousand people suddenly
+tried to run. A score of people were trampled under foot. Two or three
+of the Robots ran into that next block--ran impervious to the many
+shots which now were fired at them. From what was described as slots
+in the sides of their iron bodies they drew swords--long, dark,
+burnished blades. They ran, and at each fallen human body they made a
+single stroke of decapitation, or, more generally, cut the body in
+half.
+
+The Robots did not attack the fire engines. Emboldened by this,
+firemen connected a hose and pumped a huge jet of water toward the
+Tugh house. The Robots then rushed it. One huge mechanism--some said
+it was twelve feet tall--ran heedlessly into the firemen's
+high-pressure stream, toppled backward from the force of the water and
+very strangely lay still. Killed? Rather, out of order: deranged: it
+was not human, to be killed. But it lay motionless, with the fire hose
+playing upon it. Then abruptly there was an explosion. The fallen
+Robot, with a deafening report and a puff of green flame, burst into
+flying metallic fragments like shrapnel. Nearby windows were broken
+from the violent explosion, and pieces of the flying metal were hurled
+a hundred feet or more. One huge chunk, evidently a plate of the
+thing's body, struck into the crowd two blocks away, and felled
+several people.
+
+At this smashing of one of the mechanisms, its brother Robots went for
+the first time into aggressive action. A hundred or more were pouring
+now from the vacant house of the absent Tugh....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The alarm by ten o'clock had spread throughout the entire city. Police
+reserves were called out, and by midnight soldiers were being
+mobilized. Panics were starting everywhere. Millions of people crowded
+in on small Manhattan Island, in the heart of which was this strange
+enemy.
+
+Panics.... Yet human nature is very strange. Thousands of people
+started to leave Manhattan, but there were other thousands during that
+first skirmish who did their best to try and get to the neighborhood
+of Patton Place to see what was going on. They added greatly to the
+confusion. Traffic soon was stalled everywhere. Traffic officers,
+confused, frightened by the news which was bubbled at them from every
+side, gave wrong orders; accidents began to occur. And then, out of
+the growing confusion, came tangles, until, like a dammed stream, all
+the city mid-section was paralyzed. Vehicles were abandoned
+everywhere.
+
+Reports of what was happening on Patton Place grew more confused. The
+gathering nearby crowds impeded the police and firemen. The Robots, by
+ten o'clock, were using a single great beam of dull-red light. It was
+two or three feet broad. It came from a spluttering, hissing cylinder
+mounted on runners which the Robots dragged along the ground, and the
+beam was like that of a great red searchlight. It swung the length of
+Patton Place in both directions. It hissed against the houses;
+penetrated the open windows which now were all deserted; swept the
+front cornices of the roofs, where crowds of tenants and others were
+trying to hide. The red beam drove back the ones near the edge, except
+those who were stricken by its frigid blast and dropped like plummets
+into the street, where the Robots with flashing blades pounced upon
+them.
+
+Frigid was the blast of this giant light-beam. The street, wet from
+the fire-hose, was soon frozen with ice--ice which increased under the
+blast of the beam, and melted in the warm air of the night when the
+ray turned away.
+
+From every distant point in the city, awed crowds could see that great
+shaft when it occasionally shot upward, to stain the sky with blood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dr. Alten by midnight was with the city officials, telling them what
+he could of the origin of this calamity. They were a distracted group
+indeed! There were a thousand things to do, and frantically they were
+giving orders, struggling to cope with conditions so suddenly
+unprecedented. A great city, millions of people, plunged into
+conditions unfathomable. And every moment growing worse. One calamity
+bringing another, in the city, with its myriad diverse activities so
+interwoven. Around Alten the clattering, terrifying reports were
+surging. He sat there nearly all that night; and near dawn, an
+official plane carried him in a flight over the city.
+
+The panics, by midnight, were causing the most deaths. Thousands,
+hundreds of thousands, were trying to leave the island. The tube
+trains, the subways, the elevateds were jammed. There were riots
+without number in them. Ferryboats and bridges were thronged to their
+capacity. Downtown Manhattan, fortunately comparatively empty, gave
+space to the crowds plunging down from the crowded foreign quarters
+bordering Greenwich Village. By dawn it was estimated that five
+thousand people had been trampled to death by the panics in various
+parts of the city, in the tubes beneath the rivers and on departing
+trains.
+
+And another thousand or more had been killed by the Robots. How many
+of these monstrous metal men were now in evidence, no one could
+guess. A hundred--or a thousand. The Time-cage made many trips between
+that night of June 9 and 10, 1935, and a night in 2930. Always it
+gauged its return to this same night.
+
+The Robots poured out into Patton Place. With running, stiff-legged
+steps, flashing swords, small light-beams darting before them, they
+spread about the city....
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The Vengeance of Tugh
+
+A myriad individual scenes of horror were enacted. Metal travesties of
+the human form ran along the city streets, overturning stalled
+vehicles, climbing into houses, roaming dark hallways, breaking into
+rooms.
+
+There was a woman who afterward told that she crouched in a corner,
+clutching her child, when the door of her room was burst in. Her
+husband, who had kept them there thinking it was the safest thing to
+do, fought futilely with the great thing of iron. Its sword slashed
+his head from his body with a single stroke. The woman and the little
+child screamed, but the monster ignored them. They had a radio, tuned
+to a station in New Jersey which was broadcasting the events. The
+Robot seized the instrument as though in a frenzy of anger, tore it
+apart, then rushed from the room.
+
+No one could give a connected picture of the events of that horrible
+night. It was a series of disjointed incidents out of which the
+imagination must construct the whole.
+
+The panics were everywhere. The streets were stalled with traffic and
+running, shouting, fighting people. And the area around Greenwich
+Village brought reports of continued horror.
+
+The Robots were of many different forms; some pseudo-human; others,
+great machines running amuck--things more monstrous, more horrible
+even, than those which mocked humanity. There was a great pot-bellied
+monster which forced its way somehow to a roof. It encountered a
+crouching woman and child in a corner of the parapet, seized them, one
+in each of its great iron hands, and whirled them out over the
+housetops.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By dawn it seemed that the Robots had mounted several projectors of
+the giant red beam on the roofs of Patton Place. They held a full
+square mile, now, around Tugh's house. The police and firemen had long
+since given up fighting them. They were needed elsewhere--the police
+to try and cope with the panics, and the firemen to fight the
+conflagrations which everywhere began springing up. Fires, the natural
+outcome of chaos; and fires, incendiary--made by criminals who took
+advantage of the disaster to fatten like ghouls upon the dead. They
+prowled the streets. They robbed and murdered at will.
+
+The giant beams of the Robots carried a frigid blast for miles. By
+dawn of that June 10th, the south wind was carrying from the enemy
+area a perceptible wave of cold even as far as Westchester. Allen,
+flying over the city, saw the devastated area clearly. Ice in the
+streets--smashed vehicles--the gruesome litter of sword-slashed human
+bodies. And other human bodies, plucked apart; strewn....
+
+Alten's plane flew at an altitude of some two thousand feet. In the
+growing daylight the dark prowling figures of the metal men were
+plainly seen. There were no humans left alive in the captured area.
+The plane dropped a bomb into Washington Square where a dozen or two
+of the Robots were gathered. It missed them. The plane's pilot had not
+realized that they were grouped around a projector; its red shaft
+sprang up, caught the plane and clung to it. Frigid blast! Even at
+that two thousand feet altitude, for a few seconds Alten and the
+others were stiffened by the cold. The motor missed; very nearly
+stopped. Then an intervening rooftop cut off the beam, and the plane
+escaped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All this I have pictured from what Dr. Alten subsequently told me. He
+leaves my narrative now, since fate hereafter held him in the New York
+City of 1935. But he has described for me three horrible days, and
+three still more horrible nights. The whole world now was alarmed.
+Every nation offered its forces of air and land and sea to overcome
+these gruesome invaders. Warships steamed for New York harbor.
+Soldiers were entrained and brought to the city outskirts. Airplanes
+flew overhead. On Long Island, Staten Island, and in New Jersey,
+infantry, tanks and artillery were massed in readiness.
+
+But they were all very nearly powerless to attack. Manhattan Island
+still was thronged with refugees. It was not possible for the millions
+to escape; and for the first day there were hundreds of thousands
+hiding in their homes. The city could not be shelled. The influx of
+troops was hampered by the outrush of civilians.
+
+By the night of the tenth, nevertheless, ten thousand soldiers were
+surrounding the enemy area. It embraced now all the mid-section of the
+island. The soldiers rushed in. Machine-guns were set up.
+
+But the Robots were difficult to find. With this direct attack they
+began fighting with an almost human caution. Their bodies were
+impervious to bullets, save perhaps in the orifices of the face which
+might or might not be vulnerable. But when attacked, they skulked in
+the houses, or crouched like cautious animals under the smashed
+vehicles. Then there were times when they would wade forward directly
+into machine-gun fire--unharmed--plunging on until the gunners fled
+and the Robots wreaked their fury upon the abandoned gun.
+
+The only hand-to-hand conflicts took place on the afternoon of June
+10th. A full thousand soldiers were killed--and possibly six or eight
+of the Robots. The troops were ordered away after that; they made
+lines across the island to the north and to the south, to keep the
+enemy from increasing its area. Over Greenwich Village now, the
+circling planes--at their highest altitude, to avoid the upflung
+crimson beams--dropped bombs. Hundreds of houses there were wrecked.
+Tugh's house could not be positively identified, though the attack was
+directed at it most particularly. Afterward, it was found by chance to
+have escaped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The night of June 10th brought new horrors. The city lights failed.
+Against all the efforts of the troops and the artillery fire which now
+was shelling the Washington Square area, the giant mechanisms pushed
+north and south. By midnight, with their dull-red beams illumining the
+darkness of the canyon streets, they had reached the Battery, and
+spread northward beyond the northern limits of Central Park.
+
+It is estimated that by then there were still a million people on
+Manhattan Island.
+
+The night of the 11th, the Robots made their real attack. Those who
+saw it, from planes overhead, say that upon a roof near Washington
+Square a machine was mounted from which a red beam sprang. It was not
+of parallel rays, like the others; this one spread. And of such power
+it was, that it painted the leaden clouds of the threatening, overcast
+night. Every plane, at whatever high altitude, felt its frigid blast
+and winged hastily away to safety.
+
+Spreading, dull-red beam! It flashed with a range of miles. Its light
+seemed to cling to the clouds, staining like blood; and to cling to
+the air itself with a dull lurid radiance.
+
+It was a hot night, that June 11th, with a brewing thunderstorm. There
+had been occasional rumbles of thunder and lightning flashes. The
+temperature was perhaps 90° F.
+
+Then the temperature began falling. A million people were hiding in
+the great apartment houses and homes of the northern sections, or
+still struggling to escape over the littered bridges or by the
+paralyzed transportation systems--and that million people saw the
+crimson radiance and felt the falling temperature.
+
+80°. Then 70°. Within half an hour it was at 30°! In unheated houses,
+in midsummer, in the midst of panic, the people were swept by chilling
+cold. With no adequate clothing available they suffered greatly--and
+then abruptly they were freezing. Children wailing with the cold; then
+asleep in numbed, last slumber....
+
+Zero weather in midsummer! And below zero! How cold it got, there is
+no one to say. The abandoned recording instrument in the Weather
+Bureau was found, at 2:16 A.M., the morning of June 12, 1935, to have
+touched minus 42° F.
+
+The gathering storm over the city burst with lightning and thunder
+claps through the blood-red radiance. And then snow began falling. A
+steady white downpour, a winter blizzard with the lightning flashing
+above it, and the thunder crashing.
+
+With the lightning and thunder and snow, crazy winds sprang up. They
+whirled and tossed the thick white snowflakes; swept in blasts along
+the city streets. It piled the snow in great drifts against the
+houses; whirled and sucked it upward in white powdery geysers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At 2:30 A.M. there came a change. The dull-red radiance which swept
+the city changed in color. Through the shades of the spectrum it swung
+up to violet. And no longer was it a blast of cold, but of heat! Of
+what inherent temperature the ray of that spreading beam may have
+been, no one can say. It caught the houses, and everything inflammable
+burst into flame. Conflagrations were everywhere--a thousand spots of
+yellow-red flames, like torches, with smoke rolling up from them to
+mingle with the violet glow overhead.
+
+The blizzard was gone. The snow ceased. The storm clouds rolled away,
+blasted by the pendulum winds which lashed the city.
+
+By 3 A.M. the city temperature was over 100° F--the dry, blistering
+heat of a midsummer desert. The northern city streets were littered
+with the bodies of people who had rushed from their homes and fallen
+in the heat, the wild winds and the suffocating smoke outside.
+
+And then, flung back by the abnormal winds, the storm clouds crashed
+together overhead. A terrible storm, born of outraged nature, vent
+itself on the city. The fires of the burning metropolis presently died
+under the torrent of falling water. Clouds of steam whirled and tossed
+and hissed close overhead, and there was a boiling hot rain.
+
+By dawn the radiance of that strange spreading beam died away. The
+daylight showed a wrecked, dead city. Few humans indeed were left
+alive on Manhattan that dawn. The Robots and their apparatus had
+gone....
+
+The vengeance of Tugh against the New York City of 1935 was
+accomplished.
+
+(_To be continued._)
+
+[Illustration: Advertisement.]
+
+
+
+
+Hell's Dimension
+
+_By Tom Curry_
+
+[Illustration: _Just as the terrific unknown force reached its apex, she stepped
+across the plate._]
+
+[Sidenote: Professor Lambert deliberately ventures into a Vibrational
+Dimension to join his fiancee in its magnetic torture-fields.]
+
+
+"Now, Professor Lambert, tell us what you have done with the body of
+your assistant Miss Madge Crawford. Her car is outside your door, has
+stood there since early yesterday morning. There are no footprints
+leading away from the house and you can't expect us to believe that an
+airplane picked her off the roof. It will make it a lot easier if you
+tell us where she is. Her parents are greatly worried about her. When
+they telephoned, you refused to talk to them, would not allow them to
+speak to Miss Crawford. They are alarmed as to her fate. While you are
+not the sort of man who would injure a young woman, still, things look
+bad for you. You had better explain fully."
+
+John Lambert, a man of about thirty-six, tall, spare, with black hair
+which was slightly tinged with gray at the temples in spite of his
+youth, turned large eyes which were filled with agony upon his
+questioners.
+
+Lambert was already internationally famous for his unique and
+astounding experiments in the realm of sound and rhythm. He had been
+endowed by one of the great electrical companies to do original work,
+and his laboratory, in which he lived, was situated in a large tract
+of isolated woodland some forty miles from New York City. It was
+necessary for the success of his work that as few disturbing noises as
+possible be made in the neighborhood. Many of his experiments with
+sound and etheric waves required absolute quiet and freedom from
+interrupting noises. The delicate nature of some of the machines he
+used would not tolerate so much as the footsteps of a man within a
+hundred yards, and a passing car would have disrupted them entirely.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lambert was terribly nervous; he trembled under the gaze of the stern
+detective, come with several colleagues from a neighboring town at the
+call of Madge Crawford's frightened family. The girl, whose picture
+stood on a working table nearby, looked at them from the photograph as
+a beautiful young woman of twenty-five, light of hair, with large eyes
+and a lovely face.
+
+Detective Phillips pointed dramatically to the likeness of the missing
+girl. "Can you," he said, "look at her there, and deny you loved her?
+And if she did not love you in return, then we have a motive for what
+you have done--jealousy. Come, tell us what you have done with her.
+Our men will find her, anyway; they are searching the cellar for her
+now. You can't hope to keep her, alive, and if she is dead--"
+
+Lambert uttered a cry of despair, and put his face in his long
+fingers. "She--she--don't say she's dead!"
+
+"Then you did love her!" exclaimed Phillips triumphantly, and
+exchanged glances with his companions.
+
+"Of course I love her. And she returned my love. We were secretly
+engaged, and were to be married when we had finished these extremely
+important experiments. It is infamous though, to accuse me of having
+killed her; if I have done so, then it was no fault of mine."
+
+"Then you did kill her?"
+
+"No, no. I cannot believe she is really gone."
+
+"Why did you evade her parents' inquiries?"
+
+"Because ... I have been trying to bring her ... to re-materialize
+her."
+
+"You mean to bring her back to life?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Couldn't a doctor do that better than you, if she is hidden somewhere
+about here?" asked Phillips gravely.
+
+"No, no. You do not understand. She cannot be seen, she has
+dematerialized. Oh, go away. I'm the only man, save, possibly, my
+friend Doctor Morgan, who can help her now. And Morgan--I've thought
+of calling him, but I've been working every instant to get the right
+combination. Go away, for God's sake!"
+
+"We can't go away until we have found out Miss Crawford's fate," said
+Phillips patiently.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another sleuth entered the immense laboratory. He made his way through
+the myriad strange machines, a weird collection of xylophones, gongs,
+stone slabs cut in peculiar patterns to produce odd rhythmic sounds,
+electrical apparatus of all sorts. Near Phillips was a plate some feet
+square, of heavy metal, raised from the floor on poles of a different
+substance. About the ceiling were studs thickly set of the same sort
+of metal as was the big plate.
+
+One of the sleuths tapped his forehead, pointing to Lambert as the
+latter nervously lighted a cigarette.
+
+The newcomer reported to Phillips. He held in his hand two or three
+sheets of paper on which something was written.
+
+"The only other person here is a deaf mute," said the sleuth to
+Phillips, his superior. "I've got his story. He writes that he takes
+care of things, cooks their meals and so on. And he writes further
+that he thinks the woman and this guy Lambert were in love with each
+other. He has no idea where she has gone to. Here, you read it."
+
+Phillips took the sheets and continued: "'Yesterday morning about ten
+o'clock I was passing the door of the laboratory on my way to make up
+Professor Lambert's bed. Suddenly I noticed a queer, shimmering,
+greenish-blue light streaming down from the walls and ceiling of the
+laboratory. I was right outside the place and though I cannot hear
+anything, I was knocked down and I twisted and wriggled around like a
+snake. It felt like something with a thousand little paws but with
+great strength was pushing me every way. When there was a lull, and
+the light had stopped for a few moments, I staggered to my feet and
+ran madly for my own quarters, scared out of my head. As I went by the
+kitchen, I saw Miss Crawford at the sink there, filling some vases and
+arranging flowers as she usually did every morning.
+
+"'If she called to me, I did not hear her or notice her lips moving. I
+believe she came to the door.
+
+"'I was going to quit, when I recovered myself, angry at what had
+occurred; but then, I began to feel ashamed for being such a baby, for
+Professor Lambert has been very good to me. About fifteen minutes
+after I went to my room, I was able to return to the kitchen. Miss
+Crawford was not there, though the flowers and vases were. Then, as I
+started to work, still a little alarmed, Professor Lambert came
+rushing into the kitchen, an expression of terror on his face. His
+mouth was open, and I think he was calling. He then ran out, back to
+the laboratory, and I have not seen Miss Madge since. Professor
+Lambert has been almost continuously in the work-room since then,
+and--I kept away from it, because I was afraid.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two more members of Phillips' squad broke into the laboratory and came
+toward the chief. They had been working at physical labor, for they
+were still perspiring and one regarded his hands with a rueful
+expression.
+
+"Any luck?" asked Phillips eagerly.
+
+"No, boss. We been all over the place, and we dug every spot we could
+get to earth in the cellar. Most of it's three-inch concrete, without
+a sign of a break."
+
+"Did you look in the furnace?"
+
+"We looked there the first thing. She ain't there."
+
+There were several closets in the laboratory, and Phillips opened all
+of them and inspected them. As he moved near the big plate, Lambert
+uttered a cry of warning. "Don't disturb that, don't touch anything
+near it!"
+
+"All right, all right," said Phillips testily.
+
+The skeptical sleuths had classified Lambert as a "nut," and were
+practically sure he had done away with Madge Crawford because she
+would not marry him.
+
+Still, they needed better evidence than their mere beliefs. There was
+no corpus delicti, for instance.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Lambert at last, controlling his emotions with a
+great effort. "I will admit to you that I am in trepidation and a
+state of mental torture as to Miss Crawford's fate. You are delaying
+matters, keeping me from my work."
+
+"He thinks about work when the girl he claims he loves has
+disappeared," said Doherty, in a loud whisper to Phillips. Doherty was
+one of the sleuths who had been digging in the cellar, and the hard
+work had made his temper short.
+
+"You must help us find Miss Crawford before we can let you alone,"
+said Phillips. "Can't you understand that you are under grave
+suspicion of having injured her, hidden her away? This is a serious
+matter, Professor Lambert. Your experiments can wait."
+
+"This one cannot," shouted Lambert, shaking his fists. "You are
+fools!"
+
+"Steady now," said Doherty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Perhaps you had better come with us to the district attorney's
+office," went on Phillips. "There you may come to your senses and
+realize the futility of trying to cover up your crime--if you have
+committed one. If you have not, why do you not tell us where Miss
+Crawford is?"
+
+"Because I do not know myself," replied Lambert. "But you can't take
+me away from here. I beg of you, gentlemen, allow me a little more
+time. I must have it."
+
+Phillips shook his head. "Not unless you tell us logically what has
+occurred," he said.
+
+"Then I must, though I do not think you will comprehend or even
+believe me. Briefly, it is this: yesterday morning I was working on
+the final series of experiments with a new type of harmonic overtones
+plus a new type of sinusoidal current which I had arranged with a
+series of selenium cells. When I finally threw the switch--remember, I
+was many weeks preparing the apparatus, and had just put the final
+touches on early that morning--there was a sound such as never had
+been heard before by human ears, an indescribable sound, terrifying
+and mysterious. Also, there was a fierce, devouring verditer blue
+light, and this came from the plates and studs you see, but so great
+was its strength that it got out of control and leaped about the room
+like a live thing. For some moments, while it increased in intensity
+as I raised the power of the current by means of the switch I held in
+my hand, I watched and listened in fascination. My instruments had
+ceased to record, though they are the most delicate ever invented and
+can handle almost anything which man can even surmise."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The perspiration was pouring from Lambert's face, as he recounted his
+story. The detectives listened, comprehending but a little of the
+meaning of the scientist's words.
+
+"What has this to do with Miss Crawford?" asked Doherty impatiently.
+
+Phillips held up his hand to silence the other sleuth. "Let him
+finish," he ordered. "Go on, professor."
+
+"The sensations which I was undergoing became unendurable," went on
+Lambert, in a low, hoarse voice. "I was forced to cry out in pain and
+confusion.
+
+"Miss Crawford evidently heard my call, for a few moments later, just
+as the terrific unknown force reached its apex, she dashed into the
+laboratory, and stepped across the plate you see there.
+
+"I was powerless. Though I shut off the current by a superhuman
+effort, she--she was gone!"
+
+Lambert put his face in his hands, a sob shook his broad shoulders.
+
+"Gone?" repeated Phillips. "What do you mean, gone?"
+
+"She disappeared, before my very eyes," said the professor shakily.
+"Torn into nothingness by the fierce force of the current or sound.
+Since then, I have been trying to reproduce the conditions of the
+experiment, for I wish to bring her back. If I cannot do so, then I
+want to join her, wherever she has gone. I love her, I know now that I
+cannot possibly live without her. Will you please leave me alone, now,
+so that I can continue?"
+
+Doherty laughed derisively. "What a story," he jeered.
+
+"Keep quiet, Doherty," ordered Phillips. "Now, Professor Lambert, your
+explanation of Miss Crawford's disappearance does not sound logical to
+us, but still we are willing to give you every chance to bring her
+back, if what you say is true. We cannot leave you entirely alone,
+because you might try to escape or you might carry out your threat of
+suicide. Therefore, I am going to sit over there in the corner,
+quietly, where I can watch you but will not interfere with your work.
+We will give you until midnight to prove your story. Then you must go
+with us to the district attorney. Do you agree to that?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lambert nodded, eagerly. "I agree. Let me work in peace, and if I do
+not succeed then you may take me anywhere you wish. If you can," he
+added, in an undertone.
+
+Doherty and the others, at Phillips' orders, filed from the
+laboratory. "One thing more, professor," said Phillips, when they were
+alone and the professor was preparing to work. "How do you explain the
+fact, if your story is true, that Miss Crawford was killed and made to
+disappear, while you yourself, close by, were uninjured?"
+
+"Do you see these garments?" asked Lambert, indicating some black
+clothes which lay on a bench nearby. "They insulated me from the
+current and partially protected me from the sound. Though the force
+was very great, great enough to penetrate my insulation, it was
+handicapped in my case because of the garments."
+
+"I see. Well, you may go on."
+
+Phillips moved in the chair he had taken, from time to time. He could
+hear the noises of his men, still searching the premises for Madge
+Crawford, and Professor Lambert heard them, too.
+
+"Will you tell your men to be quiet?" he cried at last.
+
+There were dark circles under Lambert's eyes. He was working in a
+state of feverish anxiety. When the girl he loved had dematerialized
+from under his very eyes, panic had seized him; he had ripped away
+wires to break the current and lost the thread of his experiment, so
+that he could not reproduce it exactly without much labor.
+
+The scientist put on the black robes, and Phillips wished he too had
+some protective armor, even though he did believe that Lambert had
+told them a parcel of lies. The deaf mute's story was not too
+reassuring. Phillips warned his companions to be more quiet, and he
+himself sat quite still.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lambert knew that the sleuths thought he was stark mad. He was aware
+of the fact that he had but a few hours in which to save the girl who
+had come at his cry to help him, who had loved him and whom he loved,
+only to be torn into some place unknown by the forces which were
+released in his experiment. And he knew he would rather die with her
+than live without her.
+
+He labored feverishly, though he tried to keep his brain calm in order
+to win. His notes helped him up to a certain point, but when he had
+made the final touches he had not had time to bring the data up to the
+moment, being eager to test out his apparatus. It was while testing
+that the awful event had occurred and he had seen Madge Crawford
+disappear before his very eyes.
+
+Her eyes, large and frightened, burned in his mind.
+
+The deaf mute, Felix, a small, spare man of about fifty, sent the
+professor some food and coffee through one of the sleuths. Lambert
+swallowed the coffee, but waved away the rest, impatiently. Phillips,
+watching his suspect constantly, was served a light supper at the end
+of the afternoon.
+
+There seemed to be a million wires to be touched, tested, and various
+strange apparatus. Several times, later on in the evening. Lambert
+threw the big switch with an air of expectancy, but little happened.
+Then Lambert would go to work again, testing, testing--adjusting this
+and that till Phillips swore under his breath.
+
+"Only an hour more, professor," said Phillips, who was bored to death
+and cramped from trying to obey the professor's orders to keep still.
+A circle of cigarette-ends surrounded the sleuth.
+
+"Only an hour," agreed Lambert. "Will you please be quiet, my man?
+This is a matter of my fiancée's life or death."
+
+Phillips was somewhat disgruntled, for he felt he had done Lambert
+quite a favor in allowing him to remain in the laboratory for so long,
+to prove his story.
+
+"I wish Doctor Morgan were here; I ought to have sent for him, I
+suppose," said Lambert, a few minutes later. "Will you allow me to get
+him? I cannot seem to perfect this last stage."
+
+"No time, now," declared Phillips. "I said till midnight."
+
+It was obvious to Lambert that the detective had become certain during
+the course of the evening that the scientist was mad. The ceaseless
+fiddling and the lack of results or even spectacular sights had
+convinced Phillips that he had to do with a crank.
+
+"I think I have it now," said Lambert coolly.
+
+"What?" asked Phillips.
+
+"The original combination. I had forgotten one detail in the
+excitement, and this threw me off. Now I believe I will succeed--in
+one way or another. I warn you, be careful. I am about to release
+forces which may get out of my control."
+
+"Well, now, don't get reckless," begged Phillips nervously. The array
+of machines had impressed him, even if Lambert did seem a fool.
+
+"You insist upon remaining, so it is your own risk," said Lambert
+coolly.
+
+Lambert, in the strange robes, was a bizarre figure. The hood was
+thrown back, exposing his pale, black-bearded face, the wan eyes with
+dark circles under them, and the twitching lips.
+
+"If you find yourself leaving this vale of tears," went on the
+scientist, ironically, to the sleuth, "you will at least have the
+comfort of realizing that as the sound-force disintegrates your mortal
+form you are among the first of men to be attuned to the vibrations of
+the unknown sound world. All matter is vibration; that has been
+proven. A building of bricks, if shaken in the right manner, falls
+into its component parts; a bridge, crossed by soldiers in certain
+rhythmic time, is torn from its moorings. A tuning fork, receiving the
+sound vibrations from one of a similar size and shape begins to
+vibrate in turn. These are homely analogies, but applied to the less
+familiar sound vibrations, which make up our atomic world, they may
+help you to understand how the terrific forces I have discovered can
+disintegrate flesh."
+
+The scientist looked inquiringly at Phillips. As the sleuth did not
+move, but sat with folded arms, Lambert shrugged and said, "I am
+ready."
+
+Lambert raised his hood, and Phillips said, in a spirit of bravado,
+"You can't scare me out of here."
+
+"Here goes the switch," cried Lambert.
+
+He made the contact, as he had before. He stood for a moment, and this
+time the current gained force. The experimenter pushed his lever all
+the way over.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A terrible greenish-blue light suddenly illuminated the laboratory,
+and through the air there came sound vibrations which seemed to tear
+at Phillips' body. He found himself on the floor, knocked from his
+chair, and he writhed this way and that, speechless, suffering a
+torment of agony. His whole flesh seemed to tremble in unison with the
+waves which emanated from the machines which Lambert manipulated.
+
+After what seemed hours to the suffering sleuth, the force diminished,
+and soon Phillips was able to rise. Trembling, the detective cursed
+and yelled for help in a high-pitched voice.
+
+Lambert had thrown back his hood, and was rocking to and fro in agony.
+
+"Madge, Madge," he cried, "what have I done! Come back to me, come
+back!"
+
+Doherty and the others came running in at their chief's shouts.
+"Arrest him," ordered Phillips shakily. "I've stood enough of this
+nonsense."
+
+The detectives started for Lambert. He saw them coming, and swiftly
+threw off the protective garments he wore.
+
+"Stand back!" he cried, and threw the switch all the way over. The
+verditer green light smashed through the air, and the queer sound
+sensations smacked and tore them; Doherty, who had drawn a revolver
+when he was answering Phillips' cries, fired the gun into the air, and
+the report seemed to battle with the vibrating ether.
+
+Lambert, as he threw the switch, leaped forward and landed on the
+metal plate under the ceiling studs, in the very center of the awful
+disturbance and unprotected from its force.
+
+For a few moments, Lambert felt racking pain, as though something were
+tearing at his flesh, separating the very atoms. The scientist saw the
+wriggling figures of the sleuths, in various strange positions, but his
+impressions were confused. His head whirled round and round, he swayed
+to and fro, and, finally, he thought he fell down, or rather, that he
+had melted, as a lump of sugar dissolves in water.
+
+"He's gone--gone--"
+
+In the heart of nothingness was Lambert, his body torn and racked in a
+shrieking chaos of sound and a blinding glare of iridescent light
+which seemed too much to bear.
+
+His last conscious thought was a prayer, that, having failed to bring
+back his sweetheart, Madge Crawford, he was undergoing a step toward
+the same destination to which he had sent her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+John Lambert came to with a shudder. But it was not a mortal shudder.
+He could sense no body; had no sense of being confined by matter. He
+was in a strange, chilly place--a twilight region, limitless, without
+dimensions.
+
+Yet he could feel something, in an impersonal way, vaguely
+indifferent. He had no pain now.
+
+He was moving, somehow. He had one impelling desire, and that was to
+discover Madge Crawford. Perhaps it was this thought which directed
+his movements.
+
+Intent upon finding the girl, if she was indeed in this same strange
+world that he was, he did not notice for some time--how long, he had
+no way of telling--that there were other beings which tried to impede
+his progress. But as he grew more accustomed to the unfamiliar
+sensations he was undergoing, he found his path blocked again and
+again by queer beings.
+
+They were living, without doubt, and had intelligence, and evinced
+hostility toward him. But they were shapeless, shapeless as amoebas.
+He heard them in a sort of soundless whisper, and could see them
+without the use of eyes. And he shuddered, though he could feel no
+body in which he might be confined. Still, when he pinched viciously
+with invisible fingers at the spot where his face should have been, a
+twinge of pain registered on the vague consciousness which appeared to
+be all there was to him.
+
+He was not sure of his substance, though he could evidently experience
+human sensations with his amorphous body. He did not know whether he
+could see; yet, he was dodging this way and that, as the beings who
+occupied this world tried to stop him.
+
+They gave him the impression of gray shapes, and in coppery shadows
+things gleamed and closed in on him.
+
+He seemed to hear a cry, and he knew that he was receiving a call for
+help from Madge Crawford. He tried to run, pushed determinedly toward
+the spot, impelled by his love for the girl.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, as he hurried, he occasionally was stopped short by collision
+with the formless shapes which were all about him. He was hampered by
+them, for they followed him, making a sound like wind heard in a
+dream. Whatever medium he was in was evidently thickly inhabited by
+the hostile beings who claimed this world as their own. Though he
+could not actually feel the medium, he could sense that it was heavy.
+He leaped and ran, fighting his way through the increasing hosts, and
+the roar of their voice-impressions increased in his consciousness.
+
+Yet there seemed to be nothing, nothing tangible save vagueness. He
+felt he was in a blind spot in space, a place of no dimensions, no
+time, where beings abhorred by nature, things which had never
+developed any dimensional laws, existed.
+
+The cry for help struck him, with more force this time. Lambert,
+whatever form he was in, realised that he was close to the end of his
+journey to Madge Crawford.
+
+He tried to speak, and had the impression that he said something
+reassuring. He then bumped into some vibrational being which he knew
+was Madge. His ears could not hear, nor could his flesh feel, but his
+whole form or cerebrum sensed he held the woman he loved in his arms.
+
+And she was speaking to him, in accents of fear, begging him to save
+her.
+
+"John, John, you have come at last. They have been torturing me
+terribly. Save me."
+
+"Darling Madge, I will do everything I can. Now I have found you, and
+we are together and will never part. Can you hear me?"
+
+"I know what you are thinking, and what you wish to say. I can't
+exactly hear; it all seems vague, and impossible. Yet I can suffer.
+They have been hitting me with something which makes me shudder and
+shake--there, they are at it again."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lambert felt the sensations, now, which the girl had made known to
+him. He felt crowded by gray beings, and his existence was troubled by
+spasms of pain-impressions. He knew Madge was crying out, too.
+
+He could not comprehend the attacks, or guess their meaning. But the
+situation was unendurable.
+
+Anger shook him, and he began to fight, furiously but vaguely. They
+were closely hemmed in, but when Lambert began to strike out with
+hands and legs, the beings gave way a little. The scientist tried to
+shout, and though he could actually hear nothing, the result was
+gratifying. The formless creatures seemed to scatter and draw back in
+confusion as he yelled his defiance.
+
+"They hate that," Madge said to him. "I have screamed myself hoarse
+and that is why they have not killed me--if I can be killed."
+
+"I do not believe we can. But they can torture us," replied Lambert.
+"It is an everlasting half-life or quarter-life, and these creatures
+who call this Hell's Dimension home, have nothing but hatred for us in
+their consciousness."
+
+The inhabitants of the imperfect world had closed in once again and
+the sharp instruments of torture they used were being thrust into the
+invisible bodies of the two humans. Each time, Lambert was unable to
+restrain his cries, for it seemed that he was being torn to pieces by
+vibrations.
+
+He yelled until he could not speak above a whisper, or at least until
+the impressions of speech he gave forth did not trouble the beings.
+The two humans, still bound to some extent by their mortal beliefs,
+were chivvied to and fro, and struck and bullied. The creatures seemed
+to delight in this sport.
+
+The two felt they could not die; yet they could suffer terribly. Would
+this go on through eternity? Was there no release?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were trying to tear Madge away from him. She was fighting them,
+and Lambert, in a frenzy of rage, made a determined effort to get away
+with the girl from their tormentors.
+
+They retreated before his onslaughts. Drawing Madge after him, Lambert
+put down his head--or believed he was doing so--and ran as fast as he
+could at the beings.
+
+He bumped into some invisible forms and was slowed in his rush, but he
+shouted and flailed about with his arms, and tried to kick. Madge
+helped by screaming and striking out. They made some distance in this
+way, or so they thought, and the horrid creatures gave way before
+them.
+
+All about them was the coppery sensation of the medium in which they
+moved: Lambert as he became more used to the form he was inhabiting,
+he began to think he could discern dreadful eyes which stared
+unblinkingly at the couple.
+
+He fought on, and believed they had come to a spot where the beings
+did not molest them, though they still sensed the things glaring at
+them.
+
+Were they on some invisible eminence, above the reach of these queer
+creatures?
+
+"We might as well stop here, for if we try to go farther we may come
+to a worse place," said Lambert.
+
+They rested there, in temporary peace, together at last.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I seem to be happy now," said Madge, clinging close. "I feared I
+would never see you again. John dear. I ran to you when you called out
+that day and when I crossed the plate, I was torn and racked and
+knocked down. When I next experienced sensation, it was in this
+terrible form. I am becoming more used to it, but I kept crying out
+for you: the beings, as soon as they discovered my presence, began to
+torment me. More and more have been collecting, and I have a sensation
+of seeing them as horrible, revolting beasts. Oh, John, I don't think
+I could have stood it much longer, if you hadn't come to me. They were
+driving me on, on, on, ceaselessly torturing me."
+
+"Curse them," said Lambert. "I wish I could really get hold of some of
+them. Perhaps, Madge, I will be able to think of some escape for us
+from this Hell's Dimension."
+
+"Yes, darling. I could not bear to think that we are eternally damned
+to exist among these beings, hurt by them and unable to get away. How
+I wish we were back in the laboratory, at the tea table. How happy we
+were there!"
+
+"And we will be again, Madge." Lambert was far from feeling hopeful,
+but he tried to encourage the girl into thinking they might get away.
+
+However, he was unable to dissimulate. She felt his anguish for her
+safety. "But I know now that you love me. I can feel it stronger than
+ever before, John. It seems like a great rock to which I can always
+cling, your love. It projects me from the hatred that these beasts
+pour out against us."
+
+Since they had no sense of time, they could not tell how long they
+were allowed to remain unmolested. But in each other's company they
+were happy, though each one was afraid for the safety of the loved
+one.
+
+They spoke of the mortal life they had lived, and their love. They
+felt no need of food or water, but clung together in a dimensionless
+universe, held up by love.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lull came to an end, at last. There was no change in the coppery
+vagueness about them which they sensed as the surrounding ether, but
+all was changeless, boundless. Lambert, close to Madge Crawford, felt
+that they were about to be attacked.
+
+He had swift, temporary impressions of seeing saucerlike, unblinking
+eyes, and then hordes of bizarre inhabitants started to climb up to
+their perch.
+
+For a short while, Lambert and Madge fought them off, thrusting at
+them, seeming to push them backward down the intangible slope; the
+cries which the dematerialized humans uttered also helped to hold the
+leaders of the attacking army partially in check, but the vast number
+of beings swept forward.
+
+The thrusts of the torture-fields they emanated became more and more
+racking, as the two unfortunates shuddered in horror and pain.
+
+The power to demonstrate loud noise was evidently impossible to the
+creatures, for their only sounds came to Madge Crawford and John
+Lambert as long-drawn out, almost unbearable squeaks, mouse-like in
+character. Perhaps they had never had the faculty of speech, since
+they did not need it to communicate with one another; perhaps they
+realized that the racket they could make would hurt them as much as it
+did their enemies.
+
+Lambert, Madge clinging to him, was forced backward down the slope,
+and the beings had the advantage of height. He could not again reach
+the eminence, but the way behind seemed to clear quickly enough,
+though thrusts were made at him, innumerable times with the
+torture-fields.
+
+The hordes pushed them backward, and ever back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were forced on for some distance. As they retreated, the way
+become easier, and fewer and fewer of the beings impeded the channel
+along which they moved, though in front of them and on all sides,
+above, beneath, they were pressed by the hordes.
+
+"They are forcing us to some place they want us to go," said Lambert
+desperately.
+
+"We can do nothing more," replied the girl.
+
+Lambert felt her quiet confidence in him, and that as long as they
+were together, all was well.
+
+"Maybe they can kill us, somehow," he said.
+
+And now, Lambert felt the way was clear to the rear. There was a
+sudden rush of the creatures, and needlelike fields were impelled
+viciously into the spaces the two humans occupied.
+
+Madge cried out in pain, and Lambert shouted. The throng drew away
+from them as suddenly as it had surged forward, and an instant later
+the pair, clinging together, felt that they were falling, falling,
+falling....
+
+"Are you all right, Madge?"
+
+"Yes, John."
+
+But he knew she was suffering. How long they fell he did not know, but
+they stopped at last. No sooner had they come to rest than they were
+assailed with sensations of pain which made both cry out in anguish.
+
+There, in the spot where they had been thrust by the hordes, they felt
+that there was some terrific vibration which racked and tore at their
+invisible forms continuously, sending them into spasms of sharp
+misery.
+
+They both were forced to give vent to their feelings by loud cries.
+But they could not command their movements any longer. When they tried
+to get away, their limbs moved but they felt that they remained in the
+same spot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The pain shook every fraction of their souls.
+
+"We--we are in some pit of hell, into which they have thrown us,
+John," gasped Madge.
+
+He knew she was shivering with the torture of that great vibration
+from which there was no escape, that they were in a prison-pit of
+Hell's Dimension.
+
+"I--oh--John--I'm dying!"
+
+But he was powerless to help her. He suffered as much as she. Yet
+there was no weakening of his sensations; he was in as much torture as
+he had been at the start. He knew that they could not die and could
+never escape from this misery of hell.
+
+Their cries seemed to disturb the vacuum about. Lambert, shivering and
+shaking with pain, was aware that great eyes, similar to those which
+they had thought they saw above, were now upon them. Squeaks were
+impressed upon him, squeaks which expressed disapprobation. There were
+some of the beings in the pit with them.
+
+Madge knew they were there, too. She cried out in terror, "Will they
+add to our misery?"
+
+But the creatures in the vacuum were pinned to the spots they
+occupied, as were Madge and Lambert. From their squeaks it was evident
+they suffered, too, and were fellow prisoners of the mortals.
+
+"Probably the cries we make disturb them," said Lambert. "Vibrations
+to which we and they are not attuned are torture to the form we are
+in. Evidently the inhabitants of this hell world punish offenders by
+condemning them to this eternal torture."
+
+"Why--why did they treat us so?"
+
+"Perhaps we jarred upon them, hurt them, because we were not of their
+kind exactly," said Lambert. "Perhaps it was just their natural hatred
+of us as strangers."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They did not grow used to the terrible eternity of torments. No, if
+anything, it grew worse as it went on. Still, they could visualize no
+end to the existence to which they were bound. Throbs of awful
+intensity rent them, tore them apart myriad times, yet they still felt
+as keenly as before and suffered just as much. There was no death for
+them, no release from the intangible world in which they were.
+
+Their fellow prisoners squeaked at them, as though imploring them not
+to add to the agony by uttering discordant cries. But it was
+impossible for Madge to keep quiet, and Lambert shouted in anguish
+from time to time.
+
+There seemed to be no end to it.
+
+And yet, after what was eternity to the sufferers, Madge spoke
+hopefully.
+
+"Darling John, I--I fear I am really going to die. I am growing
+weaker. I can feel the pain very little now. It is all vague, and is
+getting less real to me. Good-by, sweetheart, I love you, and I always
+will--"
+
+Lambert uttered a strangled cry, "No, no. Don't leave me, Madge."
+
+He clung to her, yet she was becoming extremely intangible to him. She
+was melting away from his embrace, and Lambert felt that he, too, was
+weaker, even less real than he had been. He hoped that if it was the
+end, they would go together.
+
+Desperately, he tried to hold her with him, but he had little ability
+to do so. The torture was still racking his consciousness, but was
+becoming more dreamlike.
+
+There was a terrific snap, suddenly, and Lambert lost all
+consciousness....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Water, water!"
+
+Lambert, opening his eyes, felt his body writhing about, and
+experienced pain that was--mortal. A bluish-green light dazzled his
+pupils and made him blink.
+
+Something cut into his flesh, and Lambert rolled about, trying to
+escape. He bumped into something, something soft; he clung to this
+form, and knew that he was holding on to a human being. Then the light
+died out, and in its stead was the yellow, normal glow of the electric
+lights. Weak, famished, almost dead of thirst, Lambert looked about
+him at the familiar sights of his laboratory. He was lying on the
+floor, close by the metal plate, and at his side, unconscious but
+still alive to judge by her rising and falling breast, was Madge
+Crawford.
+
+Someone bent over him, and pressed a glass of water against his lips.
+He drank, watching while a mortal whom Lambert at last realized was
+Detective Phillips bathed Madge Crawford's temples with water from a
+pitcher and forced a little between her pale, drawn lips.
+
+Lambert tried to rise, but he was weak, and required assistance. He
+was dazed, still, and they sat him down in a chair and allowed him to
+come to.
+
+He shuddered from time to time, for he still thought he could feel the
+torture which he had been undergoing. But he was worried about Madge,
+and watched anxiously as Phillips, assisted by another man, worked
+over the girl.
+
+At last, Madge stirred and moaned faintly. They lifted her to a bench,
+where they gently restored her to full consciousness.
+
+When she could sit up, she at once cried out for Lambert.
+
+The scientist had recovered enough to rise to his feet and stagger
+toward her. "Here I am, darling," he said.
+
+"John--we're alive--we're back in the laboratory!"
+
+"Ah, Lambert. Glad to see you." A heavy voice spoke, and Lambert for
+the first time noticed the black-clad figure which stood to one side,
+near the switchboard, hidden by a large piece of apparatus.
+
+"Dr. Morgan!" cried Lambert.
+
+Althaus Morgan, the renowned physicist, came forward calmly, with
+outstretched hand. "So, you realized your great ambition, eh?" he said
+curiously. "But where would you be if I had not been able to bring you
+back?"
+
+"In Hell--or Hell's Dimension, anyway," said Lambert.
+
+He went to Madge, took her in his arms. "Darling, we are safe. Morgan
+has managed to re-materialize us. We will never again be cast into the
+void in this way. I shall destroy the apparatus and my notes."
+
+Doherty, who had been out of the room on some errand, came into the
+laboratory. He shouted when he saw Lambert standing before him.
+
+"So you got him," he cried. "Where was he hidin'?"
+
+His eyes fell upon Madge Crawford, then, and he exclaimed in
+satisfaction. "You found her, eh?"
+
+"No," said Phillips. "They came back. They suddenly appeared out of
+nothing, Doherty."
+
+"Don't kid me," growled Doherty. "They were hidin' in a closet
+somewhere. Maybe they can fool you guys, but not me."
+
+Lambert spoke to Phillips. "I'm starving to death and I think Miss
+Crawford must be, too. Will you tell Felix to bring us some food,
+plenty of it?"
+
+One of the sleuths went to the kitchen to give the order. Lambert
+turned to Morgan.
+
+"How did you manage to bring us back?" he asked.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Morgan shrugged. "It was all guess work at the last. I at first could
+check the apparatus by your notes, and this took some time. You know
+you have written me in detail about what you were working on, so when
+I was summoned by Detective Phillips, who said you had mentioned my
+name to him as the only one who could help, I could make a good
+conjecture as to what had occurred. I heard the stories of all
+concerned, and realized that you must have dematerialized Miss
+Crawford by mistake, and then, unable to bring her back, had followed
+her yourself.
+
+"I put on your insulation outfit, and went to work. I have not left
+here for a moment, but have snatched an hour or two of sleep from time
+to time. Detective Phillips has been very good and helpful.
+
+"Finally, I had everything in shape, but I reversed the apparatus in
+vital spots, and tried each combination until suddenly, a few minutes
+ago, you were re-materialized. It was a desperate chance, but I was
+forced to take it in an endeavor to save you."
+
+Lambert held out his hand to his friend. "I can never thank you
+enough," he said gratefully. "You saved us from a horrible fate. But
+you speak as though we had been gone a long while. Was it many hours?"
+
+"Hours?" repeated Morgan, his lips parting under his black beard.
+"Man, it was eight days! You have been gone since a week ago last
+night!"
+
+Lambert turned to Phillips. "I must ask you not to release this story
+to the newspapers," he begged.
+
+Phillips smiled and turned up his hands in a gesture of frank wonder.
+"Professor Lambert," he said, "I can't believe what I have seen
+myself. If I told such a yarn to the reporters, they'd never forget
+it. They'd kid me out of the department."
+
+"Aw, they were hidin' in a closet," growled Doherty. "Come on, we've
+wasted too much time on this job already. Just a couple of nuts, says
+I."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sleuths, after Phillips had shaken hands with Lambert, left the
+laboratory. Morgan, a large man of middle age, joined them in a meal
+which Felix served to the three on a folding table brought in for the
+purpose. Felix was terribly glad to see Madge and Lambert again, and
+manifested his joy by many bobs and leaps as he waited upon them. A
+grin spread across his face from ear to ear.
+
+Morgan asked innumerable questions. They described as best they could
+what they could recall of the strange dominion in which they had been,
+and the physicist listened intently.
+
+"It is some Hell's Dimension, as you call it," he said at last.
+
+"Where it is, or exactly what, I cannot say," said Lambert. "I surely
+have no desire to return to that world of hate."
+
+Madge, happy now, smiled at him and he leaned over and kissed her
+tenderly.
+
+"We have come from Hell, together," said Lambert, "and now we are in
+Heaven!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: Advertisement]
+
+
+
+
+The World Behind the Moon
+
+_By Paul Ernst_
+
+[Illustration: _They fell, for hours, into a deep chasm._]
+
+[Sidenote: Two intrepid Earth-men fight it out with the horrific
+monsters of Zeud's frightful jungles.]
+
+
+Like pitiless jaws, a distant crater opened for their ship.
+Helplessly, they hurtled toward it: helplessly, because they were
+still in the nothingness of space, with no atmospheric resistance on
+which their rudders, or stern or bow tubes, could get a purchase to
+steer them.
+
+Professor Dorn Wichter waited anxiously for the slight vibration that
+should announce that the projectile-shaped shell had entered the new
+planet's atmosphere.
+
+"Have we struck it yet?" asked Joyce, a tall blond young man with the
+shoulders of an athlete and the broad brow and square chin of one who
+combines dreams with action. He made his way painfully toward
+Wichter. It was the first time he had attempted to move since the
+shell had passed the neutral point--that belt midway between the moon
+and the world behind it, where the pull of gravity of each satellite
+was neutralized by the other. They, and all the loose objects in the
+shell, had floated uncomfortably about the middle of the chamber for
+half an hour or so, gradually settling down again; until now it was
+possible, with care, to walk.
+
+"Have we struck it?" he repeated, leaning over the professor's
+shoulder and staring at the resistance gauge.
+
+"No." Absently Wichter took off his spectacles and polished them.
+"There's not a trace of resistance yet."
+
+They gazed out the bow window toward the vast disc, like a serrated,
+pock-marked plate of blue ice, that was the planet Zeud--discovered
+and named by them. The same thought was in the mind of each. Suppose
+there were no atmosphere surrounding Zeud to cushion their descent
+into the hundred-mile crater that yawned to receive them?
+
+"Well," said Joyce after a time, "we're taking no more of a chance
+here than we did when we pointed our nose toward the moon. We were
+almost sure that was no atmosphere there--which meant we'd nose dive
+into the rocks at five thousand miles an hour. On Zeud there might be
+anything." His eyes shone. "How wonderful that there should be such a
+planet, unsuspected during all the centuries men have been studying
+the heavens!"
+
+Wichter nodded agreement. It was indeed wonderful. But what was more
+wonderful was its present discovery: for that would never have
+transpired had not he and Joyce succeeded in their attempt to fly to
+the moon. From there, after following the sun in its slow journey
+around to the lost side of the lunar globe--that face which the earth
+has never yet observed--they had seen shining in the near distance
+the great ball which they had christened Zeud.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Astronomical calculations had soon described the mysterious hidden
+satellite. It was almost a twin to the moon; a very little smaller,
+and less than eighty thousand miles away. Its rotation was nearly
+similar, which made its days not quite sixteen of our earthly days. It
+was of approximately the weight, per cubic mile, of Earth. And there
+it whirled, directly in a line with the earth and the moon, moving as
+the moon moved so that it was ever out of sight beyond it, as a dime
+would be out of sight if placed in a direct line behind a penny.
+
+Zeud, the new satellite, the world beyond the moon! In their
+excitement at its discovery, Joyce and Wichter had left the
+moon--which they had found to be as dead and cold as it had been
+surmised to be--and returned summarily to Earth. They had replenished
+their supplies and their oxygen tanks, and had come back--to circle
+around the moon and point the sharp prow of the shell toward Zeud. The
+gift of the moon to Earth was a dubious one; but the gift of a
+possibly living planet-colony to mankind might be the solution of the
+overcrowded conditions of the terrestial sphere!
+
+"Speed, three thousand miles an hour," computed Wichter. "Distance to
+Zeud, nine hundred and eighty miles. If we don't strike a few atoms of
+hydrogen or something soon we're going to drill this nearest crater a
+little deeper!"
+
+Joyce nodded grimly. At two thousand miles from Earth there had still
+been enough hydrogen traces in the ether to give purchase to the
+explosions of their water-motor. At six hundred miles from the moon
+they had run into a sparse gaseous belt that had enabled them to
+change direction and slow their speed. They had hoped to find hydrogen
+at a thousand or twelve hundred miles from Zeud.
+
+"Eight hundred and thirty miles," commented Wichter, his slender,
+bent body tensed. "Eight hundred miles--ah!"
+
+A thrumming sound came to their ears as the shell quivered,
+imperceptibly almost, but unmistakeably, at the touch of some faint
+resistance outside in space.
+
+"We've struck it, Joyce. And it's much denser than the moon's, even as
+we'd hoped. There'll be life on Zeud, my boy, unless I'm vastly
+mistaken. You'd better look to the motor now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joyce went to the water-motor. This was a curious, but extremely
+simple affair. There was a glass box, ribbed with polished steel,
+about the size and shape of a cigar box, which was full of water.
+Leading away from this, to the bow and stern of the shell, were two
+small pipes. The pipes were greatly thickened for a period of three
+feet or so, directly under the little tank, and were braced by
+bed-plates so heavy as to look all out of proportion. Around the
+thickened parts of the pipes were coils of heavy, insulated copper
+wire. There were no valves nor cylinders, no revolving parts: that was
+all there was to the "motor."
+
+Joyce didn't yet understand the device. The water dripped from the
+tank, drop by drop, to be abruptly disintegrated, made into an
+explosive, by being subjected to a powerful magnetic field induced in
+the coils by a generator in the bow of the shell. As each drop of
+water passed into the pipes, and was instantaneously broken up, there
+was a violent but controlled explosion--and the shell was kicked
+another hundred miles ahead on its journey. That was all Joyce knew
+about it.
+
+He threw the bow switch. There was a soft shock as the motor exhausted
+through the forward tube, slowing their speed.
+
+"Turn on the outside generator propellers," ordered Wichter. "I think
+our batteries are getting low."
+
+Joyce slipped the tiny, slim-bladed propellers into gear. They began
+to turn, slowly at first in the almost non-existent atmosphere.
+
+"Four hundred miles," announced Wichter. "How's the temperature?"
+
+Joyce stepped to the thermometer that registered the heat of the outer
+wall. "Nine hundred degrees," he said.
+
+"Cut down to a thousand miles an hour," commanded Wichter. "Five
+hundred as soon as the motor will catch that much. I'll keep our
+course straight toward this crater. It's in wells like that, that
+we'll find livable air--if we're right in believing there is such a
+thing on Zeud."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joyce glanced at the thermometer. It still registered hundreds of
+degrees, though their speed had been materially reduced.
+
+"I guess there's livable air, all right," he said. "It's pretty thick
+outside already."
+
+The professor smiled. "Another theory vindicated. I was sure that
+Zeud, swinging on the outside of the Earth-moon-Zeud chain and hence
+traveling at a faster rate, would pick up most of the moon's
+atmosphere over a period of millions of years. Also it must have been
+shielded by the moon, to some extent, against the constant small
+atmospheric leakage most celestial globes are subject to. Just the
+same, when we land, we'll test conditions with a rat or two."
+
+At a signal from him, Joyce checked their speed to four hundred miles
+an hour, then to two hundred, and then, as they descended below the
+highest rim of the circular cliffs of the crater, almost to a full
+stop. They floated toward the surface of Zeud, watching with
+breathless interest the panorama that unfolded beneath them.
+
+They were nosing toward a spot that was being favored with the Zeudian
+sunrise. Sharp and clear the light rays slanted down, illuminating
+about half the crater's floor and leaving the cliff protected half in
+dim shadow.
+
+The illuminated part of the giant pit was as bizarre as the landscape
+of a nightmare. There were purplish trees, immense beyond belief.
+There were broad, smooth pools of inky black fluid that was oily and
+troubled in spots as though disturbed by some moving things under the
+surface. There were bare, rocky patches where the stones, the long
+drippings of ancient lava flow, were spread like bleaching gray
+skeletons of monsters. And over all, rising from pools and bare ground
+and jungle alike, was a thin, miasmic mist.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sustained by the slow, steady exhaust of the motor, rising a little
+with each partly muffled explosion and sinking a little further in
+each interval, they settled toward a bare, lava strewn spot that
+appealed to Wichter as being a good landing place. With a last hiss,
+and a grinding jar, they grounded. Joyce opened the switch to cut off
+the generator.
+
+"Now let's see what the air's like," said Wichter, lifting down a
+small cage in which was penned an active rat.
+
+He opened a double panel in the shell's hull, and freed the little
+animal. In an agony of suspense they watched it as it leaped onto the
+bare lava and halted a moment....
+
+"Seems to like it," said Joyce, drawing a great breath.
+
+The rat, as though intoxicated by its sudden freedom, raced away out
+of sight, covering eight or ten feet at a bound, its legs scurrying
+ludicrously in empty air during its short flights.
+
+"That means that we can dispense with oxygen helmets--and that we'd
+better take our guns," said Wichter, his voice tense, his eyes
+snapping behind his glasses.
+
+He stepped to the gun rack. In this were half a dozen air-guns. Long
+and of very small bore, they discharged a tiny steel shell in which
+was a liquid of his invention that, about a second after the heat of
+its forced passage through the rifle barrel, expanded instantly in
+gaseous form to millions of times its liquid bulk. It was the most
+powerful explosive yet found, but one that was beautifully safe to
+carry inasmuch as it could be exploded only by heat.
+
+"Are we ready?" he said, handing a gun to Joyce. "Then--let's go!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But for a breath or two they hesitated before opening the heavy double
+door in the side of the hull, savoring to the full the immensity of
+the moment.
+
+The rapture of the explorer who is the first to set foot on a vast new
+continent was theirs, magnified a hundredfold. For they were the first
+to set foot on a vast new planet! An entire new world, containing
+heaven alone knew what forms of life, what monstrous or infinitesimal
+creatures, lay before them. Even the profound awe they had experienced
+when landing on the moon was dwarfed by the solemnity of this
+occasion; just as it is less soul stirring to discover an arctic
+continent which is perpetually cased in barren ice, than to discover a
+continent which is warmly fruitful and, probably, teeming with life.
+
+Still wordless, too stirred to speak, they opened the vault-like door
+and stepped out--into a humid heat which was like that of their own
+tropical regions, but not so unendurable.
+
+In their short stay on the moon, during which they had taken several
+walks in their insulated suits, they had become somewhat accustomed to
+the decreased weight of their bodies due to the lesser gravity, so
+that here, where their weight was even less, they did not make any
+blunders of stepping twenty feet instead of a yard.
+
+Walking warily, glancing alertly in all directions to guard against
+any strange animals that might rush out to destroy them, they moved
+toward the nearest stretch of jungle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first thing that arrested their attention was the size of the
+trees they were approaching. They had got some idea of their hugeness
+from the shell, but viewed from ground level they loomed even larger.
+Eight hundred, a thousand feet they reared their mighty tops, with
+trunks hundreds of feet in circumference; living pyramids whose bases
+wove together to make an impenetrable ceiling over the jungle floor.
+The leaves were thick and bloated like cactus growths, and their color
+was a pronounced lavender.
+
+"We must take back several of those leaves," said Wichter, his
+scientific soul filled with cold excitement.
+
+"I wish we could take back some of this air, too." Joyce filled his
+lungs to capacity. "Isn't it great? Like wine! It almost counteracts
+the effects of the heat."
+
+"There's more oxygen in it than in our own," surmised Wichter. "My
+God! What's that!"
+
+They halted for an instant. From the depths of the lavender jungle had
+come an ear shattering, screaming hiss, as though some monstrous
+serpent were in its death agony.
+
+They waited to hear if the noise would be repeated. It wasn't.
+Dubiously they started on again.
+
+"We'd better not go in there too far," said Joyce. "If we didn't come
+out again it would cost Earth a new planet. No one else knows the
+secret of your water-motor."
+
+"Oh, nothing living can stand against these guns of ours," replied
+Wichter confidently. "And that noise might not have been caused by
+anything living. It might have been steam escaping from some volcanic
+crevice."
+
+They started cautiously down a well defined, hard packed trail through
+thorny lavender underbrush. As they went, Joyce blazed marks on
+various tree trunks marking the direction back to the shell. The tough
+fibres exuded a bluish liquid from the cuts that bubbled slowly like
+blood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To the right and left of them were cup-shaped bushes that looked like
+traps; and that their looks were not deceiving was proved by a
+muffled, bleating cry that rose from the compressed leaves of one of
+them they passed. Sluggish, blind crawling things like three-foot
+slugs flowed across their path and among the tree trunks, leaving
+viscous trails of slime behind them. And there were larger things....
+
+"Careful," said Wichter suddenly, coming to a halt and peering into
+the gloom at their right.
+
+"What did you see?" whispered Joyce.
+
+Wichter shook his head. The gigantic, two-legged, purplish figure he
+had dimly made out in the steamy dark, had moved away. "I don't know.
+It looked a little like a giant ape."
+
+They halted and took stock of their situation, mechanically wiping
+perspiration from their streaming faces, and pondering as to whether
+or not they should turn back. Joyce, who was far from being a coward,
+thought they should.
+
+"In this undergrowth," he pointed out, "we might be rushed before we
+could even fire our guns. And we're nearly a mile from the shell."
+
+But Wichter was like an eager child.
+
+"We'll press on just a little," he urged. "To that clear spot in front
+of us." He pointed along the trail to where sunlight was blazing down
+through an opening in the trees. "As soon as we see what's there,
+we'll go back."
+
+With a shrug, Joyce followed the eager little man down the weird trail
+under the lavender trees. In a few moments they had reached the
+clearing which was Wichter's goal. They halted on its edge, gazing at
+it with awe and repulsion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a circular quagmire of festering black mud about a hundred
+yards across. Near at hand they could see the mud heaving, very
+slowly, as though abysmal forms of life were tunneling along just
+under the surface. They glanced toward the center of the bog, which
+was occupied by one of the smooth black pools, and cried aloud at
+what they saw.
+
+At the brink of the pool was lying a gigantic creature like a great,
+thick snake--a snake with a lizard's head, and a series of
+many-jointed, scaled legs running down its powerful length. Its mouth
+was gaping open to reveal hundreds of needle-sharp, backward pointing
+teeth. Its legs and thick, stubbed tail were threshing feebly in the
+mud as though it were in distress; and its eyes, so small as to be
+invisible in its repulsive head, were glazed and dull.
+
+"Was that what we heard back a ways?" wondered Joyce.
+
+"Probably," said Wichter. His eyes shone as he gazed at the nightmare
+shape. Impulsively he took a step toward the stirring mud.
+
+"Don't be entirely insane," snapped Joyce, catching his arm.
+
+"I must see it closer," said Wichter, tugging to be free.
+
+"Then we'll climb a tree and look down on it. We'll probably be safer
+up off the ground anyway."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They ascended the nearest jungle giant--whose rubbery bark was so
+ringed and scored as to be as easy to climb as a staircase--to the
+first great bough, about fifty feet from the ground, and edged out
+till they hung over the rim of the quagmire. From there, with the aid
+of their binoculars, they expected to see the dying monster in every
+detail. But when they looked toward the pool it was not in sight!
+
+"Were we seeing things?" exclaimed Wichter, rubbing his glasses. "I'd
+have sworn it was lying there!"
+
+"It was," said Joyce grimly. "Look at the pool. That'll tell you where
+it went."
+
+The black, secretive surface was bubbling and waving as though, down
+in its depths, a terrific fight were taking place.
+
+"Something came up and dragged our ten-legged lizard down to its den.
+Then that something's brothers got onto the fact that a feast was
+being held, and rushed in. That pool would be no place for a
+before-breakfast dip!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wichter started to say something in reply, then gazed, hypnotized, at
+the opposite wall of the jungle.
+
+From the dense screen of lavender foliage stretched a glistening,
+scale-armored neck, as thick as a man's body at its thinnest point,
+which was just behind a tremendous-jawed crocodilian head. It tapered
+back for a distance of at least thirty feet, to merge into a body as
+big as that of a terrestial whale, that was supported by four squat,
+ponderous legs.
+
+Moving with surprising rapidity, the enormous thing slid into the mud
+and began ploughing a way, belly deep, toward the pool. Shapeless,
+slow-writhing forms were cast up in its wake, to quiver for a moment
+in the sunlight and then melt below the mud again.
+
+One of the bloated, formless mud-crawlers was snapped up in the huge
+jaws with an abrupt plunge of the long neck, and the monster began to
+feed, hog-like, slobbering over the loathsome carcass.
+
+Wichter shook his head, half in fanatical eagerness, half in despair.
+"I'd like to stay and see more," he said with a sigh, "but if that's
+the kind of creatures we're apt to encounter in the Zeudian jungle,
+we'd better be going at once--"
+
+"Sh-h!" snapped Joyce. Then, in a barely audible whisper: "I think the
+thing heard your voice!"
+
+The monster had abruptly ceased its feeding. Its head, thrust high in
+the air, was waving inquisitively from side to side. Suddenly it
+expelled the air from its vast lungs in a roaring cough--and started
+directly for their tree.
+
+"Shoot!" cried Wichter, raising his gun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Moving with the speed of an express train, the monster had almost got
+to their overhanging branch before they could pull the triggers. Both
+shells imbedded themselves in the enormous chest, just as the long
+neck reached up for them. And at once things began to happen with
+cataclysmic rapidity.
+
+Almost with their impact the shells exploded. The monster stopped,
+with a great hole torn in its body. Then, dying on its feet, it thrust
+its great head up and its huge jaws crunched over the branch to which
+its two puny destroyers were clinging.
+
+With all its dozens of tons of weight, it jerked in a gargantuan death
+agony. The tree, enormous as it was, shook with it, and the branch
+itself was tossed as though in a hurricane.
+
+There was a splintering sound. Wichter and Joyce dropped their guns to
+cling more tightly to the bole of the drooping branch that was their
+only security. The guns glanced off the mountainous body--and, with a
+last convulsion of the mighty legs, were swept underneath!
+
+The monster was still at last, its insensate jaws yet gripping the
+bough. The two men looked at each other in speechless consternation.
+The shell a mile off through the dreadful jungle.... Themselves,
+helpless without their guns....
+
+"Well," said Joyce at last. "I guess we'd better be on our way.
+Waiting here, thinking it over, won't help any. Lucky there's no
+night, for a couple of weeks at least, to come stealing down on us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He started down the great trunk, with Wichter following close behind.
+Walking as rapidly as they could, they hurried back along the tunneled
+trail toward their shell.
+
+They hadn't covered a hundred yards when they heard a mighty crashing
+of underbrush behind them. Glancing back, they saw tooth-studded jaws
+gaping cavernously at the end of a thirty-foot neck--little,
+dead-looking eyes glaring at them--a hundred-foot body smashing its
+way over the trap-bushes and through tangles of vines and
+down-drooping branches.
+
+"The mate to the thing we killed back there!" Joyce panted. "Run, for
+God's sake!"
+
+Wichter needed no urging. He hadn't an ounce of fear in his spare,
+small body. But he had an overwhelming desire to get back to Earth and
+deliver his message. He was trembling as he raced after Joyce, thirty
+feet to a bound, ducking his head to avoid hitting the thick lavender
+foliage that roofed the trail.
+
+"One of us must get through!" he panted over and over. "One of us must
+make it!"
+
+It was speedily apparent that they could never outrun their pursuer.
+The reaching jaws were only a few yards behind them now.
+
+"You go," called Joyce, sobbing for breath. He slowed his pace
+deliberately.
+
+"No--you--" Wichter slowed too. In a frenzy, Joyce shoved him along
+the trail.
+
+"I tell you--"
+
+He got no further. In front of them, where there had appeared to be
+solid ground, they suddenly saw a yawning pit. Desperately, they tried
+to veer aside, but they were too close. Their last long birdlike leap
+carried them over the edge. They fell, far down, into a deep chasm,
+splashing into a shallow pool of water.
+
+A few clods of earth cascaded after them as the monster above dug its
+great splay feet into the ground and checked its rush in time to keep
+from falling after them. Then the top of the pit slowly darkened as a
+covering of some sort slid across it. They were in a prison as
+profoundly quiet and utterly black as a tomb.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dorn," shouted Joyce. "Are you all right?"
+
+"Yes," came a voice in the near darkness. "And you?"
+
+"I'm still in one piece as far as I can feel." There was a splashing
+noise. He waded toward it and in a moment his outstretched hand
+touched the professor's shoulder.
+
+"This is a fine mess," he observed shakily. "We got away from those
+tooth-lined jaws, all right, but I'm wondering if we're much better
+off than we would have been if we hadn't escaped."
+
+"I'm wondering the same thing." Wichter's voice was strained. "Did you
+see the way the top of the pit closed above us? That means we're in a
+trap. And a most ingenious trap it is, too! The roof of it is
+camouflaged until it looks exactly like the rest of the trail floor.
+The water in here is just shallow enough to let large animals break
+their necks when they fall in and just deep enough to preserve small
+animals--like ourselves--alive. We're in the hands of some sort of
+reasoning, intelligent beings, Joyce!"
+
+"In that case," said Joyce with a shudder, "we'd better do our best to
+get out of here!"
+
+But this was found to be impossible. They couldn't climb up out of the
+pit, and nowhere could they feel any openings in the walls. Only
+smooth, impenetrable stone met their questing fingers.
+
+"It looks as though we're in to stay," said Joyce finally. "At least
+until our Zeudian hosts, whatever kind of creatures they may be, come
+and take us out. What'll we do then? Sail in and die fighting? Or go
+peaceably along with them--assuming we aren't killed at once--on the
+chance that we can make a break later?"
+
+"I'd advise the latter," answered Wichter. "There is a small animal on
+our own planet whose example might be a good one for us to follow.
+That's the 'possum." He stopped abruptly, and gripped Joyce's arm.
+
+From the opposite side of the pit came a grating sound. A crack of
+greenish light appeared, low down near the water. This widened jerkily
+as though a door were being hoisted by some sort of pulley
+arrangement. The walls of the pit began to glow faintly with
+reflected light.
+
+"Down," breathed Wichter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Noiselessly they let themselves sink into the water until they were
+floating, eyes closed and motionless, on the surface. Playing dead to
+the best of their ability, they waited for what might happen next.
+
+They heard a splashing near the open rock door. The splashing neared them,
+and high-pitched hissing syllables came to their ears--variegated sounds
+that resembled excited conversation in some unknown language.
+
+Joyce felt himself touched by something, and it was all he could do to
+keep from shouting aloud and springing to his feet at the contact.
+
+He'd had no idea, of course, what might be the nature of their
+captors, but he had imagined them as man-like, to some extent at
+least. And the touch of his hand, or flipper, or whatever it was,
+indicated that they were not!
+
+They were cold-blooded, reptilian things, for the flesh that had
+touched him was cold; as clammy and repulsive as the belly of a dead
+fish. So repulsive was that flesh that, when he presently felt himself
+lifted high up and roughly carried, he shuddered in spite of himself
+at the contact.
+
+Instantly the thing that bore him stopped. Joyce held his breath. He
+felt an excruciating, stabbing pain in his arm, after which the
+journey through the water was resumed. Stubbornly he kept up his
+pretence of lifelessness.
+
+The splashing ceased, and he heard flat wet feet slapping along on dry
+rock, indicating that they had emerged from the pit. Then he sank into
+real unconsciousness.
+
+The next thing he knew was that he was lying on smooth, bare rock in a
+perfect bedlam of noises. Howls and grunts, snuffling coughs and
+snarls beat at his ear-drums. It was as though he had fallen into a
+vast cage in which were hundreds of savage, excited animals--animals,
+however, that in spite of their excitement and ferocity were
+surprisingly motionless, for he heard no scraping of claws, or padding
+of feet.
+
+Cautiously he opened his eyes....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was in a large cave, the walls of which were glowing with greenish,
+phosphorescent light. Strewn about the floor were seemingly dead
+carcasses of animals. And what carcasses there were! Blubber-coated
+things that looked like giant tadpoles, gazelle-like creatures with a
+single, long slim horn growing from delicate small skulls, four-legged
+beasts and six-legged ones, animals with furry hides and crawlers with
+scaled coverings--several hundred assorted specimens of the smaller
+life of Zeud lay stretched out in seeming lifelessness.
+
+But they were not dead, these bizarre beasts of another world. They
+lived, and were animated with the frenzied fear of trapped things.
+Joyce could see the tortured heaving of their furred and scaled sides
+as they panted with terror. And from their throats issued the
+outlandish noises he had heard. They were alive enough--only they
+seemed unable to move!
+
+There was nothing in his range of vision that might conceivably be the
+beings that had captured them, so Joyce started to lift his head and
+look around at the rest of the cavern. He found that he could not
+move. He tried again, and his body was as unresponsive as a log. In
+fact, he couldn't feel his body at all! In growing terror, he
+concentrated all his will on moving his arm. It was as limp as a rag.
+
+He relaxed, momentarily in the grip of stark, blind panic. He was as
+helpless as the howling things around him! He was numbed, completely
+paralyzed into immobility!
+
+The professor's voice--a weak, uncertain voice--sounded from behind
+him. "Joyce! Joyce!"
+
+He found that he could talk, that the paralysis that gripped the rest
+of his muscles had not extended to the vocal cords. "Dorn! Thank God
+you're alive! I couldn't see you, and I thought--"
+
+"I'm alive, but that's about all," said Wichter. "I--I can't move."
+
+"Neither can I. We've been drugged in some manner--just as all the
+other animals in here have been drugged. I must have got my dose in
+the pit. I was cut, or stabbed, in the arm."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joyce stopped talking as he suddenly heard steps, like human footsteps
+yet weirdly different--flap-flapping sounds as though awkward flippers
+were slapping along the rock floor toward them. The steps stopped
+within a few feet of them; then, after what seemed hours, they sounded
+again, this time in front of him.
+
+He opened his eyes, cautiously, barely moving his eyelids, and saw at
+last, in every hideous detail, one of the super-beasts that had
+captured Wichter and himself.
+
+It was a horrible cartoon of a man, the thing that stood there in the
+greenish glow of the cave. Nine or ten feet high, it loomed; hairless,
+with a faintly iridescent, purplish hide. A thick, cylindrical trunk
+sloped into a neck only a little smaller than the body itself. Set on
+this was a bony, ugly head that was split clear across by lipless
+jaws. There was no nose, only slanted holes like the nostrils of an
+animal; and over these were set pale, expressionless, pupil-less eyes.
+The arms were short and thick and ended in bifurcated lumps of flesh
+like swollen hands encased in old-fashioned mittens. The legs were
+also grotesquely short, and the feet mere shapeless flaps.
+
+It was standing near one of the smaller animals, apparently regarding
+it closely. Observing it himself, Joyce saw that it was moving a
+little. As though coming out of a coma, it was raising its bizarre
+head and trying to get on its feet.
+
+Leisurely the two-legged monster bent over it. Two long fangs gleamed
+in the lipless mouth. These were buried in the neck of the reviving
+beast--and instantly it sank back into immobility.
+
+Having reduced it to helplessness--the monster ate it! The lipless
+jaws gaped widely. The shapeless hands forced in the head of the
+animal. The throat muscles expanded hugely: and in less than a minute
+it had swallowed its living prey as a boa-constrictor swallows a
+monkey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joyce closed his eyes, feeling weak and nauseated. He didn't open them
+again till long after he had heard the last of the awkward, flapping
+footsteps.
+
+"Could you see it?" asked Wichter, who was lying so closely behind him
+that he couldn't observe the monstrous Zeudian. "What did it do? What
+was it like?"
+
+Joyce told him of the way the creature had fed. "We are evidently in
+their provision room," he concluded. "They keep some of their food
+alive, it seems.... Well, it's a quick death."
+
+"Tell me more about the way the other animal moved, just before it was
+eaten."
+
+"There isn't much to tell," said Joyce wearily. "It didn't move long
+after those fangs were sunk into it."
+
+"But don't you see!" There was sudden hope in Wichter's voice. "That
+means that the effect of the poison, which is apparently injected by
+those fangs, wears off after a time. And in that case--"
+
+"In that case," Joyce interjected, "we'd have only an unknown army of
+ten-foot Zeudians, the problem of finding a way to the surface of the
+ground again, and the lack of any kind of weapons, to keep us from
+escaping!"
+
+"We're not quite weaponless, though," the professor whispered back.
+"Over in a corner there's a pile of the long, slender horns that
+sprout from the heads of some of these creatures. Evidently the
+Zeudians cut them out, or break them off before eating that
+particular type of animal. They'd be as good as lances, if we could
+get hold of them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joyce said nothing, but hope began to beat in his own breast. He had
+noticed a significant happening during the age-long hours in the
+commissary cave. Most of the Zeudians had entered from the direction
+of the pit. But one had come in through an opening in the opposite
+side. And this one had blinked pale eyes as though dazzled from bright
+sunlight--and was bearing some large, woody looking tubers that seemed
+to have been freshly uprooted! There was a good chance, thought Joyce,
+that that opening led to a tunnel up to the world above!
+
+He drew a deep breath--and felt a dim pain in his back, caused by the
+cramping position in which he had lain for so long.
+
+He could have shouted aloud with the thrill of that discovery. This
+was the first time he had felt his body at all! Did it mean that the
+effect of the poison was wearing off--that it wasn't as lastingly
+paralyzing to his earthly nerve centers as to those of Zeudian
+creatures around them? He flexed the muscles of his leg. The leg moved
+a fraction of an inch.
+
+"Dorn!" he called softly, "I can move a little! Can you?"
+
+"Yes," Wichter answered, "I've been able to wriggle my fingers for
+several minutes. I think I could walk in an hour or two."
+
+"Then pray for that hour or two. It might mean our escape!" Joyce told
+him of the seldom used entrance that he thought led to the open air.
+"I'm sure it goes to the surface, Dorn. Those woody looking tubers had
+been freshly picked."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three of the two-legged monsters came in just then. They relapsed into
+lifeless silence. There was a horrible moment as the three paused over
+them longer than any of the others had. Was it obvious that the
+effects of the numbing poison was wearing off? Would they be bitten
+again--or eaten?
+
+The Zeudians finally moved on, hissing and clicking to each other.
+Eventually the cold-blooded things fed, and dragged lethargically out
+of the cave in the direction of the pit.
+
+With every passing minute Joyce could feel life pouring back into his
+numbed body. His cramped muscles were in agony now--a pain that gave
+him fierce pleasure. At last, risking observation, he lifted his head
+and then struggled to a sitting position and looked around.
+
+No Zeudian was in sight. Evidently they were too sure of their poison
+glands to post a guard over them. He listened intently, and could hear
+no dragging footsteps. He turned to Wichter, who had followed his
+example and was sitting up, feebly rubbing his body to restore
+circulation.
+
+"Now's our chance," he whispered. "Stand up and walk a little to
+steady your legs, while I go over and get us a couple of those sharp
+horns. Then we'll see where that entrance of mine goes!"
+
+He walked to the pile of bones and horns in the corner and selected
+two of the longest and slimmest of the ivory-like things. Just as he
+had rejoined Wichter he heard the sound with which he was now so
+grimly familiar--flapping, awkward footsteps. Wildly he signaled the
+professor. They dropped in their tracks, just as the approaching
+monster stumped into the cave.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For an instant he dared hope that their movement had gone unobserved,
+but his hope was rudely shattered. He heard a sharp hiss: heard the
+Zeudian flap toward them at double-quick time. Abandoning all
+pretense, he sprang to his feet just as the thing reached him, its
+fangs gleaming wickedly in the greenish light.
+
+He leaped to the side, going twenty feet or more with the press of his
+Earth muscles against the reduced gravity. The creature rushed on
+toward the professor. That game little man crouched and awaited its
+onslaught. But Joyce had sprung back again before the two could clash.
+
+He raised the long horn and plunged it into the smooth, purplish back.
+Again and again he drove it home, as the monster writhed under him. It
+had enormous vitality. Gashed and dripping, it yet struggled on,
+attempting to encircle Joyce with its stubby arms. Once it succeeded,
+and he felt his ribs crack as it contracted its powerful body. But a
+final stroke finished the savage fight. He got up and, with an
+incoherent cry to Wichter, raced toward the opening on which they
+pinned their hopes of reaching the upper air.
+
+Hissing cries and the thudding of many feet came to them just as they
+reached the arched mouth of the passage. But the cries, and the
+constant pandemonium of the paralysed animals died behind them as they
+bounded along the tunnel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They emerged at last into the sunlight they had never expected to see
+again, beside one of the great lavender trees. They paused an instant
+to try to get their bearings.
+
+"This way," panted Joyce as he saw, on a hard-packed path ahead of
+them, one of the trail-marks he had blazed.
+
+Down the trail they raced, toward their space shell. Fortunately they
+met none of the tremendous animals that infested the jungles; and
+their journey to the clearing in which the shell was lying was
+accomplished without accident.
+
+"We're safe now," gasped Wichter, as they came in sight of the bare
+lava patch. "We can outrun them five feet to their one!"
+
+They burst into the clearing--and halted abruptly. Surrounding the
+shell, stumping curiously about it and touching it with their
+shapeless hands, were dozens of the Zeudians.
+
+"My God!" groaned Joyce. "There must be at least a hundred of them!
+We're lost for certain now!"
+
+They stared with hopeless longing at the vehicle that, if only they
+could reach it, could carry them back to Earth. Then they turned to
+each other and clasped hands, without a word. The same thought was in
+the mind of each--to rush at the swarming monsters and fight till they
+were killed. There was absolutely no chance of winning through to the
+shell, but it was infinitely better to die fighting than be swallowed
+alive.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So engrossed were the Zeudians by the strange thing that had fallen
+into their province, that Joyce and Wichter got within a hundred feet
+of them before they turned their pale eyes in their direction. Then,
+baring their fangs, they streamed toward the Earth men, just as the
+pursuing Zeudians entered the clearing from the jungle trail.
+
+The two prepared to die as effectively as possible. Each grasped his
+lace-like horn tightly. The professor mechanically adjusted his
+glasses more firmly on his nose....
+
+With his move, the narrowing circle of Zeudians halted. A violent
+clamor broke out among them. They glared at the two, but made no
+further step toward them.
+
+"What in the world--" began Wichter bewilderedly.
+
+"Your glasses!" Joyce shouted, gripping his shoulder. "When you moved
+them, they all stopped! They must be afraid of them, somehow. Take
+them clear off and see what happens."
+
+Wichter removed his spectacles, and swung them in his hand, peering
+near-sightedly at the crowding Zeudians.
+
+Their reaction to his simple move was remarkable! Hisses of
+consternation came from their lipless mouths. They faced each other
+uneasily, waving their stubby arms and covering their own eyes as
+though suddenly afraid they would lose them.
+
+Taking advantage of their indecision, Joyce and Wichter walked boldly
+toward them. They moved aside, forming a reluctant lane. Some of the
+Zeudians in the rear shoved to close in on them, but the ones in front
+held them back. It wasn't until the two were nearly through that the
+lane began to straggle into a threatening circle around them again.
+The Zeudians were evidently becoming reassured by the fact that
+Wichter continued to see all right in spite of the little strange
+creature's alarming act of removing his eyes.
+
+"Do it again," breathed Joyce, perspiration beading his forehead as
+the giants moved closed, their fangs tentatively bared for the numbing
+poison stroke.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wichter popped his glasses on, then jerked them off with a cry, as
+though he were suffering intensely. Once more the Zeudians faltered
+and drew back, feeling at their own eyes.
+
+"Run!" cried Joyce. And they raced for the haven of the shell.
+
+The Zeudians swarmed after them, snarling and hissing. Barely ahead of
+the nearest, Joyce and Wichter dove into the open panel. They slammed
+it closed just as a powerful, stubby arm reached after them. There was
+a screaming hiss, and a cold, cartilagenous lump of flesh dropped to
+the floor of the shell--half the monster's hand, sheared off between
+the sharp edge of the door and the metal hull.
+
+Joyce threw in the generator switch. With a soft roar the water-motor
+exploded into action, sending the shell far into the sky.
+
+"When we return," said Joyce, adding a final thousand miles an hour to
+their speed before they should fly free of the atmosphere of Zeud, "I
+think we'd better come at the head of an army, equipped with air-guns
+and explosive bombs."
+
+"And with glasses," added the professor, taking off his spectacles and
+gazing at them as though seeing them for the first time.
+
+
+
+
+Four Miles Within
+
+A COMPLETE NOVELETTE
+
+_By Anthony Gilmore_
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_The Monster of Metal_
+
+[Illustration: The man hurled the empty gun at the monster.]
+
+[Sidenote: Far down into the earth goes a gleaming metal sphere whose
+passengers are deadly enemies.]
+
+
+A strange spherical monster stood in the moonlight on the silent
+Mojave Desert. In the ghostly gray of the sand and sage and joshua
+trees its metal hide glimmered dully--an amazing object to be found on
+that lonely spot. But there was only pride and anticipation in the
+eyes of the three people who stood a little way off, looking at it.
+For they had constructed the strange sphere, and were soon going to
+entrust their lives to it.
+
+"Professor," said one of them, a young man with a cheerful face and a
+likable grin, "let's go down now! There's no use waiting till
+to-morrow. It's always dark down there, whether it's day or night up
+here. Everything is ready."
+
+The white-haired Professor David Guinness smiled tolerantly at the
+speaker, his partner, Phil Holmes. "I'm kind of eager to be off,
+myself," he admitted. He turned to the third person in the little
+group, a dark-haired girl. "What do you say, Sue?"
+
+"Oh, let's, Father!" came the quick reply. "We'd never be able to
+sleep to-night, anyway. As Phil says, everything is ready."
+
+"Well, I guess that settles it," Professor Guinness said to the eager
+young man.
+
+Phil Holmes' face went aglow with anticipation. "Good!" he cried.
+"Good! I'll skip over and get some water. It's barely possible that
+it'll be hot down there, in spite of your eloquent logic to the
+contrary!" And with the words he caught up a large jug standing
+nearby, waved his hand, said: "I'll be right back!" and set out for
+the water-hole, situated nearly a mile away from their little camp.
+The heavy hush of the desert night settled down once more after he
+left.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As his figure merged with the shadows in the distance, the elderly
+scientist murmured aloud to his daughter:
+
+"You know, it's good to realize that my dream is about to become a
+reality. If it hadn't been for Phil.... Or no--I really ought to thank
+you, Sue. You're the one responsible for his participation!" And he
+smiled fondly at the slender girl by his side.
+
+"Phil joined us just for the scientific interest, and for the thrill
+of going four miles down into the earth," she retorted at once, in
+spite of the blush her father saw on her face. But he did not insist.
+Once more he turned, as to a magnet, to the machine that was his
+handiwork.
+
+The fifteen-foot sphere was an earth-borer--Guinness's own invention.
+In it he had utilized for the first time for boring purposes the newly
+developed atomic disintegrators. Many holes equally spaced over the
+sphere were the outlets for the dissolving ray--most of them on the
+bottom and alternating with them on the bottom and sides were the
+outlets of powerful rocket propulsion tubes, which would enable it to
+rise easily from the hole it would presently blast into the earth. A
+small, tight-fitting door gave entrance to the double-walled interior,
+where, in spite of the space taken up by batteries and mechanisms and
+an enclosed gyroscope for keeping the borer on an even keel, there was
+room for several people.
+
+The earth-borer had been designed not so much for scientific
+investigation as the specific purpose of reaching a rich store of
+radium ore buried four miles below the Guinness desert camp. Many
+geologists and mining engineers knew that the radium was there, for
+their instruments had proven it often; but no one up to then knew how
+to get to it. David Guinness did--first. The borer had been
+constructed in his laboratory in San Francisco, then dismantled and
+freighted to the little desert town of Palmdale, from whence Holmes
+had brought the parts to their isolated camp by truck. Strict secrecy
+had been kept. Rather than risk assistants they had done all the work
+themselves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Fifteen minutes passed by, while the slight figure of the inventor
+puttered about the interior of the sphere, brightly lit by a
+detachable searchlight, inspecting all mechanisms in preparation for
+their descent. Sue stood by the door watching him, now and then
+turning to scan the desert for the returning Phil.
+
+It was then, startlingly sudden, that there cracked through the velvet
+night the faint, distant sound of a gun. And it came from the
+direction of the water-hole.
+
+Sue's face went white, and she trembled. Without a word her father
+stepped out of the borer and looked at her.
+
+"That was a gun!" he said. "Phil didn't have one with him, did he?"
+
+"No," Sue whispered. "And--why, there's nobody within miles of here!"
+
+The two looked at each other with alarm and wonder. Then, from one of
+the broken patches of scrub that ringed the space in which the borer
+stood, came a mocking voice.
+
+"Ah, you're mistaken, Sue," it affirmed. "But that was a gun."
+
+David Guinness jerked around, as did his daughter. The man who had
+spoken stood only ten yards away, clearly outlined in the bright
+moonlight--a tall, well-built man, standing quite at ease, surveying
+them pleasantly. His smile did not change when old Guinness cried:
+
+"Quade! James Quade!"
+
+The man nodded and came slowly forward. He might have been considered
+handsome, had it not been for his thin, mocking lips and a swarthy
+complexion.
+
+"What are you doing here?" demanded Guinness angrily. "And what do you
+mean--'it was a gun?' Have you--"
+
+"Easy, easy--one thing at a time," said Quade, still smiling. "About
+the gun--well, your young friend Holmes said, he'd be right back, but
+I--I'm afraid he won't be."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sue Guinness's lips formed a frightened word:
+
+"Why?"
+
+Quade made a short movement with his left hand, as is brushing the
+query aside. "Let's talk about something more pleasant," he said, and
+looked back at the professor. "The radium, and your borer, for
+instance. I hear you're all ready to go down."
+
+David Guinness gasped. "How did you know--?" he began, but a surge of
+anger choked him, and his fists clenched. He stepped forward. But
+something came to life in James Quade's right hand and pointed
+menacingly at him. It was the stubby black shape of an automatic.
+
+"Keep back, you old fool!" Quade said harshly. "I don't want to have
+to shoot you!"
+
+Unwillingly, Guinness came to a stop. "What have you done with young
+Holmes?" he demanded.
+
+"Never mind about him now," said Quade, smiling again. "Perhaps I'll
+explain later. At the moment there's something much more interesting
+to do. Possibly you'll be surprised to hear it, but we're all going to
+take a little ride in this machine of yours, Professor. Down. About
+four miles. I'll have to ask you to do the driving. You will, won't
+you--without making a fuss?"
+
+Guinness's face worked furiously. "Why, you're crazy, Quade!" he
+sputtered. "I certainly won't!"
+
+"No?" asked Quade softly. The automatic he held veered around, till it
+was pointing directly at the girl. "I wouldn't want to have to shoot
+Sue--say--through the hand...." His finger tightened perceptibly on
+the trigger.
+
+"You're mad, man!" Guinness burst out. "You're crazy! What's the
+idea--"
+
+"In due time I'll tell you. But now I'll ask you just once more,"
+Quade persisted. "Will you enter that borer, or must I--" He broke off
+with an expressive shrug.
+
+David Guinness was powerless. He had not the slightest idea what Quade
+might be about; the one thought that broke through his fear and anger
+was that the man was mad, and had better be humored. He trembled, and
+a tight sensation came to his throat at sight of the steady gun
+trained on his daughter. He dared not trifle.
+
+"I'll do it," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+James Quade laughed. "That's better. You always were essentially
+reasonable, though somewhat impulsive for a man of your age. The rash
+way you severed our partnership, for instance.... But enough of that.
+I think we'd better leave immediately. Into the sphere, please. You
+first, Miss Guinness."
+
+"Must she come?"
+
+"I'm afraid so. I can't very well leave her here all unprotected, can
+I?"
+
+Quade's voice was soft and suave, but an undercurrent of sarcasm ran
+through it. Guinness winced under it; his whole body was trembling
+with suppressed rage and indignation. As he stepped to the door of the
+earth-borer he turned and asked:
+
+"How did you know our plans? About the radium?--the borer?"
+
+Quade told him. "Have you forgotten," he said, "that you talked the
+matter over with me before we split last year? I simply had the
+laboratory watched, and when you got new financial backing from young
+Holmes, and came here. I followed you. Simple, eh?... Well, enough of
+this. Get inside. You first, Sue."
+
+Trembling, the girl obeyed, and when her father hesitated Quade jammed
+his gun viciously into his ribs and pushed him to the door. "Inside!"
+he hissed, and reluctantly, hatred in his eyes, the professor stepped
+into the control compartment after Sue. Quade gave a last quick glance
+around and, with gun ever wary, passed inside. The door slammed shut:
+there was a click as its lock shot over. The sphere was a sealed ball
+of metal.
+
+Inside, David Guinness obeyed the automatic's imperious gesture and
+pulled a shiny-handled lever slowly back, and the hush that rested
+over the Mojave was shattered by a tremendous bellow, a roar that
+shook the very earth. It was the disintegrating blast, hurled out of
+the bottom in many fan-shaped rays. The coarse gray sand beneath the
+machine stirred and flew wildly; the sphere vibrated madly; and then
+the thunder lowered in tone to a mighty humming and the earth-borer
+began to drop. Slowly it fell, at first, then more rapidly. The shiny
+top came level with the ground: disappeared; and in a moment there was
+nothing left but a gaping hole where a short while before a round
+monster of metal had stood. The hole was hot and dark, and from it
+came a steadily diminishing thunder....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a long time no one in the earth-borer spoke--didn't even try
+to--for though the thunder of the disintegrators was muted, inside, to
+a steady drone, conversation was almost impossible. The three were
+crowded quite close in the spherical inner control compartment. Sue
+sat on a little collapsible stool by the bowed, but by no means
+subdued, figure of Professor David Guinness, while Quade sat on the
+wire guard of the gyroscope, which was in the exact center of the
+floor.
+
+The depth gauge showed two hundred feet. Already the three people were
+numb from the vibration; they hardly felt any sensation at all, save
+one of great weight pressing inwards. The compartment was fairly cool
+and the air good--kept so by the automatic air rectifiers and the
+insulation, which shut out the heat born of their passage.
+
+Quade had been carefully watching Guinness's manipulation of the
+controls, when he was struck by a thought. At once he stood up, and
+shouted in the elderly inventor's ear: "Try the rockets! I want to be
+sure this thing will go back up!"
+
+Without a word Guinness shoved back the lever controlling the
+disintegrators, at the same time whirling a small wheel full over. The
+thudding drone died away to a whisper, and was replaced by sharper
+thundering, as the stream of the propulsion rockets beneath the sphere
+was released. A delicate needle trembled on a gauge, danced at the
+figure two hundred, then crept back to one-ninety ... one-sixty ...
+one-forty.... Quade's eyes took in everything.
+
+"Excellent, Guinness!" he yelled. "Now--down once more!"
+
+The rockets were slowly cut; the borer jarred at the bottom of its
+hole; again the disintegrators droned out. The sphere dug rapidly into
+the warm ground, biting lower and lower. At ten miles an hour it
+blasted a path to depths hitherto unattainable to man, sweeping away
+rock and gravel and sand--everything that stood in its way. The depth
+gauge rose to two thousand, then steadily to three and four. So it
+went on for nearly half an hour.
+
+At the end of that time, at a depth of nearly four miles, Quade got
+stiffly to his feet and once more shouted into the professor's ear.
+
+"We ought to be close to that radium, now," he said. "I think--"
+
+But his words stopped short. The floor of the sphere suddenly fell
+away from their feet, and they felt themselves tumbled into a wild
+plunge. The drone of the disintegrators, hitherto muffled by the earth
+they bit into, rose to a hollow scream. Before the professor quite
+knew what was happening, there was a stunning crash, a shriek of
+tortured metal--and the earth-borer rocked and lay still....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The whole world seemed to be filled with thunder when David Guinness
+came back to consciousness. He opened his eyes and stared up into a
+darkness to which it took him some time to accustom himself. When he
+did, he made out hazily that he was lying on the floor of a vast dark
+cavern. He could dimly see its jagged roof, perhaps fifty feet above.
+There was the strong smell of damp earth in his nostrils; his head was
+splitting from the steady drone in his ear-drums. Suddenly he
+remembered what had happened. He groaned slightly and tried to sit up.
+
+But he could not. His arms and legs were tied. Someone had removed him
+from the earth-borer and bound him on the floor of the cavern they had
+plunged into.
+
+David Guinness strained at the rope. It was futile, but in doing so he
+twisted his head around and saw another form, similarly tied, lying
+close to him. He gave a little cry of relief. It was Sue. And she was
+conscious, her eyes on his face.
+
+She spoke to him, but he could not understand her for the drone in his
+ears, and when he spoke to her it was the same. But the professor did
+not just then continue his effort to converse with her. His attention
+was drawn to the borer, now dimly illuminated by its portable light,
+which had been secured to the door. It was right side up, and appeared
+to be undamaged. The broad ray of the searchlight fell far away on one
+of the cavern's rough walls. He could just make out James Quade
+standing there, his back towards them.
+
+He was hacking at the wall with a pick. Presently he dropped the tool
+and wrenched at the rock with bare hands. A large chunk came loose. He
+hugged it to him and turned and strode back towards the two on the
+floor, and as he drew near they could plainly see a gleam of triumph
+in his eyes.
+
+"You know what this is?" he shouted. Guinness could only faintly hear
+him. "Wealth! Millions! Of course we always knew the radium was here,
+but this is the proof. And now we've a way of getting it out--thanks
+to your borer! All the credit is yours, Professor Guinness! You shall
+have the credit, and I'll have the money."
+
+Guinness tugged furiously at his bonds again. "You--you--" he gasped.
+"How dare you tie us this way! Release us at once! What do you mean by
+it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Quade smiled unpleasantly. "You're very stupid, Guinness. Haven't you
+guessed by now what I'm going to do?" He paused, as if waiting for an
+answer, and the smile on his face gave way to a look of savage menace.
+For the first time his bitter feelings came to the surface.
+
+"Have you forgotten how close I came to going to jail over those
+charges of yours a year ago?" he said. "Have you forgotten the
+disgrace to me that followed?--the stigma that forced me to disappear
+for months? You fool, do you think I've forgotten?--or that I'd let
+you--"
+
+"Quade," interrupted the older man, "you know very well you were
+guilty. I caught you red-handed. You didn't fool anyone--except the
+jury that let you go. So save your breath, and, if you've the sense
+you were born with, release my daughter and me. Why, you're crazy!" he
+cried with mounting anger. "You can't get away with this! I'll have
+you in jail within forty-eight hours, once I get back to the surface!"
+
+With an effort Quade controlled his feelings and assumed his oily,
+sarcastic manner. "That's just it," he said: "'once you get back!' How
+stupid you are! You don't seem to realize that you're not going back
+to the surface. You and your daughter."
+
+Sue gasped, and her father's eyes went wide. There was a tense
+silence.
+
+"You wouldn't dare!" the inventor cried finally. "You wouldn't dare!"
+
+"It's rather large, this cavern," Quade went on. "You'll have plenty
+of room. Perhaps I'll untie you before I go back up, so--"
+
+"You can't get away with it!" shouted the old man, tremendously
+excited. "Why, you can't, possibly! Philip Holmes'll track you
+down--he'll tell the police--he'll rescue us! And then--"
+
+Quade smiled suavely. "Oh, no, he won't. Perhaps you remember the shot
+that sounded from the water-hole? Well, when I and my assistant, Juan,
+heard Holmes say he was going for water, I told Juan to follow him to
+the water-hole and bind him, to keep him from interfering till I got
+back up. But Mr. Holmes is evidently of an impulsive disposition, and
+must have caused trouble. Juan, too, is impulsive; he is a Mexican.
+And he had a gun. I'm afraid he was forced to use it.... I am quite
+sure Philip Holmes will not, as you say, track me down."
+
+David Guinness looked at his daughter's white face and horror-filled
+eyes and suddenly crumpled. Humbly, passionately, he begged Quade to
+take her back up. "Why, she's never done anything to you, Quade!" he
+pleaded. "You can't take her life like that! Please! Leave me, if you
+must, but not her! You can't--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But suddenly the old man noticed that Quade was not listening. His
+head was tilted to one side as if he was straining to hear something
+else. Guinness was held silent for a moment by the puzzled look on the
+other's face and the strange way he was acting.
+
+"Do you hear it?" Quade asked at last; and without waiting for an
+answer, he knelt down and put his ear to the ground. When he rose his
+face was savage, and he cursed under his breath.
+
+"Why, it's a humming!" muttered Professor Guinness. "And it's getting
+louder!"
+
+"It sounds like another borer!" ventured Sue.
+
+The humming grew in volume. Then, from the ceiling, a rock dropped.
+They were looking at the cavern roof and saw it start, but they did
+not hear it strike, for the ever-growing humming echoed loudly through
+the cavern. They saw another rock fall; and another.
+
+"For God's sake, what is it?" cried Guinness.
+
+Quade looked at him and slowly drew out his automatic.
+
+"Another earth-borer, I think," he answered. "And I rather expect it
+contains your young friend Mr. Holmes. Yes--coming to rescue you."
+
+For a moment Guinness and his daughter were too astounded to do
+anything but gape. She finally exclaimed:
+
+"But--but then Phil's alive?"
+
+James Quade smiled. "Probably--for the moment. But don't let your
+hopes rise too high. The borer he's in isn't strong enough to survive
+a fifty-foot plunge." He was shouting now, so loud was the thunder
+from above. "And," he added, "I'm afraid he's not strong enough to
+survive it, either!"
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_The Man-Hunt_
+
+When Phil Holmes started off to the water-hole, his head was full of
+the earth-borer and the imminent descent. Now that the long-awaited
+time had come, he was at fever-pitch to be off, and it did not take
+him long to cover the mile of sandy waste. His thoughts were far
+inside the earth as he dipped the jug into the clear cool water and
+sloshed it full.
+
+So the rope that snaked softly through the air and dropped in a loop
+over his shoulders came as a stark surprise. Before he knew what was
+happening it had slithered down over his arms and drawn taut just
+above the elbows, and he was yanked powerfully backwards and almost
+fell.
+
+But he managed to keep his feet as he staggered backward, and turning
+his head he saw the small dark figure of his aggressor some fifteen
+feet away, keeping tight the slack.
+
+Phil's surprise turned to sudden fury and he completely lost his head.
+What he did was rash; mad; and yet, as it turned out, it was the only
+thing that could have saved him. Instinctively, without hesitating
+one second, and absolutely ignoring an excited command to stand still,
+he squirmed face-on to his aggressor, lowered his head and charged.
+
+The distance was short. Halfway across it, a gun barked, and he heard
+the bullet crack into the water jug, which he was still holding in
+front of himself. And even before the splintered fragments reached the
+ground he had crashed into the firer.
+
+He hit him with all the force of a tackling lineman, and they both
+went down. The man grunted as the wind was jarred out of him, but he
+wriggled like an eel and managed to worm aside and bring up his gun.
+
+Then there was a desperate flurry of bodies in the coarse sand. Holmes
+dived frantically for the gun hand and caught it; but, handicapped as
+he was by the rope, he could not hold it. Slowly its muzzle bent
+upward to firing position.
+
+Desperately, he wrenched the arm upwards, in the direction it had been
+straining to go, and the sudden unexpected jerk doubled the man's arm
+and brought the weapon across his chest. For a moment there was a test
+of strength as Phil lay chest to chest over his opponent, the gun
+blocked between. Then the other grunted; squirmed violently--and there
+was a muffled explosion.
+
+A cry of pain cut the midnight air, and with insane strength Holmes'
+ambusher fought free from his grip, staggered to his feet and went
+reeling away. Phil tore loose from the rope and bounded after him,
+never feeling, at the moment, his powder-burned chest.
+
+And then he halted in his tracks.
+
+A great roar came thundering over the desert!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At once he knew that it came from the earth-borer's disintegrators.
+The sphere had started down without him.
+
+He stood stock still, petrified with surprise, facing the sound, while
+his attacker melted farther and farther into the night. And then,
+suddenly, Phil Holmes was sprinting desperately back towards the
+Guinness camp.
+
+He ran until he was exhausted; walked for a little while his legs
+gathered more strength, and his laboring lungs more air; and then ran
+again. As the minutes passed, the thunder lessened rapidly into a
+muffled drone; and by the time Phil had panted up to the brink of the
+hole that gaped where but a little time before the sphere was
+standing, it had become but a distant purr. He leaned far over and
+peered into the hot blackness below, but could see nothing.
+
+Phil knelt there silently for some minutes, shocked by his strange
+attack, bewildered by the unexpected descent of the borer. For a time
+his mind would not work; he had no idea what to do. But gradually his
+thoughts came to order and made certain things clear.
+
+He had been deliberately ambushed. Only by luck had he escaped, he
+told himself. If it hadn't been for the water jug, he'd now be out of
+the picture. And on the heels of the ambush had came the surprising
+descent of the earth-borer. The two incidents coincided too well: the
+same mind had planned them. And two, men, at least, were in on the
+plot.... It suddenly became very clear to him that the answer to the
+puzzle lay with the man who had ambushed him. He would have to get
+that man. Track him down.
+
+Phil acted with decision. He got to his feet and strode rapidly to the
+deserted Guinness shack, horribly quiet and lonely now in the bright
+moonlight. In a minute he emerged with a flashlight at his belt and a
+rifle across his arm.
+
+Once again he went over to the new black hole in the desert and looked
+down. From far below still came the purr, now fainter than ever. His
+friend, the girl he loved, were down there, he reflected bitterly, and
+he was helpless to reach them. Well, there was one thing he could
+do--go man-hunting. Turning, he started off at a long lope for the
+water-hole.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ten minutes later he was there, and off to the side he found the marks
+of their scuffle--and small black blotches that could be nothing but
+blood. The other was wounded: could probably not get far. But he might
+still have his gun, so Phil kept his rifle handy, and tempered his
+impatience with caution as he set out on the trail of the widely
+spaced footprints.
+
+They led off towards the nearby hills, and in the bright moonlight
+Phil did not use his flashlight at all, except to investigate other
+round black blotches that made a line parallel to the prints. As he
+went on he found his quarry's steps coming more closely together:
+becoming erratic. Soon they showed as painful drags in the sand, a
+laborious hauling of one foot after the other.... Phil put away his
+light and advanced very cautiously.
+
+He wondered, as he went, who in the devil was behind it all. The
+radium-finding project had been kept strictly secret. Not another soul
+was supposed to know of the earth-borer and its daring mission into
+the heart of the earth. Yet, obviously, someone had found out, and
+whoever it was had laid at least part of his scheme cunningly. An old
+man and a girl cannot offer much resistance: he, Phil, would have been
+well taken care of had it not been for the water jug. So far, there
+were at least two in the plot: the man who had ambushed him and the
+unknown who had evidently kidnapped both Professor and Sue Guinness.
+But there might be still more.
+
+There might be friends, nearby, of the man he was tracking. The fellow
+might have reached them, and warned them that the scheme hadn't gone
+through, that Phil was loose. They could very easily conceal
+themselves alongside their partner's tracks and train their rifles on
+the tracker....
+
+The trail was leading up into one of the cañons in the cluster of
+hills to the west. For some distance he followed it up through a slash
+of black below the steep moonlit heights of the hills to each
+side--and then, suddenly, he vaguely made out the forms of two huts
+just ahead.
+
+Immediately he stooped low, and went skirting widely off up one side.
+He proceeded slowly, with great caution, his rifle at the ready. At
+any moment, he knew, the hush might be split by the cracks of
+waylaying guns. Warily he advanced along the narrow cañon wall above
+the huts. No lights were lit, and the place seemed unoccupied. He was
+debating what to do next when his attention was attracted to a large
+dark object lying in the cañon trail some twenty yards from the
+nearest hut. Straining his eyes in the inadequate moonlight, he saw
+that it was the outstretched figure of a man. His quarry--his
+ambusher!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Phil dropped flat, fearful of being seen. Keeping as best he could in
+the shadows, fearing every moment to hear the sharp bark of a gun, he
+crawled forward. It took him a long time to approach the sprawled
+figure, but he wasn't taking chances. When within twenty feet, he rose
+suddenly and darted forward to the man's side.
+
+His rapid glance showed him that the fellow was completely out: and
+another quick look around failed to show that anyone else was
+watching, so he returned to his examination of the man. It was the
+ambusher, all right: a Mexican. He was still breathing, though his
+face was drawn and white from the loss of blood from a wound under the
+blood-soaked clothing near his upper right arm. A hasty search showed
+that he no longer had his gun, so Phil, satisfied that he was
+powerless for some time to come, cautiously wormed his way towards the
+two shacks.
+
+There was something sinister in the strange silence that hung over
+them. One was of queer construction--a windowless, square, high box
+of galvanized iron. The other was obviously a dwelling place.
+Carefully Phil sneaked up to the latter. Then, rifle ready, he pushed
+its door open and sent a beam of light stabbing through the darkness
+of the interior.
+
+There was no one there. Only two bunks, a table, chair, a pail of
+water and some cooking utensils met his view. He crept out toward the
+other building.
+
+Come close, Phil found that a dun-colored canvas had been thrown over
+the top of it, making an adequate camouflage in daytime. The place was
+about twenty feet high. He prowled around the metal walls and
+discovered a rickety door. Again, gun ready, he flung it open. The
+beam from his flash speared a path through the blackness--and he
+gasped at sight of what stood revealed.
+
+There, inside, was a long, bullet-like tube of metal, the pointed end
+upper-most, and the bottom, which was flat, toward the ground. It was
+held in a wooden cradle, and was slanted at the floor. In the bottom
+were holes of two shapes--rocket tubes and disintegrating projectors.
+It was another earth-borer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Phil stood frozen with surprise before this totally unlooked-for
+machine. He could easily have been overcome, had the owner been in the
+building, for he had forgotten everything but what his eyes were
+staring at. He started slowly around the borer, found a long narrow
+door slightly ajar, and stepped inside.
+
+This borer, like Guinness's, had a double shell, and much the same
+instruments, though the whole job was simpler and cruder. A small
+instrument board contained inclination, temperature, depth and
+air-purity indicators, and narrow tubes led to the air rectifiers. But
+what kept Holmes' attention were the wires running from the magneto to
+the mixing chambers of the disintegrating tubes.
+
+"The fools!" he exclaimed, "--they didn't know how to wire the thing!
+Or else," he added after a moment, "didn't get around to doing it." He
+noticed that the projectile's interior contained no gyroscope: though,
+he thought, none would be needed, for the machine, being long and
+narrow, could not change keel while in the ground. Here he was
+reminded of something. Stepping outside, he estimated the angle the
+borer made with the dirt floor. Twenty degrees. "And pointed
+southwest!" he exclaimed aloud. "This borer would come close to
+meeting the professor's, four miles under our camp!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At once he knew what he would do. First he went back to the other
+shack and got the pail of water he had noticed, and took this out
+where the Mexican lay outstretched. He bathed the man's face and the
+still slightly bleeding bullet wound in his shoulder.
+
+Presently the wounded man came to. His eyes opened, and he stared up
+into a steel mask of a face, in which two level black eyes bored into
+his. He remembered that face--remembered it all too well. He trembled,
+cowered away.
+
+"No!" he gasped, as if he had seen a ghost. "No--no!"
+
+"Yes, I'm the man," Holmes told him firmly, menacingly. "The same one
+you tried to ambush." He paused a moment, then said: "Do you want to
+live?"
+
+It was a simple question, frightening in its simplicity.
+
+"Because if you don't answer my questions, I'm going to let you lie
+here," Phil went on coldly. "And that would probably mean your death.
+If you do answer, I'll fix you up so you can have a chance."
+
+The Mexican nodded eagerly. "I talk," he said.
+
+"Good," said Phil. "Then tell me who built that machine?"
+
+"Señor Quade. Señor James Quade."
+
+"Quade!" Phil had heard the name before. "Of course!" he said.
+"Guinness's old partner!"
+
+"I not know," the Mexican answered. "He hire me with much money. He
+buy thees machine inside, and we put him together. But he could no
+make him work--it take too long. We watch, hear old man go down
+to-night, and--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The greaser stopped. "And so he sent you to get me, while he kidnapped
+the old man and his daughter and forced them under the ground in their
+own borer," Holmes supplied, and the other nodded.
+
+"But I only mean to tie you!" he blurted, gesturing weakly. "I no mean
+shoot! No, no--"
+
+"All right--forget it," Phil interrupted. "And now tell me what Quade
+expects to do down there."
+
+"I not know, Señor," came the hesitant reply, "but...."
+
+"But what?" the young man jerked.
+
+Reluctantly the wounded Mexican continued. "Señor Quade--he--I think
+he don' like thees old man. I think he leave heem an' the girl down
+below. Then he come up an' say they keeled going down."
+
+Phil nodded grimly. "I see," he said, voicing his thoughts. "Then he
+would say that he and Professor Guinness are still partners--and the
+radium ore will belong to him. Very nice. Very nice...."
+
+He snapped back to action, and without another word hoisted the
+Mexican onto his back and carried him into the shack. There he
+cleansed the wound, rigged up a tight bandage for it, and tied the man
+to one of the cots. He tied him in such a fashion that he could reach
+some food and water he put by the cot.
+
+"You leave me like thees?" the Mexican asked.
+
+"Yes," Phil said, and started for the door.
+
+"But what you going to do?"
+
+Phil smiled grimly as he flung an answer back over his shoulder.
+
+"Me?--I'm going to fix the wiring on those disintegrators in your
+friend Quade's borer. Then I'm starting down after him." He stopped
+and turned before he closed the door. "And if I don't get back--well,
+it's just too bad for you!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so, a little later, once more the hushed desert night was cleft by
+a furious bellow of sound. It came, this time, from a narrow cañon.
+The steep sides threw the roar back and back again, and the echoes
+swelled to an earth-shaking blast of sound. The oblong hut from which
+it came rocked and almost fell; then, as the noise began to lessen,
+teetered on its foundations and half-slipped into the ragged hole that
+had been bored inside.
+
+The descent was a nightmare that Holmes would never forget. Quade's
+machine was much cruder and less efficient than the sphere David
+Guinness had designed. Its protecting insulation proved quite
+inadequate, and the heat rapidly grew terrific as the borer dug down.
+Phil became faint, stifled, and his body oozed streams of sweat. And
+the descent was also bumpy and uneven; often he was forced to leave
+the controls and work on the mechanism of the disintegrators when they
+faltered and threatened to stop. But in spite of everything the needle
+on the depth gauge gradually swung over to three thousand, and four,
+and five....
+
+After the first mile Holmes improvised a way to change the air more
+rapidly, and it grew a little cooler. He watched the story the depth
+gauge told with narrowed eyes, and, as it reached three miles,
+inspected his rifle. At three and a half miles he stopped the borer,
+thinking to try to hear the noise made by the other, but so paralyzed
+were his ear-drums from the terrific thunder beneath, it seemed hardly
+any quieter when it ceased.
+
+His plans were vague; they would have to be made according to the
+conditions he found. There was a coil of rope in the tube-like
+interior of the borer, and he hoped to find a cavern or cleft in the
+earth for lateral exploring. He would stop at a depth of four
+miles--where he should be very near the path of the professor's
+sphere.
+
+But Phil never saw the needle on the gauge rise to four miles. At
+three and three quarters came sudden catastrophe.
+
+He knew only that there was an awful moment of utter helplessness,
+when the borer swooped wildly downwards, and the floor was snatched
+sickeningly from under him. He was thrown violently against the
+instrument panel; then up toward the pointed top; and at the same
+instant came a rending crash that drove his senses from him....
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+"_You Haven't the Guts_"
+
+"Just as I thought," said James Quade in the silence that fell when
+the last echoes had died away, and the splinters of steel and rock had
+settled. "You see, Professor, this earth-borer belongs to me. Yes, I
+built one too. But I couldn't, unfortunately, get it working
+properly--that is, in time to get down here first. After all, I'm not
+a scientist, and remembered little enough of your borer's plans....
+It's probably young Holmes who's dropped in on us. Shall we see?"
+
+David Guinness and his daughter were speechless with dread. Quade had
+trained the searchlight on the borer, and by turning their heads they
+could see it plainly. It was all too clear that the machine was a
+total wreck. It had pitched over onto one side, its shell cracked and
+mangled irreparably. Grotesque pieces of crumpled metal lay all around
+it. Its slanting course had tumbled it within fifteen yards of the
+sphere.
+
+In silence the old man and the girl watched Quade walk deliberately
+over to it, his automatic steady in his right hand. He wrenched at the
+long, narrow door, but it was so badly bent that for a while he could
+not get it open. At last it swung out, however, and Quade peered
+inside.
+
+After a moment he reached in and drew out a rifle. He took it over to
+a nearby rock, smashed the gun's breech, then flung it, useless,
+aside. Returning to the borer, he again peered in.
+
+Sue was about to scream from the torturous suspense when he at last
+straightened up and looked around at the white-faced girl and her
+father.
+
+"Mr. Holmes is tougher than I'd thought possible," he said, with a
+thin smile; "he's still alive." And, as Sue gasped with relief, he
+added: "Would you like to see him?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He dragged the young man's unconscious body roughly out on the floor.
+There were several bad bruises on his face and head, but otherwise he
+was apparently uninjured. As Quade stood over him, playing idly with
+the automatic, he stirred, and blinked, and at last, with an effort,
+got up on one elbow and looked straight at the thin lips and narrowed
+eyes of the man standing above. He shook his head, trying to
+comprehend, then muttered hazily:
+
+"You--you're--Quade?"
+
+Quade did not have time to answer, for Sue Guinness cried out:
+
+"Phil! Are you all right?"
+
+Phil stared stupidly around, caught sight of the two who lay bound on
+the floor, and staggered to his feet. "Sue!" he cried, relief and
+understanding flooding his voice. He started towards her.
+
+"Stand where you are!" Quade snapped harshly, and the automatic in his
+hand came up. Holmes peered at it and stopped, but his blood-streaked
+face settled into tight lines, and his body tensed.
+
+"You'd better," continued Quade. "Now tell me what happened to Juan."
+
+Phil forced himself to be calm. "Your pal, the greaser?" he said
+cuttingly. "He's lying on a bunk in your shack. He shot himself,
+playing with a gun."
+
+Quade chose not to notice the way Phil said this, but a little of the
+suave self-confidence was gone from his face as he said: "Well, in
+that case I'll have to hurry back to the surface to attend to him. But
+don't be alarmed," he added, more brightly. "I'll be back for you all
+in an hour or so."
+
+At this, David Guinness struggled frantically with his bonds and
+yelled:
+
+"Don't believe him, Phil! He's going to leave us here, to starve and
+die! He told us so just before you came down!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Quade's face twitched perceptibly. His eyes were nervous.
+
+"Is that true, Quade?" Holmes asked. There was a steely note in his
+voice.
+
+"Why--no, of course not," the other said hastily, uncertain whether to
+lie or not. "Of course I didn't!"
+
+Phil Holmes looked square into his eyes. He bluffed.
+
+"You couldn't desert us, Quade. You haven't the guts. You haven't the
+guts."
+
+His face and eyes burned with the contempt that was in his words. It
+cut Quade to the raw. But he could not avoid Phil's eyes. He stared at
+them for a full moment, trembling slightly. Slowly, by inches, he
+started to back toward the sphere; then suddenly he ran for it with
+all his might, Holmes after him. Quade got to it first, and inside, as
+he yanked in the searchlight and slammed and locked the door, he
+yelled:
+
+"You'll see, you damned pup! You'll see!" And there was the smothered
+sound of half-maniacal laughter....
+
+Phil threw all his weight against the metal door, but it was hopeless
+and he knew it. He had gathered himself for another rush when he heard
+Guinness yell:
+
+"Back, Phil--back! He'll turn on the side disintegrators!"
+
+Mad with rage as the young man was, he at once saw the danger and
+leaped away--only to almost fall over the professor's prone body. With
+hurrying, trembling fingers he untied the pair's bonds, and they
+struggled to their feet, cramped and stiff. Then it was Phil who
+warned them.
+
+"Back as far as you can! Hurry!" He grabbed Sue's hand and plunged
+toward the uncertain protection of a huge rock far in the rear. At
+once he made them lie flat on the ground.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As yet the sphere had not stirred nor emitted a whisper of sound,
+though they knew the man inside was conning the controls in a fever of
+haste to leave the cavern. But they hadn't long to wait. There came a
+sputter, a starting cough from the rocket tubes beneath the sphere.
+Quickly they warmed into life, and the dully glimmering ball rocked in
+the hole it lay in. Then a cataract of noise unleashed itself; a
+devastating thunder roared through the echoing cavern as the rockets
+burst into full force. A wave of brilliant orange-red splashed out
+from under the sphere, licked back up its sides, and seemed literally
+to shove the great ball up towards the hole in the ceiling.
+
+Its ascent was very slow. As it gained height it looked--save for its
+speed--like a fantastic meteor flaming through the night, for the
+orange plumage that streamed from beneath lit the ball with dazzling
+color. A glowing sphere, it staggered midway between floor and
+ceiling, creeping jerkily upwards.
+
+"He's not going to hit the hole!" shouted Guinness.
+
+The borer had not risen in a perfectly straight line; it jarred
+against the rim of the hole, and wavered uncertainly. Every second the
+roar of its rockets, swollen by echoes, rose in a savage crescendo;
+the faces of the three who watched were painted orange in the glow.
+
+The sphere was blind. The man inside could judge his course only by
+the feel. As the three who were deserted watched, hoping ardently that
+Quade would not be able to find the opening, the left side-rockets
+spouted lances of fire, and they knew he had discovered the way to
+maneuver the borer laterally. The new flames welded with the exhaust
+of the main tubes into a great fan-shaped tail, so brilliant and shot
+through with other colors that their eyes could not stand the sight,
+except in winks. The borer jerked to the right, but still it could not
+find the hole. Then the flames lessened for a moment, and the borer
+sank down, to rise again a moment later. Its ascent was so labored
+that Phil shouted to Professor Guinness:
+
+"Why so slow?"
+
+And the inventor told him that which he had not seen for the
+intolerable light.
+
+"Only half his rockets are on!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This time the sphere was correctly aimed, however, and it roared
+straight into the hole. Immediately the fierce sound of the exhaust
+was muffled, and in a few seconds only the fiery plumage, shooting
+down from the ceiling, showed where the machine was. Then this
+disappeared, and the noise alone was left.
+
+Phil leaped forward, intending to stare up, but Guinness's yell halted
+him.
+
+"Not yet! He might still use the disintegrators!"
+
+For many minutes they waited, till the muffled exhaust had died to a
+drone. There was a puzzled expression on the professor's face as the
+three at last walked over and dared peer up into the hole. Far above,
+the splash of orange lit the walls of the tunnel.
+
+"That's funny!" the old man muttered. "He's only using half the
+rockets--about ten. I thought he'd turn them all on when he got into
+the hole, but he didn't. Either they were damaged in the fall, or
+Quade doesn't see fit to use them."
+
+"Half of them are enough," said Phil bitterly, and put his arm around
+the quiet girl standing next to him. Together, a silent little group,
+they watched the spot of orange die to a pin-point; watched it waver,
+twinkle, ever growing smaller.... And then it was gone.
+
+Gone! Back to the surface of the earth, to the normal world of
+reality. Only four miles above them--a small enough distance on the
+surface itself--and yet it might have been a million miles, so utterly
+were they barred from it....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The same thought was in their minds, though none of them dared express
+it. They were thinking of the serene desert, and the cool wind, and
+the buttes and the high hills, placid in the moonlight. Of the hushed
+rise of the dawn, the first flush of the sun that was so achingly
+lovely on the desert. The sun they would never see again, buried in a
+lifeless world of gloom four miles within.... And buried alive--and
+not alive for long....
+
+But that way lay madness. Phil Holmes drove the horrible thoughts from
+his brain and forced a smile to his face.
+
+"Well, that's that!" he said in a voice meant to be cheerful.
+
+The dim cavern echoed his words mockingly. With the earth-borer
+gone--the man-made machine that had dared break a solitude undisturbed
+since the earth first cooled--the great cavern seemed to return to its
+awful original mood. The three dwarfed humans became wholly conscious
+of it. They felt it almost a living thing, stretching vastly around
+them, tightening its unheard spell on them. Its smell, of mouldy earth
+and rocks down which water slowly dripped, filled their nostrils and
+somehow added to their fear.
+
+As they looked about, their eyes became accustomed to the dim, eery,
+phosphorescent illumination. They saw little worm-like creatures now
+and again appear from tiny holes between stalagmites in the jagged
+floor; and, as Phil wondered in his mind how long it would be before
+they would be reduced to using them for food, a strange mole-sized
+animal scraped from the darkness and pecked at one of them. As it
+slithered away, a writhing shape in its mouth, Holmes muttered
+bitterly: "A competitor!" Vague, flitting forms haunted the gloom
+among the stalactites of the distorted ceiling--hints of the things
+that lived in the terrible silence of this nether world. Here Time had
+paused, and life had halted in primate form.
+
+A little moan came from Sue Guinness's pale lips. She plucked at her
+arm; a sickly white worm, only an inch long, had fallen on it from the
+ceiling. "Oh!" she gasped. "Oh!"
+
+Phil drew her closer to him, and walked with her over to Quade's
+wrecked borer. "Let's see what we've got here," he suggested
+cheerfully.
+
+The machine was over on its side, the metal mangled and crushed beyond
+repair. Nevertheless, he squeezed into it. "Stand back!" he warned.
+"I'm going to try its rockets!" There was a click of broken machinery,
+and that was all. "Rockets gone," Phil muttered.
+
+He pulled another lever over. There was a sputter from within the
+borer, then a furious roar that sent great echoes beating through the
+cavern. A cloud of dust reared up before the bottom of the machine,
+whipped madly for a moment, and sank as the bellow of sound died down.
+Sue saw that a rocky rise in the floor directly in front of the
+disintegrators had been planed off levelly.
+
+Phil scrambled out. "The disintegrators work," he said, "but a lot of
+good they do us. The borer's hopelessly cracked." He shrugged his
+shoulders, and with a discouraged gesture cast to the ground a coil of
+rope he had found inside.
+
+Then suddenly he swung around. "Professor!" he called to the old
+figure standing bowed beneath the hole in the ceiling. "There's a
+draft blowing from somewhere! Do you feel it?"
+
+Guinness felt with his hands a moment and nodded slowly. "Yes," he
+said.
+
+"It's coming from this way!" Sue said excitedly, pointing into the
+darkness on one side of the cavern. "And it goes up the hole we made
+in the ceiling!"
+
+Phil turned eagerly to the old inventor. "It must come from
+somewhere," he said, "and that somewhere may take us toward the
+surface. Let's follow it!"
+
+"We might as well," the other agreed wearily. His was the tone of a
+man who has only a certain time to live.
+
+But Phil was more eager. "While there's life, there's hope," he said
+cheerfully. "Come on, Sue, Professor!" And he led the way forward
+toward the dim, distorted rock shapes in the distance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The roof and sides of the cavern angled down into a rough, tunnel-like
+opening, from which the draft swept. It was a heavy air, weighted with
+the smell of moist earth and lifeless water and a nameless, flat,
+stale gas. They slowly made their way through the impeding
+stalagmites, surrounded by a dark blur of shadows, the ghostly
+phosphorescent light illuminating well only the few rods around them.
+Utter silence brooded over the tunnel.
+
+Phil paused when they had gone about seventy-five feet. "I left that
+rope behind," he said, "and we may need it. I'll return and get it,
+and you both wait right here." With the words he turned and went back
+into the shadows.
+
+He went as fast as he could, not liking to leave the other two alone.
+But when he had retrieved the rope and tied it to his waist, he
+permitted himself a last look up as he passed under the hole in the
+ceiling--and what he saw there tensed every muscle in his body, and
+made his heart beat like mad. Again there was a tiny spot of orange in
+the blackness above!
+
+"Professor!" he yelled excitedly. "Sue! Come here! The sphere's
+coming back!"
+
+There was no doubt about it. The pin-point of light was growing each
+second, with the flame of the descending exhausts. Guinness and his
+daughter ran from the tunnel, and, guided by Phil's excited
+ejaculations, hurried to his side. Their eyes confirmed what his had
+seen. The earth-borer was coming down!
+
+"But," Guinness said bewilderedly, "those rockets were enough to lift
+him!"
+
+This was a mystery. Even though ten rockets were on--ten tiny spots of
+orange flame--the sphere came down swiftly. The same force which some
+time before had lifted it slowly up was now insufficient. The roar of
+the tubes rose rapidly. "Get back!" Phil ordered, remembering the
+danger, and they all retreated to the mouth of the tunnel, ready to
+peep cautiously around the edge. Holmes' jaws were locked tight with
+grim resolution. Quade was coming back! he told himself exultantly.
+This time he must not go up alone! This time--!
+
+But his half-formed resolutions were idle. He could not know what
+frightful thing was bringing Quade down--what frightful experience was
+in store for them all....
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_Spawn of the Cavern_
+
+In a crescendo of noise that stunned their ears, the earth-borer came
+down. Tongues of fire flared from the hole, speared to the ground and
+were deflected upward, cradling the metal ball in a wave of flame.
+Through this fiery curtain the machine slowly lowered to the floor,
+where a shower of sparks spattered out, blinding the eyes of the
+watchers with their brilliance. For a full minute the orange-glowing
+sphere lay there, quivering from the vibration; then the exhausts died
+and the wave of flame wavered and sank into nothingness. While their
+ear-drums continued the thunder, the three stared at the borer, not
+daring to approach, yet striving to solve the mystery of why it had
+sunk despite the up-thrust of ten rocket tubes.
+
+As their eyes again became accustomed to the familiar phosphorescent
+illumination, pallid and cold after the fierce orange flame, they saw
+why--and their eyes went wide with surprise and horror.
+
+A strange mass was covering the top of the earth-borer--something that
+looked like a heap of viscid, whitish jelly. It was sprawled
+shapelessly over the round upper part of the metal sphere, a
+half-transparent, loathsome stuff, several feet thick in places.
+
+And Phil Holmes, striving to understand what it could be, saw an awful
+thing. "It's moving!" he whispered, unconsciously drawing Sue closer.
+"There's--there's life in it!"
+
+Lazy quiverings were running through the mound of jelly, pulsings that
+gave evidence of its low organism. They saw little ripples of even
+beat run over it, and under them steady, sluggish convulsions that
+told of life; that showed, perhaps, that the thing was hungry and
+preparing to move its body in quest of food.
+
+It was alive, unquestionably. The borer lay still, but this thing
+moved internally, of itself. It was life in its lowest, most primate
+form. The mass was mind, stomach, muscle and body all in one, stark
+and raw before their startled eyes.
+
+"Oh, God!" Phil whispered through the long pause. "It can't be
+real!..."
+
+"Protoplasm--a monster amoeba," David Guinness's curiously cracked
+voice said. "Just as it exists on the surface, only microscopically.
+Primate life...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lock of the earth-borer clicked. Phil gasped. "Quade is coming
+out!" he said. A little cry of horror came from Sue. And the metal
+door opened.
+
+James Quade stepped through, automatic in hand. He was fresh from the
+light inside, and he could not see well. He was quite unconscious of
+what was oozing down on him from above, of the flabby heap that was
+carefully stretching down for him. He peered into the gloom, looking
+for the three he had deserted, and all the time an arm from the mass
+above crept nearer. Sue Guinness's nerves suddenly gave, and she
+shrieked; but Quade's ears were deaf from the borer's thunder, and he
+did not hear her.
+
+It was when he lifted one foot back into the sphere--probably to get
+out the searchlight--that he felt the thing's presence. He looked
+up--and a strange sound came from him. For seconds he apparently could
+not move, stark fear rooting him to the ground, the gun limp in his
+hand.
+
+Then a surge ran through the mound of flesh, and the arm, a pseudopod,
+reached more rapidly for him.
+
+It stung Quade into action. He leaped back, brought up his automatic,
+and fired at the thing once; then three times more. He, and each one
+of the others, saw four bullets thud into the heap of pallid matter
+and heard them clang on the metal of the sphere beneath. They had gone
+right through its flesh--but they showed no slightest effect!
+
+Quade was evidently unwilling to leave the sphere. Jerking his arm up
+he brought his trigger finger back again. A burst of three more shots
+barked through the cavern, echoing and re-echoing. The man screamed an
+inarticulate oath as he saw how useless his bullets were, and hurled
+the empty gun at the monster--which was down on the floor now, and
+bunching its sluggish body together.
+
+The automatic went right into it. They could all see it there, in the
+middle of the amorphous body, while the creature stopped, as if
+determining whether or not it was food. Quade screwed his courage
+together in the pause, and tried to dodge past to the door of the
+sphere; but the monster was alert: another pseudopod sprang out from
+its shapeless flesh, sending him back on his heels.
+
+The feeler had all but touched Quade, and with the closeness of his
+escape, the remnants of his courage gave. He yelled, and turned and
+ran.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He ran straight for the three who watched from the tunnel mouth, and
+the mound of shapeless jelly came fast on his trail. It came in
+surging rolls, like thick fluid oozing forward; it would have been
+hard to measure its size, for each moment it changed. The only
+impression the four humans had was that of a wave of half-transparent
+matter that one instant was a sticky ball of viscid flesh and the next
+a rapidly advancing crescent whose horns reached far out on each flank
+to cut off retreat.
+
+By instinct Phil jerked Sue around and yelled at the professor to run,
+for the old man seemed to be frozen into an attitude of fearful
+interest. Bullets would not stop the thing--could anything? Holmes
+wondered. He could visualize all too easily the death they would meet
+if that shapeless, naked protoplasmic mass overtook and flowed over
+them....
+
+But he wasted no time with such thoughts. They ran, all three, into
+the dark tunnel.
+
+Quade caught up with them quickly. Personal enmity was suspended
+before this common peril. They could not run at full speed, for a
+multitude of obstacles hindered them. Tortuous ridges of rock lay
+directly across their path, formations that had been whipped in some
+mad, eon-old convulsion and then, through the ages, remained frozen
+into their present distortion; black pits gaped suddenly before them;
+half-seen stalagmites, whose crystalline edges were razor-sharp, tore
+through to their flesh. Haste was perilous where every moment they
+might stumble into an unseen cleft and go pitching into awful depths
+below. They were staking everything on the draft that blew steadily
+in their faces; Phil told himself desperately that it must lead to
+some opening--it must!
+
+But what if the opening were a vertical, impassable tunnel? He would
+not think of that....
+
+Old David Guinness tired fast, and was already lagging in the rear
+when Quade gasped hoarsely:
+
+"Hurry! It's close behind!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Surging rapidly at a constant distance behind them, it came on. It was
+as fast as they were, and evidently untiring. It was in its own
+element; obstacles meant nothing to it. It oozed over the jagged
+ridges that took the humans precious moments to scramble past, and the
+speed of its weird progress seemed to increase as theirs faltered. It
+was a heartless mass driven inexorably by primal instinct towards the
+food that lay ahead. The dim phosphorescent illumination tinged its
+flabby tissues a weird white.
+
+The passage they stumbled through narrowed. Long irregular spears of
+stalactites hung from the unseen ceiling; others, the drippings of
+ages, pronged up from the floor, shredding their clothes as they
+jarred into them. One moment they were clambering up-hill, slipping on
+the damp rock; the next they were sliding down into unprobed darkness,
+reckless of where they would land. They were aware only that the
+water-odorous draft was still in their faces, and the hungry mound of
+flesh behind....
+
+"I can't last much longer!" old Guinness's winded voice gasped. "Best
+leave me behind. I--I might delay it!"
+
+For answer, Phil went back, grabbed him by the arm and dragged his
+tired body forward. He was snatching a glance behind to see how close
+the monster was, when Sue's frightened voice reached him from ahead.
+
+"There's a wall here, Phil--and no way through!"
+
+And then Holmes came to it. It barred the passage, and was apparently
+unbroken. Yet the draft still came!
+
+"Search for where the draft enters!" he yelled. "You take that side!"
+And he started feeling over the clammy, uneven surface, searching
+frantically for a cleft. It seemed to be hopeless. Quade stood staring
+back into the gloom, his eyes looking for what he knew was surging
+towards them. His face had gone sickly white, he was trembling as if
+with fever, and he sucked in air with long, racking gasps.
+
+"Here! I have it!" cried the girl suddenly at her end of the wall. The
+other three ran over, and saw, just above her head, a narrow rift in
+the rock, barely wide enough to squirm through. "Into it!" Phil
+ordered tersely. He grasped her, raised her high, and she wormed
+through. Quade scrambled to get in next, but Holmes shoved him aside
+and boosted the old man through. Then he helped the other.
+
+A second after he had swung himself up, a wave of whitish matter
+rolled up below, hungry pseudopods reaching for the food it knew was
+near. It began to trickle up the wall....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The crack was narrow and jagged; utterly black. Phil could hear Quade
+frantically worming himself ahead, and he wondered achingly if it
+would lead anywhere. Then a faint, clear voice from ahead rang out:
+
+"It's opening up!"
+
+Sue's voice! Phil breathed more easily. The next moment Quade
+scrambled through; dim light came; and they were in another vast,
+ghostly-lit cavern.
+
+The crack came out on its floor-level; Guinness was resting near, and
+his daughter had her hands on a large boulder of rock. "Let's shove it
+against the hole!" she suggested to Phil. "It might stop it!"
+
+"Good, Sue, good!" he exclaimed, and at once all four of them strained
+at the chunk, putting forth every bit of strength they had. The
+boulder stirred, rolled over, and thudded neatly in front of the
+crack, almost completely sealing it. There was only a cleft of five
+inches on one side.
+
+But their expression of relief died in their throats. A tiny trickle
+of white appeared through the niche. The amorphous monster was
+compressing itself to a single stream, thin enough to squeeze through
+even that narrow space.
+
+They could not block it. They had nothing to attack it with. There was
+nothing to do but run.... And hope for a chance to double back....
+
+As nearly as they could make out, this second cavern was as large as
+the first. They could dimly see the fantastic shapes of hundreds of
+stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Clumps of stalagmites made the
+floor a maze which they threaded painfully. The strong steady draft
+guided them like a radio beacon, leading them to their only faint hope
+of escape and life. Guinness, very tired, staggered along
+mechanically, a heavy weight on Phil's supporting arm; James Quade ran
+here and there in frantic spurts of speed. Sue was silent, but the
+hopelessness in her eyes tortured Phil like a wound. His shirt had
+long since been ripped to shreds; his face, bruised in the first place
+by the borer he had crashed in, now was scratched and bloody from
+contact with rough stalagmites.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then, without warning, they suddenly found among the rough walls on
+the far side of the cavern, the birthplace of the draft. It lay at the
+edge of the floor--a dark hole, very wide. Black, sinister and clammy
+from the draft that poured from it, it pierced vertically down into
+the very bowels of the earth. It was impassable.
+
+James Quade crumpled at the brink; "It's the end!" he moaned. "We
+can't go farther! It's the end of the draft!"
+
+The hole blocked their forward path completely. They could not go
+ahead.... In seconds, it seemed, the slithering that told of the
+monster's approach sounded from behind. Sue's eyes were already fixed
+on the awful, surging mass when a voice off to one side yelled:
+
+"Here! Quick!"
+
+It was Phil Holmes. He had been scouting through the gloom, and had
+found something.
+
+The other three ran to him. "There's another draft going through
+here," he explained rapidly, pointing to an angled crevice in the
+rocky wall. "There's a good chance it goes to the cavern where the
+sphere and the hole to the surface are. Anyway, we've got to take it.
+I'd better go first, after this--and you, Quade, last. I trust you
+less than the monster behind."
+
+He turned and edged into the crack, and the others followed as he had
+ordered. Quickly the passageway broadened, and they found the going
+much easier than it had been before. For perhaps ten minutes they
+scrambled along, with the draft always on their backs and the blessed,
+though faint, fire of hope kindling again. In all that time they did
+not see their pursuer once, and the hope that they had lost it brought
+a measure of much needed optimism to drive their tired bodies onward.
+They found but few time-wasting obstacles. If only the tunnel would
+continue right into the original cavern! If only their path would stay
+clear and unhindered!
+
+But it did not. The sound of Phil's footsteps ahead stopped, and when
+Sue and her father came up they saw why.
+
+"A river!" Phil said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were standing on a narrow ledge that overhung an underground
+river. A fetid smell of age-old, lifeless water rose from it. Dimly,
+at least fifty feet across, they could see the other side, shrouded in
+vague shadows. The inky stream beneath did not seem to move at all,
+but remained smooth and hard and thick-looking.
+
+They could not go around it. The ledge was only a few feet wide, and
+blocked at each side.
+
+"Got to cross!" Phil said tersely.
+
+Quade, sickly-faced, stared down. "There--there might be other things
+in that water!" he gasped. "Monsters!"
+
+"Sure," agreed Phil contemptuously. "You'd better stay here." He
+turned to the others. "I'll see how deep it is," he said, and without
+the faintest hesitation dove flatly in.
+
+Oily ripples washed back, and they saw his head poke through,
+sputtering. "Not deep," he said. "Chest-high. Come on."
+
+He reached for Sue, helped her down, and did the same for her father.
+Holding each by the hand, Sue's head barely above the water, he
+started across. They had not gone more than twenty feet when they
+heard Quade, left on the bank, give a hoarse yell of fear and dive
+into the water. Their dread pursuer had caught up with them.
+
+And it followed--on the water! Phil had hoped it would not be able to
+cross, but once more the thing's astounding adaptability dashed his
+hopes. Without hesitation, the whitish jelly sprawled out over the
+water, rolling after them with ghastly, snake-like ripples, its pallid
+body standing out gruesomely against the black, odorous tide.
+
+Quade came up thrashing madly, some feet to the side of the other
+three. He was swimming--and swimming with such strength that he
+quickly left them behind. He would be across before they; and that
+meant there was a good chance that the earth-borer would go up again
+with only one passenger....
+
+Phil fought against the water, pulling Sue and her father forward as
+best he could. From behind came the rippling sound of their shapeless
+pursuer. "Ten feet more--" Holmes began--then abruptly stopped.
+
+There had been a swish, a ripple upstream. And as their heads turned
+they saw the water part and a black head, long, evil, glistening,
+pointing coldly down to where they were struggling towards the shore.
+Phil Holmes felt his strength ooze out. He heard Professor Guinness
+gasp:
+
+"A water-snake!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Its head was reared above the surface, gliding down on them silently,
+leaving a wedge of long, sluggish ripples behind. When thirty feet
+away the glistening head dipped under, and a great half-circle of
+leg-thick body arched out. It was like an oily stream of curved cable;
+then it ended in a pointed tail--and the creature was entirely under
+water....
+
+With desperate strength Phil hauled the girl to the bank and, standing
+in several feet of water, pushed her up. Then he whirled and yanked
+old Guinness past him up into the hands of his daughter. With them
+safe, and Sue reaching out her hand for him, he began to scramble up
+himself.
+
+But he was too late. There was a swish in the water behind him, and
+toothless, hard-gummed jaws clamped tight over one leg and drew him
+back and under. And with the touch of the creature's mouth a stiff
+shock jolted him; his body went numb; his arms flopped limply down. He
+was paralyzed.
+
+Sue Guinness cried out. Her father stared helplessly at the spot where
+his young partner had disappeared with so little commotion.
+
+"It was an eel," he muttered dully. "Some kind of electric eel...."
+
+Phil dimly realized the same thing. A moment later his face broke the
+surface, but he could not cry out; he could not move his little
+finger. Only his involuntary muscles kept working--his heart and his
+lungs. He found he could control his breathing a little.... And then
+he was wondering why he was remaining motionless on the surface.
+Gradually he came to understand.
+
+He had not felt it, but the eel had let go its hold on his leg, and
+had disappeared. But only for a moment. Suddenly, from somewhere near,
+its gleaming body writhed crazily, and a terrific twist of its tail
+hit Phil a glancing blow on the chest. He was swept under, and the
+water around him became a maelstrom. When next he bobbed to the
+tumultuous surface, he managed to get a much-needed breath of
+air--and in the swirling currents glimpsed the long, snake-like head
+of the eel go shooting by, with thin trickles of stuff that looked
+like white jelly clinging to it.
+
+That explained what was happening. The eel had been challenged by the
+ameboid monster, and they were fighting for possession of him--the
+common prey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The water became an inferno of whipping and lashing movements, of
+whitish fibers and spearing thrusts of a glistening black electric
+body. Unquestionably the eel was using its numbing electric shock on
+its foe. Time and time again Phil felt the amoeba grasp him,
+searingly, only to be wrenched free by the force of the currents the
+combat stirred up. Once he thudded into the bottom of the river, and
+his lungs seemed about to burst before he was again shot to the top
+and managed to get a breath. At last the water quieted somewhat, and
+Phil, at the surface, saw the eel bury its head in a now apathetic
+mound of flesh.
+
+It tore a portion loose with savage jaws, a portion that still writhed
+after it was separated from the parent mass; and then the victor
+glided swiftly downstream, and disappeared under the surface....
+
+Holmes floated helplessly on the inky water. He could see the amoeba
+plainly; it was still partly paralyzed, for it was very still. But
+then a faint tremor ran through it; a wave ran over its surface--and
+it moved slowly towards him once again.
+
+Desperately Phil tried to retreat. The will was there, but the body
+would not work. Save for a feeble flutter of his hands and feet, he
+could not move. He could not even turn around to bid Sue and David
+Guinness good-by--with his eyes....
+
+Then a fresh, loved voice sounded just behind him, and he felt
+something tighten around his waist.
+
+"It's all right, dear!" the voice called. "Hang on; we'll get you
+out!"
+
+Sue had come in after him! She had grasped the rope tied to his belt,
+and she and her father were pulling him back to the bank!
+
+He wanted to tell her to go back--the amoeba was only feet away--but
+he could only manage a little croak. And then he was safe up on the
+ledge at the other side of the river.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A surge of strength filled his limbs, and he knew the shock was
+rapidly wearing off. But it was also wearing off of the monster in the
+water. Its speed increased; the ripplings of its amorphous
+body-substance became quicker, more excited. It came on steadily.
+
+While it came, the girl and her father worked desperately over Phil,
+massaging his body and pulling him further up the bank. It had all but
+reached the bank when Holmes gasped:
+
+"I think I can walk now. Where--where did Quade go to?"
+
+Guinness gestured over to the right, up a dim winding passage through
+the rocks.
+
+"Then we must follow--fast!" Phil said, staggering to his feet. "He
+may get to the sphere first; he'll go up by himself even yet! I'm all
+right!"
+
+Despite his words, he could not run, and could only command an awkward
+walk. Sue lifted one of his arms around her shoulder, and her father
+took the other, and without a backward glance they labored ahead. But
+Phil's strength quickly returned, and they raised the pace until they
+had broken once more into a stumbling run.
+
+How far ahead James Quade was, they did not know, but obviously they
+could follow where he had gone. Once again the draft was strong on
+their backs. They felt sure they were on the last stretch, headed for
+the earth-borer. But, unless they could overtake Quade, he would be
+there first. They had no illusions about what that would mean....
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_A Death More Hideous_
+
+Quade was there first.
+
+When they burst out of a narrow crevice, not far from the
+funnel-shaped opening they had originally entered, they saw him
+standing beside the open door of the sphere as if waiting. The
+searchlight inside was still on, and in its shaft of light they could
+see that he was smiling thinly, once more his old, confident self. It
+would only take him a second to jump in, slam the door and lock it. He
+could afford a last gesture....
+
+The three stopped short. They saw something he did not.
+
+"So!" he observed in his familiar, mocking voice. He paused, seeing
+that they did not come on. He had plenty of time.
+
+He said something else, but the two men and the girl did not hear what
+it was. As if by a magnet their eyes were held by what was hanging
+above him, clinging to the lip of the hole the sphere had made in the
+ceiling.
+
+It was an amoeba, another of those single-celled, protoplasmic mounds
+of flesh. It had evidently come down through the hole; and now it was
+stretching, rubber-like, lower and lower, a living, reaching
+stalactite of whitish hunger.
+
+Quade was all unconscious of it. His final words reached Phil's
+consciousness.
+
+"... And this time, of course, I will keep the top disintegrators on.
+No other monster will then be able to weigh me down!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and turned to the door. And that movement
+was the signal that brought his doom. Without a sound, the poised mass
+above dropped.
+
+James Quade never knew what hit him. The heap of whitish jelly fell
+squarely. There was a brief moment of frantic lashing, of tortured
+struggles--then only tiny ripples running through the monster as it
+fed.
+
+Sue Guinness turned her head. But the two men for some reason could
+not take their eyes away....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the girl's voice that jerked them back to reality. "The other!"
+she gasped. "It's coming, behind!"
+
+They had completely forgotten the mass in the tunnel. Turning, they
+saw that it was only fifteen feet away and approaching fast, and
+instinctively they ran out into the cavern, skirting the sphere
+widely. When they came to Quade's wrecked borer Phil, who had snatched
+a glance behind, dragged them down behind it. For he had seen their
+pursuer abandon the chase and go to share in the meal of its fellow.
+
+"We'd best not get too far away," he whispered. "When they leave the
+front of the borer, maybe we can make a dash for it."
+
+For minutes that went like hours the young man watched, waiting for
+the creatures to be done, hoping that they would go away. Fortunately
+the sphere lay between, and he was not forced to see too much. Only
+one portion of one of the monsters was visible, lapping out from
+behind the machine....
+
+At last his body tensed, and he gripped Sue and her father's arm in
+quick warning. The things were leaving the sphere. Or, rather, only
+one was. For Phil saw that they had agglutenated--merged into
+oneness--and now the monster that remained was the sum of the sizes of
+the original two. And more....
+
+They all watched. And they all saw the amoeba stop, hesitate for a
+moment--and come straight for the wrecked borer behind which they were
+hidden.
+
+"Damn!" Phil whispered hoarsely. "It's still hungry--and it's after
+us!"
+
+David Guinness sighed wearily. "It's heavy and sluggish, now," he
+said, "so maybe if we run again.... Though I don't know how I can last
+any longer...."
+
+Holmes did not answer. His eyes were narrowed; he was casting about
+desperately for a plan. He hardly felt Sue's light touch on his arm as
+she whispered:
+
+"In case, Phil--in case.... This must be good-by...."
+
+But the young man turned to her with gleaming eyes. "Good-by,
+nothing!" he cried. "We've still got a card to play!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She stared at him, wondering if he had cracked from the strain of what
+he had passed through. But his next words assured her he had not. "Go
+back, Sue," he said levelly. "Go far back. We'll win through this
+yet."
+
+She hesitated, then obeyed. She crept back from the wrecked borer,
+back into the dim rear, eyes on Phil and the sluggish mass that moved
+inexorably towards him. When she had gone fifteen or twenty yards she
+paused, and watched the two men anxiously.
+
+Phil was talking swiftly to Professor Guinness. His voice was low and
+level, and though she could not hear the words she could catch the
+tone of assurance that ran through them. She saw her father nod his
+head, and he seemed to make the gesture with vigor. "I will," she
+heard him say; and he slapped Phil on the back, adding: "But for God's
+sake, be careful!"
+
+And with these words the old man wormed inside Quade's wrecked borer
+and was gone from the girl's sight.
+
+She wanted desperately to run forward and learn what Phil intended to
+do, but she restrained herself and obeyed his order. She waited, and
+watched; and saw the young man stand up, look at the slowly advancing
+monster--and deliberately walk right into its path!
+
+Sue could not move from her fright. In a daze she saw Phil advance
+cautiously towards the amoeba and pause when within five feet of it.
+The thing stopped; remained absolutely motionless. She saw him take
+another short step forward. This time a pseudopod emerged, and reached
+slowly out for him. Phil avoided it easily, but by so narrow a margin
+that the girl's heart stopped beating. Then she saw him step back;
+and, snail-like, the creature followed, pausing twice, as if wary and
+suspicious. Slowly Phil Holmes drew it after him.
+
+To Sue, who did not know what was his plan, it seemed a deliberate
+invitation to death. She forgot about her father, lying inside the
+mangled borer, waiting. She did not see that Phil was leading the
+monster directly in front of it....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a grotesque, silent pursuit. The creature appeared to be
+unalert; its movements were sloth-like; yet the girl knew that if Phil
+once ventured an inch too close, or slipped, or tried to dodge past it
+to the sphere, its torpidness would vanish and it would have him. His
+maneuvering had to be delicate, judged to a matter of inches. Tense
+with the suspense, the strain of the slow-paced seconds, she
+watched--and yet hardly dared to watch, fearful of the awful thing she
+might see.
+
+It was a fantastic game of tag her lover was playing, with death the
+penalty for tardiness. The slow, enticing movements were repeated
+again and again, Phil advancing very close, and stepping back in the
+nick of time. Always he barely avoided the clutching white arms that
+were extended, and little by little he decoyed the thing onward....
+
+Then came the end. As Holmes was almost in front of the wrecked
+machine, Sue saw him glance quickly aside--and, as if waiting for that
+moment when he would be off guard, the monster whipped forward in a
+great, reaching surge.
+
+Sue's ragged nerves cracked: she shrieked. They had him! She started
+forward, then halted abruptly. With a tremendous leap, Phil Holmes had
+wrenched free and flung himself backwards. She heard his yell:
+
+"Now!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a sputter from the bottom of the outstretched borer; then,
+like the crack of a whip, came a bellow of awful sound.
+
+A thick cloud of dust reared up, and the ear-numbing thunder rolled
+through the cavern in great pulsing echoes. And then Sue Guinness
+understood what the young man had been about.
+
+The disintegrators of James Quade's borer had sent a broad beam of
+annihilation into the monster. His own machine had destroyed his
+destroyer--and given his intended victims their only chance to escape
+from the dread fate he had schemed for them.
+
+Sue could see no trace of the creature in its pyre of slow-swirling
+dust. Caught squarely, its annihilation had been utter. And then,
+through the thunder that still echoed in her ear-drums, she heard a
+joyful voice.
+
+"We got 'em!"
+
+Through the dusty haze Phil appeared at her side. He flung his arms up
+exultantly, swept her off the ground, hugged her close.
+
+"We got 'em!" he cried again. "We're free--free to go up!"
+
+Professor David Guinness crawled from the borer. His face, for the
+first time since the descent, wore a broad smile. Phil ran over to
+him, slapped him on the back; and the older man said:
+
+"You did it beautifully, Phil." He turned to Sue. "He had to decoy
+them right in front of the disintegrators. It was--well, it was
+magnificent!"
+
+"All credit to Sue: she was my inspiration!" Phil said, laughing. "But
+now," he added, "let's see if we can fix those dead rocket-tubes. I
+have a patient up above--and, anyway, I'm not over-fond of this
+place!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three had won through. They had blasted four miles down from the
+surface of the earth. The brain of an elderly scientist, the
+quick-witted courage of a young engineer, had achieved the seemingly
+impossible--and against obstacles that could not have been predicted.
+Death had attended that achievement, as death often does accompany
+great forward steps; James Quade had gone to a death more hideous than
+that he devised for the others. But, in spite of the justice of it, a
+moment of silence fell on the three survivors as they came to the spot
+where his fate at last had caught up to him.
+
+But it was only a moment. It was relieved by Professor Guinness's
+picking up the chunk of radium ore his former partner had hewn from
+the cavern's wall. He held it up for all to see, and smiled.
+
+"Here it is," he said simply.
+
+Then he led the way into his earth-borer, and the little door closed
+quietly and firmly into place.
+
+For a few minutes slight tappings came from within, as if a wrench or
+a screwdriver were being used. Then the tappings stopped, and all was
+silence.
+
+A choke, a starting cough, came from beneath the sphere. A torrent of
+rushing sound burst out, and spears of orange flame spurted from the
+bottom and splashed up its sides, bathing it in fierce, brilliant
+light. It stirred. Then, slowly and smoothly, the great ball of metal
+raised up.
+
+It hit the edge of the hole in the ceiling, and hung there,
+hesitating. Side-rockets flared, and the sphere angled over. Then it
+slid, roaring, through the hole.
+
+Swiftly the spots of orange from its rocket-tube exhausts died to
+pin-points. There were now almost twenty of them. And soon these
+pin-points wavered, and vanished utterly.
+
+Then there was only blackness in the hole that went up to the surface.
+Blackness in the hole, calm night on the desert above--and silence, as
+if the cavern were brooding on the puny figures and strange machines
+that had for the first time dared invade its solitude, in the realms
+four miles within the earth....
+
+
+
+
+The Lake of Light
+
+_By Jack Williamson_
+
+[Illustration: _The monster emanated power, sinister, malevolent
+power._]
+
+[Sidenote: In the frozen wastes at the bottom of the world two
+explorers find a strange pool of white fire--and have a strange
+adventure.]
+
+
+The roar of the motor rang loud in the frosty air above a desert of
+ice. The sky above us was a deep purple-blue; the red sun hung like a
+crimson eye low in the north. Three thousand feet below, through a
+hazy blue mist of wind-whipped, frozen vapor, was the rugged
+wilderness of black ice-peaks and blizzard-carved hummocks of snow--a
+grim, undulating waste, black and yellow, splotched with crystal
+white. The icy wind howled dismally through the struts. We were flying
+above the weird ice-mountains of the Enderby quadrant of Antarctica.
+
+That was a perilous flight, across the blizzard-whipped bottom of the
+world. In all the years of polar exploration by air, since Byrd's
+memorable flights, this area had never been crossed. The intrepid
+Britisher, Major Meriden, with the daring American aviatrix whom the
+world had known as Mildred Cross before she married him, had flown
+into it nineteen years before--and like many others they had never
+returned.
+
+Faintly, above the purring drone of the motor, I heard Ray Summers'
+shout. I drew my gaze from the desolate plateau of ice below and
+leaned forward. His lean, fur-hooded face was turned back toward me. A
+mittened hand was pointing, and thin lips moved in words that I did
+not hear above the roar of the engine and the scream of the wind.
+
+I turned and looked out to the right, past the shimmering silver disk
+of the propeller. Under the blue haze of ice-crystals in the air, the
+ice lay away in a vast undulating plain of black and yellow, broken
+with splotches of prismatic whiteness, lying away in frozen desolation
+to the rim of the cold violet sky. Rising against that sky I saw a
+curious thing.
+
+It was a mountain of fire!
+
+Beyond the desert of ice, a great conical peak pointed straight into
+the amethystine gloom of the polar heavens. It was brilliantly white,
+a finger of milky fire, a sharp cone of pure light. It shone with
+white radiance. It was brighter, far brighter, than is the sacred cone
+of Fujiyama in the vivid day of Japan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For many minutes I stared in wonder at it. Far away it was; it looked
+very small. It was like a little heap of light poured from the hand of
+a fire-god. What it might be, I could not imagine. At first sight, I
+imagined it might be a volcano with streams of incandescent lava
+flowing down the side. I knew that this continent of mystery boasted
+Mt. Erebus and other active craters. But there was none of the smoke
+or lurid yellow flame which accompanies volcanic eruptions.
+
+I was still watching it, and wondering, when the catastrophe took
+place--the catastrophe which hurled us into a mad extravaganza of
+amazing adventure.
+
+Our little two-place amphibian was flying smoothly, through air
+unusually good for this continent of storms. The twelve cylinders of
+the motor had been firing regularly since we took off from Byrd's old
+station at Little America fifteen hours before. We had crossed the
+pole in safety. It looked as if we might succeed in this attempt to
+penetrate the last white spot on the map. Then it Happened.
+
+A sudden crack of snapping metal rang out sharp as a pistol report. A
+bright blade of metal flashed past the wing-struts, to fall in a
+flashing arc. The motor broke abruptly into a mad, deep-voiced roar.
+Terrific vibration shook the ship, until I feared that it would go to
+pieces.
+
+Ray Summers, with his usual quick efficiency, cut the throttle.
+Quickly the motor slowed to idling speed; the vibration stopped. A
+last cough of the engine, and there was no sound save the shrill
+screaming of the wind in the gloomy twilight of this unknown land
+beyond the pole.
+
+"What in the devil!" I exclaimed.
+
+"The prop! See!" Ray pointed ahead.
+
+I looked, and the dreadful truth flashed upon me. The steel propeller
+was gone, or half of it at least. One blade was broken off at a jagged
+line just above the hub.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The propeller! What made it break? I've never heard--"
+
+"Search me!" Ray grinned. "The important thing is that it did. It was
+all-metal, of course, tested and guaranteed. The guarantee isn't worth
+much here. A flaw in the forging, perhaps, that escaped detection.
+And this low temperature. Makes metal as brittle as glass. And the
+thing may have been crystallized by the vibration."
+
+The plane was coming down in a shallow glide. I looked out at the grim
+expanse of black ice-crags and glistening snow below us, and it was
+far from a comforting prospect. But I had a huge amount of confidence
+in Ray Summers. I have known him since the day he appeared, from his
+father's great Arizona ranch, to be a freshman in the School of Mines
+at El Paso, where I was then an instructor in geology. We have knocked
+about queer corners of the world together for a good many years. But
+he is still but a great boy, with the bluff, simple manners of the
+West.
+
+"Do you think we can land?" I asked.
+
+"Looks like we've got to," he said, grimly.
+
+"And what after that?"
+
+"How should I know? We have the sledge, tent, furs. Food, and fuel for
+the primus to last a week. There's the rifle, but it must be a
+thousand miles to anything to shoot. We can do our best."
+
+"We should have had an extra prop."
+
+"Of course. But it was so many pounds, when every pound counted. And
+who knew the thing would break?"
+
+"We'll never get out on a week's provisions."
+
+"Not a shot! Too bad to disappoint Captain Harper." Ray grinned wanly.
+"He ought to have the _Albatross_ around there by this time, waiting
+for us." The _Albatross_ was the ship which had left us at Little
+America a few months before, to steam around and pick us up at our
+destination beyond Enderby Land. "We're in the same boat with Major
+Meriden and his wife--and all those others. Lost without a trace."
+
+"You've read Scott's diary--that he wrote after he visited the pole in
+1912--the one they found with the bodies?"
+
+"Yes. Not altogether cheerful. But we won't be trying to get out. No
+use of that." He looked at me suddenly, grinning again. "Say, Jim, why
+not try for that shining mountain we saw? It looks queer enough to be
+interesting. We ought to make it in a week."
+
+"I'm with you," I said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I did not speak again, for the jagged ice-peaks were coming rather
+near. I held my breath as the little plane veered around a slender
+black spire and dropped toward a tiny scrap of smooth snow among the
+ice-hummocks. I might have spared my anxiety. Under Ray's consumately
+skilful piloting, the skids struck the snow with hardly a shock. We
+glided swiftly over the ice and came to rest just short of a yawning
+crevasse.
+
+"Suppose," said Ray, "that we spend the first night in the plane. We
+are tired already. We can keep warm here, and sleep. We've plenty of
+ice to melt for water. Then we're off for the shining mountain."
+
+I agreed: Ray Summers is usually right. We got out the sledge, packed
+it, took our bearings, and made all preparations for a start to the
+luminous mountain, which was about a hundred miles away. The
+thermometer stood at twenty below, but we were comfortable enough in
+our furs as we ate a scanty supper and went to sleep in the cabin of
+the plane.
+
+We started promptly the next morning, after draining the last of the
+hot chocolate from our vacuum bottles, which we left behind. We had a
+light but powerful sporting rifle, with telescopic sights, and several
+hundred rounds of ammunition. Ray put them in the pack, though I
+insisted that we would never need them, unless a quick way out of our
+predicament.
+
+"No, Jim," he said. "We take 'em along. We don't know what we're going
+to find at the shining mountain."
+
+The air was bitterly cold as we set out: it was twenty-five below and
+a sharp wind was blowing. Only our toiling at the sledge kept us warm.
+We covered eighteen miles that day, and made a good camp in the lee
+of a bare stone ridge.
+
+That night there was a slight fall of snow. When we went on it was
+nearly thirty-five degrees below zero. The layer of fresh snow
+concealed irregularities in the ice, making our pulling very hard.
+After an exhausting day we had made hardly fifteen miles.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the following day the sky was covered with gray clouds, and a
+bitterly cold wind blew. We should have remained in the tent, but the
+shortage of food made it imperative that we keep moving. We felt
+immensely better after a reckless, generous fill of hot pemmican stew;
+but the next morning my feet were so painful from frost-bite that I
+could hardly get on my fur boots.
+
+Walking was very painful to me that day, but we made a good distance,
+having come to smoother ice. Ray was very kind in caring for me. I
+became discouraged about going on at all: it was very painful, and I
+knew there was no hope of getting out. I tried to get some of our
+morphine tablets, but Ray had them, and refused to be convinced that
+he ought to go on without me.
+
+On the next march we came in sight of the luminous mountain, which
+cheered me considerably. It was a curious thing, indeed. A
+straight-sided cone of light it was, rather steeper than the average
+volcano. Its point was sharp, its sides smooth as if cut with a
+mammoth plane. And it shone with a pure white light, with a steady and
+unchanging milky radiance. It rose out of the black and dull yellow of
+the ice wilderness like a white finger of hope.
+
+The next morning it was a little warmer. Ray had been caring for my
+feet very attentively, but it took me nearly two hours to get on my
+footgear. Again I tried to get him to leave me, but he refused.
+
+We arrived at the base of the shining mountain in three more marches.
+On the last night the fuel for the primus was all gone, having been
+used up during the very cold weather, and we were unable to melt water
+to drink. We munched the last of our pemmican dry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few minutes after we had started on the last morning, Ray stopped
+suddenly.
+
+"Look at that!" he cried.
+
+I saw what he had seen--the wreck of an airplane, the wings crumpled
+up and blackened with fire. We limped up to it.
+
+"A Harley biplane!" Ray exclaimed. "That is Major Meriden's ship! And
+look at that wing! It looks like it's been in an electric furnace!"
+
+I examined the metal wing; saw that it had been blackened with heat.
+The metal was fused and twisted.
+
+"I've seen a good many wrecks, Jim. I've seen planes that burned as
+they fell. But nothing like that. The fuselage and engines were not
+even afire. Jim, something struck out from that shining mountain and
+brought them down!"
+
+"Are they--" I began.
+
+Ray was poking about in the snow in the cockpits.
+
+"No. Not here. Probably would have been better for them if they had
+been killed in the plane. Quick and merciful."
+
+He examined the engines and propellers.
+
+"No. Seems to be nothing wrong. Something struck them down!"
+
+Soon we went on.
+
+The shining mountain rose before us like a great cone of fire. It must
+have been three thousand feet high, and about that in diameter at the
+bottom. Its walls were as smooth and straight as though turned from
+milky rock crystal in a gigantic lathe. It shone with a steady,
+brilliantly white radiance.
+
+"That's no natural hill!" Ray grunted beside me as we limped on.
+
+We were less than a mile from the foot of the cone of fire. Soon we
+observed another remarkable thing about it. It seemed that a straight
+band of silvery metal rose from the snow about its foot.
+
+"Has it a wall around it?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Evidently," said Ray. "Looks as if it's built on a round metal
+platform. But by whom? When? Why?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We approached the curious wall. It was of a white metal, apparently
+aluminum, or a silvery alloy of that metal. In places it was
+twenty-five feet high, but more usually the snow and ice was banked
+high against it. The smooth white wall of the gleaming mountain stood
+several hundred yards back from the wall.
+
+"Let's have a look over it." Ray suggested. "We can get up on that
+hummock, against it. You know, this place must have been built by
+men!"
+
+We clambered up over the ice, as he suggested, until our heads came
+above the top of the wall.
+
+"A lake of fire!" cried Ray.
+
+Indeed, a lake of liquid fire lay before us. The white aluminum wall
+was hardly a foot thick. It formed a great circular tank, nearly a
+mile across, with the cone of white fire rising in the center. And the
+tank was filled, to within a foot of the top, with shimmeringly
+brilliant white fluid, bright and luminous as the cone--liquid light!
+
+Ray dipped a hand into it. The hand came up with fingers of fire,
+radiant, gleaming, with shining drops falling from them. With a
+spasmodic effort, he flung off the luminous drops, rubbed his hand on
+his garments, and got it back into its fur mitten.
+
+"Gee, it's cold!" he muttered. "Freeze the horns off a brass
+billy-goat!"
+
+"Cold light!" I exclaimed. "What wouldn't a bottle of that stuff be
+worth to a chemist back in the States!"
+
+"That cone must be a factory to make the stuff." Ray suggested,
+hugging his hand. "They might pump the liquid up to the top, and then
+let it trickle down over the sides: that would explain why the cone is
+so bright. The stuff might absorb sunlight, like barium sulphide. And
+there could be chemical action with the air, under the actinic rays."
+
+"Well, if somebody's making cold light, where does he use it?"
+
+"I'd like to find out, and strike him for a hot meal," Ray said,
+grinning. "It's too cold to live on top of the ground around here.
+They must run it down in a cave."
+
+"Then let's find the hole."
+
+"You know it's possible we won't be welcome. This mountain of light
+may be connected with the vanishing of all the aviators. We'd better
+take along the rifle."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We set off around just outside the white metal wall. The snow and ice
+was irregularly banked against it, but the wall itself was smooth and
+unbroken. We had limped along for some two miles, or more than halfway
+around the amazing lake of light. I had begun to doubt that we would
+find anything.
+
+Then we came to a square metal tower, ten feet on a side, that rose
+just outside the silvery wall, to a level with its top. The ice was
+low here; the tower rose twenty feet above its unequal surface. We
+found metal flanges riveted to its side, like the steps of a ladder.
+They were most inconveniently placed, nearly four feet apart; but we
+were able to climb them, and to look down the shaft.
+
+It was a straight-sided pit, evidently some hundreds of feet deep. We
+could see a tiny square of light at the bottom, very far away. The
+flanges ran down the side forming the rungs of a ladder that gave
+access to whatever lay at the bottom.
+
+Without hesitation, Ray climbed over the side and started down. I
+followed him, feeling a great relief in getting out of the freezing
+wind. Ray had the rifle and ammunition strapped to his back, along
+with a few other articles; and I had a small pack. We had abandoned
+the sledge, with the useless stove and the most of our instruments.
+Our food was all gone.
+
+The metal flanges were fully four feet apart, and it was not easy to
+scramble down from one to another; certainly not easy for one who was
+cold, hungry, thirsty, worn out with a week of exhausting marches, and
+suffering the torture of frozen feet.
+
+"You know, this thing was not built by men," Ray observed.
+
+"Not built by men? What do you mean?"
+
+"Men would have put the steps closer together. Jim, I'm afraid we are
+up against something--well--that we aren't used to."
+
+"If men didn't build this, what did?" I was astounded.
+
+"Search me! This continent has been cut off from the rest of the world
+for geologic ages. Such life as has been found here is not common to
+the rest of the earth. It is not impossible that some form of life,
+isolated here, has developed intelligence and acquired the power to
+erect that cone of light--and to burn the wing off a metal airplane."
+
+My thoughts whirled madly as we clambered down the shaft.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It must have taken us an hour to reach the bottom. I did not count the
+steps, but it must have been at least a thousand feet. The air grew
+rapidly warmer as we descended. We both took off most of our heavy fur
+garments, and left them hanging on the rungs.
+
+I was rather nervous. I felt the nearness of an intelligent, hostile
+power. I had a great fear that the owners of those steps would use
+them to find us, and then crush us ruthlessly as they had brought down
+Meriden's plane.
+
+The little square of white light below grew larger. Finally I saw Ray
+swing off and stand on his feet in a flood of white radiance below me.
+The air was warm, moist, laden with a subtle unfamiliar fragrance that
+suggested growing things. Then I stood beside Ray.
+
+We stood on the bare stone floor of a huge cavern. It must have been
+of volcanic origin. The walls glistened with the sparkling smoothness
+of volcanic glass. It was a huge space. The black roof was a hundred
+feet high, or more; the cave was some hundreds of feet wide. And it
+sloped away from us into dim distance as though leading into huger
+cavities below.
+
+The light that shone upon us came from an amazing thing--a fall of
+liquid fire. From the roof plunged a sheer torrent of white
+brilliantly luminous fluid, falling a hundred feet into a shimmering
+pool of moon-flame. Shining opalescent mists swirled about it, and the
+ceaseless roar of it filled the cave with sound. It seemed that a
+stream of the phosphorescent stuff ran off down the cave from the
+pool, to light the lower caverns.
+
+"Very clever!" said Ray. "They make the stuff up there at the cone and
+run it in here to see by."
+
+"This warm air feels mighty good," I remarked, pulling off another
+garment.
+
+Ray sniffed the air. "A curious odor. Smells like something growing.
+Where anything is growing there ought to be something to eat. Let's
+see what we can find."
+
+Only black obsidian covered the floor about us. Cautiously we skirted
+the overflowing pool of white fire, and followed down the stream of it
+that flowed toward the inner cavern. We had gone but a few hundred
+yards when suddenly Ray stopped me with a hand on my arm.
+
+"Lie flat!" he hissed. "Quick!"
+
+He dived behind a huge mass of fire-born granite. I flung myself down
+beside him.
+
+"Something is coming up the trail by the shining river. And it isn't a
+man! It's between us and the light; we should be able to see it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon I heard a curious scraping sound, and a little tinkle of metal. I
+caught a whiff of a powerful odor--a strange, fishy odor--so strong
+that it almost knocked me down.
+
+The thing that made the scraping and the tinkle and the smell came
+into view. The sight of it sickened me with horror.
+
+It was far larger than a man; its body was heavy as a horse's, but
+nearer the ground. In form it suggested a huge crab, though it was not
+very much like any crustacean I had ever seen. It was mostly red in
+color, and covered with a huge scarlet shell. It had five pairs of
+limbs. The two forward pairs had pinchers, seemingly used as hands; it
+scraped along on the other three pairs. Yard-long antennae, slender
+and luminously green, wavered above a grotesque head. The many facets
+of compound eyes stood on the end of foot-long stalks.
+
+The amazing crab-thing wore a metal harness. Bands of silvery aluminum
+were fastened about its shell, with little cases of white metal
+dangling to them. In one of its uplifted claws it carried what seemed
+to be an aluminum bar, two feet long and an inch thick.
+
+It scraped lumberingly past, between us and the racing stream of white
+fire. It passed less than a dozen feet from us. The curious fishy
+smell of it was overpowering, disgusting.
+
+Sweat of horror chilled my limbs. The monster emanated power,
+sinister, malevolent power, power intelligent, alien and hostile to
+man.
+
+I trembled with the fear that it would see us, but it scrambled
+grotesquely on. When it was twenty yards past, Ray picked up a block
+of black lava that lay beneath his hand and hurled it silently and
+swiftly. It crashed splinteringly on the rocks far beyond the
+creature, on the other side of the stream of light.
+
+In fascination I watched the monster as it paused as if astonished.
+The glittering compound eyes twisted about on their stalks, and the
+long shining green tentacles wavered questioningly. Then the knobbed
+limbs snapped the white metal tube to a level position. A metallic
+click came from it.
+
+And a ray of red light, vivid and intense, burst from the tube. It
+flashed across the river of fire. With a dull, thudding burst it
+struck the rocks where the stone had fallen. It must have been a ray
+of concentrated heat. Rocks beneath it flashed into sudden
+incandescence, splintered and cracked, flowed in molten streams.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a moment the intensely brilliant ruby ray flashed off. The rocks in
+the circle where it had struck faded to a dull red and then to
+blackness, still cracking and crumbling.
+
+To my intense relief, the monstrous crab lumbered on.
+
+"That," Ray whispered, "is what got Major Meriden's airplane wing."
+
+When we could hear its scraping progress no longer, we climbed up from
+behind our boulder and continued cautiously down the cavern, beside
+the rushing luminous river. In half a mile we came to a bend. Rounding
+it, we gazed upon a remarkable sight.
+
+We looked into a huge cavity in the heart of the earth. A vast
+underground plain lay before us, with the black lava of the roof
+arching above it. It must have been miles across, though we had no way
+to measure it, and it stretched down into dim hazy distance. Its level
+was hundreds of feet below us.
+
+At our feet the glistening river of fire plunged down again in a
+magnificent flaming fall. Below, its luminous liquid was spread out in
+rivers and lakes and canals, over all the vast plain. The channels ran
+through an amazing jungle. It was a forest of fungus, of mushroom
+things with great fleshy stalks and spreading circular tops. But they
+were not the sickly white and yellow of ordinary mushrooms, but were
+of brilliant colors, bright green, flaming scarlet, gold and
+purple-blue. Huge brilliant yellow stalks, fringed with crimson and
+black, lifted mauve tops thirty feet or more. It was a veritable
+forest of flame-bright fungus.
+
+In the center of this weirdly forested subterranean plain was a great
+lake, filled, not with the flaming liquid, but with dark crystal
+water. And on the bottom of that lake, clearly visible from the
+elevation upon which we stood, was a city!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A city below the water! The buildings were upright cylinders in groups
+of two or three, of dozens, even of hundreds. For miles, the bottom of
+the great lake was covered with them. They were all of crystal,
+azure-blue, brilliant as cylinders turned from immense sapphires. They
+were vividly visible beneath the transparent water. Not one of them
+broke the surface.
+
+Through the clear black water we saw moving hundreds, thousands of the
+giant crabs. The crawled over the hard, pebbled bottom of the lake, or
+swam between the crystal cylinders of the city. They were huge as the
+one we had seen, with red shells, great ominous looking stalked eyes,
+luminous green tentacular antennae and knobbed claws on forelimbs.
+
+"Looks as if we've run on something to write home about," Ray muttered
+in amazement.
+
+"A whole city of them! A whole world! No wonder they could build that
+cone-mountain for a lighting plant!"
+
+"When they got to knocking down airplanes with that heat-ray," he
+speculated, "they were probably surprised to find that other animals
+had developed intelligence."
+
+"Do you suppose those mushroom things are good to eat?"
+
+"We can try and see--if the crabs don't get us first with a heat-ray.
+I'm hungry enough to try anything!"
+
+Again we cautiously advanced. The river of light fell over a sheer
+precipice, but we found a metal ladder spiked to the rock, with rungs
+as inconveniently far apart as those in the shaft. It was five hundred
+feet, I suppose, to the bottom; it took us many minutes to descend.
+
+At last we stepped off in a little rocky clearing. The forest of
+brilliant mushrooms rose about us, great fleshy stalks of gold and
+graceful fringes of black and scarlet about them, with flattened heads
+of purple.
+
+We started eagerly across toward the fungoid forest. I had visions of
+tearing off great pieces of soft, golden flesh and filling my aching
+stomach with it.
+
+We were stopped by a sharp, poignantly eager human cry.
+
+A human being, a girl, darted from among the mushroom stalks and ran
+across to us. Sobbing out great incoherent cries, she dropped at Ray's
+feet, wrapped her arms about his knees and clung to him, while her
+slender body was wracked with sobbing cries.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My first impression was that she was very beautiful--and that
+impression I was never called upon to revise. About her lithe young
+body she had the merest scrap of some curious green fabric--ample in
+the warm air of the great cavern. Luxuriant brown hair fell loose
+about her white shoulders. She was not quite twenty years old, I
+supposed; her body was superbly formed, with the graceful curves and
+the free, smooth movements of a wild thing.
+
+Ray stood motionless for a moment, thunder-struck as I was, while the
+sobbing girl clung to his knees. Then the astonishment on his face
+gave place to pity.
+
+"Poor kid!" he murmured.
+
+He bent, took her tenderly by the shoulder, helped her to her feet.
+
+Her beauty burst upon us like a great light. Smoothly white, her skin
+was, perfect. Wide blue eyes, now appealing, even piteous, looked
+from beneath a wealth of golden brown hair. White teeth, straight and
+even, flashed behind the natural crimson of her lips.
+
+She stood staring at Ray, in a sort of enchantment of wonder. An eager
+light of incredible joy flamed in her amazing eyes; red lips were
+parted in an unconscious smile of joy. She looked like the troubled
+princess in the fairy tale, when the prince of her dreams appeared in
+the flesh.
+
+"God, but you're beautiful!" Ray's words slipped out as if he were
+hardly conscious of them. He flushed quickly, stepped back a little.
+
+The girl's lips opened. She voiced a curious cry. It was deep toned,
+pealing with a wonderful timbre. A happy burst of sound, like a baby
+makes. But strong, ringing, musically golden. And pathetically eager,
+pitifully glad, so that it brought tears to my eyes, cynical old man
+that I am.
+
+I saw Ray wipe his eyes.
+
+"Can you talk?" Ray put the question in a clear, deliberate voice,
+with great kindness ringing in it.
+
+"Talk?" The chiming, golden voice was slow, uncertain. "Talk? Yes. I
+talked--with mother. But for long--I have had no need to talk."
+
+"Where is your mother?" Ray's voice was gentle.
+
+"She is gone. She was here when I was little." The clear, silvery
+voice was more certain now. "Once, when I was almost as big as
+she--she was still. She was cold. She did not move when I called her.
+The Things took her away. She was dead. She told me that sometime she
+would be dead."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bright tears came in the wide blue eyes, trickled down over the
+perfect face. A pathetic catch was in the deliberate, halting voice. I
+turned away, and Ray put a handkerchief to his face.
+
+"What is your name? Who are you?" Ray spoke kindly.
+
+"I am Mildred. Mildred Meriden."
+
+"Meriden!" Ray turned to me. "I bet this is a daughter of the major
+and his wife!"
+
+"Father was the major," the girl said slowly. "He and mother came in a
+machine that flew, from a far land. The Things burned the machine with
+the red fire. They came here and the Things kept them. They made
+mother sing over the water. They killed father. I never saw him."
+
+"I know," Ray, said gently. "We came from the same land. We saw your
+father's machine above."
+
+"You came from outside! And you are going back? Oh, take me with you!
+Take me!" Piteous pleading was in her voice. "It is so--lonely since
+the Things took Mother away. Mother told me that sometime men would
+come, and take me away to see the people and the outside that she told
+me of. Oh, please take me!"
+
+"Don't worry! You go along whenever we leave--if we can get out."
+
+"Oh, I am so glad! You are very good!"
+
+Impulsively, she threw her arms around Ray's neck. Gently, he
+disengaged himself, flushing a little. I noticed, however, that he did
+not seem particularly displeased.
+
+"But can we get out?"
+
+"Mother and I tried. We could never get out. The Things watch. They
+make me come to the water to sing, when the great bell rings."
+
+"Are these things goods to eat?" I motioned to the brilliant fungal
+forest. I had begun to fear that Ray would never get to this very
+important topic.
+
+Blue eyes regarded me. "Eat? Oh, you are hungry! Come! I have food."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Like a child, she grasped Ray's hand, pulled him toward the mushroom
+jungle. I followed, and we slipped in between the brilliantly golden,
+fleshy stalks. They rose to the tangle of bright feathery fringes
+above, huge and substantial as the trunks of trees.
+
+In a few minutes we came to a wide, shallow canal, metal-walled,
+through which a slow current of the opalescent, luminous liquid was
+flowing. We crossed this on a narrow metal foot-bridge, and went on
+through the brilliant forest.
+
+Suddenly we emerged into a little clearing, with the black waters of
+the great lake visible beyond it, across a quarter-mile of rocky
+beach. In the middle of the open space, rose three straight cylinders
+of azure crystal, side by side. Each must have been twenty feet in
+diameter, and forty high. They shone with a clear blue light, like the
+cylindrical buildings we had seen in the strange city of the
+crab-creatures below the great lake.
+
+Mildred Meriden, the strangely beautiful girl who had known no other
+world than this amazing cavern empire where giant crabs reigned,
+beckoned us with unconscious queenly grace to enter the arched door in
+the blue sapphire wall of her remarkable abode of clustered cylinders.
+
+The crystal of the walls seemed luminous, the lofty cylinders were
+filled with a liquid, azure radiance. The high round room we entered
+was strangely furnished. There was a silken couch, a bathing pool of
+blue crystal filled with sparkling water, a curious chest of drawers
+made of bright aluminum with a mirror of polished crystal, its top
+bearing odd combs and other articles. The furnishings must have been
+done by the giant crabs, under human direction.
+
+Mildred led us quickly across the room, through an arched opening into
+another. A round aluminum table stood in the center of the room, with
+two curious metal chairs beside it. Odd metal cabinets stood about the
+shining blue walls. The girl made us sit down, and put dishes before
+us.
+
+She gave us each a bowl of thick, sweetish soup, darkly red; placed
+before us a dish piled high with little circular cakes, crisp and
+brown, which had a tantalizing fragrance; poured for each of us a
+transparent crystal goblet full of clear amber drink.
+
+We fell to with enthusiasm and abandon.
+
+"The Things made this place for father," the girl told us, as she
+watched us eat, attentively replenishing the red soup in the great
+blue crystal bowl, or the little cakes, or the fragrant amber drink.
+"They would give him anything he wanted. But he tried to go away with
+mother, and they killed him."
+
+"We must get out of here," Ray declared when at last we had done. "We
+must get together a lot of food, and enough clothing for all of us. We
+ought to be able to make it to the edge of the ice-pack. We've got to
+give these crab-things the slip; we ought to get off before they know
+we're here--unless they already do."
+
+Mildred was eagerly attentive: she was so unused to human speech that
+it took the best of her efforts to understand us, though it seems that
+her mother had given her quite a wide education. She promised that
+there would be no difficulty about the food.
+
+"Mother taught me how to fix food," she said. "She always said that
+sometime men would come, with weapons of fire and great noise that
+would tear and kill the Things. I have food ready, in bags--more than
+we can carry. I have, too, the furs that mother and father wore."
+
+She ran into another room and returned with a great pile of fur
+garments, which we examined and found to be in good condition.
+
+"Now is the time," Ray said. "I'd like to know more about the big
+crabs, but there'll be a chance for that, later. Mildred is the
+important thing, now. We must get her out. Then we can tell the world
+about this place and come back with a bigger expedition."
+
+"You think we can reach the coast?"
+
+"I think so. It might be hard on Mildred. But we will have food; we
+can probably find fuel for the stove in Meriden's plane, if the tanks
+were well sealed. And Captain Harper should have a relief party landed
+and sent to meet us. We should have only three or four hundred miles
+to go alone."
+
+"Three or four hundred miles, over country like we've been crossing in
+the last week, with a girl! Ray, we'd never make it!"
+
+"It's the only chance."
+
+I said nothing more. I knew that I could stand no such march on my
+frozen feet, but I resolved to say nothing about it. I would help them
+as far as I could, and then walk out of camp some night. Men have done
+just that.
+
+Mildred brought out sacks of the little cakes, and of a red powder
+that seemed to be the dried and ground flesh of a crimson mushroom. We
+made a pack for each of us, as heavy as we could carry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just before we were ready to start Ray took off my footgear and
+treated my feet from his medicine kit. I had feared gangrene, but he
+assured me that there was no danger if they were well cared for.
+Walking was still exquisitely painful to me as we slipped out through
+the arched door and into the fungoid forest beyond the three blue
+cylinders.
+
+As rapidly and silently as possible we hastened through the brilliant
+fungous forest, across the river of opalescent liquid, to the foot of
+the fall of fire. A weird and splendid sight was that sheer arc of
+shimmering white flame, roaring into a pool of opal light, and
+surrounded with a mist of moon-flame.
+
+We reached the foot of the metal ladder spiked to the rocks beside the
+fall and started up immediately. The going was not easy. The packs of
+food, heavy enough when we were on level ground, were difficult indeed
+to lift when one was scrambling up over rungs four feet apart.
+
+Ray climbed ahead, with a piece of rope fastened from his waist to
+Mildred's, so that he could help her if she slipped. I was below the
+girl. We were halfway up the rock when suddenly a glare of red light
+shone upon me, casting my shadow sharply on the cliff. I looked up
+and saw the broad, intensely red beam of a heat-ray like that we had
+seen the giant crab use.
+
+The ray came, evidently, from the shore of the great lake with its
+submerged city of blue cylinders. It fell upon the face of the cliff
+just above us. Quickly the ladder was heated to cherry red. The face
+of the rock grew incandescent, cracked. Hot sparks rained down upon
+us.
+
+Slowly the ray moved down, toward us.
+
+"Guess we'd better call it off," said Ray. "They have the advantage
+right now. Better get to climbing down, Jim. This ladder is going to
+be burning my hands pretty soon."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I climbed down. Mildred and Ray scrambled down behind me.
+
+The ray followed us, keeping the metal at a cherry red just above
+Ray's hands.
+
+I looked down and saw a dozen of the giant crabs lumbering up out of
+the fungoid jungle from the direction of the great lake. Hideous
+things they were, with staring, stalked eyes, shining green antennae,
+polished red shells, claw-armed limbs. Like the one that had passed us
+in the upper cavern, they wore glistening white metal accoutrements.
+
+We clambered down, with the red ray following.
+
+I dropped to the ground among them, wet with the sweat of horror. I
+reeled in nausea from the intolerable odor of the crab-things; it was
+indescribable, overpowering.
+
+Curious rasping stridulations came from them, sounds which seemed to
+serve as means of communication, and which Mildred evidently
+understood.
+
+"They say that you will not be harmed, but that you must not go out,"
+she called down.
+
+I was seized by the pincher-like claws, held writhing in an
+unbreakable grasp, while the glittering eyes twisted about, looked at
+me, and the shining green tentacles wavered questioningly over me. My
+stomach revolted at the horrible odor.
+
+The crabs tore off my pack, even my clothing. Ray was similarly
+treated as soon as he reached the ground. Though they took Mildred's
+pack, they treated her with a curious respect.
+
+In a few minutes they released us. They had taken the packs, the rifle
+and ammunition, our medicine kit and the few instruments we had
+brought with us down the shaft, even our clothing. They turned us
+loose stark naked. Ray's face and neck went beet-red when he saw
+Mildred standing by him.
+
+The rasping sound came from one of them again.
+
+"It says you may stay with me," Mildred said. "They will not harm you
+unless you try again to get away. If you do, you die--as father did.
+They will keep what they took from you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Several of the creatures went scraping off, carrying the articles they
+had taken from us either in their claws or in the metal cases they
+wore. Several waited, staring at us with the stalked compound eyes,
+and waving the green antennae as if they were organs of some special
+sense.
+
+Two of the creatures waited at the foot of the metal ladder, holding
+the long slender white tubes of the heat-ray in their claws.
+
+"They say we can go now," Mildred said.
+
+She led the way toward the edge of the brilliant jungle. She seemed to
+be without false modesty, for I saw her glancing with evident
+admiration at Ray's lithe and powerful white-skinned figure. We
+followed her into the giant mushrooms, glad to escape the overpowering
+stench of the crabs.
+
+In a few minutes we arrived again at the strange building of the three
+blue cylinders. Mildred, noticing our discomfort, produced for each of
+us a piece of white silken fabric with which we draped ourselves.
+
+She had noticed my difficulty in walking on bare feet. She had me
+bathe them, then dressed them with a soothing yellow oil, and bandaged
+them skilfully.
+
+"Anyhow," she said later, "it is good to have both of you here with
+me. I am sorry indeed for you that you may never see your country
+again. But it is good fortune for me. I was so lonely."
+
+"These damned crabs don't know me!" Ray Summers muttered. "They think
+I'll play around like a pet kitten, for the rest of my life! They'll
+get their eyes opened. We'll spend the winter on Palm Beach yet!"
+
+"It seems to me that we're rather outnumbered." I said. "And it's
+rather more pleasant in here than outside."
+
+"I'm going to get that rifle," Ray declared, "and give these big crabs
+a little respect for humanity!"
+
+"Let's rest up a while first, anyhow," I urged.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently Mildred noticed how tired we were. She went into the third
+of the connected cylinders of blue crystal, was busy a few minutes and
+called us to the couches she had prepared there.
+
+"You may sleep," she told us. "The Things never come here. And they
+said they would not harm you, if you did not try to go out."
+
+We lay down on the silken beds. In a few minutes I was sleep. I awoke
+to feel a curious unease, a sense of impending catastrophe. Ray was
+bending over me, his face drawn with anxiety.
+
+"Something's happened!" he whispered. "She's gone!"
+
+I sat up, staring into the liquid blue vastness of the tall cylinder
+above us.
+
+"Listen! What's that?"
+
+A deep bell-note sounded out, brazen, clanging. Sonorous, throbbing,
+mighty, it rang through the cylindered rooms. Slowly it died; faded to
+silence with a last ringing pulse. Tense minutes of silence passed.
+Again it boomed out, throbbed, and died. After more long minutes there
+was yet a third.
+
+"Outside, somewhere!"
+
+Ray started; ran to the arched door. We looked out upon the dense
+forest of gold and crimson mushrooms that grew below the black cavern
+roof. Before us, across a few hundred yards of bare rocky beach, was
+the edge of the crystal lake with the city of blue cylinders upon its
+floor.
+
+"God! What's that?" Ray gripped my arm crushingly.
+
+A thin wailing scream came across the beach from the black lake. A
+piteous sound it was, plaintive, pleading. Higher and higher it rose,
+until it was a piercing silver note. Clear and sweet it was, but
+inexpressibly lonely, sorrowful, mournful. It sank slowly, died away.
+Again it rose and fell, and again.
+
+"It's Mildred!" I gasped. "Didn't she say something about singing to
+the crabs?"
+
+"Yes! I think she did. Well, if that's singing, it's wonderful! Had me
+feeling like I'd never see another human. But listen--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Liquid, trilling notes were rising, pealing out in a queer, swift
+rhythm. It was happy, joyous, carefree. The rippling golden tones made
+me think of the caroling of birds on a spring morning. Swiftly it rose
+and fell, pure and clear as the tinkle of a mountain brook.
+
+Mildred sang not words but notes of pure music.
+
+The gay song died.
+
+And the strong clear voice rose again with the force and challenge of
+bugle notes, with a swift marching time beating through it. It
+throbbed to a rhythm strange to me. It set my feet tingling to move;
+it set my heart to pulsing faster. It was a challenge to action, to
+battle.
+
+Unconsciously obeying the suggestion of the song, Ray whispered,
+"Let's get over and see what's going on."
+
+We leaped through the door and ran across four hundred yards of rocky
+beach to the edge of the lake. We stepped on a granite bluff a few
+yards above the water, to gaze upon as strange a sight as men ever
+saw.
+
+The black water lay before us, a transparent crystal sheet. On its
+rocky bottom we could see the innumerable clusters of upright azure
+cylinders that were the city of the crabs. The blue cylinders seemed
+to bend and waver in the water.
+
+A hundred yards away from us, over the dark water, was Mildred. She
+stood on a slender azure cylinder that came just to the surface. Tall,
+slender, superbly graceful, with only the scant bodice of green silken
+stuff about her, she looked like the statue of a goddess in white
+marble. Her head was thrown up, golden-brown hair fell behind her
+shoulders, and the pure notes of her song rang over the water.
+
+Beyond her, all about her, were thousands upon thousands of the giant
+crabs, swimming at the surface of the water. Their green antenna rose
+above the water, a curious forest of luminous tentacles, flexing,
+wavering. Green coils moved and swung in time to the strange rhythm of
+her song.
+
+The last note died. Her white arms fell in a gesture of finality. The
+thousands of twisting green antennae vanished below the water, and the
+giant red crabs swam swiftly back to the tall blue cylinders of their
+submerged city.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The white goddess turned and saw us.
+
+Her voice rang out in a golden shout of welcome. With a clean dive she
+slipped into the water and came swimming swiftly toward us. Her slim
+white body glided through the crystal water as smoothly as a fish.
+Reaching the shore she sprang to her feet and ran to meet Ray.
+
+"The Things come together when the giant bell rings, to listen to my
+song," she said. "They like my singing, as they liked mother's. But
+for that, they would not let us live. That is the reason they would
+not let us go."
+
+"I like your singing, too," Ray informed her. "Though at first you
+made me cry. It was so lonely."
+
+"The song was lonely because I have been lonely. Did you hear the glad
+song I sang because you have come?"
+
+"Sure! Great stuff! Made me feel like a kid at Christmas!"
+
+"Come," she said. "We will eat."
+
+Like a child, she took Ray's hand again, smiling naively up at him as
+she led the way toward the three sapphire cylinders.
+
+Back in the blue-vaulted dining room, Ray made Mildred sit with me at
+the little metal table while he served the little brown cakes and the
+dark-red soup and the fragrant amber drink. Mildred got up and brought
+a great metal bowl filled with tiny purple fruits that had a
+delicious, piquant tang.
+
+Ray was deeply thoughtful as he ate. Suddenly he sat back and cried
+out:
+
+"I've got it!"
+
+"Got what?" I demanded.
+
+"I want that rifle! Mildred can find out where it is. Then, when she
+sings, the crabs will all come. I'll get the gun, while she is
+singing, and hide it. Then when it comes time to get out, she will
+sing while you and I are getting our packs up the cliff. I can cover
+them with the rifle while she gets up to us."
+
+"Looks good enough," I agreed, "provided they all come to hear the
+singing."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He explained the plan at greater length to the girl. She assured him
+that the crabs all come when the bell-notes sound. She thought that
+she could make them return her furs, and find out where they had put
+the gun.
+
+My feet were much better than they had been, and Mildred dressed them
+again with the yellow oil. Ray examined them, said that I should be
+able to walk as well as ever in a few days.
+
+Considerable time went by. Since the crabs had taken our watches, we
+had no very accurate way of counting days; but I think we slept about
+a dozen times. Ray and Mildred spent a good deal of time together, and
+seemed not altogether to hate each other. By the end of the time my
+feet were quite well; I did not even lose a toe.
+
+We went over our plans for escape in great detail. The crabs had
+confiscated our clothing. Mildred managed to secure the return of her
+furs, and, incidentally, while she was about it, learned where the
+rifle was.
+
+Fortunately, perhaps realizing that it would be ruined by water, the
+crabs had not taken it to their submerged city. Being amphibious, they
+lived above water as easily as below, and much of their industrial
+equipment was above the surface. The great pumps which lifted the
+white phosphorescent liquid from the canals back to the cone above the
+ground were located beyond the great lake. I did not see the place,
+but Ray tells me that they had great engines and a wealth of strange
+and complex machinery there. It was at these pumps that they had left
+our rifle and instruments, as Mildred found when she was recovering
+her furs.
+
+They had taken our food, and we prepared as much more as we could
+carry, arranged sacks for it, and made quilted garments for ourselves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the three brazen notes clanged out, and Mildred ran across the
+beach and swam out to the blue cylinder to sing. Ray slipped hurriedly
+away, while the green forest of antennae was still growing up from the
+water about the girl.
+
+I waited above the beach, enchanted by the haunting, wordless melody
+of the gongs. It seemed that only a few minutes had passed, though it
+may have been an hour or more, when Ray was by my side again. He
+flourished the rifle.
+
+"I've got it! In good shape, too. Hasn't even been fired, though it
+looks like they have opened a box of cartridges, and cut open one or
+two. Maybe they didn't understand the outfit--or it may be such a
+primitive weapon that they aren't interested in it."
+
+We hurried up to the building of blue cylinders and carefully hid the
+gun and ammunition, as well as a sun compass, a pair of prism
+binoculars, and a few other articles Ray had recovered.
+
+In a few minutes Mildred, having seen Ray's return, finished her song
+and ran up to join us. We arranged our packs, and waited the next call
+of the throbbing brazen gong to make the attempt for freedom.
+
+We slept twice again before the clang of the great gong. Ray and
+Mildred were always together; I could not see that they were at all
+impatient.
+
+The bell note came, the awful brazen vibration of it ringing on the
+black cavern roof. It came when we were eating, in the liquid
+turquoise radiance of the lofty cylinder. We sprang out. Ray gave his
+last directions to Mildred.
+
+"Give us time to get to the top of the cliff by the shining fall. Then
+swim ashore and run. They may not notice. And if they do, we give 'em
+a taste of lead!"
+
+I was not very much surprised when he took the girl in his arms and
+put a burning kiss on her red lips. She gasped, but her struggles
+subsided very quickly; she clung to him as he freed her.
+
+She paused a moment in the door, before she ran down across the beach.
+A radiant light of joy was burning in her great blue eyes, even though
+tears were glistening there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ray and I waited, to give time for the giant crabs that guarded the
+ladder to get away. In about ten more minutes the second brazen gong
+sounded, and presently the third. We gathered up the heavy packs of
+food. Ray took the rifle and I the binoculars, and we slipped out into
+the brilliant mushroom forest.
+
+I stepped confidently out of the jungle into the clearing below the
+splendid opalescent fall of fire--and threw myself backward in
+trembling panic. A flaming crimson ray cut hissing into the towering
+mushrooms above my head.
+
+Mildred's confidence that the crabs would all gather at the ringing of
+the gong had been mistaken. The two guards had been waiting at the
+foot of the ladder, their flaming heat-rays ready for use.
+
+As I dived back into the jungle, I heard two quick reports of the
+rifle. I scrambled awkwardly to my feet, beneath the heavy pack. Ray
+stood alert beside me, the smoking rifle in his hand. The giant crabs
+had collapsed by the foot of the ladder, in grotesque and hideous
+metal-bound heaps of red shell and twisted limb. Blood was oozing from
+a ragged hole in the head of each.
+
+"Glad they were here," Ray muttered. "I wanted to try the gun out on
+'em. They're soft enough beneath the shell; the bullet tears 'em up
+inside. Let's get a move on!"
+
+He sprang past the revolting carcasses. I followed, holding my nose
+against their nauseating, charnel-house odor. We scrambled up the
+metal ladder.
+
+As we climbed, I could hear the haunting melody of Mildred's wordless
+song coming faint across the distance. Once I glanced back for a
+moment, and glimpsed her tiny white figure above the black water, with
+the thousands of green antennae rising in a luminous forest about her.
+
+We reached the top of the cliff, where the opalescent river plunged
+down in the flaming fall. Ray chose convenient boulders for shelter
+and quickly we flung ourselves flat. Ray replaced the fired cartridges
+in the rifle and leveled it across the rock before him. I unslung the
+binoculars and focussed them.
+
+"Watch 'em close," Ray muttered. "And tell me when to shoot."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The black lake lay below us, with the weird city of sapphire cylinders
+on its floor. I got the glasses upon Mildred's white form. Soon she
+dived from the turquoise pedestal, swam swiftly ashore and vanished in
+the vivid fungous jungle. The wavering green antennae vanished below
+the water; I watched the crabs swimming away. Some of them climbed out
+of the water and lumbered off in various directions.
+
+In fifteen minutes the slender white form of Mildred appeared at the
+foot of the ladder. She sprang over the dead crabs and scrambled
+nimbly up. Soon she was halfway up the face of the cliff, and there
+had been no sign of discovery. My hopes ran high.
+
+I was sweeping the whole plain with the binoculars, while Ray peered
+through the telescopic sights of the rifle. Suddenly I saw a giant
+crab pause as he lumbered along the edge of the black lake. He rose
+upright; his shining green antennae wavered. Then I saw him reaching
+with a knobbed claw for a slender silver tube slung to his harness.
+
+"Quick! The one by the lake! To the right of that canal!"
+
+I pointed quickly. Ray swung his gun about, aimed. A broad red beam
+flashed from the tube the thing carried, and fell upon the cliff. The
+report of Ray's rifle rang thunderously in my ears. The red ray was
+snapped off abruptly, and the giant crab rolled over into the black
+water of the lake. Half a dozen of the huge crabs were in sight. They
+all took alarm, probably having seen the flash of the red ray. They
+raised grotesque heads, twisted stalked eyes and waved green antennae.
+Some of them began to raise the metal tubes of the heat-ray.
+
+"Let's get all there are in sight!" Ray muttered.
+
+He began firing regularly, with deliberate precision. A few times he
+had to take two shots, but ordinarily one was enough to bring down a
+giant crab in a writhing red mass. Three times a red ray flashed out,
+once at the girl clambering up the ladder, twice at our position above
+the precipice. But the intense color of the ray announced its source,
+and Ray stopped each before it could be focussed to do damage.
+
+I looked over at Mildred and saw that she was still climbing bravely,
+a little over a hundred feet below.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the great red crabs began to climb out of the water, heat-ray
+tubes grasped in their claws. Ray fired as fast as he could load and
+aim. Still he shot with deliberate care, and almost every shot was
+effective.
+
+Intense, ruby-red rays flashed up from the lake shore. Twice, one of
+them beat scorchingly upon us for a moment. Once a rock beside us was
+fused and cracked with the heat. But Ray fired rapidly, and the rays
+winked out as fast as they were born.
+
+He was powder-stained, black and grimy. The heat-ray had singed his
+clothing. He was dripping perspiration. The gun was so hot that he
+could hardly handle it. But still the angry bark of the rifle rang
+out, almost with a deliberate rhythm. Ray was a fine shot in his youth
+on his father's Arizona ranch, but his best shooting, I think, was
+done from above that cascade of liquid fire, at the hordes of monster
+scarlet crabs.
+
+Mildred scrambled over the edge, unharmed. Her breast was heaving, but
+her face was bright with joy.
+
+"You are wonderful!" she gasped to Ray.
+
+We seized the packs and beat a hurried retreat. A crimson forest of
+the heat-rays flashed up behind us, and flamed upon the black walls
+and roof of the cavern until glistening lava became incandescent,
+cracked and fused.
+
+We were below the line of the rays. Quickly we made the bend in the
+cavern and followed at a halting run up the path beside the shimmering
+river of opalescent light. Before us the torrent of fire fell in a
+magnificent flaming arc from the roof.
+
+We rounded the pool of lambent milk of flame, passed the roaring
+torrent of coruscating liquid radiance and reached the ladder in the
+square, metal shaft. "If we can get to the top before they can get up
+here, we're safe," Ray said. "If we don't, this shaft will be a
+chimney of fire."
+
+In the haste of desperation, we attacked the thousand-foot climb. I
+went first, Mildred below me, and Ray, with the rifle, in the rear.
+Our heavy packs were a terrible impediment, but we dared not attempt
+to go on without them. The metal rungs were four feet apart; it was no
+easy task to scramble from one to the next, again and again, for
+hundreds of times.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It must have taken us an hour to make it. We should have been caught
+long before we reached the top, but the giant crabs were slow in their
+lumbering movements. Despite their evident intelligence, they seemed
+to lack anything like our railways and automobiles.
+
+The cold gray light of the polar sky came about us; a dull,
+purple-blue square grew larger above. I clambered over the last rung,
+flung myself across the top of the metal shaft. Looking down at the
+tiny fleck of white light so far below, I saw a bit of red move in it.
+
+"A crab!" I shouted. "Hurry!"
+
+Mildred was just below me. I took her pack and helped her over the
+edge.
+
+Red flame flared up the shaft.
+
+We reached over, seized Ray's arms and fairly jerked him out of the
+ruby ray.
+
+The bitterly cold wind struck our hot, perspiring bodies as we
+scrambled down the rungs outside the square metal shaft. Mildred
+shivered in her thin attire.
+
+"Out of the frying pan into the ice box!" Ray jested grimly as we
+dropped, to the frozen plain.
+
+Quickly we tore open our packs. Ray and I snatched out clothing and
+wrapped up the trembling girl. In a few minutes we had her snugly
+dressed in the fur garments that had been Major Meriden's. Then we got
+into the quilted garments we had made for ourselves.
+
+The intensely red heat-beam still flared up the shaft. Ray looked at
+it in satisfaction.
+
+"They'll have it so hot they can't get up it for some time yet," he
+remarked hopefully.
+
+We shouldered our packs and set out over the wilderness of snow,
+turning our backs upon the metal-bound lake of fire, with the tall
+cone of iridescent flame rising in its center.
+
+The deep, purple-blue sky was clear, and, for a rarity, there was not
+much wind. I doubt that the temperature was twenty below. But it was a
+violent change from the warm cavern. Mildred was blue and shivering.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In two hours the metal rim below the great white cone had vanished
+behind the black ice-crags. We passed near the wreck of Major
+Meriden's plane and reached our last camp, where we had left the tent
+sledge, primus stove, and most of our instruments. The tent was still
+stretched, though banked with snow. We got Mildred inside, chafed her
+hands, and soon had her comfortable.
+
+Then Ray went out and soon returned with a sealed tin of oil from the
+wrecked plane, with which he lit the primus stove. Soon the tent was
+warm. We melted snow and cooked thick red soup. After the girl had
+made a meal of the scalding soup, with the little golden cakes, she
+professed to be feeling as well as ever.
+
+"We can fix our plane!" Ray said. "There's a perfectly good prop on
+Meriden's plane!"
+
+We went back to the wreck, found the tools, and removed an undamaged
+propeller. This we packed on the sledge, with a good supply of fuel
+for the stove.
+
+"I'm sure we're safe now, so far as the crab-things go," he said. "I
+don't fancy they'd get around very well in the snow."
+
+In an hour we broke camp, and made ten miles of the distance back to
+the plane before we stopped. We were anxious about Mildred, but she
+seemed to stand the journey admirably; she is a marvelous physical
+specimen. She seemed running over with gay vivacity of spirit; she
+asked innumerable questions of the world which she had known only at
+second-hand from her mother's words.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The weather smiled on us during the march back to the plane as much as
+it had frowned on the terrible journey to the cone. We had an
+abundance of food and fuel, and we made it in eight easy stages. Once
+there was a light fall of snow, but the air was unusually warm and
+calm for the season.
+
+We found the plane safe. It was the work of but a short time to remove
+the broken propeller and replace it with the one we had brought from
+the wrecked ship. We warmed and started the engine, broke the skids
+loose from the ice, turned the plane around, and took off safely from
+the tiny scrap of smooth ice.
+
+Mildred seemed amazed and immensely delighted at the sensations of her
+first trip aloft.
+
+A few hours later we were landing beside the _Albatross_, in the
+leaden blue sea beyond the ice barrier. Bluff Captain Harper greeted
+us in amazed delight as we climbed to the deck.
+
+"You're just in time!" he said. "The relief expedition we landed came
+back a week ago. We had no idea you could still be alive, with only a
+week's provisions. We were sailing to-morrow. But tell us! What
+happened? Your passenger--"
+
+"We just stopped to pick up my fiancee," Ray grinned. "Captain, may I
+present Miss Mildred Meriden? We'll be wanting you to marry us right
+away."
+
+
+THE MENACE OF THE INSECT
+
+It is possible that future study may tell man enough about insects to
+enable him to eradicate them. This, however, is more than can be
+reasonably expected, for the more we cultivate the earth the better we
+make conditions for these enemies. The insect thrives on the work of
+man. And having made conditions ideal for the insect, with great
+expanses of cultivated food fitted to his needs, it is an optimist who
+can believe that at the same time we can make other conditions which
+will be so unfavorable as to cause him to disappear completely. The
+two things do not go together.
+
+The insect is much better fitted for life than is man. He can survive
+long periods of famine, he can survive extremes of heat and cold. The
+insect produces great numbers of young which have no long period of
+infancy requiring the attention of the parents over a large part of
+their life. Every function of the insect is directed toward the
+propagation of the race and the use of minimum effort in every other
+direction.
+
+It is even possible in some cases, the water flea, for example, for
+the female to produce young without the necessity of fertilization by
+the male. In order to perform the necessary work to insure food
+supplies for the winter other insects have developed highly
+specialized workers, especially fitted to do particular kinds of
+labor. Ants and termites are in this class.
+
+If we examine the organization of insects closely we shall find but
+one point at which they are vulnerable. This is in their lack of
+ability to reason. True, there is considerable evidence to support the
+belief that some insects are capable of simple reasoning, but the
+development in this direction is only of the most elementary nature.
+As compared to man it is safe to say that they do not reason. They are
+guided by instinct.
+
+This again is the most efficient way to organize their affairs. It
+requires no long period of training. They can begin performing all
+their useful functions as soon as their bodily development makes it
+possible. No one need teach them how to catch their prey, how to build
+their nests or shelters. Instinct takes care of this. But this,
+obviously the best system in a world wholly governed by instinct, is
+not so desirable when the instinctively actuated insect encounters
+another form of life, as man, which is capable of reason. The
+reasoning individual can play all kinds of tricks on the individual
+who is actuated by instinct.
+
+
+
+
+The Ghost World
+
+_By Sewell Peaslee Wright_
+
+[Illustration: _My whole attention was focused upon the strange
+beings._]
+
+[Sidenote: Commander John Hanson records another of his thrilling
+interplanetary adventures with the Special Patrol Service.]
+
+
+I was asleep when our danger was discovered, but I knew the instant
+the attention signal sounded that the situation was serious. Kincaide,
+my second officer, had a cool head, and he would not have called me
+except in a tremendous emergency.
+
+"Hanson speaking!" I snapped into the microphone. "What's up, Mr.
+Kincaide?"
+
+"A field of meteorites sweeping into our path, sir." Kincaide's voice
+was tense. "I have altered our course as much as I dared and am
+reducing speed at emergency rate, but this is the largest swarm of
+meteorites I have ever seen. I am afraid that we must pass through at
+least a section of it."
+
+"With you in a moment, Mr. Kincaide!" I dropped the microphone and
+snatched up my robe, knotting its cord about me as I hurried out of my
+stateroom. In those days, interplanetary ships did not have their
+auras of repulsion rays to protect them from meteorites, it must be
+remembered. Two skins of metal were all that lay between the _Ertak_
+and all the dangers of space.
+
+I took the companionway to the navigating room two steps at a time and
+fairly burst into the room.
+
+Kincaide was crouched over the two charts that pictured the space
+around us, microphone pressed to his lips. Through the plate glass
+partition I could see the men in the operating room tensed over their
+wheels and levers and dials. Kincaide glanced up as I entered, and
+motioned with his free hand towards the charts.
+
+One glance convinced me that he had not overestimated our danger. The
+space to right and left, and above and below, was fairly peppered with
+tiny pricks of greenish light that moved slowly across the milky faces
+of the charts.
+
+From the position of the ship, represented as a glowing red spark, and
+measuring the distances roughly by means of the fine black lines
+graved in both directions upon the surface of the chart, it was
+evident to any understanding observer that disaster of a most terrible
+kind was imminent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kincaide muttered into his microphone, and out of the tail of my eye I
+could see his orders obeyed on the instant by the men in the operating
+room. I could feel the peculiar, sickening surge that told of speed
+being reduced, and the course being altered, but the cold, brutally
+accurate charts before me assured me that no action we dared take
+would save us from the meteorites.
+
+"We're in for it, Mr. Kincaide. Continue to reduce speed as much as
+possible, and keep bearing away, as at present. I believe we can avoid
+the thickest portion of the field, but we shall have to take our
+chances with the fringe."
+
+"Yes, sir!" said Kincaide, without lifting his eyes from the chart.
+His voice was calm and businesslike, now; with the responsibility on
+my shoulders, as commander, he was the efficient, level-headed
+thinking machine that had endeared him to me as both fellow-officer
+and friend.
+
+Leaving the charts to Kincaide, I sounded the general emergency
+signal, calling every man and officer of the _Ertak's_ crew to his
+post, and began giving orders through the microphone.
+
+"Mr. Correy,"--Correy was my first officer--"please report at once to
+the navigating room. Mr. Hendricks, make the rounds of all duty posts,
+please, and give special attention to the disintegrator ray operators.
+The ray generators are to be started at once, full speed." Hendricks,
+I might say, was a junior officer, and a very good one, although
+quick-tempered and excitable--failings of youth. He had only recently
+shipped with us to replace Anderson Croy, who--but that has already
+been recorded.[2]
+
+[Footnote 2: "The Dark Side of Antri," in the January, 1931, issue of
+Astounding Stories.]
+
+These preparations made, I glanced at the twin charts again. The
+peppering of tiny green lights, each of which represented a meteoritic
+body, had definitely shifted in relation to the position of the
+strongly-glowing red spark that was the _Ertak_, but a quick
+comparison of the two charts showed that we would be certain to pass
+through--again I use land terms to make my meaning clear--the upper
+right fringe of the field.
+
+The great cluster of meteorites was moving in the same direction as
+ourselves now; Kincaide's change of course had settled that matter
+nicely. Naturally, this was the logical course, since should we come
+in contact with any of them, the impact would bear a relation to only
+the _difference_ in our speeds, instead of the _sum_, as would be the
+case if we struck at a wide angle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was difficult to stand without grasping a support of some kind, and
+walking was almost impossible, for the reduction of our tremendous
+speed, and even the slightest change of direction, placed terrific
+strains upon the ship and everything in it. Space ships, at space
+speeds, must travel like the old-fashioned bullets if those within are
+to feel at ease.
+
+"I believe, Mr. Kincaide, it might be well to slightly increase the
+power in the gravity pads," I suggested. Kincaide nodded and spoke
+briefly into his microphone; an instant later I felt my weight
+increase perhaps fifty per cent, and despite the inertia of my body,
+opposed to both the change in speed and direction of the _Ertak_, I
+could now stand without support, and could walk without too much
+difficulty.
+
+The door of the navigating room was flung open, and Correy entered,
+his face alight with curiosity and eagerness. An emergency meant
+danger, and few beings in the universe have loved danger more than
+Correy.
+
+"We're in for it, Mr. Correy," I said, with a nod towards the charts.
+"Swarm of meteorites, and we can't avoid them."
+
+"Well, we've dodged through them before, sir," smiled Correy. "We can
+do it again."
+
+"I hope so, but this is the largest field of them I have ever seen.
+Look at the charts: they're thicker than flies."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Correy glanced at the charts, slapped Kincaide across his bowed, tense
+shoulders, and laughed aloud.
+
+"Trust the old _Ertak_ to worm her way through, sir," he said. "The
+ray crews are on duty, I presume?"
+
+"Yes. But I doubt that the rays will be of much assistance to us.
+Particularly if these are stony meteorites--and as you know, the odds
+are about ten to one against their being of ferrous composition. The
+rays, deducting the losses due to the utter lack of a conducting
+medium, will be insufficient protection. They will help, of course.
+The iron meteorites they will take care of effectively, but the
+conglomerate nature of the stony meteorites does not make them
+particularly susceptible to the disintegrating rays.
+
+"We shall do what we can, but our success will depend largely upon
+good luck--or Divine Providence."
+
+"At any rate, sir," replied Correy, and his voice had lost some of its
+lightness, "we are upon routine patrol and not upon special mission.
+If we do crack up, there is no emergency call that will remain
+unanswered."
+
+"No," I said dryly. "There will be just another 'Lost in Space' report
+in the records of the Service, and the _Ertak's_ name will go up on
+the tablet of lost ships. In any case, we have done and shall do what
+we can. In ten minutes we shall know all there is to know. That about
+right, Mr. Kincaide?"
+
+"Ten minutes?" Kincaide studied the charts with narrowed eyes,
+mentally balancing distance and speed. "We should be within the danger
+area in about that length of time, sir," he answered. "And out of
+it--if we come out--three or four minutes later."
+
+"We'll come out of it," said Correy positively.
+
+I walked heavily across the room and studied the charts again. Space
+above and below, to the right and the left of us, was powdered with
+the green points of light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Correy joined me, his feet thumping with the unaccustomed weight given
+him by the increase in gravity. As he bent over the charts, I heard
+him draw in his breath sharply.
+
+Kincaide looked up. Correy looked up. I looked up. The glance of each
+man swept the faces, read the eyes, of the other two. Then, with one
+accord, we all three glanced up at the clocks--more properly, at the
+twelve-figured dial of the Earth clock, for none of us had any great
+love for the metric Universal system of time-keeping.
+
+Ten minutes.... Less than that, now.
+
+"Mr. Correy," I said, as calmly as I could, "you will relieve Mr.
+Kincaide as navigating officer. Mr. Kincaide, present my compliments
+to Mr. Hendricks, and ask him to explain the situation to the crew.
+You will instruct the disintegrator ray operators in their duties, and
+take charge of their activities. Start operation at your discretion;
+you understand the necessity."
+
+"Yes, sir!" Kincaide saluted sharply, and I returned his salute. We
+did not shake hands, the Earth gesture of--strangely enough--both
+greeting and farewell, but we both realized that this might well be a
+final parting. The door closed behind him, and Correy and I were left
+together to watch the creeping hands of the Earth clock, the twin
+charts with their thick spatter of green lights, and the two fiery red
+sparks, one on each chart, that represented the _Ertak_ sweeping
+recklessly towards the swarming danger ahead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In other accounts of my experiences in the Special Patrol Service I
+feel that I have written too much about myself. After all, I have run
+my race; a retired commander of the Service, and an old, old man, with
+the century mark well behind me, my only use is to record, in this
+fashion, some of those things the Service accomplished in the old days
+when the worlds of the Universe were strange to each other, and space
+travel was still an adventure to many.
+
+The Universe is not interested in old men; it is concerned only with
+youth and action. It forgets that once we were young men, strong,
+impetuous, daring. It forgets what we did; but that has always been
+so. It always will be so. John Hanson, retired Commander of the
+Special Patrol Service, is fit only to amuse the present generation
+with his tales of bygone days.
+
+Well, so be it. I am content. I have lived greatly; certainly I would
+not exchange my memories of those bold, daring days even for youth and
+strength again, had I to live that youth and waste that strength in
+this softened, gilded age.
+
+But no more of this; it is too easy for an old man to rumble on about
+himself. It is only the young John Hanson, Commander of the _Ertak_,
+who can interest those who may pick up and read what I am writing
+here.
+
+I did not waste the minutes measured by that clock, grouped with our
+other instruments in the navigating room of the _Ertak_. I wrote
+hastily in the ship's log, stating the facts briefly and without
+feeling. If we came through, the log would read better thus; if not,
+and by some strange chance it came to human eyes, then the Universe
+would know at least that the _Ertak's_ officers did not flinch from
+even such a danger.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As I finished the entry, Correy spoke:
+
+"Kincaide's estimate was not far off, sir," he said, with a swift
+glance at the clock. "Here we go!" It was less than half a minute
+short of the ten estimated by Kincaide.
+
+I nodded and bent over the television disc--one of the huge, hooded
+affairs we used in those days. Widening the field to the greatest
+angle, and with low power, I inspected the space before us on all
+sides.
+
+The charts, operated by super-radio reflexes, had not lied about the
+danger into which we were passing--had passed. We were in the midst of
+a veritable swarm of meteorites of all sizes.
+
+They were not large; I believe the largest I saw had a mass of not
+more than three or four times that of the _Ertak_ herself. Some of the
+smaller bodies were only fifty or sixty feet in diameter.
+
+They were jagged and irregular in shape, and they seemed to spin at
+varying speeds, like tiny worlds.
+
+As I watched, fixing my view now on the space directly in our path, I
+saw that our disintegrator ray men were at work. Deep in the bowels of
+the _Ertak_, the moan of the ray generators had deepened in note; I
+could even feel the slight vibration beneath my feet.
+
+One of the meteorites slowly crumbled on top, the dust of
+disintegration hovering in a compact mass about the body. More and
+more of it melted away. The spinning motion grew irregular, eccentric,
+as the center of gravity was changed by the action of the ray.
+
+Another ray, two more, centered on the wobbling mass. It was directly
+in our path, looming up larger and larger every second.
+
+Faster and faster it melted, the rays eating into it from four sides.
+But it was perilously near now; I had to reduce power in order to keep
+all of it within the field of my disc. If--
+
+The thing vanished before the very nose of the ship, not an instant
+too soon. I glanced up at the surface temperature indicator, and saw
+the big black hand move slowly for a degree or two, and stop. It was a
+very sensitive instrument, and registered even the slight friction of
+our passage through the disintegrated dust of the meteorite.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our rays were working desperately, but disintegrator rays are not
+nearly so effective in space as in an atmosphere of some kind. Half a
+dozen times it seemed that we must crash head on into one of the
+flying bodies, but our speed was reduced now to such an extent that we
+were going but little faster than the meteorites, and this fact was
+all that saved us. We had more time for utilizing our rays.
+
+We nosed upward through the trailing fringe of the swarm in safety.
+The great field of meteorites was now below and ahead of us. We had
+won through! The _Ertak_ was safe, and--
+
+"There seems to be another directly above us, sir," commented Correy
+quietly, speaking for the first time since we had entered the area of
+danger. "I believe your disc is not picking it up."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Correy," I said. While operating on an entirely
+different principle, his two charts had certain very definite
+advantages: they showed the entire space around us, instead of but a
+portion.
+
+I picked up the meteorite he had mentioned without difficulty. It was
+a large body, about three times the mass of the _Ertak_, and some
+distance above us--a laggard in the group we had just eluded.
+
+"Will it coincide with our path at any point, Mr. Correy?" I asked
+doubtfully. The television disc could not, of course, give me this
+information.
+
+"I believe so; yes," replied Correy, frowning over his charts. "Are
+the rays on it, sir?"
+
+"Yes. All of them, I judge, but they are making slow work of it." I
+fell silent, bending lower over the great hooded disc.
+
+There were a dozen, a score of rays playing upon the surface of the
+meteorite. A halo of dust hung around the rapidly diminishing body,
+but still the mass melted all too slowly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pressing the attention signal for Kincaide, I spoke sharply into the
+microphone:
+
+"Mr. Kincaide, is every ray on that large meteorite above us?"
+
+"Yes, sir," he replied instantly.
+
+"Full power?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Very well; carry on, Mr. Kincaide." I turned to Correy; he had just
+glanced from his charts to the clock, with its jerking second hand,
+and back to his charts.
+
+"They'll have to do it in the next ten seconds, sir," he said.
+"Otherwise--" Correy shrugged, and his eyes fixed with a peculiar,
+fascinated stare on the charts. He was looking death squarely in the
+eyes.
+
+Ten seconds! It was not enough. I had watched the rays working, and I
+knew their power to disintegrate this death-dealing stone that was
+hurtling along above us while we rose, helplessly, into its path.
+
+I did not ask Correy if it was possible to alter the course enough,
+and quickly enough, to avoid that fateful path. Had it been possible
+without tearing the _Ertak_ to pieces with the strain of it, Correy
+would have done it seconds ago.
+
+I glanced up swiftly at the relentless, jerking second hand. Seven
+seconds gone! Three seconds more.
+
+The rays were doing all that could be expected of them. There was only
+a tiny fragment of the meteorite left, and it was dwindling swiftly.
+But our time was passing even more rapidly.
+
+The bit of rock loomed up at me from the disc. It seemed to fly up
+into my face, to meet me.
+
+"Got us, Correy!" I said hoarsely. "Good-by, old-man!"
+
+I think he tried to reply. I saw his lips open; the flash of the
+bright light from the ethon tubes on his big white teeth.
+
+Then there was a crash that shook the whole ship. I shot into the air.
+I remember falling ... terribly.
+
+A blinding flash of light that emanated from the very center of my
+brain, a sickening sense of utter catastrophe, and ... blackness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think I was conscious several seconds before I finally opened my
+eyes. My mind was still wandering; my thoughts kept flying around in
+huge circles that kept closing in.
+
+We had hit the meteorite. I remembered the crash. I remembered
+falling. I remembered striking my head.
+
+But I was still alive. There was air to breathe and there was firm
+material under me. I opened my eyes.
+
+For the first instant, it seemed I was in an utterly strange room.
+Nothing was familiar. Everything was--was _inverted_. Then I glanced
+upward, and I saw what had happened.
+
+I was lying on the ceiling of the navigating room. Over my head were
+the charts, still glowing, the chronometers in their gimballed beds,
+and the television disc. Beside me, sprawled out limply, was Correy, a
+trickle of dried blood on his cheek. A litter of papers, chairs,
+framed licenses and other movable objects were strewn on and around
+us.
+
+My first instinctive, foolish thought was that the ship was upside
+down. Man has a ground-trained mind, no matter how many years he may
+travel space. Then, of course, I realized that in the open void there
+is not top nor bottom; the illusion is supplied, in space ships, by
+the gravity pads. Somehow, the shock of impact had reversed the
+polarity of the leads to the pads, and they had become repulsion pads.
+That was why I had dropped from the floor to the ceiling.
+
+All this flashed through my mind in an instant as I dragged myself
+toward Correy. Dragged myself because my head was throbbing so that I
+dared not stand up, and one shoulder, my left, was numb.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For an instant I thought that Correy was dead. Then, as I bent over
+him, I saw a pulse leaping just under the angle of his jaw.
+
+"Correy, old man!" I whispered. "Do you hear me?" All the formality of
+the Service was forgotten for the time. "Are you hurt badly?"
+
+His eyelids flickered, and he sighed; then, suddenly, he looked up at
+me--and smiled!
+
+"We're still here, sir?"
+
+"After a fashion. Look around; see what's happened?"
+
+He glanced about curiously, frowning. His wits were not all with him
+yet.
+
+"We're in a mess, aren't we?" he grinned. "What's the matter?"
+
+I told him what I thought, and he nodded slowly, feeling his head
+tenderly.
+
+"How long ago did it happen?" he asked. "The blooming clock's upside
+down; can you read it?"
+
+I could--with an effort.
+
+"Over twenty minutes," I said. "I wonder how the rest of the men are?"
+
+With an effort, I got to my feet and peered into the operating room.
+Several of the men were moving about, dazedly, and as I signalled to
+them, reassuringly, a voice hailed us from the doorway:
+
+"Any orders, sir?"
+
+It was Kincaide. He was peering over what had been the top of the
+doorway, and he was probably the most disreputable-looking officer who
+had ever worn the blue-and-silver uniform of the Service. His nose was
+bloody and swollen to twice its normal size. Both eyes were blackened,
+and his hair, matted with blood, was plastered in ragged swirls across
+his forehead.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Kincaide; plenty of them. Round up enough of the men to
+locate the trouble with the gravity pads; there's a reversed
+connection somewhere. But don't let them make the repairs until the
+signal is given. Otherwise, we'll all fall on our heads again. Mr.
+Correy and I will take care of the injured."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next half hour was a trying one. Two men had been killed outright,
+and another died before we could do anything to save him. Every man in
+the crew was shaken up and bruised, but by the time the check was
+completed, we had a good half of our personnel on duty.
+
+Returning at last to the navigating room, I pressed the attention
+signal for Kincaide, and got his answer immediately.
+
+"Located the trouble yet, Mr. Kincaide?" I asked anxiously.
+
+"Yes, sir! Mr. Hendricks has been working with a group of men and has
+just made his report. They are ready when you are."
+
+"Good!" I drew a sigh of relief. It had been easier than I thought.
+Pressing the general attention signal, I broadcasted the warning,
+giving particular instructions to the men in charge of the injured.
+Then I issued orders to Hendricks:
+
+"Reverse the current in five seconds, Mr. Hendricks, and stand by for
+further instructions."
+
+Hastily, then, Correy and I followed the orders we had given the men.
+Briefly we stood on our heads against the wall, feeling very foolish,
+and dreading the fall we knew was coming.
+
+It came. We slid down the wall and lit heavily on our feet, while the
+litter that had been on the ceiling with us fell all around us.
+Miraculously, the ship seemed to have righted herself. Correy and I
+picked ourselves up and looked around.
+
+"We're still operating smoothly," I commented with a sweeping glance
+at the instruments over the operating table. "Everything seems in
+order."
+
+"Did you notice the speed indicator, sir?" asked Correy grimly. "When
+he fell, one of the men in the operating room must have pulled the
+speed lever all the way over. We're at maximum space speed, sir, and
+have been for nearly an hour, with no one at the controls."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We stared at each other dully. Nearly an hour, at maximum space
+speed--a speed seldom used except in case of great emergency. With no
+one at the controls, and the ship set at maximum deflection from her
+course.
+
+That meant that for nearly an hour we had been sweeping into infinite
+space in a great arc, at a speed I disliked to think about.
+
+"I'll work out our position at once," I said, "and in the meantime,
+reduce speed to normal as quickly as possible. We must get back on our
+course at the earliest possible moment."
+
+We hurried across to the charts that were our most important aides in
+proper navigation. By comparing the groups of stars there with our
+space charts of the universe, the working out of our position was
+ordinarily, a simple matter.
+
+But now, instead of milky rectangles, ruled with fine black lines,
+with a fiery red speck in the center and the bodies of the universe
+grouped around in green points of light, there were only nearly blank
+rectangles, shot through with vague, flickering lights that revealed
+nothing except the presence of disaster.
+
+"The meteoric fragment wiped out some of our plates, I imagine," said
+Correy slowly. "The thing's useless."
+
+I nodded, staring down at the crawling lights on the charts.
+
+"We'll have to set down for repairs, Mr. Correy. If," I added, "we can
+find a place."
+
+Correy glanced up at the attraction meter.
+
+"I'll take a look in the big disc," he suggested. "There's a sizeable
+body off to port. Perhaps our luck's changed."
+
+He bent his head under the big hood, adjusting the controls until he
+located the source of the registered attraction.
+
+"Right!" he said, after a moment's careful scrutiny. "She's as big as
+Earth, I'd venture, and I believe I can detect clouds, so there should
+be atmosphere. Shall we try it, sir?"
+
+"Yes. We're helpless until we make repairs. As big as Earth, you said?
+Is she familiar?"
+
+Correy studied the image under the hood again, long and carefully.
+
+"No, sir," he said, looking up and shaking his head. "She's a new one
+on me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Conning the ship first by means of the television disc, and navigating
+visually as we neared the strange sphere, we were soon close enough to
+make out the physical characteristics of this unknown world.
+
+Our spectroscopic tests had revealed the presence of atmosphere
+suitable for breathing, although strongly laden with mineral fumes
+which, while possibly objectionable, would probably not be dangerous.
+
+So far as we could see, there was but one continent, somewhat north of
+the equator, roughly triangular in shape, with its northernmost point
+reaching nearly to the Pole.
+
+"It's an unexplored world, sir. I'm certain of that," said Correy. "I
+am sure I would have remembered that single, triangular continent had
+I seen it on any of our charts." In those days, of course, the
+Universe was by no means so well mapped as it is today.
+
+"If not unknown, it is at least uncharted," I replied. "Rough looking
+country, isn't it? No sign of life, either, that the disc will
+reveal."
+
+"That's as well, sir. Better no people than wild natives who might
+interfere with our work. Any choice in the matter of a spot on which
+to set her down?"
+
+I inspected the great, triangular continent carefully. Towards the
+north it was a mass of snow covered mountains, some of them, from
+their craters, dead volcanoes. Long spurs of these ranges reached
+southward, with green and apparently fertile valleys between. The
+southern edge was covered with dense tropical vegetation; a veritable
+jungle.
+
+"At the base of that central spur there seems to be a sort of
+plateau," I suggested. "I believe that would be a likely spot."
+
+"Very well, sir," replied Correy, and the old _Ertak_, reduced to
+atmospheric speed, swiftly swept toward the indicated position, while
+Correy kept a wary eye on the surface temperature gauge, and I swept
+the terrain for any sign of intelligent life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I found a number of trails, particularly around the base of the
+foothills, but they were evidently game trails, for there were no
+dwelling places of any kind; no cities, no villages, not even a single
+habitation of any kind that the searching eyes of the disc could
+detect.
+
+Correy set her down as neatly and as softly as a rose petal drifts to
+the ground. Roses, I may add, are a beautiful and delicate flower,
+with very soft petals, peculiar to my native Earth.
+
+We opened the main exit immediately. I watched the huge, circular door
+back slowly out of its threads, and finally swing aside, swiftly and
+silently, in the grip of its mighty gimbals, with the weird,
+unearthly feeling I have always had when about to step foot on some
+strange star where no man has trod before.
+
+The air was sweet, and delightfully fresh after being cooped up for
+weeks in the _Ertak_, with her machine-made air. A little thinner, I
+should judge, than the air to which we were accustomed, but strangely
+exhilarating, and laden with a faint scent of some unknown
+constituent--undoubtedly the mineral element our spectroscope had
+revealed but not identified. Gravity, I found upon passing through the
+exit, was normal. Altogether an extremely satisfactory repair station.
+
+Correy's guess as to what had happened proved absolutely accurate.
+Along the top of the _Ertak_, from amidships to within a few feet of
+her pointed stem, was a jagged groove that had destroyed hundreds of
+the bright, coppery discs, set into the outer skin of the ship, that
+operated our super-radio reflex charts. The groove was so deep, in
+places, that it must have bent the outer skin of the _Ertak_ down
+against the inner skin. A foot or more--it was best not to think of
+what would have happened then.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the time we completed our inspection dusk was upon us--a long,
+lingering dusk, due, no doubt, to the afterglow resulting from the
+mineral content of the air. I'm no white-skinned, stoop-shouldered
+laboratory man, so I'm not sure that was the real reason. It sounds
+logical, however.
+
+"Mr. Correy, I think we shall break out our field equipment and give
+all men not on watch an opportunity to sleep out in the fresh air," I
+said. "Will you give the orders, please?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Mr. Hendricks will stand the eight to twelve watch as
+usual?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Mr. Kincaide will relieve him at midnight, and you will take over at
+four."
+
+"Very well, sir." Correy turned to give the orders, and in a few
+minutes an orderly array of shelter tents made a single street in
+front of the fat, dully-gleaming side of the _Ertak_. Our tents were
+at the head of this short company street, three of them in a little
+row.
+
+After the evening meal, cooked over open fires, with the smoke of the
+very resinous wood we had collected hanging comfortably in the still
+air, the men gave themselves up to boisterous, noisy games, which, I
+confess, I should have liked very much to participate in. They raced
+and tumbled around the two big fires like schoolboys on a lark. Only
+those who have spent most of their days in the metal belly of a space
+ship know the sheer joy of utter physical freedom.
+
+Correy, Kincaide and I sat before our tents and watched them, chatting
+about this and that--I have long since forgotten what. But I shall
+never forget what occurred just before the watch changed that night.
+Nor will any man of the _Ertak's_ crew.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was just a few minutes before midnight. The men had quieted down
+and were preparing to turn in. I had given orders that this first
+night they could suit themselves about retiring; a good officer, and I
+tried to be one, is never afraid to give good men a little rein, now
+and then.
+
+The fires had died down to great heaps of red coals, filmed with
+ashes, and, aside from the brilliant galaxy of stars overhead, there
+was no light from above. Either this world had no moons, not even a
+single moon, like my native Earth, or it had not yet arisen.
+
+Kincaide rose lazily, stretched himself, and glanced at his watch.
+
+"Seven till twelve, sir," he said. "I believe I'll run along and
+relieve--"
+
+He never finished that sentence. From somewhere there came a rushing
+sound, and a damp, stringy net, a living, horrible, _something_,
+descended upon us out of the night.
+
+In an instant, what had been an orderly encampment became a bedlam. I
+tried to fight against the stringy, animated, nearly intangible mass,
+or masses, that held me, but my arms, my legs, my whole body, was
+bound as with strings and loops of elastic bands.
+
+Strange whispering sounds filled the air, audible above the shouting
+of the men. The net about me grew tighter; I felt myself being lifted
+from the ground. Others were being treated the same way; one of the
+_Ertak's_ crew shot straight up, not a dozen feet away, writhing and
+squirming. Then, at an elevation of perhaps twice my height, he was
+hurried away.
+
+Hendrick's voice called out my name from the _Ertak's_ exit, and I
+shouted a warning:
+
+"Hendrick! Go back! Close the emergency--" Then a gluey mass cut
+across my mouth, and, as though carried on huge soft springs, I was
+hurried away, with the sibilant, whispering sounds louder and closer
+than ever. With me, as nearly as I could judge, went every man who had
+not been on duty in the ship.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I ceased struggling, and immediately the rubbery network about me
+loosened. It seemed to me that the whisperings about me were suddenly
+approving. We were in the grip, then, of some sort of intelligent
+beings, ghost-like and invisible though they were.
+
+After a time, during which we were all, in a ragged group, being borne
+swiftly towards the mountains, all at a common level from the ground,
+I managed to turn my head so that I could see, against the star-lit
+sky, something of the nature of the things that had made us captive.
+
+As is not infrequently the case, in trying to describe things of an
+utterly different world, I find myself at a loss for words. I think of
+jellyfish, such as inhabit the seas of most of the inhabited planets,
+and yet this is not a good description.
+
+These creatures were pale, and almost completely transparent. What
+their forms might be, I could not even guess. I could make out
+writhing, tentacle-like arms, and wrinkled, flabby excrudescences and
+that was all. That these creatures were huge, was evident from the
+fact that they, apparently walking, from the irregular, undulating
+motion, held us easily ten or a dozen feet from the ground.
+
+With the release of the pressure about my body I was able to talk
+again, and I called out to Correy, who was fighting his way along,
+muttering, angrily, just ahead of me.
+
+"Correy! No use fighting them. Save your strength, man!"
+
+"Then? What are they, in God's name? What spawn of hell--"
+
+"The Commander is right, Correy," interrupted Kincaide, who was not
+far from my first officer. "Let's get our breaths and try to figure
+out what's happened. I'm winded!" His voice gave plentiful evidence of
+the struggle he had put up.
+
+"I want to know where I'm going, and why!" growled Correy, ceasing his
+struggling, nevertheless. "What have us? Are they fish or flesh or
+fowl?"
+
+"I think we shall know before very long, Correy," I replied. "Look
+ahead!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The bearers of the men in the fore part of the group had apparently
+stopped before a shadowy wall, like the face of a cliff. Rapidly, the
+rest of us were brought up, until we were in a compact group, some in
+sitting positions, some upside down, the majority reclining on back or
+side. The whispering sound now was intense and excited, as though our
+strange bearers awaited some momentous happening.
+
+I took advantage of the opportunity to speak very briefly to my
+companions.
+
+"Men, I'll admit frankly that I don't know what we're up against," I
+said. "But I do know this: we'll come out on top of the heap. Conserve
+your strength, keep your eyes open, and be prepared to obey,
+instantly, any orders that may be issued: I know that last remark is
+not needed. If any of you should see or learn something of interest or
+value, report at once to Mr. Correy, Mr. Kincaide or my--"
+
+A simultaneous, involuntary exclamation from the men interrupted me,
+and it was not surprising that this was so, for the wall before us had
+suddenly opened, and there was a great burst of yellow light in our
+faces. A strong odor, like the faint scent we had first noticed in the
+air, but infinitely more powerful, struck our nostrils, but I was not
+conscious of the fact for several seconds. My whole attention, my
+every startled thought, was focused upon the group of strange beings,
+silhouetted against the glowing light, that stood in the opening.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Imagine, if you can, a huge globe, perhaps eight feet in diameter,
+flattened slightly at the bottom, and supported on six short, huge
+stumps, like the feet of an elephant, and topped by an excrudescence
+like a rounded coning tower, merging into the globular body. From
+points slightly below this excrudescence, visualize six long, limp
+tentacles, so long that they drop from the equators of these animated
+spheres, and trail on the ground. Now you have some conception of the
+beings that stood before us.
+
+A sharp, sibilant whispering came from one of these figures, to be
+answered in an eager chorus from our bearers. There was a reply like a
+command, and the group in the doorway marched forward. One by one
+these visible tentacles wrapped themselves around a member of the
+_Ertak's_ crew, each one of the globular creatures bearing one of us.
+
+I heard a disappointed whisper go up from the outer darkness where,
+but a moment before, we had been. Then there was a grating sound, and
+a thud as the stone doorway was rolled back into place.
+
+The entrance was sealed. We were prisoners indeed!
+
+"All right, now what?" gritted Correy. "God! If I ever get a hand
+loose!"
+
+Swiftly, each of us held above the head-like excrudescence atop the
+globular body of the thing that held us, we were carried down a
+widening rocky corridor, towards the source of the yellow light that
+beat about us.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The passage led to a great cavern, irregular in shape, and apparently
+possessed of numerous other outlets which converged here.
+
+I am not certain as to the size of the cavern, save that it was great,
+and that the roof was so high in most sections that it was lost in
+shadow.
+
+The great cavern was nearly filled with creatures similar to those
+which were bearing us, and they fell back in orderly passage to permit
+our conductors to pass.
+
+I could see, now, that the hump atop each rounded body was a travesty
+of a head, hairless, and without a neck. Their features were
+particularly hideous, and I shall pass over a description as rapidly
+as possible.
+
+The eyes were round, and apparently lidless; a pale drab or bluff in
+color. Instead of a nose, as, we understand the term, they had a
+convoluted rosette in the center of the face, not unlike the olfactory
+organ of a bat. Their ears were placed as are ours, but were of thin,
+pale parchment, and hugged the side of the head tightly. Instead of a
+mouth, there was a slightly depressed oval of fluttering skin near the
+point where the head melted into the rounded body: the rapid
+fluttering or vibration of this skin produced the whispering sound I
+have already remarked.
+
+The cavern, as I have said, was flooded with yellow light, which came
+from a great column of fire near the center of the clear space. I had
+no opportunity to inspect the exact arrangements but from what I did
+see, I judged that this flame was fed by some sort of highly
+inflammable substance, not unlike crude oil, except that it burned
+clearly and without smoke. This substance was conducted to the font
+from which the flame leaped by means of a large pipe of hollow reed or
+wood.
+
+At the far end of the cavern a procession entered from one of the
+passages--nine figures similar to those which bore us, save that by
+the greater darkness of their skin, and the wrinkles upon both face
+and body, I judged these to be older than the rest. From the respect
+with which they were treated, and the dignity of their movements, I
+gathered that these were persons of authority, a surmise which quickly
+verified itself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These nine elders arranged themselves, standing, in the form of a
+semicircle, the center creature standing a pace or two in front of the
+others. At a whispered command, we were all dumped unceremoniously on
+the floor of the cavern before this august council of nine.
+
+Nine pairs of fish-like, unblinking eyes inspected us, whether with
+enmity or otherwise; I could not determine. One of the nine spoke
+briefly to one of our conductors, and received an even more brief
+reply.
+
+I felt the gaze of the creature in the center fix on me. I had taken
+my proper position in front of my men; he apparently recognized me as
+the leader of the group.
+
+In a sharp whisper, he addressed me; I gathered from the tone that he
+uttered a command, but I could only shake my head in response. No
+words could convey thought from his mind to mine--but we did have a
+means of communication at hand.
+
+"Mr. Correy," I said, "your menore, please!" I released my own from
+the belt which held it, along with the other expeditionary equipment
+which we always wore when outside our ship, and placed it in position
+upon my head, motioning for one of the nine to do likewise with
+Correy's menore.
+
+They watched me suspiciously, despite my attempt to convey, by gestures,
+that by means of these instruments we could convey thoughts to each other.
+The menores of those days were bulky, heavy things, and undoubtedly they
+looked dangerous to these creatures: thought-transference instruments at
+that time were complicated affairs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+However, I must have made myself partially understood, at least, for
+the chief of the nine uttered a whispered command to one of the beings
+who had borne us to the large cavern, and motioned with a writhing
+gesture of one tentacle that I was to place the menore upon this
+creature's head.
+
+"The old boy's playing it safe, sir," muttered Correy, chuckling.
+"Wants to try it out on the dog first."
+
+"Right!" I nodded, and, not without difficulty, placed the other
+menore upon the rounded dome of the individual selected for the trial.
+
+Both instruments were adjusted to full power, and I concentrated my
+mental energy upon the simple pictures that I thought I could convey
+to the limited mentality of which I suspected these creatures,
+watching his fishy eyes the while.
+
+It was several seconds before he realized what was happening; then he
+began talking excitedly to the waiting nine. The words fairly burned
+themselves in my consciousness, but of course were utterly
+unintelligible to me. Before the creature had finished, a lash-like
+tentacle shot out from the chief of the nine and removed the menore; a
+moment later it reposed, at a rather rakish slant, on the shining dome
+of its new possessor.
+
+"Get anything, sir?" asked Correy in a low voice.
+
+"Not yet. I'm trying to make him see how we came here, and that we're
+friends. Then I'll see what I can get out of him; he'll have to get
+the idea of coming back at me with pictures instead of words, and it
+may take a long time to make him understand."
+
+It did take a long time. I could feel the sweat trickling down my face
+as I strove to make him understand. His eyes revealed wonderment and a
+little fear, but an almost utter lack of understanding.
+
+I pictured for him the heavens, and our ship sailing along through
+space. Then I showed him the _Ertak_ coming to rest on the plateau,
+and he made little impatient noises as though to convey that he knew
+all about that.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a long time he got the idea. Crudely, dimly, he pictured the
+_Ertak_ leaving this strange world, and soaring off into vacant space.
+Then his scene faded out, and he pictured the same thing again, as one
+might repeat a question not understood. He wanted to know where we
+would go if we left this world of his.
+
+I pictured for him other worlds, peopled with men more or less like
+myself. I showed him the great cities, and the fleets of ships like
+the _Ertak_ that plied between them. Then, as best I could, I asked
+him about himself and his people.
+
+It came to me jerkily and poorly pictured, but I managed to piece out
+the story. Whether I guess correctly on all points, I am not sure, nor
+will I ever be sure. But this is the story as I got it.
+
+These people at one time lived in the open, and all the people of this
+world were like those in the cavern, possessed of opaque bodies and
+great strength. There were none of the ghost-like creatures who had
+captured us.
+
+But after a long time, a ruling class arose. They tried to dominate
+the masses, and the masses refused to be dominated. But the ruling
+classes were wise, and versed in certain sciences; the masses were
+ignorant. So the ruling classes devised a plan.
+
+These creatures did not eat. There was a tradition that at one time
+they had had mouths, as I had, but that was not known. Their strength,
+their vitality, came from the powerful mineral vapor which came forth
+from the bowels of the earth. The ruling classes decided that if they
+could control the supply of this vapor, they would have the whip hand,
+and they set about realizing this condition.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was quickly done. All the sources of supply, save one, were sealed.
+This one source of supply was the cavern in which we stood. These were
+members of the ruling class, and outside was the rabble, starved and
+unhappy, living on the faint seepage of the vital fumes, without which
+they became almost bodiless, and the helpless slaves of those within
+the cavern.
+
+These creatures, then, were boneless; as boneless as sponges, and,
+like sponges, capable of absorbing huge quantities of a foreign
+substance, which distended them and gave them weight. I could see,
+now, why the rotund bodies sagged and flattened at the base, and why
+six short, stubby legs were needed to support that body. There was
+only tissue, unsupported by bone, to bear the weight!
+
+This chief of the nine went on to show me how ruthlessly, how cruelly
+those within the cavern ruled those without. The substance that fed
+the flame had to be gathered and a great reservoir on the side of the
+mountain kept filled. Great masses of dry, sweet grass, often changed,
+must be harvested and brought to the entrance of the cavern, for
+bedding. A score of other tasks kept the outsiders busy always--and
+the driving force was that, did the slaves become disobedient, the
+slight supply of mineral vapor available in the outside world would be
+cut off utterly, and all outside would surely die, slowly and in
+agony.
+
+Those within the cavern were the rulers. They would always remain the
+rulers, and those outside would remain the slaves to wait upon them.
+And we--how strangely he pictured us, as he saw us!--were not to
+return to our queer worlds, that we might bring many other ships like
+the _Ertak_ back to interfere. No.
+
+The pupils of his eyes contracted, and the leafy structure of his nose
+fluttered as though with strong emotion.
+
+No, we would not go back. He would give a signal to those of his
+creatures who stood behind us--a sort of soldiery, I gathered--and our
+heads, our legs, our arms, would be torn from our bodies. Then we
+would not go back to bring--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That was enough for me.
+
+"Men!" I spoke softly, but with an intensity that gave me their
+instant attention, "it's going to be a fight for life. When I give the
+signal, make a rush for the entrance by which we came in. I'll lead
+the way. Use your pistols, and your bombs if necessary. All
+right--forward!"
+
+Correy's great shout rang out after mine, and I flung my menore in the
+face of the nearest guard. It bounced off as though it had struck a
+rubber ball. Behind me, one of the men called out sharply; I heard a
+sharp crunch of bone, and with a pang realized that the _Ertak's_ log
+would have at least one death to record.
+
+A dozen tentacles lashed out at me, and I sprayed their owners with
+pellets from my atomic pistol. The air was filled with the shouts of
+my men and the whispers of our enemies. All around me I could hear the
+screaming of ricochets from our pistols. Twice atomic bombs exploded
+not far away, and the solid rock shook beneath my feet. Something shot
+by close to my face; an instant later a limp bundle in the blue and
+silver uniform of our Service struck the rock wall of the cavern,
+thirty feet away. The strength in those rubbery tentacles was
+terrible.
+
+The pistols seemed to have but little effect. They wounded, but they
+did not kill unless the pellet struck the head. Then the victim
+rolled over, rocking idiotically on its middle.
+
+"In the head, men!" I shouted. "That downs them! And keep the bombs in
+action. Throw them against the walls of the cavern. Take a chance!"
+
+A ragged cheer went up, and I heard Correy's voice raised in angry
+conversation with the enemy:
+
+"You will, eh? There!... Now!... Ah!--right--through--the--eye.
+That's--the place!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A score of times I was grasped and held by the writhing arms of the
+angry horde whispering all around me. Each time I literally shot the
+tentacle away with my atomic pistol, leaving the severed end to unwrap
+itself and drop from my struggling body. The things had no blood in
+them.
+
+Steadily, we fought our way toward the doorway, out of the cavern,
+down the passageway, pressed into a compact, sweating mass by the
+pressure of the eager bodies around us. I have never heard any sound
+even remotely like the babel of angry, sibilant whispering that beat
+against the walls and roof of that cavern.
+
+I had saved my own bombs for a specific purpose, and now I unslung
+them and managed to work them up above my shoulders, one in either
+hand.
+
+"I'm going to try to blow the entrance clear, men," I shouted. "The
+instant I fling the bombs, drop! The fragments will be stopped by the
+enemy crowding around us. One ... two ... three ... _drop_!"
+
+The two bombs exploded almost simultaneously. The ground shook, and
+all over the cavern masses of stone came crashing to the floor. Bits
+of rock hummed and shrieked over our heads. And--yes! There was a
+draft of cooler, purer air on our faces. The bombs had done their
+work.
+
+"One more effort and we're outside, men," I called. "The passage is
+open, and there are only a few of the enemy before us. Ready?"
+
+"Ready!" went up the hoarse shout.
+
+"Then, forward!"
+
+It was easy to give the command, but hard to execute it. We were
+pressed so hard that only the men on the outside of the group could
+use their weapons. And our captors were making a terrible, desperate
+effort to hold us.
+
+Two more of our men were literally torn to pieces before my eyes, but
+I had the satisfaction of ripping holes in the heads of the creatures
+whose tentacles had done the beastly work. And in the meantime we were
+working our way slowly but surely to the entrance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I glanced up as I dodged out into the open. That soft humming sound
+was familiar, and properly so. There, at an elevation of less than
+fifty feet, was the _Ertak_, with Hendricks standing in the exit,
+leaning forward at a perilous angle.
+
+"Ahoy the _Ertak_!" I hailed. "Descend at once!"
+
+"Right, sir!" Hendricks turned to relay the order, and, as the rest of
+the men burst forth from the cavern, the ship struck the ground before
+us.
+
+"All hands board ship!" I ordered. "Lively, now." As many years as I
+have commanded men, I have never seen an order obeyed with more
+alacrity.
+
+I was the last man to enter, and as I did so, I turned for a last
+glance at the enemy.
+
+They could not come through the small opening my bombs had driven in
+the rock, although they were working desperately to enlarge it.
+Leaping back and forth between me and the entrance I could see the
+vague, shadowy figures of the outside slaves, eagerly seeping up the
+life-giving fumes that escaped from the cavern.
+
+"Your orders, sir?" asked Hendricks anxiously; he was a very young
+officer, and he had been through a very trying experience.
+
+"Ascend five hundred feet, Mr. Hendricks," I said thoughtfully.
+"Directly over this spot. Then I'll take over.
+
+"It isn't often," I added, "that the Service concerns itself with
+economic conditions. This, however, is one of the exceptions."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Hendricks, for the very good reason, I suppose, that
+that was about all a third officer could say to his commander, under
+the circumstances.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Five hundred feet, sir," said Hendricks.
+
+"Very well," I nodded, and pressed the attention signal of the
+non-commissioned officer in charge of the big forward ray projector.
+
+"Ott? Commander Hanson speaking. I have special orders for you."
+
+"Yes, sir!"
+
+"Direct your ray, narrowed to normal beam and at full intensity, on
+the spot directly below. Keep the ray motionless, and carry on until
+further orders. Is that clear?"
+
+"Perfectly, sir." The disintegrator ray generators deepened their purr
+as I turned away.
+
+"I trust, sir, that I did the right thing in following you with the
+_Ertak_?" asked Hendricks. "I was absolutely without precedent, and
+the circumstances were so mysterious--"
+
+"You handled the situation very well indeed," I told him. "Had you not
+been waiting when we fought our way into the open, the nearly
+invisible things on the outside might have--but you don't know about
+them yet."
+
+Picking up the microphone again, I ordered a pair of searchlights to
+follow the disintegrator ray, and made my way forward, where I could
+observe activities through a port.
+
+The ray was boring straight down into a shoulder of a rocky hill, and
+the bright beams of the searchlights glowed redly with the dust of
+disintegration. Here and there I could see the shadowy, transparent
+forms of the creatures that the self-constituted rulers of this world
+had doomed to a demi-existence, and I smiled grimly to myself. The
+tables would soon be turned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For perhaps an hour the ray melted its way into the solid rock, while
+I stood beside Ott and his crew, watching. Then, down below us, things
+began to happen.
+
+Little fragments of rock flew up from the shaft the ray had drilled.
+Jets of black mud leaped into the air. There was a sudden blast from
+below that rocked the _Ertak_, and the shaft became a miniature
+volcano, throwing rocky fragments and mud high into the air.
+
+"Very good, Ott," I said triumphantly. "Cease action." As I spoke, the
+first light of the dawn, unnoticed until now, spread itself over the
+scene, and we witnessed then one of the strangest scenes that the
+Universe has ever beheld.
+
+Up to the very edge of that life-giving blast of mineral-laden gas the
+tenuous creatures came crowding. There were hundreds of them,
+thousands of them. And they were still coming, crowding closer and
+closer and closer, a mass of crawling, yellowish shadows against the
+sombre earth.
+
+Slowly, they began to fill out and darken, as they drew in the fumes
+that were more than bread and meat and water to us. Where there had
+been formless shadows, rotund creatures such as we had met in the
+cavern stood and lashed their tentacles about in a sort of frenzied
+gladness, and fell back to make room for their brothers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It's a sight to make a man doubt his own eyes, sir," said Correy, who
+had come to stand beside me. "Look at them! Thousands of them pouring
+from every direction. How did it happen?"
+
+"It didn't happen. I used our disintegrator ray as a drill; we simply
+sunk a huge shaft down into the bowels of the earth until we struck
+the source of the vapor which the self-appointed 'ruling class' has
+bottled up. We have emancipated a whole people, Mr. Correy."
+
+"I hate to think of what will happen to those in the cavern," replied
+Correy, smiling grimly. "Or rather, since you've told me of the
+pleasant little death they had arranged for us. I'm mighty glad of it.
+They'll receive rough treatment, I'm afraid!"
+
+"They deserve it. It has been a great sight to watch, but I believe
+we've seen enough. It has been a good night's work, but it's daylight,
+now, and it will take hours to repair the damage to the _Ertak's_
+hull. Take over in the navigating room, if you will, and pick a likely
+spot where we will not be disturbed. We should be on our course by
+to-night, Mr. Correy."
+
+"Right, sir," said Correy, with a last wondering look at the strange
+miracle we had brought to pass on the earth below us. "It will seem
+good to be off in space again, away from the troubles of these little
+worlds."
+
+"There are troubles in space, too," I said dryly, thinking of the
+swarm of meteorites that had come so close to wiping the _Ertak_ off
+the records of the Service. "You can't escape trouble even in space."
+
+"No, sir," said Correy from the doorway. "But you can get your sleep
+regularly!"
+
+And sleep is, when one comes to think of it, a very precious thing.
+
+Particularly for an old man, whose eyelids are heavy with years.
+
+
+
+
+Readers' Corner
+
+[Illustration: Readers' Corner]
+
+
+     _Now In Book Form_
+
+     Readers of Astounding Stories will be interested to hear
+     that two of the continued novels which appeared in our pages
+     during last year are coming out in book form.
+
+     The first of these is "Murder Madness," by Murray Leinster.
+     It is due sometime in February, so by the time this issue is
+     on the newsstands it will no doubt be already out. The
+     publishers are Brewer and Warren, and the price is $2.00.
+     Here's your chance, collectors, and those who missed an
+     instalment or two.
+
+     The other book is "Brigands of the Moon," by--everyone
+     knows--Ray Cummings. It should be coming along in a month or
+     so. Watch out for it!
+
+
+_Mr. Cummings Sits In_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Thank you for the opportunity to address our Readers on
+     certain side-lights of my tale, "The Exile of Time." I
+     particularly welcome it, for the theme of Time-traveling is,
+     I think, the most interesting of any upon which I have
+     written.
+
+     Some of you will no doubt recall my stories "The Man Who
+     Mastered Time" and "The Shadow Girl." In "The Exile of
+     Time," I present the third of the trilogy. It has no
+     fictional connection with the others; it is in no sense a
+     sequel, but rather a companion story.
+
+     To write about Time-traveling is for me a difficult but
+     fascinating task. The opportunities are endless; and I hope
+     you may think I have taken advantage of them with a measure
+     of success.
+
+     I wrote those conceptions of Time and Space and the Great
+     Cosmos, which you will find in the text of the story,
+     because I feel them very deeply. Each occasion upon which
+     circumstances allow me to present my theories, I eagerly
+     welcome. How much of the conception is original with me, I
+     cannot say. It is the product of my groping interpretation
+     of the theories of many brilliant scientific minds of
+     today--humbly combined with perhaps some originality of my
+     own. The mind flings far afield when it starts to grope with
+     the Unknown. Try it! Read what I have written and then let
+     your mind roam a little further. Probe a little deeper.
+     Perhaps we may contribute something. It is only by that
+     process--each mind following some other's cleared path and
+     pushing forward a little on his own--that the Unknown can be
+     pierced.
+
+     When once you admit the basic idea of Time-traveling to be
+     plausible, what fascinating vistas are opened to the
+     imagination!
+
+     Space is so crowded! The room in which you are now sitting
+     as you read these words--just think what that Space around
+     you has held in the Past, and will hold in the Future! You
+     occupy it now, playing out your little part; but think what
+     has happened where you are now sitting so calmly reading!
+     What tumultuous, crowding events! Your room is quiet now,
+     but its space has rung with war-cries; the ground under you
+     has been drenched with blood; and further back it was lush
+     with primeval jungle; and in another age it was frozen
+     beneath a great ice-cap; and before that it blazed, molten
+     with fire. Back to the Beginning.
+
+     And your little Space in the Future? It will be in the heart
+     of a great mechanical city, perhaps. A mechanical servant
+     may murder his human master in the space which you now call
+     your room. The great revolt of the mechanisms may start in
+     your room....
+
+     I think that your room will some day again be shrouded under
+     a forest growth. The mechanical city will be neglected,
+     tumbled into ruins, buried beneath the silt of the passing
+     centuries. The sun will slowly rise--a giant dull red ball,
+     burning out, cooling. And the Earth will cool. Humans,
+     perhaps, will have passed decadence and reverted to
+     savagery. Perhaps the polar ice-caps will again come down,
+     and ice slowly cover the dying world. All nature will be
+     struggling and dying, with the sun a red ball turning dark
+     like a cooling ember.
+
+     Millions of centuries, with whatever events--who am I to
+     say?--but it will go on to the End. That's a long way from
+     the Beginning, isn't it? And yet ours is only a tiny planet
+     living briefly in the great cosmos of Time and Space!
+
+     A segment of Everything that ever was and ever will be
+     marches through the Space of your room. What an enormously
+     thronged little Space! There is only Time, to keep
+     consecutive and orderly the myriad events which in your room
+     are pushing and jostling one another! I say, then, "Time is
+     what keeps everything from happening at once." It seems a
+     good definition.
+
+     I do hope you like "The Exile of Time." The writing of it
+     made me realize how unimportant I am. A human lifetime is
+     really as brief as the flash of an electric spark. The whole
+     lifetime of our Earth is not much more than that. Stars,
+     worlds, are born, live and die, and the Great Cosmos goes
+     majestically on. Yet some people seem to feel that they and
+     the Space they occupy in this Time they call the Present are
+     the most important things that ever were or ever will be in
+     the whole Universe. It is a good thing to realize that that
+     isn't so.--Ray Cummings.
+
+
+_Likes_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Starting with the August issue, I am going to give my
+     opinion of the stories.
+
+     "The Planet of Dread," by R. F. Starzl, couldn't have been
+     better. Get more stories by him. "Murder Madness," by Murray
+     Leinster, was a good story, but it didn't belong in a
+     Science Fiction magazine. "The Terrible Tentacles of L-472,"
+     a good story; "The Invisible Death," a very good story;
+     "Prisoners on the Electron," very good; "The Ape-Men of
+     Xlotli," a good story, but it does not belong in a Science
+     Fiction magazine; "The Pirate Planet," very excellent--much
+     more so because it is an interplanetary story. "Vagabonds of
+     Space," "The Fifth Dimension Catapult," "The Gate of Xoran,"
+     "The Dark Side of Antri"--all good.
+
+     Well, I guess I will sign off and give somebody else a
+     chance to broadcast.--Wm. McCalvy, 1244 Beech St., St. Paul,
+     Minn.
+
+
+_I Do; I Don't_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     "I like the magazine the way it is," "I want a larger
+     magazine," "I want a magazine twice a month," "I want a
+     quarterly," and so do I, "There is a terrible flaw in one of
+     the stories," "All of the stories are flawless," "I want
+     reprints," "I don't," "I like Ray Cummings," "I don't," "I
+     want a better grade paper," "The paper's O. K. with me," "I
+     want smooth edges on the magazine," "So do I," "And so do
+     I!"--these seem to be the most often repeated sentences in
+     the letters from Readers.
+
+     However, I have a new one to add: I would like to see an
+     answer, by the Editor, to each letter that is printed in
+     "The Readers' Corner," like this: "I liked 'An Extra Man,'
+     etc.--Mr. Syence Ficshun" (I am very glad to hear that you
+     liked this little masterpiece, etc.--Editor). Why not?
+
+     The illustration on the cover of the January issue surely
+     shows that you're starting the new year out right by putting
+     on an extremely astounding cover. The story "The Gate to
+     Xoran" is simply amazing. Let's read many more of Mr. Wells
+     stories. It is far surpassed, however, by "The Fifth
+     Dimension Catapult," which is the best story (novelette)
+     that I have ever read in "our" magazine.
+
+     The Boys' Scientification Club is now a branch of the famous
+     Science Correspondence Club. Remember, boys between the ages
+     of 10 and 15, if you're interested in reading Science
+     Fiction, by all means join the B. S. C. We have many copies
+     of Astounding Stories in our library and members are welcome
+     to read them. For further details write to me.--Forrest J.
+     Ackerman, President-Librarian, B. S. C., 530 Staples Avenue,
+     San Francisco, Cal.
+
+
+_Souls and Integrations_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     You are starting your second year as Editor of Astounding
+     Stories. If your standard during 1931 is up to your standard
+     of 1930, we shall be satisfied. If possible, give us, the
+     Readers, the best in Science Fiction. I have no doubt but
+     that the Readers of Astounding Stories would not want
+     fantasy unless written by a master; and to my mind there is
+     only one whom I will forgive for not making his stories
+     Science Fiction, and that writer is A. Merritt. Every other
+     writer should and must put plausible science in his stories.
+     If he doesn't, he won't go far; not with Science Fiction
+     readers, anyway.
+
+     I do not agree to your answer, by letter, to my complaint
+     about the science in the story, "An Extra Man," by Jackson
+     Gee. You say that two men, each the size and half the weight
+     of the original man could have been formed from the
+     integrated particles of the original man. In the story, the
+     weight of the two men was exactly the same as that of the
+     original man. [?] Anyway, I do not believe that these two
+     men could have been formed. Most likely, when the
+     laboratories began the process of reintegration, the person
+     integrated would have been cut in half, provided of course,
+     that the laboratories began the process at the same time. If
+     not, one laboratory would produce a larger portion of an
+     integrated man than the other.
+
+     But to come back to the original question. Can a man be
+     disintegrated into his component atoms and then reintegrated
+     into two men each half the size, weight, ability and brains?
+     I say no. I believe that the component atoms of the man when
+     reintegrated would be in exactly the same place as they were
+     before the disintegration occurred. If a part and not the
+     whole of a man is reintegrated in one place, then the part
+     would be one part of that man and not a complete man in
+     itself.
+
+     It would be as preposterous and absurd for anything but a
+     part of that man to be reintegrated, as it would be for two
+     apes, pigs or hens to come from him. I leave out the
+     question of what would happen to the soul. Imagine a soul
+     divided in half. Mr. Gee might say that he doesn't believe
+     in souls. Neither do I, much. I notice that some Readers say
+     that they liked that story. One even says that it was
+     perfect. Every man to his taste. I've read worse, myself.
+
+     Anyway, Mr. Editor, Astounding Stories is the finest and
+     best Science Fiction magazine on the market.
+
+     Many Readers want to keep their magazines and bind them,
+     including myself. Why change the size? I'm certain that that
+     won't be done. Astounding Stories started small (in size
+     only) and it will remain small (also only in size). Let us
+     have reprints.--Nathan Greenfeld, 373 Whitlock Ave., New
+     York City.
+
+
+_The Defense Rests_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     I have just read the January issue for 1931 and noticed some
+     so-called helpful letters by Readers. Looking over Mr.
+     Waite's letter, would like to suggest that he stop to think,
+     if possible, that if he wants absolute bone-dry facts, that
+     he doesn't want fiction at all. And Mr. Johnson--he seems
+     to have the impression that everyone who can take things for
+     granted without having a detailed explanation of the facts
+     of the story is a moron or a small child. He should go find
+     a volume of scientific research if he enjoys that sort of
+     stuff. I read fiction stories for the enjoyment I get out of
+     them and not to criticize them for lack of explanation. I
+     would rather read some of his so-called nonsense than a lot
+     of far-flung, intricate, baseless scientific explanations.
+     Why doesn't Mr. Johnson use his imagination?--Donald Kahl,
+     360 Selby Ave., St. Paul, Minn.
+
+
+_"High Time"_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     I have been reading the magazine ever since it first came
+     out, a year ago, so it is high time for me to write. It
+     certainly grows better with every new issue.
+
+     I think that the ten best stories published during 1930 were
+     (not in order of merit): "Brigands of the Moon," "Vandals of
+     the Stars," "The Atom Smasher," "The Moon Master," "Earth,
+     the Marauder," "The Planet of Dread," "Silver Dome," "The
+     Second Satellite," "Jetta of the Lowlands" and "The Pirate
+     Planet."
+
+     Your ten best authors are: Harl Vincent, Ray Cummings,
+     Charles W. Diffin, Victor Rousseau, Capt. S. P. Meek, Murray
+     Leinster, Arthur J. Burks, R. F. Starzl, Sewell P. Wright
+     and Edmond Hamilton.
+
+     The Commander Hanson stories by S. P. Wright are great.
+     Let's have lots more of them.
+
+     And now about reprints. I cast my vote like many other
+     readers in favor of them. Many Readers, in fact over half,
+     are new Readers of Science Fiction. They, like myself, have
+     not read the great masterpieces such as "The Time Machine,"
+     "The Moon Pool" and countless other stories. Now, why not
+     reprint some of them and give us a chance to read them? A
+     few Readers who have read them before do not want them
+     reprinted because they do not want anybody else to read
+     them.
+
+     A brickbat: Why not cut the edges of the magazine smooth? It
+     would be much easier to handle.
+
+     A bouquet: You have a fine magazine. Keep up the good stuff.
+     My criticism is exhausted, so good-by until next
+     time.--Oswald Train, P. O. Box 94, Barnesboro, Pa.
+
+
+_Two Dimensions Off?_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     It was just by accident that I came across your magazine,
+     and I have read every issue since.
+
+     In the January number there is one story that I don't like,
+     "The Fifth Dimension Catapult." As far as the story is
+     concerned it is very good, but Professor Denham was not
+     marooned in the fifth dimension. If you read the story you
+     will find that Professor Denham was marooned on a three
+     dimensional world. That is all I can make out.
+
+     Astounding Stories is the best Science Fiction magazine I
+     have ever read, and I shall keep on reading it.
+
+     Keep up the good cover illustrations.--Richard Meindle, R.
+     1, Box 91, Butternut, Wisconsin.
+
+
+_To the Colors!_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Being a passionate admirer of Dr. Breuer and his writings, I
+     cannot permit the contumelious, unfounded aggression of one
+     George K. Addison to go on unconfuted.
+
+     Perceiving that Dr. Breuer cannot possibly vindicate himself
+     against this disparagement I feel obliged to extenuate Dr.
+     Breuer in the eyes of the Readers.
+
+     In the first place, Dr. Breuer writes rarely and sparingly
+     and does not grind out his stories month after month as do
+     some other authors. His stories are highly original and are
+     presented in a purely literary style. The story to which Mr.
+     Addison refers, "A Problem in Communication," is a fine
+     example of his work. Should his story be remonstrated
+     against because it is lacking in adventure, because it did
+     not delineate mushy love episodes, because it does not cause
+     chills to run down one's spine? Positively not! It lives up
+     to the standard of the highest Science Fiction. Here is a
+     story unbesmirched by the love element, exceedingly
+     plausible and interestingly narrated.
+
+     If all stories were thought out and written just half as
+     carefully as Dr. Breuer's, Astounding Stories would become a
+     periodical justified to be considered on a par with The
+     Golden Book.
+
+     In closing, I wish to express my desire that more stories of
+     the Breuer quality be bestowed upon the Readers.--Mortimer
+     Weisinger, 266 Van Cortland Ave., Bronx, New York.
+
+
+_And It Wasn't!_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Having read "The Readers' Corner" since its first appearance
+     in Astounding Stories and noted the various criticisms
+     offered, may I tell you about a story written by a Science
+     Fiction author?
+
+     The author, by the way, is the perfect author; he makes
+     absolutely no mistakes in his story, and is in no danger of
+     starving if his works aren't accepted and older stories are
+     reprinted instead. His science is correct and the story
+     contains nothing that cannot be understood.
+
+     The story is of interplanetary adventure. Strange to say,
+     there is no war in the story; there is no villain; there is
+     no hero to save a world from destruction or his sweetheart
+     from the monsters of another planet. Instead, there are
+     nothing but characters--if you get what I mean. The persons
+     involved in this interplanetary novel reach their goal due
+     to the tremendous strides of science in experimenting with
+     air and space vehicles.
+
+     When they arrive on the planet they do not meet hostile
+     nations. They do not meet monstrosities. They do, however,
+     meet people much like themselves who do not welcome the
+     travelers with open arms and show them about their city, but
+     regard them with curiosity and treat them with all due
+     respect for their achievement in conquering space.
+
+     As I said before, there is no hero who falls in love with
+     the beautiful girl from the planet visited, and saves her
+     and her country from other warring nations. To tell the
+     truth, the adventurers have their own loved ones at home.
+     They meet no intrigue. When they have learned all they
+     can--experiencing many difficulties in mastering the
+     language used, for the people of the planet have not
+     perfected a brain-copier or other like mechanism--they
+     arrange for commerce and travel between the two worlds and
+     return to Earth. On their return, they are not met with
+     world wide ovations and made heroes of, but receive credit
+     for their undertaking and are soon forgotten about.
+
+     To cap the climax, the story is acceptable to the Editors.
+     It is not in need of corrections and is published
+     immediately. The story is gratefully accepted by the public
+     and not one single soul writes a scathing letter to the
+     Editor telling why it was not good. In fact, I can hardly
+     believe that such a story was written. Possibly it
+     wasn't!--Robert R. Young, 86 Third Avenue, Kingston, Penn.
+
+
+_Ha-ha!_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Christmas day, and because I'm not acquainted in this city
+     I'm writing you a letter.
+
+     I have just finished reading your magazine. I came close to
+     not buying it, being not overly prosperous, but decided to
+     take a chance when I saw you had a dimensional story by
+     Murray Leinster. That story was up to expectations. The
+     others were down to expectations.
+
+     If you want me to choose your magazine to spend my reading
+     allowance on, have more stories by Leinster, Starzl, Breuer
+     and Wells. It may take a little more effort, but it's worth
+     it. Sax Rohmer is good on science stuff, too.
+
+     Before you print any more undersea stories have a diver look
+     at them. You tell about standing at the bottom of the ocean
+     and seeing the submarine "not more than a quarter of a mile
+     away." Ha-ha! [No fair, that ha-ha! For the story says,
+     quoted exactly: "... there gleamed the reassuring LIGHTS of
+     the Nereid, not a quarter of a mile away." Probably, intense
+     searchlight beams could be seen that far.--Ed.] You couldn't
+     see it if you stood more than ten feet away. I'm not trying
+     to be critical, but you should be more careful.--Myron
+     Higgins, 524 West 100th St., New York City.
+
+
+_We Never Will_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     I have been an enthusiastic reader of Astounding Stories
+     since it was founded, and I think it about time that I
+     voiced my opinion of your great magazine.
+
+     Taking all in all it's a vow, but of course it could be
+     made better by having a quarterly, which I am sure would go
+     over big.
+
+     Wesso is great, so why not have all the illustrations by
+     him?
+
+     Your authors are also great. Nearly every story I have read
+     was perfect, and whatever you do don't lose R. F. Starzl.
+     His ideas are very good, as illustrated in "The Planet of
+     Dread."
+
+     There is only one more thing I would like to ask of you, and
+     that is the reason why I write. Please don't spoil the
+     magazine by endeavoring to please a very small minority by
+     putting in unnecessary scientific explanations. The reason
+     why I like your magazine so much is because of the fact that
+     it is unique in that respect. I have read a few stories in
+     other scientific magazines and found that they contained too
+     much explanation. I hope for the benefit of other Readers
+     and myself that you will not change the stories by adding
+     too much explanation.
+
+     In the coming year I wish you all possible success.--John
+     Sheehan, 32 Elm St., Cambridge, Mass.
+
+
+_This and That_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     In the October issue of Astounding Stories Mr. Woodrow
+     Gelman cast vote number 1 for reprints. In the February,
+     1931, issue, Mr. Forgaris throws in number 2 and here goes
+     number 3. I really don't see why, even after the arguments
+     you printed, you don't print at least one a year. I have
+     been reading your magazine ever since it came out and have
+     found that at least one-half of your Readers want reprints.
+     Can't you print at least one for an experiment?
+
+     Ray Cummings, S. P. Meek, Dr. Miles J. Breuer, Sewell P.
+     Wright and Harl Vincent are your best authors. Wesso is your
+     best artist by far.
+
+     There were several stories I did not like. They are:
+     "Monsters of Moyen," "Earth, the Marauder," and I guess
+     those are all.
+
+     How about giving us some short short stories? And how about
+     cutting the edges of the paper smooth? And giving us a
+     quarterly? But all in all I think your magazine is one of
+     the best in the field.--Vernon H. Jones, 1603 Sixth Ave.,
+     Des Moines, Iowa.
+
+
+_It's Your Imagination_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Well, well! Astounding Stories was two days early this
+     month. See that this happens more often.
+
+     Of course, "The Pirate Planet" took first place in the
+     February number. The story was very well written and the
+     characters very realistic. It deserves to be put in book
+     form, also in the talkies. It would be much better than
+     "Just Imagine."
+
+     I welcome Anthony Gilmore, D. W. Hall and F. V. W. Mason to
+     Astounding Stories. Their stories proved to be very
+     interesting and I hope to read more.
+
+     Do you know how to write editorials? Yes? Then prove it. I
+     have to be shown. Write on some scientific subject each
+     month, and every so often write on Astounding Stories itself
+     and of its stories and authors.
+
+     Is it my imagination or have you been using a better grade
+     of paper in the past two issues? it seems to be much
+     smoother and a little thinner than that used previously.
+
+     I notice that you are giving more room to some of the
+     illustrations, as in "Werewolves of War" and "The Pirate
+     Planet." The larger the illustrations are the more there can
+     be put in them.--Jack Darrow, 4225 No. Spaulding Ave.,
+     Chicago, Illinois.
+
+
+_If He But Could!_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Astounding Stories is without doubt the most preeminent in
+     its field.
+
+     With such versatile authors as Burks (When does his next
+     story appear?), Starzl, Cummings, Leinster, Vincent and all
+     the rest, how can it help but to overshadow all periodicals!
+
+     The illustrations are superfine. Wesso is a marvel! If he
+     could only write his own stories and illustrate them!
+
+     Now, a suggestion. I am positive that every Reader of your
+     magazine wants you to start a department in which
+     biographies of the authors and their photographs are given.
+     Why not start one?--Julius Schwartz, 407 East 183rd St.,
+     Bronx, New York.
+
+
+_"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!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Astounding Stories,  April, 1931, by Various
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30452 ***
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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30452 ***</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 370px;"><a name="Cover" id="Cover"></a>
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Cover" width="370" height="528" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image_001.jpg" width="500" height="212" alt="Cover"  />
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>ASTOUNDING</h1>
+  <h2>STORIES</h2>
+
+<h3>20&cent;</h3>
+
+<h3><i>On Sale the First Thursday of Each Month</i></h3>
+<p>W. M. CLAYTON, Publisher&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;HARRY BATES, Editor&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;DR. DOUGLAS M. DOLD,
+Consulting Editor</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h3>The Clayton Standard on a Magazine Guarantees</h3>
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>That</i> the stories therein are clean, interesting, vivid, by
+leading writers of the day and purchased under conditions
+approved by the Authors' League of America;</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 150px;">
+<img src="images/image_002.jpg" width="150" height="280" alt=""  />
+</div>
+
+<p><i>That</i> such magazines are manufactured in Union shops by
+American workmen;</p>
+
+<p><i>That</i> each newsdealer and agent is insured a fair profit;</p>
+
+<p><i>That</i> an intelligent censorship guards their advertising
+pages.</p></div>
+
+<p><i>The other Clayton magazines are</i>:</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+ACE-HIGH MAGAZINE, RANCH ROMANCES, COWBOY STORIES, CLUES, FIVE-NOVELS
+MONTHLY, ALL STAR DETECTIVE STORIES, RANGELAND LOVE STORY
+MAGAZINE, WESTERN ADVENTURES, and WESTERN LOVE STORIES.
+</p>
+
+<p><i>More than Two Million Copies Required to Supply the Monthly Demand
+for Clayton Magazines.</i></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>VOL. VI, No. 1&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;CONTENTS&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;April, 1931</h2>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<table summary="Contents">
+<tr><td><a href="#Cover">COVER DESIGN</a></td>
+<td>H. W. WESSO</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>Painted in Water-Colors from a Scene in "Monsters of Mars."</i></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#Monsters_of_Mars">MONSTERS OF MARS</a></td>
+<td>EDMOND HAMILTON</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_4">4</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>Three Martian-Duped Earth-Men Swing Open the Gates of Space That for So Long Had Barred the Greedy Hordes of the Red Planet.</i> (A Complete Novelette.)</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#The_Exile_of_Time">THE EXILE OF TIME</a></td>
+<td>RAY CUMMINGS</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>From Somewhere Out of Time Come a Swarm of Robots Who Inflict on
+New York the Awful Vengeance of the Diabolical Cripple Tugh.</i>
+(Beginning a Four-Part Novel.)</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#Hells_Dimension">HELL'S DIMENSION</a></td>
+<td>TOM CURRY</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>Professor Lambert Deliberately Ventures into a Vibrational Dimension to Join His Fiancée in Its Magnetic Torture-Fields.</i></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#The_World_Behind_the_Moon">THE WORLD BEHIND THE MOON</a></td>
+<td>PAUL ERNST</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>Two Intrepid Earth-Men Fight It Out with the Horrific Monsters of
+Zeud's Frightful Jungles.</i></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#Four_Miles_Within">FOUR MILES WITHIN</a></td>
+<td>ANTHONY GILMORE</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>Far Down into the Earth Goes a Gleaming Metal Sphere Whose Passengers Are Deadly Enemies.</i> (A Complete Novelette.)</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#The_Lake_of_Light">THE LAKE OF LIGHT</a></td>
+<td>JACK WILLIAMSON</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>In the Frozen Wastes at the Bottom of the World Two Explorers Find a Strange Pool of White Fire&mdash;and Have a Strange Adventure.</i></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#The_Ghost_World">THE GHOST WORLD</a></td>
+<td>SEWELL PEASLEE WRIGHT</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td>
+</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>Commander John Hanson Records Another of His Thrilling Interplanetary Adventures with the Special Patrol Service.</i></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#Readers_Corner">THE READERS' CORNER</a></td>
+<td>ALL OF US</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_134">134</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>A Meeting Place for Readers of Astounding Stories.</i></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><b>Single Copies, 20 Cents (In Canada, 25 Cents)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yearly Subscription,
+$2.00</b></p>
+
+<p>Issued monthly by Readers' Guild, Inc., 80 Lafayette Street, New York,
+N. Y. W. M. Clayton, President; Francis P. Pace, Secretary. Entered as
+second-class matter December 7, 1929, at the Post Office at New York,
+N. Y., under Act of March 3, 1879. Title registered as a Trade Mark in
+the U. S. Patent Office. Member Newsstand Group&mdash;Men's List. For
+advertising rates address E. R. Crowe &amp; Co., Inc., 25 Vanderbilt Ave.,
+New York; or 225 North Michigan Ave., Chicago.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Monsters_of_Mars" id="Monsters_of_Mars"></a>Monsters of Mars</h2>
+
+<h4>A COMPLETE NOVELETTE</h4>
+<h3><i>By Edmond Hamilton</i></h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img class="img1" src="images/image_003.jpg" width="600" height="270" alt=""  /><span class="caption">
+<i>The Martian gestured with a reptilian arm toward the
+ladder.</i></span></div>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+<p>llan Randall stared at the man before him. "And that's why you sent
+for me, Milton?" he finally asked.</p>
+
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence, in which Randall's eyes moved as though
+uncomprehendingly from the face of Milton to those of the two men
+beside him. The four sat together at the end of a roughly furnished
+and electric-lit living-room, and in that momentary silence there came
+in to them from the outside night the distant pounding of the Atlantic
+upon the beach. It was Randall who first spoke again.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Three Martian-duped Earth-men swing open the gates of space
+that for so long had barred the greedy hordes of the Red Planet.</div>
+
+<p>The other's face was unsmiling. "That's why I sent for you, Allan," he
+said quietly. "To go to Mars with us to-night!"</p>
+
+<p>"To Mars!" he repeated. "Have you gone crazy, Milton&mdash;or is this some
+joke you've put up with Lanier and Nelson here?"</p>
+
+<p>Milton shook his head gravely. "It is not a joke, Allan. Lanier and I
+are actually going to flash out over the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> gulf to the planet Mars
+to-night. Nelson must stay here, and since we wanted three to go I
+wired you as the most likely of my friends to make the venture."</p>
+
+<p>"But good God!" Randall exploded, rising. "You, Milton, as a physicist
+ought to know better. Space-ships and projectiles and all that are but
+fictionists' dreams."</p>
+
+<p>"We are not going in either space-ship or projectile," said Milton
+calmly. And then as he saw his friend's bewilderment he rose and led
+the way to a door at the room's end, the other three following him
+into the room beyond.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was a long laboratory of unusual size in which Randall found
+himself, one in which every variety of physical and electrical
+apparatus seemed represented. Three huge dynamo-motor arrangements
+took up the room's far end, and from them a tangle of wiring led
+through square black condensers and transformers to a battery of great
+tubes. Most remarkable, though, was the object at the room's center.</p>
+
+<p>It was like a great double cube of dull metal, being in effect two
+metal cubes each twelve feet square, supported a few feet above the
+floor by insulated standards. One side of each cube was open, exposing
+the hollow interiors of the two cubical chambers. Other wiring led
+from the big electronic tubes and from the dynamos to the sides of the
+two cubes.</p>
+
+<p>The four men gazed at the enigmatic thing for a time in silence.
+Milton's strong, capable face showed only in its steady eyes what
+feelings were his, but Lanier's younger countenance was alight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> with
+excitement; and so too to some degree was that of Nelson. Randall
+simply stared at the thing, until Milton nodded toward it.</p>
+
+<p>"That," he said, "is what will flash us out to Mars to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Randall could only turn his stare upon the other, and Lanier chuckled.
+"Can't take it in yet, Randall? Well, neither could I when the idea
+was first sprung on us."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ilton nodded to seats behind them, and as the half-dazed Randall sank
+into one the physicist faced him earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>"Randall, there isn't much time now, but I am going to tell you what I
+have been doing in the last two years on this God-forsaken Maine
+coast. I have been for those two years in unbroken communication by
+radio with beings on the planet Mars!</p>
+
+<p>"It was when I still held my physics professorship back at the
+university that I got first onto the track of the thing. I was
+studying the variation of static vibrations, and in so doing caught
+steady signals&mdash;not static&mdash;at an unprecedentedly high wave-length.
+They were dots and dashes of varying length in an entirely
+unintelligible code, the same arrangement of them being sent out
+apparently every few hours.</p>
+
+<p>"I began to study them and soon ascertained that they could be sent
+out by no station on earth. The signals seemed to be growing louder
+each day, and it suddenly occurred to me that Mars was approaching
+opposition with earth! I was startled, and kept careful watch. On the
+day that Mars was closest the earth the signals were loudest.
+Thereafter, as the red planet receded, they grew weaker. The signals
+were from some being or beings on Mars!</p>
+
+<p>"At first I was going to give the news to the world, but saw in time
+that I could not. There was not sufficient proof, and a premature
+statement would only wreck my own scientific reputation. So I decided
+to study the signals farther until I had irrefutable proof, and to
+answer them if possible. I came up here and had this place built, and
+the aerial towers and other equipment I wanted set up. Lanier and
+Nelson came with me from the university, and we began our work.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_o1.jpg" alt="O" width="60" height="54" /></div>
+<p>ur chief object was to answer those signals, but it proved
+heartbreaking work at first. We could not produce a radio wave of
+great enough length to pierce out through earth's insulating layer and
+across the gulf to Mars. We used all the power of our great
+windmill-dynamo hook-ups, but for long could not make it. Every few
+hours like clockwork the Martian signals came through. Then at last we
+heard them repeating one of our own signals. We had been heard!</p>
+
+<p>"For a time we hardly left our instruments. We began the slow and
+almost impossible work of establishing intelligent communication with
+the Martians. It was with numbers we began. Earth is the third planet
+from the sun and Mars the fourth, so three represented earth and four
+stood for Mars. Slowly we felt our way to an exchange of ideas, and
+within months were in steady and intelligent communication with them.</p>
+
+<p>"They asked us first concerning earth, its climates and seas and
+continents, and concerning ourselves, our races and mechanisms and
+weapons. Much information we flashed out to them, the language of our
+communication being English, the elements, of which they had learned,
+with a mixture of numbers and symbolical dot-dash signals.</p>
+
+<p>"We were as eager to learn about them. They were somewhat reticent, we
+found, concerning their planet and themselves. They admitted that
+their world was a dying one and that their great canals were to make
+life possible on it, and also admitted that they were different in
+bodily form from ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>"They told us finally that communi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>cation like this was too
+ineffective to give us a clear picture of their world, or vice versa.
+If we could visit Mars, and then they visit earth, both worlds would
+benefit by the knowledge of the other. It seemed impossible to me,
+though I was eager enough for it. But the Martians said that while
+spaceships and the like were impossible, there was a way by which
+living beings could flash from earth to Mars and back by radio waves,
+even as our signals flashed!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_r.jpg" alt="R" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>andall broke in in amazement. "By radio!" he exclaimed, and Milton
+nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, so they said, nor did the idea of sending matter by radio seem
+too insane, after all. We send sound, music by radio waves across half
+the world from our broadcasting stations. We send light, pictures,
+across the world from our television stations. We do that by changing
+the wave length of the light-vibrations to make them radio vibrations,
+flashing them out thus over the world, to receivers which alter their
+wave-lengths again and change them back into light-vibrations.</p>
+
+<p>"Why then could not matter be sent in the same way? Matter, it has
+been long believed, is but another vibration of the ether, like light
+and radiant heat and radio vibrations and the like, having a lower
+wave-length than any of the others. Suppose we take matter and by
+applying electrical force to it change its wave-length, step it up to
+the wave-length of radio vibrations? Then those vibrations can be
+flashed forth from the sending station to a special receiver that will
+step them down again from radio vibrations to matter vibrations. Thus
+matter, living or non-living, could be flashed tremendous distances in
+a second!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_t1.jpg" alt="T" width="64" height="54" /></div>
+
+<p>his the Martians told us, and said they would set up a
+matter-transmitter and receiver on Mars and would aid and instruct us
+so that we could set up a similar transmitter and receiver here. Then
+part of us could be flashed out to Mars as radio vibrations by the
+transmitter, and in moments would have flashed across the gulf to the
+red planet and would be transformed back from radio vibrations to
+matter-vibrations by the receiver awaiting us there!</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally we agreed enthusiastically to build such a
+matter-transmitter and receiver, and then, with their instructions
+signalled to us constantly, started the work. Weeks it took, but at
+last, only yesterday, we finished it. The thing's two cubical chambers
+are one for the transmitting of matter and the other for its
+reception. At a time agreed on yesterday we tested the thing, placing
+a guinea pig in the transmitting chamber and turning on the actuating
+force. Instantly the animal vanished, and in moments came a signal
+from the Martians saying that they had received it unharmed in their
+receiving chamber.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we tested it the other way, they sending the same guinea pig to
+us, and in moments it flashed into being in our receiving chamber. Of
+course the step-down force in the receiving chamber had to be in
+operation, since had it not been at that moment the radio-vibrations
+of the animal would have simply flashed on endlessly in endless space.
+And the same would happen to any of us were we flashed forth and no
+receiving chamber turned on to receive us.</p>
+
+<p>"We signalled the Martians that all tests were satisfactory, and told
+them that on the next night at exactly midnight by our time we would
+flash out ourselves on our first visit to them. They have promised to
+have their receiving chamber operating to receive us at that moment,
+of course, and it is my plan to stay there twenty-four hours,
+gathering ample proofs of our visit, and then flash back to earth.</p>
+
+<p>"Nelson must stay here, not only to flash us forth to-night, but above
+all to have the receiving chamber operating to receive us at the
+destined mo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>ment twenty-four hours later. The force required to
+operate it is too great to use for more than a few minutes at a time,
+so it is necessary above all that that force be turned on and the
+receiving chamber ready for us at the moment we flash back. And since
+Nelson must stay, and Lanier and I wanted another, we wired you,
+Randall, in the hope that you would want to go with us on this
+venture. And do you?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>s Milton's question hung, Randall drew a long breath. His eyes were
+on the two great cubical chambers, and his brain seemed whirling at
+what he had heard. Then he was on his feet with the others.</p>
+
+<p>"Go? Could you keep me from going? Why, man, it's the greatest
+adventure in history!"</p>
+
+<p>Milton grasped his hand, as did Lanier, and then the physicist shot a
+glance at the square clock on the wall. "Well, there's little enough
+time left us," he said, "for we've hardly an hour before midnight, and
+at midnight we must be in that transmitting chamber for Nelson to send
+us flashing out!"</p>
+
+<p>Randall could never recall but dimly afterward how that tense hour
+passed. It was an hour in which Milton and Nelson went with anxious
+faces and low-voiced comments from one to another of the pieces of
+apparatus in the room, inspecting each carefully, from the great
+dynamos to the transmitting and receiving chambers, while Lanier
+quickly got out and made ready the rough khaki suits and equipment
+they were to take.</p>
+
+<p>It lacked but a quarter-hour of midnight when they had finally donned
+those suits, each making sure that he was in possession of the small
+personal kit Milton had designated. This included for each a heavy
+automatic, a small supply of concentrated foods, and a small case of
+drugs chosen to counteract the rarer atmosphere and lesser gravity
+which Milton had been warned to expect on the red planet. Each had
+also a strong wrist-watch, the three synchronized exactly with the
+big laboratory clock.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hen they had finished checking up on this equipment the clock's
+longer hand pointed almost to the figure twelve, and the physicist
+gestured expressively toward the transmitting chamber. Lanier, though,
+strode for a moment to one of the laboratory's doors and flung it
+open. As Randall gazed out with him they could see far out over the
+tossing sea, dimly lit by the great canopy of the summer stars
+overhead. Right at the zenith among those stars shone brightest a
+crimson spark.</p>
+
+<p>"Mars," said Lanier, his voice a half-whisper. "And they're waiting
+out there for us now&mdash;out there where we'll be in minutes!"</p>
+
+<p>"And if they shouldn't be waiting&mdash;their receiving chamber not
+ready&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Milton's calm voice came across the room to them: "Zero hour," he
+said, stepping up into the big transmitting chamber.</p>
+
+<p>Lanier and Randall slowly followed, and despite himself a slight
+shudder shook the latter's body as he stepped into the mechanism that
+in moments would send him flashing out through the great void as
+impalpable ether-vibrations. Milton and Lanier were standing silent
+beside him, their eyes on Nelson, who stood watchfully now at the big
+switchboard beside the chambers, his own gaze on the clock. They saw
+him touch a stud, and another, and the hum of the great dynamos at the
+room's end grew loud as the swarming of angry bees.</p>
+
+<p>The clock's longer hand was crawling over the last space to cover the
+smaller hand. Nelson turned a knob and the battery of great glass
+tubes broke into brilliant white light, a crackling coming from them.
+Randall saw the clock's pointer clicking over the last divisions, and
+as he saw Nelson grip a great switch there came over him a wild
+impulse to bolt from the transmitting chamber. But then as his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+thoughts whirled maelstromlike there came a clang from the clock and
+Nelson flung down the switch in his grasp. Blinding light seemed to
+break from all the chamber onto the three; Randall felt himself hurled
+into nothingness by forces titanic, inconceivable, and then knew no
+more.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_r.jpg" alt="R" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>andall came back to consciousness with a humming sound in his ears
+and with a sharp pain piercing his lungs at every breath. He felt
+himself lying on a smooth hard surface, and heard the humming stop and
+be succeeded by a complete silence. He opened his eyes, drawing
+himself to his feet as Milton and Lanier were doing, and stared about
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He was standing with his two friends inside a cubical metal chamber
+almost exactly the same as the one they had occupied in Milton's
+laboratory a few moments before. But it was not the same, as their
+first astounded glance out through its open side told them.</p>
+
+<p>For it was not the laboratory that lay around them, but a vast
+conelike hall that seemed to Randall's dazed eyes of dimensions
+illimitable. Its dull-gleaming metal walls slanted up for a thousand
+feet over their heads, and through a round aperture at the tip far
+above and through great doors in the walls came a thin sunlight. At
+the center of the great hall's circular floor stood the two cubical
+chambers in one of which the three were, while around the chambers
+were grouped masses of unfamiliar-looking apparatus.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>o Randall's untrained eyes it seemed electrical apparatus of very
+strange design, but neither he nor Milton nor Lanier paid it but small
+attention in that first breathless moment. They were gazing in
+fascinated horror at the scores of creatures who stood silent amid the
+apparatus and at its switches, gazing back at them. Those creatures
+were erect and roughly man-like in shape, but they were not human
+men. They were&mdash;the thought blasted to Randall's brain in that
+horror-filled moment&mdash;crocodile-men.</p>
+
+<p>Crocodile-men! It was only so that he could think of them in that
+moment. For they were terribly like great crocodile shapes that had
+learned in some way to carry themselves erect upon their hinder limbs.
+The bodies were not covered with skin, but with green bony plates. The
+limbs, thick and taloned at their paw-ends, seemed greater in size and
+stronger, the upper two great arms and the lower two the legs upon
+which each walked, while there was but the suggestion of a tail. But
+the flat head set on the neckless body was most crocodilian of all,
+with great fanged, hinged jaws projecting forward, and with dark
+unwinking eyes set back in bony sockets.</p>
+
+<p>Each of the creatures wore on his torso a gleaming garment like a coat
+of metal scales, with metal belts in which some had shining tubes.
+They were standing in groups here and there about the mechanisms, the
+nearest group at a strange big switch-panel not a half-dozen feet from
+the three men. Milton and Lanier and Randall returned in a tense
+silence the unwinking stare of the monstrous beings around them.</p>
+
+<p>"The Martians!" Lanier's horror-filled exclamation was echoed in the
+next instant by Randall's.</p>
+
+<p>"The Martians! God, Milton! They're not like anything we know&mdash;they're
+reptilian!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ilton's hand clutched his shoulder. "Steady, Randall," he muttered.
+"They're terrible enough, God knows&mdash;but remember we must seem just as
+grotesque to them."</p>
+
+<p>The sound of their voices seemed to break the great hall's spell of
+silence, and they saw the crocodilian Martians before them turning and
+speaking swiftly to each other in low hissing speech-sounds that were
+quite unintelligible to the three. Then from the small group nearest
+them one came<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> forward, until he stood just outside the chamber in
+which they were.</p>
+
+<p>Randall felt dimly the momentousness of the moment, in which beings of
+earth and Mars were confronting each other for the first time in the
+solar system's history. The creature before them opened his great jaws
+and uttered slowly a succession of sounds that for the moment puzzled
+them, so different were they from the hissing speech of the others,
+though with the same sibilance of tone. Again the thing repeated the
+sounds, and this time Milton uttered an exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>"He's speaking to us!" he cried. "Trying to speak the English that I
+taught them in our communication! I caught a word&mdash;listen...."</p>
+
+<p>As the creature repeated the sounds, Randall and Lanier started to
+hear also vaguely expressed in that hissing voice familiar words:
+"You&mdash;are Milton and&mdash;others from&mdash;earth?"</p>
+
+<p>Milton spoke very clearly and slowly to the creature: "We are those
+from earth," he said. "And you are the Martians with whom we have
+communicated?"</p>
+
+<p>"We are those Martians," said the other's hissing voice slowly.
+"These"&mdash;he waved a taloned paw toward those behind him&mdash;"have charge
+of the matter-transmitter and receiver. I am of our ruler's council."</p>
+
+<p>"Ruler?" Milton repeated. "A ruler of all Mars?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of all Mars," the other said. "Our name for him would mean in your
+words the Martian Master. I am to take you to him."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ilton turned to the other two with face alight with excitement.
+"These Martians have some supreme ruler they call the Martian Master,"
+he said quickly; "and we're to go before him. As the first visitors
+from earth we're of immense importance here."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, the Martian official before them had uttered a hissing
+call, and in answer to it a long shape of shining metal raced into
+the vast hall and halted beside them. It was like a fifty-foot
+centipede of metal, its scores of supporting short legs actuated by
+some mechanism inside the cylindrical body. There was a
+transparent-walled control room at the front end of that body, and in
+it a Martian at the controls who snapped open a door from which a
+metal ladder automatically descended.</p>
+
+<p>The Martian official gestured with a reptilian arm toward the ladder,
+and Milton and Lanier and Randall moved carefully out of the
+cube-chamber and across the floor to it, each of their steps being
+made a short leap forward by the lesser gravity of the smaller planet.
+They climbed up into the centipede-machine's control room, their guide
+following, and then as the door snapped shut, the operator of the
+thing pulled and turned the knob in his grasp and the long machine
+scuttled forward with amazing smoothness and speed.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment it was out of the building and into the feeble sunlight of
+a broad metal-paved street. About them lay a Martian city, seen by
+their eager eyes for the first time. It was a city whose structures
+were giant metal cones like that from which they had just come, though
+none seemed as large as that titanic one. Throngs of the hideous
+crocodilian Martians were moving busily to and fro in the streets,
+while among them there scuttled and flashed numbers of the
+centipede-machines.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>s their strange vehicle raced along, Randall saw that the conelike
+structures were for the most part divided into many levels, and that
+inside some could be glimpsed ranks of great mechanisms and hurrying
+Martians tending them. Away to their right across the vast forest of
+cones that was the city the sun's little disk was shining, and he
+glimpsed in that direction higher ground covered with a vast tangle of
+bright crimson jungle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> that sloped upward from a great, half-glimpsed
+waterway.</p>
+
+<p>The Martian beside them saw the direction of his gaze and leaned
+toward him. "No Martians live there," he hissed slowly. "Martians live
+only in cities where canals meet."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there's no life in those crimson jungles?" Randall asked,
+repeating the question a moment later more slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"No Martians there, but life&mdash;living things," the other told him,
+searching for words. "But not intelligent, like Martians and you."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to gaze ahead, then pointed. "The Martian Master's cone," he
+hissed.</p>
+
+<p>The three saw that at the end of the broad metal street down which
+their vehicle was racing there loomed another titanic cone-structure,
+fully as large as the mighty one in which they first found themselves.
+As the centipede-machine swept up to its great door-opening and
+halted, they descended to the metal paving and then followed their
+reptilian guide through the opening.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey found themselves in a great hall in which scores of the Martians
+were coming and going. At the hall's end stood a row of what seemed
+guards, Martians grasping shining tubes such as they had already
+glimpsed. These gave way to allow their passage when their conductor
+uttered a hissing order, and then they were moving down a shorter hall
+at whose end also were guards. As these sprang aside before them, a
+great door of massive metal they guarded moved softly upward,
+disclosing a mighty circular hall or room inside. Their crocodilian
+guide turned to them.</p>
+
+<p>"The hall of the Martian Master," he hissed.</p>
+
+<p>They passed inside with him. The great hall seemed to extend upward to
+the giant cone's tip, thin light coming down from an opening there.
+Upon the dull metal of its looming walls were running friezes of
+lighter metal, grotesque representations of reptilian shapes that they
+could but vaguely glimpse. Around the walls stood rank after rank of
+guards.</p>
+
+<p>At the hall's center was a low dias, and in a semicircle around and
+behind it stood a half-hundred great crocodilian shapes. Randall
+guessed even at the moment that they were the council of which their
+conductor had named himself a member. But like Milton and Lanier, he
+had eyes in that first moment only for the dais itself. For on it
+was&mdash;the Martian Master.</p>
+
+<p>Randall heard Milton and Lanier choke with the horror that shook his
+own heart and brain as he gazed. It was not simply another great
+crocodilian shape that sat upon that dais. It was a monstrous thing
+formed by the joining of three of the great reptilian bodies! Three
+distinct crocodile-like bodies sitting close together upon a metal
+seat, that had but a single great head. A great, grotesque crocodilian
+head that bulged backward and to either side, and that rested on the
+three thick short necks that rose from the triple body! And that head,
+that triple-bodied thing, was living, its unwinking eyes gazing at the
+three men!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he Martian Master! Randall felt his brain reel as he gazed at that
+mind-shattering thing. The Martian Master&mdash;this great head with three
+bodies! Reason told Randall, even as he strove for sanity, that the
+thing was but logical, that even on earth biologists had formed
+multiple-headed creatures by surgery, and that the Martians had done
+so to combine in one great head, one great brain, the brains of three
+bodies. Reason told him that the great triple brain inside that
+bulging head needed the bloodstreams of all three bodies to nourish
+it, must be a giant intellect indeed, one fitted to be the supreme
+Martian Master. But reason could not overcome the horror that choked
+him as he gazed at the awful thing.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A hissing voice sounding before him made him aware that the Martian
+Master was speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"You are the Earth-beings with whom we communicated, and whom we
+instructed to build a matter-transmitter and receiver on earth?" the
+slow voice asked. "You have come safely to Mars by means of that
+station?"</p>
+
+<p>"We have come safely." Milton's voice was shaken and he could find no
+other words.</p>
+
+<p>"That is well. Long had we desired to have such a station built on
+earth, since with it there to flash back and forth between the two
+worlds is easy. You have come, then, to learn of this world and to
+take back what you learn to your races?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is why we came." Milton said, more steadily. "We want to stay
+only hours on this first visit, and then flash back to earth as we
+came."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he head's awful eyes seemed to consider them. "But when do you intend
+to go back?" its strange voice asked. "Unless the one at your earth
+station has its receiver operating at the right moment you will simply
+flash on endlessly as radio waves&mdash;will be annihilated."</p>
+
+<p>Milton found the courage to smile. "We started from earth at our
+midnight exactly, and at midnight exactly twenty-four earth hours
+later, we are to flash back and the receiver will be awaiting us."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence when he had said that, a silence that seemed to
+Randall's strained mind to have become suddenly tense, sinister. The
+great triple-bodied creature before them considered them again, its
+eyes moving over them, and when it again spoke the hissing words came
+very slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty-four earth hours," it said; "and then your receiver on earth
+will be awaiting you. That time we can measure to the moment, and that
+is well. For it is not you three Earth-beings who will flash back to
+earth when that moment comes! It will be Martians, the first of our
+Martian masses who have waited for ages for that moment and who will
+begin then our conquest of the earth!</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Earth-beings, our great plan comes to its end now at last! At
+last! Age on age, prisoned on this dying, arid world, we have desired
+the earth that by right of power shall be ours, have sought for ages
+to communicate with its beings. You finally heard us, you hearkened to
+us, you built the matter-transmitting and receiving station on earth
+that was the one thing needed for our plan. For when the
+matter-receiver of that station is turned on in twenty-four of your
+hours, and ready to receive matter flashes from here, it will be the
+first of our millions who will flash at last to earth!</p>
+
+<p>"I, the Martian Master, say it. Those first to go shall seize that
+matter-receiver on earth when first they appear there, shall build
+other and larger receivers, and through them within days all our
+Martian hordes shall have been flashed to earth! Shall have poured out
+over it and conquered with our weapons your weak races of
+Earth-beings, who cannot stand before us, and whose world you have
+delivered at last into our hands!"</p>
+
+<p>For a moment, when the great monster's hissing voice had ceased,
+Milton and Randall and Lanier gazed toward it as though petrified, the
+whole unearthly scene spinning about them. And then, through the thick
+silence, the thin sound of Milton's voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Our world&mdash;our earth&mdash;delivered to the Martians, and by us! God&mdash;no!"</p>
+
+<p>With that last cry of agonized comprehension and horror, Milton did
+what surely had never any in the great hall expected, leaped onto the
+dais with a single spring toward the Martian Master! Randall heard a
+hundred wild hissing cries break from about him, saw the crocodilian
+forms of guards and council rushing forward even as he and Lanier
+sprang after Milton, and then glimpsed shining tubes levelled from
+which brilliant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> shafts of dazzling crimson light or force were
+stabbing toward them!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>o Randall the moment that followed was but a split-second flash and
+whirl of action. As his earthly muscles took him forward with Lanier
+after Milton in a great leap to the dais, he was aware of the
+brilliant red rays stabbing behind him closely, and knew that only the
+tremendous size of his leap had taken him past them. In the succeeding
+instant he was made aware of what he had escaped, for the
+hastily-loosed rays struck squarely a group of three or four Martian
+guards rushing to the dais from the opposite side, and they vanished
+from view with a sharp detonation as though clicked out of existence!</p>
+
+<p>Randall was not to know then, that the red rays were ones that
+annihilated matter by neutralizing or damping the matter-vibrations in
+the ether. But he did know that no more rays were loosed, for by then
+he and Milton and Lanier were on the dais and were wrapped in a
+hurricane combat with the guards that had rushed between them and the
+Martian Master.</p>
+
+<p>Gleaming fangs&mdash;great scaled forms&mdash;reaching talons&mdash;it was all a wild
+phantasmagoria of grotesque forms spinning around him as he struck
+with all the power of his earthly muscles and felt crocodilian forms
+staggering and going down beneath his frenzied blows. He heard the
+roar of an automatic close beside him in the melee as Milton
+remembered at last through the red haze of his fury the weapon he
+carried, but before either Randall or Lanier could reach their own
+weapons a new wave of crocodilian forms had poured onto them that by
+sheer pressing weight held them helpless, to be disarmed.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>issing orders sounded, the arms and legs of the three were tightly
+grasped by great taloned paws, and the masses of Martians about them
+melted back from the dais. Held each by two great creatures, Milton
+and Randall and Lanier faced again the triple-bodied Martian Master,
+who in all that wild moment of struggle appeared not to have changed
+his position. The big monster's black eyes stared unmovedly down at
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"You Earth-beings seem of lower intelligence even than we thought,"
+his hissing voice informed them. "And those weapons&mdash;crude, very
+crude."</p>
+
+<p>Milton, his face set, spoke back: "It may be that you will find human
+weapons of some power if your hordes reach earth," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"But what compared with the power of ours?" the other asked coldly.
+"And since our scientists even now devise new weapons to annihilate
+the earth's races, I think they would be glad of three of those races
+to experiment with now. The one use we can make of you, certainly."</p>
+
+<p>The creature turned its bulging head a little towards the guards who
+held the three men, and uttered a brief hissing order. Instantly the
+six Martians, grasping the three tightly, marched them across the
+great hall and through a different door than that by which they had
+entered.</p>
+
+<p>They were taken down a narrow corridor that turned sharply twice as
+they went on. Randall saw that it was lit by squares inset in the
+walls that glowed with crimson light. It came to him as they marched
+on that night must be upon the Martian city without, since the sun had
+been sinking when they had crossed it in the centipede-machine.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hrough what seemed an ante-room they were taken, and then into a long
+hall instantly recognizable as a laboratory. There were many glowing
+squares illuminating it, and narrow windows high in the wall gave them
+a glimpse of the city outside, a pattern of crimson lights. Long metal
+tables and racks filled the big room's farther end, while along the
+walls were ranged shining mechanisms of un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>familiar and grotesque
+appearance. Fully a score of the crocodilian Martians were busy in the
+room, some intent on their work at the racks and tables, others
+operating some of the strange machines.</p>
+
+<p>The guards conducted the three to an open space by the wall, below one
+of the high window-openings and between two great cylindrical
+mechanisms. Then, while five of their number held the three men
+prisoned in that space by the threat of their levelled ray-tubes, the
+other moved toward one of the busy Martian scientists and held with
+him a brief interchange of hissing speech.</p>
+
+<p>Milton leaned to whisper to the other two: "We've got to get out of
+this while we're still living," he whispered. "You heard the Martian
+Master&mdash;in constructing that matter-receiver on earth, we've opened a
+door through which all the Martian millions will pour onto our world!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's useless, Milton," said Randall dully. "Even if we got clear of
+this the Martians will be at their matter-transmitter in hordes when
+the moment comes to flash back to earth."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that, but we've got to try," the other insisted. "If we or
+some of us could get clear of this, we might in some way hide near the
+matter-transmitter until the moment came and then fight to it."</p>
+
+<p>"But how to get out of the hands of these, even?" asked Lanier,
+nodding toward the alert guards before them.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_t1.jpg" alt="T" width="64" height="54" /></div>
+
+<p>here's but one way," Milton whispered swiftly. "Our earthly muscles
+would enable us, I think, to get through this window-opening above us
+in a leap, if we had a moment's chance. Well, whichever of us they
+take to experiment with or examine first, must make a struggle or
+disturbance that will turn the guards' attention for a moment and give
+the other two a chance to make the attempt!"</p>
+
+<p>"One to stay and the other two to get away...." Randall said slowly;
+but Milton's tense whisper interrupted:</p>
+
+<p>"It's the only way, and even then a thousand to one chance! But it's
+we who have opened this gate for the Martian invasion of our world and
+it's we who must&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Before he could finish, the approach of hissing voices told them that
+the leader of the six guards and the Martian who seemed the chief of
+the experimenters in the hall were nearing them. The three men stood
+silent and tense as the two crocodilian monsters stopped before them.
+The scientist, who carried in his metal-belt, instead of a ray-tube a
+compact case of instruments, surveyed them as though in curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>He came closer, his quick reptilian eyes taking in with evident
+interest every feature of their bodily appearance. Intuitively the
+three knew that one of them was to be chosen for a first investigation
+by the Martian scientists, and that that one would have not even the
+slender hope of escape open to the other two. A strange lottery of
+life and death!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_r.jpg" alt="R" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>andall saw the creature's gaze turn from one to another of them, and
+then heard the hiss of his voice as he pointed a taloned paw toward
+Milton. Instantly two of the guards had seized Milton and had jerked
+him out from the wall, the other guards holding back Randall and
+Lanier with threatening tubes. It was upon Milton that the fatal
+choice had fallen!</p>
+
+<p>Randall and Lanier made together a half-movement forward, but Milton,
+a tense message in his eyes, forced them back. The guards who held the
+physicist led him, at the direction of the Martian scientist, toward a
+great upright frame at the room's far end, upon which were clustered a
+score of dial-indicators. From these flexible cords led; and now the
+scientists began attaching these by clips to various spots on Milton's
+body. Some mechanical examination of his bodily characteris<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>tics were
+apparently to be made. Milton shot suddenly a glance at the two by the
+wall, and his head nodded in an almost imperceptible signal. The
+muscles of Lanier and Randall tensed.</p>
+
+<p>Then abruptly Milton seemed to go mad. He shouted aloud in a terrible
+voice, and at the same moment tore from him the cords just attached,
+his fists striking out then at the amazed Martians around him. As they
+leaped back from that sudden explosion of activity and sound on
+Milton's part the guards before Randall and Lanier whirled
+instinctively for an instant toward it. And in that instant the two
+had leaped.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was upward they leaped, with all the force of their earthly
+muscles, toward the big window-opening a half-dozen feet in the wall
+above them. Like released steel springs they sat up, and Randall heard
+the thump of their feet as they struck the opening's sill, heard wild
+cries suddenly coming from beneath them, as the guards turned back
+toward them. Crimson rays clove up like light toward them, but the
+instant's surprise had been enough, and in it they had leaped on and
+through the opening, into the outside night!</p>
+
+<p>As they shot downward and struck the metal paving outside, Randall
+heard a wild babble of cries from inside. A moment he and Lanier gazed
+frenziedly around them, then were running with great leaps along the
+base of the building from which they had just escaped.</p>
+
+<p>In the darkness of night the Martian city stretched away to their
+right, its massive dark cone-structures outlined by points of glowing
+ruddy light here and there upon them. Beside the city's metal streets
+were illuminated by the brilliant field of stars overhead and by the
+soft light of the two moons, one much larger than the other, that
+moved among those stars.</p>
+
+<p>Along the street crocodilian Martians were coming and going still,
+though in small numbers, there being but few in sight in the dim-lit
+street's length. Lanier pointed ahead as they leaped onward.</p>
+
+<p>"Straight onward, Randall!" he jerked. "There seem fewer of the
+Martians this way!"</p>
+
+<p>"But the great cone of the matter-station is the other way!" Randall
+exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"We can't risk making for it now!" cried the other. "We've got to keep
+clear of them until the alarm is over. Hear them now?"</p>
+
+<p>For even as they leaped forward a rising clamor of hissing cries and
+rush of feet was coming from behind as scores of Martians poured out
+into the darkness from the great cone-building. The two fugitives had
+passed by then from the shadow of the mighty structure, and as they
+ran along the broad metal street toward the shadow of the next cone,
+through the light of the moons above, they heard higher cries and then
+glimpsed narrow shafts of crimson force cleaving the night around
+them.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_r.jpg" alt="R" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>andall, as the deadly rays drove past him, heard the low detonating
+sound made by their destruction of the air in their path, and the
+inrush of new air. But in the misty and uncertain moonlight the rays
+could not be loosed accurately, and before they could be swept
+sidewise to annihilate the two fleeing men they had gained, with a
+last great leap, the shadow of the next building.</p>
+
+<p>On they ran, the clatter of the Martian pursuit growing more noisy
+behind them. Randall heard Lanier gasping with each great leap, and
+felt himself at every breath a knife of pain stabbing through his
+lungs, the rarified atmosphere of the red planet taking its toll.
+Again from the darkness behind them the crimson rays clove, but this
+time were wide of their mark.</p>
+
+<p>With every moment the clamor of pursuit seemed growing louder, the
+alarm spreading out over the Martian city and arousing it. As they
+raced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> past cone after cone, Randall knew even the increased power of
+their muscles could not long aid them against the exhaustion which the
+thin air was imposing on them. His thoughts spun for a moment to
+Milton, in the laboratory behind, and then back to their own desperate
+plight.</p>
+
+<p>Abruptly shapes loomed in the misty light before them! A group of
+three great Martians, reptilian shapes that had been coming toward
+them and had stopped for an instant in amazement at sight of the
+running pair. There was no time to halt themselves, to evade the
+three, and with a mutual instinct Lanier and Randall seized together
+the last expedient open to them. They ran straight forward toward the
+astounded three, and when a half-score feet from them, leaped with all
+their force upward and toward them, their tensed bodies flying through
+the air with feet outstretched before them.</p>
+
+<p>Then they had struck the group of three with feet-foremost, and with
+the impetus of that great leap had knocked them sprawling to this side
+and that, while with a supreme effort the two kept their balance and
+leaped on. The cries of the three added to the din behind them as they
+threw themselves forward.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey flung themselves past a last cone building to halt for an instant
+in utter amazement despite the nearing pursuit. Before them were no
+more streets and structures, but a huge smooth-flowing waterway! It
+gleamed in the moonlight and lay at right angles across their path,
+seeming to flow along the Martian city's edge.</p>
+
+<p>"A canal!" cried Lanier. "It's one of the canals that meet at this
+city and flow around it! We're trapped&mdash;we've reached the city's
+edge!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet!" Randall gasped. "Look!"</p>
+
+<p>As he pointed to the left Lanier shot a glance there; and then both of
+them were running in that direction, along the smooth metal paving
+that bordered the mighty canal. They came to what Randall had seen, a
+mighty metal arch that soared out over the waterway to its opposite
+side. A bridge!</p>
+
+<p>They were on it, were racing up the smooth incline of it. Randall
+glanced back as they reached the arch's summit. From that height the
+city stretched far away behind them, a lace of crimson lights in the
+night. He glimpsed the gleam of the giant waterway that encircled the
+city completely, one that was fed by other canals from far away that
+emptied into it, the great city's vital water-supply brought thus from
+this world's melting polar snows.</p>
+
+<p>There were moving lights behind now, too, pouring out onto the metal
+paving by the waterway, moving to and fro as though in confusion, with
+a babel of hissing cries. It was not until Randall and Lanier were
+running down the descending incline of the great arched bridge,
+though, that the lights and shouts of their pursuers began to move up
+on that bridge after them.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_r.jpg" alt="R" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>unning off the bridge's smooth way, the two found themselves
+stumbling on through the darkness over more metal paving, and then
+over soft ground. There were no lights or buildings or sounds of any
+sort on this farther side of the great waterway. A tall dark wall
+seemed suddenly to loom up out of the darkness some distance ahead of
+the two.</p>
+
+<p>"The crimson jungle!" Randall cried. "The jungles we glimpsed from the
+city! It's a chance to hide!"</p>
+
+<p>They raced toward the protecting blackness of that wall of vegetation.
+They reached it, flung themselves inside, just as the pursuing
+Martians, a mass of running crocodilian shapes and of great racing
+centipede-machines, swept up over the bridge's arch behind. A moment
+the two halted in the thick vegetation's shelter, gasping for breath,
+then were moving forward through the jungle's denser darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Thick about them and far above them towered the masses of strange
+trees<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> and plant life through which they made their way. Randall could
+see but dimly the nature of these plant-forms, but could make out that
+they were grotesque and unearthly in appearance, all leafless, and
+with masses of thin tendrils branching from them instead of leaves. He
+realized that it was only beside the arid planet's great canals that
+this profusion of plant life had sufficient moisture for existence,
+and that it was the broad bands of jungle bordering the canals that
+had made the latter visible to earth's astronomers.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>anier and he halted for a moment to listen. The thick jungle about
+them seemed quite silent. But from behind there came through it a
+vague tumult of hissing calls; and then, as they glimpsed red flashes
+far behind, they heard the crashing of great masses of the leafless
+trees.</p>
+
+<p>"The rays!" whispered Lanier. "They're beating through the jungle with
+them and the centipede-machines after us!"</p>
+
+<p>They paused no more, but pushed on through the thick growths with
+renewed urgency. Now and then, as they passed through small clearings,
+Randall glimpsed overhead the fast-moving nearer moon and slower
+sailing farther moon of Mars, moving across the steady stars. In some
+of these clearings they saw, too, strange great openings burrowed in
+the ground as though by some strange animal.</p>
+
+<p>The crashing clamor of the Martians beating the jungle behind was
+coming close, ever closer, and as they came to still another misty-lit
+clearing, Lanier paused, with face white and tense.</p>
+
+<p>"They're closing in on us!" he said. "They're hunting us down by
+beating the jungle with those centipede-machines, and even if we
+escape them we're getting farther from the city and the matter-station
+each moment!"</p>
+
+<p>Randall's eyes roved desperately around the clearing; and then, as
+they fell on a group of the great burrowed openings that seemed
+present everywhere about them, he uttered an exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>"These holes! We can hide in one until they've passed over us, and
+then steal back to the city!"</p>
+
+<p>Lanier's eyes lit. "It's a chance!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey sprang toward the openings. They were each of some four feet
+diameter, extending indefinitely downward as though the mouths of
+tunnels. In a moment Randall was lowering himself into one, Lanier
+after him. The tunnel in which they were, they found, curved to one
+side a few feet below the surface. They crawled down this curve until
+they were out of sight of the opening above. They crouched silent,
+then, listening.</p>
+
+<p>There came down to them the dull, distant clamor of the
+centipede-machines crashing through the jungle, cutting a way with
+rays, their clamor growing ever louder. Then Randall, who was lowest
+in the tunnel, turned suddenly as there came to him a strange rustling
+sound from <i>beneath</i> him. It was as though some crawling or creeping
+thing was moving in the tunnel below them!</p>
+
+<p>He grasped the arm of Lanier, beside and a little above him, to warn
+him, but the words he was about to whisper never were uttered. For at
+this moment a big shapeless living thing seemed to flash up toward
+them through the darkness from beneath, cold ropelike tentacles
+gripped both tightly; and then in an instant they were being dragged
+irresistibly down into the lightless tunnel's depths!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>s they were pulled swiftly downward into the tunnel by the tentacles
+that grasped them an involuntary cry of horror came from Randall and
+Lanier alike. They twisted frantically in the cold grip that held
+them, but found it of the quality of steel. And as Randall twisted in
+it to strike frantically down through the darkness at whatever thing
+of horror held them, his clenched fist met but the cold<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> smooth skin
+of some big, soft-bodied creature!</p>
+
+<p>Down&mdash;down&mdash;remorselessly they were being drawn farther into the black
+depths of the tunnel by the great thing crawling down below them.
+Again and again the two twisted and struck, but could not shake its
+hold. In sheer exhaustion they ceased to struggle, dragged helplessly
+farther down.</p>
+
+<p>Was it minutes or hours, Randall wondered afterward, of that horrible
+progress downward, that passed before they glimpsed light beneath? A
+feeble glow, hardly discernible, it was, and as they went lower still
+he saw that it was caused by the tunnel passing through a strata of
+radio-active rock that gave off the faint light. In that light they
+glimpsed for the first time the horror dragging them downward.</p>
+
+<p>It was a huge worm creature! A thing like a giant angleworm, three
+feet or more in thickness and thrice that in length, its great body
+soft and cold and worm-like. From the end nearest them projected two
+long tentacles with which it had gripped the two men and was dragging
+them down the tunnel after it! Randall glimpsed a mouth-aperture in
+the tentacled end of the worm body also, and two scarlike marks above
+it, placed like eyes, although eyes the monstrous thing had not.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ut a moment they glimpsed it and then were in darkness again as the
+tunnel passed through the radio-active strata and lower. The horror of
+that moment's glimpse, though, made them strike out in blind
+repulsion, but relentlessly the creature dragged them after it.</p>
+
+<p>"God!" It was Lanier's panting cry as they were dragged on. "This worm
+monster&mdash;we're hundreds of feet below the surface!"</p>
+
+<p>Randall sought to reply, but his voice choked. The air about them was
+close and damp, with an overpowering earthy smell. He felt
+consciousness leaving him.</p>
+
+<p>A gleam of soft light&mdash;they were passing more radio-active patches. He
+felt the wild convulsive struggles of Lanier against the thing; and
+then suddenly the tunnel ended, debouched into a far-stretching,
+low-ceilinged cavity. It was feebly illuminated by radio-active
+patches here and there in walls and ceiling, and as the monster that
+held them halted on entering the cavity, Randall and Lanier lay in its
+grip and stared across the weird place with intensified horror.</p>
+
+<p>For it was swarming with countless worm monsters! All were like the
+one who held them, thick long worm bodies with projecting tentacles
+and with black eyeless faces. They were crawling to and fro in this
+cavern far beneath the surface, swarming in hordes around and over
+each other, pouring in and out of the awful place from countless
+tunnels that led upward and downward from it!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;world of worm monsters, beneath the surface of the Martian jungles!
+As Randall stared across that swarming, dim-lit cave of horror,
+physically sick at sight of it, he remembered the countless tunnel
+openings they had glimpsed in their flight through the jungle, and
+remembered the remark of the Martian who had first guided them across
+the city, that in the jungles were living things, of a sort. These
+were the things, worm monsters whose unthinkable networks of tunnels
+and burrows formed beneath the surface a veritable worm world!</p>
+
+<p>"Randall!" It was Lanier's thick exclamation. "Randall&mdash;those
+scar-marks on their&mdash;faces&mdash;you see&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"See?"</p>
+
+<p>"Those marks! These creatures had eyes once but must have been forced
+down here by the Martians. These may once have been&mdash;ages ago&mdash;human!"</p>
+
+<p>At that thought Randall felt horror overcoming his senses. He was
+aware that the great worm monster holding them was dragging them
+forward through the cavern, that others of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> swarms there were
+crowding around them, feeling them blindly with their tentacles,
+helping to drag them forward.</p>
+
+<p>Half-carried and half-dragged they went, scores of tentacles now
+holding them, great worm shapes crawling forward on all sides of them
+and accompanying them along the cavern's length. He glimpsed worm
+monsters here and there emerging from the upward tunnels with masses
+of strange plant stuff in their grasp that others blindly devoured.
+His senses reeled from the suffocating air, the great cavity being but
+a half-score feet in height, burrowed from the damp earth by these
+numberless things.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he faint, strange light of the radio-active patches showed him that
+they were approaching the cavern's end. Tunnels opened from its end as
+from all its walls and floor, and into one Randall was dragged by the
+creatures, one before and one behind, grasping him, and Lanier being
+brought behind him in the same way. In the close tunnel the heavy air
+was deadly, and he was but partly conscious when again, after moments
+of crawling along it, he felt himself dragged out into another cavern.</p>
+
+<p>This earth-walled cavity, though, seemed to extend farther than the
+first, though of the same height as the first and with a few
+radio-active illuminating patches. In it seethed and swarmed literally
+hundreds on hundreds of the worm monsters, a sea of great crawling
+bodies. Randall and Lanier saw that they were being carried and
+dragged now toward the farther end of this larger cavity.</p>
+
+<p>As they approached it, pushing through the swarming creatures who felt
+them with inquisitive tentacles as their captors took them forward,
+the two men saw that a great shape was looming up in the faint light
+at the cave's far end. In moments they were close enough to discern
+its nature, and a horror and awe filled them at sight of it more
+intense than they had yet felt.</p>
+
+<p>For the looming shape was a huge earthen image or statue of a worm! It
+was shaped with a childish crudeness from the solid earth, a giant
+earthen worm shape whose body looped across the cave's end, and whose
+tentacled head or front end was reared upward to the cavity's roof.
+Before this awful earthen shape was a section of the cave's floor
+higher than the rest, and on it a great crudely shaped rectangular
+earthen block.</p>
+
+<p>"Lanier&mdash;that shape!" whispered Randall in his horror. "That earthen
+image, made by these creatures&mdash;it's the worm god they've made for
+themselves!"</p>
+
+<p>"A worm god!" Lanier repeated, staring toward it as they were dragged
+nearer. "Then that block...."</p>
+
+<p>"Its altar!" Randall exclaimed. "These things have some dim spark of
+intelligence or memory! They're brought us here to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>efore he could finish, the clutching tentacles of the worm monsters
+about them had dragged them up onto the raised floor beside the block,
+beneath the looming earthen worm shape. There they glimpsed for the
+first time in the faint light another who stood there held tightly by
+the tentacles of two worm monsters. It was a Martian!</p>
+
+<p>The big crocodilian shape was apparently a prisoner like themselves,
+captured and brought down from above. His reptilian eyes surveyed
+Lanier and Randall quickly as they were dragged up and held beside
+him, but he took no other interest. To the two men, at the moment, it
+seemed that his great crocodilian shape was human, almost, so much
+more man-like was it than the grotesque worm monsters before them.</p>
+
+<p>With a half-dozen of the creatures holding the two men and the Martian
+tightly, another great worm monster crawled to the edge of the raised
+earth floor in front of the giant worm god's image, and then reared up
+the first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> third of his thick body into the air. By then the great,
+faint-lit cavity stretching before them was filled with countless
+numbers of the monsters, pouring into it from all the tunnels that
+opened into it from above and below, packing it thick with their
+grotesque bodies as far as the eye could reach in the dim light.</p>
+
+<p>They were seething and crawling in that great mass; but as the worm
+monster on the elevation upreared, all in the cavity seemed suddenly
+to quiet. Then the upreared eyeless thing began to move his long
+tentacles. Very slowly at first he waved them back and forth, and
+slowly the masses of monsters in the cavity, all turned by some sense
+toward him, did likewise, the cavity becoming a forest of upraised
+tentacles waving rhythmically back and forth in unison with those of
+the leader.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ack and forth&mdash;back and forth&mdash;Randall felt caught in some torturing
+nightmare as he watched the countless tentacle-feelers waving thus
+from one side to the other. It was a ceremony, he knew&mdash;some strange
+rite springing perhaps from dim memory alone, that these worm monsters
+carried out thus before the looming shape of their worm god. Only the
+six that held the three captives never relaxed their grip.</p>
+
+<p>Still on and on went the strange and senseless rite. By then the
+close, damp air of that cavity far beneath Mars' surface was sinking
+Randall and Lanier deeper into a half-consciousness. The Martian
+beside them never moved or spoke. The upstretched tentacles of the
+leader and of the great worm horde before him never ceased swaying
+rhythmically from side to side.</p>
+
+<p>Randall, half-hypnotized by those swaying tentacles and but
+semi-conscious by then, could only estimate afterward how long that
+grotesque rite went on. Hours it must have endured, he knew, hours in
+which each opening of his eyes revealed only the dimly-illuminated
+cavern, the worm monsters that filled it, the forest of tentacles
+waving in unison. It was only toward the end of those hours that he
+noticed vaguely that the tentacles were waving faster and faster.</p>
+
+<p>And as the tentacles of leader and worm horde waved alike ever more
+swiftly an atmosphere of growing excitement and expectation seemed to
+hold the horde. At last the upstretched feelers were whipping back and
+forth almost too swiftly for the eye to follow. Then abruptly the worm
+leader ceased the motion himself, and while the horde before him
+continued it, turned and crawled to the three captives.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>In an instant, as though in answer to a second command, the two worm
+monsters who held the Martian dragged him forward toward the great
+earthen block before the worm god's image. Two others of the creatures
+came from the side, and the four swiftly stretched the Martian flat on
+the block's top, each of the four grasping with their tentacles one of
+his four taloned limbs. They seemed to hesitate then, the worm leader
+beside them, the tentacles of the horde waving swiftly still.</p>
+
+<p>Abruptly the tentacles of the leader flashed up as though in a signal.
+There was a dull ripping sound, and in that moment Randall and Lanier
+saw the Martian on the block torn literally limb from limb by the four
+great worm monsters who had held his four limbs!</p>
+
+<p>The tentacles of the horde waved suddenly with increased, excited
+swiftness at that. Randall shrank in horror.</p>
+
+<p>"They've brought us here for that!" he cried. "To sacrifice us on that
+altar that way to their worm god!"</p>
+
+<p>But Lanier too had cried out, appalled, as he saw that awful
+sacrifice, and both strained madly against the grip of the worm
+creatures. Their struggles were in vain, and then in answer to another
+unspoken command the two monsters that held Randall were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> dragging him
+also to the earthen altar!</p>
+
+<p>He felt himself gripped by the four great creatures around the block,
+felt as he struggled with his last strength that he was being
+stretched out on the block, each of the four at one of its corners
+grasping one of his limbs. He heard Lanier's mad cries as though from
+a great distance, glimpsed as he was held thus on his back the great
+shape of the earthen worm god reared over him, and then glimpsed the
+leader of the monsters rearing beside him.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he dull sound of the swift-waving tentacles of the horde came to him,
+there was a tense moment of agony of waiting, and then the tentacles
+of the leader flashed up in the signal!</p>
+
+<p>But at the same moment Randall felt his limbs released by the four
+monsters that had held them! There seemed sudden wild confusion in the
+great cave. The strange rite broke off; the horde of worm monsters
+crawled frantically this way and that in it. Randall slipped off the
+block; staggered to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>The worm monsters in the cave were swarming toward the downward tunnel
+openings! The two captives forgotten, the creatures were pouring in
+crawling, fighting swarms toward those openings. And then, as Randall
+and Lanier stared stupefied, there came a red flash from one of the
+upward tunnels and a brilliant crimson ray stabbed down and mowed a
+path of annihilation in the cave's earthen side!</p>
+
+<p>The two heard great thumping sounds from above, saw the tunnels
+leading from above becoming suddenly many times greater in size as red
+rays flashed down along them to gouge the tunnel's walls. Then down
+from those enlarged tunnels there were bursting long shining shapes,
+great centipede-machines crawling down the tunnels which their rays
+made larger before them! And as the centipede-machines burst down into
+the cavern their crimson rays stabbed right and left to cut paths of
+annihilation among the worms.</p>
+
+<p>"The Martians!" Lanier cried. "They didn't find us above&mdash;they knew we
+must have been taken by these things&mdash;and they've come down after us!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_b1.jpg" alt="B" width="46" height="52" /></div>
+<p>ack, Lanier!" Randall shouted. "Quick, before they see us, behind
+this&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he was jerking Lanier with him behind the looming earthen
+statue of the great worm god. Crouched there between the statue and
+the cave's wall they were hidden precariously from the view of those
+in the cavern. And now that cavern had become a scene of horror
+unthinkable as the centipede-machines pouring down into it blasted the
+frantically crawling worm monsters with their rays.</p>
+
+<p>The worm monsters attempted no resistance, but sought only to escape
+into their downward tunnels, and in moments those not caught by the
+rays had vanished in the openings. But the centipede-machines, after
+racing swiftly around the cavity, were following them, were going down
+into those downward tunnels also, their rays blasting down ahead of
+each to make the tunnel large enough for them to follow.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment all but one had vanished down into the openings, the
+remaining one having its front or head jammed in one of the openings
+from the failure of its operator to blast a large enough opening
+before him. As Lanier and Randall watched tensely they saw the
+machine's control room door open and a Martian descend. He inspected
+the tunnel opening in which his vehicle was jammed, then with a hand
+ray-tube began to disintegrate the earth around that opening to free
+his machine.</p>
+
+<p>Randall clutched his companion's arm. "That machine!" he whispered.
+"If we could capture it, it would give us a chance to get back to the
+city&mdash;to Milton and the matter-transmitter!"</p>
+
+<p>Lanier started, then nodded swiftly. "We'll chance it," he whispered.
+"For our twenty-four hours here must be almost up."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey hesitated a moment, then crept forward from behind the great
+earthen statue. The Martian had his back to them, his attention on the
+freeing of his mechanism. Across the dim-lit cavern they crept softly,
+and were within a dozen feet of the Martian when some sound made him
+wheel quickly to confront them with the deadly tube. But even as he
+whirled the two had leaped.</p>
+
+<p>The force of their leap sent them flying through that dozen feet of
+space to strike the Martian at the moment his tube levelled. One
+hissing call he uttered as they struck him, and then with all his
+strength Lanier had grasped the crocodilian body and bent it backward.
+Something in it snapped, and the Martian collapsed limply. The two
+looked wildly around.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing showed that the Martian's call had been heard, and after a
+moment's glance that showed the head of the centipede machine already
+freed, they were clambering up into its control room, closing the
+door. Randall seized the knob with which he had seen the machines
+operated. As he pulled it toward him the machine moved across the
+tunnel opening and raced smoothly over the cavern's floor. As he
+turned the knob the machine turned swiftly in the same direction.</p>
+
+<p>He headed the long mechanism toward one of the upward-curving tunnels
+which the Martians had blasted larger in descending. They were almost
+to it when there flashed up into the cavity from one of the downward
+tunnel openings a centipede-machine, and then another, and another.
+The Martians in their transparent-windowed control rooms took in at a
+glance the dead crocodilian on the floor, and then the three great
+machines were darting toward that of Randall and Lanier.</p>
+
+<p>"The Martian we killed!" Randall cried. "They heard his call and are
+coming after us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Turn to the wall!" Lanier shouted to him. "I have the rays&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t that moment there was a clicking beside Randall and he glimpsed
+Lanier pulling forth two small grips he had found, then saw that two
+crimson rays were stabbing from tubes in their machine's front toward
+the others even as their own rays darted back. The beams that had been
+loosed toward them grazed past them as Randall whirled their machine
+to the wall, and he saw one of the three attacking mechanisms vanish
+as Lanier's beams struck it.</p>
+
+<p>Around&mdash;back&mdash;with instinctive, lightninglike motions he whirled their
+centipede-machine in the great dim-lit cave as the two remaining ones
+leapt again to the attack. Their rays shot right and left to catch the
+two men's vehicle in a trap of death, and as Randall swung their own
+mechanism straight ahead he glimpsed at the cavern's far end the great
+earthen worm god still upreared.</p>
+
+<p>On either side of them the red beams burned as they leapt forward, but
+as though running a gauntlet of death Randall kept the machine racing
+forward in the succeeding second until the two others loomed on either
+side of it. Then Lanier's beams were driving in turn to right and left
+of them and the two vanished as though by magic as they were struck.</p>
+
+<p>"Up to the surface!" Lanier cried, his eyes on the glowing dial of his
+wrist-watch. "We've been held hours here&mdash;we've but a half-hour or
+more before earth midnight!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_r.jpg" alt="R" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>andall sent their machine racing again toward one of the upward
+tunnels, and as the long mechanism began to climb smoothly up the
+darkness he heard Lanier agonizing beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"God, if we have only enough time to get to that matter-transmitter
+before the Martians start flashing to earth through it!"</p>
+
+<p>"But Milton?" Randall cried. "We don't know whether he's alive or
+dead! We can't leave him!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We must!" said Lanier solemnly. "Our duty's to the earth now, man, to
+the world that we alone can save from the Martian invasion and
+conquest! At the hour of twelve Nelson will have the matter-receiver
+turned on and at that hour the Martian will start flashing to
+earth&mdash;unless we prevent!"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Randall grasped the knob in his hands more tightly as light
+showed above them. They had been climbing upward through the enlarged
+tunnel at their machine's highest speed, and now as the tunnel curved
+the light grew stronger. Suddenly they were emerging into the thin
+sunlight of the Martian day.</p>
+
+<p>In the crimson jungle about them were many Martians, milling excitedly
+to and fro, and other centipede-machines that were blasting their way
+down through tunnels to the worm world beneath.</p>
+
+<p>Randall and Lanier, breathless, crouched low in the
+transparent-windowed control room as they sent their mechanism racing
+through this scene of swarming activity. Both gasped as one of the
+centipede-machines clashed against their own in passing, its Martian
+driver turning to stare after them. But there came no alarm, and in a
+moment they had passed out of the swarm of Martians and machines and
+were heading through the jungle in the direction of the city.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hrough the weird red vegetation their mechanism raced with them,
+Randall holding it at its highest speed, and in minutes they came out
+of the jungle and were racing over the clear space between it and the
+great canal. Beyond that canal loomed into the thin sunlight the
+clustering cones of the mighty Martian city, two towering above all
+the others&mdash;the cone of the Martian Master and the other cone in which
+was the matter-transmitter and receiver.</p>
+
+<p>It was toward the latter that Lanier pointed. "Head straight toward
+that cone, Randall&mdash;we've but minutes left!"</p>
+
+<p>They were racing now up over the great arch of the canal's metal
+bridge, and then scuttling smoothly off it and along the broad metal
+street through which they had fled in darkness hours before. In it
+Martians and centipede-machines were coming and going in great
+numbers, but none noticed the human forms of the two crouched low in
+their mechanism's control room.</p>
+
+<p>They were rushing then toward the looming cone of the Martian Master.
+As they flashed past it Randall saw Lanier's face working, knew the
+desire that tore at him even as at himself to burst inside and
+ascertain whether or not Milton still lived in the laboratories from
+which they had fled. But they were past it, faces white and grim, were
+rushing on through the Martian city at reckless speed toward the other
+mighty cone.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t seemed that all in the great city were heading toward the same
+goal, streams of crocodilian Martians and masses of shining
+centipede-machines filling the streets as they moved toward it. As
+they came closer to the mighty structure, hearts pounding, they saw
+that around it surged a mighty mass of Martians and machines. The
+hordes waiting to be released through the matter-transmitter inside
+upon the unsuspecting earth!</p>
+
+<p>"Try to get the machine inside!" Lanier whispered tensely. "If we can
+smash that transmitter yet...."</p>
+
+<p>Randall nodded grimly. "Keep ready at the ray-tubes," he told the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>As unobtrusively as possible he sent their long mechanism worming
+forward through the vast throng of machines and Martians, toward the
+great cone's door. Crouching low, the hands of their watches closing
+fast toward the twelfth figure, they edged forward in the long
+machine. At last they were moving through the mighty door, into the
+cone's interior.</p>
+
+<p>They moved slowly on through the mass of machines and crocodile forms<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+inside, then halted. For at the great crowd's center was a clear
+circle hundreds of feet across, and as Randall gazed across it his
+heart seemed to leap once and then stop.</p>
+
+<p>At the center of that clear circle rose the two cubical metal chambers
+of the matter-transmitter and receiver. The transmitting chamber, they
+saw, was flooded with humming force, with white light pouring from its
+inner walls. It was already in operation, and the masses of Martians
+in the great cone were only waiting for the moment to sound when the
+receiver on earth would be operating also. Then they would pour into
+the chamber to be flashed in masses across the gulf to earth! The eyes
+of all in the cone seemed turned toward an erect dial-mechanism beside
+the chambers which was clocklike in appearance, and that would mark
+the moment when the first Martian could enter the transmitting-chamber
+and flash out.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;little distance from the two metal chambers stood a low dais on
+which there sat the hideous triple-bodied form of the Martian Master.
+Around him were the massed members of his council, waiting like him
+for the start of their age-planned invasion of earth. And beside the
+dais was a figure between two crocodilian guards at sight of whom
+Randall forgot all else.</p>
+
+<p>"Milton! My God, Lanier, it's Milton!"</p>
+
+<p>"Milton! They've brought him here to torture or kill him if they find
+he's lied about the moment they could flash to earth!"</p>
+
+<p>Milton! And at sight of him something snapped in Randall's brain.</p>
+
+<p>With a single motion of the knob he sent their centipede-machine
+crashing out into the clear circle at the mighty cone's center. A wild
+uproar of hissing cries broke from all the thousands in it as he sent
+the mechanism whirling toward the dais of the Martian Master. He saw
+the crocodilian forms there scattering blindly before him, and then
+as his rays drove out and spun and stabbed in mad figures of crimson
+death through the astounded Martian masses he saw Milton looking up
+toward them, crying out crazily to them as his two guards loosed him
+for the moment.</p>
+
+<p>A high call from the Martian Master ripped across the hall and was
+answered by a shattering roar of hissing voices as Martians and
+machines surged madly toward them. Randall and Lanier in a single leap
+were out of the centipede-machine, and in an instant had half-dragged
+Milton with them in a great leap up to the edge of the humming
+transmitting chamber.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ilton was shouting hoarsely to them over the wild uproar. To enter
+that transmitting chamber before the destined moment was annihilation,
+to be flashed out with no receiver on earth awaiting them. They
+turned, struck with all their strength at the first Martians rushing
+up to them. No rays flashed, for a ray loosed would destroy the
+chamber behind them that was the one gate for the Martians to the
+world they would invade. But as the Martian Master's high call hissed
+again all the countless crocodilian forms in the great cone were
+rushing toward them.</p>
+
+<p>Braced at the very edge of the humming, light-filled chamber, Randall
+and Lanier and Milton struck madly at the Martians surging up toward
+them. Randall seemed in a dream. A score of taloned paws clutched him
+from beneath; scaled forms collapsed under his insane blows.</p>
+
+<p>The whole vast cone and surging reptilian hordes seemed spinning at
+increasing speed around him. As his clenched fists flashed with waning
+strength he glimpsed crocodilian forms swarming up on either side of
+them, glimpsed Lanier down, talons reaching toward him, Milton
+fighting over him like a madman. Another moment would see it
+ended&mdash;reptilian arms reaching in scores to drag him down&mdash;Milton<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+jerking Lanier half to his feet. The Martian Master's call
+sounded&mdash;and then came a great clanging sound at which the Martian
+hordes seemed to freeze for an instant motionless, at which Milton's
+voice reached him in a supreme cry.</p>
+
+<p><i>"Randall&mdash;the transmitter!"</i></p>
+
+<p>For in that instant Milton was leaping back with Lanier, and as
+Randall with his last strength threw himself backward with them into
+the humming transmitting-chamber's brilliant light, he heard a last
+frenzied roar of hissing cries from the Martian hordes about them.
+Then as the brilliant light and force from the chamber's walls smote
+them, Randall felt himself hurled into blackness inconceivable, that
+smashed like a descending curtain across his brain.</p>
+
+<p>The curtain of blackness lifted for a moment. He was lying with Milton
+and Lanier in another chamber whose force beat upon them. He saw a
+yellow-lit room instead of the great cone&mdash;saw the tense, anxious face
+of Nelson at the switch beside them. He strove to move, made to Nelson
+a gesture with his arm that seemed to drain all strength and life from
+him; and then, as in answer to it Nelson drove up the switch and
+turned off the force of the matter-receiver in which they lay, the
+black curtain descended on Randall's brain once more.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>wo hours later it was when Milton and Randall and Lanier and Nelson
+turned to the laboratory's door. They paused to glance behind them. Of
+the great matter-transmitter and receiver, of the apparatus that had
+crowded the laboratory, there remained now but wreckage.</p>
+
+<p>For that had been their first thought, their first task, when the
+astounded Nelson had brought the three back to consciousness and had
+heard their amazing tale. They had wrecked so completely the
+matter-station and its actuating apparatus that none could ever have
+guessed what a mechanism of wonder the laboratory a short time before
+had held.</p>
+
+<p>The cubical chambers had been smashed beyond all recognition, the
+dynamos were masses of split metal and fused wiring, the batteries of
+tubes were shattered, the condensers and transformers and wiring
+demolished. And it had only been when the last written plans and
+blue-prints of the mechanism had been burned that Milton and Randall
+and Lanier had stopped to allow their exhausted bodies a moment of
+rest.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_n.jpg" alt="N" width="49" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ow as they paused at the laboratory's door, Lanier reached and swung
+it open. Together, silent, they gazed out.</p>
+
+<p>It all seemed to Randall exactly as upon the night before. The shadowy
+masses in the darkness, the heaving, dim-lit sea stretching far away
+before them, the curtain of summer stars stretched across the heavens.
+And, sinking westward amid those stars, the red spark of Mars toward
+which as though toward a magnet all their eyes had turned.</p>
+
+<p>Milton was speaking. "Up there it has shone for centuries&mdash;ages&mdash;a
+crimson spot of light. And up there the Martians have been watching,
+watching&mdash;until at last we opened to them the gate."</p>
+
+<p>Randall's hand was on his shoulder. "But we closed that gate, too, in
+the end."</p>
+
+<p>Milton nodded slowly. "We&mdash;or the fate that rules our worlds. But the
+gate is closed, and God grant, shall never again be opened by any on
+this world."</p>
+
+<p>"God grant it," the other echoed.</p>
+
+<p>And they were all gazing still toward the thing. Gazing up toward the
+crimson spot of light that burned there among the stars, toward the
+planet that shone red, menacing, terrible, but whose menace and whose
+terror had been thrust back even as they had crouched to spring at
+last upon the earth.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_004.jpg" width="600" height="396" alt="" title="" /><span class
+="caption"><i>Presently there was not one Robot, but three!</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="The_Exile_of_Time" id="The_Exile_of_Time"></a>The Exile of Time</h2>
+
+<h4>BEGINNING A FOUR-PART NOVEL</h4>
+<h3><i>By Ray Cummings</i></h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4>CHAPTER I</h4>
+<h4><i>Mysterious Girl</i></h4>
+<div class="sidenote">From somewhere out of Time come a swarm of Robots who
+inflict on New York the awful vengeance of the diabolical cripple
+Tugh.</div>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he extraordinary incidents began about 1 A.M. in the night of June
+8-9, 1935. I was walking through Patton Place, in New York City, with
+my friend Larry Gregory. My name is George Rankin. My business&mdash;and
+Larry's&mdash;are details quite unimportant to this narrative. We had been
+friends in college. Both of us were working in New York; and with all
+our relatives in the middle west we were sharing an apartment on this
+Patton Place&mdash;a short crooked, little-known street of not particularly
+impressive residential buildings lying near the section known as
+Greenwich Village, where towering office buildings of the business
+districts encroach close upon it.</p>
+
+<p>This night at 1 A. M. it was deserted. A taxi stood at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> a corner; its
+chauffeur had left it there, and evidently gone to a nearby lunch
+room. The street lights were, as always, inadequate. The night was
+sultry and dark, with a leaden sky and a breathless humidity that
+presaged a thunder storm. The houses were mostly unlighted at this
+hour. There was an occasional apartment house among them, but mostly
+they were low, ramshackle affairs of brick and stone.</p>
+
+<p>We were still three blocks from our apartment when without warning the
+incidents began which were to plunge us and all the city into
+disaster. We were upon the threshold of a mystery weird and strange,
+but we did not know it. Mysterious portals were swinging<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> to engulf
+us. And all unknowing, we walked into them.</p>
+
+<p>Larry was saying, "Wish we would get a storm to clear this air&mdash;<i>what
+the devil?</i> George, did you hear that?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e stood listening. There had sounded a choking, muffled scream. We
+were midway in the block. There was not a pedestrian in sight, nor any
+vehicle save the abandoned taxi at the corner.</p>
+
+<p>"A woman," he said. "Did it come from this house?"</p>
+
+<p>We were standing before a three-story brick residence. All its windows
+were dark. There was a front stoop of several steps, and a basement
+entryway. The windows were all closed, and the place had the look of
+being unoccupied.</p>
+
+<p>"Not in there, Larry," I answered. "It's closed for the summer&mdash;" But
+I got no further; we heard it again. And this time it sounded, not
+like a scream, but like a woman's voice calling to attract our
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>"George! Look there!" Larry cried.</p>
+
+<p>The glow from a street light illumined the basement entryway, and
+behind one of the dark windows a girl's face was pressed against the
+pane.</p>
+
+<p>Larry stood gripping me, then drew me forward and down the steps of
+the entryway. There was a girl in the front basement room. Darkness
+was behind her, but we could see her white frightened face close to
+the glass. She tapped on the pane, and in the silence we heard her
+muffled voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me out! Oh, let me get out!"</p>
+
+<p>The basement door had a locked iron gate. I rattled it. "No way of
+getting in," I said, then stopped short with surprise. "What the
+devil&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>I joined Larry by the window. The girl was only a few inches from us.
+She had a pale, frightened face; wide, terrified eyes. Even with that
+first glimpse, I was transfixed by her beauty. And startled; there was
+something weird about her. A low-necked, white satin dress disclosed
+her snowy shoulders; her head was surmounted by a pile of snow-white
+hair, with dangling white curls framing her pale ethereal beauty. She
+called again.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with you?" Larry demanded. "Are you alone in there?
+What is it?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he backed from the window; we could see her only as a white blob in
+the darkness of the basement room.</p>
+
+<p>I called, "Can you hear us? What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>Then she screamed again. A low scream; but there was infinite terror
+in it. And again she was at the window.</p>
+
+<p>"You will not hurt me? Let me&mdash;oh please let me come out!" Her fists
+pounded the casement.</p>
+
+<p>What I would have done I don't know. I recall wondering if the
+policeman would be at our corner down the block; he very seldom was
+there. I heard Larry saying:</p>
+
+<p>"What the hell!&mdash;I'll get her out. George, get me that brick.... Now,
+get back, girl&mdash;I'm going to smash the window."</p>
+
+<p>But the girl kept her face pressed against the pane. I had never seen
+such terrified eyes. Terrified at something behind her in the house;
+and equally frightened at us.</p>
+
+<p>I call to her: "Come to the door. Can't you come to the door and open
+it?" I pointed to the basement gate. "Open it! Can you hear me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;I can hear you, and you speak my language. But you&mdash;you will not
+hurt me? Where am I? This&mdash;this was my house a moment ago. I was
+living here."</p>
+
+<p>Demented! It flashed to me. An insane girl, locked in this empty
+house. I gripped Larry; said to him: "Take it easy; there's something
+queer about this. We can't smash windows. Let's&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You open the door," he called to the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot."</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Is it locked on the inside?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Because&mdash;oh, hurry! If he&mdash;if it comes again&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e could see her turn to look behind her.</p>
+
+<p>Larry demanded, "Are you alone in there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;now. But, oh! a moment ago he was here!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then come to the door."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot. I don't know where it is. This is so strange and dark a
+place. And yet it was my home, just a little time ago."</p>
+
+<p>Demented! And it seemed to me that her accent was very queer. A
+foreigner, perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>She went suddenly into frantic fear. Her fists beat the window glass
+almost hard enough to shatter it.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd better get her out," I agreed. "Smash it, Larry."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." He waved at the girl. "Get back. I'll break the glass. Get away
+so you won't get hurt."</p>
+
+<p>The girl receded into the dimness.</p>
+
+<p>"Watch your hand," I cautioned. Larry took off his coat and wrapped
+his hand and the brick in it. I gazed behind us. The street was still
+empty. The slight commotion we had made had attracted no attention.</p>
+
+<p>The girl cried out again as Larry smashed the pane. "Easy," I called
+to her. "Take it easy. We won't hurt you."</p>
+
+<p>The splintering glass fell inward, and Larry pounded around the
+casement until it was all clear. The rectangular opening was fairly
+large. We could see a dim basement room of dilapidated furniture: a
+door opening into a back room; the girl; nearby, a white shape
+watching us.</p>
+
+<p>There seemed no one else. "Come on," I said. "You can get out here."</p>
+
+<p>But she backed away. I was half in the window so I swung my legs over
+the sill. Larry came after me, and together we advanced on the girl,
+who shrank before us.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly she ran to meet us, and I had the sudden feeling that
+she was not insane. Her fear of us was overshadowed by her terror at
+something else in this dark, deserted house. The terror communicated
+itself to Larry and me. Something eery, here.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on," Larry muttered. "Let's get her out of here."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;had indeed no desire to investigate anything further. The girl let
+us help her through the window. I stood in the entryway holding her
+arms. Her dress was of billowing white satin with a single red rose at
+the breast; her snowy arms and shoulders were bare; white hair was
+piled high on her small head. Her face, still terrified, showed parted
+red lips; a little round black beauty patch adorned one of her
+powdered cheeks. The thought flashed to me that this was a girl in a
+fancy dress costume. This was a white wig she was wearing!</p>
+
+<p>I stood with the girl in the entryway, at a loss what to do. I held
+her soft warm arms; the perfume of her enveloped me.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want us to do with you?" I demanded softly. McGuire, the
+policeman on the block, might at any moment pass. "We might get
+arrested! What's the matter with you? Can't you explain? Are you
+hurt?"</p>
+
+<p>She was staring as though I were a ghost, or some strange animal. "Oh,
+take me away from this place! I will talk&mdash;though I do not know what
+to say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Demented or sane, I had no desire to have her fall into the clutches
+of the police. Nor could we very well take her to our apartment. But
+there was my friend Dr. Alten, alienist, who lived within a mile of
+here.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll take her to Alten's," I said to Larry, "and find out what this
+means. She isn't crazy."</p>
+
+<p>A sudden wild emotion swept me, then. Whatever this mystery, more than
+anything in the world I did not want the girl to be insane!</p>
+
+<p>Larry said, "There was a taxi down the street."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t came, now, slowly along the deserted block. The chauffeur had
+perhaps heard us, and was cruising past to see if we were possible
+fares. He halted at the curb. The girl had quieted; but when she saw
+the taxi her face registered wildest terror, and she shrank against
+me.</p>
+
+<p>"No! No! Don't let it kill me!"</p>
+
+<p>Larry and I were pulling her forward. "What the devil's the matter
+with you?" Larry demanded again.</p>
+
+<p>She was suddenly wildly fighting with us. "No! That&mdash;that mechanism&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Get her in it!" Larry panted. "We'll have the neighborhood on us!"</p>
+
+<p>It seemed the only thing to do. We flung her, scrambling and fighting,
+into the taxi. To the half-frightened, reluctant driver, Larry said
+vigorously:</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right; we're just taking her to a doctor. Hurry and get us
+away from here. There's good money in it for you!"</p>
+
+<p>The promise&mdash;and the reassurance of the physician's address&mdash;convinced
+the chauffeur. We whirled off toward Washington Square.</p>
+
+<p>Within the swaying taxi I sat holding the trembling girl. She was
+sobbing now, but quieting.</p>
+
+<p>"There," I murmured. "We won't hurt you; we're just taking you to a
+doctor. You can explain to him. He's very intelligent."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said softly. "Yes. Thank you. I'm all right now."</p>
+
+<p>She relaxed against me. So beautiful, so dainty a creature.</p>
+
+<p>Larry leaned toward us. "You're better now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"That's fine. You'll be all right. Don't think about it."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e was convinced she was insane. I breathed again the vague hope that
+it might not be so. She was huddled against me. Her face, upturned to
+mine, had color in it now; red lips; a faint rose tint in the pale
+cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>She murmured, "Is this New York?"</p>
+
+<p>My heart sank. "Yes," I answered. "Of course it is."</p>
+
+<p>"But when?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean, what year?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, 1935!"</p>
+
+<p>She caught her breath. "And your name is&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"George Rankin."</p>
+
+<p>"And I,"&mdash;her laugh had a queer break in it&mdash;"I am Mistress Mary
+Atwood. But just a few minutes ago&mdash;oh, am I dreaming? Surely I'm not
+insane!"</p>
+
+<p>Larry again leaned over us. "What are you talking about?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're friendly, you two. Like men; strange, so very strange-looking
+young men. This&mdash;this carriage without any horses&mdash;I know now it won't
+hurt me."</p>
+
+<p>She sat up. "Take me to your doctor. And then to the general of your
+army. I must see him, and warn him. Warn you all." She was turning
+half hysterical again. She laughed wildly. "Your general&mdash;he won't be
+General Washington, of course. But I must warn him."</p>
+
+<p>She gripped me. "You think I am demented. But I am not. I am Mary
+Atwood, daughter of Major Charles Atwood, of General Washington's
+staff. That was my home, where you broke the window. But it did not
+look like that a few moments ago. You tell me this is the year 1935,
+but just a few moments ago I was living in the year 1777!"</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER II</h4>
+<h4><i>From Out of the Past</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_s1.jpg" alt="S" width="45" height="57" /></div>
+<p>ane?" said Dr. Alten. "Of course she's sane." He stood gazing down
+at Mary Atwood. He was a tall, slim fellow, this famous young
+alienist, with dark hair turning slightly grey at the temples and a
+neat black mustache that made him look older than he was. Dr. Alten at
+this time, in spite of his eminence, had not yet turned forty.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She's sane," he reiterated. "Though from what you tell me, it's a
+wonder that she is." He smiled gently at the girl. "If you don't mind,
+my dear, tell us just what happened to you, as calmly as you can."</p>
+
+<p>She sat by an electrolier in Dr. Alten's living room. The yellow light
+gleamed on her white satin dress, on her white shoulders, her
+beautiful face with its little round black beauty patch, and the curls
+of the white wig dangling to her neck. From beneath the billowing,
+flounced skirt the two satin points of her slippers showed.</p>
+
+<p>A beauty of the year 1777! This thing so strange! I gazed at her with
+quickened pulse. It seemed that I was dreaming; that as I sat before
+her in my tweed business suit with its tubular trousers I was the
+anachronism! This should have been candle-light illumining us; I
+should have been a powdered and bewigged gallant, in gorgeous satin
+and frilled shirt to match her dress. How strange, how futuristic we
+three men of 1935 must have looked to her! And this city through which
+we had whirled her in the throbbing taxi&mdash;no wonder she was
+overwrought.</p>
+
+<p>Alten fumbled in the pockets of his dressing gown for cigarettes. "Go
+ahead, Miss Mary. You are among friends. I promise we will try and
+understand."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he smiled. "Yes. I&mdash;I believe you." Her voice was low. She sat
+staring at the floor, choosing her words carefully; and though she
+stumbled a little, her story was coherent. Upon the wings of her words
+my fancy conjured that other Time-world, more than a hundred and fifty
+years ago.</p>
+
+<p>"I was at home to-night," she began. "To-night after dinner. I have no
+relatives except my father. He is General Washington's aide. We
+live&mdash;our home is north of the city. I was alone, except for the
+servants.</p>
+
+<p>"Father sent word to-night that he was coming to see me. The
+messenger got through the British lines. But the redcoats are
+everywhere. They were quartered in our house. For months I have been
+little more than a servant to a dozen of My Lord's Howe's officers.
+They are gentlemen, though: I have no complaint. Then they left, and
+father, knowing it, wanted to come to see me.</p>
+
+<p>"He should not have tried it. Our house is watched. He promised me he
+would not wear the British red." She shuddered. "Anything but that&mdash;to
+have him executed as a spy. He would not risk that, but wear merely a
+long black cloak.</p>
+
+<p>"He was to come about ten o'clock. But at midnight there was no sign
+of him. The servants were asleep. I sat alone, and every pounding
+hoof-beat on the road matched my heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I went into the garden. There was a dim moon in and out of the
+clouds. It was hot, like to-night. I mean, why it <i>was</i> to-night. It's
+so strange&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>n the silence of Alten's living room we could hear the hurried
+ticking of his little mantle clock, and from the street outside came
+the roar of a passing elevated train and the honk of a taxi. This was
+New York of 1935. But to me the crowding ghosts of the past were here.
+In fancy I saw the white pillars of the moonlit Atwood home. A garden
+with a dirt road beside it. Red-coated British soldiers passing....
+And to the south the little city of New York extending northward from
+crooked Maiden Lane and the Bowling Green....</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, Mistress Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"I sat on a bench in the garden. And suddenly before me there was a
+white ghost. A shape. A wraith of something which a moment before had
+not been there. I sat too frightened to move. I could not call out. I
+tried to, but the sound would not come.</p>
+
+<p>"The shape was like a mist, a little ball of cloud in the center of
+the garden lawn. Then in a second or two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> it was solid&mdash;a thing like a
+shining cage, with crisscrossing white bars. It was like a room; a
+metal cage like a room. I thought that the thing was a phantom or that
+I was asleep and dreaming. But it was real."</p>
+
+<p>Alten interrupted. "How big was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"As large as this room; perhaps larger. But it was square, and about
+twice as high as a man."</p>
+
+<p>A cage, then, some twenty feet square and twelve feet high.</p>
+
+<p>She went on: "The cage door opened. I think I was standing, then, and
+I tried to run but could not. The&mdash;the <i>thing</i> came from the door of
+the cage and walked toward me. It was about ten feet tall. It
+looked&mdash;oh, it looked like a man!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he buried her face in her hands. Again the room was silent. Larry was
+seated, staring at her; all of us were breathless.</p>
+
+<p>"Like a man?" Alten prompted gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; like a man." She raised her white face. This girl out of the
+past! Admiration for her swept me anew&mdash;she was bravely trying to
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Like a man. A thing with legs, a body, a great round head and swaying
+arms. A jointed man of metal! You surely must know all about them."</p>
+
+<p>"A Robot!" Larry muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"You have them here, I suppose. Like that rumbling carriage without
+horses, this jointed iron man came walking toward me. And it spoke! A
+most horrible hollow voice&mdash;but it seemed almost human. And what it
+said I do not know, for I fainted. I remember falling as it came
+walking toward me, with stiff-jointed legs.</p>
+
+<p>"When I came to my senses I was in the cage. Everything was humming and
+glowing. There was a glow outside the bars like a moonlit mist. The iron
+monster was sitting at a table, with peculiar things&mdash;mechanical things&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The controls of the cage-mechanisms," said Alten. "How long were you
+in the cage?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Time seemed to stop. Everything was silent except the
+humming noises. They were everywhere. I guess I was only half
+conscious. The monster sat motionless. In front of him were big round
+clock faces with whirling hands. Oh, I suppose you don't find this
+strange; but to me&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_c1.jpg" alt="C" width="54" height="58" /></div>
+<p>ould you see anything outside the cage?" Alten persisted. "No. Just
+a fog. But it was crawling and shifting. Yes!&mdash;I remember now&mdash;I could
+not see anything out there, but I had the thought, the feeling, that
+there were tremendous things to see! The monster spoke again and told
+me to be careful; that we were going to stop. Its iron hands pulled at
+levers. Then the humming grew fainter; died away; and I felt a shock.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I had fainted again. I could just remember being pulled
+through the cage door. The monster left me on the ground. It said,
+'Lie there, for I will return very soon.'</p>
+
+<p>"The cage vanished. I saw a great cliff of stone near me; it had
+yellow-lighted openings, high up in the air. And big stone fences
+hemmed me in. Then I realized I was in an open space between a lot of
+stone houses. One towered like a cliff, or the side of a pyramid&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The back yard of that house on Patton Place!" Larry exclaimed. He
+looked at me. "Has it any back yard, George?"</p>
+
+<p>"How should I know?" I retorted. "Probably has."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," Alten was prompting.</p>
+
+<p>"That is nearly all. I found a doorway leading to a dark room. I
+crawled through it toward a glow of light. I passed through another
+room. I thought I was in a nightmare, and that this was my home. I
+remembered that the cage had not moved. It had hardly lurched. Just
+trembled; vibrated.</p>
+
+<p>"But this was not my home. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> rooms were small and dark. Then I
+peered through a window on a strange stone street. And saw these
+strange-looking young men. And that is all&mdash;all I can tell you."</p>
+
+<p>She had evidently held herself calm by a desperate effort. She broke
+down now, sobbing without restraint.</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER III</h4>
+<h4><i>Tugh, the Cripple</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he portals of this mystery had swung wide to receive us. The tumbling
+events which menaced all our world of 1935 were upon us now. A
+maelstrom. A torrent in the midst of which we were caught up like tiny
+bits of cork and whirled away.</p>
+
+<p>But we thought we understood the mystery. We believed we were acting
+for the best. What we did was no doubt ill-considered; but the human
+mind is so far from omniscient! And this thing was so strange!</p>
+
+<p>Alten said, "You have a right to be overwrought, Mistress Mary Atwood.
+But this thing is as strange to us as it is to you. I called that iron
+monster a Robot. But it does not belong to our age: if it does I have
+never seen one such as you describe. And traveling through Time&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled down at her. "That is not a commonplace everyday occurrence
+to us, I assure you. The difference is that in this world of ours we
+can understand&mdash;or at least explain&mdash;these things as being scientific.
+And so they have not the terror of the supernatural."</p>
+
+<p>Mary was calmer now. She returned his smile. "I realize that; or at
+least I am trying to realize it."</p>
+
+<p>What a level-headed girl was this! I touched her arm. "You are very
+wonderful&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Alten brushed me away. "Let's try and reduce it to rationality. The
+cage was&mdash;is, I should say, since of course it still exists&mdash;that cage
+is a Time-traveling vehicle. It is traveling back and forth through
+Time, operated by a Robot. Call it that. A pseudo-human monster
+fashioned of metal in the guise of a man."</p>
+
+<p>Even Alten had to force himself to speak calmly, as he gazed from one
+to the other of us. "It came, no doubt from some future age, where
+half-human mechanisms are common, and Time-traveling is known. That
+cage probably does not travel in Space, but only in Time. In the
+future&mdash;somewhere&mdash;the Space of that house on Patton Place may be the
+laboratory of a famous scientist. And in the past&mdash;in the year
+1777&mdash;that same Space was the garden of Mistress Atwood's home. So
+much is obvious. But why&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why," Larry burst out, "did that iron monster stop in 1777 and abduct
+this girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"And why," I intercepted, "did it stop here in 1935?" I gazed at Mary.
+"And it told you it would return?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>lten was pondering. "There must be some connection, of course....
+Mistress Mary, had you never seen this cage before?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor anything like it? Was anything like that known to your Time?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Oh, I cannot truly say that. Some people believe in phantoms,
+omens and witchcraft. There was in Salem, in the Massachusetts Colony,
+not so many years ago&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean that. I mean Time-traveling."</p>
+
+<p>"There were soothsayers and fortune-tellers, and necromancers with
+crystals to gaze into the future."</p>
+
+<p>"We still have them," Alten smiled. "You see, we don't know much more
+than you do about this thing."</p>
+
+<p>I said, "Did you have any enemy? Anyone who wished you harm?"</p>
+
+<p>She thought a moment. "No&mdash;yes, there was one." She shuddered at the
+memory. "A man&mdash;a cripple&mdash;a horribly repulsive man of about one score
+and ten years. He lives down near the Battery." She paused.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Tell us about him," Larry urged.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded. "But what could he have to do with this? He is horribly
+deformed. Thin, bent legs, a body like a cask and a bulging forehead
+with goggling eyes. My Lord Howe's officers say he is very intelligent
+and very learned. Loyal to the King, too. There was a munitions plot
+in the Bermudas, and this cripple and Lord Howe were concerned in it.
+But Father likes the fellow and says that in reality he wishes our
+cause well. He is rich.</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't want to hear all this. He&mdash;he made love to me, and I
+repulsed him. There was a scene with Father, and Father had our
+lackeys throw him out. That was a year ago. He cursed horribly. He
+vowed then that some day he&mdash;he would have me; and get revenge on
+Father. But he has kept away. I have not seen him for a twelvemonth."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e were silent. I chanced to glance at Alten, and a strange look was
+on his face.</p>
+
+<p>He said abruptly, "What is this cripple's name, Mistress Mary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tugh. He is known to all the city as Tugh. Just that. I never heard
+any Christian name."</p>
+
+<p>Alten rose sharply to his feet. "A cripple named Tugh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she affirmed wonderingly. "Does it mean anything to you?"</p>
+
+<p>Alten swung on me. "What is the number of that house on Patton Place?
+Did you happen to notice?"</p>
+
+<p>I had, and wondering I told him.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a minute," he said. "I want to use the phone."</p>
+
+<p>He came back to us in a moment: his face was very solemn. "That house
+on Patton Place is owned by a man named Tugh! I just called a reporter
+friend; he remembers a certain case: he confirmed what I thought.
+Mistress Mary, did this Tugh in your Time ever consult doctors, trying
+to have his crippled body made whole?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course he did. I have heard that many times. But his
+crippled, deformed body cannot be cured."</p>
+
+<p>Alten checked Larry and me when we would have broken in with
+astonished questions. He said:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask me what it means; I don't know. But I think that this
+cripple&mdash;this Tugh&mdash;has lived both in 1777 and 1935, and is traveling
+between them in this Time-traveling cage. And perhaps he is the human
+master of that Robot."</p>
+
+<p>Alten made a vehement gesture. "But we'd better not theorize; it's too
+fantastic. Here is the story of Tugh in our Time. He came to me some
+three years ago; in 1932, I think. He offered any price if I could
+cure his crippled body. All the New York medical fraternity knew him.
+He seemed sane, but obsessed with the idea that he must have a body
+like other men. Like Faust, who, as an old man, paid the price of his
+soul to become youthful, he wanted to have the beautiful body of a
+young man."</p>
+
+<p>Alten was speaking vehemently. My thoughts ran ahead of his words; I
+could imagine with grewsome fancy so many things. A cripple, traveling
+to different ages seeking to be cured. Desiring a different body....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>lten was saying, "This fellow Tugh lived alone in that house on
+Patton Place. He was all you say of him, Mistress Mary. Hideously
+repulsive. A sinister personality. About thirty years old.</p>
+
+<p>"And, in 1932, he got mixed up with a girl who had a somewhat dubious
+reputation herself. A dancer, a frequenter of night-clubs, as they
+used to be called. Her name was Doris Johns&mdash;something like that. She
+evidently thought she could get money out of Tugh. Whatever it was,
+there was a big uproar. The girl had him arrested, saying that he had
+assaulted her. The police had quite a time with the cripple."</p>
+
+<p>Larry and I remembered a few of the details of it now, though neither
+of us had been in New York at the time.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Alten went on: "Tugh fought with the police. Went berserk. I imagine
+they handled him pretty roughly. In the Magistrate's Court he made
+another scene, and fought with the court attendants. With ungovernable
+rage he screamed vituperatives, and was carried kicking, biting and
+snarling from the court-room. He threatened some wild weird revenge
+upon all the city officials&mdash;even upon the city itself."</p>
+
+<p>"Nice sort of chap," Larry commented.</p>
+
+<p>But Alten did not smile. "The Magistrate could only hold him for
+contempt of Court. The girl had absolutely no evidence to support her
+accusation of assault. Tugh was finally dismissed. A week later he
+murdered the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"The details are unimportant; but he did it. The police had him
+trapped in his house; had the house surrounded&mdash;this same one on
+Patton Place&mdash;but when they burst in to take him, he had inexplicably
+vanished. He was never heard from again."</p>
+
+<p>Alten continued to regard us with grim, solemn face. "Never heard
+from&mdash;until to-night. And now we hear of him. How he vanished, with
+the police guarding every exit to that house&mdash;well, it's obvious,
+isn't it? He went into another Time-world. Back to 1777, doubtless."</p>
+
+<p>Mary Atwood gave a little cry. "I had forgotten that I must warn you.
+Tugh told me once, before Father and I quarreled with him, that he had
+a mysterious power. He was a most wonderful man, he said. And there
+was a world in the future&mdash;he mentioned 1934 or 1935&mdash;which he hated.
+A great city whose people had wronged him; and he was going to bring
+death to them. Death to them all! I did not heed him. I thought he was
+demented, raving...."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>lten's little clock ticked with tumultuous heartbeat through another
+silence. The great city around us, even though this was two o'clock
+in the morning, throbbed with a myriad of blended sounds.</p>
+
+<p>A warning! Was the girl from out of the past giving us a warning of
+coming disaster to this great city?</p>
+
+<p>Alten was pacing the floor. "What are we to do&mdash;tell the authorities?
+Take Mistress Mary Atwood to Police Headquarters and inform them that
+she has come from the year 1777? And that, if we are not careful,
+there will be an attack upon New York?"</p>
+
+<p>"No!" I burst out. I could fancy how we would be received at Police
+Headquarters if we did that! And our pictures in to-morrow's
+newspapers. Mary's picture, with a jibing headline ridiculing us.</p>
+
+<p>"No," echoed Alten. "I have no intention of doing it. I'm not so
+foolish as that." He stopped before Mary. "What do you want to do?
+You're obviously an exceptionally intelligent, level-headed girl.
+Heaven knows you need to be."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I want to get back home," she stammered.</p>
+
+<p>A pang shot through me as she said it. A hundred and fifty years to
+separate us. A vast gulf. An impassible barrier.</p>
+
+<p>"That mechanism said it would return!"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," agreed Alten. An excitement was upon us all. "Exactly what
+I mean! Shall we chance it? Try it? There's nothing else I can think
+of to do. I have a revolver and two hunting rifles."</p>
+
+<p>"Just what do you mean?" I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean, we'll take my car and go to Tugh's house on Patton Place.
+Right now! And if that mechanical monster returns, we'll seize it!"</p>
+
+<p>Alten, the usually calm, precise man of science, was tensely vehement.
+"Seize it! Why not? Three of us, armed, ought to be able to overcome a
+Robot! Then we'll seize the Time-traveling cage. Perhaps we can
+operate it. If not, with it in our possession we'll at least have
+something to show<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> the authorities; there'll be no ridicule then!"</p>
+
+<p>Our inescapable destiny was making us plunge so rashly into this
+mystery! With the excitement and the strange fantasy of it upon us, we
+thought we were acting for the best.</p>
+
+<p>Within a quarter of an hour, armed and with a long overcoat and a
+scarf to hide Mary Atwood's beauty, we took Alten's car and drove to
+Patton Place.</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER IV</h4>
+<h4><i>The Fight With the Robot</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_p.jpg" alt="P" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+<p>atrolman McGuire quite evidently had not passed through Patton Place
+since we left it; or at least he had not noticed the broken window.
+The house appeared as before, dark, silent, deserted, and the broken
+basement window yawned with its wide black opening.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll leave the car around on the other street," Alten said as slowly
+we passed the house. "Quick&mdash;no one's in sight; you three get out
+here."</p>
+
+<p>We crouched in the dim entryway and in a moment he joined us.</p>
+
+<p>I clung to Mary Atwood's arm. "You're not afraid?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Yes; of course I am afraid. But I want to do what we planned. I
+want to go back to my own world, to my Father."</p>
+
+<p>"Inside!" Alten whispered. "I'll go first. You two follow with her."</p>
+
+<p>I can say now that we should not have taken her into that house. It is
+so easy to look back upon what one might have done!</p>
+
+<p>We climbed through the window, into the dark front basement room.
+There was only silence, and our faintly padding footsteps on the
+carpeted floor. The furniture was shrouded with cotton covers standing
+like ghosts in the gloom. I clutched the loaded rifle which Alten had
+given me. Larry was similarly armed; and Alten carried a revolver.</p>
+
+<p>"Which way, Mary?" I whispered. "You're sure it was outdoors?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. This way, I think."</p>
+
+<p>We passed through the connecting door. The back room seemed to be a
+dismantled kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"You stay with her here, a moment," Alten whispered to me. "Come on,
+Larry. Let's make sure no one&mdash;nothing&mdash;is down here."</p>
+
+<p>I stood silent with Mary, while they prowled about the lower floor.</p>
+
+<p>"It may have come and gone," I whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." She was trembling against me.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t seemed to me an eternity while we stood there listening to the
+faint footfalls of Larry and Alten. Once they must have stood quiet;
+then the silence leaped and crowded us. It is horrible to listen to a
+pregnant silence which every moment might be split by some weird
+unearthly sound.</p>
+
+<p>Larry and Alten returned. "Seems to be all clear," Alten whispered.
+"Let's go into the back yard."</p>
+
+<p>The little yard was dim. The big apartment house against its rear wall
+loomed with a blank brick face, save that there were windows some
+eight stories up. Only a few windows overlooked this dim area with its
+high enclosing walls. The space was some forty feet square, and there
+was a faded grass plot in the center.</p>
+
+<p>We crouched near the kitchen door, with Mary behind us in the room.
+She said she could recall the cage having stood near the center of the
+yard, with its door facing this way....</p>
+
+<p>Nearly an hour passed. It seemed that the dawn must be near, but it
+was only around four o'clock. The same storm clouds hung overhead&mdash;a
+threatening storm which would not break. The heat was oppressing.</p>
+
+<p>"It's come and gone," Larry whispered; "or it isn't coming. I guess
+that this&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And then it came! We were just outside the doorway, crouching against
+the shadowed wall of the house. I had Mary close behind me, my rifle
+ready.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There!" whispered Alten.</p>
+
+<p>We all saw it&mdash;a faint luminous mist out near the center of the
+yard&mdash;a crawling, shifting ball of fog.</p>
+
+<p>Alten and Larry, one on each side of me, shifted sidewise, away from
+me. Mary stood and cast off her dark overcoat. We men were in dark
+clothes, but she stood in gleaming white against the dark rectangle of
+doorway. It was as we had arranged. A moment only, she stood there;
+then she moved back, further behind me in the black kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>And in that moment the cage had materialized. We were hoping its
+occupant had seen the girl, and not us. A breathless moment passed
+while we stared for the first time at this strange thing from the
+Unknown.... A formless, glowing mist, it quickly gathered itself into
+solidity. It seemed to shrink. It took form. From a wraith of a cage,
+in a second it was solid. And so silently, so swiftly, came this thing
+out of Time into what we call the Present! The dim yard a second ago
+had been empty.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he cage stood there, a thing of gleaming silver bars. It seemed to
+enclose a single room. From within its dim interior came a faint glow,
+which outlined something standing at the bars, peering out.</p>
+
+<p>The doorway was facing us. There had been utter silence; but suddenly,
+as though to prove how solid was this apparition, we heard the clank
+of metal, and the door slid open.</p>
+
+<p>I turned to make sure that Mary was hiding well behind me. The way
+back to the street, if need for escape arose, was open to her.</p>
+
+<p>I turned again, to face the shining cage. In the doorway something
+stood peering out, a light behind it. It was a great jointed thing of
+dark metal some ten feet high. For a moment it stood motionless. I
+could not see its face clearly, though I knew there was a suggestion
+of human features, and two great round glowing spots of eyes.</p>
+
+<p>It stepped forward&mdash;toward us. A jointed, stiff-legged step. Its arms
+were dangling loosely; I heard one of its mailed hands clank against
+its sides.</p>
+
+<p>"Now!" Alten whispered.</p>
+
+<p>I saw Alten's revolver leveling, and my own rifle went up.</p>
+
+<p>"Aim at its face," I murmured.</p>
+
+<p>We pulled our triggers together, and two spurts of flame spat before
+us. But the thing had stooped an instant before, and we missed. Then
+came Larry's shot. And then chaos.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;recall hearing the ping of Larry's bullet against the mailed body of
+the Robot. At that it crouched, and from it leaped a dull red-black
+beam of light. I heard Mary scream. She had not fled but was clinging
+to me. I cast her off.</p>
+
+<p>"Run! Get back! Get away!" I cried.</p>
+
+<p>Larry shouted, as we all stood bathed in the dull light from the
+Robot:</p>
+
+<p>"Look out! It sees us!"</p>
+
+<p>He fired again, into the light&mdash;and murmured, "Why&mdash;why&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A great surprise and terror was in his tone. Beside me, with
+half-leveled revolver, Alten stood transfixed. And he too was
+muttering something.</p>
+
+<p>All this happened in an instant. And there I was aware that I was
+trying to get my rifle up for firing again; but I could not. My arms
+stiffened. I tried to take a step, tried to move a foot, but could
+not. I was rooted there; held, as though by some giant magnet, to the
+ground!</p>
+
+<p>This horrible dull-red light! It was cold&mdash;a frigid, paralyzing blast.
+The blood ran like cold water in my veins. My feet were heavy with the
+weight of my body pressing them down.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Robot was moving; coming forward; holding the light upon us.
+I thought I heard its voice&mdash;and a horrible, hollow, rasping laugh.</p>
+
+<p>My brain was chilling. I had confused thoughts; impressions, vague and
+dreamlike. As though in a dream I felt myself standing there with
+Mary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> clinging to me. Both of us were frozen inert upon our feet.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to shout, but my tongue was too thick; my throat seemed
+swelling inside. I heard Alten's revolver clatter to the stone
+pavement of the yard. And saw him fall forward&mdash;out.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;felt that in another instant I too would fall. This damnable,
+chilling light! Then the beam turned partly away, and fell more fully
+upon Larry. With his youth and greater strength than Alten's or mine,
+he had resisted its first blast. His weapon had fallen; now he stooped
+and tried to seize it; but he lost his balance and staggered backward
+against the house wall.</p>
+
+<p>And then the Robot was upon him. It sprang&mdash;this mechanism!&mdash;this
+machine in human form! And, with whatever pseudo-human intelligence
+actuated its giant metal body, it reached under Larry for his rifle!
+Its great mailed hand swept the ground, seized the rifle and flung it
+away. And as Larry twisted sidewise, the Robot's arm with a sweep
+caught him and rolled him across the yard. When he stopped, he lay
+motionless.</p>
+
+<p>I heard myself thickly calling to Mary, and the light flashed again
+upon us. And then we fell forward. Clinging together, we fell....</p>
+
+<p>I did not quite lose consciousness. It seemed that I was frozen, and
+drifting off half into a nightmare sleep. Great metal arms were
+gathering Mary and me from the ground. Lifting us; carrying us....</p>
+
+<p>We were in the cage. I felt myself lying on the grid of a metal floor.
+I could vaguely see the crossed bars of the ceiling overhead, and the
+latticed walls around me....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hen the dull-red light was gone. The chill was gone. I was warming.
+The blessed warm blood again was coursing through my veins, reviving
+me, bringing back my strength.</p>
+
+<p>I turned over, and found Mary lying beside me. I heard her softly
+murmur:</p>
+
+<p>"George! George Rankin!"</p>
+
+<p>The giant mechanism clanked the door closed, and came with stiff,
+stilted steps back into the center of the cage. I heard the hollow
+rumble of its voice, chuckling, as its hand pulled a switch.</p>
+
+<p>At once the cage-room seemed to reel. It was not a physical movement,
+though, but more a reeling of my senses, a wild shock to all my being.</p>
+
+<p>Then, after a nameless interval, I steadied. Around me was a humming,
+glowing intensity of tiny sounds and infinitely small, infinitely
+rapid vibrations. The whole room grew luminous. The Robot, seated now
+at a table, showed for a moment as thin as an apparition. All this
+room&mdash;Mary lying beside me, the mechanism, myself&mdash;all this was
+imponderable, intangible, unreal.</p>
+
+<p>And outside the bars stretched a shining mist of movement. Blurred
+shifting shapes over a vast illimitable vista. Changing things;
+melting landscapes. Silent, tumbling, crowding events blurred by our
+movement as we swept past them.</p>
+
+<p>We were traveling through Time!</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER V</h4>
+<h4><i>The Girl from 2930</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;must take up now the sequence of events as Larry saw them. I was
+separated from Larry during most of the strange incidents which befell
+us later; but from his subsequent account of what happened to him I am
+constructing several portions of this history, using my own words
+based upon Larry's description of the events in which I personally did
+not participate; I think that this method avoids complications in the
+narrative and makes more clear my own and Larry's simultaneous
+actions.</p>
+
+<p>Larry recovered consciousness in the back yard of the house on Patton
+Place probably only a moment or two after Mary and I had been snatched
+away in the Time-traveling cage. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> found himself bruised and
+battered, but apparently without injuries. He got to his feet, weak
+and shaken. His head was roaring.</p>
+
+<p>He recalled what had happened to him, but it seemed like a dream. The
+back yard was then empty. He remembered vaguely that he had seen the
+mechanism carry Mary and me into the cage, and that the cage had
+vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Larry knew that only a few moments had passed. The shots had aroused
+the neighborhood. As he stood now against the house wall, dizzily
+looking around, he was aware of calling voices from the nearby
+windows.</p>
+
+<p>Then Larry stumbled over Alten, who was lying on his face near the
+kitchen doorway. Still alive, he groaned as Larry fell over him; but
+he was unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>Forgetting all about his weapon, Larry's first thought was to rush out
+for help. He staggered through the dark kitchen into the front room,
+and through the corridor into the street.</p>
+
+<p>Patton Place, as before, was deserted. The houses were dark; the alarm
+was all in the rear. There were no pedestrians, no vehicles, and no
+sign of a policeman. Dawn was just coming; as Larry turned eastward he
+saw, in a patch of clearing sky, stars paling with the coming
+daylight.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ith uncertain steps, out in the middle of the street, Larry ran
+eastward through the middle of the street, hoping that at the next
+corner he might encounter someone, or find a telephone over which he
+might call the police.</p>
+
+<p>But he had not gone more than five hundred feet when suddenly he
+stopped; stood there wavering, panting, staring with whirling senses.
+Near the middle of the street, with the faint dawn behind it, a ball
+of gathering mist had appeared directly in his path. It was a
+luminous, shining mist&mdash;and it was gathering into form!</p>
+
+<p>In seconds a small, glowing cage of white luminous bars stood there in
+the street, where there had just been nothing! It was not the
+Time-traveling cage from the house yard he had just left. No&mdash;he knew
+it was not that one. This one was similar, but much smaller.</p>
+
+<p>The shock of its appearance held Larry for a moment transfixed. It had
+so silently, so suddenly appeared in his path that Larry was now
+within a foot or two of its doorway.</p>
+
+<p>The doorway slid open, and a man leaped out. Behind him, a girl peered
+from the doorway. Larry stood gaping, wholly confused. The cage had
+materialized so abruptly that the leaping man collided with him before
+either man could avoid the other. Larry gripped the man before him;
+struck out with his fists and shouted. The girl in the doorway called
+frantically:</p>
+
+<p>"Harl-no noise! Harl-stop him!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, suddenly the two of them were upon Larry and pulling him toward
+the doorway of the cage. Inside, he was jerked; he shouted wildly; but
+the girl slammed the door. Then in a soft, girlish voice, in English
+with a curiously indescribable accent and intonation, the girl said
+hastily:</p>
+
+<p>"Hold him, Harl! Hold him! I'll start the traveler!"</p>
+
+<p>The black garbed figure of a slim young man was gripping Larry as the
+girl pulled a switch and there was a shock, a reeling of Larry's
+senses, as the cage, motionless in Space, sped off into Time....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t seems needless to encumber this narrative with prolonged details of
+how Larry explained himself to his two captors. Or how they told him
+who they were; and from whence they had come; and why. To Larry it was
+a fantastic&mdash;and confusing at first&mdash;series of questions and answers.
+An hour? The words have no meaning. They were traveling through Time.
+Years were minutes&mdash;the words meaning nothing save how they impressed
+the vehicle's human occupants. To them all it was an interval of
+mutual distrust which was gradually changing into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> friendship. Larry
+found the two strangers singularly direct; singularly forceful in
+quiet, calm fashion; singularly keen of perception. They had not meant
+to capture him. The encounter had startled them, and Larry's shouts
+would have brought others upon the scene.</p>
+
+<p>Almost at once they knew Larry was no enemy, and told him so. And in a
+moment Larry was pouring out all that had happened to him; and to
+Alten and Mary Atwood and me. This strange thing! But to Larry now,
+telling it to these strange new companions, it abruptly seemed not
+fantastic, but only sinister. The Robot, an enemy, had captured Mary
+Atwood and me, and whirled us off in the other&mdash;the larger&mdash;cage.</p>
+
+<p>And in this smaller cage Larry was with friends&mdash;for he suddenly found
+their purpose the same as his! They were chasing this other
+Time-traveler, with its semi-human, mechanical operator!</p>
+
+<p>The young man said, "You explain to him, Tina. I will watch."</p>
+
+<p>He was a slim, pale fellow, handsome in a queer, tight-lipped,
+stern-faced fashion. His close-fitting black silk jacket had a white
+neck ruching and white cuffs; he wore a wide white-silk belt, snug
+black-silk knee-length trousers and black stockings.</p>
+
+<p>And the girl was similarly dressed. Her black hair was braided and
+coiled upon her head, and ornaments dangled from her ears. Over her
+black blouse was a brocaded network jacket; her white belt,
+compressing her slim waist, dangled with tassels; and there were other
+tassels on the garters at the knees of her trousers.</p>
+
+<p>She was a pale-faced, beautiful girl, with black brows arching in a
+thin line, with purple-black eyes like somber pools. She was no more
+than five feet tall, and slim and frail. But, like her companion,
+there was about her a queer aspect of calm, quiet power and force of
+personality&mdash;physical vitality merged with an intellect keenly sharp.</p>
+
+<p>She sat with Larry on a little metal bench, listening, almost without
+interruption, to his explanation. And then, succinctly she gave her
+own. The young man, Harl, sat at his instruments, with his gaze
+searching for the other cage, five hundred feet away in Space, but in
+Time unknown.</p>
+
+<p>And outside the shining bars Larry could vaguely see the blurred,
+shifting, melting vistas of New York City hastening through the
+changes Time had brought to it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>his young man, Harl, and this girl, Tina, lived in New York City in
+the Time-world of 2930 A. D. To Larry it was a thousand years in the
+future. Tina was the Princess of the American Nation. It was an
+hereditary title, non-political, added several hundred years
+previously as a picturesque symbol. A tradition; something to make
+less prosaic the political machine of Republican government. Tina was
+loved by her people, we afterward came to learn.</p>
+
+<p>Harl was an aristocrat of the New York City of Tina's Time-world, a
+scientist. In the Government laboratories, under the same roof where
+Tina dwelt, Harl had worked with another, older scientist, and&mdash;so
+Tina told me&mdash;together they had discovered the secret of
+Time-traveling. They had built two cages, a large and a small, which
+could travel freely through Time.</p>
+
+<p>The smaller vehicle&mdash;this one in which Larry now was speeding&mdash;was, in
+the Time-world of 2930, located in the garden of Tina's palace. The
+other, somewhat larger, they had built some five hundred feet distant,
+just beyond the palace walls, within a great Government laboratory.</p>
+
+<p>Harl's fellow scientist&mdash;the leader in their endeavors, since he was
+much older and of wider experience&mdash;was not altogether trusted by
+Tina. He took the credit for the discovery of Time-traveling; yet,
+said Tina, it was Harl's genius which in reality had worked out the
+final problems.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And this older scientist was a cripple. A hideously repulsive fellow,
+named Tugh!</p>
+
+<p>"Tugh!" exclaimed Larry.</p>
+
+<p>"The same," said Tina in her crisp fashion. "Yes&mdash;undoubtedly the
+same. So you see why what you have told us was of such interest. Tugh
+is a Government leader in our world; and now we find he has lived in
+<i>your</i> Time, and in the Time of this Mary Atwood."</p>
+
+<p>From his seat at the instrument table, Harl burst out: "So he murdered
+a girl of 1935, and has abducted another of 1777? You would not have
+me judge him, Tina&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No one," she said, "may judge without full facts. This man here&mdash;this
+Larry of 1935&mdash;tells us that only a mechanism is in the larger
+cage&mdash;which is what we thought, Harl. And this mechanism, without a
+doubt, is the treacherous Migul."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>here was, in 2930, a vast world of machinery. The god of the machine
+had developed them to almost human intricacy. Almost all the work of
+the world, particularly in America, and most particularly in the
+mechanical center of New York City, was done by machinery. And the
+machinery itself was guided, handled, operated&mdash;even, in some
+instances, constructed&mdash;by other, more intricate machines. They were
+fashioned in pseudo-human form&mdash;thinking, logically acting,
+independently acting mechanisms: the Robots. All but human, they
+were&mdash;a new race. Inferior to humans, yet similar.</p>
+
+<p>And in 2930 the machines, slaves of idle human masters, had been
+developed too highly! They were upon the verge of a revolt!</p>
+
+<p>All this Tina briefly sketched now to Larry. And to Larry it seemed a
+very distant, very academic danger. Yet so soon all of us were plunged
+into the midst of it!</p>
+
+<p>The revolt had not yet come, but it was feared. A great Robot named
+Migul seemed fomenting it. The revolt was smouldering; at any moment
+it would burst; and then the machines would rise to destroy the
+humans.</p>
+
+<p>This was the situation when Harl and Tugh completed the Time-traveling
+vehicles in this world. They had been tested, but never used. Then
+Tugh had vanished; was gone now; and the larger of the two vehicles
+was also gone.</p>
+
+<p>Both Harl and Tina had always distrusted Tugh. They thought him allied
+to the Robots. But they had no proof; and suavely he denied it, and
+helped always with the Government activities struggling to keep the
+mechanical slaves docile and at work.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ugh and the larger vehicle had vanished, and so had Migul, the
+insubordinate, giant mechanism&mdash;at which, unknown to the Government
+officials, Tina and Harl had taken the other cage and started in
+pursuit. It was possible that Tugh was loyal; that Migul had abducted
+him and stolen the cage.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait!" exclaimed Larry. "I'm trying to figure this out. It seems to
+hang together. It almost does, but not quite. When did Tugh vanish
+from your world?"</p>
+
+<p>"To our consciousness," Tina answered, "about three hours ago. Perhaps
+a little longer than that."</p>
+
+<p>"But look here," Larry protested: "according to my story and that of
+Mary Atwood, Tugh lived in 1935 and in 1777 for three years."</p>
+
+<p>Confusing? But in a moment Larry understood it. Tugh could have taken
+the cage, gone to 1777 and to 1935, alternated between them for what
+was to him, and to those Time-worlds, three years&mdash;then have returned
+to 2930 <i>on the same day of his departure</i>. He would have lived these
+three years; grown that much older; but to the Time-world of 2930
+neither he nor the cage would have been missed.</p>
+
+<p>"That," said Tina, "is what doubtless he did. The cage is traveling
+again. But you, Larry, tell us only Migul is in it."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't say that of my own knowledge," said Larry. "Mary Atwood
+said so. It held only the mechanism you call Migul. And now Migul has
+with him Mary and my friend George Rankin. We must reach them."</p>
+
+<p>"We want that quite as much as you do," said Harl. "And to find Tugh.
+If he is a friend we must save him; if a traitor&mdash;punish him."</p>
+
+<p>Larry began, "But can you get to the other cage?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only if it stops," said Tina. "<i>When</i> it stops, I should say."</p>
+
+<p>"Come here," said Harl. "I will show you."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>arry crossed the glowing room. He had forgotten its aspect&mdash;the
+ghostly unreality around him. He too&mdash;his body, like Harl's and
+Tina's&mdash;was of the same wraith-like substance.... Then, suddenly,
+Larry's viewpoint shifted. The room and its occupants were real and
+tangible. And outside the glowing bars&mdash;everything out there was the
+unreality.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," said Harl. "I will show you. It is not visible yet."</p>
+
+<p>Each of the cages was equipped with an intricate device, strange of
+name, which Larry and I have since termed a Time-telespectroscope.
+Larry saw it now as a small metal box, with tuning vibration dials,
+batteries, coils, a series of tiny prisms and an image-mirror&mdash;the
+whole surmounted by what appeared the barrel of a small telescope.
+Harl had it leveled and was gazing through it.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The workings of the Time-telespectroscope involve all the
+intricate postulates and mathematical formulae of Time-traveling
+itself. As a matter of practicality, however, the results obtained are
+simple of understanding. The etheric vibratory rate of the vehicles
+while traveling through Time was constantly changing. Through the
+telespectroscope one cage was visible to the other across the five
+hundred feet of intervening Space when they approached a simultaneous
+Time; when they, so to speak, were tuned in unison.
+</p><p>
+Thus, Harl explained, the other cage would show as a ghost, the
+faintest of wraiths, over a Time-distance of some five or ten years.
+And the closer in Time they approached it, the more solid it would
+appear.</p></div>
+
+<p>The enemy cage was not visible, now. But Harl and Tina had glimpsed it
+on several occasions. What vast realms Time opens within a single
+small segment of Space! The larger vehicle seemed speeding back and
+forth. A dash into the year 1777! as Larry learned from Mary Atwood.</p>
+
+<p>And there had been several evidences of the cage halting in 1935.
+Larry's account explained two such pauses. But the others? Those
+others, which brought to the City of New York such amazing disaster?
+We did not learn of them until much later. But Alten lived through
+them, and presently I shall reconstruct them from his account.</p>
+
+<p>The larger cage was difficult to trace in its sweep along the
+corridors of Time. Never once had Tina and Harl been able to stop
+simultaneously with it, for a year has so many separate days and
+hours. The nearest they came was the halt in the night of June 8-9,
+when they encountered Larry, and, startled, seized him and moved on
+again.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>arl continued to gaze through the eyepiece of the detecting
+instrument. But nothing showed, and the mirror-grid on the table was
+dark.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;which way are we going?" Larry stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"Back," said Tina. "The retrograde.... Wait! Do not do that!"</p>
+
+<p>Larry had turned toward where the bars, less luminous, showed a dark
+rectangle like a window. The desire swept him to gaze out at the
+shining, changing scene.</p>
+
+<p>But Tina checked him. "Do not do that! Not yet! It is too great a
+shock in the retrograde. It was to me."</p>
+
+<p>"But where are we?"</p>
+
+<p>In answer she gestured toward a series of tiny dials on the table
+edge. There were at least two score of them, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>laid in a triple bank.
+Dials to record the passing minutes, hours, days; the years, the
+centuries! Larry stared at the small whirring pointers. Some were a
+blur of swift whirling movement&mdash;the hours and days. Tina showed Larry
+how to read them. The cage was passing through the year 1880. In a few
+moments of Larry's consciousness it was 1799. Then 1793. The infant
+American nation was here now. But with the cage retrograding, soon
+they would be in the Revolutionary War.</p>
+
+<p>Tina said. "The other cage may go back to 1777, if Tugh meant ill to
+Mary Atwood, or wants revenge upon her father, at you said. We shall
+see."</p>
+
+<p>They had reached 1790 when Harl gave a low ejaculation.</p>
+
+<p>"You see it?" Tina murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Very faintly."</p>
+
+<p>Larry bent tensely forward. "Will it show on the mirror?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; presently. We are about ten years from it. If we get closer, the
+mirror will show it."</p>
+
+<p>But the mirror held dark. No&mdash;now it was glowing a trifle. A vague
+luminosity.</p>
+
+<p>Tina moved toward the instrument controls nearby. "Watch closely,
+Harl. I will slow us down."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t seemed to Larry that the humming with which everything around him
+was endowed, now began descending in pitch. And his head suddenly was
+unsteady. A singular, wild, queer feeling was within him. An unrest. A
+tugging torment of every tiny cell of his body.</p>
+
+<p>Tina said. "Hold steady, Larry, for when we stop."</p>
+
+<p>"Will it shock me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;at first. But the shock will not harm you: it is nearly all
+mental."</p>
+
+<p>The mirror held an image now&mdash;the other cage. Larry saw, on the
+six-inch square mirror surface, a crawling, melting scene of movement.
+And in the midst of it, the image of the other cage, faint and
+spectral. In all the mirrored movement, only the apparition of the
+cage was still. And this marked it; made it visible.</p>
+
+<p>Over an interval, while Larry stared, the ghostly image grew plainer.
+They were approaching its Time-factor!</p>
+
+<p>"It is stopping," Harl murmured. Larry was aware that he had left the
+eyepiece and joined Tina at the controls.</p>
+
+<p>"Tina, let us try to get it right this time."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"In 1777; but which month, would you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"It has stopped! See?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>arry heard them clicking switches, and setting the controls for a
+stop. Then he felt Tina gently push him.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit here. Standing, you might fall."</p>
+
+<p>He found himself on a bench. He could still see the mirror. The ghost
+of the other cage was now lined more plainly upon it.</p>
+
+<p>"This month," said Tina, setting a switch. "Would not you say so? And
+this day."</p>
+
+<p>"But the hour, Tina? The minute?"</p>
+
+<p>The vast intricate corridors of Time!</p>
+
+<p>"It would be in the night. Hasten, Harl, or we will pass! Try the
+night&mdash;around midnight. Even Migul has the mechanical intelligence to
+fear a daylight pausing."</p>
+
+<p>The controls were set for the stop. Larry heard Tina murmuring, "Oh, I
+pray we may have judged with correctness!"</p>
+
+<p>The vehicle was rapidly coming to a stop. Larry gripped the table,
+struggling to hold firm to his reeling senses. This soundless,
+grinding halt! His swaying gaze strayed from the mirror. Outside the
+glowing bars he could now discern the luminous greyness separating.
+Swift, soundless claps of light and dark, alternating. Daylight and
+darkness. They had been blended, but now they were separating. The
+passing, retrograding days&mdash;a dozen to the second of Larry's
+consciousness. Then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> fewer. Vivid daylight. Black night. Daylight
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"Not too slowly, Harl; we will be seen!... Oh, it is gone!"</p>
+
+<p>Larry saw the mirror go blank. The image on it had flared to great
+distinctness, faded, and was gone. Darkness was around Larry. Then
+daylight. Then darkness again.</p>
+
+<p>"Gone!" echoed Harl's disappointed voice. "But it stopped here!...
+Shall we stop, Tina?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! Leave the control settings as they are. Larry&mdash;be careful, now."</p>
+
+<p>A dragging second of grey daylight. A plunge into night. It seemed to
+Larry that all the universe was soundlessly reeling. Out of the chaos,
+Tina was saying:</p>
+
+<p>"We have stopped. Are you all right, Larry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he stammered.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e stood up. The cage room, with its faint lights, benches and
+settles, instrument tables and banks of controls, was flooded with
+moonlight from outside the bars. Night, and the moon and stars out
+there.</p>
+
+<p>Harl slid the door open. "Come, let us look."</p>
+
+<p>The reeling chaos had fallen swiftly from Larry. With Tina's small
+black and white figure beside him, he stood at the threshold of the
+cage. A warm gentle night breeze fanned his face.</p>
+
+<p>A moonlit landscape lay somnolent around the cage. Trees were nearby.
+The cage stood in a corner of a field by a low picket fence. Behind
+the trees, a ribbon of road stretched away toward a distant shining
+river. Down the road some five hundred feet, the white columns of a
+large square brick house gleamed in the moonlight. And behind the
+house was a garden and a group of barns and stables.</p>
+
+<p>The three in the cage doorway stood whispering, planning. Then two of
+them stepped to the ground. They were Larry and Tina; Harl remained to
+guard the cage.</p>
+
+<p>The two figures on the ground paused a moment and then moved
+cautiously along the inside line of the fence toward the home of Major
+Atwood. Strange anachronisms, these two prowling figures! A girl from
+the year 2930; a man from 1935!</p>
+
+<p>And this was revolutionary New York, now. The little city lay well to
+the south. It was open country up here. The New York of 1935 had
+melted away and was gone....</p>
+
+<p>This was a night in August of 1777.</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER VI</h4>
+<h4><i>The New York Massacre of 1935</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_d.jpg" alt="D" width="57" height="56" /></div>
+<p>r. Alten recovered consciousness in the back yard of the house on
+Patton Place just a few moments after Larry had encountered the
+smaller Time-traveling cage and been carried off by Harl and Tina.
+Previously to that, of course, the mysterious mechanism in the guise
+of a giant man had abducted Mary Atwood and me in the larger
+Time-cage.</p>
+
+<p>Alten became aware that people were bending over him. The shots we had
+taken at the Robot had aroused the neighborhood. A policeman arrived.</p>
+
+<p>The sleeping neighbors had heard the shots, but it seemed that none
+had seen the cage, or the metal man who had come from it. Alten said
+nothing. He was taken to the nearest police station where grudgingly,
+he told his story. He was laughed at; reprimanded for alcoholism.
+Evidently, according to the police sergeant, there had been a fight,
+and Alten had drawn the loser's end. The police confiscated the two
+rifles and the revolver and decided that no one but Alten had been
+hurt. But at best it was a queer affair. Alten had not been shot; he
+was just stiff with cold; he said a dull-red ray had fallen upon him
+and stiffened him with its frigid blast. Utter nonsense!</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Alten was a man of standing. It was a reprehensible affair, but he
+was released upon his own recognizance. He was charged with breaking
+into the untenanted home of one Tugh; of il<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>legally possessing
+firearms; of disturbing the peace&mdash;a variety of offenses all rational
+to the year 1935.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ut Alten's case never reached even its hearing in the Magistrate's
+Court. He arrived home just after dawn, that June 9, still cold and
+stiff from the effects of the ray, and bruised and battered by the
+sweeping blow of Miguel's great iron arm. He recalled vaguely seeing
+Larry fall, and the iron monster bearing Mary Atwood and me away. What
+had happened to Larry, Alten could not guess, unless the Robot had
+returned, ignored him and taken his friend away.</p>
+
+<p>During that day of June 9 Alten summoned several of his scientific
+friends, and to them he told fully what had happened to him. They
+listened with a keen understanding and a rational knowledge of the
+possibility that what he said was true; but credibility they could not
+give him.</p>
+
+<p>The noon papers came out.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>NOTED ALIENIST ATTACKED BY GHOST Felled by One of the
+Fantastic Monsters of His Brain</p></div>
+
+<p>A jocular, jibing account. Then Alten gave it up. He had about decided
+to plead guilty in the Magistrate's Court to disorderly conduct and
+all the rest of it! That was preferable to being judged a liar, or
+insane.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>nd then, at about 9 P.M. on the evening of June 9, the first of the
+mechanical monsters came stalking from the house on Patton Place&mdash;the
+beginning of the revenge which Tugh had threatened when arrested. The
+policeman at the corner&mdash;one McGuire&mdash;turned in the first hysterical
+alarm. He rushed into a little candy and stationery store shouting
+that he had seen a piece of machinery running wild. His telephone call
+brought a squad of his comrades. The Robot at first did no damage.</p>
+
+<p>McGuire later told how he saw it as it emerged from the entryway of
+the Tugh house. It came lurching out into the street&mdash;a giant thing of
+dull grey metal, with tubular, jointed legs; a body with a great
+bulging chest; a round head, eight or ten feet above the pavement;
+eyes that shot fire.</p>
+
+<p>The policeman took to his heels. There was a commotion in Patton Place
+during those next few minutes. Pedestrians saw the thing standing in
+the middle of the street, staring stupidly around it. The head
+wobbled. Some said that the eyes shot fire; others, that it was not
+the eyes, but more like a torch in its mailed hand. The torch shot a
+small beam of light around the street&mdash;a beam which was dull-red.</p>
+
+<p>The pedestrians fled. Their cries brought people to the nearby house
+windows. Women screamed. Presently bottles were thrown from the
+windows. One of these crashed against the iron shoulder of the
+monster. It turned its head: as though its neck were rubber, some
+said. And it gazed upward, with a human gesture as though it were not
+angry, but contemptuous.</p>
+
+<p>But still, beyond a step or two in one direction or another, it merely
+stood and waved its torch. The little dull-red beam of light carried
+no more than twenty or thirty feet. The street in a few moments was
+clear of pedestrians; remained littered with glass from the broken
+bottles. A taxi came suddenly around the corner, and the driver, with
+an almost immediate tire puncture, saw the monster. He hauled up to
+the curb, left his cab and ran.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he Robot saw the taxicab, and stood gazing. It turned its torch-beam
+on it, and seemed surprised that the thing did not move. Then thinking
+evidently that this was a less cowardly enemy than the humans, it made
+a rush to it. The chauffeur had not turned off his engine when he
+fled, so the cab stood throbbing.</p>
+
+<p>The Robot reached it; cuffed it with a huge mailed fist. The
+windshield<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> broke; the windows were shattered; but the cab stood
+purring, planted upon its four wheels.</p>
+
+<p>Strange encounter! They say that the Robot tried to talk to it. At
+last, exasperated, it stepped backward, gathered itself and pounced on
+it again. Stooping, it put one of its great arms down under the
+wheels, the other over the hood, and with prodigious strength heaved
+the cab into the air. It crashed on its side across the street, and in
+a moment was covered with flames.</p>
+
+<p>It was about this time that Patrolman McGuire came back to the scene.
+He shot at the monster a few times; hit it, he was sure. But the Robot
+did not heed him.</p>
+
+<p>The block was now in chaos. People stood at most of the windows,
+crowds gathered at the distant street corners, while the blazing
+taxicab lighted the block with a lurid glare. No one dared approach
+within a hundred feet or so of the monster. But when, after a time, it
+showed no disposition to attack, throngs at every distinct point of
+vantage tried to gather where they could see it. Those nearest
+reported back that its face was iron; that it had a nose, a wide,
+yawning mouth, and holes for eyes. There were certainly little lights
+in the eye-holes.</p>
+
+<p>A small, fluffy white dog went dashing up to the monster and barked
+bravely at its heels. It leaped nimbly away when the Robot stooped to
+seize it. Then, from the Robot's chest, the dull-red torch beam leaped
+out and down. It caught the little dog, and clung to it for an
+instant. The dog stood transfixed; its bark turned to a yelp; then a
+gurgle. In a moment it fell on its side; then lay motionless with
+stiffened legs sticking out.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ll this happened within five minutes. McGuire's riot squad arrived,
+discreetly ranged itself at the end of the block and fired. The Robot
+by then had retreated to the entryway of the Tugh house, where it
+stood peering as though with curiosity at all this commotion. There
+came a clanging from the distance: someone had turned in a fire alarm.
+Through the gathered crowds and vehicles the engines came tearing up.</p>
+
+<p>Presently there was not one Robot, but three: a dozen! More than that,
+many reports said. But certain it is that within half an hour of the
+first alarm, the block in front of Tugh's home held many of the iron
+monsters. And there were many human bodies lying strewn there, by
+then. A few policemen had made a stand at the corner, to protect the
+crowd against one of the Robots. The thing had made an unexpected
+infuriated rush....</p>
+
+<p>There was a panic in the next block, when a thousand people suddenly
+tried to run. A score of people were trampled under foot. Two or three
+of the Robots ran into that next block&mdash;ran impervious to the many
+shots which now were fired at them. From what was described as slots
+in the sides of their iron bodies they drew swords&mdash;long, dark,
+burnished blades. They ran, and at each fallen human body they made a
+single stroke of decapitation, or, more generally, cut the body in
+half.</p>
+
+<p>The Robots did not attack the fire engines. Emboldened by this,
+firemen connected a hose and pumped a huge jet of water toward the
+Tugh house. The Robots then rushed it. One huge mechanism&mdash;some said
+it was twelve feet tall&mdash;ran heedlessly into the firemen's
+high-pressure stream, toppled backward from the force of the water and
+very strangely lay still. Killed? Rather, out of order: deranged: it
+was not human, to be killed. But it lay motionless, with the fire hose
+playing upon it. Then abruptly there was an explosion. The fallen
+Robot, with a deafening report and a puff of green flame, burst into
+flying metallic fragments like shrapnel. Nearby windows were broken
+from the violent explosion, and pieces of the flying metal were hurled
+a hundred feet or more. One huge chunk, evidently a plate of the
+thing's body, struck into the crowd<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> two blocks away, and felled
+several people.</p>
+
+<p>At this smashing of one of the mechanisms, its brother Robots went for
+the first time into aggressive action. A hundred or more were pouring
+now from the vacant house of the absent Tugh....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he alarm by ten o'clock had spread throughout the entire city. Police
+reserves were called out, and by midnight soldiers were being
+mobilized. Panics were starting everywhere. Millions of people crowded
+in on small Manhattan Island, in the heart of which was this strange
+enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Panics.... Yet human nature is very strange. Thousands of people
+started to leave Manhattan, but there were other thousands during that
+first skirmish who did their best to try and get to the neighborhood
+of Patton Place to see what was going on. They added greatly to the
+confusion. Traffic soon was stalled everywhere. Traffic officers,
+confused, frightened by the news which was bubbled at them from every
+side, gave wrong orders; accidents began to occur. And then, out of
+the growing confusion, came tangles, until, like a dammed stream, all
+the city mid-section was paralyzed. Vehicles were abandoned
+everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>Reports of what was happening on Patton Place grew more confused. The
+gathering nearby crowds impeded the police and firemen. The Robots, by
+ten o'clock, were using a single great beam of dull-red light. It was
+two or three feet broad. It came from a spluttering, hissing cylinder
+mounted on runners which the Robots dragged along the ground, and the
+beam was like that of a great red searchlight. It swung the length of
+Patton Place in both directions. It hissed against the houses;
+penetrated the open windows which now were all deserted; swept the
+front cornices of the roofs, where crowds of tenants and others were
+trying to hide. The red beam drove back the ones near the edge, except
+those who were stricken by its frigid blast and dropped like plummets
+into the street, where the Robots with flashing blades pounced upon
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Frigid was the blast of this giant light-beam. The street, wet from
+the fire-hose, was soon frozen with ice&mdash;ice which increased under the
+blast of the beam, and melted in the warm air of the night when the
+ray turned away.</p>
+
+<p>From every distant point in the city, awed crowds could see that great
+shaft when it occasionally shot upward, to stain the sky with blood.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_d.jpg" alt="D" width="57" height="56" /></div>
+
+<p>r. Alten by midnight was with the city officials, telling them what
+he could of the origin of this calamity. They were a distracted group
+indeed! There were a thousand things to do, and frantically they were
+giving orders, struggling to cope with conditions so suddenly
+unprecedented. A great city, millions of people, plunged into
+conditions unfathomable. And every moment growing worse. One calamity
+bringing another, in the city, with its myriad diverse activities so
+interwoven. Around Alten the clattering, terrifying reports were
+surging. He sat there nearly all that night; and near dawn, an
+official plane carried him in a flight over the city.</p>
+
+<p>The panics, by midnight, were causing the most deaths. Thousands,
+hundreds of thousands, were trying to leave the island. The tube
+trains, the subways, the elevateds were jammed. There were riots
+without number in them. Ferryboats and bridges were thronged to their
+capacity. Downtown Manhattan, fortunately comparatively empty, gave
+space to the crowds plunging down from the crowded foreign quarters
+bordering Greenwich Village. By dawn it was estimated that five
+thousand people had been trampled to death by the panics in various
+parts of the city, in the tubes beneath the rivers and on departing
+trains.</p>
+
+<p>And another thousand or more had been killed by the Robots. How many
+of these monstrous metal men were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> now in evidence, no one could
+guess. A hundred&mdash;or a thousand. The Time-cage made many trips between
+that night of June 9 and 10, 1935, and a night in 2930. Always it
+gauged its return to this same night.</p>
+
+<p>The Robots poured out into Patton Place. With running, stiff-legged
+steps, flashing swords, small light-beams darting before them, they
+spread about the city....</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER VII</h4>
+<h4>The Vengeance of Tugh</h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;myriad individual scenes of horror were enacted. Metal travesties of
+the human form ran along the city streets, overturning stalled
+vehicles, climbing into houses, roaming dark hallways, breaking into
+rooms.</p>
+
+<p>There was a woman who afterward told that she crouched in a corner,
+clutching her child, when the door of her room was burst in. Her
+husband, who had kept them there thinking it was the safest thing to
+do, fought futilely with the great thing of iron. Its sword slashed
+his head from his body with a single stroke. The woman and the little
+child screamed, but the monster ignored them. They had a radio, tuned
+to a station in New Jersey which was broadcasting the events. The
+Robot seized the instrument as though in a frenzy of anger, tore it
+apart, then rushed from the room.</p>
+
+<p>No one could give a connected picture of the events of that horrible
+night. It was a series of disjointed incidents out of which the
+imagination must construct the whole.</p>
+
+<p>The panics were everywhere. The streets were stalled with traffic and
+running, shouting, fighting people. And the area around Greenwich
+Village brought reports of continued horror.</p>
+
+<p>The Robots were of many different forms; some pseudo-human; others,
+great machines running amuck&mdash;things more monstrous, more horrible
+even, than those which mocked humanity. There was a great pot-bellied
+monster which forced its way somehow to a roof. It encountered a
+crouching woman and child in a corner of the parapet, seized them, one
+in each of its great iron hands, and whirled them out over the
+housetops.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>y dawn it seemed that the Robots had mounted several projectors of
+the giant red beam on the roofs of Patton Place. They held a full
+square mile, now, around Tugh's house. The police and firemen had long
+since given up fighting them. They were needed elsewhere&mdash;the police
+to try and cope with the panics, and the firemen to fight the
+conflagrations which everywhere began springing up. Fires, the natural
+outcome of chaos; and fires, incendiary&mdash;made by criminals who took
+advantage of the disaster to fatten like ghouls upon the dead. They
+prowled the streets. They robbed and murdered at will.</p>
+
+<p>The giant beams of the Robots carried a frigid blast for miles. By
+dawn of that June 10th, the south wind was carrying from the enemy
+area a perceptible wave of cold even as far as Westchester. Allen,
+flying over the city, saw the devastated area clearly. Ice in the
+streets&mdash;smashed vehicles&mdash;the gruesome litter of sword-slashed human
+bodies. And other human bodies, plucked apart; strewn....</p>
+
+<p>Alten's plane flew at an altitude of some two thousand feet. In the
+growing daylight the dark prowling figures of the metal men were
+plainly seen. There were no humans left alive in the captured area.
+The plane dropped a bomb into Washington Square where a dozen or two
+of the Robots were gathered. It missed them. The plane's pilot had not
+realized that they were grouped around a projector; its red shaft
+sprang up, caught the plane and clung to it. Frigid blast! Even at
+that two thousand feet altitude, for a few seconds Alten and the
+others were stiffened by the cold. The motor missed; very nearly
+stopped. Then an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> intervening rooftop cut off the beam, and the plane
+escaped.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ll this I have pictured from what Dr. Alten subsequently told me. He
+leaves my narrative now, since fate hereafter held him in the New York
+City of 1935. But he has described for me three horrible days, and
+three still more horrible nights. The whole world now was alarmed.
+Every nation offered its forces of air and land and sea to overcome
+these gruesome invaders. Warships steamed for New York harbor.
+Soldiers were entrained and brought to the city outskirts. Airplanes
+flew overhead. On Long Island, Staten Island, and in New Jersey,
+infantry, tanks and artillery were massed in readiness.</p>
+
+<p>But they were all very nearly powerless to attack. Manhattan Island
+still was thronged with refugees. It was not possible for the millions
+to escape; and for the first day there were hundreds of thousands
+hiding in their homes. The city could not be shelled. The influx of
+troops was hampered by the outrush of civilians.</p>
+
+<p>By the night of the tenth, nevertheless, ten thousand soldiers were
+surrounding the enemy area. It embraced now all the mid-section of the
+island. The soldiers rushed in. Machine-guns were set up.</p>
+
+<p>But the Robots were difficult to find. With this direct attack they
+began fighting with an almost human caution. Their bodies were
+impervious to bullets, save perhaps in the orifices of the face which
+might or might not be vulnerable. But when attacked, they skulked in
+the houses, or crouched like cautious animals under the smashed
+vehicles. Then there were times when they would wade forward directly
+into machine-gun fire&mdash;unharmed&mdash;plunging on until the gunners fled
+and the Robots wreaked their fury upon the abandoned gun.</p>
+
+<p>The only hand-to-hand conflicts took place on the afternoon of June
+10th. A full thousand soldiers were killed&mdash;and possibly six or eight
+of the Robots. The troops were ordered away after that; they made
+lines across the island to the north and to the south, to keep the
+enemy from increasing its area. Over Greenwich Village now, the
+circling planes&mdash;at their highest altitude, to avoid the upflung
+crimson beams&mdash;dropped bombs. Hundreds of houses there were wrecked.
+Tugh's house could not be positively identified, though the attack was
+directed at it most particularly. Afterward, it was found by chance to
+have escaped.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he night of June 10th brought new horrors. The city lights failed.
+Against all the efforts of the troops and the artillery fire which now
+was shelling the Washington Square area, the giant mechanisms pushed
+north and south. By midnight, with their dull-red beams illumining the
+darkness of the canyon streets, they had reached the Battery, and
+spread northward beyond the northern limits of Central Park.</p>
+
+<p>It is estimated that by then there were still a million people on
+Manhattan Island.</p>
+
+<p>The night of the 11th, the Robots made their real attack. Those who
+saw it, from planes overhead, say that upon a roof near Washington
+Square a machine was mounted from which a red beam sprang. It was not
+of parallel rays, like the others; this one spread. And of such power
+it was, that it painted the leaden clouds of the threatening, overcast
+night. Every plane, at whatever high altitude, felt its frigid blast
+and winged hastily away to safety.</p>
+
+<p>Spreading, dull-red beam! It flashed with a range of miles. Its light
+seemed to cling to the clouds, staining like blood; and to cling to
+the air itself with a dull lurid radiance.</p>
+
+<p>It was a hot night, that June 11th, with a brewing thunderstorm. There
+had been occasional rumbles of thunder and lightning flashes. The
+temperature was perhaps 90&deg; F.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then the temperature began falling. A million people were hiding in
+the great apartment houses and homes of the northern sections, or
+still struggling to escape over the littered bridges or by the
+paralyzed transportation systems&mdash;and that million people saw the
+crimson radiance and felt the falling temperature.</p>
+
+<p>80&deg;. Then 70&deg;. Within half an hour it was at 30&deg;! In unheated houses,
+in midsummer, in the midst of panic, the people were swept by chilling
+cold. With no adequate clothing available they suffered greatly&mdash;and
+then abruptly they were freezing. Children wailing with the cold; then
+asleep in numbed, last slumber....</p>
+
+<p>Zero weather in midsummer! And below zero! How cold it got, there is
+no one to say. The abandoned recording instrument in the Weather
+Bureau was found, at 2:16 A.M., the morning of June 12, 1935, to have
+touched minus 42&deg; F.</p>
+
+<p>The gathering storm over the city burst with lightning and thunder
+claps through the blood-red radiance. And then snow began falling. A
+steady white downpour, a winter blizzard with the lightning flashing
+above it, and the thunder crashing.</p>
+
+<p>With the lightning and thunder and snow, crazy winds sprang up. They
+whirled and tossed the thick white snowflakes; swept in blasts along
+the city streets. It piled the snow in great drifts against the
+houses; whirled and sucked it upward in white powdery geysers.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t 2:30 A.M. there came a change. The dull-red radiance which swept
+the city changed in color. Through the shades of the spectrum it swung
+up to violet. And no longer was it a blast of cold, but of heat! Of
+what inherent temperature the ray of that spreading beam may have
+been, no one can say. It caught the houses, and everything inflammable
+burst into flame. Conflagrations were everywhere&mdash;a thousand spots of
+yellow-red flames, like torches, with smoke rolling up from them to
+mingle with the violet glow overhead.</p>
+
+<p>The blizzard was gone. The snow ceased. The storm clouds rolled away,
+blasted by the pendulum winds which lashed the city.</p>
+
+<p>By 3 A.M. the city temperature was over 100&deg; F&mdash;the dry, blistering
+heat of a midsummer desert. The northern city streets were littered
+with the bodies of people who had rushed from their homes and fallen
+in the heat, the wild winds and the suffocating smoke outside.</p>
+
+<p>And then, flung back by the abnormal winds, the storm clouds crashed
+together overhead. A terrible storm, born of outraged nature, vent
+itself on the city. The fires of the burning metropolis presently died
+under the torrent of falling water. Clouds of steam whirled and tossed
+and hissed close overhead, and there was a boiling hot rain.</p>
+
+<p>By dawn the radiance of that strange spreading beam died away. The
+daylight showed a wrecked, dead city. Few humans indeed were left
+alive on Manhattan that dawn. The Robots and their apparatus had
+gone....</p>
+
+<p>The vengeance of Tugh against the New York City of 1935 was
+accomplished.</p>
+
+<p class="center">(<i>To be continued.</i>)</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_005.jpg" width="600" height="142" alt="Advertisement." title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image_006.jpg" width="500" height="404" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>Just as the terrific unknown force reached its apex, she stepped across the plate.</i></span></div>
+
+<h2><a name="Hells_Dimension" id="Hells_Dimension"></a>Hell's Dimension</h2>
+
+<h3><i>By Tom Curry</i></h3>
+<div class="sidenote">Professor Lambert deliberately ventures into a Vibrational
+Dimension to join his fiancee in its magnetic torture-fields.</div>
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_n1.jpg" alt="N" width="63" height="58" /></div>
+<p>ow, Professor Lambert, tell us what you have done with the body of
+your assistant Miss Madge Crawford. Her car is outside your door, has
+stood there since early yesterday morning. There are no footprints
+leading away from the house and you can't expect us to believe that an
+airplane picked her off the roof. It will make it a lot easier if you
+tell us where she is. Her parents are greatly worried about her. When
+they telephoned, you refused to talk to them, would not allow them to
+speak to Miss Crawford. They are alarmed as to her fate. While you are
+not the sort of man who would injure a young woman, still, things look
+bad for you. You had better explain fully."</p>
+
+<p>John Lambert, a man of about thirty-six, tall, spare, with black hair
+which was slightly tinged with gray at the temples in spite of his
+youth, turned large eyes which were filled with agony upon his
+questioners.</p>
+
+<p>Lambert was already internationally famous for his unique and
+astounding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> experiments in the realm of sound and rhythm. He had been
+endowed by one of the great electrical companies to do original work,
+and his laboratory, in which he lived, was situated in a large tract
+of isolated woodland some forty miles from New York City. It was
+necessary for the success of his work that as few disturbing noises as
+possible be made in the neighborhood. Many of his experiments with
+sound and etheric waves required absolute quiet and freedom from
+interrupting noises. The delicate nature of some of the machines he
+used would not tolerate so much as the footsteps of a man within a
+hundred yards, and a passing car would have disrupted them entirely.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ambert was terribly nervous; he trembled under the gaze of the stern
+detective, come with several colleagues from a neighboring town at the
+call of Madge Crawford's frightened family. The girl, whose picture
+stood on a working table nearby, looked at them from the photograph as
+a beautiful young woman of twenty-five, light of hair, with large eyes
+and a lovely face.</p>
+
+<p>Detective Phillips pointed dramatically to the likeness of the missing
+girl. "Can you," he said, "look at her there, and deny you loved her?
+And if she did not love you in return, then we have a motive for what
+you have done&mdash;jealousy. Come, tell us what you have done with her.
+Our men will find her, anyway; they are searching the cellar for her
+now. You can't hope to keep her, alive, and if she is dead&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Lambert uttered a cry of despair, and put his face in his long
+fingers. "She&mdash;she&mdash;don't say she's dead!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you did love her!" exclaimed Phillips triumphantly, and
+exchanged glances with his companions.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I love her. And she returned my love. We were secretly
+engaged, and were to be married when we had finished these extremely
+important experiments. It is infamous though, to accuse me of having
+killed her; if I have done so, then it was no fault of mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you did kill her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. I cannot believe she is really gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you evade her parents' inquiries?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because ... I have been trying to bring her ... to re-materialize
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean to bring her back to life?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't a doctor do that better than you, if she is hidden somewhere
+about here?" asked Phillips gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. You do not understand. She cannot be seen, she has
+dematerialized. Oh, go away. I'm the only man, save, possibly, my
+friend Doctor Morgan, who can help her now. And Morgan&mdash;I've thought
+of calling him, but I've been working every instant to get the right
+combination. Go away, for God's sake!"</p>
+
+<p>"We can't go away until we have found out Miss Crawford's fate," said
+Phillips patiently.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>nother sleuth entered the immense laboratory. He made his way through
+the myriad strange machines, a weird collection of xylophones, gongs,
+stone slabs cut in peculiar patterns to produce odd rhythmic sounds,
+electrical apparatus of all sorts. Near Phillips was a plate some feet
+square, of heavy metal, raised from the floor on poles of a different
+substance. About the ceiling were studs thickly set of the same sort
+of metal as was the big plate.</p>
+
+<p>One of the sleuths tapped his forehead, pointing to Lambert as the
+latter nervously lighted a cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>The newcomer reported to Phillips. He held in his hand two or three
+sheets of paper on which something was written.</p>
+
+<p>"The only other person here is a deaf mute," said the sleuth to
+Phillips, his superior. "I've got his story. He writes that he takes
+care of things, cooks their meals and so on. And he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> writes further
+that he thinks the woman and this guy Lambert were in love with each
+other. He has no idea where she has gone to. Here, you read it."</p>
+
+<p>Phillips took the sheets and continued: "'Yesterday morning about ten
+o'clock I was passing the door of the laboratory on my way to make up
+Professor Lambert's bed. Suddenly I noticed a queer, shimmering,
+greenish-blue light streaming down from the walls and ceiling of the
+laboratory. I was right outside the place and though I cannot hear
+anything, I was knocked down and I twisted and wriggled around like a
+snake. It felt like something with a thousand little paws but with
+great strength was pushing me every way. When there was a lull, and
+the light had stopped for a few moments, I staggered to my feet and
+ran madly for my own quarters, scared out of my head. As I went by the
+kitchen, I saw Miss Crawford at the sink there, filling some vases and
+arranging flowers as she usually did every morning.</p>
+
+<p>"'If she called to me, I did not hear her or notice her lips moving. I
+believe she came to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"'I was going to quit, when I recovered myself, angry at what had
+occurred; but then, I began to feel ashamed for being such a baby, for
+Professor Lambert has been very good to me. About fifteen minutes
+after I went to my room, I was able to return to the kitchen. Miss
+Crawford was not there, though the flowers and vases were. Then, as I
+started to work, still a little alarmed, Professor Lambert came
+rushing into the kitchen, an expression of terror on his face. His
+mouth was open, and I think he was calling. He then ran out, back to
+the laboratory, and I have not seen Miss Madge since. Professor
+Lambert has been almost continuously in the work-room since then,
+and&mdash;I kept away from it, because I was afraid.'"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>wo more members of Phillips' squad broke into the laboratory and came
+toward the chief. They had been working at physical labor, for they
+were still perspiring and one regarded his hands with a rueful
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Any luck?" asked Phillips eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, boss. We been all over the place, and we dug every spot we could
+get to earth in the cellar. Most of it's three-inch concrete, without
+a sign of a break."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you look in the furnace?"</p>
+
+<p>"We looked there the first thing. She ain't there."</p>
+
+<p>There were several closets in the laboratory, and Phillips opened all
+of them and inspected them. As he moved near the big plate, Lambert
+uttered a cry of warning. "Don't disturb that, don't touch anything
+near it!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right, all right," said Phillips testily.</p>
+
+<p>The skeptical sleuths had classified Lambert as a "nut," and were
+practically sure he had done away with Madge Crawford because she
+would not marry him.</p>
+
+<p>Still, they needed better evidence than their mere beliefs. There was
+no corpus delicti, for instance.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," said Lambert at last, controlling his emotions with a
+great effort. "I will admit to you that I am in trepidation and a
+state of mental torture as to Miss Crawford's fate. You are delaying
+matters, keeping me from my work."</p>
+
+<p>"He thinks about work when the girl he claims he loves has
+disappeared," said Doherty, in a loud whisper to Phillips. Doherty was
+one of the sleuths who had been digging in the cellar, and the hard
+work had made his temper short.</p>
+
+<p>"You must help us find Miss Crawford before we can let you alone,"
+said Phillips. "Can't you understand that you are under grave
+suspicion of having injured her, hidden her away? This is a serious
+matter, Professor Lambert. Your experiments can wait."</p>
+
+<p>"This one cannot," shouted Lambert, shaking his fists. "You are
+fools!"</p>
+
+<p>"Steady now," said Doherty.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_p1.jpg" alt="P" width="51" height="56" /></div>
+<p>erhaps you had better come with us to the district attorney's
+office," went on Phillips. "There you may come to your senses and
+realize the futility of trying to cover up your crime&mdash;if you have
+committed one. If you have not, why do you not tell us where Miss
+Crawford is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I do not know myself," replied Lambert. "But you can't take
+me away from here. I beg of you, gentlemen, allow me a little more
+time. I must have it."</p>
+
+<p>Phillips shook his head. "Not unless you tell us logically what has
+occurred," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I must, though I do not think you will comprehend or even
+believe me. Briefly, it is this: yesterday morning I was working on
+the final series of experiments with a new type of harmonic overtones
+plus a new type of sinusoidal current which I had arranged with a
+series of selenium cells. When I finally threw the switch&mdash;remember, I
+was many weeks preparing the apparatus, and had just put the final
+touches on early that morning&mdash;there was a sound such as never had
+been heard before by human ears, an indescribable sound, terrifying
+and mysterious. Also, there was a fierce, devouring verditer blue
+light, and this came from the plates and studs you see, but so great
+was its strength that it got out of control and leaped about the room
+like a live thing. For some moments, while it increased in intensity
+as I raised the power of the current by means of the switch I held in
+my hand, I watched and listened in fascination. My instruments had
+ceased to record, though they are the most delicate ever invented and
+can handle almost anything which man can even surmise."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he perspiration was pouring from Lambert's face, as he recounted his
+story. The detectives listened, comprehending but a little of the
+meaning of the scientist's words.</p>
+
+<p>"What has this to do with Miss Crawford?" asked Doherty impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>Phillips held up his hand to silence the other sleuth. "Let him
+finish," he ordered. "Go on, professor."</p>
+
+<p>"The sensations which I was undergoing became unendurable," went on
+Lambert, in a low, hoarse voice. "I was forced to cry out in pain and
+confusion.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Crawford evidently heard my call, for a few moments later, just
+as the terrific unknown force reached its apex, she dashed into the
+laboratory, and stepped across the plate you see there.</p>
+
+<p>"I was powerless. Though I shut off the current by a superhuman
+effort, she&mdash;she was gone!"</p>
+
+<p>Lambert put his face in his hands, a sob shook his broad shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Gone?" repeated Phillips. "What do you mean, gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"She disappeared, before my very eyes," said the professor shakily.
+"Torn into nothingness by the fierce force of the current or sound.
+Since then, I have been trying to reproduce the conditions of the
+experiment, for I wish to bring her back. If I cannot do so, then I
+want to join her, wherever she has gone. I love her, I know now that I
+cannot possibly live without her. Will you please leave me alone, now,
+so that I can continue?"</p>
+
+<p>Doherty laughed derisively. "What a story," he jeered.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep quiet, Doherty," ordered Phillips. "Now, Professor Lambert, your
+explanation of Miss Crawford's disappearance does not sound logical to
+us, but still we are willing to give you every chance to bring her
+back, if what you say is true. We cannot leave you entirely alone,
+because you might try to escape or you might carry out your threat of
+suicide. Therefore, I am going to sit over there in the corner,
+quietly, where I can watch you but will not interfere with your work.
+We will give you until midnight to prove your story. Then you must go
+with us to the district attorney. Do you agree to that?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ambert nodded, eagerly. "I agree. Let me work in peace, and if I do
+not succeed then you may take me anywhere you wish. If you can," he
+added, in an undertone.</p>
+
+<p>Doherty and the others, at Phillips' orders, filed from the
+laboratory. "One thing more, professor," said Phillips, when they were
+alone and the professor was preparing to work. "How do you explain the
+fact, if your story is true, that Miss Crawford was killed and made to
+disappear, while you yourself, close by, were uninjured?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see these garments?" asked Lambert, indicating some black
+clothes which lay on a bench nearby. "They insulated me from the
+current and partially protected me from the sound. Though the force
+was very great, great enough to penetrate my insulation, it was
+handicapped in my case because of the garments."</p>
+
+<p>"I see. Well, you may go on."</p>
+
+<p>Phillips moved in the chair he had taken, from time to time. He could
+hear the noises of his men, still searching the premises for Madge
+Crawford, and Professor Lambert heard them, too.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you tell your men to be quiet?" he cried at last.</p>
+
+<p>There were dark circles under Lambert's eyes. He was working in a
+state of feverish anxiety. When the girl he loved had dematerialized
+from under his very eyes, panic had seized him; he had ripped away
+wires to break the current and lost the thread of his experiment, so
+that he could not reproduce it exactly without much labor.</p>
+
+<p>The scientist put on the black robes, and Phillips wished he too had
+some protective armor, even though he did believe that Lambert had
+told them a parcel of lies. The deaf mute's story was not too
+reassuring. Phillips warned his companions to be more quiet, and he
+himself sat quite still.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ambert knew that the sleuths thought he was stark mad. He was aware
+of the fact that he had but a few hours in which to save the girl who
+had come at his cry to help him, who had loved him and whom he loved,
+only to be torn into some place unknown by the forces which were
+released in his experiment. And he knew he would rather die with her
+than live without her.</p>
+
+<p>He labored feverishly, though he tried to keep his brain calm in order
+to win. His notes helped him up to a certain point, but when he had
+made the final touches he had not had time to bring the data up to the
+moment, being eager to test out his apparatus. It was while testing
+that the awful event had occurred and he had seen Madge Crawford
+disappear before his very eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes, large and frightened, burned in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>The deaf mute, Felix, a small, spare man of about fifty, sent the
+professor some food and coffee through one of the sleuths. Lambert
+swallowed the coffee, but waved away the rest, impatiently. Phillips,
+watching his suspect constantly, was served a light supper at the end
+of the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>There seemed to be a million wires to be touched, tested, and various
+strange apparatus. Several times, later on in the evening. Lambert
+threw the big switch with an air of expectancy, but little happened.
+Then Lambert would go to work again, testing, testing&mdash;adjusting this
+and that till Phillips swore under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Only an hour more, professor," said Phillips, who was bored to death
+and cramped from trying to obey the professor's orders to keep still.
+A circle of cigarette-ends surrounded the sleuth.</p>
+
+<p>"Only an hour," agreed Lambert. "Will you please be quiet, my man?
+This is a matter of my fianc&eacute;e's life or death."</p>
+
+<p>Phillips was somewhat disgruntled, for he felt he had done Lambert
+quite a favor in allowing him to remain in the laboratory for so long,
+to prove his story.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I wish Doctor Morgan were here; I ought to have sent for him, I
+suppose," said Lambert, a few minutes later. "Will you allow me to get
+him? I cannot seem to perfect this last stage."</p>
+
+<p>"No time, now," declared Phillips. "I said till midnight."</p>
+
+<p>It was obvious to Lambert that the detective had become certain during
+the course of the evening that the scientist was mad. The ceaseless
+fiddling and the lack of results or even spectacular sights had
+convinced Phillips that he had to do with a crank.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I have it now," said Lambert coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" asked Phillips.</p>
+
+<p>"The original combination. I had forgotten one detail in the
+excitement, and this threw me off. Now I believe I will succeed&mdash;in
+one way or another. I warn you, be careful. I am about to release
+forces which may get out of my control."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, don't get reckless," begged Phillips nervously. The array
+of machines had impressed him, even if Lambert did seem a fool.</p>
+
+<p>"You insist upon remaining, so it is your own risk," said Lambert
+coolly.</p>
+
+<p>Lambert, in the strange robes, was a bizarre figure. The hood was
+thrown back, exposing his pale, black-bearded face, the wan eyes with
+dark circles under them, and the twitching lips.</p>
+
+<p>"If you find yourself leaving this vale of tears," went on the
+scientist, ironically, to the sleuth, "you will at least have the
+comfort of realizing that as the sound-force disintegrates your mortal
+form you are among the first of men to be attuned to the vibrations of
+the unknown sound world. All matter is vibration; that has been
+proven. A building of bricks, if shaken in the right manner, falls
+into its component parts; a bridge, crossed by soldiers in certain
+rhythmic time, is torn from its moorings. A tuning fork, receiving the
+sound vibrations from one of a similar size and shape begins to
+vibrate in turn. These are homely analogies, but applied to the less
+familiar sound vibrations, which make up our atomic world, they may
+help you to understand how the terrific forces I have discovered can
+disintegrate flesh."</p>
+
+<p>The scientist looked inquiringly at Phillips. As the sleuth did not
+move, but sat with folded arms, Lambert shrugged and said, "I am
+ready."</p>
+
+<p>Lambert raised his hood, and Phillips said, in a spirit of bravado,
+"You can't scare me out of here."</p>
+
+<p>"Here goes the switch," cried Lambert.</p>
+
+<p>He made the contact, as he had before. He stood for a moment, and this
+time the current gained force. The experimenter pushed his lever all
+the way over.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;terrible greenish-blue light suddenly illuminated the laboratory,
+and through the air there came sound vibrations which seemed to tear
+at Phillips' body. He found himself on the floor, knocked from his
+chair, and he writhed this way and that, speechless, suffering a
+torment of agony. His whole flesh seemed to tremble in unison with the
+waves which emanated from the machines which Lambert manipulated.</p>
+
+<p>After what seemed hours to the suffering sleuth, the force diminished,
+and soon Phillips was able to rise. Trembling, the detective cursed
+and yelled for help in a high-pitched voice.</p>
+
+<p>Lambert had thrown back his hood, and was rocking to and fro in agony.</p>
+
+<p>"Madge, Madge," he cried, "what have I done! Come back to me, come
+back!"</p>
+
+<p>Doherty and the others came running in at their chief's shouts.
+"Arrest him," ordered Phillips shakily. "I've stood enough of this
+nonsense."</p>
+
+<p>The detectives started for Lambert. He saw them coming, and swiftly
+threw off the protective garments he wore.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand back!" he cried, and threw the switch all the way over. The
+ver<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>diter green light smashed through the air, and the queer sound
+sensations smacked and tore them; Doherty, who had drawn a revolver
+when he was answering Phillips' cries, fired the gun into the air, and
+the report seemed to battle with the vibrating ether.</p>
+
+<p>Lambert, as he threw the switch, leaped forward and landed on the
+metal plate under the ceiling studs, in the very center of the awful
+disturbance and unprotected from its force.</p>
+
+<p>For a few moments, Lambert felt racking pain, as though something were
+tearing at his flesh, separating the very atoms. The scientist saw the
+wriggling figures of the sleuths, in various strange positions, but his
+impressions were confused. His head whirled round and round, he swayed
+to and fro, and, finally, he thought he fell down, or rather, that he
+had melted, as a lump of sugar dissolves in water.</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone&mdash;gone&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>In the heart of nothingness was Lambert, his body torn and racked in a
+shrieking chaos of sound and a blinding glare of iridescent light
+which seemed too much to bear.</p>
+
+<p>His last conscious thought was a prayer, that, having failed to bring
+back his sweetheart, Madge Crawford, he was undergoing a step toward
+the same destination to which he had sent her.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ohn Lambert came to with a shudder. But it was not a mortal shudder.
+He could sense no body; had no sense of being confined by matter. He
+was in a strange, chilly place&mdash;a twilight region, limitless, without
+dimensions.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he could feel something, in an impersonal way, vaguely
+indifferent. He had no pain now.</p>
+
+<p>He was moving, somehow. He had one impelling desire, and that was to
+discover Madge Crawford. Perhaps it was this thought which directed
+his movements.</p>
+
+<p>Intent upon finding the girl, if she was indeed in this same strange
+world that he was, he did not notice for some time&mdash;how long, he had
+no way of telling&mdash;that there were other beings which tried to impede
+his progress. But as he grew more accustomed to the unfamiliar
+sensations he was undergoing, he found his path blocked again and
+again by queer beings.</p>
+
+<p>They were living, without doubt, and had intelligence, and evinced
+hostility toward him. But they were shapeless, shapeless as amoebas.
+He heard them in a sort of soundless whisper, and could see them
+without the use of eyes. And he shuddered, though he could feel no
+body in which he might be confined. Still, when he pinched viciously
+with invisible fingers at the spot where his face should have been, a
+twinge of pain registered on the vague consciousness which appeared to
+be all there was to him.</p>
+
+<p>He was not sure of his substance, though he could evidently experience
+human sensations with his amorphous body. He did not know whether he
+could see; yet, he was dodging this way and that, as the beings who
+occupied this world tried to stop him.</p>
+
+<p>They gave him the impression of gray shapes, and in coppery shadows
+things gleamed and closed in on him.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to hear a cry, and he knew that he was receiving a call for
+help from Madge Crawford. He tried to run, pushed determinedly toward
+the spot, impelled by his love for the girl.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_n.jpg" alt="N" width="49" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ow, as he hurried, he occasionally was stopped short by collision
+with the formless shapes which were all about him. He was hampered by
+them, for they followed him, making a sound like wind heard in a
+dream. Whatever medium he was in was evidently thickly inhabited by
+the hostile beings who claimed this world as their own. Though he
+could not actually feel the medium, he could sense that it was heavy.
+He leaped and ran, fighting his way through the increasing hosts, and
+the roar of their voice-im<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>pressions increased in his consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there seemed to be nothing, nothing tangible save vagueness. He
+felt he was in a blind spot in space, a place of no dimensions, no
+time, where beings abhorred by nature, things which had never
+developed any dimensional laws, existed.</p>
+
+<p>The cry for help struck him, with more force this time. Lambert,
+whatever form he was in, realised that he was close to the end of his
+journey to Madge Crawford.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to speak, and had the impression that he said something
+reassuring. He then bumped into some vibrational being which he knew
+was Madge. His ears could not hear, nor could his flesh feel, but his
+whole form or cerebrum sensed he held the woman he loved in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>And she was speaking to him, in accents of fear, begging him to save
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"John, John, you have come at last. They have been torturing me
+terribly. Save me."</p>
+
+<p>"Darling Madge, I will do everything I can. Now I have found you, and
+we are together and will never part. Can you hear me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you are thinking, and what you wish to say. I can't
+exactly hear; it all seems vague, and impossible. Yet I can suffer.
+They have been hitting me with something which makes me shudder and
+shake&mdash;there, they are at it again."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ambert felt the sensations, now, which the girl had made known to
+him. He felt crowded by gray beings, and his existence was troubled by
+spasms of pain-impressions. He knew Madge was crying out, too.</p>
+
+<p>He could not comprehend the attacks, or guess their meaning. But the
+situation was unendurable.</p>
+
+<p>Anger shook him, and he began to fight, furiously but vaguely. They
+were closely hemmed in, but when Lambert began to strike out with
+hands and legs, the beings gave way a little. The scientist tried to
+shout, and though he could actually hear nothing, the result was
+gratifying. The formless creatures seemed to scatter and draw back in
+confusion as he yelled his defiance.</p>
+
+<p>"They hate that," Madge said to him. "I have screamed myself hoarse
+and that is why they have not killed me&mdash;if I can be killed."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not believe we can. But they can torture us," replied Lambert.
+"It is an everlasting half-life or quarter-life, and these creatures
+who call this Hell's Dimension home, have nothing but hatred for us in
+their consciousness."</p>
+
+<p>The inhabitants of the imperfect world had closed in once again and
+the sharp instruments of torture they used were being thrust into the
+invisible bodies of the two humans. Each time, Lambert was unable to
+restrain his cries, for it seemed that he was being torn to pieces by
+vibrations.</p>
+
+<p>He yelled until he could not speak above a whisper, or at least until
+the impressions of speech he gave forth did not trouble the beings.
+The two humans, still bound to some extent by their mortal beliefs,
+were chivvied to and fro, and struck and bullied. The creatures seemed
+to delight in this sport.</p>
+
+<p>The two felt they could not die; yet they could suffer terribly. Would
+this go on through eternity? Was there no release?</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey were trying to tear Madge away from him. She was fighting them,
+and Lambert, in a frenzy of rage, made a determined effort to get away
+with the girl from their tormentors.</p>
+
+<p>They retreated before his onslaughts. Drawing Madge after him, Lambert
+put down his head&mdash;or believed he was doing so&mdash;and ran as fast as he
+could at the beings.</p>
+
+<p>He bumped into some invisible forms and was slowed in his rush, but he
+shouted and flailed about with his arms, and tried to kick. Madge
+helped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> by screaming and striking out. They made some distance in this
+way, or so they thought, and the horrid creatures gave way before
+them.</p>
+
+<p>All about them was the coppery sensation of the medium in which they
+moved: Lambert as he became more used to the form he was inhabiting,
+he began to think he could discern dreadful eyes which stared
+unblinkingly at the couple.</p>
+
+<p>He fought on, and believed they had come to a spot where the beings
+did not molest them, though they still sensed the things glaring at
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Were they on some invisible eminence, above the reach of these queer
+creatures?</p>
+
+<p>"We might as well stop here, for if we try to go farther we may come
+to a worse place," said Lambert.</p>
+
+<p>They rested there, in temporary peace, together at last.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_i1.jpg" alt="I" width="37" height="52" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;seem to be happy now," said Madge, clinging close. "I feared I
+would never see you again. John dear. I ran to you when you called out
+that day and when I crossed the plate, I was torn and racked and
+knocked down. When I next experienced sensation, it was in this
+terrible form. I am becoming more used to it, but I kept crying out
+for you: the beings, as soon as they discovered my presence, began to
+torment me. More and more have been collecting, and I have a sensation
+of seeing them as horrible, revolting beasts. Oh, John, I don't think
+I could have stood it much longer, if you hadn't come to me. They were
+driving me on, on, on, ceaselessly torturing me."</p>
+
+<p>"Curse them," said Lambert. "I wish I could really get hold of some of
+them. Perhaps, Madge, I will be able to think of some escape for us
+from this Hell's Dimension."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, darling. I could not bear to think that we are eternally damned
+to exist among these beings, hurt by them and unable to get away. How
+I wish we were back in the laboratory, at the tea table. How happy we
+were there!"</p>
+
+<p>"And we will be again, Madge." Lambert was far from feeling hopeful,
+but he tried to encourage the girl into thinking they might get away.</p>
+
+<p>However, he was unable to dissimulate. She felt his anguish for her
+safety. "But I know now that you love me. I can feel it stronger than
+ever before, John. It seems like a great rock to which I can always
+cling, your love. It projects me from the hatred that these beasts
+pour out against us."</p>
+
+<p>Since they had no sense of time, they could not tell how long they
+were allowed to remain unmolested. But in each other's company they
+were happy, though each one was afraid for the safety of the loved
+one.</p>
+
+<p>They spoke of the mortal life they had lived, and their love. They
+felt no need of food or water, but clung together in a dimensionless
+universe, held up by love.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he lull came to an end, at last. There was no change in the coppery
+vagueness about them which they sensed as the surrounding ether, but
+all was changeless, boundless. Lambert, close to Madge Crawford, felt
+that they were about to be attacked.</p>
+
+<p>He had swift, temporary impressions of seeing saucerlike, unblinking
+eyes, and then hordes of bizarre inhabitants started to climb up to
+their perch.</p>
+
+<p>For a short while, Lambert and Madge fought them off, thrusting at
+them, seeming to push them backward down the intangible slope; the
+cries which the dematerialized humans uttered also helped to hold the
+leaders of the attacking army partially in check, but the vast number
+of beings swept forward.</p>
+
+<p>The thrusts of the torture-fields they emanated became more and more
+racking, as the two unfortunates shuddered in horror and pain.</p>
+
+<p>The power to demonstrate loud noise was evidently impossible to the
+creatures, for their only sounds came to Madge Crawford and John
+Lambert<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> as long-drawn out, almost unbearable squeaks, mouse-like in
+character. Perhaps they had never had the faculty of speech, since
+they did not need it to communicate with one another; perhaps they
+realized that the racket they could make would hurt them as much as it
+did their enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Lambert, Madge clinging to him, was forced backward down the slope,
+and the beings had the advantage of height. He could not again reach
+the eminence, but the way behind seemed to clear quickly enough,
+though thrusts were made at him, innumerable times with the
+torture-fields.</p>
+
+<p>The hordes pushed them backward, and ever back.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey were forced on for some distance. As they retreated, the way
+become easier, and fewer and fewer of the beings impeded the channel
+along which they moved, though in front of them and on all sides,
+above, beneath, they were pressed by the hordes.</p>
+
+<p>"They are forcing us to some place they want us to go," said Lambert
+desperately.</p>
+
+<p>"We can do nothing more," replied the girl.</p>
+
+<p>Lambert felt her quiet confidence in him, and that as long as they
+were together, all was well.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe they can kill us, somehow," he said.</p>
+
+<p>And now, Lambert felt the way was clear to the rear. There was a
+sudden rush of the creatures, and needlelike fields were impelled
+viciously into the spaces the two humans occupied.</p>
+
+<p>Madge cried out in pain, and Lambert shouted. The throng drew away
+from them as suddenly as it had surged forward, and an instant later
+the pair, clinging together, felt that they were falling, falling,
+falling....</p>
+
+<p>"Are you all right, Madge?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, John."</p>
+
+<p>But he knew she was suffering. How long they fell he did not know, but
+they stopped at last. No sooner had they come to rest than they were
+assailed with sensations of pain which made both cry out in anguish.</p>
+
+<p>There, in the spot where they had been thrust by the hordes, they felt
+that there was some terrific vibration which racked and tore at their
+invisible forms continuously, sending them into spasms of sharp
+misery.</p>
+
+<p>They both were forced to give vent to their feelings by loud cries.
+But they could not command their movements any longer. When they tried
+to get away, their limbs moved but they felt that they remained in the
+same spot.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he pain shook every fraction of their souls.</p>
+
+<p>"We&mdash;we are in some pit of hell, into which they have thrown us,
+John," gasped Madge.</p>
+
+<p>He knew she was shivering with the torture of that great vibration
+from which there was no escape, that they were in a prison-pit of
+Hell's Dimension.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;oh&mdash;John&mdash;I'm dying!"</p>
+
+<p>But he was powerless to help her. He suffered as much as she. Yet
+there was no weakening of his sensations; he was in as much torture as
+he had been at the start. He knew that they could not die and could
+never escape from this misery of hell.</p>
+
+<p>Their cries seemed to disturb the vacuum about. Lambert, shivering and
+shaking with pain, was aware that great eyes, similar to those which
+they had thought they saw above, were now upon them. Squeaks were
+impressed upon him, squeaks which expressed disapprobation. There were
+some of the beings in the pit with them.</p>
+
+<p>Madge knew they were there, too. She cried out in terror, "Will they
+add to our misery?"</p>
+
+<p>But the creatures in the vacuum were pinned to the spots they
+occupied, as were Madge and Lambert. From their squeaks it was evident
+they suffered, too, and were fellow prisoners of the mortals.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably the cries we make disturb<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> them," said Lambert. "Vibrations
+to which we and they are not attuned are torture to the form we are
+in. Evidently the inhabitants of this hell world punish offenders by
+condemning them to this eternal torture."</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;why did they treat us so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps we jarred upon them, hurt them, because we were not of their
+kind exactly," said Lambert. "Perhaps it was just their natural hatred
+of us as strangers."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey did not grow used to the terrible eternity of torments. No, if
+anything, it grew worse as it went on. Still, they could visualize no
+end to the existence to which they were bound. Throbs of awful
+intensity rent them, tore them apart myriad times, yet they still felt
+as keenly as before and suffered just as much. There was no death for
+them, no release from the intangible world in which they were.</p>
+
+<p>Their fellow prisoners squeaked at them, as though imploring them not
+to add to the agony by uttering discordant cries. But it was
+impossible for Madge to keep quiet, and Lambert shouted in anguish
+from time to time.</p>
+
+<p>There seemed to be no end to it.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, after what was eternity to the sufferers, Madge spoke
+hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>"Darling John, I&mdash;I fear I am really going to die. I am growing
+weaker. I can feel the pain very little now. It is all vague, and is
+getting less real to me. Good-by, sweetheart, I love you, and I always
+will&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Lambert uttered a strangled cry, "No, no. Don't leave me, Madge."</p>
+
+<p>He clung to her, yet she was becoming extremely intangible to him. She
+was melting away from his embrace, and Lambert felt that he, too, was
+weaker, even less real than he had been. He hoped that if it was the
+end, they would go together.</p>
+
+<p>Desperately, he tried to hold her with him, but he had little ability
+to do so. The torture was still racking his consciousness, but was
+becoming more dreamlike.</p>
+
+<p>There was a terrific snap, suddenly, and Lambert lost all
+consciousness....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_w1.jpg" alt="W" width="78" height="54" /></div>
+<p>ater, water!"</p>
+
+<p>Lambert, opening his eyes, felt his body writhing about, and
+experienced pain that was&mdash;mortal. A bluish-green light dazzled his
+pupils and made him blink.</p>
+
+<p>Something cut into his flesh, and Lambert rolled about, trying to
+escape. He bumped into something, something soft; he clung to this
+form, and knew that he was holding on to a human being. Then the light
+died out, and in its stead was the yellow, normal glow of the electric
+lights. Weak, famished, almost dead of thirst, Lambert looked about
+him at the familiar sights of his laboratory. He was lying on the
+floor, close by the metal plate, and at his side, unconscious but
+still alive to judge by her rising and falling breast, was Madge
+Crawford.</p>
+
+<p>Someone bent over him, and pressed a glass of water against his lips.
+He drank, watching while a mortal whom Lambert at last realized was
+Detective Phillips bathed Madge Crawford's temples with water from a
+pitcher and forced a little between her pale, drawn lips.</p>
+
+<p>Lambert tried to rise, but he was weak, and required assistance. He
+was dazed, still, and they sat him down in a chair and allowed him to
+come to.</p>
+
+<p>He shuddered from time to time, for he still thought he could feel the
+torture which he had been undergoing. But he was worried about Madge,
+and watched anxiously as Phillips, assisted by another man, worked
+over the girl.</p>
+
+<p>At last, Madge stirred and moaned faintly. They lifted her to a bench,
+where they gently restored her to full consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>When she could sit up, she at once cried out for Lambert.</p>
+
+<p>The scientist had recovered enough to rise to his feet and stagger
+toward her. "Here I am, darling," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"John&mdash;we're alive&mdash;we're back in the laboratory!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Lambert. Glad to see you." A heavy voice spoke, and Lambert for
+the first time noticed the black-clad figure which stood to one side,
+near the switchboard, hidden by a large piece of apparatus.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Morgan!" cried Lambert.</p>
+
+<p>Althaus Morgan, the renowned physicist, came forward calmly, with
+outstretched hand. "So, you realized your great ambition, eh?" he said
+curiously. "But where would you be if I had not been able to bring you
+back?"</p>
+
+<p>"In Hell&mdash;or Hell's Dimension, anyway," said Lambert.</p>
+
+<p>He went to Madge, took her in his arms. "Darling, we are safe. Morgan
+has managed to re-materialize us. We will never again be cast into the
+void in this way. I shall destroy the apparatus and my notes."</p>
+
+<p>Doherty, who had been out of the room on some errand, came into the
+laboratory. He shouted when he saw Lambert standing before him.</p>
+
+<p>"So you got him," he cried. "Where was he hidin'?"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes fell upon Madge Crawford, then, and he exclaimed in
+satisfaction. "You found her, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Phillips. "They came back. They suddenly appeared out of
+nothing, Doherty."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't kid me," growled Doherty. "They were hidin' in a closet
+somewhere. Maybe they can fool you guys, but not me."</p>
+
+<p>Lambert spoke to Phillips. "I'm starving to death and I think Miss
+Crawford must be, too. Will you tell Felix to bring us some food,
+plenty of it?"</p>
+
+<p>One of the sleuths went to the kitchen to give the order. Lambert
+turned to Morgan.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you manage to bring us back?" he asked.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>organ shrugged. "It was all guess work at the last. I at first could
+check the apparatus by your notes, and this took some time. You know
+you have written me in detail about what you were working on, so when
+I was summoned by Detective Phillips, who said you had mentioned my
+name to him as the only one who could help, I could make a good
+conjecture as to what had occurred. I heard the stories of all
+concerned, and realized that you must have dematerialized Miss
+Crawford by mistake, and then, unable to bring her back, had followed
+her yourself.</p>
+
+<p>"I put on your insulation outfit, and went to work. I have not left
+here for a moment, but have snatched an hour or two of sleep from time
+to time. Detective Phillips has been very good and helpful.</p>
+
+<p>"Finally, I had everything in shape, but I reversed the apparatus in
+vital spots, and tried each combination until suddenly, a few minutes
+ago, you were re-materialized. It was a desperate chance, but I was
+forced to take it in an endeavor to save you."</p>
+
+<p>Lambert held out his hand to his friend. "I can never thank you
+enough," he said gratefully. "You saved us from a horrible fate. But
+you speak as though we had been gone a long while. Was it many hours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hours?" repeated Morgan, his lips parting under his black beard.
+"Man, it was eight days! You have been gone since a week ago last
+night!"</p>
+
+<p>Lambert turned to Phillips. "I must ask you not to release this story
+to the newspapers," he begged.</p>
+
+<p>Phillips smiled and turned up his hands in a gesture of frank wonder.
+"Professor Lambert," he said, "I can't believe what I have seen
+myself. If I told such a yarn to the reporters, they'd never forget
+it. They'd kid me out of the department."</p>
+
+<p>"Aw, they were hidin' in a closet," growled Doherty. "Come on, we've
+wasted too much time on this job already. Just a couple of nuts, says
+I."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he sleuths, after Phillips had shaken hands with Lambert, left the
+laboratory. Morgan, a large man of middle age, joined them in a meal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+which Felix served to the three on a folding table brought in for the
+purpose. Felix was terribly glad to see Madge and Lambert again, and
+manifested his joy by many bobs and leaps as he waited upon them. A
+grin spread across his face from ear to ear.</p>
+
+<p>Morgan asked innumerable questions. They described as best they could
+what they could recall of the strange dominion in which they had been,
+and the physicist listened intently.</p>
+
+<p>"It is some Hell's Dimension, as you call it," he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Where it is, or exactly what, I cannot say," said Lambert. "I surely
+have no desire to return to that world of hate."</p>
+
+<p>Madge, happy now, smiled at him and he leaned over and kissed her
+tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"We have come from Hell, together," said Lambert, "and now we are in
+Heaven!"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image_007.jpg" width="500" height="571" alt="Advertisement" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>
+
+<div><a name="The_World_Behind_the_Moon" id="The_World_Behind_the_Moon"></a>
+<img class="figright" src="images/image_008_01.jpg" width="600" height="297" alt="They fell, for hours, into a deep chasm." title="" />
+<img class="figright" src="images/image_008_02.jpg" width="299" height="618" alt="They fell, for hours, into a deep chasm." title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="f1">The World<br />
+Behind the<br />
+Moon</p>
+<p class="f2"><i>By Paul Ernst</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ike pitiless jaws, a distant crater opened for their ship.
+Helplessly, they hurtled toward it: helplessly, because they were
+still in the nothingness of space, with no atmospheric resistance on
+which their rudders, or stern or bow tubes, could get a purchase to
+steer them.</p>
+
+
+<p>Professor Dorn Wichter waited anxiously for the slight vibration that
+should announce that the projectile-shaped shell had entered the new
+planet's atmosphere.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Two intrepid Earth-men fight it out with the horrific
+monsters of Zeud's frightful jungles.</div>
+
+<p>"Have we struck it yet?" asked Joyce, a tall blond young man with the
+shoulders of an athlete and the broad brow and square chin of one who
+com<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>bines dreams with action. He made his way painfully toward
+Wichter. It was the first time he had attempted to move since the
+shell had passed the neutral point&mdash;that belt midway between the moon
+and the world behind it, where the pull of gravity of each satellite
+was neutralized by the other. They, and all the loose objects in the
+shell, had floated uncomfortably about the middle of the chamber for
+half an hour or so, gradually settling down again; until now it was
+possible, with care, to walk.</p>
+
+<p>"Have we struck it?" he repeated, leaning over the professor's
+shoulder and staring at the resistance gauge.</p>
+
+<p>"No." Absently Wichter took off his spectacles and polished them.
+"There's not a trace of resistance yet."</p>
+
+<p>They gazed out the bow window toward the vast disc, like a serrated,
+pock-marked plate of blue ice, that was the planet Zeud&mdash;discovered
+and named by them. The same thought was in the mind of each. Suppose
+there were no atmosphere surrounding Zeud to cushion their descent
+into the hundred-mile crater that yawned to receive them?</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Joyce after a time, "we're taking no more of a chance
+here than we did when we pointed our nose toward the moon. We were
+almost sure that was no atmosphere there&mdash;which meant we'd nose dive
+into the rocks at five thousand miles an hour. On Zeud there might be
+anything." His eyes shone. "How wonderful that there should be such a
+planet, unsuspected during all the centuries men have been studying
+the heavens!"</p>
+
+<p>Wichter nodded agreement. It was indeed wonderful. But what was more
+wonderful was its present discovery: for that would never have
+transpired had not he and Joyce succeeded in their attempt to fly to
+the moon. From there, after following the sun in its slow journey
+around to the lost side of the lunar globe&mdash;that face which the earth
+has never yet observed&mdash;they had seen shining in the near distance
+the great ball which they had christened Zeud.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>stronomical calculations had soon described the mysterious hidden
+satellite. It was almost a twin to the moon; a very little smaller,
+and less than eighty thousand miles away. Its rotation was nearly
+similar, which made its days not quite sixteen of our earthly days. It
+was of approximately the weight, per cubic mile, of Earth. And there
+it whirled, directly in a line with the earth and the moon, moving as
+the moon moved so that it was ever out of sight beyond it, as a dime
+would be out of sight if placed in a direct line behind a penny.</p>
+
+<p>Zeud, the new satellite, the world beyond the moon! In their
+excitement at its discovery, Joyce and Wichter had left the
+moon&mdash;which they had found to be as dead and cold as it had been
+surmised to be&mdash;and returned summarily to Earth. They had replenished
+their supplies and their oxygen tanks, and had come back&mdash;to circle
+around the moon and point the sharp prow of the shell toward Zeud. The
+gift of the moon to Earth was a dubious one; but the gift of a
+possibly living planet-colony to mankind might be the solution of the
+overcrowded conditions of the terrestial sphere!</p>
+
+<p>"Speed, three thousand miles an hour," computed Wichter. "Distance to
+Zeud, nine hundred and eighty miles. If we don't strike a few atoms of
+hydrogen or something soon we're going to drill this nearest crater a
+little deeper!"</p>
+
+<p>Joyce nodded grimly. At two thousand miles from Earth there had still
+been enough hydrogen traces in the ether to give purchase to the
+explosions of their water-motor. At six hundred miles from the moon
+they had run into a sparse gaseous belt that had enabled them to
+change direction and slow their speed. They had hoped to find hydrogen
+at a thousand or twelve hundred miles from Zeud.</p>
+
+<p>"Eight hundred and thirty miles,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> commented Wichter, his slender,
+bent body tensed. "Eight hundred miles&mdash;ah!"</p>
+
+<p>A thrumming sound came to their ears as the shell quivered,
+imperceptibly almost, but unmistakeably, at the touch of some faint
+resistance outside in space.</p>
+
+<p>"We've struck it, Joyce. And it's much denser than the moon's, even as
+we'd hoped. There'll be life on Zeud, my boy, unless I'm vastly
+mistaken. You'd better look to the motor now."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oyce went to the water-motor. This was a curious, but extremely
+simple affair. There was a glass box, ribbed with polished steel,
+about the size and shape of a cigar box, which was full of water.
+Leading away from this, to the bow and stern of the shell, were two
+small pipes. The pipes were greatly thickened for a period of three
+feet or so, directly under the little tank, and were braced by
+bed-plates so heavy as to look all out of proportion. Around the
+thickened parts of the pipes were coils of heavy, insulated copper
+wire. There were no valves nor cylinders, no revolving parts: that was
+all there was to the "motor."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce didn't yet understand the device. The water dripped from the
+tank, drop by drop, to be abruptly disintegrated, made into an
+explosive, by being subjected to a powerful magnetic field induced in
+the coils by a generator in the bow of the shell. As each drop of
+water passed into the pipes, and was instantaneously broken up, there
+was a violent but controlled explosion&mdash;and the shell was kicked
+another hundred miles ahead on its journey. That was all Joyce knew
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>He threw the bow switch. There was a soft shock as the motor exhausted
+through the forward tube, slowing their speed.</p>
+
+<p>"Turn on the outside generator propellers," ordered Wichter. "I think
+our batteries are getting low."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce slipped the tiny, slim-bladed propellers into gear. They began
+to turn, slowly at first in the almost non-existent atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>"Four hundred miles," announced Wichter. "How's the temperature?"</p>
+
+<p>Joyce stepped to the thermometer that registered the heat of the outer
+wall. "Nine hundred degrees," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Cut down to a thousand miles an hour," commanded Wichter. "Five
+hundred as soon as the motor will catch that much. I'll keep our
+course straight toward this crater. It's in wells like that, that
+we'll find livable air&mdash;if we're right in believing there is such a
+thing on Zeud."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oyce glanced at the thermometer. It still registered hundreds of
+degrees, though their speed had been materially reduced.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess there's livable air, all right," he said. "It's pretty thick
+outside already."</p>
+
+<p>The professor smiled. "Another theory vindicated. I was sure that
+Zeud, swinging on the outside of the Earth-moon-Zeud chain and hence
+traveling at a faster rate, would pick up most of the moon's
+atmosphere over a period of millions of years. Also it must have been
+shielded by the moon, to some extent, against the constant small
+atmospheric leakage most celestial globes are subject to. Just the
+same, when we land, we'll test conditions with a rat or two."</p>
+
+<p>At a signal from him, Joyce checked their speed to four hundred miles
+an hour, then to two hundred, and then, as they descended below the
+highest rim of the circular cliffs of the crater, almost to a full
+stop. They floated toward the surface of Zeud, watching with
+breathless interest the panorama that unfolded beneath them.</p>
+
+<p>They were nosing toward a spot that was being favored with the Zeudian
+sunrise. Sharp and clear the light rays slanted down, illuminating
+about half the crater's floor and leaving the cliff protected half in
+dim shadow.</p>
+
+<p>The illuminated part of the giant pit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> was as bizarre as the landscape
+of a nightmare. There were purplish trees, immense beyond belief.
+There were broad, smooth pools of inky black fluid that was oily and
+troubled in spots as though disturbed by some moving things under the
+surface. There were bare, rocky patches where the stones, the long
+drippings of ancient lava flow, were spread like bleaching gray
+skeletons of monsters. And over all, rising from pools and bare ground
+and jungle alike, was a thin, miasmic mist.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ustained by the slow, steady exhaust of the motor, rising a little
+with each partly muffled explosion and sinking a little further in
+each interval, they settled toward a bare, lava strewn spot that
+appealed to Wichter as being a good landing place. With a last hiss,
+and a grinding jar, they grounded. Joyce opened the switch to cut off
+the generator.</p>
+
+<p>"Now let's see what the air's like," said Wichter, lifting down a
+small cage in which was penned an active rat.</p>
+
+<p>He opened a double panel in the shell's hull, and freed the little
+animal. In an agony of suspense they watched it as it leaped onto the
+bare lava and halted a moment....</p>
+
+<p>"Seems to like it," said Joyce, drawing a great breath.</p>
+
+<p>The rat, as though intoxicated by its sudden freedom, raced away out
+of sight, covering eight or ten feet at a bound, its legs scurrying
+ludicrously in empty air during its short flights.</p>
+
+<p>"That means that we can dispense with oxygen helmets&mdash;and that we'd
+better take our guns," said Wichter, his voice tense, his eyes
+snapping behind his glasses.</p>
+
+<p>He stepped to the gun rack. In this were half a dozen air-guns. Long
+and of very small bore, they discharged a tiny steel shell in which
+was a liquid of his invention that, about a second after the heat of
+its forced passage through the rifle barrel, expanded instantly in
+gaseous form to millions of times its liquid bulk. It was the most
+powerful explosive yet found, but one that was beautifully safe to
+carry inasmuch as it could be exploded only by heat.</p>
+
+<p>"Are we ready?" he said, handing a gun to Joyce. "Then&mdash;let's go!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ut for a breath or two they hesitated before opening the heavy double
+door in the side of the hull, savoring to the full the immensity of
+the moment.</p>
+
+<p>The rapture of the explorer who is the first to set foot on a vast new
+continent was theirs, magnified a hundredfold. For they were the first
+to set foot on a vast new planet! An entire new world, containing
+heaven alone knew what forms of life, what monstrous or infinitesimal
+creatures, lay before them. Even the profound awe they had experienced
+when landing on the moon was dwarfed by the solemnity of this
+occasion; just as it is less soul stirring to discover an arctic
+continent which is perpetually cased in barren ice, than to discover a
+continent which is warmly fruitful and, probably, teeming with life.</p>
+
+<p>Still wordless, too stirred to speak, they opened the vault-like door
+and stepped out&mdash;into a humid heat which was like that of their own
+tropical regions, but not so unendurable.</p>
+
+<p>In their short stay on the moon, during which they had taken several
+walks in their insulated suits, they had become somewhat accustomed to
+the decreased weight of their bodies due to the lesser gravity, so
+that here, where their weight was even less, they did not make any
+blunders of stepping twenty feet instead of a yard.</p>
+
+<p>Walking warily, glancing alertly in all directions to guard against
+any strange animals that might rush out to destroy them, they moved
+toward the nearest stretch of jungle.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he first thing that arrested their attention was the size of the
+trees they were approaching. They had got<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> some idea of their hugeness
+from the shell, but viewed from ground level they loomed even larger.
+Eight hundred, a thousand feet they reared their mighty tops, with
+trunks hundreds of feet in circumference; living pyramids whose bases
+wove together to make an impenetrable ceiling over the jungle floor.
+The leaves were thick and bloated like cactus growths, and their color
+was a pronounced lavender.</p>
+
+<p>"We must take back several of those leaves," said Wichter, his
+scientific soul filled with cold excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish we could take back some of this air, too." Joyce filled his
+lungs to capacity. "Isn't it great? Like wine! It almost counteracts
+the effects of the heat."</p>
+
+<p>"There's more oxygen in it than in our own," surmised Wichter. "My
+God! What's that!"</p>
+
+<p>They halted for an instant. From the depths of the lavender jungle had
+come an ear shattering, screaming hiss, as though some monstrous
+serpent were in its death agony.</p>
+
+<p>They waited to hear if the noise would be repeated. It wasn't.
+Dubiously they started on again.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd better not go in there too far," said Joyce. "If we didn't come
+out again it would cost Earth a new planet. No one else knows the
+secret of your water-motor."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing living can stand against these guns of ours," replied
+Wichter confidently. "And that noise might not have been caused by
+anything living. It might have been steam escaping from some volcanic
+crevice."</p>
+
+<p>They started cautiously down a well defined, hard packed trail through
+thorny lavender underbrush. As they went, Joyce blazed marks on
+various tree trunks marking the direction back to the shell. The tough
+fibres exuded a bluish liquid from the cuts that bubbled slowly like
+blood.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>o the right and left of them were cup-shaped bushes that looked like
+traps; and that their looks were not deceiving was proved by a
+muffled, bleating cry that rose from the compressed leaves of one of
+them they passed. Sluggish, blind crawling things like three-foot
+slugs flowed across their path and among the tree trunks, leaving
+viscous trails of slime behind them. And there were larger things....</p>
+
+<p>"Careful," said Wichter suddenly, coming to a halt and peering into
+the gloom at their right.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you see?" whispered Joyce.</p>
+
+<p>Wichter shook his head. The gigantic, two-legged, purplish figure he
+had dimly made out in the steamy dark, had moved away. "I don't know.
+It looked a little like a giant ape."</p>
+
+<p>They halted and took stock of their situation, mechanically wiping
+perspiration from their streaming faces, and pondering as to whether
+or not they should turn back. Joyce, who was far from being a coward,
+thought they should.</p>
+
+<p>"In this undergrowth," he pointed out, "we might be rushed before we
+could even fire our guns. And we're nearly a mile from the shell."</p>
+
+<p>But Wichter was like an eager child.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll press on just a little," he urged. "To that clear spot in front
+of us." He pointed along the trail to where sunlight was blazing down
+through an opening in the trees. "As soon as we see what's there,
+we'll go back."</p>
+
+<p>With a shrug, Joyce followed the eager little man down the weird trail
+under the lavender trees. In a few moments they had reached the
+clearing which was Wichter's goal. They halted on its edge, gazing at
+it with awe and repulsion.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was a circular quagmire of festering black mud about a hundred
+yards across. Near at hand they could see the mud heaving, very
+slowly, as though abysmal forms of life were tunneling along just
+under the surface. They glanced toward the center of the bog, which
+was occupied by one of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> smooth black pools, and cried aloud at
+what they saw.</p>
+
+<p>At the brink of the pool was lying a gigantic creature like a great,
+thick snake&mdash;a snake with a lizard's head, and a series of
+many-jointed, scaled legs running down its powerful length. Its mouth
+was gaping open to reveal hundreds of needle-sharp, backward pointing
+teeth. Its legs and thick, stubbed tail were threshing feebly in the
+mud as though it were in distress; and its eyes, so small as to be
+invisible in its repulsive head, were glazed and dull.</p>
+
+<p>"Was that what we heard back a ways?" wondered Joyce.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably," said Wichter. His eyes shone as he gazed at the nightmare
+shape. Impulsively he took a step toward the stirring mud.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be entirely insane," snapped Joyce, catching his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"I must see it closer," said Wichter, tugging to be free.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we'll climb a tree and look down on it. We'll probably be safer
+up off the ground anyway."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey ascended the nearest jungle giant&mdash;whose rubbery bark was so
+ringed and scored as to be as easy to climb as a staircase&mdash;to the
+first great bough, about fifty feet from the ground, and edged out
+till they hung over the rim of the quagmire. From there, with the aid
+of their binoculars, they expected to see the dying monster in every
+detail. But when they looked toward the pool it was not in sight!</p>
+
+<p>"Were we seeing things?" exclaimed Wichter, rubbing his glasses. "I'd
+have sworn it was lying there!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was," said Joyce grimly. "Look at the pool. That'll tell you where
+it went."</p>
+
+<p>The black, secretive surface was bubbling and waving as though, down
+in its depths, a terrific fight were taking place.</p>
+
+<p>"Something came up and dragged our ten-legged lizard down to its den.
+Then that something's brothers got onto the fact that a feast was
+being held, and rushed in. That pool would be no place for a
+before-breakfast dip!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ichter started to say something in reply, then gazed, hypnotized, at
+the opposite wall of the jungle.</p>
+
+<p>From the dense screen of lavender foliage stretched a glistening,
+scale-armored neck, as thick as a man's body at its thinnest point,
+which was just behind a tremendous-jawed crocodilian head. It tapered
+back for a distance of at least thirty feet, to merge into a body as
+big as that of a terrestial whale, that was supported by four squat,
+ponderous legs.</p>
+
+<p>Moving with surprising rapidity, the enormous thing slid into the mud
+and began ploughing a way, belly deep, toward the pool. Shapeless,
+slow-writhing forms were cast up in its wake, to quiver for a moment
+in the sunlight and then melt below the mud again.</p>
+
+<p>One of the bloated, formless mud-crawlers was snapped up in the huge
+jaws with an abrupt plunge of the long neck, and the monster began to
+feed, hog-like, slobbering over the loathsome carcass.</p>
+
+<p>Wichter shook his head, half in fanatical eagerness, half in despair.
+"I'd like to stay and see more," he said with a sigh, "but if that's
+the kind of creatures we're apt to encounter in the Zeudian jungle,
+we'd better be going at once&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Sh-h!" snapped Joyce. Then, in a barely audible whisper: "I think the
+thing heard your voice!"</p>
+
+<p>The monster had abruptly ceased its feeding. Its head, thrust high in
+the air, was waving inquisitively from side to side. Suddenly it
+expelled the air from its vast lungs in a roaring cough&mdash;and started
+directly for their tree.</p>
+
+<p>"Shoot!" cried Wichter, raising his gun.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oving with the speed of an express train, the monster had almost got
+to their overhanging branch<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> before they could pull the triggers. Both
+shells imbedded themselves in the enormous chest, just as the long
+neck reached up for them. And at once things began to happen with
+cataclysmic rapidity.</p>
+
+<p>Almost with their impact the shells exploded. The monster stopped,
+with a great hole torn in its body. Then, dying on its feet, it thrust
+its great head up and its huge jaws crunched over the branch to which
+its two puny destroyers were clinging.</p>
+
+<p>With all its dozens of tons of weight, it jerked in a gargantuan death
+agony. The tree, enormous as it was, shook with it, and the branch
+itself was tossed as though in a hurricane.</p>
+
+<p>There was a splintering sound. Wichter and Joyce dropped their guns to
+cling more tightly to the bole of the drooping branch that was their
+only security. The guns glanced off the mountainous body&mdash;and, with a
+last convulsion of the mighty legs, were swept underneath!</p>
+
+<p>The monster was still at last, its insensate jaws yet gripping the
+bough. The two men looked at each other in speechless consternation.
+The shell a mile off through the dreadful jungle.... Themselves,
+helpless without their guns....</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Joyce at last. "I guess we'd better be on our way.
+Waiting here, thinking it over, won't help any. Lucky there's no
+night, for a couple of weeks at least, to come stealing down on us."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e started down the great trunk, with Wichter following close behind.
+Walking as rapidly as they could, they hurried back along the tunneled
+trail toward their shell.</p>
+
+<p>They hadn't covered a hundred yards when they heard a mighty crashing
+of underbrush behind them. Glancing back, they saw tooth-studded jaws
+gaping cavernously at the end of a thirty-foot neck&mdash;little,
+dead-looking eyes glaring at them&mdash;a hundred-foot body smashing its
+way over the trap-bushes and through tangles of vines and
+down-drooping branches.</p>
+
+<p>"The mate to the thing we killed back there!" Joyce panted. "Run, for
+God's sake!"</p>
+
+<p>Wichter needed no urging. He hadn't an ounce of fear in his spare,
+small body. But he had an overwhelming desire to get back to Earth and
+deliver his message. He was trembling as he raced after Joyce, thirty
+feet to a bound, ducking his head to avoid hitting the thick lavender
+foliage that roofed the trail.</p>
+
+<p>"One of us must get through!" he panted over and over. "One of us must
+make it!"</p>
+
+<p>It was speedily apparent that they could never outrun their pursuer.
+The reaching jaws were only a few yards behind them now.</p>
+
+<p>"You go," called Joyce, sobbing for breath. He slowed his pace
+deliberately.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;you&mdash;" Wichter slowed too. In a frenzy, Joyce shoved him along
+the trail.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He got no further. In front of them, where there had appeared to be
+solid ground, they suddenly saw a yawning pit. Desperately, they tried
+to veer aside, but they were too close. Their last long birdlike leap
+carried them over the edge. They fell, far down, into a deep chasm,
+splashing into a shallow pool of water.</p>
+
+<p>A few clods of earth cascaded after them as the monster above dug its
+great splay feet into the ground and checked its rush in time to keep
+from falling after them. Then the top of the pit slowly darkened as a
+covering of some sort slid across it. They were in a prison as
+profoundly quiet and utterly black as a tomb.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_d1.jpg" alt="D" width="59" height="59" /></div>
+<p>orn," shouted Joyce. "Are you all right?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," came a voice in the near darkness. "And you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm still in one piece as far as I can feel." There was a splashing
+noise.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> He waded toward it and in a moment his outstretched hand
+touched the professor's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a fine mess," he observed shakily. "We got away from those
+tooth-lined jaws, all right, but I'm wondering if we're much better
+off than we would have been if we hadn't escaped."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm wondering the same thing." Wichter's voice was strained. "Did you
+see the way the top of the pit closed above us? That means we're in a
+trap. And a most ingenious trap it is, too! The roof of it is
+camouflaged until it looks exactly like the rest of the trail floor.
+The water in here is just shallow enough to let large animals break
+their necks when they fall in and just deep enough to preserve small
+animals&mdash;like ourselves&mdash;alive. We're in the hands of some sort of
+reasoning, intelligent beings, Joyce!"</p>
+
+<p>"In that case," said Joyce with a shudder, "we'd better do our best to
+get out of here!"</p>
+
+<p>But this was found to be impossible. They couldn't climb up out of the
+pit, and nowhere could they feel any openings in the walls. Only
+smooth, impenetrable stone met their questing fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks as though we're in to stay," said Joyce finally. "At least
+until our Zeudian hosts, whatever kind of creatures they may be, come
+and take us out. What'll we do then? Sail in and die fighting? Or go
+peaceably along with them&mdash;assuming we aren't killed at once&mdash;on the
+chance that we can make a break later?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd advise the latter," answered Wichter. "There is a small animal on
+our own planet whose example might be a good one for us to follow.
+That's the 'possum." He stopped abruptly, and gripped Joyce's arm.</p>
+
+<p>From the opposite side of the pit came a grating sound. A crack of
+greenish light appeared, low down near the water. This widened jerkily
+as though a door were being hoisted by some sort of pulley
+arrangement. The walls of the pit began to glow faintly with
+reflected light.</p>
+
+<p>"Down," breathed Wichter.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_n.jpg" alt="N" width="49" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oiselessly they let themselves sink into the water until they were
+floating, eyes closed and motionless, on the surface. Playing dead to
+the best of their ability, they waited for what might happen next.</p>
+
+<p>They heard a splashing near the open rock door. The splashing neared them,
+and high-pitched hissing syllables came to their ears&mdash;variegated sounds
+that resembled excited conversation in some unknown language.</p>
+
+<p>Joyce felt himself touched by something, and it was all he could do to
+keep from shouting aloud and springing to his feet at the contact.</p>
+
+<p>He'd had no idea, of course, what might be the nature of their
+captors, but he had imagined them as man-like, to some extent at
+least. And the touch of his hand, or flipper, or whatever it was,
+indicated that they were not!</p>
+
+<p>They were cold-blooded, reptilian things, for the flesh that had
+touched him was cold; as clammy and repulsive as the belly of a dead
+fish. So repulsive was that flesh that, when he presently felt himself
+lifted high up and roughly carried, he shuddered in spite of himself
+at the contact.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly the thing that bore him stopped. Joyce held his breath. He
+felt an excruciating, stabbing pain in his arm, after which the
+journey through the water was resumed. Stubbornly he kept up his
+pretence of lifelessness.</p>
+
+<p>The splashing ceased, and he heard flat wet feet slapping along on dry
+rock, indicating that they had emerged from the pit. Then he sank into
+real unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>The next thing he knew was that he was lying on smooth, bare rock in a
+perfect bedlam of noises. Howls and grunts, snuffling coughs and
+snarls beat at his ear-drums. It was as though he had fallen into a
+vast cage in which were hundreds of savage, excited ani<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>mals&mdash;animals,
+however, that in spite of their excitement and ferocity were
+surprisingly motionless, for he heard no scraping of claws, or padding
+of feet.</p>
+
+<p>Cautiously he opened his eyes....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e was in a large cave, the walls of which were glowing with greenish,
+phosphorescent light. Strewn about the floor were seemingly dead
+carcasses of animals. And what carcasses there were! Blubber-coated
+things that looked like giant tadpoles, gazelle-like creatures with a
+single, long slim horn growing from delicate small skulls, four-legged
+beasts and six-legged ones, animals with furry hides and crawlers with
+scaled coverings&mdash;several hundred assorted specimens of the smaller
+life of Zeud lay stretched out in seeming lifelessness.</p>
+
+<p>But they were not dead, these bizarre beasts of another world. They
+lived, and were animated with the frenzied fear of trapped things.
+Joyce could see the tortured heaving of their furred and scaled sides
+as they panted with terror. And from their throats issued the
+outlandish noises he had heard. They were alive enough&mdash;only they
+seemed unable to move!</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing in his range of vision that might conceivably be the
+beings that had captured them, so Joyce started to lift his head and
+look around at the rest of the cavern. He found that he could not
+move. He tried again, and his body was as unresponsive as a log. In
+fact, he couldn't feel his body at all! In growing terror, he
+concentrated all his will on moving his arm. It was as limp as a rag.</p>
+
+<p>He relaxed, momentarily in the grip of stark, blind panic. He was as
+helpless as the howling things around him! He was numbed, completely
+paralyzed into immobility!</p>
+
+<p>The professor's voice&mdash;a weak, uncertain voice&mdash;sounded from behind
+him. "Joyce! Joyce!"</p>
+
+<p>He found that he could talk, that the paralysis that gripped the rest
+of his muscles had not extended to the vocal cords. "Dorn! Thank God
+you're alive! I couldn't see you, and I thought&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm alive, but that's about all," said Wichter. "I&mdash;I can't move."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither can I. We've been drugged in some manner&mdash;just as all the
+other animals in here have been drugged. I must have got my dose in
+the pit. I was cut, or stabbed, in the arm."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oyce stopped talking as he suddenly heard steps, like human footsteps
+yet weirdly different&mdash;flap-flapping sounds as though awkward flippers
+were slapping along the rock floor toward them. The steps stopped
+within a few feet of them; then, after what seemed hours, they sounded
+again, this time in front of him.</p>
+
+<p>He opened his eyes, cautiously, barely moving his eyelids, and saw at
+last, in every hideous detail, one of the super-beasts that had
+captured Wichter and himself.</p>
+
+<p>It was a horrible cartoon of a man, the thing that stood there in the
+greenish glow of the cave. Nine or ten feet high, it loomed; hairless,
+with a faintly iridescent, purplish hide. A thick, cylindrical trunk
+sloped into a neck only a little smaller than the body itself. Set on
+this was a bony, ugly head that was split clear across by lipless
+jaws. There was no nose, only slanted holes like the nostrils of an
+animal; and over these were set pale, expressionless, pupil-less eyes.
+The arms were short and thick and ended in bifurcated lumps of flesh
+like swollen hands encased in old-fashioned mittens. The legs were
+also grotesquely short, and the feet mere shapeless flaps.</p>
+
+<p>It was standing near one of the smaller animals, apparently regarding
+it closely. Observing it himself, Joyce saw that it was moving a
+little. As though coming out of a coma, it was raising its bizarre
+head and trying to get on its feet.</p>
+
+<p>Leisurely the two-legged monster bent over it. Two long fangs gleamed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+in the lipless mouth. These were buried in the neck of the reviving
+beast&mdash;and instantly it sank back into immobility.</p>
+
+<p>Having reduced it to helplessness&mdash;the monster ate it! The lipless
+jaws gaped widely. The shapeless hands forced in the head of the
+animal. The throat muscles expanded hugely: and in less than a minute
+it had swallowed its living prey as a boa-constrictor swallows a
+monkey.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oyce closed his eyes, feeling weak and nauseated. He didn't open them
+again till long after he had heard the last of the awkward, flapping
+footsteps.</p>
+
+<p>"Could you see it?" asked Wichter, who was lying so closely behind him
+that he couldn't observe the monstrous Zeudian. "What did it do? What
+was it like?"</p>
+
+<p>Joyce told him of the way the creature had fed. "We are evidently in
+their provision room," he concluded. "They keep some of their food
+alive, it seems.... Well, it's a quick death."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me more about the way the other animal moved, just before it was
+eaten."</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't much to tell," said Joyce wearily. "It didn't move long
+after those fangs were sunk into it."</p>
+
+<p>"But don't you see!" There was sudden hope in Wichter's voice. "That
+means that the effect of the poison, which is apparently injected by
+those fangs, wears off after a time. And in that case&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"In that case," Joyce interjected, "we'd have only an unknown army of
+ten-foot Zeudians, the problem of finding a way to the surface of the
+ground again, and the lack of any kind of weapons, to keep us from
+escaping!"</p>
+
+<p>"We're not quite weaponless, though," the professor whispered back.
+"Over in a corner there's a pile of the long, slender horns that
+sprout from the heads of some of these creatures. Evidently the
+Zeudians cut them out, or break them off before eating that
+particular type of animal. They'd be as good as lances, if we could
+get hold of them."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oyce said nothing, but hope began to beat in his own breast. He had
+noticed a significant happening during the age-long hours in the
+commissary cave. Most of the Zeudians had entered from the direction
+of the pit. But one had come in through an opening in the opposite
+side. And this one had blinked pale eyes as though dazzled from bright
+sunlight&mdash;and was bearing some large, woody looking tubers that seemed
+to have been freshly uprooted! There was a good chance, thought Joyce,
+that that opening led to a tunnel up to the world above!</p>
+
+<p>He drew a deep breath&mdash;and felt a dim pain in his back, caused by the
+cramping position in which he had lain for so long.</p>
+
+<p>He could have shouted aloud with the thrill of that discovery. This
+was the first time he had felt his body at all! Did it mean that the
+effect of the poison was wearing off&mdash;that it wasn't as lastingly
+paralyzing to his earthly nerve centers as to those of Zeudian
+creatures around them? He flexed the muscles of his leg. The leg moved
+a fraction of an inch.</p>
+
+<p>"Dorn!" he called softly, "I can move a little! Can you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Wichter answered, "I've been able to wriggle my fingers for
+several minutes. I think I could walk in an hour or two."</p>
+
+<p>"Then pray for that hour or two. It might mean our escape!" Joyce told
+him of the seldom used entrance that he thought led to the open air.
+"I'm sure it goes to the surface, Dorn. Those woody looking tubers had
+been freshly picked."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hree of the two-legged monsters came in just then. They relapsed into
+lifeless silence. There was a horrible moment as the three paused over
+them longer than any of the others had. Was it obvious that the
+effects of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> numbing poison was wearing off? Would they be bitten
+again&mdash;or eaten?</p>
+
+<p>The Zeudians finally moved on, hissing and clicking to each other.
+Eventually the cold-blooded things fed, and dragged lethargically out
+of the cave in the direction of the pit.</p>
+
+<p>With every passing minute Joyce could feel life pouring back into his
+numbed body. His cramped muscles were in agony now&mdash;a pain that gave
+him fierce pleasure. At last, risking observation, he lifted his head
+and then struggled to a sitting position and looked around.</p>
+
+<p>No Zeudian was in sight. Evidently they were too sure of their poison
+glands to post a guard over them. He listened intently, and could hear
+no dragging footsteps. He turned to Wichter, who had followed his
+example and was sitting up, feebly rubbing his body to restore
+circulation.</p>
+
+<p>"Now's our chance," he whispered. "Stand up and walk a little to
+steady your legs, while I go over and get us a couple of those sharp
+horns. Then we'll see where that entrance of mine goes!"</p>
+
+<p>He walked to the pile of bones and horns in the corner and selected
+two of the longest and slimmest of the ivory-like things. Just as he
+had rejoined Wichter he heard the sound with which he was now so
+grimly familiar&mdash;flapping, awkward footsteps. Wildly he signaled the
+professor. They dropped in their tracks, just as the approaching
+monster stumped into the cave.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>or an instant he dared hope that their movement had gone unobserved,
+but his hope was rudely shattered. He heard a sharp hiss: heard the
+Zeudian flap toward them at double-quick time. Abandoning all
+pretense, he sprang to his feet just as the thing reached him, its
+fangs gleaming wickedly in the greenish light.</p>
+
+<p>He leaped to the side, going twenty feet or more with the press of his
+Earth muscles against the reduced gravity. The creature rushed on
+toward the professor. That game little man crouched and awaited its
+onslaught. But Joyce had sprung back again before the two could clash.</p>
+
+<p>He raised the long horn and plunged it into the smooth, purplish back.
+Again and again he drove it home, as the monster writhed under him. It
+had enormous vitality. Gashed and dripping, it yet struggled on,
+attempting to encircle Joyce with its stubby arms. Once it succeeded,
+and he felt his ribs crack as it contracted its powerful body. But a
+final stroke finished the savage fight. He got up and, with an
+incoherent cry to Wichter, raced toward the opening on which they
+pinned their hopes of reaching the upper air.</p>
+
+<p>Hissing cries and the thudding of many feet came to them just as they
+reached the arched mouth of the passage. But the cries, and the
+constant pandemonium of the paralysed animals died behind them as they
+bounded along the tunnel.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey emerged at last into the sunlight they had never expected to see
+again, beside one of the great lavender trees. They paused an instant
+to try to get their bearings.</p>
+
+<p>"This way," panted Joyce as he saw, on a hard-packed path ahead of
+them, one of the trail-marks he had blazed.</p>
+
+<p>Down the trail they raced, toward their space shell. Fortunately they
+met none of the tremendous animals that infested the jungles; and
+their journey to the clearing in which the shell was lying was
+accomplished without accident.</p>
+
+<p>"We're safe now," gasped Wichter, as they came in sight of the bare
+lava patch. "We can outrun them five feet to their one!"</p>
+
+<p>They burst into the clearing&mdash;and halted abruptly. Surrounding the
+shell, stumping curiously about it and touching it with their
+shapeless hands, were dozens of the Zeudians.</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" groaned Joyce. "There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> must be at least a hundred of them!
+We're lost for certain now!"</p>
+
+<p>They stared with hopeless longing at the vehicle that, if only they
+could reach it, could carry them back to Earth. Then they turned to
+each other and clasped hands, without a word. The same thought was in
+the mind of each&mdash;to rush at the swarming monsters and fight till they
+were killed. There was absolutely no chance of winning through to the
+shell, but it was infinitely better to die fighting than be swallowed
+alive.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>o engrossed were the Zeudians by the strange thing that had fallen
+into their province, that Joyce and Wichter got within a hundred feet
+of them before they turned their pale eyes in their direction. Then,
+baring their fangs, they streamed toward the Earth men, just as the
+pursuing Zeudians entered the clearing from the jungle trail.</p>
+
+<p>The two prepared to die as effectively as possible. Each grasped his
+lace-like horn tightly. The professor mechanically adjusted his
+glasses more firmly on his nose....</p>
+
+<p>With his move, the narrowing circle of Zeudians halted. A violent
+clamor broke out among them. They glared at the two, but made no
+further step toward them.</p>
+
+<p>"What in the world&mdash;" began Wichter bewilderedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Your glasses!" Joyce shouted, gripping his shoulder. "When you moved
+them, they all stopped! They must be afraid of them, somehow. Take
+them clear off and see what happens."</p>
+
+<p>Wichter removed his spectacles, and swung them in his hand, peering
+near-sightedly at the crowding Zeudians.</p>
+
+<p>Their reaction to his simple move was remarkable! Hisses of
+consternation came from their lipless mouths. They faced each other
+uneasily, waving their stubby arms and covering their own eyes as
+though suddenly afraid they would lose them.</p>
+
+<p>Taking advantage of their indecision, Joyce and Wichter walked boldly
+toward them. They moved aside, forming a reluctant lane. Some of the
+Zeudians in the rear shoved to close in on them, but the ones in front
+held them back. It wasn't until the two were nearly through that the
+lane began to straggle into a threatening circle around them again.
+The Zeudians were evidently becoming reassured by the fact that
+Wichter continued to see all right in spite of the little strange
+creature's alarming act of removing his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Do it again," breathed Joyce, perspiration beading his forehead as
+the giants moved closed, their fangs tentatively bared for the numbing
+poison stroke.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ichter popped his glasses on, then jerked them off with a cry, as
+though he were suffering intensely. Once more the Zeudians faltered
+and drew back, feeling at their own eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Run!" cried Joyce. And they raced for the haven of the shell.</p>
+
+<p>The Zeudians swarmed after them, snarling and hissing. Barely ahead of
+the nearest, Joyce and Wichter dove into the open panel. They slammed
+it closed just as a powerful, stubby arm reached after them. There was
+a screaming hiss, and a cold, cartilagenous lump of flesh dropped to
+the floor of the shell&mdash;half the monster's hand, sheared off between
+the sharp edge of the door and the metal hull.</p>
+
+<p>Joyce threw in the generator switch. With a soft roar the water-motor
+exploded into action, sending the shell far into the sky.</p>
+
+<p>"When we return," said Joyce, adding a final thousand miles an hour to
+their speed before they should fly free of the atmosphere of Zeud, "I
+think we'd better come at the head of an army, equipped with air-guns
+and explosive bombs."</p>
+
+<p>"And with glasses," added the professor, taking off his spectacles and
+gazing at them as though seeing them for the first time.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_009.jpg" width="600" height="359" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The man hurled the empty gun at the monster.</span>
+</div>
+<h2><a name="Four_Miles_Within" id="Four_Miles_Within"></a>Four Miles Within</h2>
+
+<h4>A COMPLETE NOVELETTE</h4>
+<h3><i>By Anthony Gilmore</i></h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4>CHAPTER I</h4>
+<h4><i>The Monster of Metal</i></h4>
+<div class="sidenote">Far down into the earth goes a gleaming metal sphere whose
+passengers are deadly enemies.</div>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;strange spherical monster stood in the moonlight on the silent
+Mojave Desert. In the ghostly gray of the sand and sage and joshua
+trees its metal hide glimmered dully&mdash;an amazing object to be found on
+that lonely spot. But there was only pride and anticipation in the
+eyes of the three people who stood a little way off, looking at it.
+For they had constructed the strange sphere, and were soon going to
+entrust their lives to it.</p>
+
+<p>"Professor," said one of them, a young man with a cheerful face and a
+likable grin, "let's go down now! There's no use waiting till
+to-morrow. It's always dark down there, whether it's day or night up
+here. Everything is ready."</p>
+
+<p>The white-haired Professor David Guinness smiled tolerantly at the
+speaker, his partner, Phil Holmes. "I'm kind of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> eager to be off,
+myself," he admitted. He turned to the third person in the little
+group, a dark-haired girl. "What do you say, Sue?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, let's, Father!" came the quick reply. "We'd never be able to
+sleep to-night, anyway. As Phil says, everything is ready."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I guess that settles it," Professor Guinness said to the eager
+young man.</p>
+
+<p>Phil Holmes' face went aglow with anticipation. "Good!" he cried.
+"Good! I'll skip over and get some water. It's barely possible that
+it'll be hot down there, in spite of your eloquent logic to the
+contrary!" And with the words he caught up a large jug standing
+nearby, waved his hand, said: "I'll be right back!" and set out for
+the water-hole, situated nearly a mile away from their little camp.
+The heavy hush of the desert night settled down once more after he
+left.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>s his figure merged with the shadows in the distance, the elderly
+scientist murmured aloud to his daughter:</p>
+
+<p>"You know, it's good to realize that my dream is about to become a
+reality. If it hadn't been for Phil.... Or no&mdash;I really ought to thank
+you, Sue. You're the one responsible for his participation!" And he
+smiled fondly at the slender girl by his side.</p>
+
+<p>"Phil joined us just for the scientific interest, and for the thrill
+of going four miles down into the earth," she retorted at once, in
+spite of the blush her father saw on her face. But he did not insist.
+Once more he turned, as to a magnet, to the machine that was his
+handiwork.</p>
+
+<p>The fifteen-foot sphere was an earth-borer&mdash;Guinness's own invention.
+In it he had utilized for the first time for boring purposes the newly
+developed atomic disintegrators. Many holes equally spaced over the
+sphere were the outlets for the dissolving ray&mdash;most of them on the
+bottom and alternating with them on the bottom and sides were the
+outlets of powerful rocket propulsion tubes, which would enable it to
+rise easily from the hole it would presently blast into the earth. A
+small, tight-fitting door gave entrance to the double-walled interior,
+where, in spite of the space taken up by batteries and mechanisms and
+an enclosed gyroscope for keeping the borer on an even keel, there was
+room for several people.</p>
+
+<p>The earth-borer had been designed not so much for scientific
+investigation as the specific purpose of reaching a rich store of
+radium ore buried four miles below the Guinness desert camp. Many
+geologists and mining engineers knew that the radium was there, for
+their instruments had proven it often; but no one up to then knew how
+to get to it. David Guinness did&mdash;first. The borer had been
+constructed in his laboratory in San Francisco, then dismantled and
+freighted to the little desert town of Palmdale, from whence Holmes
+had brought the parts to their isolated camp by truck. Strict secrecy
+had been kept. Rather than risk assistants they had done all the work
+themselves.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ifteen minutes passed by, while the slight figure of the inventor
+puttered about the interior of the sphere, brightly lit by a
+detachable searchlight, inspecting all mechanisms in preparation for
+their descent. Sue stood by the door watching him, now and then
+turning to scan the desert for the returning Phil.</p>
+
+<p>It was then, startlingly sudden, that there cracked through the velvet
+night the faint, distant sound of a gun. And it came from the
+direction of the water-hole.</p>
+
+<p>Sue's face went white, and she trembled. Without a word her father
+stepped out of the borer and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>"That was a gun!" he said. "Phil didn't have one with him, did he?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," Sue whispered. "And&mdash;why, there's nobody within miles of here!"</p>
+
+<p>The two looked at each other with alarm and wonder. Then, from one of
+the broken patches of scrub that ringed the space in which the borer
+stood, came a mocking voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you're mistaken, Sue," it affirmed. "But that was a gun."</p>
+
+<p>David Guinness jerked around, as did his daughter. The man who had
+spoken stood only ten yards away, clearly outlined in the bright
+moonlight&mdash;a tall, well-built man, standing quite at ease, surveying
+them pleasantly. His smile did not change when old Guinness cried:</p>
+
+<p>"Quade! James Quade!"</p>
+
+<p>The man nodded and came slowly forward. He might have been considered
+handsome, had it not been for his thin, mocking lips and a swarthy
+complexion.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing here?" demanded Guinness angrily. "And what do you
+mean&mdash;'it was a gun?' Have you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Easy, easy&mdash;one thing at a time,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> said Quade, still smiling. "About
+the gun&mdash;well, your young friend Holmes said, he'd be right back, but
+I&mdash;I'm afraid he won't be."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ue Guinness's lips formed a frightened word:</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>Quade made a short movement with his left hand, as is brushing the
+query aside. "Let's talk about something more pleasant," he said, and
+looked back at the professor. "The radium, and your borer, for
+instance. I hear you're all ready to go down."</p>
+
+<p>David Guinness gasped. "How did you know&mdash;?" he began, but a surge of
+anger choked him, and his fists clenched. He stepped forward. But
+something came to life in James Quade's right hand and pointed
+menacingly at him. It was the stubby black shape of an automatic.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep back, you old fool!" Quade said harshly. "I don't want to have
+to shoot you!"</p>
+
+<p>Unwillingly, Guinness came to a stop. "What have you done with young
+Holmes?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind about him now," said Quade, smiling again. "Perhaps I'll
+explain later. At the moment there's something much more interesting
+to do. Possibly you'll be surprised to hear it, but we're all going to
+take a little ride in this machine of yours, Professor. Down. About
+four miles. I'll have to ask you to do the driving. You will, won't
+you&mdash;without making a fuss?"</p>
+
+<p>Guinness's face worked furiously. "Why, you're crazy, Quade!" he
+sputtered. "I certainly won't!"</p>
+
+<p>"No?" asked Quade softly. The automatic he held veered around, till it
+was pointing directly at the girl. "I wouldn't want to have to shoot
+Sue&mdash;say&mdash;through the hand...." His finger tightened perceptibly on
+the trigger.</p>
+
+<p>"You're mad, man!" Guinness burst out. "You're crazy! What's the
+idea&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"In due time I'll tell you. But now I'll ask you just once more,"
+Quade persisted. "Will you enter that borer, or must I&mdash;" He broke off
+with an expressive shrug.</p>
+
+<p>David Guinness was powerless. He had not the slightest idea what Quade
+might be about; the one thought that broke through his fear and anger
+was that the man was mad, and had better be humored. He trembled, and
+a tight sensation came to his throat at sight of the steady gun
+trained on his daughter. He dared not trifle.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do it," he said.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ames Quade laughed. "That's better. You always were essentially
+reasonable, though somewhat impulsive for a man of your age. The rash
+way you severed our partnership, for instance.... But enough of that.
+I think we'd better leave immediately. Into the sphere, please. You
+first, Miss Guinness."</p>
+
+<p>"Must she come?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid so. I can't very well leave her here all unprotected, can
+I?"</p>
+
+<p>Quade's voice was soft and suave, but an undercurrent of sarcasm ran
+through it. Guinness winced under it; his whole body was trembling
+with suppressed rage and indignation. As he stepped to the door of the
+earth-borer he turned and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"How did you know our plans? About the radium?&mdash;the borer?"</p>
+
+<p>Quade told him. "Have you forgotten," he said, "that you talked the
+matter over with me before we split last year? I simply had the
+laboratory watched, and when you got new financial backing from young
+Holmes, and came here. I followed you. Simple, eh?... Well, enough of
+this. Get inside. You first, Sue."</p>
+
+<p>Trembling, the girl obeyed, and when her father hesitated Quade jammed
+his gun viciously into his ribs and pushed him to the door. "Inside!"
+he hissed, and reluctantly, hatred in his eyes, the professor stepped
+into the control compartment after Sue. Quade gave a last quick glance
+around and, with gun ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> wary, passed inside. The door slammed shut:
+there was a click as its lock shot over. The sphere was a sealed ball
+of metal.</p>
+
+<p>Inside, David Guinness obeyed the automatic's imperious gesture and
+pulled a shiny-handled lever slowly back, and the hush that rested
+over the Mojave was shattered by a tremendous bellow, a roar that
+shook the very earth. It was the disintegrating blast, hurled out of
+the bottom in many fan-shaped rays. The coarse gray sand beneath the
+machine stirred and flew wildly; the sphere vibrated madly; and then
+the thunder lowered in tone to a mighty humming and the earth-borer
+began to drop. Slowly it fell, at first, then more rapidly. The shiny
+top came level with the ground: disappeared; and in a moment there was
+nothing left but a gaping hole where a short while before a round
+monster of metal had stood. The hole was hot and dark, and from it
+came a steadily diminishing thunder....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>or a long time no one in the earth-borer spoke&mdash;didn't even try
+to&mdash;for though the thunder of the disintegrators was muted, inside, to
+a steady drone, conversation was almost impossible. The three were
+crowded quite close in the spherical inner control compartment. Sue
+sat on a little collapsible stool by the bowed, but by no means
+subdued, figure of Professor David Guinness, while Quade sat on the
+wire guard of the gyroscope, which was in the exact center of the
+floor.</p>
+
+<p>The depth gauge showed two hundred feet. Already the three people were
+numb from the vibration; they hardly felt any sensation at all, save
+one of great weight pressing inwards. The compartment was fairly cool
+and the air good&mdash;kept so by the automatic air rectifiers and the
+insulation, which shut out the heat born of their passage.</p>
+
+<p>Quade had been carefully watching Guinness's manipulation of the
+controls, when he was struck by a thought. At once he stood up, and
+shouted in the elderly inventor's ear: "Try the rockets! I want to be
+sure this thing will go back up!"</p>
+
+<p>Without a word Guinness shoved back the lever controlling the
+disintegrators, at the same time whirling a small wheel full over. The
+thudding drone died away to a whisper, and was replaced by sharper
+thundering, as the stream of the propulsion rockets beneath the sphere
+was released. A delicate needle trembled on a gauge, danced at the
+figure two hundred, then crept back to one-ninety ... one-sixty ...
+one-forty.... Quade's eyes took in everything.</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent, Guinness!" he yelled. "Now&mdash;down once more!"</p>
+
+<p>The rockets were slowly cut; the borer jarred at the bottom of its
+hole; again the disintegrators droned out. The sphere dug rapidly into
+the warm ground, biting lower and lower. At ten miles an hour it
+blasted a path to depths hitherto unattainable to man, sweeping away
+rock and gravel and sand&mdash;everything that stood in its way. The depth
+gauge rose to two thousand, then steadily to three and four. So it
+went on for nearly half an hour.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of that time, at a depth of nearly four miles, Quade got
+stiffly to his feet and once more shouted into the professor's ear.</p>
+
+<p>"We ought to be close to that radium, now," he said. "I think&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But his words stopped short. The floor of the sphere suddenly fell
+away from their feet, and they felt themselves tumbled into a wild
+plunge. The drone of the disintegrators, hitherto muffled by the earth
+they bit into, rose to a hollow scream. Before the professor quite
+knew what was happening, there was a stunning crash, a shriek of
+tortured metal&mdash;and the earth-borer rocked and lay still....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he whole world seemed to be filled with thunder when David Guinness
+came back to consciousness. He opened his eyes and stared up into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> a
+darkness to which it took him some time to accustom himself. When he
+did, he made out hazily that he was lying on the floor of a vast dark
+cavern. He could dimly see its jagged roof, perhaps fifty feet above.
+There was the strong smell of damp earth in his nostrils; his head was
+splitting from the steady drone in his ear-drums. Suddenly he
+remembered what had happened. He groaned slightly and tried to sit up.</p>
+
+<p>But he could not. His arms and legs were tied. Someone had removed him
+from the earth-borer and bound him on the floor of the cavern they had
+plunged into.</p>
+
+<p>David Guinness strained at the rope. It was futile, but in doing so he
+twisted his head around and saw another form, similarly tied, lying
+close to him. He gave a little cry of relief. It was Sue. And she was
+conscious, her eyes on his face.</p>
+
+<p>She spoke to him, but he could not understand her for the drone in his
+ears, and when he spoke to her it was the same. But the professor did
+not just then continue his effort to converse with her. His attention
+was drawn to the borer, now dimly illuminated by its portable light,
+which had been secured to the door. It was right side up, and appeared
+to be undamaged. The broad ray of the searchlight fell far away on one
+of the cavern's rough walls. He could just make out James Quade
+standing there, his back towards them.</p>
+
+<p>He was hacking at the wall with a pick. Presently he dropped the tool
+and wrenched at the rock with bare hands. A large chunk came loose. He
+hugged it to him and turned and strode back towards the two on the
+floor, and as he drew near they could plainly see a gleam of triumph
+in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You know what this is?" he shouted. Guinness could only faintly hear
+him. "Wealth! Millions! Of course we always knew the radium was here,
+but this is the proof. And now we've a way of getting it out&mdash;thanks
+to your borer! All the credit is yours, Professor Guinness! You shall
+have the credit, and I'll have the money."</p>
+
+<p>Guinness tugged furiously at his bonds again. "You&mdash;you&mdash;" he gasped.
+"How dare you tie us this way! Release us at once! What do you mean by
+it?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_q.jpg" alt="Q" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+<p>uade smiled unpleasantly. "You're very stupid, Guinness. Haven't you
+guessed by now what I'm going to do?" He paused, as if waiting for an
+answer, and the smile on his face gave way to a look of savage menace.
+For the first time his bitter feelings came to the surface.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you forgotten how close I came to going to jail over those
+charges of yours a year ago?" he said. "Have you forgotten the
+disgrace to me that followed?&mdash;the stigma that forced me to disappear
+for months? You fool, do you think I've forgotten?&mdash;or that I'd let
+you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Quade," interrupted the older man, "you know very well you were
+guilty. I caught you red-handed. You didn't fool anyone&mdash;except the
+jury that let you go. So save your breath, and, if you've the sense
+you were born with, release my daughter and me. Why, you're crazy!" he
+cried with mounting anger. "You can't get away with this! I'll have
+you in jail within forty-eight hours, once I get back to the surface!"</p>
+
+<p>With an effort Quade controlled his feelings and assumed his oily,
+sarcastic manner. "That's just it," he said: "'once you get back!' How
+stupid you are! You don't seem to realize that you're not going back
+to the surface. You and your daughter."</p>
+
+<p>Sue gasped, and her father's eyes went wide. There was a tense
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't dare!" the inventor cried finally. "You wouldn't dare!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's rather large, this cavern," Quade went on. "You'll have plenty
+of room. Perhaps I'll untie you before I go back up, so&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You can't get away with it!" shouted the old man, tremendously
+ex<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>cited. "Why, you can't, possibly! Philip Holmes'll track you
+down&mdash;he'll tell the police&mdash;he'll rescue us! And then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Quade smiled suavely. "Oh, no, he won't. Perhaps you remember the shot
+that sounded from the water-hole? Well, when I and my assistant, Juan,
+heard Holmes say he was going for water, I told Juan to follow him to
+the water-hole and bind him, to keep him from interfering till I got
+back up. But Mr. Holmes is evidently of an impulsive disposition, and
+must have caused trouble. Juan, too, is impulsive; he is a Mexican.
+And he had a gun. I'm afraid he was forced to use it.... I am quite
+sure Philip Holmes will not, as you say, track me down."</p>
+
+<p>David Guinness looked at his daughter's white face and horror-filled
+eyes and suddenly crumpled. Humbly, passionately, he begged Quade to
+take her back up. "Why, she's never done anything to you, Quade!" he
+pleaded. "You can't take her life like that! Please! Leave me, if you
+must, but not her! You can't&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ut suddenly the old man noticed that Quade was not listening. His
+head was tilted to one side as if he was straining to hear something
+else. Guinness was held silent for a moment by the puzzled look on the
+other's face and the strange way he was acting.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear it?" Quade asked at last; and without waiting for an
+answer, he knelt down and put his ear to the ground. When he rose his
+face was savage, and he cursed under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's a humming!" muttered Professor Guinness. "And it's getting
+louder!"</p>
+
+<p>"It sounds like another borer!" ventured Sue.</p>
+
+<p>The humming grew in volume. Then, from the ceiling, a rock dropped.
+They were looking at the cavern roof and saw it start, but they did
+not hear it strike, for the ever-growing humming echoed loudly through
+the cavern. They saw another rock fall; and another.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, what is it?" cried Guinness.</p>
+
+<p>Quade looked at him and slowly drew out his automatic.</p>
+
+<p>"Another earth-borer, I think," he answered. "And I rather expect it
+contains your young friend Mr. Holmes. Yes&mdash;coming to rescue you."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Guinness and his daughter were too astounded to do
+anything but gape. She finally exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but then Phil's alive?"</p>
+
+<p>James Quade smiled. "Probably&mdash;for the moment. But don't let your
+hopes rise too high. The borer he's in isn't strong enough to survive
+a fifty-foot plunge." He was shouting now, so loud was the thunder
+from above. "And," he added, "I'm afraid he's not strong enough to
+survive it, either!"</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER II</h4>
+<h4><i>The Man-Hunt</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+<p>hen Phil Holmes started off to the water-hole, his head was full of
+the earth-borer and the imminent descent. Now that the long-awaited
+time had come, he was at fever-pitch to be off, and it did not take
+him long to cover the mile of sandy waste. His thoughts were far
+inside the earth as he dipped the jug into the clear cool water and
+sloshed it full.</p>
+
+<p>So the rope that snaked softly through the air and dropped in a loop
+over his shoulders came as a stark surprise. Before he knew what was
+happening it had slithered down over his arms and drawn taut just
+above the elbows, and he was yanked powerfully backwards and almost
+fell.</p>
+
+<p>But he managed to keep his feet as he staggered backward, and turning
+his head he saw the small dark figure of his aggressor some fifteen
+feet away, keeping tight the slack.</p>
+
+<p>Phil's surprise turned to sudden fury and he completely lost his head.
+What he did was rash; mad; and yet, as it turned out, it was the only
+thing that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> could have saved him. Instinctively, without hesitating
+one second, and absolutely ignoring an excited command to stand still,
+he squirmed face-on to his aggressor, lowered his head and charged.</p>
+
+<p>The distance was short. Halfway across it, a gun barked, and he heard
+the bullet crack into the water jug, which he was still holding in
+front of himself. And even before the splintered fragments reached the
+ground he had crashed into the firer.</p>
+
+<p>He hit him with all the force of a tackling lineman, and they both
+went down. The man grunted as the wind was jarred out of him, but he
+wriggled like an eel and managed to worm aside and bring up his gun.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a desperate flurry of bodies in the coarse sand. Holmes
+dived frantically for the gun hand and caught it; but, handicapped as
+he was by the rope, he could not hold it. Slowly its muzzle bent
+upward to firing position.</p>
+
+<p>Desperately, he wrenched the arm upwards, in the direction it had been
+straining to go, and the sudden unexpected jerk doubled the man's arm
+and brought the weapon across his chest. For a moment there was a test
+of strength as Phil lay chest to chest over his opponent, the gun
+blocked between. Then the other grunted; squirmed violently&mdash;and there
+was a muffled explosion.</p>
+
+<p>A cry of pain cut the midnight air, and with insane strength Holmes'
+ambusher fought free from his grip, staggered to his feet and went
+reeling away. Phil tore loose from the rope and bounded after him,
+never feeling, at the moment, his powder-burned chest.</p>
+
+<p>And then he halted in his tracks.</p>
+
+<p>A great roar came thundering over the desert!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t once he knew that it came from the earth-borer's disintegrators.
+The sphere had started down without him.</p>
+
+<p>He stood stock still, petrified with surprise, facing the sound, while
+his attacker melted farther and farther into the night. And then,
+suddenly, Phil Holmes was sprinting desperately back towards the
+Guinness camp.</p>
+
+<p>He ran until he was exhausted; walked for a little while his legs
+gathered more strength, and his laboring lungs more air; and then ran
+again. As the minutes passed, the thunder lessened rapidly into a
+muffled drone; and by the time Phil had panted up to the brink of the
+hole that gaped where but a little time before the sphere was
+standing, it had become but a distant purr. He leaned far over and
+peered into the hot blackness below, but could see nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Phil knelt there silently for some minutes, shocked by his strange
+attack, bewildered by the unexpected descent of the borer. For a time
+his mind would not work; he had no idea what to do. But gradually his
+thoughts came to order and made certain things clear.</p>
+
+<p>He had been deliberately ambushed. Only by luck had he escaped, he
+told himself. If it hadn't been for the water jug, he'd now be out of
+the picture. And on the heels of the ambush had came the surprising
+descent of the earth-borer. The two incidents coincided too well: the
+same mind had planned them. And two, men, at least, were in on the
+plot.... It suddenly became very clear to him that the answer to the
+puzzle lay with the man who had ambushed him. He would have to get
+that man. Track him down.</p>
+
+<p>Phil acted with decision. He got to his feet and strode rapidly to the
+deserted Guinness shack, horribly quiet and lonely now in the bright
+moonlight. In a minute he emerged with a flashlight at his belt and a
+rifle across his arm.</p>
+
+<p>Once again he went over to the new black hole in the desert and looked
+down. From far below still came the purr, now fainter than ever. His
+friend, the girl he loved, were down there, he reflected bitterly, and
+he was helpless<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> to reach them. Well, there was one thing he could
+do&mdash;go man-hunting. Turning, he started off at a long lope for the
+water-hole.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>en minutes later he was there, and off to the side he found the marks
+of their scuffle&mdash;and small black blotches that could be nothing but
+blood. The other was wounded: could probably not get far. But he might
+still have his gun, so Phil kept his rifle handy, and tempered his
+impatience with caution as he set out on the trail of the widely
+spaced footprints.</p>
+
+<p>They led off towards the nearby hills, and in the bright moonlight
+Phil did not use his flashlight at all, except to investigate other
+round black blotches that made a line parallel to the prints. As he
+went on he found his quarry's steps coming more closely together:
+becoming erratic. Soon they showed as painful drags in the sand, a
+laborious hauling of one foot after the other.... Phil put away his
+light and advanced very cautiously.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered, as he went, who in the devil was behind it all. The
+radium-finding project had been kept strictly secret. Not another soul
+was supposed to know of the earth-borer and its daring mission into
+the heart of the earth. Yet, obviously, someone had found out, and
+whoever it was had laid at least part of his scheme cunningly. An old
+man and a girl cannot offer much resistance: he, Phil, would have been
+well taken care of had it not been for the water jug. So far, there
+were at least two in the plot: the man who had ambushed him and the
+unknown who had evidently kidnapped both Professor and Sue Guinness.
+But there might be still more.</p>
+
+<p>There might be friends, nearby, of the man he was tracking. The fellow
+might have reached them, and warned them that the scheme hadn't gone
+through, that Phil was loose. They could very easily conceal
+themselves alongside their partner's tracks and train their rifles on
+the tracker....</p>
+
+<p>The trail was leading up into one of the ca&ntilde;ons in the cluster of
+hills to the west. For some distance he followed it up through a slash
+of black below the steep moonlit heights of the hills to each
+side&mdash;and then, suddenly, he vaguely made out the forms of two huts
+just ahead.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately he stooped low, and went skirting widely off up one side.
+He proceeded slowly, with great caution, his rifle at the ready. At
+any moment, he knew, the hush might be split by the cracks of
+waylaying guns. Warily he advanced along the narrow ca&ntilde;on wall above
+the huts. No lights were lit, and the place seemed unoccupied. He was
+debating what to do next when his attention was attracted to a large
+dark object lying in the ca&ntilde;on trail some twenty yards from the
+nearest hut. Straining his eyes in the inadequate moonlight, he saw
+that it was the outstretched figure of a man. His quarry&mdash;his
+ambusher!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_p.jpg" alt="P" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hil dropped flat, fearful of being seen. Keeping as best he could in
+the shadows, fearing every moment to hear the sharp bark of a gun, he
+crawled forward. It took him a long time to approach the sprawled
+figure, but he wasn't taking chances. When within twenty feet, he rose
+suddenly and darted forward to the man's side.</p>
+
+<p>His rapid glance showed him that the fellow was completely out: and
+another quick look around failed to show that anyone else was
+watching, so he returned to his examination of the man. It was the
+ambusher, all right: a Mexican. He was still breathing, though his
+face was drawn and white from the loss of blood from a wound under the
+blood-soaked clothing near his upper right arm. A hasty search showed
+that he no longer had his gun, so Phil, satisfied that he was
+powerless for some time to come, cautiously wormed his way towards the
+two shacks.</p>
+
+<p>There was something sinister in the strange silence that hung over
+them. One was of queer construction&mdash;a win<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>dowless, square, high box
+of galvanized iron. The other was obviously a dwelling place.
+Carefully Phil sneaked up to the latter. Then, rifle ready, he pushed
+its door open and sent a beam of light stabbing through the darkness
+of the interior.</p>
+
+<p>There was no one there. Only two bunks, a table, chair, a pail of
+water and some cooking utensils met his view. He crept out toward the
+other building.</p>
+
+<p>Come close, Phil found that a dun-colored canvas had been thrown over
+the top of it, making an adequate camouflage in daytime. The place was
+about twenty feet high. He prowled around the metal walls and
+discovered a rickety door. Again, gun ready, he flung it open. The
+beam from his flash speared a path through the blackness&mdash;and he
+gasped at sight of what stood revealed.</p>
+
+<p>There, inside, was a long, bullet-like tube of metal, the pointed end
+upper-most, and the bottom, which was flat, toward the ground. It was
+held in a wooden cradle, and was slanted at the floor. In the bottom
+were holes of two shapes&mdash;rocket tubes and disintegrating projectors.
+It was another earth-borer.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_p.jpg" alt="P" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hil stood frozen with surprise before this totally unlooked-for
+machine. He could easily have been overcome, had the owner been in the
+building, for he had forgotten everything but what his eyes were
+staring at. He started slowly around the borer, found a long narrow
+door slightly ajar, and stepped inside.</p>
+
+<p>This borer, like Guinness's, had a double shell, and much the same
+instruments, though the whole job was simpler and cruder. A small
+instrument board contained inclination, temperature, depth and
+air-purity indicators, and narrow tubes led to the air rectifiers. But
+what kept Holmes' attention were the wires running from the magneto to
+the mixing chambers of the disintegrating tubes.</p>
+
+<p>"The fools!" he exclaimed, "&mdash;they didn't know how to wire the thing!
+Or else," he added after a moment, "didn't get around to doing it." He
+noticed that the projectile's interior contained no gyroscope: though,
+he thought, none would be needed, for the machine, being long and
+narrow, could not change keel while in the ground. Here he was
+reminded of something. Stepping outside, he estimated the angle the
+borer made with the dirt floor. Twenty degrees. "And pointed
+southwest!" he exclaimed aloud. "This borer would come close to
+meeting the professor's, four miles under our camp!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t once he knew what he would do. First he went back to the other
+shack and got the pail of water he had noticed, and took this out
+where the Mexican lay outstretched. He bathed the man's face and the
+still slightly bleeding bullet wound in his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the wounded man came to. His eyes opened, and he stared up
+into a steel mask of a face, in which two level black eyes bored into
+his. He remembered that face&mdash;remembered it all too well. He trembled,
+cowered away.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" he gasped, as if he had seen a ghost. "No&mdash;no!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm the man," Holmes told him firmly, menacingly. "The same one
+you tried to ambush." He paused a moment, then said: "Do you want to
+live?"</p>
+
+<p>It was a simple question, frightening in its simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>"Because if you don't answer my questions, I'm going to let you lie
+here," Phil went on coldly. "And that would probably mean your death.
+If you do answer, I'll fix you up so you can have a chance."</p>
+
+<p>The Mexican nodded eagerly. "I talk," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Good," said Phil. "Then tell me who built that machine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Se&ntilde;or Quade. Se&ntilde;or James Quade."</p>
+
+<p>"Quade!" Phil had heard the name<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> before. "Of course!" he said.
+"Guinness's old partner!"</p>
+
+<p>"I not know," the Mexican answered. "He hire me with much money. He
+buy thees machine inside, and we put him together. But he could no
+make him work&mdash;it take too long. We watch, hear old man go down
+to-night, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he greaser stopped. "And so he sent you to get me, while he kidnapped
+the old man and his daughter and forced them under the ground in their
+own borer," Holmes supplied, and the other nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"But I only mean to tie you!" he blurted, gesturing weakly. "I no mean
+shoot! No, no&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"All right&mdash;forget it," Phil interrupted. "And now tell me what Quade
+expects to do down there."</p>
+
+<p>"I not know, Se&ntilde;or," came the hesitant reply, "but...."</p>
+
+<p>"But what?" the young man jerked.</p>
+
+<p>Reluctantly the wounded Mexican continued. "Se&ntilde;or Quade&mdash;he&mdash;I think
+he don' like thees old man. I think he leave heem an' the girl down
+below. Then he come up an' say they keeled going down."</p>
+
+<p>Phil nodded grimly. "I see," he said, voicing his thoughts. "Then he
+would say that he and Professor Guinness are still partners&mdash;and the
+radium ore will belong to him. Very nice. Very nice...."</p>
+
+<p>He snapped back to action, and without another word hoisted the
+Mexican onto his back and carried him into the shack. There he
+cleansed the wound, rigged up a tight bandage for it, and tied the man
+to one of the cots. He tied him in such a fashion that he could reach
+some food and water he put by the cot.</p>
+
+<p>"You leave me like thees?" the Mexican asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Phil said, and started for the door.</p>
+
+<p>"But what you going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>Phil smiled grimly as he flung an answer back over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Me?&mdash;I'm going to fix the wiring on those disintegrators in your
+friend Quade's borer. Then I'm starting down after him." He stopped
+and turned before he closed the door. "And if I don't get back&mdash;well,
+it's just too bad for you!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>nd so, a little later, once more the hushed desert night was cleft by
+a furious bellow of sound. It came, this time, from a narrow ca&ntilde;on.
+The steep sides threw the roar back and back again, and the echoes
+swelled to an earth-shaking blast of sound. The oblong hut from which
+it came rocked and almost fell; then, as the noise began to lessen,
+teetered on its foundations and half-slipped into the ragged hole that
+had been bored inside.</p>
+
+<p>The descent was a nightmare that Holmes would never forget. Quade's
+machine was much cruder and less efficient than the sphere David
+Guinness had designed. Its protecting insulation proved quite
+inadequate, and the heat rapidly grew terrific as the borer dug down.
+Phil became faint, stifled, and his body oozed streams of sweat. And
+the descent was also bumpy and uneven; often he was forced to leave
+the controls and work on the mechanism of the disintegrators when they
+faltered and threatened to stop. But in spite of everything the needle
+on the depth gauge gradually swung over to three thousand, and four,
+and five....</p>
+
+<p>After the first mile Holmes improvised a way to change the air more
+rapidly, and it grew a little cooler. He watched the story the depth
+gauge told with narrowed eyes, and, as it reached three miles,
+inspected his rifle. At three and a half miles he stopped the borer,
+thinking to try to hear the noise made by the other, but so paralyzed
+were his ear-drums from the terrific thunder beneath, it seemed hardly
+any quieter when it ceased.</p>
+
+<p>His plans were vague; they would have to be made according to the
+conditions he found. There was a coil of rope in the tube-like
+interior of the borer, and he hoped to find a cavern or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> cleft in the
+earth for lateral exploring. He would stop at a depth of four
+miles&mdash;where he should be very near the path of the professor's
+sphere.</p>
+
+<p>But Phil never saw the needle on the gauge rise to four miles. At
+three and three quarters came sudden catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>He knew only that there was an awful moment of utter helplessness,
+when the borer swooped wildly downwards, and the floor was snatched
+sickeningly from under him. He was thrown violently against the
+instrument panel; then up toward the pointed top; and at the same
+instant came a rending crash that drove his senses from him....</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER III</h4>
+<h4>"<i>You Haven't the Guts</i>"</h4>
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_f1.jpg" alt="" width="53" height="56" /></div>
+<p>ust as I thought," said James Quade in the silence that fell when
+the last echoes had died away, and the splinters of steel and rock had
+settled. "You see, Professor, this earth-borer belongs to me. Yes, I
+built one too. But I couldn't, unfortunately, get it working
+properly&mdash;that is, in time to get down here first. After all, I'm not
+a scientist, and remembered little enough of your borer's plans....
+It's probably young Holmes who's dropped in on us. Shall we see?"</p>
+
+<p>David Guinness and his daughter were speechless with dread. Quade had
+trained the searchlight on the borer, and by turning their heads they
+could see it plainly. It was all too clear that the machine was a
+total wreck. It had pitched over onto one side, its shell cracked and
+mangled irreparably. Grotesque pieces of crumpled metal lay all around
+it. Its slanting course had tumbled it within fifteen yards of the
+sphere.</p>
+
+<p>In silence the old man and the girl watched Quade walk deliberately
+over to it, his automatic steady in his right hand. He wrenched at the
+long, narrow door, but it was so badly bent that for a while he could
+not get it open. At last it swung out, however, and Quade peered
+inside.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment he reached in and drew out a rifle. He took it over to
+a nearby rock, smashed the gun's breech, then flung it, useless,
+aside. Returning to the borer, he again peered in.</p>
+
+<p>Sue was about to scream from the torturous suspense when he at last
+straightened up and looked around at the white-faced girl and her
+father.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Holmes is tougher than I'd thought possible," he said, with a
+thin smile; "he's still alive." And, as Sue gasped with relief, he
+added: "Would you like to see him?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e dragged the young man's unconscious body roughly out on the floor.
+There were several bad bruises on his face and head, but otherwise he
+was apparently uninjured. As Quade stood over him, playing idly with
+the automatic, he stirred, and blinked, and at last, with an effort,
+got up on one elbow and looked straight at the thin lips and narrowed
+eyes of the man standing above. He shook his head, trying to
+comprehend, then muttered hazily:</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you're&mdash;Quade?"</p>
+
+<p>Quade did not have time to answer, for Sue Guinness cried out:</p>
+
+<p>"Phil! Are you all right?"</p>
+
+<p>Phil stared stupidly around, caught sight of the two who lay bound on
+the floor, and staggered to his feet. "Sue!" he cried, relief and
+understanding flooding his voice. He started towards her.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand where you are!" Quade snapped harshly, and the automatic in his
+hand came up. Holmes peered at it and stopped, but his blood-streaked
+face settled into tight lines, and his body tensed.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better," continued Quade. "Now tell me what happened to Juan."</p>
+
+<p>Phil forced himself to be calm. "Your pal, the greaser?" he said
+cuttingly. "He's lying on a bunk in your shack. He shot himself,
+playing with a gun."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Quade chose not to notice the way Phil said this, but a little of the
+suave self-confidence was gone from his face as he said: "Well, in
+that case I'll have to hurry back to the surface to attend to him. But
+don't be alarmed," he added, more brightly. "I'll be back for you all
+in an hour or so."</p>
+
+<p>At this, David Guinness struggled frantically with his bonds and
+yelled:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't believe him, Phil! He's going to leave us here, to starve and
+die! He told us so just before you came down!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_q.jpg" alt="Q" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+<p>uade's face twitched perceptibly. His eyes were nervous.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that true, Quade?" Holmes asked. There was a steely note in his
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;no, of course not," the other said hastily, uncertain whether to
+lie or not. "Of course I didn't!"</p>
+
+<p>Phil Holmes looked square into his eyes. He bluffed.</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't desert us, Quade. You haven't the guts. You haven't the
+guts."</p>
+
+<p>His face and eyes burned with the contempt that was in his words. It
+cut Quade to the raw. But he could not avoid Phil's eyes. He stared at
+them for a full moment, trembling slightly. Slowly, by inches, he
+started to back toward the sphere; then suddenly he ran for it with
+all his might, Holmes after him. Quade got to it first, and inside, as
+he yanked in the searchlight and slammed and locked the door, he
+yelled:</p>
+
+<p>"You'll see, you damned pup! You'll see!" And there was the smothered
+sound of half-maniacal laughter....</p>
+
+<p>Phil threw all his weight against the metal door, but it was hopeless
+and he knew it. He had gathered himself for another rush when he heard
+Guinness yell:</p>
+
+<p>"Back, Phil&mdash;back! He'll turn on the side disintegrators!"</p>
+
+<p>Mad with rage as the young man was, he at once saw the danger and
+leaped away&mdash;only to almost fall over the professor's prone body. With
+hurrying, trembling fingers he untied the pair's bonds, and they
+struggled to their feet, cramped and stiff. Then it was Phil who
+warned them.</p>
+
+<p>"Back as far as you can! Hurry!" He grabbed Sue's hand and plunged
+toward the uncertain protection of a huge rock far in the rear. At
+once he made them lie flat on the ground.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>s yet the sphere had not stirred nor emitted a whisper of sound,
+though they knew the man inside was conning the controls in a fever of
+haste to leave the cavern. But they hadn't long to wait. There came a
+sputter, a starting cough from the rocket tubes beneath the sphere.
+Quickly they warmed into life, and the dully glimmering ball rocked in
+the hole it lay in. Then a cataract of noise unleashed itself; a
+devastating thunder roared through the echoing cavern as the rockets
+burst into full force. A wave of brilliant orange-red splashed out
+from under the sphere, licked back up its sides, and seemed literally
+to shove the great ball up towards the hole in the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>Its ascent was very slow. As it gained height it looked&mdash;save for its
+speed&mdash;like a fantastic meteor flaming through the night, for the
+orange plumage that streamed from beneath lit the ball with dazzling
+color. A glowing sphere, it staggered midway between floor and
+ceiling, creeping jerkily upwards.</p>
+
+<p>"He's not going to hit the hole!" shouted Guinness.</p>
+
+<p>The borer had not risen in a perfectly straight line; it jarred
+against the rim of the hole, and wavered uncertainly. Every second the
+roar of its rockets, swollen by echoes, rose in a savage crescendo;
+the faces of the three who watched were painted orange in the glow.</p>
+
+<p>The sphere was blind. The man inside could judge his course only by
+the feel. As the three who were deserted watched, hoping ardently that
+Quade would not be able to find the opening, the left side-rockets
+spouted lances of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> fire, and they knew he had discovered the way to
+maneuver the borer laterally. The new flames welded with the exhaust
+of the main tubes into a great fan-shaped tail, so brilliant and shot
+through with other colors that their eyes could not stand the sight,
+except in winks. The borer jerked to the right, but still it could not
+find the hole. Then the flames lessened for a moment, and the borer
+sank down, to rise again a moment later. Its ascent was so labored
+that Phil shouted to Professor Guinness:</p>
+
+<p>"Why so slow?"</p>
+
+<p>And the inventor told him that which he had not seen for the
+intolerable light.</p>
+
+<p>"Only half his rockets are on!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>his time the sphere was correctly aimed, however, and it roared
+straight into the hole. Immediately the fierce sound of the exhaust
+was muffled, and in a few seconds only the fiery plumage, shooting
+down from the ceiling, showed where the machine was. Then this
+disappeared, and the noise alone was left.</p>
+
+<p>Phil leaped forward, intending to stare up, but Guinness's yell halted
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet! He might still use the disintegrators!"</p>
+
+<p>For many minutes they waited, till the muffled exhaust had died to a
+drone. There was a puzzled expression on the professor's face as the
+three at last walked over and dared peer up into the hole. Far above,
+the splash of orange lit the walls of the tunnel.</p>
+
+<p>"That's funny!" the old man muttered. "He's only using half the
+rockets&mdash;about ten. I thought he'd turn them all on when he got into
+the hole, but he didn't. Either they were damaged in the fall, or
+Quade doesn't see fit to use them."</p>
+
+<p>"Half of them are enough," said Phil bitterly, and put his arm around
+the quiet girl standing next to him. Together, a silent little group,
+they watched the spot of orange die to a pin-point; watched it waver,
+twinkle, ever growing smaller.... And then it was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Gone! Back to the surface of the earth, to the normal world of
+reality. Only four miles above them&mdash;a small enough distance on the
+surface itself&mdash;and yet it might have been a million miles, so utterly
+were they barred from it....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he same thought was in their minds, though none of them dared express
+it. They were thinking of the serene desert, and the cool wind, and
+the buttes and the high hills, placid in the moonlight. Of the hushed
+rise of the dawn, the first flush of the sun that was so achingly
+lovely on the desert. The sun they would never see again, buried in a
+lifeless world of gloom four miles within.... And buried alive&mdash;and
+not alive for long....</p>
+
+<p>But that way lay madness. Phil Holmes drove the horrible thoughts from
+his brain and forced a smile to his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's that!" he said in a voice meant to be cheerful.</p>
+
+<p>The dim cavern echoed his words mockingly. With the earth-borer
+gone&mdash;the man-made machine that had dared break a solitude undisturbed
+since the earth first cooled&mdash;the great cavern seemed to return to its
+awful original mood. The three dwarfed humans became wholly conscious
+of it. They felt it almost a living thing, stretching vastly around
+them, tightening its unheard spell on them. Its smell, of mouldy earth
+and rocks down which water slowly dripped, filled their nostrils and
+somehow added to their fear.</p>
+
+<p>As they looked about, their eyes became accustomed to the dim, eery,
+phosphorescent illumination. They saw little worm-like creatures now
+and again appear from tiny holes between stalagmites in the jagged
+floor; and, as Phil wondered in his mind how long it would be before
+they would be reduced to using them for food, a strange mole-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>sized
+animal scraped from the darkness and pecked at one of them. As it
+slithered away, a writhing shape in its mouth, Holmes muttered
+bitterly: "A competitor!" Vague, flitting forms haunted the gloom
+among the stalactites of the distorted ceiling&mdash;hints of the things
+that lived in the terrible silence of this nether world. Here Time had
+paused, and life had halted in primate form.</p>
+
+<p>A little moan came from Sue Guinness's pale lips. She plucked at her
+arm; a sickly white worm, only an inch long, had fallen on it from the
+ceiling. "Oh!" she gasped. "Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>Phil drew her closer to him, and walked with her over to Quade's
+wrecked borer. "Let's see what we've got here," he suggested
+cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>The machine was over on its side, the metal mangled and crushed beyond
+repair. Nevertheless, he squeezed into it. "Stand back!" he warned.
+"I'm going to try its rockets!" There was a click of broken machinery,
+and that was all. "Rockets gone," Phil muttered.</p>
+
+<p>He pulled another lever over. There was a sputter from within the
+borer, then a furious roar that sent great echoes beating through the
+cavern. A cloud of dust reared up before the bottom of the machine,
+whipped madly for a moment, and sank as the bellow of sound died down.
+Sue saw that a rocky rise in the floor directly in front of the
+disintegrators had been planed off levelly.</p>
+
+<p>Phil scrambled out. "The disintegrators work," he said, "but a lot of
+good they do us. The borer's hopelessly cracked." He shrugged his
+shoulders, and with a discouraged gesture cast to the ground a coil of
+rope he had found inside.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly he swung around. "Professor!" he called to the old
+figure standing bowed beneath the hole in the ceiling. "There's a
+draft blowing from somewhere! Do you feel it?"</p>
+
+<p>Guinness felt with his hands a moment and nodded slowly. "Yes," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"It's coming from this way!" Sue said excitedly, pointing into the
+darkness on one side of the cavern. "And it goes up the hole we made
+in the ceiling!"</p>
+
+<p>Phil turned eagerly to the old inventor. "It must come from
+somewhere," he said, "and that somewhere may take us toward the
+surface. Let's follow it!"</p>
+
+<p>"We might as well," the other agreed wearily. His was the tone of a
+man who has only a certain time to live.</p>
+
+<p>But Phil was more eager. "While there's life, there's hope," he said
+cheerfully. "Come on, Sue, Professor!" And he led the way forward
+toward the dim, distorted rock shapes in the distance.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he roof and sides of the cavern angled down into a rough, tunnel-like
+opening, from which the draft swept. It was a heavy air, weighted with
+the smell of moist earth and lifeless water and a nameless, flat,
+stale gas. They slowly made their way through the impeding
+stalagmites, surrounded by a dark blur of shadows, the ghostly
+phosphorescent light illuminating well only the few rods around them.
+Utter silence brooded over the tunnel.</p>
+
+<p>Phil paused when they had gone about seventy-five feet. "I left that
+rope behind," he said, "and we may need it. I'll return and get it,
+and you both wait right here." With the words he turned and went back
+into the shadows.</p>
+
+<p>He went as fast as he could, not liking to leave the other two alone.
+But when he had retrieved the rope and tied it to his waist, he
+permitted himself a last look up as he passed under the hole in the
+ceiling&mdash;and what he saw there tensed every muscle in his body, and
+made his heart beat like mad. Again there was a tiny spot of orange in
+the blackness above!</p>
+
+<p>"Professor!" he yelled excitedly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> "Sue! Come here! The sphere's
+coming back!"</p>
+
+<p>There was no doubt about it. The pin-point of light was growing each
+second, with the flame of the descending exhausts. Guinness and his
+daughter ran from the tunnel, and, guided by Phil's excited
+ejaculations, hurried to his side. Their eyes confirmed what his had
+seen. The earth-borer was coming down!</p>
+
+<p>"But," Guinness said bewilderedly, "those rockets were enough to lift
+him!"</p>
+
+<p>This was a mystery. Even though ten rockets were on&mdash;ten tiny spots of
+orange flame&mdash;the sphere came down swiftly. The same force which some
+time before had lifted it slowly up was now insufficient. The roar of
+the tubes rose rapidly. "Get back!" Phil ordered, remembering the
+danger, and they all retreated to the mouth of the tunnel, ready to
+peep cautiously around the edge. Holmes' jaws were locked tight with
+grim resolution. Quade was coming back! he told himself exultantly.
+This time he must not go up alone! This time&mdash;!</p>
+
+<p>But his half-formed resolutions were idle. He could not know what
+frightful thing was bringing Quade down&mdash;what frightful experience was
+in store for them all....</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER IV</h4>
+<h4><i>Spawn of the Cavern</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>n a crescendo of noise that stunned their ears, the earth-borer came
+down. Tongues of fire flared from the hole, speared to the ground and
+were deflected upward, cradling the metal ball in a wave of flame.
+Through this fiery curtain the machine slowly lowered to the floor,
+where a shower of sparks spattered out, blinding the eyes of the
+watchers with their brilliance. For a full minute the orange-glowing
+sphere lay there, quivering from the vibration; then the exhausts died
+and the wave of flame wavered and sank into nothingness. While their
+ear-drums continued the thunder, the three stared at the borer, not
+daring to approach, yet striving to solve the mystery of why it had
+sunk despite the up-thrust of ten rocket tubes.</p>
+
+<p>As their eyes again became accustomed to the familiar phosphorescent
+illumination, pallid and cold after the fierce orange flame, they saw
+why&mdash;and their eyes went wide with surprise and horror.</p>
+
+<p>A strange mass was covering the top of the earth-borer&mdash;something that
+looked like a heap of viscid, whitish jelly. It was sprawled
+shapelessly over the round upper part of the metal sphere, a
+half-transparent, loathsome stuff, several feet thick in places.</p>
+
+<p>And Phil Holmes, striving to understand what it could be, saw an awful
+thing. "It's moving!" he whispered, unconsciously drawing Sue closer.
+"There's&mdash;there's life in it!"</p>
+
+<p>Lazy quiverings were running through the mound of jelly, pulsings that
+gave evidence of its low organism. They saw little ripples of even
+beat run over it, and under them steady, sluggish convulsions that
+told of life; that showed, perhaps, that the thing was hungry and
+preparing to move its body in quest of food.</p>
+
+<p>It was alive, unquestionably. The borer lay still, but this thing
+moved internally, of itself. It was life in its lowest, most primate
+form. The mass was mind, stomach, muscle and body all in one, stark
+and raw before their startled eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God!" Phil whispered through the long pause. "It can't be
+real!..."</p>
+
+<p>"Protoplasm&mdash;a monster amoeba," David Guinness's curiously cracked
+voice said. "Just as it exists on the surface, only microscopically.
+Primate life...."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he lock of the earth-borer clicked. Phil gasped. "Quade is coming
+out!" he said. A little cry of horror came from Sue. And the metal
+door opened.</p>
+
+<p>James Quade stepped through, auto<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>matic in hand. He was fresh from the
+light inside, and he could not see well. He was quite unconscious of
+what was oozing down on him from above, of the flabby heap that was
+carefully stretching down for him. He peered into the gloom, looking
+for the three he had deserted, and all the time an arm from the mass
+above crept nearer. Sue Guinness's nerves suddenly gave, and she
+shrieked; but Quade's ears were deaf from the borer's thunder, and he
+did not hear her.</p>
+
+<p>It was when he lifted one foot back into the sphere&mdash;probably to get
+out the searchlight&mdash;that he felt the thing's presence. He looked
+up&mdash;and a strange sound came from him. For seconds he apparently could
+not move, stark fear rooting him to the ground, the gun limp in his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Then a surge ran through the mound of flesh, and the arm, a pseudopod,
+reached more rapidly for him.</p>
+
+<p>It stung Quade into action. He leaped back, brought up his automatic,
+and fired at the thing once; then three times more. He, and each one
+of the others, saw four bullets thud into the heap of pallid matter
+and heard them clang on the metal of the sphere beneath. They had gone
+right through its flesh&mdash;but they showed no slightest effect!</p>
+
+<p>Quade was evidently unwilling to leave the sphere. Jerking his arm up
+he brought his trigger finger back again. A burst of three more shots
+barked through the cavern, echoing and re-echoing. The man screamed an
+inarticulate oath as he saw how useless his bullets were, and hurled
+the empty gun at the monster&mdash;which was down on the floor now, and
+bunching its sluggish body together.</p>
+
+<p>The automatic went right into it. They could all see it there, in the
+middle of the amorphous body, while the creature stopped, as if
+determining whether or not it was food. Quade screwed his courage
+together in the pause, and tried to dodge past to the door of the
+sphere; but the monster was alert: another pseudopod sprang out from
+its shapeless flesh, sending him back on his heels.</p>
+
+<p>The feeler had all but touched Quade, and with the closeness of his
+escape, the remnants of his courage gave. He yelled, and turned and
+ran.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e ran straight for the three who watched from the tunnel mouth, and
+the mound of shapeless jelly came fast on his trail. It came in
+surging rolls, like thick fluid oozing forward; it would have been
+hard to measure its size, for each moment it changed. The only
+impression the four humans had was that of a wave of half-transparent
+matter that one instant was a sticky ball of viscid flesh and the next
+a rapidly advancing crescent whose horns reached far out on each flank
+to cut off retreat.</p>
+
+<p>By instinct Phil jerked Sue around and yelled at the professor to run,
+for the old man seemed to be frozen into an attitude of fearful
+interest. Bullets would not stop the thing&mdash;could anything? Holmes
+wondered. He could visualize all too easily the death they would meet
+if that shapeless, naked protoplasmic mass overtook and flowed over
+them....</p>
+
+<p>But he wasted no time with such thoughts. They ran, all three, into
+the dark tunnel.</p>
+
+<p>Quade caught up with them quickly. Personal enmity was suspended
+before this common peril. They could not run at full speed, for a
+multitude of obstacles hindered them. Tortuous ridges of rock lay
+directly across their path, formations that had been whipped in some
+mad, eon-old convulsion and then, through the ages, remained frozen
+into their present distortion; black pits gaped suddenly before them;
+half-seen stalagmites, whose crystalline edges were razor-sharp, tore
+through to their flesh. Haste was perilous where every moment they
+might stumble into an unseen cleft and go pitching into awful depths
+below. They were staking everything on the draft that blew stead<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>ily
+in their faces; Phil told himself desperately that it must lead to
+some opening&mdash;it must!</p>
+
+<p>But what if the opening were a vertical, impassable tunnel? He would
+not think of that....</p>
+
+<p>Old David Guinness tired fast, and was already lagging in the rear
+when Quade gasped hoarsely:</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry! It's close behind!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>urging rapidly at a constant distance behind them, it came on. It was
+as fast as they were, and evidently untiring. It was in its own
+element; obstacles meant nothing to it. It oozed over the jagged
+ridges that took the humans precious moments to scramble past, and the
+speed of its weird progress seemed to increase as theirs faltered. It
+was a heartless mass driven inexorably by primal instinct towards the
+food that lay ahead. The dim phosphorescent illumination tinged its
+flabby tissues a weird white.</p>
+
+<p>The passage they stumbled through narrowed. Long irregular spears of
+stalactites hung from the unseen ceiling; others, the drippings of
+ages, pronged up from the floor, shredding their clothes as they
+jarred into them. One moment they were clambering up-hill, slipping on
+the damp rock; the next they were sliding down into unprobed darkness,
+reckless of where they would land. They were aware only that the
+water-odorous draft was still in their faces, and the hungry mound of
+flesh behind....</p>
+
+<p>"I can't last much longer!" old Guinness's winded voice gasped. "Best
+leave me behind. I&mdash;I might delay it!"</p>
+
+<p>For answer, Phil went back, grabbed him by the arm and dragged his
+tired body forward. He was snatching a glance behind to see how close
+the monster was, when Sue's frightened voice reached him from ahead.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a wall here, Phil&mdash;and no way through!"</p>
+
+<p>And then Holmes came to it. It barred the passage, and was apparently
+unbroken. Yet the draft still came!</p>
+
+<p>"Search for where the draft enters!" he yelled. "You take that side!"
+And he started feeling over the clammy, uneven surface, searching
+frantically for a cleft. It seemed to be hopeless. Quade stood staring
+back into the gloom, his eyes looking for what he knew was surging
+towards them. His face had gone sickly white, he was trembling as if
+with fever, and he sucked in air with long, racking gasps.</p>
+
+<p>"Here! I have it!" cried the girl suddenly at her end of the wall. The
+other three ran over, and saw, just above her head, a narrow rift in
+the rock, barely wide enough to squirm through. "Into it!" Phil
+ordered tersely. He grasped her, raised her high, and she wormed
+through. Quade scrambled to get in next, but Holmes shoved him aside
+and boosted the old man through. Then he helped the other.</p>
+
+<p>A second after he had swung himself up, a wave of whitish matter
+rolled up below, hungry pseudopods reaching for the food it knew was
+near. It began to trickle up the wall....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he crack was narrow and jagged; utterly black. Phil could hear Quade
+frantically worming himself ahead, and he wondered achingly if it
+would lead anywhere. Then a faint, clear voice from ahead rang out:</p>
+
+<p>"It's opening up!"</p>
+
+<p>Sue's voice! Phil breathed more easily. The next moment Quade
+scrambled through; dim light came; and they were in another vast,
+ghostly-lit cavern.</p>
+
+<p>The crack came out on its floor-level; Guinness was resting near, and
+his daughter had her hands on a large boulder of rock. "Let's shove it
+against the hole!" she suggested to Phil. "It might stop it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good, Sue, good!" he exclaimed, and at once all four of them strained
+at the chunk, putting forth every bit of strength they had. The
+boulder stirred, rolled over, and thudded neatly in front of the
+crack, almost completely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> sealing it. There was only a cleft of five
+inches on one side.</p>
+
+<p>But their expression of relief died in their throats. A tiny trickle
+of white appeared through the niche. The amorphous monster was
+compressing itself to a single stream, thin enough to squeeze through
+even that narrow space.</p>
+
+<p>They could not block it. They had nothing to attack it with. There was
+nothing to do but run.... And hope for a chance to double back....</p>
+
+<p>As nearly as they could make out, this second cavern was as large as
+the first. They could dimly see the fantastic shapes of hundreds of
+stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Clumps of stalagmites made the
+floor a maze which they threaded painfully. The strong steady draft
+guided them like a radio beacon, leading them to their only faint hope
+of escape and life. Guinness, very tired, staggered along
+mechanically, a heavy weight on Phil's supporting arm; James Quade ran
+here and there in frantic spurts of speed. Sue was silent, but the
+hopelessness in her eyes tortured Phil like a wound. His shirt had
+long since been ripped to shreds; his face, bruised in the first place
+by the borer he had crashed in, now was scratched and bloody from
+contact with rough stalagmites.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hen, without warning, they suddenly found among the rough walls on
+the far side of the cavern, the birthplace of the draft. It lay at the
+edge of the floor&mdash;a dark hole, very wide. Black, sinister and clammy
+from the draft that poured from it, it pierced vertically down into
+the very bowels of the earth. It was impassable.</p>
+
+<p>James Quade crumpled at the brink; "It's the end!" he moaned. "We
+can't go farther! It's the end of the draft!"</p>
+
+<p>The hole blocked their forward path completely. They could not go
+ahead.... In seconds, it seemed, the slithering that told of the
+monster's approach sounded from behind. Sue's eyes were already fixed
+on the awful, surging mass when a voice off to one side yelled:</p>
+
+<p>"Here! Quick!"</p>
+
+<p>It was Phil Holmes. He had been scouting through the gloom, and had
+found something.</p>
+
+<p>The other three ran to him. "There's another draft going through
+here," he explained rapidly, pointing to an angled crevice in the
+rocky wall. "There's a good chance it goes to the cavern where the
+sphere and the hole to the surface are. Anyway, we've got to take it.
+I'd better go first, after this&mdash;and you, Quade, last. I trust you
+less than the monster behind."</p>
+
+<p>He turned and edged into the crack, and the others followed as he had
+ordered. Quickly the passageway broadened, and they found the going
+much easier than it had been before. For perhaps ten minutes they
+scrambled along, with the draft always on their backs and the blessed,
+though faint, fire of hope kindling again. In all that time they did
+not see their pursuer once, and the hope that they had lost it brought
+a measure of much needed optimism to drive their tired bodies onward.
+They found but few time-wasting obstacles. If only the tunnel would
+continue right into the original cavern! If only their path would stay
+clear and unhindered!</p>
+
+<p>But it did not. The sound of Phil's footsteps ahead stopped, and when
+Sue and her father came up they saw why.</p>
+
+<p>"A river!" Phil said.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey were standing on a narrow ledge that overhung an underground
+river. A fetid smell of age-old, lifeless water rose from it. Dimly,
+at least fifty feet across, they could see the other side, shrouded in
+vague shadows. The inky stream beneath did not seem to move at all,
+but remained smooth and hard and thick-looking.</p>
+
+<p>They could not go around it. The ledge was only a few feet wide, and
+blocked at each side.</p>
+
+<p>"Got to cross!" Phil said tersely.</p>
+
+<p>Quade, sickly-faced, stared down.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> "There&mdash;there might be other things
+in that water!" he gasped. "Monsters!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," agreed Phil contemptuously. "You'd better stay here." He
+turned to the others. "I'll see how deep it is," he said, and without
+the faintest hesitation dove flatly in.</p>
+
+<p>Oily ripples washed back, and they saw his head poke through,
+sputtering. "Not deep," he said. "Chest-high. Come on."</p>
+
+<p>He reached for Sue, helped her down, and did the same for her father.
+Holding each by the hand, Sue's head barely above the water, he
+started across. They had not gone more than twenty feet when they
+heard Quade, left on the bank, give a hoarse yell of fear and dive
+into the water. Their dread pursuer had caught up with them.</p>
+
+<p>And it followed&mdash;on the water! Phil had hoped it would not be able to
+cross, but once more the thing's astounding adaptability dashed his
+hopes. Without hesitation, the whitish jelly sprawled out over the
+water, rolling after them with ghastly, snake-like ripples, its pallid
+body standing out gruesomely against the black, odorous tide.</p>
+
+<p>Quade came up thrashing madly, some feet to the side of the other
+three. He was swimming&mdash;and swimming with such strength that he
+quickly left them behind. He would be across before they; and that
+meant there was a good chance that the earth-borer would go up again
+with only one passenger....</p>
+
+<p>Phil fought against the water, pulling Sue and her father forward as
+best he could. From behind came the rippling sound of their shapeless
+pursuer. "Ten feet more&mdash;" Holmes began&mdash;then abruptly stopped.</p>
+
+<p>There had been a swish, a ripple upstream. And as their heads turned
+they saw the water part and a black head, long, evil, glistening,
+pointing coldly down to where they were struggling towards the shore.
+Phil Holmes felt his strength ooze out. He heard Professor Guinness
+gasp:</p>
+
+<p>"A water-snake!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ts head was reared above the surface, gliding down on them silently,
+leaving a wedge of long, sluggish ripples behind. When thirty feet
+away the glistening head dipped under, and a great half-circle of
+leg-thick body arched out. It was like an oily stream of curved cable;
+then it ended in a pointed tail&mdash;and the creature was entirely under
+water....</p>
+
+<p>With desperate strength Phil hauled the girl to the bank and, standing
+in several feet of water, pushed her up. Then he whirled and yanked
+old Guinness past him up into the hands of his daughter. With them
+safe, and Sue reaching out her hand for him, he began to scramble up
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>But he was too late. There was a swish in the water behind him, and
+toothless, hard-gummed jaws clamped tight over one leg and drew him
+back and under. And with the touch of the creature's mouth a stiff
+shock jolted him; his body went numb; his arms flopped limply down. He
+was paralyzed.</p>
+
+<p>Sue Guinness cried out. Her father stared helplessly at the spot where
+his young partner had disappeared with so little commotion.</p>
+
+<p>"It was an eel," he muttered dully. "Some kind of electric eel...."</p>
+
+<p>Phil dimly realized the same thing. A moment later his face broke the
+surface, but he could not cry out; he could not move his little
+finger. Only his involuntary muscles kept working&mdash;his heart and his
+lungs. He found he could control his breathing a little.... And then
+he was wondering why he was remaining motionless on the surface.
+Gradually he came to understand.</p>
+
+<p>He had not felt it, but the eel had let go its hold on his leg, and
+had disappeared. But only for a moment. Suddenly, from somewhere near,
+its gleaming body writhed crazily, and a terrific twist of its tail
+hit Phil a glancing blow on the chest. He was swept under, and the
+water around him became a maelstrom. When next he bobbed to the
+tumultuous surface, he man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>aged to get a much-needed breath of
+air&mdash;and in the swirling currents glimpsed the long, snake-like head
+of the eel go shooting by, with thin trickles of stuff that looked
+like white jelly clinging to it.</p>
+
+<p>That explained what was happening. The eel had been challenged by the
+ameboid monster, and they were fighting for possession of him&mdash;the
+common prey.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he water became an inferno of whipping and lashing movements, of
+whitish fibers and spearing thrusts of a glistening black electric
+body. Unquestionably the eel was using its numbing electric shock on
+its foe. Time and time again Phil felt the amoeba grasp him,
+searingly, only to be wrenched free by the force of the currents the
+combat stirred up. Once he thudded into the bottom of the river, and
+his lungs seemed about to burst before he was again shot to the top
+and managed to get a breath. At last the water quieted somewhat, and
+Phil, at the surface, saw the eel bury its head in a now apathetic
+mound of flesh.</p>
+
+<p>It tore a portion loose with savage jaws, a portion that still writhed
+after it was separated from the parent mass; and then the victor
+glided swiftly downstream, and disappeared under the surface....</p>
+
+<p>Holmes floated helplessly on the inky water. He could see the amoeba
+plainly; it was still partly paralyzed, for it was very still. But
+then a faint tremor ran through it; a wave ran over its surface&mdash;and
+it moved slowly towards him once again.</p>
+
+<p>Desperately Phil tried to retreat. The will was there, but the body
+would not work. Save for a feeble flutter of his hands and feet, he
+could not move. He could not even turn around to bid Sue and David
+Guinness good-by&mdash;with his eyes....</p>
+
+<p>Then a fresh, loved voice sounded just behind him, and he felt
+something tighten around his waist.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, dear!" the voice called. "Hang on; we'll get you
+out!"</p>
+
+<p>Sue had come in after him! She had grasped the rope tied to his belt,
+and she and her father were pulling him back to the bank!</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to tell her to go back&mdash;the amoeba was only feet away&mdash;but
+he could only manage a little croak. And then he was safe up on the
+ledge at the other side of the river.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp; surge of strength filled his limbs, and he knew the shock was
+rapidly wearing off. But it was also wearing off of the monster in the
+water. Its speed increased; the ripplings of its amorphous
+body-substance became quicker, more excited. It came on steadily.</p>
+
+<p>While it came, the girl and her father worked desperately over Phil,
+massaging his body and pulling him further up the bank. It had all but
+reached the bank when Holmes gasped:</p>
+
+<p>"I think I can walk now. Where&mdash;where did Quade go to?"</p>
+
+<p>Guinness gestured over to the right, up a dim winding passage through
+the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we must follow&mdash;fast!" Phil said, staggering to his feet. "He
+may get to the sphere first; he'll go up by himself even yet! I'm all
+right!"</p>
+
+<p>Despite his words, he could not run, and could only command an awkward
+walk. Sue lifted one of his arms around her shoulder, and her father
+took the other, and without a backward glance they labored ahead. But
+Phil's strength quickly returned, and they raised the pace until they
+had broken once more into a stumbling run.</p>
+
+<p>How far ahead James Quade was, they did not know, but obviously they
+could follow where he had gone. Once again the draft was strong on
+their backs. They felt sure they were on the last stretch, headed for
+the earth-borer. But, unless they could overtake Quade, he would be
+there first. They had no illusions about what that would mean....<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER V</h4>
+<h4><i>A Death More Hideous</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_q.jpg" alt="Q" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+<p>uade was there first.</p>
+
+<p>When they burst out of a narrow crevice, not far from the
+funnel-shaped opening they had originally entered, they saw him
+standing beside the open door of the sphere as if waiting. The
+searchlight inside was still on, and in its shaft of light they could
+see that he was smiling thinly, once more his old, confident self. It
+would only take him a second to jump in, slam the door and lock it. He
+could afford a last gesture....</p>
+
+<p>The three stopped short. They saw something he did not.</p>
+
+<p>"So!" he observed in his familiar, mocking voice. He paused, seeing
+that they did not come on. He had plenty of time.</p>
+
+<p>He said something else, but the two men and the girl did not hear what
+it was. As if by a magnet their eyes were held by what was hanging
+above him, clinging to the lip of the hole the sphere had made in the
+ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>It was an amoeba, another of those single-celled, protoplasmic mounds
+of flesh. It had evidently come down through the hole; and now it was
+stretching, rubber-like, lower and lower, a living, reaching
+stalactite of whitish hunger.</p>
+
+<p>Quade was all unconscious of it. His final words reached Phil's
+consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"... And this time, of course, I will keep the top disintegrators on.
+No other monster will then be able to weigh me down!"</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders and turned to the door. And that movement
+was the signal that brought his doom. Without a sound, the poised mass
+above dropped.</p>
+
+<p>James Quade never knew what hit him. The heap of whitish jelly fell
+squarely. There was a brief moment of frantic lashing, of tortured
+struggles&mdash;then only tiny ripples running through the monster as it
+fed.</p>
+
+<p>Sue Guinness turned her head. But the two men for some reason could
+not take their eyes away....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was the girl's voice that jerked them back to reality. "The other!"
+she gasped. "It's coming, behind!"</p>
+
+<p>They had completely forgotten the mass in the tunnel. Turning, they
+saw that it was only fifteen feet away and approaching fast, and
+instinctively they ran out into the cavern, skirting the sphere
+widely. When they came to Quade's wrecked borer Phil, who had snatched
+a glance behind, dragged them down behind it. For he had seen their
+pursuer abandon the chase and go to share in the meal of its fellow.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd best not get too far away," he whispered. "When they leave the
+front of the borer, maybe we can make a dash for it."</p>
+
+<p>For minutes that went like hours the young man watched, waiting for
+the creatures to be done, hoping that they would go away. Fortunately
+the sphere lay between, and he was not forced to see too much. Only
+one portion of one of the monsters was visible, lapping out from
+behind the machine....</p>
+
+<p>At last his body tensed, and he gripped Sue and her father's arm in
+quick warning. The things were leaving the sphere. Or, rather, only
+one was. For Phil saw that they had agglutenated&mdash;merged into
+oneness&mdash;and now the monster that remained was the sum of the sizes of
+the original two. And more....</p>
+
+<p>They all watched. And they all saw the amoeba stop, hesitate for a
+moment&mdash;and come straight for the wrecked borer behind which they were
+hidden.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn!" Phil whispered hoarsely. "It's still hungry&mdash;and it's after
+us!"</p>
+
+<p>David Guinness sighed wearily. "It's heavy and sluggish, now," he
+said, "so maybe if we run again.... Though I don't know how I can last
+any longer...."</p>
+
+<p>Holmes did not answer. His eyes were narrowed; he was casting about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+desperately for a plan. He hardly felt Sue's light touch on his arm as
+she whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"In case, Phil&mdash;in case.... This must be good-by...."</p>
+
+<p>But the young man turned to her with gleaming eyes. "Good-by,
+nothing!" he cried. "We've still got a card to play!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he stared at him, wondering if he had cracked from the strain of what
+he had passed through. But his next words assured her he had not. "Go
+back, Sue," he said levelly. "Go far back. We'll win through this
+yet."</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated, then obeyed. She crept back from the wrecked borer,
+back into the dim rear, eyes on Phil and the sluggish mass that moved
+inexorably towards him. When she had gone fifteen or twenty yards she
+paused, and watched the two men anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>Phil was talking swiftly to Professor Guinness. His voice was low and
+level, and though she could not hear the words she could catch the
+tone of assurance that ran through them. She saw her father nod his
+head, and he seemed to make the gesture with vigor. "I will," she
+heard him say; and he slapped Phil on the back, adding: "But for God's
+sake, be careful!"</p>
+
+<p>And with these words the old man wormed inside Quade's wrecked borer
+and was gone from the girl's sight.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted desperately to run forward and learn what Phil intended to
+do, but she restrained herself and obeyed his order. She waited, and
+watched; and saw the young man stand up, look at the slowly advancing
+monster&mdash;and deliberately walk right into its path!</p>
+
+<p>Sue could not move from her fright. In a daze she saw Phil advance
+cautiously towards the amoeba and pause when within five feet of it.
+The thing stopped; remained absolutely motionless. She saw him take
+another short step forward. This time a pseudopod emerged, and reached
+slowly out for him. Phil avoided it easily, but by so narrow a margin
+that the girl's heart stopped beating. Then she saw him step back;
+and, snail-like, the creature followed, pausing twice, as if wary and
+suspicious. Slowly Phil Holmes drew it after him.</p>
+
+<p>To Sue, who did not know what was his plan, it seemed a deliberate
+invitation to death. She forgot about her father, lying inside the
+mangled borer, waiting. She did not see that Phil was leading the
+monster directly in front of it....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was a grotesque, silent pursuit. The creature appeared to be
+unalert; its movements were sloth-like; yet the girl knew that if Phil
+once ventured an inch too close, or slipped, or tried to dodge past it
+to the sphere, its torpidness would vanish and it would have him. His
+maneuvering had to be delicate, judged to a matter of inches. Tense
+with the suspense, the strain of the slow-paced seconds, she
+watched&mdash;and yet hardly dared to watch, fearful of the awful thing she
+might see.</p>
+
+<p>It was a fantastic game of tag her lover was playing, with death the
+penalty for tardiness. The slow, enticing movements were repeated
+again and again, Phil advancing very close, and stepping back in the
+nick of time. Always he barely avoided the clutching white arms that
+were extended, and little by little he decoyed the thing onward....</p>
+
+<p>Then came the end. As Holmes was almost in front of the wrecked
+machine, Sue saw him glance quickly aside&mdash;and, as if waiting for that
+moment when he would be off guard, the monster whipped forward in a
+great, reaching surge.</p>
+
+<p>Sue's ragged nerves cracked: she shrieked. They had him! She started
+forward, then halted abruptly. With a tremendous leap, Phil Holmes had
+wrenched free and flung himself backwards. She heard his yell:</p>
+
+<p>"Now!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>here was a sputter from the bottom of the outstretched borer; then,
+like the crack of a whip, came a bellow of awful sound.</p>
+
+<p>A thick cloud of dust reared up, and the ear-numbing thunder rolled
+through the cavern in great pulsing echoes. And then Sue Guinness
+understood what the young man had been about.</p>
+
+<p>The disintegrators of James Quade's borer had sent a broad beam of
+annihilation into the monster. His own machine had destroyed his
+destroyer&mdash;and given his intended victims their only chance to escape
+from the dread fate he had schemed for them.</p>
+
+<p>Sue could see no trace of the creature in its pyre of slow-swirling
+dust. Caught squarely, its annihilation had been utter. And then,
+through the thunder that still echoed in her ear-drums, she heard a
+joyful voice.</p>
+
+<p>"We got 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>Through the dusty haze Phil appeared at her side. He flung his arms up
+exultantly, swept her off the ground, hugged her close.</p>
+
+<p>"We got 'em!" he cried again. "We're free&mdash;free to go up!"</p>
+
+<p>Professor David Guinness crawled from the borer. His face, for the
+first time since the descent, wore a broad smile. Phil ran over to
+him, slapped him on the back; and the older man said:</p>
+
+<p>"You did it beautifully, Phil." He turned to Sue. "He had to decoy
+them right in front of the disintegrators. It was&mdash;well, it was
+magnificent!"</p>
+
+<p>"All credit to Sue: she was my inspiration!" Phil said, laughing. "But
+now," he added, "let's see if we can fix those dead rocket-tubes. I
+have a patient up above&mdash;and, anyway, I'm not over-fond of this
+place!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he three had won through. They had blasted four miles down from the
+surface of the earth. The brain of an elderly scientist, the
+quick-witted courage of a young engineer, had achieved the seemingly
+impossible&mdash;and against obstacles that could not have been predicted.
+Death had attended that achievement, as death often does accompany
+great forward steps; James Quade had gone to a death more hideous than
+that he devised for the others. But, in spite of the justice of it, a
+moment of silence fell on the three survivors as they came to the spot
+where his fate at last had caught up to him.</p>
+
+<p>But it was only a moment. It was relieved by Professor Guinness's
+picking up the chunk of radium ore his former partner had hewn from
+the cavern's wall. He held it up for all to see, and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is," he said simply.</p>
+
+<p>Then he led the way into his earth-borer, and the little door closed
+quietly and firmly into place.</p>
+
+<p>For a few minutes slight tappings came from within, as if a wrench or
+a screwdriver were being used. Then the tappings stopped, and all was
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>A choke, a starting cough, came from beneath the sphere. A torrent of
+rushing sound burst out, and spears of orange flame spurted from the
+bottom and splashed up its sides, bathing it in fierce, brilliant
+light. It stirred. Then, slowly and smoothly, the great ball of metal
+raised up.</p>
+
+<p>It hit the edge of the hole in the ceiling, and hung there,
+hesitating. Side-rockets flared, and the sphere angled over. Then it
+slid, roaring, through the hole.</p>
+
+<p>Swiftly the spots of orange from its rocket-tube exhausts died to
+pin-points. There were now almost twenty of them. And soon these
+pin-points wavered, and vanished utterly.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was only blackness in the hole that went up to the surface.
+Blackness in the hole, calm night on the desert above&mdash;and silence, as
+if the cavern were brooding on the puny figures and strange machines
+that had for the first time dared invade its solitude, in the realms
+four miles within the earth....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image_010.jpg" width="500" height="566" alt="The monster emanated power, sinister, malevolent
+power." title="" />
+<span class="caption">The monster emanated power, sinister, malevolent
+power.</span>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="The_Lake_of_Light" id="The_Lake_of_Light"></a>The Lake of Light</h2>
+
+<h3><i>By Jack Williamson</i></h3>
+<div class="sidenote">In the frozen wastes at the bottom of the world two
+explorers find a strange pool of white fire&mdash;and have a strange
+adventure.</div>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he roar of the motor rang loud in the frosty air above a desert of
+ice. The sky above us was a deep purple-blue; the red sun hung like a
+crimson eye low in the north. Three thousand feet below, through a
+hazy blue mist of wind-whipped, frozen vapor, was the rugged
+wilderness of black ice-peaks and blizzard-carved hummocks of snow&mdash;a
+grim, undulating waste, black and yellow, splotched with crystal
+white. The icy wind howled dismally through the struts. We were flying
+above the weird ice-moun<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>tains of the Enderby quadrant of Antarctica.</p>
+
+<p>That was a perilous flight, across the blizzard-whipped bottom of the
+world. In all the years of polar exploration by air, since Byrd's
+memorable flights, this area had never been crossed. The intrepid
+Britisher, Major Meriden, with the daring American aviatrix whom the
+world had known as Mildred Cross before she married him, had flown
+into it nineteen years before&mdash;and like many others they had never
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>Faintly, above the purring drone of the motor, I heard Ray Summers'
+shout. I drew my gaze from the desolate plateau of ice below and
+leaned forward. His lean, fur-hooded face was turned back toward me. A
+mittened hand was pointing, and thin lips moved in words that I did
+not hear above the roar of the engine and the scream of the wind.</p>
+
+<p>I turned and looked out to the right, past the shimmering silver disk
+of the propeller. Under the blue haze of ice-crystals in the air, the
+ice lay away in a vast undulating plain of black and yellow, broken
+with splotches of prismatic whiteness, lying away in frozen desolation
+to the rim of the cold violet sky. Rising against that sky I saw a
+curious thing.</p>
+
+<p>It was a mountain of fire!</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the desert of ice, a great conical peak pointed straight into
+the amethystine gloom of the polar heavens. It was brilliantly white,
+a finger of milky fire, a sharp cone of pure light. It shone with
+white radiance. It was brighter, far brighter, than is the sacred cone
+of Fujiyama in the vivid day of Japan.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>or many minutes I stared in wonder at it. Far away it was; it looked
+very small. It was like a little heap of light poured from the hand of
+a fire-god. What it might be, I could not imagine. At first sight, I
+imagined it might be a volcano with streams of incandescent lava
+flowing down the side. I knew that this continent of mystery boasted
+Mt. Erebus and other active craters. But there was none of the smoke
+or lurid yellow flame which accompanies volcanic eruptions.</p>
+
+<p>I was still watching it, and wondering, when the catastrophe took
+place&mdash;the catastrophe which hurled us into a mad extravaganza of
+amazing adventure.</p>
+
+<p>Our little two-place amphibian was flying smoothly, through air
+unusually good for this continent of storms. The twelve cylinders of
+the motor had been firing regularly since we took off from Byrd's old
+station at Little America fifteen hours before. We had crossed the
+pole in safety. It looked as if we might succeed in this attempt to
+penetrate the last white spot on the map. Then it Happened.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden crack of snapping metal rang out sharp as a pistol report. A
+bright blade of metal flashed past the wing-struts, to fall in a
+flashing arc. The motor broke abruptly into a mad, deep-voiced roar.
+Terrific vibration shook the ship, until I feared that it would go to
+pieces.</p>
+
+<p>Ray Summers, with his usual quick efficiency, cut the throttle.
+Quickly the motor slowed to idling speed; the vibration stopped. A
+last cough of the engine, and there was no sound save the shrill
+screaming of the wind in the gloomy twilight of this unknown land
+beyond the pole.</p>
+
+<p>"What in the devil!" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"The prop! See!" Ray pointed ahead.</p>
+
+<p>I looked, and the dreadful truth flashed upon me. The steel propeller
+was gone, or half of it at least. One blade was broken off at a jagged
+line just above the hub.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_t1.jpg" alt="T" width="64" height="54" /></div>
+
+<p>he propeller! What made it break? I've never heard&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Search me!" Ray grinned. "The important thing is that it did. It was
+all-metal, of course, tested and guaranteed. The guarantee isn't worth
+much here. A flaw in the forging, perhaps, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> escaped detection.
+And this low temperature. Makes metal as brittle as glass. And the
+thing may have been crystallized by the vibration."</p>
+
+<p>The plane was coming down in a shallow glide. I looked out at the grim
+expanse of black ice-crags and glistening snow below us, and it was
+far from a comforting prospect. But I had a huge amount of confidence
+in Ray Summers. I have known him since the day he appeared, from his
+father's great Arizona ranch, to be a freshman in the School of Mines
+at El Paso, where I was then an instructor in geology. We have knocked
+about queer corners of the world together for a good many years. But
+he is still but a great boy, with the bluff, simple manners of the
+West.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think we can land?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Looks like we've got to," he said, grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"And what after that?"</p>
+
+<p>"How should I know? We have the sledge, tent, furs. Food, and fuel for
+the primus to last a week. There's the rifle, but it must be a
+thousand miles to anything to shoot. We can do our best."</p>
+
+<p>"We should have had an extra prop."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. But it was so many pounds, when every pound counted. And
+who knew the thing would break?"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll never get out on a week's provisions."</p>
+
+<p>"Not a shot! Too bad to disappoint Captain Harper." Ray grinned wanly.
+"He ought to have the <i>Albatross</i> around there by this time, waiting
+for us." The <i>Albatross</i> was the ship which had left us at Little
+America a few months before, to steam around and pick us up at our
+destination beyond Enderby Land. "We're in the same boat with Major
+Meriden and his wife&mdash;and all those others. Lost without a trace."</p>
+
+<p>"You've read Scott's diary&mdash;that he wrote after he visited the pole in
+1912&mdash;the one they found with the bodies?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Not altogether cheerful. But we won't be trying to get out. No
+use of that." He looked at me suddenly, grinning again. "Say, Jim, why
+not try for that shining mountain we saw? It looks queer enough to be
+interesting. We ought to make it in a week."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm with you," I said.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;did not speak again, for the jagged ice-peaks were coming rather
+near. I held my breath as the little plane veered around a slender
+black spire and dropped toward a tiny scrap of smooth snow among the
+ice-hummocks. I might have spared my anxiety. Under Ray's consumately
+skilful piloting, the skids struck the snow with hardly a shock. We
+glided swiftly over the ice and came to rest just short of a yawning
+crevasse.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose," said Ray, "that we spend the first night in the plane. We
+are tired already. We can keep warm here, and sleep. We've plenty of
+ice to melt for water. Then we're off for the shining mountain."</p>
+
+<p>I agreed: Ray Summers is usually right. We got out the sledge, packed
+it, took our bearings, and made all preparations for a start to the
+luminous mountain, which was about a hundred miles away. The
+thermometer stood at twenty below, but we were comfortable enough in
+our furs as we ate a scanty supper and went to sleep in the cabin of
+the plane.</p>
+
+<p>We started promptly the next morning, after draining the last of the
+hot chocolate from our vacuum bottles, which we left behind. We had a
+light but powerful sporting rifle, with telescopic sights, and several
+hundred rounds of ammunition. Ray put them in the pack, though I
+insisted that we would never need them, unless a quick way out of our
+predicament.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Jim," he said. "We take 'em along. We don't know what we're going
+to find at the shining mountain."</p>
+
+<p>The air was bitterly cold as we set out: it was twenty-five below and
+a sharp wind was blowing. Only our toiling at the sledge kept us warm.
+We<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> covered eighteen miles that day, and made a good camp in the lee
+of a bare stone ridge.</p>
+
+<p>That night there was a slight fall of snow. When we went on it was
+nearly thirty-five degrees below zero. The layer of fresh snow
+concealed irregularities in the ice, making our pulling very hard.
+After an exhausting day we had made hardly fifteen miles.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_o.jpg" alt="O" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>n the following day the sky was covered with gray clouds, and a
+bitterly cold wind blew. We should have remained in the tent, but the
+shortage of food made it imperative that we keep moving. We felt
+immensely better after a reckless, generous fill of hot pemmican stew;
+but the next morning my feet were so painful from frost-bite that I
+could hardly get on my fur boots.</p>
+
+<p>Walking was very painful to me that day, but we made a good distance,
+having come to smoother ice. Ray was very kind in caring for me. I
+became discouraged about going on at all: it was very painful, and I
+knew there was no hope of getting out. I tried to get some of our
+morphine tablets, but Ray had them, and refused to be convinced that
+he ought to go on without me.</p>
+
+<p>On the next march we came in sight of the luminous mountain, which
+cheered me considerably. It was a curious thing, indeed. A
+straight-sided cone of light it was, rather steeper than the average
+volcano. Its point was sharp, its sides smooth as if cut with a
+mammoth plane. And it shone with a pure white light, with a steady and
+unchanging milky radiance. It rose out of the black and dull yellow of
+the ice wilderness like a white finger of hope.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning it was a little warmer. Ray had been caring for my
+feet very attentively, but it took me nearly two hours to get on my
+footgear. Again I tried to get him to leave me, but he refused.</p>
+
+<p>We arrived at the base of the shining mountain in three more marches.
+On the last night the fuel for the primus was all gone, having been
+used up during the very cold weather, and we were unable to melt water
+to drink. We munched the last of our pemmican dry.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;few minutes after we had started on the last morning, Ray stopped
+suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at that!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>I saw what he had seen&mdash;the wreck of an airplane, the wings crumpled
+up and blackened with fire. We limped up to it.</p>
+
+<p>"A Harley biplane!" Ray exclaimed. "That is Major Meriden's ship! And
+look at that wing! It looks like it's been in an electric furnace!"</p>
+
+<p>I examined the metal wing; saw that it had been blackened with heat.
+The metal was fused and twisted.</p>
+
+<p>"I've seen a good many wrecks, Jim. I've seen planes that burned as
+they fell. But nothing like that. The fuselage and engines were not
+even afire. Jim, something struck out from that shining mountain and
+brought them down!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are they&mdash;" I began.</p>
+
+<p>Ray was poking about in the snow in the cockpits.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Not here. Probably would have been better for them if they had
+been killed in the plane. Quick and merciful."</p>
+
+<p>He examined the engines and propellers.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Seems to be nothing wrong. Something struck them down!"</p>
+
+<p>Soon we went on.</p>
+
+<p>The shining mountain rose before us like a great cone of fire. It must
+have been three thousand feet high, and about that in diameter at the
+bottom. Its walls were as smooth and straight as though turned from
+milky rock crystal in a gigantic lathe. It shone with a steady,
+brilliantly white radiance.</p>
+
+<p>"That's no natural hill!" Ray grunted beside me as we limped on.</p>
+
+<p>We were less than a mile from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> foot of the cone of fire. Soon we
+observed another remarkable thing about it. It seemed that a straight
+band of silvery metal rose from the snow about its foot.</p>
+
+<p>"Has it a wall around it?" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently," said Ray. "Looks as if it's built on a round metal
+platform. But by whom? When? Why?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e approached the curious wall. It was of a white metal, apparently
+aluminum, or a silvery alloy of that metal. In places it was
+twenty-five feet high, but more usually the snow and ice was banked
+high against it. The smooth white wall of the gleaming mountain stood
+several hundred yards back from the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's have a look over it." Ray suggested. "We can get up on that
+hummock, against it. You know, this place must have been built by
+men!"</p>
+
+<p>We clambered up over the ice, as he suggested, until our heads came
+above the top of the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"A lake of fire!" cried Ray.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, a lake of liquid fire lay before us. The white aluminum wall
+was hardly a foot thick. It formed a great circular tank, nearly a
+mile across, with the cone of white fire rising in the center. And the
+tank was filled, to within a foot of the top, with shimmeringly
+brilliant white fluid, bright and luminous as the cone&mdash;liquid light!</p>
+
+<p>Ray dipped a hand into it. The hand came up with fingers of fire,
+radiant, gleaming, with shining drops falling from them. With a
+spasmodic effort, he flung off the luminous drops, rubbed his hand on
+his garments, and got it back into its fur mitten.</p>
+
+<p>"Gee, it's cold!" he muttered. "Freeze the horns off a brass
+billy-goat!"</p>
+
+<p>"Cold light!" I exclaimed. "What wouldn't a bottle of that stuff be
+worth to a chemist back in the States!"</p>
+
+<p>"That cone must be a factory to make the stuff." Ray suggested,
+hugging his hand. "They might pump the liquid up to the top, and then
+let it trickle down over the sides: that would explain why the cone is
+so bright. The stuff might absorb sunlight, like barium sulphide. And
+there could be chemical action with the air, under the actinic rays."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if somebody's making cold light, where does he use it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to find out, and strike him for a hot meal," Ray said,
+grinning. "It's too cold to live on top of the ground around here.
+They must run it down in a cave."</p>
+
+<p>"Then let's find the hole."</p>
+
+<p>"You know it's possible we won't be welcome. This mountain of light
+may be connected with the vanishing of all the aviators. We'd better
+take along the rifle."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e set off around just outside the white metal wall. The snow and ice
+was irregularly banked against it, but the wall itself was smooth and
+unbroken. We had limped along for some two miles, or more than halfway
+around the amazing lake of light. I had begun to doubt that we would
+find anything.</p>
+
+<p>Then we came to a square metal tower, ten feet on a side, that rose
+just outside the silvery wall, to a level with its top. The ice was
+low here; the tower rose twenty feet above its unequal surface. We
+found metal flanges riveted to its side, like the steps of a ladder.
+They were most inconveniently placed, nearly four feet apart; but we
+were able to climb them, and to look down the shaft.</p>
+
+<p>It was a straight-sided pit, evidently some hundreds of feet deep. We
+could see a tiny square of light at the bottom, very far away. The
+flanges ran down the side forming the rungs of a ladder that gave
+access to whatever lay at the bottom.</p>
+
+<p>Without hesitation, Ray climbed over the side and started down. I
+followed him, feeling a great relief in getting out of the freezing
+wind. Ray<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> had the rifle and ammunition strapped to his back, along
+with a few other articles; and I had a small pack. We had abandoned
+the sledge, with the useless stove and the most of our instruments.
+Our food was all gone.</p>
+
+<p>The metal flanges were fully four feet apart, and it was not easy to
+scramble down from one to another; certainly not easy for one who was
+cold, hungry, thirsty, worn out with a week of exhausting marches, and
+suffering the torture of frozen feet.</p>
+
+<p>"You know, this thing was not built by men," Ray observed.</p>
+
+<p>"Not built by men? What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Men would have put the steps closer together. Jim, I'm afraid we are
+up against something&mdash;well&mdash;that we aren't used to."</p>
+
+<p>"If men didn't build this, what did?" I was astounded.</p>
+
+<p>"Search me! This continent has been cut off from the rest of the world
+for geologic ages. Such life as has been found here is not common to
+the rest of the earth. It is not impossible that some form of life,
+isolated here, has developed intelligence and acquired the power to
+erect that cone of light&mdash;and to burn the wing off a metal airplane."</p>
+
+<p>My thoughts whirled madly as we clambered down the shaft.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t must have taken us an hour to reach the bottom. I did not count the
+steps, but it must have been at least a thousand feet. The air grew
+rapidly warmer as we descended. We both took off most of our heavy fur
+garments, and left them hanging on the rungs.</p>
+
+<p>I was rather nervous. I felt the nearness of an intelligent, hostile
+power. I had a great fear that the owners of those steps would use
+them to find us, and then crush us ruthlessly as they had brought down
+Meriden's plane.</p>
+
+<p>The little square of white light below grew larger. Finally I saw Ray
+swing off and stand on his feet in a flood of white radiance below me.
+The air was warm, moist, laden with a subtle unfamiliar fragrance that
+suggested growing things. Then I stood beside Ray.</p>
+
+<p>We stood on the bare stone floor of a huge cavern. It must have been
+of volcanic origin. The walls glistened with the sparkling smoothness
+of volcanic glass. It was a huge space. The black roof was a hundred
+feet high, or more; the cave was some hundreds of feet wide. And it
+sloped away from us into dim distance as though leading into huger
+cavities below.</p>
+
+<p>The light that shone upon us came from an amazing thing&mdash;a fall of
+liquid fire. From the roof plunged a sheer torrent of white
+brilliantly luminous fluid, falling a hundred feet into a shimmering
+pool of moon-flame. Shining opalescent mists swirled about it, and the
+ceaseless roar of it filled the cave with sound. It seemed that a
+stream of the phosphorescent stuff ran off down the cave from the
+pool, to light the lower caverns.</p>
+
+<p>"Very clever!" said Ray. "They make the stuff up there at the cone and
+run it in here to see by."</p>
+
+<p>"This warm air feels mighty good," I remarked, pulling off another
+garment.</p>
+
+<p>Ray sniffed the air. "A curious odor. Smells like something growing.
+Where anything is growing there ought to be something to eat. Let's
+see what we can find."</p>
+
+<p>Only black obsidian covered the floor about us. Cautiously we skirted
+the overflowing pool of white fire, and followed down the stream of it
+that flowed toward the inner cavern. We had gone but a few hundred
+yards when suddenly Ray stopped me with a hand on my arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Lie flat!" he hissed. "Quick!"</p>
+
+<p>He dived behind a huge mass of fire-born granite. I flung myself down
+beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"Something is coming up the trail by the shining river. And it isn't a
+man!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> It's between us and the light; we should be able to see it."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oon I heard a curious scraping sound, and a little tinkle of metal. I
+caught a whiff of a powerful odor&mdash;a strange, fishy odor&mdash;so strong
+that it almost knocked me down.</p>
+
+<p>The thing that made the scraping and the tinkle and the smell came
+into view. The sight of it sickened me with horror.</p>
+
+<p>It was far larger than a man; its body was heavy as a horse's, but
+nearer the ground. In form it suggested a huge crab, though it was not
+very much like any crustacean I had ever seen. It was mostly red in
+color, and covered with a huge scarlet shell. It had five pairs of
+limbs. The two forward pairs had pinchers, seemingly used as hands; it
+scraped along on the other three pairs. Yard-long antennae, slender
+and luminously green, wavered above a grotesque head. The many facets
+of compound eyes stood on the end of foot-long stalks.</p>
+
+<p>The amazing crab-thing wore a metal harness. Bands of silvery aluminum
+were fastened about its shell, with little cases of white metal
+dangling to them. In one of its uplifted claws it carried what seemed
+to be an aluminum bar, two feet long and an inch thick.</p>
+
+<p>It scraped lumberingly past, between us and the racing stream of white
+fire. It passed less than a dozen feet from us. The curious fishy
+smell of it was overpowering, disgusting.</p>
+
+<p>Sweat of horror chilled my limbs. The monster emanated power,
+sinister, malevolent power, power intelligent, alien and hostile to
+man.</p>
+
+<p>I trembled with the fear that it would see us, but it scrambled
+grotesquely on. When it was twenty yards past, Ray picked up a block
+of black lava that lay beneath his hand and hurled it silently and
+swiftly. It crashed splinteringly on the rocks far beyond the
+creature, on the other side of the stream of light.</p>
+
+<p>In fascination I watched the monster as it paused as if astonished.
+The glittering compound eyes twisted about on their stalks, and the
+long shining green tentacles wavered questioningly. Then the knobbed
+limbs snapped the white metal tube to a level position. A metallic
+click came from it.</p>
+
+<p>And a ray of red light, vivid and intense, burst from the tube. It
+flashed across the river of fire. With a dull, thudding burst it
+struck the rocks where the stone had fallen. It must have been a ray
+of concentrated heat. Rocks beneath it flashed into sudden
+incandescence, splintered and cracked, flowed in molten streams.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>n a moment the intensely brilliant ruby ray flashed off. The rocks in
+the circle where it had struck faded to a dull red and then to
+blackness, still cracking and crumbling.</p>
+
+<p>To my intense relief, the monstrous crab lumbered on.</p>
+
+<p>"That," Ray whispered, "is what got Major Meriden's airplane wing."</p>
+
+<p>When we could hear its scraping progress no longer, we climbed up from
+behind our boulder and continued cautiously down the cavern, beside
+the rushing luminous river. In half a mile we came to a bend. Rounding
+it, we gazed upon a remarkable sight.</p>
+
+<p>We looked into a huge cavity in the heart of the earth. A vast
+underground plain lay before us, with the black lava of the roof
+arching above it. It must have been miles across, though we had no way
+to measure it, and it stretched down into dim hazy distance. Its level
+was hundreds of feet below us.</p>
+
+<p>At our feet the glistening river of fire plunged down again in a
+magnificent flaming fall. Below, its luminous liquid was spread out in
+rivers and lakes and canals, over all the vast plain. The channels ran
+through an amazing jungle. It was a forest of fungus, of mushroom
+things with great fleshy stalks and spreading circular tops. But they
+were not the sickly white and yellow of ordinary mushrooms, but were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+of brilliant colors, bright green, flaming scarlet, gold and
+purple-blue. Huge brilliant yellow stalks, fringed with crimson and
+black, lifted mauve tops thirty feet or more. It was a veritable
+forest of flame-bright fungus.</p>
+
+<p>In the center of this weirdly forested subterranean plain was a great
+lake, filled, not with the flaming liquid, but with dark crystal
+water. And on the bottom of that lake, clearly visible from the
+elevation upon which we stood, was a city!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;city below the water! The buildings were upright cylinders in groups
+of two or three, of dozens, even of hundreds. For miles, the bottom of
+the great lake was covered with them. They were all of crystal,
+azure-blue, brilliant as cylinders turned from immense sapphires. They
+were vividly visible beneath the transparent water. Not one of them
+broke the surface.</p>
+
+<p>Through the clear black water we saw moving hundreds, thousands of the
+giant crabs. The crawled over the hard, pebbled bottom of the lake, or
+swam between the crystal cylinders of the city. They were huge as the
+one we had seen, with red shells, great ominous looking stalked eyes,
+luminous green tentacular antennae and knobbed claws on forelimbs.</p>
+
+<p>"Looks as if we've run on something to write home about," Ray muttered
+in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"A whole city of them! A whole world! No wonder they could build that
+cone-mountain for a lighting plant!"</p>
+
+<p>"When they got to knocking down airplanes with that heat-ray," he
+speculated, "they were probably surprised to find that other animals
+had developed intelligence."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you suppose those mushroom things are good to eat?"</p>
+
+<p>"We can try and see&mdash;if the crabs don't get us first with a heat-ray.
+I'm hungry enough to try anything!"</p>
+
+<p>Again we cautiously advanced. The river of light fell over a sheer
+precipice, but we found a metal ladder spiked to the rock, with rungs
+as inconveniently far apart as those in the shaft. It was five hundred
+feet, I suppose, to the bottom; it took us many minutes to descend.</p>
+
+<p>At last we stepped off in a little rocky clearing. The forest of
+brilliant mushrooms rose about us, great fleshy stalks of gold and
+graceful fringes of black and scarlet about them, with flattened heads
+of purple.</p>
+
+<p>We started eagerly across toward the fungoid forest. I had visions of
+tearing off great pieces of soft, golden flesh and filling my aching
+stomach with it.</p>
+
+<p>We were stopped by a sharp, poignantly eager human cry.</p>
+
+<p>A human being, a girl, darted from among the mushroom stalks and ran
+across to us. Sobbing out great incoherent cries, she dropped at Ray's
+feet, wrapped her arms about his knees and clung to him, while her
+slender body was wracked with sobbing cries.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>y first impression was that she was very beautiful&mdash;and that
+impression I was never called upon to revise. About her lithe young
+body she had the merest scrap of some curious green fabric&mdash;ample in
+the warm air of the great cavern. Luxuriant brown hair fell loose
+about her white shoulders. She was not quite twenty years old, I
+supposed; her body was superbly formed, with the graceful curves and
+the free, smooth movements of a wild thing.</p>
+
+<p>Ray stood motionless for a moment, thunder-struck as I was, while the
+sobbing girl clung to his knees. Then the astonishment on his face
+gave place to pity.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor kid!" he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>He bent, took her tenderly by the shoulder, helped her to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>Her beauty burst upon us like a great light. Smoothly white, her skin
+was, perfect. Wide blue eyes, now appeal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>ing, even piteous, looked
+from beneath a wealth of golden brown hair. White teeth, straight and
+even, flashed behind the natural crimson of her lips.</p>
+
+<p>She stood staring at Ray, in a sort of enchantment of wonder. An eager
+light of incredible joy flamed in her amazing eyes; red lips were
+parted in an unconscious smile of joy. She looked like the troubled
+princess in the fairy tale, when the prince of her dreams appeared in
+the flesh.</p>
+
+<p>"God, but you're beautiful!" Ray's words slipped out as if he were
+hardly conscious of them. He flushed quickly, stepped back a little.</p>
+
+<p>The girl's lips opened. She voiced a curious cry. It was deep toned,
+pealing with a wonderful timbre. A happy burst of sound, like a baby
+makes. But strong, ringing, musically golden. And pathetically eager,
+pitifully glad, so that it brought tears to my eyes, cynical old man
+that I am.</p>
+
+<p>I saw Ray wipe his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you talk?" Ray put the question in a clear, deliberate voice,
+with great kindness ringing in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Talk?" The chiming, golden voice was slow, uncertain. "Talk? Yes. I
+talked&mdash;with mother. But for long&mdash;I have had no need to talk."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is your mother?" Ray's voice was gentle.</p>
+
+<p>"She is gone. She was here when I was little." The clear, silvery
+voice was more certain now. "Once, when I was almost as big as
+she&mdash;she was still. She was cold. She did not move when I called her.
+The Things took her away. She was dead. She told me that sometime she
+would be dead."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>right tears came in the wide blue eyes, trickled down over the
+perfect face. A pathetic catch was in the deliberate, halting voice. I
+turned away, and Ray put a handkerchief to his face.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your name? Who are you?" Ray spoke kindly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am Mildred. Mildred Meriden."</p>
+
+<p>"Meriden!" Ray turned to me. "I bet this is a daughter of the major
+and his wife!"</p>
+
+<p>"Father was the major," the girl said slowly. "He and mother came in a
+machine that flew, from a far land. The Things burned the machine with
+the red fire. They came here and the Things kept them. They made
+mother sing over the water. They killed father. I never saw him."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," Ray, said gently. "We came from the same land. We saw your
+father's machine above."</p>
+
+<p>"You came from outside! And you are going back? Oh, take me with you!
+Take me!" Piteous pleading was in her voice. "It is so&mdash;lonely since
+the Things took Mother away. Mother told me that sometime men would
+come, and take me away to see the people and the outside that she told
+me of. Oh, please take me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry! You go along whenever we leave&mdash;if we can get out."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am so glad! You are very good!"</p>
+
+<p>Impulsively, she threw her arms around Ray's neck. Gently, he
+disengaged himself, flushing a little. I noticed, however, that he did
+not seem particularly displeased.</p>
+
+<p>"But can we get out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mother and I tried. We could never get out. The Things watch. They
+make me come to the water to sing, when the great bell rings."</p>
+
+<p>"Are these things goods to eat?" I motioned to the brilliant fungal
+forest. I had begun to fear that Ray would never get to this very
+important topic.</p>
+
+<p>Blue eyes regarded me. "Eat? Oh, you are hungry! Come! I have food."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ike a child, she grasped Ray's hand, pulled him toward the mushroom
+jungle. I followed, and we slipped in between the brilliantly golden,
+fleshy stalks. They rose to the tangle of bright feathery fringes
+above, huge and substantial as the trunks of trees.</p>
+
+<p>In a few minutes we came to a wide, shallow canal, metal-walled,
+through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> which a slow current of the opalescent, luminous liquid was
+flowing. We crossed this on a narrow metal foot-bridge, and went on
+through the brilliant forest.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly we emerged into a little clearing, with the black waters of
+the great lake visible beyond it, across a quarter-mile of rocky
+beach. In the middle of the open space, rose three straight cylinders
+of azure crystal, side by side. Each must have been twenty feet in
+diameter, and forty high. They shone with a clear blue light, like the
+cylindrical buildings we had seen in the strange city of the
+crab-creatures below the great lake.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred Meriden, the strangely beautiful girl who had known no other
+world than this amazing cavern empire where giant crabs reigned,
+beckoned us with unconscious queenly grace to enter the arched door in
+the blue sapphire wall of her remarkable abode of clustered cylinders.</p>
+
+<p>The crystal of the walls seemed luminous, the lofty cylinders were
+filled with a liquid, azure radiance. The high round room we entered
+was strangely furnished. There was a silken couch, a bathing pool of
+blue crystal filled with sparkling water, a curious chest of drawers
+made of bright aluminum with a mirror of polished crystal, its top
+bearing odd combs and other articles. The furnishings must have been
+done by the giant crabs, under human direction.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred led us quickly across the room, through an arched opening into
+another. A round aluminum table stood in the center of the room, with
+two curious metal chairs beside it. Odd metal cabinets stood about the
+shining blue walls. The girl made us sit down, and put dishes before
+us.</p>
+
+<p>She gave us each a bowl of thick, sweetish soup, darkly red; placed
+before us a dish piled high with little circular cakes, crisp and
+brown, which had a tantalizing fragrance; poured for each of us a
+transparent crystal goblet full of clear amber drink.</p>
+
+<p>We fell to with enthusiasm and abandon.</p>
+
+<p>"The Things made this place for father," the girl told us, as she
+watched us eat, attentively replenishing the red soup in the great
+blue crystal bowl, or the little cakes, or the fragrant amber drink.
+"They would give him anything he wanted. But he tried to go away with
+mother, and they killed him."</p>
+
+<p>"We must get out of here," Ray declared when at last we had done. "We
+must get together a lot of food, and enough clothing for all of us. We
+ought to be able to make it to the edge of the ice-pack. We've got to
+give these crab-things the slip; we ought to get off before they know
+we're here&mdash;unless they already do."</p>
+
+<p>Mildred was eagerly attentive: she was so unused to human speech that
+it took the best of her efforts to understand us, though it seems that
+her mother had given her quite a wide education. She promised that
+there would be no difficulty about the food.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother taught me how to fix food," she said. "She always said that
+sometime men would come, with weapons of fire and great noise that
+would tear and kill the Things. I have food ready, in bags&mdash;more than
+we can carry. I have, too, the furs that mother and father wore."</p>
+
+<p>She ran into another room and returned with a great pile of fur
+garments, which we examined and found to be in good condition.</p>
+
+<p>"Now is the time," Ray said. "I'd like to know more about the big
+crabs, but there'll be a chance for that, later. Mildred is the
+important thing, now. We must get her out. Then we can tell the world
+about this place and come back with a bigger expedition."</p>
+
+<p>"You think we can reach the coast?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think so. It might be hard on Mildred. But we will have food; we
+can probably find fuel for the stove in Meriden's plane, if the tanks
+were well sealed. And Captain Harper should have a relief party landed
+and sent to meet us. We should have only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> three or four hundred miles
+to go alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Three or four hundred miles, over country like we've been crossing in
+the last week, with a girl! Ray, we'd never make it!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's the only chance."</p>
+
+<p>I said nothing more. I knew that I could stand no such march on my
+frozen feet, but I resolved to say nothing about it. I would help them
+as far as I could, and then walk out of camp some night. Men have done
+just that.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred brought out sacks of the little cakes, and of a red powder
+that seemed to be the dried and ground flesh of a crimson mushroom. We
+made a pack for each of us, as heavy as we could carry.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ust before we were ready to start Ray took off my footgear and
+treated my feet from his medicine kit. I had feared gangrene, but he
+assured me that there was no danger if they were well cared for.
+Walking was still exquisitely painful to me as we slipped out through
+the arched door and into the fungoid forest beyond the three blue
+cylinders.</p>
+
+<p>As rapidly and silently as possible we hastened through the brilliant
+fungous forest, across the river of opalescent liquid, to the foot of
+the fall of fire. A weird and splendid sight was that sheer arc of
+shimmering white flame, roaring into a pool of opal light, and
+surrounded with a mist of moon-flame.</p>
+
+<p>We reached the foot of the metal ladder spiked to the rocks beside the
+fall and started up immediately. The going was not easy. The packs of
+food, heavy enough when we were on level ground, were difficult indeed
+to lift when one was scrambling up over rungs four feet apart.</p>
+
+<p>Ray climbed ahead, with a piece of rope fastened from his waist to
+Mildred's, so that he could help her if she slipped. I was below the
+girl. We were halfway up the rock when suddenly a glare of red light
+shone upon me, casting my shadow sharply on the cliff. I looked up
+and saw the broad, intensely red beam of a heat-ray like that we had
+seen the giant crab use.</p>
+
+<p>The ray came, evidently, from the shore of the great lake with its
+submerged city of blue cylinders. It fell upon the face of the cliff
+just above us. Quickly the ladder was heated to cherry red. The face
+of the rock grew incandescent, cracked. Hot sparks rained down upon
+us.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the ray moved down, toward us.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess we'd better call it off," said Ray. "They have the advantage
+right now. Better get to climbing down, Jim. This ladder is going to
+be burning my hands pretty soon."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;climbed down. Mildred and Ray scrambled down behind me.</p>
+
+<p>The ray followed us, keeping the metal at a cherry red just above
+Ray's hands.</p>
+
+<p>I looked down and saw a dozen of the giant crabs lumbering up out of
+the fungoid jungle from the direction of the great lake. Hideous
+things they were, with staring, stalked eyes, shining green antennae,
+polished red shells, claw-armed limbs. Like the one that had passed us
+in the upper cavern, they wore glistening white metal accoutrements.</p>
+
+<p>We clambered down, with the red ray following.</p>
+
+<p>I dropped to the ground among them, wet with the sweat of horror. I
+reeled in nausea from the intolerable odor of the crab-things; it was
+indescribable, overpowering.</p>
+
+<p>Curious rasping stridulations came from them, sounds which seemed to
+serve as means of communication, and which Mildred evidently
+understood.</p>
+
+<p>"They say that you will not be harmed, but that you must not go out,"
+she called down.</p>
+
+<p>I was seized by the pincher-like claws, held writhing in an
+unbreakable grasp, while the glittering eyes twisted about, looked at
+me, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> shining green tentacles wavered questioningly over me. My
+stomach revolted at the horrible odor.</p>
+
+<p>The crabs tore off my pack, even my clothing. Ray was similarly
+treated as soon as he reached the ground. Though they took Mildred's
+pack, they treated her with a curious respect.</p>
+
+<p>In a few minutes they released us. They had taken the packs, the rifle
+and ammunition, our medicine kit and the few instruments we had
+brought with us down the shaft, even our clothing. They turned us
+loose stark naked. Ray's face and neck went beet-red when he saw
+Mildred standing by him.</p>
+
+<p>The rasping sound came from one of them again.</p>
+
+<p>"It says you may stay with me," Mildred said. "They will not harm you
+unless you try again to get away. If you do, you die&mdash;as father did.
+They will keep what they took from you."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>everal of the creatures went scraping off, carrying the articles they
+had taken from us either in their claws or in the metal cases they
+wore. Several waited, staring at us with the stalked compound eyes,
+and waving the green antennae as if they were organs of some special
+sense.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the creatures waited at the foot of the metal ladder, holding
+the long slender white tubes of the heat-ray in their claws.</p>
+
+<p>"They say we can go now," Mildred said.</p>
+
+<p>She led the way toward the edge of the brilliant jungle. She seemed to
+be without false modesty, for I saw her glancing with evident
+admiration at Ray's lithe and powerful white-skinned figure. We
+followed her into the giant mushrooms, glad to escape the overpowering
+stench of the crabs.</p>
+
+<p>In a few minutes we arrived again at the strange building of the three
+blue cylinders. Mildred, noticing our discomfort, produced for each of
+us a piece of white silken fabric with which we draped ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>She had noticed my difficulty in walking on bare feet. She had me
+bathe them, then dressed them with a soothing yellow oil, and bandaged
+them skilfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow," she said later, "it is good to have both of you here with
+me. I am sorry indeed for you that you may never see your country
+again. But it is good fortune for me. I was so lonely."</p>
+
+<p>"These damned crabs don't know me!" Ray Summers muttered. "They think
+I'll play around like a pet kitten, for the rest of my life! They'll
+get their eyes opened. We'll spend the winter on Palm Beach yet!"</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me that we're rather outnumbered." I said. "And it's
+rather more pleasant in here than outside."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to get that rifle," Ray declared, "and give these big crabs
+a little respect for humanity!"</p>
+
+<p>"Let's rest up a while first, anyhow," I urged.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_p.jpg" alt="P" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>resently Mildred noticed how tired we were. She went into the third
+of the connected cylinders of blue crystal, was busy a few minutes and
+called us to the couches she had prepared there.</p>
+
+<p>"You may sleep," she told us. "The Things never come here. And they
+said they would not harm you, if you did not try to go out."</p>
+
+<p>We lay down on the silken beds. In a few minutes I was sleep. I awoke
+to feel a curious unease, a sense of impending catastrophe. Ray was
+bending over me, his face drawn with anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"Something's happened!" he whispered. "She's gone!"</p>
+
+<p>I sat up, staring into the liquid blue vastness of the tall cylinder
+above us.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen! What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>A deep bell-note sounded out, brazen, clanging. Sonorous, throbbing,
+mighty, it rang through the cylindered rooms. Slowly it died; faded to
+silence with a last ringing pulse. Tense minutes of silence passed.
+Again it boomed out, throbbed, and died. After more long minutes there
+was yet a third.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Outside, somewhere!"</p>
+
+<p>Ray started; ran to the arched door. We looked out upon the dense
+forest of gold and crimson mushrooms that grew below the black cavern
+roof. Before us, across a few hundred yards of bare rocky beach, was
+the edge of the crystal lake with the city of blue cylinders upon its
+floor.</p>
+
+<p>"God! What's that?" Ray gripped my arm crushingly.</p>
+
+<p>A thin wailing scream came across the beach from the black lake. A
+piteous sound it was, plaintive, pleading. Higher and higher it rose,
+until it was a piercing silver note. Clear and sweet it was, but
+inexpressibly lonely, sorrowful, mournful. It sank slowly, died away.
+Again it rose and fell, and again.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Mildred!" I gasped. "Didn't she say something about singing to
+the crabs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! I think she did. Well, if that's singing, it's wonderful! Had me
+feeling like I'd never see another human. But listen&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>iquid, trilling notes were rising, pealing out in a queer, swift
+rhythm. It was happy, joyous, carefree. The rippling golden tones made
+me think of the caroling of birds on a spring morning. Swiftly it rose
+and fell, pure and clear as the tinkle of a mountain brook.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred sang not words but notes of pure music.</p>
+
+<p>The gay song died.</p>
+
+<p>And the strong clear voice rose again with the force and challenge of
+bugle notes, with a swift marching time beating through it. It
+throbbed to a rhythm strange to me. It set my feet tingling to move;
+it set my heart to pulsing faster. It was a challenge to action, to
+battle.</p>
+
+<p>Unconsciously obeying the suggestion of the song, Ray whispered,
+"Let's get over and see what's going on."</p>
+
+<p>We leaped through the door and ran across four hundred yards of rocky
+beach to the edge of the lake. We stepped on a granite bluff a few
+yards above the water, to gaze upon as strange a sight as men ever
+saw.</p>
+
+<p>The black water lay before us, a transparent crystal sheet. On its
+rocky bottom we could see the innumerable clusters of upright azure
+cylinders that were the city of the crabs. The blue cylinders seemed
+to bend and waver in the water.</p>
+
+<p>A hundred yards away from us, over the dark water, was Mildred. She
+stood on a slender azure cylinder that came just to the surface. Tall,
+slender, superbly graceful, with only the scant bodice of green silken
+stuff about her, she looked like the statue of a goddess in white
+marble. Her head was thrown up, golden-brown hair fell behind her
+shoulders, and the pure notes of her song rang over the water.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond her, all about her, were thousands upon thousands of the giant
+crabs, swimming at the surface of the water. Their green antenna rose
+above the water, a curious forest of luminous tentacles, flexing,
+wavering. Green coils moved and swung in time to the strange rhythm of
+her song.</p>
+
+<p>The last note died. Her white arms fell in a gesture of finality. The
+thousands of twisting green antennae vanished below the water, and the
+giant red crabs swam swiftly back to the tall blue cylinders of their
+submerged city.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he white goddess turned and saw us.</p>
+
+<p>Her voice rang out in a golden shout of welcome. With a clean dive she
+slipped into the water and came swimming swiftly toward us. Her slim
+white body glided through the crystal water as smoothly as a fish.
+Reaching the shore she sprang to her feet and ran to meet Ray.</p>
+
+<p>"The Things come together when the giant bell rings, to listen to my
+song," she said. "They like my singing, as they liked mother's. But
+for that, they would not let us live. That is the reason they would
+not let us go."</p>
+
+<p>"I like your singing, too," Ray in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>formed her. "Though at first you
+made me cry. It was so lonely."</p>
+
+<p>"The song was lonely because I have been lonely. Did you hear the glad
+song I sang because you have come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure! Great stuff! Made me feel like a kid at Christmas!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come," she said. "We will eat."</p>
+
+<p>Like a child, she took Ray's hand again, smiling naively up at him as
+she led the way toward the three sapphire cylinders.</p>
+
+<p>Back in the blue-vaulted dining room, Ray made Mildred sit with me at
+the little metal table while he served the little brown cakes and the
+dark-red soup and the fragrant amber drink. Mildred got up and brought
+a great metal bowl filled with tiny purple fruits that had a
+delicious, piquant tang.</p>
+
+<p>Ray was deeply thoughtful as he ate. Suddenly he sat back and cried
+out:</p>
+
+<p>"I've got it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Got what?" I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I want that rifle! Mildred can find out where it is. Then, when she
+sings, the crabs will all come. I'll get the gun, while she is
+singing, and hide it. Then when it comes time to get out, she will
+sing while you and I are getting our packs up the cliff. I can cover
+them with the rifle while she gets up to us."</p>
+
+<p>"Looks good enough," I agreed, "provided they all come to hear the
+singing."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e explained the plan at greater length to the girl. She assured him
+that the crabs all come when the bell-notes sound. She thought that
+she could make them return her furs, and find out where they had put
+the gun.</p>
+
+<p>My feet were much better than they had been, and Mildred dressed them
+again with the yellow oil. Ray examined them, said that I should be
+able to walk as well as ever in a few days.</p>
+
+<p>Considerable time went by. Since the crabs had taken our watches, we
+had no very accurate way of counting days; but I think we slept about
+a dozen times. Ray and Mildred spent a good deal of time together, and
+seemed not altogether to hate each other. By the end of the time my
+feet were quite well; I did not even lose a toe.</p>
+
+<p>We went over our plans for escape in great detail. The crabs had
+confiscated our clothing. Mildred managed to secure the return of her
+furs, and, incidentally, while she was about it, learned where the
+rifle was.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, perhaps realizing that it would be ruined by water, the
+crabs had not taken it to their submerged city. Being amphibious, they
+lived above water as easily as below, and much of their industrial
+equipment was above the surface. The great pumps which lifted the
+white phosphorescent liquid from the canals back to the cone above the
+ground were located beyond the great lake. I did not see the place,
+but Ray tells me that they had great engines and a wealth of strange
+and complex machinery there. It was at these pumps that they had left
+our rifle and instruments, as Mildred found when she was recovering
+her furs.</p>
+
+<p>They had taken our food, and we prepared as much more as we could
+carry, arranged sacks for it, and made quilted garments for ourselves.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hen the three brazen notes clanged out, and Mildred ran across the
+beach and swam out to the blue cylinder to sing. Ray slipped hurriedly
+away, while the green forest of antennae was still growing up from the
+water about the girl.</p>
+
+<p>I waited above the beach, enchanted by the haunting, wordless melody
+of the gongs. It seemed that only a few minutes had passed, though it
+may have been an hour or more, when Ray was by my side again. He
+flourished the rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got it! In good shape, too. Hasn't even been fired, though it
+looks like they have opened a box of cartridges, and cut open one or
+two.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> Maybe they didn't understand the outfit&mdash;or it may be such a
+primitive weapon that they aren't interested in it."</p>
+
+<p>We hurried up to the building of blue cylinders and carefully hid the
+gun and ammunition, as well as a sun compass, a pair of prism
+binoculars, and a few other articles Ray had recovered.</p>
+
+<p>In a few minutes Mildred, having seen Ray's return, finished her song
+and ran up to join us. We arranged our packs, and waited the next call
+of the throbbing brazen gong to make the attempt for freedom.</p>
+
+<p>We slept twice again before the clang of the great gong. Ray and
+Mildred were always together; I could not see that they were at all
+impatient.</p>
+
+<p>The bell note came, the awful brazen vibration of it ringing on the
+black cavern roof. It came when we were eating, in the liquid
+turquoise radiance of the lofty cylinder. We sprang out. Ray gave his
+last directions to Mildred.</p>
+
+<p>"Give us time to get to the top of the cliff by the shining fall. Then
+swim ashore and run. They may not notice. And if they do, we give 'em
+a taste of lead!"</p>
+
+<p>I was not very much surprised when he took the girl in his arms and
+put a burning kiss on her red lips. She gasped, but her struggles
+subsided very quickly; she clung to him as he freed her.</p>
+
+<p>She paused a moment in the door, before she ran down across the beach.
+A radiant light of joy was burning in her great blue eyes, even though
+tears were glistening there.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_r.jpg" alt="R" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ay and I waited, to give time for the giant crabs that guarded the
+ladder to get away. In about ten more minutes the second brazen gong
+sounded, and presently the third. We gathered up the heavy packs of
+food. Ray took the rifle and I the binoculars, and we slipped out into
+the brilliant mushroom forest.</p>
+
+<p>I stepped confidently out of the jungle into the clearing below the
+splendid opalescent fall of fire&mdash;and threw myself backward in
+trembling panic. A flaming crimson ray cut hissing into the towering
+mushrooms above my head.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred's confidence that the crabs would all gather at the ringing of
+the gong had been mistaken. The two guards had been waiting at the
+foot of the ladder, their flaming heat-rays ready for use.</p>
+
+<p>As I dived back into the jungle, I heard two quick reports of the
+rifle. I scrambled awkwardly to my feet, beneath the heavy pack. Ray
+stood alert beside me, the smoking rifle in his hand. The giant crabs
+had collapsed by the foot of the ladder, in grotesque and hideous
+metal-bound heaps of red shell and twisted limb. Blood was oozing from
+a ragged hole in the head of each.</p>
+
+<p>"Glad they were here," Ray muttered. "I wanted to try the gun out on
+'em. They're soft enough beneath the shell; the bullet tears 'em up
+inside. Let's get a move on!"</p>
+
+<p>He sprang past the revolting carcasses. I followed, holding my nose
+against their nauseating, charnel-house odor. We scrambled up the
+metal ladder.</p>
+
+<p>As we climbed, I could hear the haunting melody of Mildred's wordless
+song coming faint across the distance. Once I glanced back for a
+moment, and glimpsed her tiny white figure above the black water, with
+the thousands of green antennae rising in a luminous forest about her.</p>
+
+<p>We reached the top of the cliff, where the opalescent river plunged
+down in the flaming fall. Ray chose convenient boulders for shelter
+and quickly we flung ourselves flat. Ray replaced the fired cartridges
+in the rifle and leveled it across the rock before him. I unslung the
+binoculars and focussed them.</p>
+
+<p>"Watch 'em close," Ray muttered. "And tell me when to shoot."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he black lake lay below us, with the weird city of sapphire cylinders
+on its floor. I got the glasses upon Mildred's white form. Soon she
+dived from the turquoise pedestal, swam swiftly ashore and vanished in
+the vivid fungous jungle. The wavering green antennae vanished below
+the water; I watched the crabs swimming away. Some of them climbed out
+of the water and lumbered off in various directions.</p>
+
+<p>In fifteen minutes the slender white form of Mildred appeared at the
+foot of the ladder. She sprang over the dead crabs and scrambled
+nimbly up. Soon she was halfway up the face of the cliff, and there
+had been no sign of discovery. My hopes ran high.</p>
+
+<p>I was sweeping the whole plain with the binoculars, while Ray peered
+through the telescopic sights of the rifle. Suddenly I saw a giant
+crab pause as he lumbered along the edge of the black lake. He rose
+upright; his shining green antennae wavered. Then I saw him reaching
+with a knobbed claw for a slender silver tube slung to his harness.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick! The one by the lake! To the right of that canal!"</p>
+
+<p>I pointed quickly. Ray swung his gun about, aimed. A broad red beam
+flashed from the tube the thing carried, and fell upon the cliff. The
+report of Ray's rifle rang thunderously in my ears. The red ray was
+snapped off abruptly, and the giant crab rolled over into the black
+water of the lake. Half a dozen of the huge crabs were in sight. They
+all took alarm, probably having seen the flash of the red ray. They
+raised grotesque heads, twisted stalked eyes and waved green antennae.
+Some of them began to raise the metal tubes of the heat-ray.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's get all there are in sight!" Ray muttered.</p>
+
+<p>He began firing regularly, with deliberate precision. A few times he
+had to take two shots, but ordinarily one was enough to bring down a
+giant crab in a writhing red mass. Three times a red ray flashed out,
+once at the girl clambering up the ladder, twice at our position above
+the precipice. But the intense color of the ray announced its source,
+and Ray stopped each before it could be focussed to do damage.</p>
+
+<p>I looked over at Mildred and saw that she was still climbing bravely,
+a little over a hundred feet below.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hen the great red crabs began to climb out of the water, heat-ray
+tubes grasped in their claws. Ray fired as fast as he could load and
+aim. Still he shot with deliberate care, and almost every shot was
+effective.</p>
+
+<p>Intense, ruby-red rays flashed up from the lake shore. Twice, one of
+them beat scorchingly upon us for a moment. Once a rock beside us was
+fused and cracked with the heat. But Ray fired rapidly, and the rays
+winked out as fast as they were born.</p>
+
+<p>He was powder-stained, black and grimy. The heat-ray had singed his
+clothing. He was dripping perspiration. The gun was so hot that he
+could hardly handle it. But still the angry bark of the rifle rang
+out, almost with a deliberate rhythm. Ray was a fine shot in his youth
+on his father's Arizona ranch, but his best shooting, I think, was
+done from above that cascade of liquid fire, at the hordes of monster
+scarlet crabs.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred scrambled over the edge, unharmed. Her breast was heaving, but
+her face was bright with joy.</p>
+
+<p>"You are wonderful!" she gasped to Ray.</p>
+
+<p>We seized the packs and beat a hurried retreat. A crimson forest of
+the heat-rays flashed up behind us, and flamed upon the black walls
+and roof of the cavern until glistening lava became incandescent,
+cracked and fused.</p>
+
+<p>We were below the line of the rays. Quickly we made the bend in the
+cavern and followed at a halting run up the path beside the shimmering
+river of opalescent light. Before us the torrent of fire fell in a
+magnificent flaming arc from the roof.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We rounded the pool of lambent milk of flame, passed the roaring
+torrent of coruscating liquid radiance and reached the ladder in the
+square, metal shaft. "If we can get to the top before they can get up
+here, we're safe," Ray said. "If we don't, this shaft will be a
+chimney of fire."</p>
+
+<p>In the haste of desperation, we attacked the thousand-foot climb. I
+went first, Mildred below me, and Ray, with the rifle, in the rear.
+Our heavy packs were a terrible impediment, but we dared not attempt
+to go on without them. The metal rungs were four feet apart; it was no
+easy task to scramble from one to the next, again and again, for
+hundreds of times.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t must have taken us an hour to make it. We should have been caught
+long before we reached the top, but the giant crabs were slow in their
+lumbering movements. Despite their evident intelligence, they seemed
+to lack anything like our railways and automobiles.</p>
+
+<p>The cold gray light of the polar sky came about us; a dull,
+purple-blue square grew larger above. I clambered over the last rung,
+flung myself across the top of the metal shaft. Looking down at the
+tiny fleck of white light so far below, I saw a bit of red move in it.</p>
+
+<p>"A crab!" I shouted. "Hurry!"</p>
+
+<p>Mildred was just below me. I took her pack and helped her over the
+edge.</p>
+
+<p>Red flame flared up the shaft.</p>
+
+<p>We reached over, seized Ray's arms and fairly jerked him out of the
+ruby ray.</p>
+
+<p>The bitterly cold wind struck our hot, perspiring bodies as we
+scrambled down the rungs outside the square metal shaft. Mildred
+shivered in her thin attire.</p>
+
+<p>"Out of the frying pan into the ice box!" Ray jested grimly as we
+dropped, to the frozen plain.</p>
+
+<p>Quickly we tore open our packs. Ray and I snatched out clothing and
+wrapped up the trembling girl. In a few minutes we had her snugly
+dressed in the fur garments that had been Major Meriden's. Then we got
+into the quilted garments we had made for ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>The intensely red heat-beam still flared up the shaft. Ray looked at
+it in satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll have it so hot they can't get up it for some time yet," he
+remarked hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>We shouldered our packs and set out over the wilderness of snow,
+turning our backs upon the metal-bound lake of fire, with the tall
+cone of iridescent flame rising in its center.</p>
+
+<p>The deep, purple-blue sky was clear, and, for a rarity, there was not
+much wind. I doubt that the temperature was twenty below. But it was a
+violent change from the warm cavern. Mildred was blue and shivering.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>n two hours the metal rim below the great white cone had vanished
+behind the black ice-crags. We passed near the wreck of Major
+Meriden's plane and reached our last camp, where we had left the tent
+sledge, primus stove, and most of our instruments. The tent was still
+stretched, though banked with snow. We got Mildred inside, chafed her
+hands, and soon had her comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>Then Ray went out and soon returned with a sealed tin of oil from the
+wrecked plane, with which he lit the primus stove. Soon the tent was
+warm. We melted snow and cooked thick red soup. After the girl had
+made a meal of the scalding soup, with the little golden cakes, she
+professed to be feeling as well as ever.</p>
+
+<p>"We can fix our plane!" Ray said. "There's a perfectly good prop on
+Meriden's plane!"</p>
+
+<p>We went back to the wreck, found the tools, and removed an undamaged
+propeller. This we packed on the sledge, with a good supply of fuel
+for the stove.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure we're safe now, so far as the crab-things go," he said. "I
+don't fancy they'd get around very well in the snow."</p>
+
+<p>In an hour we broke camp, and made ten miles of the distance back to
+the plane before we stopped. We were anxious about Mildred, but she
+seemed to stand the journey admirably; she is a marvelous physical
+specimen. She seemed running over with gay vivacity of spirit; she
+asked innumerable questions of the world which she had known only at
+second-hand from her mother's words.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he weather smiled on us during the march back to the plane as much as
+it had frowned on the terrible journey to the cone. We had an
+abundance of food and fuel, and we made it in eight easy stages. Once
+there was a light fall of snow, but the air was unusually warm and
+calm for the season.</p>
+
+<p>We found the plane safe. It was the work of but a short time to remove
+the broken propeller and replace it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> with the one we had brought from
+the wrecked ship. We warmed and started the engine, broke the skids
+loose from the ice, turned the plane around, and took off safely from
+the tiny scrap of smooth ice.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred seemed amazed and immensely delighted at the sensations of her
+first trip aloft.</p>
+
+<p>A few hours later we were landing beside the <i>Albatross</i>, in the
+leaden blue sea beyond the ice barrier. Bluff Captain Harper greeted
+us in amazed delight as we climbed to the deck.</p>
+
+<p>"You're just in time!" he said. "The relief expedition we landed came
+back a week ago. We had no idea you could still be alive, with only a
+week's provisions. We were sailing to-morrow. But tell us! What
+happened? Your passenger&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We just stopped to pick up my fiancee," Ray grinned. "Captain, may I
+present Miss Mildred Meriden? We'll be wanting you to marry us right
+away."</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE MENACE OF THE INSECT</h3>
+<p>It is possible that future study may tell man enough about insects to
+enable him to eradicate them. This, however, is more than can be
+reasonably expected, for the more we cultivate the earth the better we
+make conditions for these enemies. The insect thrives on the work of
+man. And having made conditions ideal for the insect, with great
+expanses of cultivated food fitted to his needs, it is an optimist who
+can believe that at the same time we can make other conditions which
+will be so unfavorable as to cause him to disappear completely. The
+two things do not go together.</p>
+
+<p>The insect is much better fitted for life than is man. He can survive
+long periods of famine, he can survive extremes of heat and cold. The
+insect produces great numbers of young which have no long period of
+infancy requiring the attention of the parents over a large part of
+their life. Every function of the insect is directed toward the
+propagation of the race and the use of minimum effort in every other
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>It is even possible in some cases, the water flea, for example, for
+the female to produce young without the necessity of fertilization by
+the male. In order to perform the necessary work to insure food
+supplies for the winter other insects have developed highly
+specialized workers, especially fitted to do particular kinds of
+labor. Ants and termites are in this class.</p>
+
+<p>If we examine the organization of insects closely we shall find but
+one point at which they are vulnerable. This is in their lack of
+ability to reason. True, there is considerable evidence to support the
+belief that some insects are capable of simple reasoning, but the
+development in this direction is only of the most elementary nature.
+As compared to man it is safe to say that they do not reason. They are
+guided by instinct.</p>
+
+<p>This again is the most efficient way to organize their affairs. It
+requires no long period of training. They can begin performing all
+their useful functions as soon as their bodily development makes it
+possible. No one need teach them how to catch their prey, how to build
+their nests or shelters. Instinct takes care of this. But this,
+obviously the best system in a world wholly governed by instinct, is
+not so desirable when the instinctively actuated insect encounters
+another form of life, as man, which is capable of reason. The
+reasoning individual can play all kinds of tricks on the individual
+who is actuated by instinct.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image_011.jpg" width="500" height="471" alt="My whole attention was focused upon the strange
+beings." title="" />
+<span class="caption">My whole attention was focused upon the strange
+beings.</span>
+</div>
+<h2><a name="The_Ghost_World" id="The_Ghost_World"></a>The Ghost World</h2>
+
+<h3><i>By Sewell Peaslee Wright</i></h3>
+<div class="sidenote">Commander John Hanson records another of his thrilling
+interplanetary adventures with the Special Patrol Service.</div>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp; was asleep when our danger was discovered, but I knew the instant
+the attention signal sounded that the situation was serious. Kincaide,
+my second officer, had a cool head, and he would not have called me
+except in a tremendous emergency.</p>
+
+<p>"Hanson speaking!" I snapped into the microphone. "What's up, Mr.
+Kincaide?"</p>
+
+<p>"A field of meteorites sweeping into our path, sir." Kincaide's voice
+was tense. "I have altered our course as much as I dared and am
+reducing speed at emergency rate, but this is the largest swarm of
+meteorites I have ever seen. I am afraid that we must pass through at
+least a section of it."</p>
+
+<p>"With you in a moment, Mr. Kincaide!" I dropped the microphone and
+snatched up my robe, knotting its cord about me as I hurried out of my
+stateroom. In those days, interplanetary ships did not have their
+auras of repulsion rays to protect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> them from meteorites, it must be
+remembered. Two skins of metal were all that lay between the <i>Ertak</i>
+and all the dangers of space.</p>
+
+<p>I took the companionway to the navigating room two steps at a time and
+fairly burst into the room.</p>
+
+<p>Kincaide was crouched over the two charts that pictured the space
+around us, microphone pressed to his lips. Through the plate glass
+partition I could see the men in the operating room tensed over their
+wheels and levers and dials. Kincaide glanced up as I entered, and
+motioned with his free hand towards the charts.</p>
+
+<p>One glance convinced me that he had not overestimated our danger. The
+space to right and left, and above and below, was fairly peppered with
+tiny pricks of greenish light that moved slowly across the milky faces
+of the charts.</p>
+
+<p>From the position of the ship, represented as a glowing red spark, and
+measuring the distances roughly by means of the fine black lines
+graved in both directions upon the surface of the chart, it was
+evident to any understanding observer that disaster of a most terrible
+kind was imminent.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_k.jpg" alt="K" width="50" height="52" /></div>
+
+<p>incaide muttered into his microphone, and out of the tail of my eye I
+could see his orders obeyed on the instant by the men in the operating
+room. I could feel the peculiar, sickening surge that told of speed
+being reduced, and the course being altered, but the cold, brutally
+accurate charts before me assured me that no action we dared take
+would save us from the meteorites.</p>
+
+<p>"We're in for it, Mr. Kincaide. Continue to reduce speed as much as
+possible, and keep bearing away, as at present. I believe we can avoid
+the thickest portion of the field, but we shall have to take our
+chances with the fringe."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir!" said Kincaide, without lifting his eyes from the chart.
+His voice was calm and businesslike, now; with the responsibility on
+my shoulders, as commander, he was the efficient, level-headed
+thinking machine that had endeared him to me as both fellow-officer
+and friend.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the charts to Kincaide, I sounded the general emergency
+signal, calling every man and officer of the <i>Ertak's</i> crew to his
+post, and began giving orders through the microphone.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Correy,"&mdash;Correy was my first officer&mdash;"please report at once to
+the navigating room. Mr. Hendricks, make the rounds of all duty posts,
+please, and give special attention to the disintegrator ray operators.
+The ray generators are to be started at once, full speed." Hendricks,
+I might say, was a junior officer, and a very good one, although
+quick-tempered and excitable&mdash;failings of youth. He had only recently
+shipped with us to replace Anderson Croy, who&mdash;but that has already
+been recorded.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> "The Dark Side of Antri," in the January, 1931, issue of
+Astounding Stories.</p></div>
+
+<p>These preparations made, I glanced at the twin charts again. The
+peppering of tiny green lights, each of which represented a meteoritic
+body, had definitely shifted in relation to the position of the
+strongly-glowing red spark that was the <i>Ertak</i>, but a quick
+comparison of the two charts showed that we would be certain to pass
+through&mdash;again I use land terms to make my meaning clear&mdash;the upper
+right fringe of the field.</p>
+
+<p>The great cluster of meteorites was moving in the same direction as
+ourselves now; Kincaide's change of course had settled that matter
+nicely. Naturally, this was the logical course, since should we come
+in contact with any of them, the impact would bear a relation to only
+the <i>difference</i> in our speeds, instead of the <i>sum</i>, as would be the
+case if we struck at a wide angle.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was difficult to stand without grasping a support of some kind, and
+walking was almost impossible, for the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>reduction of our tremendous
+speed, and even the slightest change of direction, placed terrific
+strains upon the ship and everything in it. Space ships, at space
+speeds, must travel like the old-fashioned bullets if those within are
+to feel at ease.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe, Mr. Kincaide, it might be well to slightly increase the
+power in the gravity pads," I suggested. Kincaide nodded and spoke
+briefly into his microphone; an instant later I felt my weight
+increase perhaps fifty per cent, and despite the inertia of my body,
+opposed to both the change in speed and direction of the <i>Ertak</i>, I
+could now stand without support, and could walk without too much
+difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>The door of the navigating room was flung open, and Correy entered,
+his face alight with curiosity and eagerness. An emergency meant
+danger, and few beings in the universe have loved danger more than
+Correy.</p>
+
+<p>"We're in for it, Mr. Correy," I said, with a nod towards the charts.
+"Swarm of meteorites, and we can't avoid them."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we've dodged through them before, sir," smiled Correy. "We can
+do it again."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so, but this is the largest field of them I have ever seen.
+Look at the charts: they're thicker than flies."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_c.jpg" alt="C" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>orrey glanced at the charts, slapped Kincaide across his bowed, tense
+shoulders, and laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"Trust the old <i>Ertak</i> to worm her way through, sir," he said. "The
+ray crews are on duty, I presume?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But I doubt that the rays will be of much assistance to us.
+Particularly if these are stony meteorites&mdash;and as you know, the odds
+are about ten to one against their being of ferrous composition. The
+rays, deducting the losses due to the utter lack of a conducting
+medium, will be insufficient protection. They will help, of course.
+The iron meteorites they will take care of effectively, but the
+conglomerate nature of the stony meteorites does not make them
+particularly susceptible to the disintegrating rays.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall do what we can, but our success will depend largely upon
+good luck&mdash;or Divine Providence."</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate, sir," replied Correy, and his voice had lost some of its
+lightness, "we are upon routine patrol and not upon special mission.
+If we do crack up, there is no emergency call that will remain
+unanswered."</p>
+
+<p>"No," I said dryly. "There will be just another 'Lost in Space' report
+in the records of the Service, and the <i>Ertak's</i> name will go up on
+the tablet of lost ships. In any case, we have done and shall do what
+we can. In ten minutes we shall know all there is to know. That about
+right, Mr. Kincaide?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ten minutes?" Kincaide studied the charts with narrowed eyes,
+mentally balancing distance and speed. "We should be within the danger
+area in about that length of time, sir," he answered. "And out of
+it&mdash;if we come out&mdash;three or four minutes later."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll come out of it," said Correy positively.</p>
+
+<p>I walked heavily across the room and studied the charts again. Space
+above and below, to the right and the left of us, was powdered with
+the green points of light.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_c.jpg" alt="C" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>orrey joined me, his feet thumping with the unaccustomed weight given
+him by the increase in gravity. As he bent over the charts, I heard
+him draw in his breath sharply.</p>
+
+<p>Kincaide looked up. Correy looked up. I looked up. The glance of each
+man swept the faces, read the eyes, of the other two. Then, with one
+accord, we all three glanced up at the clocks&mdash;more properly, at the
+twelve-figured dial of the Earth clock, for none of us had any great
+love for the metric Universal system of time-keeping.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes.... Less than that, now.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Correy," I said, as calmly as I could, "you will relieve Mr.
+Kincaide<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> as navigating officer. Mr. Kincaide, present my compliments
+to Mr. Hendricks, and ask him to explain the situation to the crew.
+You will instruct the disintegrator ray operators in their duties, and
+take charge of their activities. Start operation at your discretion;
+you understand the necessity."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir!" Kincaide saluted sharply, and I returned his salute. We
+did not shake hands, the Earth gesture of&mdash;strangely enough&mdash;both
+greeting and farewell, but we both realized that this might well be a
+final parting. The door closed behind him, and Correy and I were left
+together to watch the creeping hands of the Earth clock, the twin
+charts with their thick spatter of green lights, and the two fiery red
+sparks, one on each chart, that represented the <i>Ertak</i> sweeping
+recklessly towards the swarming danger ahead.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>n other accounts of my experiences in the Special Patrol Service I
+feel that I have written too much about myself. After all, I have run
+my race; a retired commander of the Service, and an old, old man, with
+the century mark well behind me, my only use is to record, in this
+fashion, some of those things the Service accomplished in the old days
+when the worlds of the Universe were strange to each other, and space
+travel was still an adventure to many.</p>
+
+<p>The Universe is not interested in old men; it is concerned only with
+youth and action. It forgets that once we were young men, strong,
+impetuous, daring. It forgets what we did; but that has always been
+so. It always will be so. John Hanson, retired Commander of the
+Special Patrol Service, is fit only to amuse the present generation
+with his tales of bygone days.</p>
+
+<p>Well, so be it. I am content. I have lived greatly; certainly I would
+not exchange my memories of those bold, daring days even for youth and
+strength again, had I to live that youth and waste that strength in
+this softened, gilded age.</p>
+
+<p>But no more of this; it is too easy for an old man to rumble on about
+himself. It is only the young John Hanson, Commander of the <i>Ertak</i>,
+who can interest those who may pick up and read what I am writing
+here.</p>
+
+<p>I did not waste the minutes measured by that clock, grouped with our
+other instruments in the navigating room of the <i>Ertak</i>. I wrote
+hastily in the ship's log, stating the facts briefly and without
+feeling. If we came through, the log would read better thus; if not,
+and by some strange chance it came to human eyes, then the Universe
+would know at least that the <i>Ertak's</i> officers did not flinch from
+even such a danger.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>s I finished the entry, Correy spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"Kincaide's estimate was not far off, sir," he said, with a swift
+glance at the clock. "Here we go!" It was less than half a minute
+short of the ten estimated by Kincaide.</p>
+
+<p>I nodded and bent over the television disc&mdash;one of the huge, hooded
+affairs we used in those days. Widening the field to the greatest
+angle, and with low power, I inspected the space before us on all
+sides.</p>
+
+<p>The charts, operated by super-radio reflexes, had not lied about the
+danger into which we were passing&mdash;had passed. We were in the midst of
+a veritable swarm of meteorites of all sizes.</p>
+
+<p>They were not large; I believe the largest I saw had a mass of not
+more than three or four times that of the <i>Ertak</i> herself. Some of the
+smaller bodies were only fifty or sixty feet in diameter.</p>
+
+<p>They were jagged and irregular in shape, and they seemed to spin at
+varying speeds, like tiny worlds.</p>
+
+<p>As I watched, fixing my view now on the space directly in our path, I
+saw that our disintegrator ray men were at work. Deep in the bowels of
+the <i>Ertak</i>, the moan of the ray generators had deepened in note; I
+could even feel the slight vibration beneath my feet.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One of the meteorites slowly crumbled on top, the dust of
+disintegration hovering in a compact mass about the body. More and
+more of it melted away. The spinning motion grew irregular, eccentric,
+as the center of gravity was changed by the action of the ray.</p>
+
+<p>Another ray, two more, centered on the wobbling mass. It was directly
+in our path, looming up larger and larger every second.</p>
+
+<p>Faster and faster it melted, the rays eating into it from four sides.
+But it was perilously near now; I had to reduce power in order to keep
+all of it within the field of my disc. If&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The thing vanished before the very nose of the ship, not an instant
+too soon. I glanced up at the surface temperature indicator, and saw
+the big black hand move slowly for a degree or two, and stop. It was a
+very sensitive instrument, and registered even the slight friction of
+our passage through the disintegrated dust of the meteorite.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_o.jpg" alt="O" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ur rays were working desperately, but disintegrator rays are not
+nearly so effective in space as in an atmosphere of some kind. Half a
+dozen times it seemed that we must crash head on into one of the
+flying bodies, but our speed was reduced now to such an extent that we
+were going but little faster than the meteorites, and this fact was
+all that saved us. We had more time for utilizing our rays.</p>
+
+<p>We nosed upward through the trailing fringe of the swarm in safety.
+The great field of meteorites was now below and ahead of us. We had
+won through! The <i>Ertak</i> was safe, and&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There seems to be another directly above us, sir," commented Correy
+quietly, speaking for the first time since we had entered the area of
+danger. "I believe your disc is not picking it up."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Correy," I said. While operating on an entirely
+different principle, his two charts had certain very definite
+advantages: they showed the entire space around us, instead of but a
+portion.</p>
+
+<p>I picked up the meteorite he had mentioned without difficulty. It was
+a large body, about three times the mass of the <i>Ertak</i>, and some
+distance above us&mdash;a laggard in the group we had just eluded.</p>
+
+<p>"Will it coincide with our path at any point, Mr. Correy?" I asked
+doubtfully. The television disc could not, of course, give me this
+information.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe so; yes," replied Correy, frowning over his charts. "Are
+the rays on it, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. All of them, I judge, but they are making slow work of it." I
+fell silent, bending lower over the great hooded disc.</p>
+
+<p>There were a dozen, a score of rays playing upon the surface of the
+meteorite. A halo of dust hung around the rapidly diminishing body,
+but still the mass melted all too slowly.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_p.jpg" alt="P" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ressing the attention signal for Kincaide, I spoke sharply into the
+microphone:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Kincaide, is every ray on that large meteorite above us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," he replied instantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Full power?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; carry on, Mr. Kincaide." I turned to Correy; he had just
+glanced from his charts to the clock, with its jerking second hand,
+and back to his charts.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll have to do it in the next ten seconds, sir," he said.
+"Otherwise&mdash;" Correy shrugged, and his eyes fixed with a peculiar,
+fascinated stare on the charts. He was looking death squarely in the
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Ten seconds! It was not enough. I had watched the rays working, and I
+knew their power to disintegrate this death-dealing stone that was
+hurtling along above us while we rose, helplessly, into its path.</p>
+
+<p>I did not ask Correy if it was possible to alter the course enough,
+and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> quickly enough, to avoid that fateful path. Had it been possible
+without tearing the <i>Ertak</i> to pieces with the strain of it, Correy
+would have done it seconds ago.</p>
+
+<p>I glanced up swiftly at the relentless, jerking second hand. Seven
+seconds gone! Three seconds more.</p>
+
+<p>The rays were doing all that could be expected of them. There was only
+a tiny fragment of the meteorite left, and it was dwindling swiftly.
+But our time was passing even more rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>The bit of rock loomed up at me from the disc. It seemed to fly up
+into my face, to meet me.</p>
+
+<p>"Got us, Correy!" I said hoarsely. "Good-by, old-man!"</p>
+
+<p>I think he tried to reply. I saw his lips open; the flash of the
+bright light from the ethon tubes on his big white teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a crash that shook the whole ship. I shot into the air.
+I remember falling ... terribly.</p>
+
+<p>A blinding flash of light that emanated from the very center of my
+brain, a sickening sense of utter catastrophe, and ... blackness.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;think I was conscious several seconds before I finally opened my
+eyes. My mind was still wandering; my thoughts kept flying around in
+huge circles that kept closing in.</p>
+
+<p>We had hit the meteorite. I remembered the crash. I remembered
+falling. I remembered striking my head.</p>
+
+<p>But I was still alive. There was air to breathe and there was firm
+material under me. I opened my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>For the first instant, it seemed I was in an utterly strange room.
+Nothing was familiar. Everything was&mdash;was <i>inverted</i>. Then I glanced
+upward, and I saw what had happened.</p>
+
+<p>I was lying on the ceiling of the navigating room. Over my head were
+the charts, still glowing, the chronometers in their gimballed beds,
+and the television disc. Beside me, sprawled out limply, was Correy, a
+trickle of dried blood on his cheek. A litter of papers, chairs,
+framed licenses and other movable objects were strewn on and around
+us.</p>
+
+<p>My first instinctive, foolish thought was that the ship was upside
+down. Man has a ground-trained mind, no matter how many years he may
+travel space. Then, of course, I realized that in the open void there
+is not top nor bottom; the illusion is supplied, in space ships, by
+the gravity pads. Somehow, the shock of impact had reversed the
+polarity of the leads to the pads, and they had become repulsion pads.
+That was why I had dropped from the floor to the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>All this flashed through my mind in an instant as I dragged myself
+toward Correy. Dragged myself because my head was throbbing so that I
+dared not stand up, and one shoulder, my left, was numb.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>or an instant I thought that Correy was dead. Then, as I bent over
+him, I saw a pulse leaping just under the angle of his jaw.</p>
+
+<p>"Correy, old man!" I whispered. "Do you hear me?" All the formality of
+the Service was forgotten for the time. "Are you hurt badly?"</p>
+
+<p>His eyelids flickered, and he sighed; then, suddenly, he looked up at
+me&mdash;and smiled!</p>
+
+<p>"We're still here, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"After a fashion. Look around; see what's happened?"</p>
+
+<p>He glanced about curiously, frowning. His wits were not all with him
+yet.</p>
+
+<p>"We're in a mess, aren't we?" he grinned. "What's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>I told him what I thought, and he nodded slowly, feeling his head
+tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"How long ago did it happen?" he asked. "The blooming clock's upside
+down; can you read it?"</p>
+
+<p>I could&mdash;with an effort.</p>
+
+<p>"Over twenty minutes," I said. "I wonder how the rest of the men are?"</p>
+
+<p>With an effort, I got to my feet and peered into the operating room.
+Sev<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>eral of the men were moving about, dazedly, and as I signalled to
+them, reassuringly, a voice hailed us from the doorway:</p>
+
+<p>"Any orders, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>It was Kincaide. He was peering over what had been the top of the
+doorway, and he was probably the most disreputable-looking officer who
+had ever worn the blue-and-silver uniform of the Service. His nose was
+bloody and swollen to twice its normal size. Both eyes were blackened,
+and his hair, matted with blood, was plastered in ragged swirls across
+his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Kincaide; plenty of them. Round up enough of the men to
+locate the trouble with the gravity pads; there's a reversed
+connection somewhere. But don't let them make the repairs until the
+signal is given. Otherwise, we'll all fall on our heads again. Mr.
+Correy and I will take care of the injured."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he next half hour was a trying one. Two men had been killed outright,
+and another died before we could do anything to save him. Every man in
+the crew was shaken up and bruised, but by the time the check was
+completed, we had a good half of our personnel on duty.</p>
+
+<p>Returning at last to the navigating room, I pressed the attention
+signal for Kincaide, and got his answer immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"Located the trouble yet, Mr. Kincaide?" I asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir! Mr. Hendricks has been working with a group of men and has
+just made his report. They are ready when you are."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" I drew a sigh of relief. It had been easier than I thought.
+Pressing the general attention signal, I broadcasted the warning,
+giving particular instructions to the men in charge of the injured.
+Then I issued orders to Hendricks:</p>
+
+<p>"Reverse the current in five seconds, Mr. Hendricks, and stand by for
+further instructions."</p>
+
+<p>Hastily, then, Correy and I followed the orders we had given the men.
+Briefly we stood on our heads against the wall, feeling very foolish,
+and dreading the fall we knew was coming.</p>
+
+<p>It came. We slid down the wall and lit heavily on our feet, while the
+litter that had been on the ceiling with us fell all around us.
+Miraculously, the ship seemed to have righted herself. Correy and I
+picked ourselves up and looked around.</p>
+
+<p>"We're still operating smoothly," I commented with a sweeping glance
+at the instruments over the operating table. "Everything seems in
+order."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you notice the speed indicator, sir?" asked Correy grimly. "When
+he fell, one of the men in the operating room must have pulled the
+speed lever all the way over. We're at maximum space speed, sir, and
+have been for nearly an hour, with no one at the controls."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e stared at each other dully. Nearly an hour, at maximum space
+speed&mdash;a speed seldom used except in case of great emergency. With no
+one at the controls, and the ship set at maximum deflection from her
+course.</p>
+
+<p>That meant that for nearly an hour we had been sweeping into infinite
+space in a great arc, at a speed I disliked to think about.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll work out our position at once," I said, "and in the meantime,
+reduce speed to normal as quickly as possible. We must get back on our
+course at the earliest possible moment."</p>
+
+<p>We hurried across to the charts that were our most important aides in
+proper navigation. By comparing the groups of stars there with our
+space charts of the universe, the working out of our position was
+ordinarily, a simple matter.</p>
+
+<p>But now, instead of milky rectangles, ruled with fine black lines,
+with a fiery red speck in the center and the bodies of the universe
+grouped around in green points of light, there were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> only nearly blank
+rectangles, shot through with vague, flickering lights that revealed
+nothing except the presence of disaster.</p>
+
+<p>"The meteoric fragment wiped out some of our plates, I imagine," said
+Correy slowly. "The thing's useless."</p>
+
+<p>I nodded, staring down at the crawling lights on the charts.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have to set down for repairs, Mr. Correy. If," I added, "we can
+find a place."</p>
+
+<p>Correy glanced up at the attraction meter.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take a look in the big disc," he suggested. "There's a sizeable
+body off to port. Perhaps our luck's changed."</p>
+
+<p>He bent his head under the big hood, adjusting the controls until he
+located the source of the registered attraction.</p>
+
+<p>"Right!" he said, after a moment's careful scrutiny. "She's as big as
+Earth, I'd venture, and I believe I can detect clouds, so there should
+be atmosphere. Shall we try it, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. We're helpless until we make repairs. As big as Earth, you said?
+Is she familiar?"</p>
+
+<p>Correy studied the image under the hood again, long and carefully.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," he said, looking up and shaking his head. "She's a new one
+on me."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_c.jpg" alt="C" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>onning the ship first by means of the television disc, and navigating
+visually as we neared the strange sphere, we were soon close enough to
+make out the physical characteristics of this unknown world.</p>
+
+<p>Our spectroscopic tests had revealed the presence of atmosphere
+suitable for breathing, although strongly laden with mineral fumes
+which, while possibly objectionable, would probably not be dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>So far as we could see, there was but one continent, somewhat north of
+the equator, roughly triangular in shape, with its northernmost point
+reaching nearly to the Pole.</p>
+
+<p>"It's an unexplored world, sir. I'm certain of that," said Correy. "I
+am sure I would have remembered that single, triangular continent had
+I seen it on any of our charts." In those days, of course, the
+Universe was by no means so well mapped as it is today.</p>
+
+<p>"If not unknown, it is at least uncharted," I replied. "Rough looking
+country, isn't it? No sign of life, either, that the disc will
+reveal."</p>
+
+<p>"That's as well, sir. Better no people than wild natives who might
+interfere with our work. Any choice in the matter of a spot on which
+to set her down?"</p>
+
+<p>I inspected the great, triangular continent carefully. Towards the
+north it was a mass of snow covered mountains, some of them, from
+their craters, dead volcanoes. Long spurs of these ranges reached
+southward, with green and apparently fertile valleys between. The
+southern edge was covered with dense tropical vegetation; a veritable
+jungle.</p>
+
+<p>"At the base of that central spur there seems to be a sort of
+plateau," I suggested. "I believe that would be a likely spot."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, sir," replied Correy, and the old <i>Ertak</i>, reduced to
+atmospheric speed, swiftly swept toward the indicated position, while
+Correy kept a wary eye on the surface temperature gauge, and I swept
+the terrain for any sign of intelligent life.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;found a number of trails, particularly around the base of the
+foothills, but they were evidently game trails, for there were no
+dwelling places of any kind; no cities, no villages, not even a single
+habitation of any kind that the searching eyes of the disc could
+detect.</p>
+
+<p>Correy set her down as neatly and as softly as a rose petal drifts to
+the ground. Roses, I may add, are a beautiful and delicate flower,
+with very soft petals, peculiar to my native Earth.</p>
+
+<p>We opened the main exit immediately. I watched the huge, circular door
+back slowly out of its threads, and finally swing aside, swiftly and
+silently,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> in the grip of its mighty gimbals, with the weird,
+unearthly feeling I have always had when about to step foot on some
+strange star where no man has trod before.</p>
+
+<p>The air was sweet, and delightfully fresh after being cooped up for
+weeks in the <i>Ertak</i>, with her machine-made air. A little thinner, I
+should judge, than the air to which we were accustomed, but strangely
+exhilarating, and laden with a faint scent of some unknown
+constituent&mdash;undoubtedly the mineral element our spectroscope had
+revealed but not identified. Gravity, I found upon passing through the
+exit, was normal. Altogether an extremely satisfactory repair station.</p>
+
+<p>Correy's guess as to what had happened proved absolutely accurate.
+Along the top of the <i>Ertak</i>, from amidships to within a few feet of
+her pointed stem, was a jagged groove that had destroyed hundreds of
+the bright, coppery discs, set into the outer skin of the ship, that
+operated our super-radio reflex charts. The groove was so deep, in
+places, that it must have bent the outer skin of the <i>Ertak</i> down
+against the inner skin. A foot or more&mdash;it was best not to think of
+what would have happened then.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>y the time we completed our inspection dusk was upon us&mdash;a long,
+lingering dusk, due, no doubt, to the afterglow resulting from the
+mineral content of the air. I'm no white-skinned, stoop-shouldered
+laboratory man, so I'm not sure that was the real reason. It sounds
+logical, however.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Correy, I think we shall break out our field equipment and give
+all men not on watch an opportunity to sleep out in the fresh air," I
+said. "Will you give the orders, please?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. Mr. Hendricks will stand the eight to twelve watch as
+usual?"</p>
+
+<p>I nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Kincaide will relieve him at midnight, and you will take over at
+four."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, sir." Correy turned to give the orders, and in a few
+minutes an orderly array of shelter tents made a single street in
+front of the fat, dully-gleaming side of the <i>Ertak</i>. Our tents were
+at the head of this short company street, three of them in a little
+row.</p>
+
+<p>After the evening meal, cooked over open fires, with the smoke of the
+very resinous wood we had collected hanging comfortably in the still
+air, the men gave themselves up to boisterous, noisy games, which, I
+confess, I should have liked very much to participate in. They raced
+and tumbled around the two big fires like schoolboys on a lark. Only
+those who have spent most of their days in the metal belly of a space
+ship know the sheer joy of utter physical freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Correy, Kincaide and I sat before our tents and watched them, chatting
+about this and that&mdash;I have long since forgotten what. But I shall
+never forget what occurred just before the watch changed that night.
+Nor will any man of the <i>Ertak's</i> crew.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was just a few minutes before midnight. The men had quieted down
+and were preparing to turn in. I had given orders that this first
+night they could suit themselves about retiring; a good officer, and I
+tried to be one, is never afraid to give good men a little rein, now
+and then.</p>
+
+<p>The fires had died down to great heaps of red coals, filmed with
+ashes, and, aside from the brilliant galaxy of stars overhead, there
+was no light from above. Either this world had no moons, not even a
+single moon, like my native Earth, or it had not yet arisen.</p>
+
+<p>Kincaide rose lazily, stretched himself, and glanced at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"Seven till twelve, sir," he said. "I believe I'll run along and
+relieve&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He never finished that sentence. From somewhere there came a rushing
+sound, and a damp, stringy net, a living, horrible, <i>something</i>,
+descended upon us out of the night.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In an instant, what had been an orderly encampment became a bedlam. I
+tried to fight against the stringy, animated, nearly intangible mass,
+or masses, that held me, but my arms, my legs, my whole body, was
+bound as with strings and loops of elastic bands.</p>
+
+<p>Strange whispering sounds filled the air, audible above the shouting
+of the men. The net about me grew tighter; I felt myself being lifted
+from the ground. Others were being treated the same way; one of the
+<i>Ertak's</i> crew shot straight up, not a dozen feet away, writhing and
+squirming. Then, at an elevation of perhaps twice my height, he was
+hurried away.</p>
+
+<p>Hendrick's voice called out my name from the <i>Ertak's</i> exit, and I
+shouted a warning:</p>
+
+<p>"Hendrick! Go back! Close the emergency&mdash;" Then a gluey mass cut
+across my mouth, and, as though carried on huge soft springs, I was
+hurried away, with the sibilant, whispering sounds louder and closer
+than ever. With me, as nearly as I could judge, went every man who had
+not been on duty in the ship.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;ceased struggling, and immediately the rubbery network about me
+loosened. It seemed to me that the whisperings about me were suddenly
+approving. We were in the grip, then, of some sort of intelligent
+beings, ghost-like and invisible though they were.</p>
+
+<p>After a time, during which we were all, in a ragged group, being borne
+swiftly towards the mountains, all at a common level from the ground,
+I managed to turn my head so that I could see, against the star-lit
+sky, something of the nature of the things that had made us captive.</p>
+
+<p>As is not infrequently the case, in trying to describe things of an
+utterly different world, I find myself at a loss for words. I think of
+jellyfish, such as inhabit the seas of most of the inhabited planets,
+and yet this is not a good description.</p>
+
+<p>These creatures were pale, and almost completely transparent. What
+their forms might be, I could not even guess. I could make out
+writhing, tentacle-like arms, and wrinkled, flabby excrudescences and
+that was all. That these creatures were huge, was evident from the
+fact that they, apparently walking, from the irregular, undulating
+motion, held us easily ten or a dozen feet from the ground.</p>
+
+<p>With the release of the pressure about my body I was able to talk
+again, and I called out to Correy, who was fighting his way along,
+muttering, angrily, just ahead of me.</p>
+
+<p>"Correy! No use fighting them. Save your strength, man!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then? What are they, in God's name? What spawn of hell&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The Commander is right, Correy," interrupted Kincaide, who was not
+far from my first officer. "Let's get our breaths and try to figure
+out what's happened. I'm winded!" His voice gave plentiful evidence of
+the struggle he had put up.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to know where I'm going, and why!" growled Correy, ceasing his
+struggling, nevertheless. "What have us? Are they fish or flesh or
+fowl?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think we shall know before very long, Correy," I replied. "Look
+ahead!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he bearers of the men in the fore part of the group had apparently
+stopped before a shadowy wall, like the face of a cliff. Rapidly, the
+rest of us were brought up, until we were in a compact group, some in
+sitting positions, some upside down, the majority reclining on back or
+side. The whispering sound now was intense and excited, as though our
+strange bearers awaited some momentous happening.</p>
+
+<p>I took advantage of the opportunity to speak very briefly to my
+companions.</p>
+
+<p>"Men, I'll admit frankly that I don't know what we're up against," I
+said. "But I do know this: we'll come out on top of the heap. Conserve
+your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> strength, keep your eyes open, and be prepared to obey,
+instantly, any orders that may be issued: I know that last remark is
+not needed. If any of you should see or learn something of interest or
+value, report at once to Mr. Correy, Mr. Kincaide or my&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A simultaneous, involuntary exclamation from the men interrupted me,
+and it was not surprising that this was so, for the wall before us had
+suddenly opened, and there was a great burst of yellow light in our
+faces. A strong odor, like the faint scent we had first noticed in the
+air, but infinitely more powerful, struck our nostrils, but I was not
+conscious of the fact for several seconds. My whole attention, my
+every startled thought, was focused upon the group of strange beings,
+silhouetted against the glowing light, that stood in the opening.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>magine, if you can, a huge globe, perhaps eight feet in diameter,
+flattened slightly at the bottom, and supported on six short, huge
+stumps, like the feet of an elephant, and topped by an excrudescence
+like a rounded coning tower, merging into the globular body. From
+points slightly below this excrudescence, visualize six long, limp
+tentacles, so long that they drop from the equators of these animated
+spheres, and trail on the ground. Now you have some conception of the
+beings that stood before us.</p>
+
+<p>A sharp, sibilant whispering came from one of these figures, to be
+answered in an eager chorus from our bearers. There was a reply like a
+command, and the group in the doorway marched forward. One by one
+these visible tentacles wrapped themselves around a member of the
+<i>Ertak's</i> crew, each one of the globular creatures bearing one of us.</p>
+
+<p>I heard a disappointed whisper go up from the outer darkness where,
+but a moment before, we had been. Then there was a grating sound, and
+a thud as the stone doorway was rolled back into place.</p>
+
+<p>The entrance was sealed. We were prisoners indeed!</p>
+
+<p>"All right, now what?" gritted Correy. "God! If I ever get a hand
+loose!"</p>
+
+<p>Swiftly, each of us held above the head-like excrudescence atop the
+globular body of the thing that held us, we were carried down a
+widening rocky corridor, towards the source of the yellow light that
+beat about us.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he passage led to a great cavern, irregular in shape, and apparently
+possessed of numerous other outlets which converged here.</p>
+
+<p>I am not certain as to the size of the cavern, save that it was great,
+and that the roof was so high in most sections that it was lost in
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>The great cavern was nearly filled with creatures similar to those
+which were bearing us, and they fell back in orderly passage to permit
+our conductors to pass.</p>
+
+<p>I could see, now, that the hump atop each rounded body was a travesty
+of a head, hairless, and without a neck. Their features were
+particularly hideous, and I shall pass over a description as rapidly
+as possible.</p>
+
+<p>The eyes were round, and apparently lidless; a pale drab or bluff in
+color. Instead of a nose, as, we understand the term, they had a
+convoluted rosette in the center of the face, not unlike the olfactory
+organ of a bat. Their ears were placed as are ours, but were of thin,
+pale parchment, and hugged the side of the head tightly. Instead of a
+mouth, there was a slightly depressed oval of fluttering skin near the
+point where the head melted into the rounded body: the rapid
+fluttering or vibration of this skin produced the whispering sound I
+have already remarked.</p>
+
+<p>The cavern, as I have said, was flooded with yellow light, which came
+from a great column of fire near the center of the clear space. I had
+no opportunity to inspect the exact arrangements but from what I did
+see, I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> judged that this flame was fed by some sort of highly
+inflammable substance, not unlike crude oil, except that it burned
+clearly and without smoke. This substance was conducted to the font
+from which the flame leaped by means of a large pipe of hollow reed or
+wood.</p>
+
+<p>At the far end of the cavern a procession entered from one of the
+passages&mdash;nine figures similar to those which bore us, save that by
+the greater darkness of their skin, and the wrinkles upon both face
+and body, I judged these to be older than the rest. From the respect
+with which they were treated, and the dignity of their movements, I
+gathered that these were persons of authority, a surmise which quickly
+verified itself.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hese nine elders arranged themselves, standing, in the form of a
+semicircle, the center creature standing a pace or two in front of the
+others. At a whispered command, we were all dumped unceremoniously on
+the floor of the cavern before this august council of nine.</p>
+
+<p>Nine pairs of fish-like, unblinking eyes inspected us, whether with
+enmity or otherwise; I could not determine. One of the nine spoke
+briefly to one of our conductors, and received an even more brief
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>I felt the gaze of the creature in the center fix on me. I had taken
+my proper position in front of my men; he apparently recognized me as
+the leader of the group.</p>
+
+<p>In a sharp whisper, he addressed me; I gathered from the tone that he
+uttered a command, but I could only shake my head in response. No
+words could convey thought from his mind to mine&mdash;but we did have a
+means of communication at hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Correy," I said, "your menore, please!" I released my own from
+the belt which held it, along with the other expeditionary equipment
+which we always wore when outside our ship, and placed it in position
+upon my head, motioning for one of the nine to do likewise with
+Correy's menore.</p>
+
+<p>They watched me suspiciously, despite my attempt to convey, by gestures,
+that by means of these instruments we could convey thoughts to each other.
+The menores of those days were bulky, heavy things, and undoubtedly they
+looked dangerous to these creatures: thought-transference instruments at
+that time were complicated affairs.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>owever, I must have made myself partially understood, at least, for
+the chief of the nine uttered a whispered command to one of the beings
+who had borne us to the large cavern, and motioned with a writhing
+gesture of one tentacle that I was to place the menore upon this
+creature's head.</p>
+
+<p>"The old boy's playing it safe, sir," muttered Correy, chuckling.
+"Wants to try it out on the dog first."</p>
+
+<p>"Right!" I nodded, and, not without difficulty, placed the other
+menore upon the rounded dome of the individual selected for the trial.</p>
+
+<p>Both instruments were adjusted to full power, and I concentrated my
+mental energy upon the simple pictures that I thought I could convey
+to the limited mentality of which I suspected these creatures,
+watching his fishy eyes the while.</p>
+
+<p>It was several seconds before he realized what was happening; then he
+began talking excitedly to the waiting nine. The words fairly burned
+themselves in my consciousness, but of course were utterly
+unintelligible to me. Before the creature had finished, a lash-like
+tentacle shot out from the chief of the nine and removed the menore; a
+moment later it reposed, at a rather rakish slant, on the shining dome
+of its new possessor.</p>
+
+<p>"Get anything, sir?" asked Correy in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet. I'm trying to make him see how we came here, and that we're
+friends. Then I'll see what I can get<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> out of him; he'll have to get
+the idea of coming back at me with pictures instead of words, and it
+may take a long time to make him understand."</p>
+
+<p>It did take a long time. I could feel the sweat trickling down my face
+as I strove to make him understand. His eyes revealed wonderment and a
+little fear, but an almost utter lack of understanding.</p>
+
+<p>I pictured for him the heavens, and our ship sailing along through
+space. Then I showed him the <i>Ertak</i> coming to rest on the plateau,
+and he made little impatient noises as though to convey that he knew
+all about that.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>fter a long time he got the idea. Crudely, dimly, he pictured the
+<i>Ertak</i> leaving this strange world, and soaring off into vacant space.
+Then his scene faded out, and he pictured the same thing again, as one
+might repeat a question not understood. He wanted to know where we
+would go if we left this world of his.</p>
+
+<p>I pictured for him other worlds, peopled with men more or less like
+myself. I showed him the great cities, and the fleets of ships like
+the <i>Ertak</i> that plied between them. Then, as best I could, I asked
+him about himself and his people.</p>
+
+<p>It came to me jerkily and poorly pictured, but I managed to piece out
+the story. Whether I guess correctly on all points, I am not sure, nor
+will I ever be sure. But this is the story as I got it.</p>
+
+<p>These people at one time lived in the open, and all the people of this
+world were like those in the cavern, possessed of opaque bodies and
+great strength. There were none of the ghost-like creatures who had
+captured us.</p>
+
+<p>But after a long time, a ruling class arose. They tried to dominate
+the masses, and the masses refused to be dominated. But the ruling
+classes were wise, and versed in certain sciences; the masses were
+ignorant. So the ruling classes devised a plan.</p>
+
+<p>These creatures did not eat. There was a tradition that at one time
+they had had mouths, as I had, but that was not known. Their strength,
+their vitality, came from the powerful mineral vapor which came forth
+from the bowels of the earth. The ruling classes decided that if they
+could control the supply of this vapor, they would have the whip hand,
+and they set about realizing this condition.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was quickly done. All the sources of supply, save one, were sealed.
+This one source of supply was the cavern in which we stood. These were
+members of the ruling class, and outside was the rabble, starved and
+unhappy, living on the faint seepage of the vital fumes, without which
+they became almost bodiless, and the helpless slaves of those within
+the cavern.</p>
+
+<p>These creatures, then, were boneless; as boneless as sponges, and,
+like sponges, capable of absorbing huge quantities of a foreign
+substance, which distended them and gave them weight. I could see,
+now, why the rotund bodies sagged and flattened at the base, and why
+six short, stubby legs were needed to support that body. There was
+only tissue, unsupported by bone, to bear the weight!</p>
+
+<p>This chief of the nine went on to show me how ruthlessly, how cruelly
+those within the cavern ruled those without. The substance that fed
+the flame had to be gathered and a great reservoir on the side of the
+mountain kept filled. Great masses of dry, sweet grass, often changed,
+must be harvested and brought to the entrance of the cavern, for
+bedding. A score of other tasks kept the outsiders busy always&mdash;and
+the driving force was that, did the slaves become disobedient, the
+slight supply of mineral vapor available in the outside world would be
+cut off utterly, and all outside would surely die, slowly and in
+agony.</p>
+
+<p>Those within the cavern were the rulers. They would always remain the
+rulers, and those outside would remain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> the slaves to wait upon them.
+And we&mdash;how strangely he pictured us, as he saw us!&mdash;were not to
+return to our queer worlds, that we might bring many other ships like
+the <i>Ertak</i> back to interfere. No.</p>
+
+<p>The pupils of his eyes contracted, and the leafy structure of his nose
+fluttered as though with strong emotion.</p>
+
+<p>No, we would not go back. He would give a signal to those of his
+creatures who stood behind us&mdash;a sort of soldiery, I gathered&mdash;and our
+heads, our legs, our arms, would be torn from our bodies. Then we
+would not go back to bring&mdash;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hat was enough for me.</p>
+
+<p>"Men!" I spoke softly, but with an intensity that gave me their
+instant attention, "it's going to be a fight for life. When I give the
+signal, make a rush for the entrance by which we came in. I'll lead
+the way. Use your pistols, and your bombs if necessary. All
+right&mdash;forward!"</p>
+
+<p>Correy's great shout rang out after mine, and I flung my menore in the
+face of the nearest guard. It bounced off as though it had struck a
+rubber ball. Behind me, one of the men called out sharply; I heard a
+sharp crunch of bone, and with a pang realized that the <i>Ertak's</i> log
+would have at least one death to record.</p>
+
+<p>A dozen tentacles lashed out at me, and I sprayed their owners with
+pellets from my atomic pistol. The air was filled with the shouts of
+my men and the whispers of our enemies. All around me I could hear the
+screaming of ricochets from our pistols. Twice atomic bombs exploded
+not far away, and the solid rock shook beneath my feet. Something shot
+by close to my face; an instant later a limp bundle in the blue and
+silver uniform of our Service struck the rock wall of the cavern,
+thirty feet away. The strength in those rubbery tentacles was
+terrible.</p>
+
+<p>The pistols seemed to have but little effect. They wounded, but they
+did not kill unless the pellet struck the head. Then the victim
+rolled over, rocking idiotically on its middle.</p>
+
+<p>"In the head, men!" I shouted. "That downs them! And keep the bombs in
+action. Throw them against the walls of the cavern. Take a chance!"</p>
+
+<p>A ragged cheer went up, and I heard Correy's voice raised in angry
+conversation with the enemy:</p>
+
+<p>"You will, eh? There!... Now!... Ah!&mdash;right&mdash;through&mdash;the&mdash;eye.
+That's&mdash;the place!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;score of times I was grasped and held by the writhing arms of the
+angry horde whispering all around me. Each time I literally shot the
+tentacle away with my atomic pistol, leaving the severed end to unwrap
+itself and drop from my struggling body. The things had no blood in
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Steadily, we fought our way toward the doorway, out of the cavern,
+down the passageway, pressed into a compact, sweating mass by the
+pressure of the eager bodies around us. I have never heard any sound
+even remotely like the babel of angry, sibilant whispering that beat
+against the walls and roof of that cavern.</p>
+
+<p>I had saved my own bombs for a specific purpose, and now I unslung
+them and managed to work them up above my shoulders, one in either
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to try to blow the entrance clear, men," I shouted. "The
+instant I fling the bombs, drop! The fragments will be stopped by the
+enemy crowding around us. One ... two ... three ... <i>drop</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>The two bombs exploded almost simultaneously. The ground shook, and
+all over the cavern masses of stone came crashing to the floor. Bits
+of rock hummed and shrieked over our heads. And&mdash;yes! There was a
+draft of cooler, purer air on our faces. The bombs had done their
+work.</p>
+
+<p>"One more effort and we're outside, men," I called. "The passage is
+open, and there are only a few of the enemy before us. Ready?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ready!" went up the hoarse shout.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, forward!"</p>
+
+<p>It was easy to give the command, but hard to execute it. We were
+pressed so hard that only the men on the outside of the group could
+use their weapons. And our captors were making a terrible, desperate
+effort to hold us.</p>
+
+<p>Two more of our men were literally torn to pieces before my eyes, but
+I had the satisfaction of ripping holes in the heads of the creatures
+whose tentacles had done the beastly work. And in the meantime we were
+working our way slowly but surely to the entrance.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;glanced up as I dodged out into the open. That soft humming sound
+was familiar, and properly so. There, at an elevation of less than
+fifty feet, was the <i>Ertak</i>, with Hendricks standing in the exit,
+leaning forward at a perilous angle.</p>
+
+<p>"Ahoy the <i>Ertak</i>!" I hailed. "Descend at once!"</p>
+
+<p>"Right, sir!" Hendricks turned to relay the order, and, as the rest of
+the men burst forth from the cavern, the ship struck the ground before
+us.</p>
+
+<p>"All hands board ship!" I ordered. "Lively, now." As many years as I
+have commanded men, I have never seen an order obeyed with more
+alacrity.</p>
+
+<p>I was the last man to enter, and as I did so, I turned for a last
+glance at the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>They could not come through the small opening my bombs had driven in
+the rock, although they were working desperately to enlarge it.
+Leaping back and forth between me and the entrance I could see the
+vague, shadowy figures of the outside slaves, eagerly seeping up the
+life-giving fumes that escaped from the cavern.</p>
+
+<p>"Your orders, sir?" asked Hendricks anxiously; he was a very young
+officer, and he had been through a very trying experience.</p>
+
+<p>"Ascend five hundred feet, Mr. Hendricks," I said thoughtfully.
+"Directly over this spot. Then I'll take over.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't often," I added, "that the Service concerns itself with
+economic conditions. This, however, is one of the exceptions."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," said Hendricks, for the very good reason, I suppose, that
+that was about all a third officer could say to his commander, under
+the circumstances.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_f1.jpg" alt="F" width="53" height="56" /></div>
+<p>ive hundred feet, sir," said Hendricks.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," I nodded, and pressed the attention signal of the
+non-commissioned officer in charge of the big forward ray projector.</p>
+
+<p>"Ott? Commander Hanson speaking. I have special orders for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Direct your ray, narrowed to normal beam and at full intensity, on
+the spot directly below. Keep the ray motionless, and carry on until
+further orders. Is that clear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly, sir." The disintegrator ray generators deepened their purr
+as I turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"I trust, sir, that I did the right thing in following you with the
+<i>Ertak</i>?" asked Hendricks. "I was absolutely without precedent, and
+the circumstances were so mysterious&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You handled the situation very well indeed," I told him. "Had you not
+been waiting when we fought our way into the open, the nearly
+invisible things on the outside might have&mdash;but you don't know about
+them yet."</p>
+
+<p>Picking up the microphone again, I ordered a pair of searchlights to
+follow the disintegrator ray, and made my way forward, where I could
+observe activities through a port.</p>
+
+<p>The ray was boring straight down into a shoulder of a rocky hill, and
+the bright beams of the searchlights glowed redly with the dust of
+disintegration. Here and there I could see the shadowy, transparent
+forms of the creatures that the self-constituted rulers of this world
+had doomed to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> demi-existence, and I smiled grimly to myself. The
+tables would soon be turned.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>or perhaps an hour the ray melted its way into the solid rock, while
+I stood beside Ott and his crew, watching. Then, down below us, things
+began to happen.</p>
+
+<p>Little fragments of rock flew up from the shaft the ray had drilled.
+Jets of black mud leaped into the air. There was a sudden blast from
+below that rocked the <i>Ertak</i>, and the shaft became a miniature
+volcano, throwing rocky fragments and mud high into the air.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good, Ott," I said triumphantly. "Cease action." As I spoke, the
+first light of the dawn, unnoticed until now, spread itself over the
+scene, and we witnessed then one of the strangest scenes that the
+Universe has ever beheld.</p>
+
+<p>Up to the very edge of that life-giving blast of mineral-laden gas the
+tenuous creatures came crowding. There were hundreds of them,
+thousands of them. And they were still coming, crowding closer and
+closer and closer, a mass of crawling, yellowish shadows against the
+sombre earth.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly, they began to fill out and darken, as they drew in the fumes
+that were more than bread and meat and water to us. Where there had
+been formless shadows, rotund creatures such as we had met in the
+cavern stood and lashed their tentacles about in a sort of frenzied
+gladness, and fell back to make room for their brothers.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_i1.jpg" alt="I" width="37" height="52" /></div>
+
+<p>t's a sight to make a man doubt his own eyes, sir," said Correy, who
+had come to stand beside me. "Look at them! Thousands of them pouring
+from every direction. How did it happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"It didn't happen. I used our disintegrator ray as a drill; we simply
+sunk a huge shaft down into the bowels of the earth until we struck
+the source of the vapor which the self-appointed 'ruling class' has
+bottled up. We have emancipated a whole people, Mr. Correy."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate to think of what will happen to those in the cavern," replied
+Correy, smiling grimly. "Or rather, since you've told me of the
+pleasant little death they had arranged for us. I'm mighty glad of it.
+They'll receive rough treatment, I'm afraid!"</p>
+
+<p>"They deserve it. It has been a great sight to watch, but I believe
+we've seen enough. It has been a good night's work, but it's daylight,
+now, and it will take hours to repair the damage to the <i>Ertak's</i>
+hull. Take over in the navigating room, if you will, and pick a likely
+spot where we will not be disturbed. We should be on our course by
+to-night, Mr. Correy."</p>
+
+<p>"Right, sir," said Correy, with a last wondering look at the strange
+miracle we had brought to pass on the earth below us. "It will seem
+good to be off in space again, away from the troubles of these little
+worlds."</p>
+
+<p>"There are troubles in space, too," I said dryly, thinking of the
+swarm of meteorites that had come so close to wiping the <i>Ertak</i> off
+the records of the Service. "You can't escape trouble even in space."</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," said Correy from the doorway. "But you can get your sleep
+regularly!"</p>
+
+<p>And sleep is, when one comes to think of it, a very precious thing.</p>
+
+<p>Particularly for an old man, whose eyelids are heavy with years.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/image_013.jpg" width="200" height="122" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"><a name="Readers_Corner" id="Readers_Corner"></a>
+<img src="images/image_012.jpg" width="600" height="548" alt="Readers&#39; Corner" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>Now In Book Form</i></p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>Readers of Astounding Stories will be interested to hear
+that two of the continued novels which appeared in our pages
+during last year are coming out in book form.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these is "Murder Madness," by Murray Leinster.
+It is due sometime in February, so by the time this issue is
+on the newsstands it will no doubt be already out. The
+publishers are Brewer and Warren, and the price is $2.00.
+Here's your chance, collectors, and those who missed an
+instalment or two.</p>
+
+<p>The other book is "Brigands of the Moon," by&mdash;everyone
+knows&mdash;Ray Cummings. It should be coming along in a month or
+so. Watch out for it!</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>Mr. Cummings Sits In</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>Thank you for the opportunity to address our Readers on
+certain side-lights of my tale, "The Exile of Time." I
+particularly welcome it, for the theme of Time-traveling is,
+I think, the most interesting of any upon which I have
+written.</p>
+
+<p>Some of you will no doubt recall my stories "The Man Who
+Mastered Time" and "The Shadow Girl." In "The Exile of
+Time," I present the third of the trilogy. It has no
+fictional connection with the others; it is in no sense a
+sequel, but rather a companion story.</p>
+
+<p>To write about Time-traveling is for me a difficult but
+fascinating task. The opportunities are endless; and I hope
+you may think I have taken advantage of them with a measure
+of success.</p>
+
+<p>I wrote those conceptions of Time and Space and the Great
+Cosmos, which you will find in the text of the story,
+because I feel them very deeply. Each occasion upon which
+circumstances allow me to present my theories, I eagerly
+welcome. How much of the conception is original with me, I
+cannot say. It is the product of my groping interpretation
+of the theories of many brilliant scientific minds of
+today&mdash;humbly combined with perhaps some originality of my
+own. The mind flings far afield when it starts to grope with
+the Unknown. Try it! Read what I have written and then let
+your mind roam<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> a little further. Probe a little deeper.
+Perhaps we may contribute something. It is only by that
+process&mdash;each mind following some other's cleared path and
+pushing forward a little on his own&mdash;that the Unknown can be
+pierced.</p>
+
+<p>When once you admit the basic idea of Time-traveling to be
+plausible, what fascinating vistas are opened to the
+imagination!</p>
+
+<p>Space is so crowded! The room in which you are now sitting
+as you read these words&mdash;just think what that Space around
+you has held in the Past, and will hold in the Future! You
+occupy it now, playing out your little part; but think what
+has happened where you are now sitting so calmly reading!
+What tumultuous, crowding events! Your room is quiet now,
+but its space has rung with war-cries; the ground under you
+has been drenched with blood; and further back it was lush
+with primeval jungle; and in another age it was frozen
+beneath a great ice-cap; and before that it blazed, molten
+with fire. Back to the Beginning.</p>
+
+<p>And your little Space in the Future? It will be in the heart
+of a great mechanical city, perhaps. A mechanical servant
+may murder his human master in the space which you now call
+your room. The great revolt of the mechanisms may start in
+your room....</p>
+
+<p>I think that your room will some day again be shrouded under
+a forest growth. The mechanical city will be neglected,
+tumbled into ruins, buried beneath the silt of the passing
+centuries. The sun will slowly rise&mdash;a giant dull red ball,
+burning out, cooling. And the Earth will cool. Humans,
+perhaps, will have passed decadence and reverted to
+savagery. Perhaps the polar ice-caps will again come down,
+and ice slowly cover the dying world. All nature will be
+struggling and dying, with the sun a red ball turning dark
+like a cooling ember.</p>
+
+<p>Millions of centuries, with whatever events&mdash;who am I to
+say?&mdash;but it will go on to the End. That's a long way from
+the Beginning, isn't it? And yet ours is only a tiny planet
+living briefly in the great cosmos of Time and Space!</p>
+
+<p>A segment of Everything that ever was and ever will be
+marches through the Space of your room. What an enormously
+thronged little Space! There is only Time, to keep
+consecutive and orderly the myriad events which in your room
+are pushing and jostling one another! I say, then, "Time is
+what keeps everything from happening at once." It seems a
+good definition.</p>
+
+<p>I do hope you like "The Exile of Time." The writing of it
+made me realize how unimportant I am. A human lifetime is
+really as brief as the flash of an electric spark. The whole
+lifetime of our Earth is not much more than that. Stars,
+worlds, are born, live and die, and the Great Cosmos goes
+majestically on. Yet some people seem to feel that they and
+the Space they occupy in this Time they call the Present are
+the most important things that ever were or ever will be in
+the whole Universe. It is a good thing to realize that that
+isn't so.&mdash;Ray Cummings.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>Likes</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>Starting with the August issue, I am going to give my
+opinion of the stories.</p>
+
+<p>"The Planet of Dread," by R. F. Starzl, couldn't have been
+better. Get more stories by him. "Murder Madness," by Murray
+Leinster, was a good story, but it didn't belong in a
+Science Fiction magazine. "The Terrible Tentacles of L-472,"
+a good story; "The Invisible Death," a very good story;
+"Prisoners on the Electron," very good; "The Ape-Men of
+Xlotli," a good story, but it does not belong in a Science
+Fiction magazine; "The Pirate Planet," very excellent&mdash;much
+more so because it is an interplanetary story. "Vagabonds of
+Space," "The Fifth Dimension Catapult," "The Gate of Xoran,"
+"The Dark Side of Antri"&mdash;all good.</p>
+
+<p>Well, I guess I will sign off and give somebody else a
+chance to broadcast.&mdash;Wm. McCalvy, 1244 Beech St., St. Paul,
+Minn.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>I Do; I Don't</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>"I like the magazine the way it is," "I want a larger
+magazine," "I want a magazine twice a month," "I want a
+quarterly," and so do I, "There is a terrible flaw in one of
+the stories," "All of the stories are flawless," "I want
+reprints," "I don't," "I like Ray Cummings," "I don't," "I
+want a better grade paper," "The paper's O. K. with me," "I
+want smooth edges on the magazine," "So do I," "And so do
+I!"&mdash;these seem to be the most often repeated sentences in
+the letters from Readers.</p>
+
+<p>However, I have a new one to add: I would like to see an
+answer, by the Editor, to each letter that is printed in
+"The Readers' Corner," like this: "I liked 'An Extra Man,'
+etc.&mdash;Mr. Syence Ficshun" (I am very glad to hear that you
+liked this little masterpiece, etc.&mdash;Editor). Why not?</p>
+
+<p>The illustration on the cover of the January issue surely
+shows that you're starting the new year out right by putting
+on an extremely astounding cover. The story "The Gate to
+Xoran" is simply amazing. Let's read many more of Mr. Wells
+stories. It is far surpassed, however, by "The Fifth
+Dimension Catapult," which is the best story (novelette)
+that I have ever read in "our" magazine.</p>
+
+<p>The Boys' Scientification Club is now a branch of the famous
+Science Correspondence Club. Remember, boys between the ages
+of 10 and 15, if you're interested in reading Science
+Fiction, by all means join the B. S. C. We have many copies
+of Astounding Stories in our library and members are welcome
+to read them. For further details write to me.&mdash;Forrest J.
+Ackerman, President-Librarian, B. S. C., 530 Staples Avenue,
+San Francisco, Cal.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>Souls and Integrations</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>You are starting your second year as Editor of Astounding
+Stories. If your standard during 1931 is up to your standard
+of 1930,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> we shall be satisfied. If possible, give us, the
+Readers, the best in Science Fiction. I have no doubt but
+that the Readers of Astounding Stories would not want
+fantasy unless written by a master; and to my mind there is
+only one whom I will forgive for not making his stories
+Science Fiction, and that writer is A. Merritt. Every other
+writer should and must put plausible science in his stories.
+If he doesn't, he won't go far; not with Science Fiction
+readers, anyway.</p>
+
+<p>I do not agree to your answer, by letter, to my complaint
+about the science in the story, "An Extra Man," by Jackson
+Gee. You say that two men, each the size and half the weight
+of the original man could have been formed from the
+integrated particles of the original man. In the story, the
+weight of the two men was exactly the same as that of the
+original man. [?] Anyway, I do not believe that these two
+men could have been formed. Most likely, when the
+laboratories began the process of reintegration, the person
+integrated would have been cut in half, provided of course,
+that the laboratories began the process at the same time. If
+not, one laboratory would produce a larger portion of an
+integrated man than the other.</p>
+
+<p>But to come back to the original question. Can a man be
+disintegrated into his component atoms and then reintegrated
+into two men each half the size, weight, ability and brains?
+I say no. I believe that the component atoms of the man when
+reintegrated would be in exactly the same place as they were
+before the disintegration occurred. If a part and not the
+whole of a man is reintegrated in one place, then the part
+would be one part of that man and not a complete man in
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>It would be as preposterous and absurd for anything but a
+part of that man to be reintegrated, as it would be for two
+apes, pigs or hens to come from him. I leave out the
+question of what would happen to the soul. Imagine a soul
+divided in half. Mr. Gee might say that he doesn't believe
+in souls. Neither do I, much. I notice that some Readers say
+that they liked that story. One even says that it was
+perfect. Every man to his taste. I've read worse, myself.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, Mr. Editor, Astounding Stories is the finest and
+best Science Fiction magazine on the market.</p>
+
+<p>Many Readers want to keep their magazines and bind them,
+including myself. Why change the size? I'm certain that that
+won't be done. Astounding Stories started small (in size
+only) and it will remain small (also only in size). Let us
+have reprints.&mdash;Nathan Greenfeld, 373 Whitlock Ave., New
+York City.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>The Defense Rests</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>I have just read the January issue for 1931 and noticed some
+so-called helpful letters by Readers. Looking over Mr.
+Waite's letter, would like to suggest that he stop to think,
+if possible, that if he wants absolute bone-dry facts, that
+he doesn't want fiction at all. And Mr. Johnson&mdash;he seems
+to have the impression that everyone who can take things for
+granted without having a detailed explanation of the facts
+of the story is a moron or a small child. He should go find
+a volume of scientific research if he enjoys that sort of
+stuff. I read fiction stories for the enjoyment I get out of
+them and not to criticize them for lack of explanation. I
+would rather read some of his so-called nonsense than a lot
+of far-flung, intricate, baseless scientific explanations.
+Why doesn't Mr. Johnson use his imagination?&mdash;Donald Kahl,
+360 Selby Ave., St. Paul, Minn.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>"High Time"</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>I have been reading the magazine ever since it first came
+out, a year ago, so it is high time for me to write. It
+certainly grows better with every new issue.</p>
+
+<p>I think that the ten best stories published during 1930 were
+(not in order of merit): "Brigands of the Moon," "Vandals of
+the Stars," "The Atom Smasher," "The Moon Master," "Earth,
+the Marauder," "The Planet of Dread," "Silver Dome," "The
+Second Satellite," "Jetta of the Lowlands" and "The Pirate
+Planet."</p>
+
+<p>Your ten best authors are: Harl Vincent, Ray Cummings,
+Charles W. Diffin, Victor Rousseau, Capt. S. P. Meek, Murray
+Leinster, Arthur J. Burks, R. F. Starzl, Sewell P. Wright
+and Edmond Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>The Commander Hanson stories by S. P. Wright are great.
+Let's have lots more of them.</p>
+
+<p>And now about reprints. I cast my vote like many other
+readers in favor of them. Many Readers, in fact over half,
+are new Readers of Science Fiction. They, like myself, have
+not read the great masterpieces such as "The Time Machine,"
+"The Moon Pool" and countless other stories. Now, why not
+reprint some of them and give us a chance to read them? A
+few Readers who have read them before do not want them
+reprinted because they do not want anybody else to read
+them.</p>
+
+<p>A brickbat: Why not cut the edges of the magazine smooth? It
+would be much easier to handle.</p>
+
+<p>A bouquet: You have a fine magazine. Keep up the good stuff.
+My criticism is exhausted, so good-by until next
+time.&mdash;Oswald Train, P. O. Box 94, Barnesboro, Pa.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>Two Dimensions Off?</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>It was just by accident that I came across your magazine,
+and I have read every issue since.</p>
+
+<p>In the January number there is one story that I don't like,
+"The Fifth Dimension Catapult." As far as the story is
+concerned it is very good, but Professor Denham was not
+marooned in the fifth dimension. If you read the story you
+will find that Professor Denham was marooned on a three
+dimensional world. That is all I can make out.</p>
+
+<p>Astounding Stories is the best Science Fic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>tion magazine I
+have ever read, and I shall keep on reading it.</p>
+
+<p>Keep up the good cover illustrations.&mdash;Richard Meindle, R.
+1, Box 91, Butternut, Wisconsin.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>To the Colors!</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>Being a passionate admirer of Dr. Breuer and his writings, I
+cannot permit the contumelious, unfounded aggression of one
+George K. Addison to go on unconfuted.</p>
+
+<p>Perceiving that Dr. Breuer cannot possibly vindicate himself
+against this disparagement I feel obliged to extenuate Dr.
+Breuer in the eyes of the Readers.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, Dr. Breuer writes rarely and sparingly
+and does not grind out his stories month after month as do
+some other authors. His stories are highly original and are
+presented in a purely literary style. The story to which Mr.
+Addison refers, "A Problem in Communication," is a fine
+example of his work. Should his story be remonstrated
+against because it is lacking in adventure, because it did
+not delineate mushy love episodes, because it does not cause
+chills to run down one's spine? Positively not! It lives up
+to the standard of the highest Science Fiction. Here is a
+story unbesmirched by the love element, exceedingly
+plausible and interestingly narrated.</p>
+
+<p>If all stories were thought out and written just half as
+carefully as Dr. Breuer's, Astounding Stories would become a
+periodical justified to be considered on a par with The
+Golden Book.</p>
+
+<p>In closing, I wish to express my desire that more stories of
+the Breuer quality be bestowed upon the Readers.&mdash;Mortimer
+Weisinger, 266 Van Cortland Ave., Bronx, New York.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>And It Wasn't!</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>Having read "The Readers' Corner" since its first appearance
+in Astounding Stories and noted the various criticisms
+offered, may I tell you about a story written by a Science
+Fiction author?</p>
+
+<p>The author, by the way, is the perfect author; he makes
+absolutely no mistakes in his story, and is in no danger of
+starving if his works aren't accepted and older stories are
+reprinted instead. His science is correct and the story
+contains nothing that cannot be understood.</p>
+
+<p>The story is of interplanetary adventure. Strange to say,
+there is no war in the story; there is no villain; there is
+no hero to save a world from destruction or his sweetheart
+from the monsters of another planet. Instead, there are
+nothing but characters&mdash;if you get what I mean. The persons
+involved in this interplanetary novel reach their goal due
+to the tremendous strides of science in experimenting with
+air and space vehicles.</p>
+
+<p>When they arrive on the planet they do not meet hostile
+nations. They do not meet monstrosities. They do, however,
+meet people much like themselves who do not welcome the
+travelers with open arms and show them about their city, but
+regard them with curiosity and treat them with all due
+respect for their achievement in conquering space.</p>
+
+<p>As I said before, there is no hero who falls in love with
+the beautiful girl from the planet visited, and saves her
+and her country from other warring nations. To tell the
+truth, the adventurers have their own loved ones at home.
+They meet no intrigue. When they have learned all they
+can&mdash;experiencing many difficulties in mastering the
+language used, for the people of the planet have not
+perfected a brain-copier or other like mechanism&mdash;they
+arrange for commerce and travel between the two worlds and
+return to Earth. On their return, they are not met with
+world wide ovations and made heroes of, but receive credit
+for their undertaking and are soon forgotten about.</p>
+
+<p>To cap the climax, the story is acceptable to the Editors.
+It is not in need of corrections and is published
+immediately. The story is gratefully accepted by the public
+and not one single soul writes a scathing letter to the
+Editor telling why it was not good. In fact, I can hardly
+believe that such a story was written. Possibly it
+wasn't!&mdash;Robert R. Young, 86 Third Avenue, Kingston, Penn.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>Ha-ha!</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>Christmas day, and because I'm not acquainted in this city
+I'm writing you a letter.</p>
+
+<p>I have just finished reading your magazine. I came close to
+not buying it, being not overly prosperous, but decided to
+take a chance when I saw you had a dimensional story by
+Murray Leinster. That story was up to expectations. The
+others were down to expectations.</p>
+
+<p>If you want me to choose your magazine to spend my reading
+allowance on, have more stories by Leinster, Starzl, Breuer
+and Wells. It may take a little more effort, but it's worth
+it. Sax Rohmer is good on science stuff, too.</p>
+
+<p>Before you print any more undersea stories have a diver look
+at them. You tell about standing at the bottom of the ocean
+and seeing the submarine "not more than a quarter of a mile
+away." Ha-ha! [No fair, that ha-ha! For the story says,
+quoted exactly: "... there gleamed the reassuring LIGHTS of
+the Nereid, not a quarter of a mile away." Probably, intense
+searchlight beams could be seen that far.&mdash;Ed.] You couldn't
+see it if you stood more than ten feet away. I'm not trying
+to be critical, but you should be more careful.&mdash;Myron
+Higgins, 524 West 100th St., New York City.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>We Never Will</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>I have been an enthusiastic reader of Astounding Stories
+since it was founded, and I think it about time that I
+voiced my opinion of your great magazine.</p>
+
+<p>Taking all in all it's a vow, but of course<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> it could be
+made better by having a quarterly, which I am sure would go
+over big.</p>
+
+<p>Wesso is great, so why not have all the illustrations by
+him?</p>
+
+<p>Your authors are also great. Nearly every story I have read
+was perfect, and whatever you do don't lose R. F. Starzl.
+His ideas are very good, as illustrated in "The Planet of
+Dread."</p>
+
+<p>There is only one more thing I would like to ask of you, and
+that is the reason why I write. Please don't spoil the
+magazine by endeavoring to please a very small minority by
+putting in unnecessary scientific explanations. The reason
+why I like your magazine so much is because of the fact that
+it is unique in that respect. I have read a few stories in
+other scientific magazines and found that they contained too
+much explanation. I hope for the benefit of other Readers
+and myself that you will not change the stories by adding
+too much explanation.</p>
+
+<p>In the coming year I wish you all possible success.&mdash;John
+Sheehan, 32 Elm St., Cambridge, Mass.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>This and That</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>In the October issue of Astounding Stories Mr. Woodrow
+Gelman cast vote number 1 for reprints. In the February,
+1931, issue, Mr. Forgaris throws in number 2 and here goes
+number 3. I really don't see why, even after the arguments
+you printed, you don't print at least one a year. I have
+been reading your magazine ever since it came out and have
+found that at least one-half of your Readers want reprints.
+Can't you print at least one for an experiment?</p>
+
+<p>Ray Cummings, S. P. Meek, Dr. Miles J. Breuer, Sewell P.
+Wright and Harl Vincent are your best authors. Wesso is your
+best artist by far.</p>
+
+<p>There were several stories I did not like. They are:
+"Monsters of Moyen," "Earth, the Marauder," and I guess
+those are all.</p>
+
+<p>How about giving us some short short stories? And how about
+cutting the edges of the paper smooth? And giving us a
+quarterly? But all in all I think your magazine is one of
+the best in the field.&mdash;Vernon H. Jones, 1603 Sixth Ave.,
+Des Moines, Iowa.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>It's Your Imagination</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>Well, well! Astounding Stories was two days early this
+month. See that this happens more often.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, "The Pirate Planet" took first place in the
+February number. The story was very well written and the
+characters very realistic. It deserves to be put in book
+form, also in the talkies. It would be much better than
+"Just Imagine."</p>
+
+<p>I welcome Anthony Gilmore, D. W. Hall and F. V. W. Mason to
+Astounding Stories. Their stories proved to be very
+interesting and I hope to read more.</p>
+
+<p>Do you know how to write editorials? Yes? Then prove it. I
+have to be shown. Write on some scientific subject each
+month, and every so often write on Astounding Stories itself
+and of its stories and authors.</p>
+
+<p>Is it my imagination or have you been using a better grade
+of paper in the past two issues? it seems to be much
+smoother and a little thinner than that used previously.</p>
+
+<p>I notice that you are giving more room to some of the
+illustrations, as in "Werewolves of War" and "The Pirate
+Planet." The larger the illustrations are the more there can
+be put in them.&mdash;Jack Darrow, 4225 No. Spaulding Ave.,
+Chicago, Illinois.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>If He But Could!</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>Astounding Stories is without doubt the most preeminent in
+its field.</p>
+
+<p>With such versatile authors as Burks (When does his next
+story appear?), Starzl, Cummings, Leinster, Vincent and all
+the rest, how can it help but to overshadow all periodicals!</p>
+
+<p>The illustrations are superfine. Wesso is a marvel! If he
+could only write his own stories and illustrate them!</p>
+
+<p>Now, a suggestion. I am positive that every Reader of your
+magazine wants you to start a department in which
+biographies of the authors and their photographs are given.
+Why not start one?&mdash;Julius Schwartz, 407 East 183rd St.,
+Bronx, New York.</p></div>
+
+
+<h3><i>"The Readers' Corner"</i></h3>
+<p>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&mdash;everything
+that's of common interest in connection with our Astounding Stories.</p>
+
+<p>Although from time to time the Editor may make a comment or so, this
+is a department primarily for <i>Readers</i>, and we want you to make full
+use of it. Likes, dislikes, criticisms, explanations, roses,
+brickbats, suggestions&mdash;everything's welcome here: so "come over in
+'The Readers' Corner'" and discuss it with all of us!</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 75px;">
+<img src="images/image_014.jpg" width="75" height="73" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30452 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #30452 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30452)
diff --git a/old/30452-8.txt b/old/30452-8.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Astounding Stories,  April, 1931, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Astounding Stories,  April, 1931
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: November 11, 2009 [EBook #30452]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTOUNDING STORIES,  APRIL, 1931 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              ASTOUNDING
+
+                               STORIES
+
+                                 20¢
+
+
+              _On Sale the First Thursday of Each Month_
+
+
+                       W. M. CLAYTON, Publisher
+                         HARRY BATES, Editor
+                  DOUGLAS M. DOLD, Consulting Editor
+
+
+The Clayton Standard on a Magazine Guarantees
+
+    _That_ the stories therein are clean, interesting, vivid, by leading
+           writers of the day and purchased under conditions approved by
+           the Authors' League of America;
+
+    _That_ such magazines are manufactured in Union shops by American
+           workmen;
+
+    _That_ each newsdealer and agent is insured a fair profit;
+
+    _That_ an intelligent censorship guards their advertising pages.
+
+
+_The other Clayton magazines are:_
+
+ACE-HIGH MAGAZINE, RANCH ROMANCES, COWBOY STORIES, CLUES, FIVE-NOVELS
+MONTHLY, ALL STAR DETECTIVE STORIES, RANGELAND LOVE STORY MAGAZINE,
+WESTERN ADVENTURES, and WESTERN LOVE STORIES.
+
+_More than Two Million Copies Required to Supply the Monthly Demand
+for Clayton Magazines._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VOL. VI, No. 1            CONTENTS            APRIL, 1931
+
+
+COVER DESIGN                  H. W. WESSO
+    _Painted in Water-Colors from a Scene in "Monsters of Mars."_
+
+MONSTERS OF MARS              EDMOND HAMILTON             4
+    _Three Martian-Duped Earth-Men Swing Open the Gates of Space That for
+     So Long Had Barred the Greedy Hordes of the Red Planet._
+     (A Complete Novelette.)
+
+THE EXILE OF TIME             RAY CUMMINGS               26
+    _From Somewhere Out of Time Come a Swarm of Robots Who Inflict on
+     New York the Awful Vengeance of the Diabolical Cripple Tugh._
+     (Beginning a Four-Part Novel.)
+
+HELL'S DIMENSION              TOM CURRY                  51
+    _Professor Lambert Deliberately Ventures into a Vibrational Dimension
+     to Join His Fiancée in Its Magnetic Torture-Fields._
+
+THE WORLD BEHIND THE MOON     PAUL ERNST                 64
+    _Two Intrepid Earth-Men Fight It Out with the Horrific Monsters of
+     Zeud's Frightful Jungles._
+
+FOUR MILES WITHIN             ANTHONY GILMORE            76
+    _Far Down into the Earth Goes a Gleaming Metal Sphere Whose Passengers
+     Are Deadly Enemies._  (A Complete Novelette.)
+
+THE LAKE OF LIGHT             JACK WILLIAMSON           100
+    _In the Frozen Wastes at the Bottom of the World Two Explorers Find a
+     Strange Pool of White Fire--and Have a Strange Adventure._
+
+THE GHOST WORLD               SEWELL PEASLEE WRIGHT     118
+    _Commander John Hanson Records Another of His Thrilling Interplanetary
+     Adventures with the Special Patrol Service._
+
+THE READERS' CORNER           ALL OF US                 134
+    _A Meeting Place for Readers of Astounding Stories._
+
+
+Single Copies, 20 Cents (In Canada, 25 Cents) Yearly Subscription,
+$2.00
+
+Issued monthly by Readers' Guild, Inc., 80 Lafayette Street, New York,
+N. Y. W. M. Clayton, President; Francis P. Pace, Secretary. Entered as
+second-class matter December 7, 1929, at the Post Office at New York,
+N. Y., under Act of March 3, 1879. Title registered as a Trade Mark in
+the U. S. Patent Office. Member Newsstand Group--Men's List. For
+advertising rates address E. R. Crowe & Co., Inc., 25 Vanderbilt Ave.,
+New York; or 225 North Michigan Ave., Chicago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Monsters of Mars
+
+A COMPLETE NOVELETTE
+
+_By Edmond Hamilton_
+
+[Illustration: _The Martian gestured with a reptilian arm toward the
+ladder._]
+
+[Sidenote: Three Martian-duped Earth-men swing open the gates of space
+that for so long had barred the greedy hordes of the Red Planet.]
+
+
+Allan Randall stared at the man before him. "And that's why you sent
+for me, Milton?" he finally asked.
+
+The other's face was unsmiling. "That's why I sent for you, Allan," he
+said quietly. "To go to Mars with us to-night!"
+
+There was a moment's silence, in which Randall's eyes moved as though
+uncomprehendingly from the face of Milton to those of the two men
+beside him. The four sat together at the end of a roughly furnished
+and electric-lit living-room, and in that momentary silence there came
+in to them from the outside night the distant pounding of the Atlantic
+upon the beach. It was Randall who first spoke again.
+
+"To Mars!" he repeated. "Have you gone crazy, Milton--or is this some
+joke you've put up with Lanier and Nelson here?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Milton shook his head gravely. "It is not a joke, Allan. Lanier and I
+are actually going to flash out over the gulf to the planet Mars
+to-night. Nelson must stay here, and since we wanted three to go I
+wired you as the most likely of my friends to make the venture."
+
+"But good God!" Randall exploded, rising. "You, Milton, as a physicist
+ought to know better. Space-ships and projectiles and all that are but
+fictionists' dreams."
+
+"We are not going in either space-ship or projectile," said Milton
+calmly. And then as he saw his friend's bewilderment he rose and led
+the way to a door at the room's end, the other three following him
+into the room beyond.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a long laboratory of unusual size in which Randall found
+himself, one in which every variety of physical and electrical
+apparatus seemed represented. Three huge dynamo-motor arrangements
+took up the room's far end, and from them a tangle of wiring led
+through square black condensers and transformers to a battery of great
+tubes. Most remarkable, though, was the object at the room's center.
+
+It was like a great double cube of dull metal, being in effect two
+metal cubes each twelve feet square, supported a few feet above the
+floor by insulated standards. One side of each cube was open, exposing
+the hollow interiors of the two cubical chambers. Other wiring led
+from the big electronic tubes and from the dynamos to the sides of the
+two cubes.
+
+The four men gazed at the enigmatic thing for a time in silence.
+Milton's strong, capable face showed only in its steady eyes what
+feelings were his, but Lanier's younger countenance was alight with
+excitement; and so too to some degree was that of Nelson. Randall
+simply stared at the thing, until Milton nodded toward it.
+
+"That," he said, "is what will flash us out to Mars to-night."
+
+Randall could only turn his stare upon the other, and Lanier chuckled.
+"Can't take it in yet, Randall? Well, neither could I when the idea
+was first sprung on us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton nodded to seats behind them, and as the half-dazed Randall sank
+into one the physicist faced him earnestly.
+
+"Randall, there isn't much time now, but I am going to tell you what I
+have been doing in the last two years on this God-forsaken Maine
+coast. I have been for those two years in unbroken communication by
+radio with beings on the planet Mars!
+
+"It was when I still held my physics professorship back at the
+university that I got first onto the track of the thing. I was
+studying the variation of static vibrations, and in so doing caught
+steady signals--not static--at an unprecedentedly high wave-length.
+They were dots and dashes of varying length in an entirely
+unintelligible code, the same arrangement of them being sent out
+apparently every few hours.
+
+"I began to study them and soon ascertained that they could be sent
+out by no station on earth. The signals seemed to be growing louder
+each day, and it suddenly occurred to me that Mars was approaching
+opposition with earth! I was startled, and kept careful watch. On the
+day that Mars was closest the earth the signals were loudest.
+Thereafter, as the red planet receded, they grew weaker. The signals
+were from some being or beings on Mars!
+
+"At first I was going to give the news to the world, but saw in time
+that I could not. There was not sufficient proof, and a premature
+statement would only wreck my own scientific reputation. So I decided
+to study the signals farther until I had irrefutable proof, and to
+answer them if possible. I came up here and had this place built, and
+the aerial towers and other equipment I wanted set up. Lanier and
+Nelson came with me from the university, and we began our work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Our chief object was to answer those signals, but it proved
+heartbreaking work at first. We could not produce a radio wave of
+great enough length to pierce out through earth's insulating layer and
+across the gulf to Mars. We used all the power of our great
+windmill-dynamo hook-ups, but for long could not make it. Every few
+hours like clockwork the Martian signals came through. Then at last we
+heard them repeating one of our own signals. We had been heard!
+
+"For a time we hardly left our instruments. We began the slow and
+almost impossible work of establishing intelligent communication with
+the Martians. It was with numbers we began. Earth is the third planet
+from the sun and Mars the fourth, so three represented earth and four
+stood for Mars. Slowly we felt our way to an exchange of ideas, and
+within months were in steady and intelligent communication with them.
+
+"They asked us first concerning earth, its climates and seas and
+continents, and concerning ourselves, our races and mechanisms and
+weapons. Much information we flashed out to them, the language of our
+communication being English, the elements, of which they had learned,
+with a mixture of numbers and symbolical dot-dash signals.
+
+"We were as eager to learn about them. They were somewhat reticent, we
+found, concerning their planet and themselves. They admitted that
+their world was a dying one and that their great canals were to make
+life possible on it, and also admitted that they were different in
+bodily form from ourselves.
+
+"They told us finally that communication like this was too
+ineffective to give us a clear picture of their world, or vice versa.
+If we could visit Mars, and then they visit earth, both worlds would
+benefit by the knowledge of the other. It seemed impossible to me,
+though I was eager enough for it. But the Martians said that while
+spaceships and the like were impossible, there was a way by which
+living beings could flash from earth to Mars and back by radio waves,
+even as our signals flashed!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Randall broke in in amazement. "By radio!" he exclaimed, and Milton
+nodded.
+
+"Yes, so they said, nor did the idea of sending matter by radio seem
+too insane, after all. We send sound, music by radio waves across half
+the world from our broadcasting stations. We send light, pictures,
+across the world from our television stations. We do that by changing
+the wave length of the light-vibrations to make them radio vibrations,
+flashing them out thus over the world, to receivers which alter their
+wave-lengths again and change them back into light-vibrations.
+
+"Why then could not matter be sent in the same way? Matter, it has
+been long believed, is but another vibration of the ether, like light
+and radiant heat and radio vibrations and the like, having a lower
+wave-length than any of the others. Suppose we take matter and by
+applying electrical force to it change its wave-length, step it up to
+the wave-length of radio vibrations? Then those vibrations can be
+flashed forth from the sending station to a special receiver that will
+step them down again from radio vibrations to matter vibrations. Thus
+matter, living or non-living, could be flashed tremendous distances in
+a second!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"This the Martians told us, and said they would set up a
+matter-transmitter and receiver on Mars and would aid and instruct us
+so that we could set up a similar transmitter and receiver here. Then
+part of us could be flashed out to Mars as radio vibrations by the
+transmitter, and in moments would have flashed across the gulf to the
+red planet and would be transformed back from radio vibrations to
+matter-vibrations by the receiver awaiting us there!
+
+"Naturally we agreed enthusiastically to build such a
+matter-transmitter and receiver, and then, with their instructions
+signalled to us constantly, started the work. Weeks it took, but at
+last, only yesterday, we finished it. The thing's two cubical chambers
+are one for the transmitting of matter and the other for its
+reception. At a time agreed on yesterday we tested the thing, placing
+a guinea pig in the transmitting chamber and turning on the actuating
+force. Instantly the animal vanished, and in moments came a signal
+from the Martians saying that they had received it unharmed in their
+receiving chamber.
+
+"Then we tested it the other way, they sending the same guinea pig to
+us, and in moments it flashed into being in our receiving chamber. Of
+course the step-down force in the receiving chamber had to be in
+operation, since had it not been at that moment the radio-vibrations
+of the animal would have simply flashed on endlessly in endless space.
+And the same would happen to any of us were we flashed forth and no
+receiving chamber turned on to receive us.
+
+"We signalled the Martians that all tests were satisfactory, and told
+them that on the next night at exactly midnight by our time we would
+flash out ourselves on our first visit to them. They have promised to
+have their receiving chamber operating to receive us at that moment,
+of course, and it is my plan to stay there twenty-four hours,
+gathering ample proofs of our visit, and then flash back to earth.
+
+"Nelson must stay here, not only to flash us forth to-night, but above
+all to have the receiving chamber operating to receive us at the
+destined moment twenty-four hours later. The force required to
+operate it is too great to use for more than a few minutes at a time,
+so it is necessary above all that that force be turned on and the
+receiving chamber ready for us at the moment we flash back. And since
+Nelson must stay, and Lanier and I wanted another, we wired you,
+Randall, in the hope that you would want to go with us on this
+venture. And do you?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As Milton's question hung, Randall drew a long breath. His eyes were
+on the two great cubical chambers, and his brain seemed whirling at
+what he had heard. Then he was on his feet with the others.
+
+"Go? Could you keep me from going? Why, man, it's the greatest
+adventure in history!"
+
+Milton grasped his hand, as did Lanier, and then the physicist shot a
+glance at the square clock on the wall. "Well, there's little enough
+time left us," he said, "for we've hardly an hour before midnight, and
+at midnight we must be in that transmitting chamber for Nelson to send
+us flashing out!"
+
+Randall could never recall but dimly afterward how that tense hour
+passed. It was an hour in which Milton and Nelson went with anxious
+faces and low-voiced comments from one to another of the pieces of
+apparatus in the room, inspecting each carefully, from the great
+dynamos to the transmitting and receiving chambers, while Lanier
+quickly got out and made ready the rough khaki suits and equipment
+they were to take.
+
+It lacked but a quarter-hour of midnight when they had finally donned
+those suits, each making sure that he was in possession of the small
+personal kit Milton had designated. This included for each a heavy
+automatic, a small supply of concentrated foods, and a small case of
+drugs chosen to counteract the rarer atmosphere and lesser gravity
+which Milton had been warned to expect on the red planet. Each had
+also a strong wrist-watch, the three synchronized exactly with the
+big laboratory clock.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they had finished checking up on this equipment the clock's
+longer hand pointed almost to the figure twelve, and the physicist
+gestured expressively toward the transmitting chamber. Lanier, though,
+strode for a moment to one of the laboratory's doors and flung it
+open. As Randall gazed out with him they could see far out over the
+tossing sea, dimly lit by the great canopy of the summer stars
+overhead. Right at the zenith among those stars shone brightest a
+crimson spark.
+
+"Mars," said Lanier, his voice a half-whisper. "And they're waiting
+out there for us now--out there where we'll be in minutes!"
+
+"And if they shouldn't be waiting--their receiving chamber not
+ready--"
+
+But Milton's calm voice came across the room to them: "Zero hour," he
+said, stepping up into the big transmitting chamber.
+
+Lanier and Randall slowly followed, and despite himself a slight
+shudder shook the latter's body as he stepped into the mechanism that
+in moments would send him flashing out through the great void as
+impalpable ether-vibrations. Milton and Lanier were standing silent
+beside him, their eyes on Nelson, who stood watchfully now at the big
+switchboard beside the chambers, his own gaze on the clock. They saw
+him touch a stud, and another, and the hum of the great dynamos at the
+room's end grew loud as the swarming of angry bees.
+
+The clock's longer hand was crawling over the last space to cover the
+smaller hand. Nelson turned a knob and the battery of great glass
+tubes broke into brilliant white light, a crackling coming from them.
+Randall saw the clock's pointer clicking over the last divisions, and
+as he saw Nelson grip a great switch there came over him a wild
+impulse to bolt from the transmitting chamber. But then as his
+thoughts whirled maelstromlike there came a clang from the clock and
+Nelson flung down the switch in his grasp. Blinding light seemed to
+break from all the chamber onto the three; Randall felt himself hurled
+into nothingness by forces titanic, inconceivable, and then knew no
+more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Randall came back to consciousness with a humming sound in his ears
+and with a sharp pain piercing his lungs at every breath. He felt
+himself lying on a smooth hard surface, and heard the humming stop and
+be succeeded by a complete silence. He opened his eyes, drawing
+himself to his feet as Milton and Lanier were doing, and stared about
+him.
+
+He was standing with his two friends inside a cubical metal chamber
+almost exactly the same as the one they had occupied in Milton's
+laboratory a few moments before. But it was not the same, as their
+first astounded glance out through its open side told them.
+
+For it was not the laboratory that lay around them, but a vast
+conelike hall that seemed to Randall's dazed eyes of dimensions
+illimitable. Its dull-gleaming metal walls slanted up for a thousand
+feet over their heads, and through a round aperture at the tip far
+above and through great doors in the walls came a thin sunlight. At
+the center of the great hall's circular floor stood the two cubical
+chambers in one of which the three were, while around the chambers
+were grouped masses of unfamiliar-looking apparatus.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Randall's untrained eyes it seemed electrical apparatus of very
+strange design, but neither he nor Milton nor Lanier paid it but small
+attention in that first breathless moment. They were gazing in
+fascinated horror at the scores of creatures who stood silent amid the
+apparatus and at its switches, gazing back at them. Those creatures
+were erect and roughly man-like in shape, but they were not human
+men. They were--the thought blasted to Randall's brain in that
+horror-filled moment--crocodile-men.
+
+Crocodile-men! It was only so that he could think of them in that
+moment. For they were terribly like great crocodile shapes that had
+learned in some way to carry themselves erect upon their hinder limbs.
+The bodies were not covered with skin, but with green bony plates. The
+limbs, thick and taloned at their paw-ends, seemed greater in size and
+stronger, the upper two great arms and the lower two the legs upon
+which each walked, while there was but the suggestion of a tail. But
+the flat head set on the neckless body was most crocodilian of all,
+with great fanged, hinged jaws projecting forward, and with dark
+unwinking eyes set back in bony sockets.
+
+Each of the creatures wore on his torso a gleaming garment like a coat
+of metal scales, with metal belts in which some had shining tubes.
+They were standing in groups here and there about the mechanisms, the
+nearest group at a strange big switch-panel not a half-dozen feet from
+the three men. Milton and Lanier and Randall returned in a tense
+silence the unwinking stare of the monstrous beings around them.
+
+"The Martians!" Lanier's horror-filled exclamation was echoed in the
+next instant by Randall's.
+
+"The Martians! God, Milton! They're not like anything we know--they're
+reptilian!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton's hand clutched his shoulder. "Steady, Randall," he muttered.
+"They're terrible enough, God knows--but remember we must seem just as
+grotesque to them."
+
+The sound of their voices seemed to break the great hall's spell of
+silence, and they saw the crocodilian Martians before them turning and
+speaking swiftly to each other in low hissing speech-sounds that were
+quite unintelligible to the three. Then from the small group nearest
+them one came forward, until he stood just outside the chamber in
+which they were.
+
+Randall felt dimly the momentousness of the moment, in which beings of
+earth and Mars were confronting each other for the first time in the
+solar system's history. The creature before them opened his great jaws
+and uttered slowly a succession of sounds that for the moment puzzled
+them, so different were they from the hissing speech of the others,
+though with the same sibilance of tone. Again the thing repeated the
+sounds, and this time Milton uttered an exclamation.
+
+"He's speaking to us!" he cried. "Trying to speak the English that I
+taught them in our communication! I caught a word--listen...."
+
+As the creature repeated the sounds, Randall and Lanier started to
+hear also vaguely expressed in that hissing voice familiar words:
+"You--are Milton and--others from--earth?"
+
+Milton spoke very clearly and slowly to the creature: "We are those
+from earth," he said. "And you are the Martians with whom we have
+communicated?"
+
+"We are those Martians," said the other's hissing voice slowly.
+"These"--he waved a taloned paw toward those behind him--"have charge
+of the matter-transmitter and receiver. I am of our ruler's council."
+
+"Ruler?" Milton repeated. "A ruler of all Mars?"
+
+"Of all Mars," the other said. "Our name for him would mean in your
+words the Martian Master. I am to take you to him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton turned to the other two with face alight with excitement.
+"These Martians have some supreme ruler they call the Martian Master,"
+he said quickly; "and we're to go before him. As the first visitors
+from earth we're of immense importance here."
+
+As he spoke, the Martian official before them had uttered a hissing
+call, and in answer to it a long shape of shining metal raced into
+the vast hall and halted beside them. It was like a fifty-foot
+centipede of metal, its scores of supporting short legs actuated by
+some mechanism inside the cylindrical body. There was a
+transparent-walled control room at the front end of that body, and in
+it a Martian at the controls who snapped open a door from which a
+metal ladder automatically descended.
+
+The Martian official gestured with a reptilian arm toward the ladder,
+and Milton and Lanier and Randall moved carefully out of the
+cube-chamber and across the floor to it, each of their steps being
+made a short leap forward by the lesser gravity of the smaller planet.
+They climbed up into the centipede-machine's control room, their guide
+following, and then as the door snapped shut, the operator of the
+thing pulled and turned the knob in his grasp and the long machine
+scuttled forward with amazing smoothness and speed.
+
+In a moment it was out of the building and into the feeble sunlight of
+a broad metal-paved street. About them lay a Martian city, seen by
+their eager eyes for the first time. It was a city whose structures
+were giant metal cones like that from which they had just come, though
+none seemed as large as that titanic one. Throngs of the hideous
+crocodilian Martians were moving busily to and fro in the streets,
+while among them there scuttled and flashed numbers of the
+centipede-machines.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As their strange vehicle raced along, Randall saw that the conelike
+structures were for the most part divided into many levels, and that
+inside some could be glimpsed ranks of great mechanisms and hurrying
+Martians tending them. Away to their right across the vast forest of
+cones that was the city the sun's little disk was shining, and he
+glimpsed in that direction higher ground covered with a vast tangle of
+bright crimson jungle that sloped upward from a great, half-glimpsed
+waterway.
+
+The Martian beside them saw the direction of his gaze and leaned
+toward him. "No Martians live there," he hissed slowly. "Martians live
+only in cities where canals meet."
+
+"Then there's no life in those crimson jungles?" Randall asked,
+repeating the question a moment later more slowly.
+
+"No Martians there, but life--living things," the other told him,
+searching for words. "But not intelligent, like Martians and you."
+
+He turned to gaze ahead, then pointed. "The Martian Master's cone," he
+hissed.
+
+The three saw that at the end of the broad metal street down which
+their vehicle was racing there loomed another titanic cone-structure,
+fully as large as the mighty one in which they first found themselves.
+As the centipede-machine swept up to its great door-opening and
+halted, they descended to the metal paving and then followed their
+reptilian guide through the opening.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They found themselves in a great hall in which scores of the Martians
+were coming and going. At the hall's end stood a row of what seemed
+guards, Martians grasping shining tubes such as they had already
+glimpsed. These gave way to allow their passage when their conductor
+uttered a hissing order, and then they were moving down a shorter hall
+at whose end also were guards. As these sprang aside before them, a
+great door of massive metal they guarded moved softly upward,
+disclosing a mighty circular hall or room inside. Their crocodilian
+guide turned to them.
+
+"The hall of the Martian Master," he hissed.
+
+They passed inside with him. The great hall seemed to extend upward to
+the giant cone's tip, thin light coming down from an opening there.
+Upon the dull metal of its looming walls were running friezes of
+lighter metal, grotesque representations of reptilian shapes that they
+could but vaguely glimpse. Around the walls stood rank after rank of
+guards.
+
+At the hall's center was a low dias, and in a semicircle around and
+behind it stood a half-hundred great crocodilian shapes. Randall
+guessed even at the moment that they were the council of which their
+conductor had named himself a member. But like Milton and Lanier, he
+had eyes in that first moment only for the dais itself. For on it
+was--the Martian Master.
+
+Randall heard Milton and Lanier choke with the horror that shook his
+own heart and brain as he gazed. It was not simply another great
+crocodilian shape that sat upon that dais. It was a monstrous thing
+formed by the joining of three of the great reptilian bodies! Three
+distinct crocodile-like bodies sitting close together upon a metal
+seat, that had but a single great head. A great, grotesque crocodilian
+head that bulged backward and to either side, and that rested on the
+three thick short necks that rose from the triple body! And that head,
+that triple-bodied thing, was living, its unwinking eyes gazing at the
+three men!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Martian Master! Randall felt his brain reel as he gazed at that
+mind-shattering thing. The Martian Master--this great head with three
+bodies! Reason told Randall, even as he strove for sanity, that the
+thing was but logical, that even on earth biologists had formed
+multiple-headed creatures by surgery, and that the Martians had done
+so to combine in one great head, one great brain, the brains of three
+bodies. Reason told him that the great triple brain inside that
+bulging head needed the bloodstreams of all three bodies to nourish
+it, must be a giant intellect indeed, one fitted to be the supreme
+Martian Master. But reason could not overcome the horror that choked
+him as he gazed at the awful thing.
+
+A hissing voice sounding before him made him aware that the Martian
+Master was speaking.
+
+"You are the Earth-beings with whom we communicated, and whom we
+instructed to build a matter-transmitter and receiver on earth?" the
+slow voice asked. "You have come safely to Mars by means of that
+station?"
+
+"We have come safely." Milton's voice was shaken and he could find no
+other words.
+
+"That is well. Long had we desired to have such a station built on
+earth, since with it there to flash back and forth between the two
+worlds is easy. You have come, then, to learn of this world and to
+take back what you learn to your races?"
+
+"That is why we came." Milton said, more steadily. "We want to stay
+only hours on this first visit, and then flash back to earth as we
+came."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The head's awful eyes seemed to consider them. "But when do you intend
+to go back?" its strange voice asked. "Unless the one at your earth
+station has its receiver operating at the right moment you will simply
+flash on endlessly as radio waves--will be annihilated."
+
+Milton found the courage to smile. "We started from earth at our
+midnight exactly, and at midnight exactly twenty-four earth hours
+later, we are to flash back and the receiver will be awaiting us."
+
+There was silence when he had said that, a silence that seemed to
+Randall's strained mind to have become suddenly tense, sinister. The
+great triple-bodied creature before them considered them again, its
+eyes moving over them, and when it again spoke the hissing words came
+very slowly.
+
+"Twenty-four earth hours," it said; "and then your receiver on earth
+will be awaiting you. That time we can measure to the moment, and that
+is well. For it is not you three Earth-beings who will flash back to
+earth when that moment comes! It will be Martians, the first of our
+Martian masses who have waited for ages for that moment and who will
+begin then our conquest of the earth!
+
+"Yes, Earth-beings, our great plan comes to its end now at last! At
+last! Age on age, prisoned on this dying, arid world, we have desired
+the earth that by right of power shall be ours, have sought for ages
+to communicate with its beings. You finally heard us, you hearkened to
+us, you built the matter-transmitting and receiving station on earth
+that was the one thing needed for our plan. For when the
+matter-receiver of that station is turned on in twenty-four of your
+hours, and ready to receive matter flashes from here, it will be the
+first of our millions who will flash at last to earth!
+
+"I, the Martian Master, say it. Those first to go shall seize that
+matter-receiver on earth when first they appear there, shall build
+other and larger receivers, and through them within days all our
+Martian hordes shall have been flashed to earth! Shall have poured out
+over it and conquered with our weapons your weak races of
+Earth-beings, who cannot stand before us, and whose world you have
+delivered at last into our hands!"
+
+For a moment, when the great monster's hissing voice had ceased,
+Milton and Randall and Lanier gazed toward it as though petrified, the
+whole unearthly scene spinning about them. And then, through the thick
+silence, the thin sound of Milton's voice:
+
+"Our world--our earth--delivered to the Martians, and by us! God--no!"
+
+With that last cry of agonized comprehension and horror, Milton did
+what surely had never any in the great hall expected, leaped onto the
+dais with a single spring toward the Martian Master! Randall heard a
+hundred wild hissing cries break from about him, saw the crocodilian
+forms of guards and council rushing forward even as he and Lanier
+sprang after Milton, and then glimpsed shining tubes levelled from
+which brilliant shafts of dazzling crimson light or force were
+stabbing toward them!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Randall the moment that followed was but a split-second flash and
+whirl of action. As his earthly muscles took him forward with Lanier
+after Milton in a great leap to the dais, he was aware of the
+brilliant red rays stabbing behind him closely, and knew that only the
+tremendous size of his leap had taken him past them. In the succeeding
+instant he was made aware of what he had escaped, for the
+hastily-loosed rays struck squarely a group of three or four Martian
+guards rushing to the dais from the opposite side, and they vanished
+from view with a sharp detonation as though clicked out of existence!
+
+Randall was not to know then, that the red rays were ones that
+annihilated matter by neutralizing or damping the matter-vibrations in
+the ether. But he did know that no more rays were loosed, for by then
+he and Milton and Lanier were on the dais and were wrapped in a
+hurricane combat with the guards that had rushed between them and the
+Martian Master.
+
+Gleaming fangs--great scaled forms--reaching talons--it was all a wild
+phantasmagoria of grotesque forms spinning around him as he struck
+with all the power of his earthly muscles and felt crocodilian forms
+staggering and going down beneath his frenzied blows. He heard the
+roar of an automatic close beside him in the melee as Milton
+remembered at last through the red haze of his fury the weapon he
+carried, but before either Randall or Lanier could reach their own
+weapons a new wave of crocodilian forms had poured onto them that by
+sheer pressing weight held them helpless, to be disarmed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hissing orders sounded, the arms and legs of the three were tightly
+grasped by great taloned paws, and the masses of Martians about them
+melted back from the dais. Held each by two great creatures, Milton
+and Randall and Lanier faced again the triple-bodied Martian Master,
+who in all that wild moment of struggle appeared not to have changed
+his position. The big monster's black eyes stared unmovedly down at
+them.
+
+"You Earth-beings seem of lower intelligence even than we thought,"
+his hissing voice informed them. "And those weapons--crude, very
+crude."
+
+Milton, his face set, spoke back: "It may be that you will find human
+weapons of some power if your hordes reach earth," he said.
+
+"But what compared with the power of ours?" the other asked coldly.
+"And since our scientists even now devise new weapons to annihilate
+the earth's races, I think they would be glad of three of those races
+to experiment with now. The one use we can make of you, certainly."
+
+The creature turned its bulging head a little towards the guards who
+held the three men, and uttered a brief hissing order. Instantly the
+six Martians, grasping the three tightly, marched them across the
+great hall and through a different door than that by which they had
+entered.
+
+They were taken down a narrow corridor that turned sharply twice as
+they went on. Randall saw that it was lit by squares inset in the
+walls that glowed with crimson light. It came to him as they marched
+on that night must be upon the Martian city without, since the sun had
+been sinking when they had crossed it in the centipede-machine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Through what seemed an ante-room they were taken, and then into a long
+hall instantly recognizable as a laboratory. There were many glowing
+squares illuminating it, and narrow windows high in the wall gave them
+a glimpse of the city outside, a pattern of crimson lights. Long metal
+tables and racks filled the big room's farther end, while along the
+walls were ranged shining mechanisms of unfamiliar and grotesque
+appearance. Fully a score of the crocodilian Martians were busy in the
+room, some intent on their work at the racks and tables, others
+operating some of the strange machines.
+
+The guards conducted the three to an open space by the wall, below one
+of the high window-openings and between two great cylindrical
+mechanisms. Then, while five of their number held the three men
+prisoned in that space by the threat of their levelled ray-tubes, the
+other moved toward one of the busy Martian scientists and held with
+him a brief interchange of hissing speech.
+
+Milton leaned to whisper to the other two: "We've got to get out of
+this while we're still living," he whispered. "You heard the Martian
+Master--in constructing that matter-receiver on earth, we've opened a
+door through which all the Martian millions will pour onto our world!"
+
+"It's useless, Milton," said Randall dully. "Even if we got clear of
+this the Martians will be at their matter-transmitter in hordes when
+the moment comes to flash back to earth."
+
+"I know that, but we've got to try," the other insisted. "If we or
+some of us could get clear of this, we might in some way hide near the
+matter-transmitter until the moment came and then fight to it."
+
+"But how to get out of the hands of these, even?" asked Lanier,
+nodding toward the alert guards before them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There's but one way," Milton whispered swiftly. "Our earthly muscles
+would enable us, I think, to get through this window-opening above us
+in a leap, if we had a moment's chance. Well, whichever of us they
+take to experiment with or examine first, must make a struggle or
+disturbance that will turn the guards' attention for a moment and give
+the other two a chance to make the attempt!"
+
+"One to stay and the other two to get away...." Randall said slowly;
+but Milton's tense whisper interrupted:
+
+"It's the only way, and even then a thousand to one chance! But it's
+we who have opened this gate for the Martian invasion of our world and
+it's we who must--"
+
+Before he could finish, the approach of hissing voices told them that
+the leader of the six guards and the Martian who seemed the chief of
+the experimenters in the hall were nearing them. The three men stood
+silent and tense as the two crocodilian monsters stopped before them.
+The scientist, who carried in his metal-belt, instead of a ray-tube a
+compact case of instruments, surveyed them as though in curiosity.
+
+He came closer, his quick reptilian eyes taking in with evident
+interest every feature of their bodily appearance. Intuitively the
+three knew that one of them was to be chosen for a first investigation
+by the Martian scientists, and that that one would have not even the
+slender hope of escape open to the other two. A strange lottery of
+life and death!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Randall saw the creature's gaze turn from one to another of them, and
+then heard the hiss of his voice as he pointed a taloned paw toward
+Milton. Instantly two of the guards had seized Milton and had jerked
+him out from the wall, the other guards holding back Randall and
+Lanier with threatening tubes. It was upon Milton that the fatal
+choice had fallen!
+
+Randall and Lanier made together a half-movement forward, but Milton,
+a tense message in his eyes, forced them back. The guards who held the
+physicist led him, at the direction of the Martian scientist, toward a
+great upright frame at the room's far end, upon which were clustered a
+score of dial-indicators. From these flexible cords led; and now the
+scientists began attaching these by clips to various spots on Milton's
+body. Some mechanical examination of his bodily characteristics were
+apparently to be made. Milton shot suddenly a glance at the two by the
+wall, and his head nodded in an almost imperceptible signal. The
+muscles of Lanier and Randall tensed.
+
+Then abruptly Milton seemed to go mad. He shouted aloud in a terrible
+voice, and at the same moment tore from him the cords just attached,
+his fists striking out then at the amazed Martians around him. As they
+leaped back from that sudden explosion of activity and sound on
+Milton's part the guards before Randall and Lanier whirled
+instinctively for an instant toward it. And in that instant the two
+had leaped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was upward they leaped, with all the force of their earthly
+muscles, toward the big window-opening a half-dozen feet in the wall
+above them. Like released steel springs they sat up, and Randall heard
+the thump of their feet as they struck the opening's sill, heard wild
+cries suddenly coming from beneath them, as the guards turned back
+toward them. Crimson rays clove up like light toward them, but the
+instant's surprise had been enough, and in it they had leaped on and
+through the opening, into the outside night!
+
+As they shot downward and struck the metal paving outside, Randall
+heard a wild babble of cries from inside. A moment he and Lanier gazed
+frenziedly around them, then were running with great leaps along the
+base of the building from which they had just escaped.
+
+In the darkness of night the Martian city stretched away to their
+right, its massive dark cone-structures outlined by points of glowing
+ruddy light here and there upon them. Beside the city's metal streets
+were illuminated by the brilliant field of stars overhead and by the
+soft light of the two moons, one much larger than the other, that
+moved among those stars.
+
+Along the street crocodilian Martians were coming and going still,
+though in small numbers, there being but few in sight in the dim-lit
+street's length. Lanier pointed ahead as they leaped onward.
+
+"Straight onward, Randall!" he jerked. "There seem fewer of the
+Martians this way!"
+
+"But the great cone of the matter-station is the other way!" Randall
+exclaimed.
+
+"We can't risk making for it now!" cried the other. "We've got to keep
+clear of them until the alarm is over. Hear them now?"
+
+For even as they leaped forward a rising clamor of hissing cries and
+rush of feet was coming from behind as scores of Martians poured out
+into the darkness from the great cone-building. The two fugitives had
+passed by then from the shadow of the mighty structure, and as they
+ran along the broad metal street toward the shadow of the next cone,
+through the light of the moons above, they heard higher cries and then
+glimpsed narrow shafts of crimson force cleaving the night around
+them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Randall, as the deadly rays drove past him, heard the low detonating
+sound made by their destruction of the air in their path, and the
+inrush of new air. But in the misty and uncertain moonlight the rays
+could not be loosed accurately, and before they could be swept
+sidewise to annihilate the two fleeing men they had gained, with a
+last great leap, the shadow of the next building.
+
+On they ran, the clatter of the Martian pursuit growing more noisy
+behind them. Randall heard Lanier gasping with each great leap, and
+felt himself at every breath a knife of pain stabbing through his
+lungs, the rarified atmosphere of the red planet taking its toll.
+Again from the darkness behind them the crimson rays clove, but this
+time were wide of their mark.
+
+With every moment the clamor of pursuit seemed growing louder, the
+alarm spreading out over the Martian city and arousing it. As they
+raced past cone after cone, Randall knew even the increased power of
+their muscles could not long aid them against the exhaustion which the
+thin air was imposing on them. His thoughts spun for a moment to
+Milton, in the laboratory behind, and then back to their own desperate
+plight.
+
+Abruptly shapes loomed in the misty light before them! A group of
+three great Martians, reptilian shapes that had been coming toward
+them and had stopped for an instant in amazement at sight of the
+running pair. There was no time to halt themselves, to evade the
+three, and with a mutual instinct Lanier and Randall seized together
+the last expedient open to them. They ran straight forward toward the
+astounded three, and when a half-score feet from them, leaped with all
+their force upward and toward them, their tensed bodies flying through
+the air with feet outstretched before them.
+
+Then they had struck the group of three with feet-foremost, and with
+the impetus of that great leap had knocked them sprawling to this side
+and that, while with a supreme effort the two kept their balance and
+leaped on. The cries of the three added to the din behind them as they
+threw themselves forward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They flung themselves past a last cone building to halt for an instant
+in utter amazement despite the nearing pursuit. Before them were no
+more streets and structures, but a huge smooth-flowing waterway! It
+gleamed in the moonlight and lay at right angles across their path,
+seeming to flow along the Martian city's edge.
+
+"A canal!" cried Lanier. "It's one of the canals that meet at this
+city and flow around it! We're trapped--we've reached the city's
+edge!"
+
+"Not yet!" Randall gasped. "Look!"
+
+As he pointed to the left Lanier shot a glance there; and then both of
+them were running in that direction, along the smooth metal paving
+that bordered the mighty canal. They came to what Randall had seen, a
+mighty metal arch that soared out over the waterway to its opposite
+side. A bridge!
+
+They were on it, were racing up the smooth incline of it. Randall
+glanced back as they reached the arch's summit. From that height the
+city stretched far away behind them, a lace of crimson lights in the
+night. He glimpsed the gleam of the giant waterway that encircled the
+city completely, one that was fed by other canals from far away that
+emptied into it, the great city's vital water-supply brought thus from
+this world's melting polar snows.
+
+There were moving lights behind now, too, pouring out onto the metal
+paving by the waterway, moving to and fro as though in confusion, with
+a babel of hissing cries. It was not until Randall and Lanier were
+running down the descending incline of the great arched bridge,
+though, that the lights and shouts of their pursuers began to move up
+on that bridge after them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Running off the bridge's smooth way, the two found themselves
+stumbling on through the darkness over more metal paving, and then
+over soft ground. There were no lights or buildings or sounds of any
+sort on this farther side of the great waterway. A tall dark wall
+seemed suddenly to loom up out of the darkness some distance ahead of
+the two.
+
+"The crimson jungle!" Randall cried. "The jungles we glimpsed from the
+city! It's a chance to hide!"
+
+They raced toward the protecting blackness of that wall of vegetation.
+They reached it, flung themselves inside, just as the pursuing
+Martians, a mass of running crocodilian shapes and of great racing
+centipede-machines, swept up over the bridge's arch behind. A moment
+the two halted in the thick vegetation's shelter, gasping for breath,
+then were moving forward through the jungle's denser darkness.
+
+Thick about them and far above them towered the masses of strange
+trees and plant life through which they made their way. Randall could
+see but dimly the nature of these plant-forms, but could make out that
+they were grotesque and unearthly in appearance, all leafless, and
+with masses of thin tendrils branching from them instead of leaves. He
+realized that it was only beside the arid planet's great canals that
+this profusion of plant life had sufficient moisture for existence,
+and that it was the broad bands of jungle bordering the canals that
+had made the latter visible to earth's astronomers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lanier and he halted for a moment to listen. The thick jungle about
+them seemed quite silent. But from behind there came through it a
+vague tumult of hissing calls; and then, as they glimpsed red flashes
+far behind, they heard the crashing of great masses of the leafless
+trees.
+
+"The rays!" whispered Lanier. "They're beating through the jungle with
+them and the centipede-machines after us!"
+
+They paused no more, but pushed on through the thick growths with
+renewed urgency. Now and then, as they passed through small clearings,
+Randall glimpsed overhead the fast-moving nearer moon and slower
+sailing farther moon of Mars, moving across the steady stars. In some
+of these clearings they saw, too, strange great openings burrowed in
+the ground as though by some strange animal.
+
+The crashing clamor of the Martians beating the jungle behind was
+coming close, ever closer, and as they came to still another misty-lit
+clearing, Lanier paused, with face white and tense.
+
+"They're closing in on us!" he said. "They're hunting us down by
+beating the jungle with those centipede-machines, and even if we
+escape them we're getting farther from the city and the matter-station
+each moment!"
+
+Randall's eyes roved desperately around the clearing; and then, as
+they fell on a group of the great burrowed openings that seemed
+present everywhere about them, he uttered an exclamation.
+
+"These holes! We can hide in one until they've passed over us, and
+then steal back to the city!"
+
+Lanier's eyes lit. "It's a chance!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They sprang toward the openings. They were each of some four feet
+diameter, extending indefinitely downward as though the mouths of
+tunnels. In a moment Randall was lowering himself into one, Lanier
+after him. The tunnel in which they were, they found, curved to one
+side a few feet below the surface. They crawled down this curve until
+they were out of sight of the opening above. They crouched silent,
+then, listening.
+
+There came down to them the dull, distant clamor of the
+centipede-machines crashing through the jungle, cutting a way with
+rays, their clamor growing ever louder. Then Randall, who was lowest
+in the tunnel, turned suddenly as there came to him a strange rustling
+sound from _beneath_ him. It was as though some crawling or creeping
+thing was moving in the tunnel below them!
+
+He grasped the arm of Lanier, beside and a little above him, to warn
+him, but the words he was about to whisper never were uttered. For at
+this moment a big shapeless living thing seemed to flash up toward
+them through the darkness from beneath, cold ropelike tentacles
+gripped both tightly; and then in an instant they were being dragged
+irresistibly down into the lightless tunnel's depths!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As they were pulled swiftly downward into the tunnel by the tentacles
+that grasped them an involuntary cry of horror came from Randall and
+Lanier alike. They twisted frantically in the cold grip that held
+them, but found it of the quality of steel. And as Randall twisted in
+it to strike frantically down through the darkness at whatever thing
+of horror held them, his clenched fist met but the cold smooth skin
+of some big, soft-bodied creature!
+
+Down--down--remorselessly they were being drawn farther into the black
+depths of the tunnel by the great thing crawling down below them.
+Again and again the two twisted and struck, but could not shake its
+hold. In sheer exhaustion they ceased to struggle, dragged helplessly
+farther down.
+
+Was it minutes or hours, Randall wondered afterward, of that horrible
+progress downward, that passed before they glimpsed light beneath? A
+feeble glow, hardly discernible, it was, and as they went lower still
+he saw that it was caused by the tunnel passing through a strata of
+radio-active rock that gave off the faint light. In that light they
+glimpsed for the first time the horror dragging them downward.
+
+It was a huge worm creature! A thing like a giant angleworm, three
+feet or more in thickness and thrice that in length, its great body
+soft and cold and worm-like. From the end nearest them projected two
+long tentacles with which it had gripped the two men and was dragging
+them down the tunnel after it! Randall glimpsed a mouth-aperture in
+the tentacled end of the worm body also, and two scarlike marks above
+it, placed like eyes, although eyes the monstrous thing had not.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But a moment they glimpsed it and then were in darkness again as the
+tunnel passed through the radio-active strata and lower. The horror of
+that moment's glimpse, though, made them strike out in blind
+repulsion, but relentlessly the creature dragged them after it.
+
+"God!" It was Lanier's panting cry as they were dragged on. "This worm
+monster--we're hundreds of feet below the surface!"
+
+Randall sought to reply, but his voice choked. The air about them was
+close and damp, with an overpowering earthy smell. He felt
+consciousness leaving him.
+
+A gleam of soft light--they were passing more radio-active patches. He
+felt the wild convulsive struggles of Lanier against the thing; and
+then suddenly the tunnel ended, debouched into a far-stretching,
+low-ceilinged cavity. It was feebly illuminated by radio-active
+patches here and there in walls and ceiling, and as the monster that
+held them halted on entering the cavity, Randall and Lanier lay in its
+grip and stared across the weird place with intensified horror.
+
+For it was swarming with countless worm monsters! All were like the
+one who held them, thick long worm bodies with projecting tentacles
+and with black eyeless faces. They were crawling to and fro in this
+cavern far beneath the surface, swarming in hordes around and over
+each other, pouring in and out of the awful place from countless
+tunnels that led upward and downward from it!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A world of worm monsters, beneath the surface of the Martian jungles!
+As Randall stared across that swarming, dim-lit cave of horror,
+physically sick at sight of it, he remembered the countless tunnel
+openings they had glimpsed in their flight through the jungle, and
+remembered the remark of the Martian who had first guided them across
+the city, that in the jungles were living things, of a sort. These
+were the things, worm monsters whose unthinkable networks of tunnels
+and burrows formed beneath the surface a veritable worm world!
+
+"Randall!" It was Lanier's thick exclamation. "Randall--those
+scar-marks on their--faces--you see--?"
+
+"See?"
+
+"Those marks! These creatures had eyes once but must have been forced
+down here by the Martians. These may once have been--ages ago--human!"
+
+At that thought Randall felt horror overcoming his senses. He was
+aware that the great worm monster holding them was dragging them
+forward through the cavern, that others of the swarms there were
+crowding around them, feeling them blindly with their tentacles,
+helping to drag them forward.
+
+Half-carried and half-dragged they went, scores of tentacles now
+holding them, great worm shapes crawling forward on all sides of them
+and accompanying them along the cavern's length. He glimpsed worm
+monsters here and there emerging from the upward tunnels with masses
+of strange plant stuff in their grasp that others blindly devoured.
+His senses reeled from the suffocating air, the great cavity being but
+a half-score feet in height, burrowed from the damp earth by these
+numberless things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The faint, strange light of the radio-active patches showed him that
+they were approaching the cavern's end. Tunnels opened from its end as
+from all its walls and floor, and into one Randall was dragged by the
+creatures, one before and one behind, grasping him, and Lanier being
+brought behind him in the same way. In the close tunnel the heavy air
+was deadly, and he was but partly conscious when again, after moments
+of crawling along it, he felt himself dragged out into another cavern.
+
+This earth-walled cavity, though, seemed to extend farther than the
+first, though of the same height as the first and with a few
+radio-active illuminating patches. In it seethed and swarmed literally
+hundreds on hundreds of the worm monsters, a sea of great crawling
+bodies. Randall and Lanier saw that they were being carried and
+dragged now toward the farther end of this larger cavity.
+
+As they approached it, pushing through the swarming creatures who felt
+them with inquisitive tentacles as their captors took them forward,
+the two men saw that a great shape was looming up in the faint light
+at the cave's far end. In moments they were close enough to discern
+its nature, and a horror and awe filled them at sight of it more
+intense than they had yet felt.
+
+For the looming shape was a huge earthen image or statue of a worm! It
+was shaped with a childish crudeness from the solid earth, a giant
+earthen worm shape whose body looped across the cave's end, and whose
+tentacled head or front end was reared upward to the cavity's roof.
+Before this awful earthen shape was a section of the cave's floor
+higher than the rest, and on it a great crudely shaped rectangular
+earthen block.
+
+"Lanier--that shape!" whispered Randall in his horror. "That earthen
+image, made by these creatures--it's the worm god they've made for
+themselves!"
+
+"A worm god!" Lanier repeated, staring toward it as they were dragged
+nearer. "Then that block...."
+
+"Its altar!" Randall exclaimed. "These things have some dim spark of
+intelligence or memory! They're brought us here to--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before he could finish, the clutching tentacles of the worm monsters
+about them had dragged them up onto the raised floor beside the block,
+beneath the looming earthen worm shape. There they glimpsed for the
+first time in the faint light another who stood there held tightly by
+the tentacles of two worm monsters. It was a Martian!
+
+The big crocodilian shape was apparently a prisoner like themselves,
+captured and brought down from above. His reptilian eyes surveyed
+Lanier and Randall quickly as they were dragged up and held beside
+him, but he took no other interest. To the two men, at the moment, it
+seemed that his great crocodilian shape was human, almost, so much
+more man-like was it than the grotesque worm monsters before them.
+
+With a half-dozen of the creatures holding the two men and the Martian
+tightly, another great worm monster crawled to the edge of the raised
+earth floor in front of the giant worm god's image, and then reared up
+the first third of his thick body into the air. By then the great,
+faint-lit cavity stretching before them was filled with countless
+numbers of the monsters, pouring into it from all the tunnels that
+opened into it from above and below, packing it thick with their
+grotesque bodies as far as the eye could reach in the dim light.
+
+They were seething and crawling in that great mass; but as the worm
+monster on the elevation upreared, all in the cavity seemed suddenly
+to quiet. Then the upreared eyeless thing began to move his long
+tentacles. Very slowly at first he waved them back and forth, and
+slowly the masses of monsters in the cavity, all turned by some sense
+toward him, did likewise, the cavity becoming a forest of upraised
+tentacles waving rhythmically back and forth in unison with those of
+the leader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Back and forth--back and forth--Randall felt caught in some torturing
+nightmare as he watched the countless tentacle-feelers waving thus
+from one side to the other. It was a ceremony, he knew--some strange
+rite springing perhaps from dim memory alone, that these worm monsters
+carried out thus before the looming shape of their worm god. Only the
+six that held the three captives never relaxed their grip.
+
+Still on and on went the strange and senseless rite. By then the
+close, damp air of that cavity far beneath Mars' surface was sinking
+Randall and Lanier deeper into a half-consciousness. The Martian
+beside them never moved or spoke. The upstretched tentacles of the
+leader and of the great worm horde before him never ceased swaying
+rhythmically from side to side.
+
+Randall, half-hypnotized by those swaying tentacles and but
+semi-conscious by then, could only estimate afterward how long that
+grotesque rite went on. Hours it must have endured, he knew, hours in
+which each opening of his eyes revealed only the dimly-illuminated
+cavern, the worm monsters that filled it, the forest of tentacles
+waving in unison. It was only toward the end of those hours that he
+noticed vaguely that the tentacles were waving faster and faster.
+
+And as the tentacles of leader and worm horde waved alike ever more
+swiftly an atmosphere of growing excitement and expectation seemed to
+hold the horde. At last the upstretched feelers were whipping back and
+forth almost too swiftly for the eye to follow. Then abruptly the worm
+leader ceased the motion himself, and while the horde before him
+continued it, turned and crawled to the three captives.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In an instant, as though in answer to a second command, the two worm
+monsters who held the Martian dragged him forward toward the great
+earthen block before the worm god's image. Two others of the creatures
+came from the side, and the four swiftly stretched the Martian flat on
+the block's top, each of the four grasping with their tentacles one of
+his four taloned limbs. They seemed to hesitate then, the worm leader
+beside them, the tentacles of the horde waving swiftly still.
+
+Abruptly the tentacles of the leader flashed up as though in a signal.
+There was a dull ripping sound, and in that moment Randall and Lanier
+saw the Martian on the block torn literally limb from limb by the four
+great worm monsters who had held his four limbs!
+
+The tentacles of the horde waved suddenly with increased, excited
+swiftness at that. Randall shrank in horror.
+
+"They've brought us here for that!" he cried. "To sacrifice us on that
+altar that way to their worm god!"
+
+But Lanier too had cried out, appalled, as he saw that awful
+sacrifice, and both strained madly against the grip of the worm
+creatures. Their struggles were in vain, and then in answer to another
+unspoken command the two monsters that held Randall were dragging him
+also to the earthen altar!
+
+He felt himself gripped by the four great creatures around the block,
+felt as he struggled with his last strength that he was being
+stretched out on the block, each of the four at one of its corners
+grasping one of his limbs. He heard Lanier's mad cries as though from
+a great distance, glimpsed as he was held thus on his back the great
+shape of the earthen worm god reared over him, and then glimpsed the
+leader of the monsters rearing beside him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dull sound of the swift-waving tentacles of the horde came to him,
+there was a tense moment of agony of waiting, and then the tentacles
+of the leader flashed up in the signal!
+
+But at the same moment Randall felt his limbs released by the four
+monsters that had held them! There seemed sudden wild confusion in the
+great cave. The strange rite broke off; the horde of worm monsters
+crawled frantically this way and that in it. Randall slipped off the
+block; staggered to his feet.
+
+The worm monsters in the cave were swarming toward the downward tunnel
+openings! The two captives forgotten, the creatures were pouring in
+crawling, fighting swarms toward those openings. And then, as Randall
+and Lanier stared stupefied, there came a red flash from one of the
+upward tunnels and a brilliant crimson ray stabbed down and mowed a
+path of annihilation in the cave's earthen side!
+
+The two heard great thumping sounds from above, saw the tunnels
+leading from above becoming suddenly many times greater in size as red
+rays flashed down along them to gouge the tunnel's walls. Then down
+from those enlarged tunnels there were bursting long shining shapes,
+great centipede-machines crawling down the tunnels which their rays
+made larger before them! And as the centipede-machines burst down into
+the cavern their crimson rays stabbed right and left to cut paths of
+annihilation among the worms.
+
+"The Martians!" Lanier cried. "They didn't find us above--they knew we
+must have been taken by these things--and they've come down after us!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Back, Lanier!" Randall shouted. "Quick, before they see us, behind
+this--"
+
+As he spoke he was jerking Lanier with him behind the looming earthen
+statue of the great worm god. Crouched there between the statue and
+the cave's wall they were hidden precariously from the view of those
+in the cavern. And now that cavern had become a scene of horror
+unthinkable as the centipede-machines pouring down into it blasted the
+frantically crawling worm monsters with their rays.
+
+The worm monsters attempted no resistance, but sought only to escape
+into their downward tunnels, and in moments those not caught by the
+rays had vanished in the openings. But the centipede-machines, after
+racing swiftly around the cavity, were following them, were going down
+into those downward tunnels also, their rays blasting down ahead of
+each to make the tunnel large enough for them to follow.
+
+In a moment all but one had vanished down into the openings, the
+remaining one having its front or head jammed in one of the openings
+from the failure of its operator to blast a large enough opening
+before him. As Lanier and Randall watched tensely they saw the
+machine's control room door open and a Martian descend. He inspected
+the tunnel opening in which his vehicle was jammed, then with a hand
+ray-tube began to disintegrate the earth around that opening to free
+his machine.
+
+Randall clutched his companion's arm. "That machine!" he whispered.
+"If we could capture it, it would give us a chance to get back to the
+city--to Milton and the matter-transmitter!"
+
+Lanier started, then nodded swiftly. "We'll chance it," he whispered.
+"For our twenty-four hours here must be almost up."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They hesitated a moment, then crept forward from behind the great
+earthen statue. The Martian had his back to them, his attention on the
+freeing of his mechanism. Across the dim-lit cavern they crept softly,
+and were within a dozen feet of the Martian when some sound made him
+wheel quickly to confront them with the deadly tube. But even as he
+whirled the two had leaped.
+
+The force of their leap sent them flying through that dozen feet of
+space to strike the Martian at the moment his tube levelled. One
+hissing call he uttered as they struck him, and then with all his
+strength Lanier had grasped the crocodilian body and bent it backward.
+Something in it snapped, and the Martian collapsed limply. The two
+looked wildly around.
+
+Nothing showed that the Martian's call had been heard, and after a
+moment's glance that showed the head of the centipede machine already
+freed, they were clambering up into its control room, closing the
+door. Randall seized the knob with which he had seen the machines
+operated. As he pulled it toward him the machine moved across the
+tunnel opening and raced smoothly over the cavern's floor. As he
+turned the knob the machine turned swiftly in the same direction.
+
+He headed the long mechanism toward one of the upward-curving tunnels
+which the Martians had blasted larger in descending. They were almost
+to it when there flashed up into the cavity from one of the downward
+tunnel openings a centipede-machine, and then another, and another.
+The Martians in their transparent-windowed control rooms took in at a
+glance the dead crocodilian on the floor, and then the three great
+machines were darting toward that of Randall and Lanier.
+
+"The Martian we killed!" Randall cried. "They heard his call and are
+coming after us!"
+
+"Turn to the wall!" Lanier shouted to him. "I have the rays--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At that moment there was a clicking beside Randall and he glimpsed
+Lanier pulling forth two small grips he had found, then saw that two
+crimson rays were stabbing from tubes in their machine's front toward
+the others even as their own rays darted back. The beams that had been
+loosed toward them grazed past them as Randall whirled their machine
+to the wall, and he saw one of the three attacking mechanisms vanish
+as Lanier's beams struck it.
+
+Around--back--with instinctive, lightninglike motions he whirled their
+centipede-machine in the great dim-lit cave as the two remaining ones
+leapt again to the attack. Their rays shot right and left to catch the
+two men's vehicle in a trap of death, and as Randall swung their own
+mechanism straight ahead he glimpsed at the cavern's far end the great
+earthen worm god still upreared.
+
+On either side of them the red beams burned as they leapt forward, but
+as though running a gauntlet of death Randall kept the machine racing
+forward in the succeeding second until the two others loomed on either
+side of it. Then Lanier's beams were driving in turn to right and left
+of them and the two vanished as though by magic as they were struck.
+
+"Up to the surface!" Lanier cried, his eyes on the glowing dial of his
+wrist-watch. "We've been held hours here--we've but a half-hour or
+more before earth midnight!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Randall sent their machine racing again toward one of the upward
+tunnels, and as the long mechanism began to climb smoothly up the
+darkness he heard Lanier agonizing beside him.
+
+"God, if we have only enough time to get to that matter-transmitter
+before the Martians start flashing to earth through it!"
+
+"But Milton?" Randall cried. "We don't know whether he's alive or
+dead! We can't leave him!"
+
+"We must!" said Lanier solemnly. "Our duty's to the earth now, man, to
+the world that we alone can save from the Martian invasion and
+conquest! At the hour of twelve Nelson will have the matter-receiver
+turned on and at that hour the Martian will start flashing to
+earth--unless we prevent!"
+
+Suddenly Randall grasped the knob in his hands more tightly as light
+showed above them. They had been climbing upward through the enlarged
+tunnel at their machine's highest speed, and now as the tunnel curved
+the light grew stronger. Suddenly they were emerging into the thin
+sunlight of the Martian day.
+
+In the crimson jungle about them were many Martians, milling excitedly
+to and fro, and other centipede-machines that were blasting their way
+down through tunnels to the worm world beneath.
+
+Randall and Lanier, breathless, crouched low in the
+transparent-windowed control room as they sent their mechanism racing
+through this scene of swarming activity. Both gasped as one of the
+centipede-machines clashed against their own in passing, its Martian
+driver turning to stare after them. But there came no alarm, and in a
+moment they had passed out of the swarm of Martians and machines and
+were heading through the jungle in the direction of the city.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Through the weird red vegetation their mechanism raced with them,
+Randall holding it at its highest speed, and in minutes they came out
+of the jungle and were racing over the clear space between it and the
+great canal. Beyond that canal loomed into the thin sunlight the
+clustering cones of the mighty Martian city, two towering above all
+the others--the cone of the Martian Master and the other cone in which
+was the matter-transmitter and receiver.
+
+It was toward the latter that Lanier pointed. "Head straight toward
+that cone, Randall--we've but minutes left!"
+
+They were racing now up over the great arch of the canal's metal
+bridge, and then scuttling smoothly off it and along the broad metal
+street through which they had fled in darkness hours before. In it
+Martians and centipede-machines were coming and going in great
+numbers, but none noticed the human forms of the two crouched low in
+their mechanism's control room.
+
+They were rushing then toward the looming cone of the Martian Master.
+As they flashed past it Randall saw Lanier's face working, knew the
+desire that tore at him even as at himself to burst inside and
+ascertain whether or not Milton still lived in the laboratories from
+which they had fled. But they were past it, faces white and grim, were
+rushing on through the Martian city at reckless speed toward the other
+mighty cone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seemed that all in the great city were heading toward the same
+goal, streams of crocodilian Martians and masses of shining
+centipede-machines filling the streets as they moved toward it. As
+they came closer to the mighty structure, hearts pounding, they saw
+that around it surged a mighty mass of Martians and machines. The
+hordes waiting to be released through the matter-transmitter inside
+upon the unsuspecting earth!
+
+"Try to get the machine inside!" Lanier whispered tensely. "If we can
+smash that transmitter yet...."
+
+Randall nodded grimly. "Keep ready at the ray-tubes," he told the
+other.
+
+As unobtrusively as possible he sent their long mechanism worming
+forward through the vast throng of machines and Martians, toward the
+great cone's door. Crouching low, the hands of their watches closing
+fast toward the twelfth figure, they edged forward in the long
+machine. At last they were moving through the mighty door, into the
+cone's interior.
+
+They moved slowly on through the mass of machines and crocodile forms
+inside, then halted. For at the great crowd's center was a clear
+circle hundreds of feet across, and as Randall gazed across it his
+heart seemed to leap once and then stop.
+
+At the center of that clear circle rose the two cubical metal chambers
+of the matter-transmitter and receiver. The transmitting chamber, they
+saw, was flooded with humming force, with white light pouring from its
+inner walls. It was already in operation, and the masses of Martians
+in the great cone were only waiting for the moment to sound when the
+receiver on earth would be operating also. Then they would pour into
+the chamber to be flashed in masses across the gulf to earth! The eyes
+of all in the cone seemed turned toward an erect dial-mechanism beside
+the chambers which was clocklike in appearance, and that would mark
+the moment when the first Martian could enter the transmitting-chamber
+and flash out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A little distance from the two metal chambers stood a low dais on
+which there sat the hideous triple-bodied form of the Martian Master.
+Around him were the massed members of his council, waiting like him
+for the start of their age-planned invasion of earth. And beside the
+dais was a figure between two crocodilian guards at sight of whom
+Randall forgot all else.
+
+"Milton! My God, Lanier, it's Milton!"
+
+"Milton! They've brought him here to torture or kill him if they find
+he's lied about the moment they could flash to earth!"
+
+Milton! And at sight of him something snapped in Randall's brain.
+
+With a single motion of the knob he sent their centipede-machine
+crashing out into the clear circle at the mighty cone's center. A wild
+uproar of hissing cries broke from all the thousands in it as he sent
+the mechanism whirling toward the dais of the Martian Master. He saw
+the crocodilian forms there scattering blindly before him, and then
+as his rays drove out and spun and stabbed in mad figures of crimson
+death through the astounded Martian masses he saw Milton looking up
+toward them, crying out crazily to them as his two guards loosed him
+for the moment.
+
+A high call from the Martian Master ripped across the hall and was
+answered by a shattering roar of hissing voices as Martians and
+machines surged madly toward them. Randall and Lanier in a single leap
+were out of the centipede-machine, and in an instant had half-dragged
+Milton with them in a great leap up to the edge of the humming
+transmitting chamber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton was shouting hoarsely to them over the wild uproar. To enter
+that transmitting chamber before the destined moment was annihilation,
+to be flashed out with no receiver on earth awaiting them. They
+turned, struck with all their strength at the first Martians rushing
+up to them. No rays flashed, for a ray loosed would destroy the
+chamber behind them that was the one gate for the Martians to the
+world they would invade. But as the Martian Master's high call hissed
+again all the countless crocodilian forms in the great cone were
+rushing toward them.
+
+Braced at the very edge of the humming, light-filled chamber, Randall
+and Lanier and Milton struck madly at the Martians surging up toward
+them. Randall seemed in a dream. A score of taloned paws clutched him
+from beneath; scaled forms collapsed under his insane blows.
+
+The whole vast cone and surging reptilian hordes seemed spinning at
+increasing speed around him. As his clenched fists flashed with waning
+strength he glimpsed crocodilian forms swarming up on either side of
+them, glimpsed Lanier down, talons reaching toward him, Milton
+fighting over him like a madman. Another moment would see it
+ended--reptilian arms reaching in scores to drag him down--Milton
+jerking Lanier half to his feet. The Martian Master's call
+sounded--and then came a great clanging sound at which the Martian
+hordes seemed to freeze for an instant motionless, at which Milton's
+voice reached him in a supreme cry.
+
+_"Randall--the transmitter!"_
+
+For in that instant Milton was leaping back with Lanier, and as
+Randall with his last strength threw himself backward with them into
+the humming transmitting-chamber's brilliant light, he heard a last
+frenzied roar of hissing cries from the Martian hordes about them.
+Then as the brilliant light and force from the chamber's walls smote
+them, Randall felt himself hurled into blackness inconceivable, that
+smashed like a descending curtain across his brain.
+
+The curtain of blackness lifted for a moment. He was lying with Milton
+and Lanier in another chamber whose force beat upon them. He saw a
+yellow-lit room instead of the great cone--saw the tense, anxious face
+of Nelson at the switch beside them. He strove to move, made to Nelson
+a gesture with his arm that seemed to drain all strength and life from
+him; and then, as in answer to it Nelson drove up the switch and
+turned off the force of the matter-receiver in which they lay, the
+black curtain descended on Randall's brain once more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two hours later it was when Milton and Randall and Lanier and Nelson
+turned to the laboratory's door. They paused to glance behind them. Of
+the great matter-transmitter and receiver, of the apparatus that had
+crowded the laboratory, there remained now but wreckage.
+
+For that had been their first thought, their first task, when the
+astounded Nelson had brought the three back to consciousness and had
+heard their amazing tale. They had wrecked so completely the
+matter-station and its actuating apparatus that none could ever have
+guessed what a mechanism of wonder the laboratory a short time before
+had held.
+
+The cubical chambers had been smashed beyond all recognition, the
+dynamos were masses of split metal and fused wiring, the batteries of
+tubes were shattered, the condensers and transformers and wiring
+demolished. And it had only been when the last written plans and
+blue-prints of the mechanism had been burned that Milton and Randall
+and Lanier had stopped to allow their exhausted bodies a moment of
+rest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now as they paused at the laboratory's door, Lanier reached and swung
+it open. Together, silent, they gazed out.
+
+It all seemed to Randall exactly as upon the night before. The shadowy
+masses in the darkness, the heaving, dim-lit sea stretching far away
+before them, the curtain of summer stars stretched across the heavens.
+And, sinking westward amid those stars, the red spark of Mars toward
+which as though toward a magnet all their eyes had turned.
+
+Milton was speaking. "Up there it has shone for centuries--ages--a
+crimson spot of light. And up there the Martians have been watching,
+watching--until at last we opened to them the gate."
+
+Randall's hand was on his shoulder. "But we closed that gate, too, in
+the end."
+
+Milton nodded slowly. "We--or the fate that rules our worlds. But the
+gate is closed, and God grant, shall never again be opened by any on
+this world."
+
+"God grant it," the other echoed.
+
+And they were all gazing still toward the thing. Gazing up toward the
+crimson spot of light that burned there among the stars, toward the
+planet that shone red, menacing, terrible, but whose menace and whose
+terror had been thrust back even as they had crouched to spring at
+last upon the earth.
+
+
+
+
+The Exile of Time
+
+BEGINNING A FOUR-PART NOVEL
+
+_By Ray Cummings_
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_Mysterious Girl_
+
+[Illustration: _Presently there was not one Robot, but three!_]
+
+[Sidenote: From somewhere out of Time come a swarm of Robots who
+inflict on New York the awful vengeance of the diabolical cripple
+Tugh.]
+
+
+The extraordinary incidents began about 1 A.M. in the night of June
+8-9, 1935. I was walking through Patton Place, in New York City, with
+my friend Larry Gregory. My name is George Rankin. My business--and
+Larry's--are details quite unimportant to this narrative. We had been
+friends in college. Both of us were working in New York; and with all
+our relatives in the middle west we were sharing an apartment on this
+Patton Place--a short crooked, little-known street of not particularly
+impressive residential buildings lying near the section known as
+Greenwich Village, where towering office buildings of the business
+districts encroach close upon it.
+
+This night at 1 A. M. it was deserted. A taxi stood at a corner; its
+chauffeur had left it there, and evidently gone to a nearby lunch
+room. The street lights were, as always, inadequate. The night was
+sultry and dark, with a leaden sky and a breathless humidity that
+presaged a thunder storm. The houses were mostly unlighted at this
+hour. There was an occasional apartment house among them, but mostly
+they were low, ramshackle affairs of brick and stone.
+
+We were still three blocks from our apartment when without warning the
+incidents began which were to plunge us and all the city into
+disaster. We were upon the threshold of a mystery weird and strange,
+but we did not know it. Mysterious portals were swinging to engulf
+us. And all unknowing, we walked into them.
+
+Larry was saying, "Wish we would get a storm to clear this air--_what
+the devil?_ George, did you hear that?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We stood listening. There had sounded a choking, muffled scream. We
+were midway in the block. There was not a pedestrian in sight, nor any
+vehicle save the abandoned taxi at the corner.
+
+"A woman," he said. "Did it come from this house?"
+
+We were standing before a three-story brick residence. All its windows
+were dark. There was a front stoop of several steps, and a basement
+entryway. The windows were all closed, and the place had the look of
+being unoccupied.
+
+"Not in there, Larry," I answered. "It's closed for the summer--" But
+I got no further; we heard it again. And this time it sounded, not
+like a scream, but like a woman's voice calling to attract our
+attention.
+
+"George! Look there!" Larry cried.
+
+The glow from a street light illumined the basement entryway, and
+behind one of the dark windows a girl's face was pressed against the
+pane.
+
+Larry stood gripping me, then drew me forward and down the steps of
+the entryway. There was a girl in the front basement room. Darkness
+was behind her, but we could see her white frightened face close to
+the glass. She tapped on the pane, and in the silence we heard her
+muffled voice:
+
+"Let me out! Oh, let me get out!"
+
+The basement door had a locked iron gate. I rattled it. "No way of
+getting in," I said, then stopped short with surprise. "What the
+devil--"
+
+I joined Larry by the window. The girl was only a few inches from us.
+She had a pale, frightened face; wide, terrified eyes. Even with that
+first glimpse, I was transfixed by her beauty. And startled; there was
+something weird about her. A low-necked, white satin dress disclosed
+her snowy shoulders; her head was surmounted by a pile of snow-white
+hair, with dangling white curls framing her pale ethereal beauty. She
+called again.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" Larry demanded. "Are you alone in there?
+What is it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She backed from the window; we could see her only as a white blob in
+the darkness of the basement room.
+
+I called, "Can you hear us? What is it?"
+
+Then she screamed again. A low scream; but there was infinite terror
+in it. And again she was at the window.
+
+"You will not hurt me? Let me--oh please let me come out!" Her fists
+pounded the casement.
+
+What I would have done I don't know. I recall wondering if the
+policeman would be at our corner down the block; he very seldom was
+there. I heard Larry saying:
+
+"What the hell!--I'll get her out. George, get me that brick.... Now,
+get back, girl--I'm going to smash the window."
+
+But the girl kept her face pressed against the pane. I had never seen
+such terrified eyes. Terrified at something behind her in the house;
+and equally frightened at us.
+
+I call to her: "Come to the door. Can't you come to the door and open
+it?" I pointed to the basement gate. "Open it! Can you hear me?"
+
+"Yes--I can hear you, and you speak my language. But you--you will not
+hurt me? Where am I? This--this was my house a moment ago. I was
+living here."
+
+Demented! It flashed to me. An insane girl, locked in this empty
+house. I gripped Larry; said to him: "Take it easy; there's something
+queer about this. We can't smash windows. Let's--"
+
+"You open the door," he called to the girl.
+
+"I cannot."
+
+"Why? Is it locked on the inside?"
+
+"I don't know. Because--oh, hurry! If he--if it comes again--!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We could see her turn to look behind her.
+
+Larry demanded, "Are you alone in there?"
+
+"Yes--now. But, oh! a moment ago he was here!"
+
+"Then come to the door."
+
+"I cannot. I don't know where it is. This is so strange and dark a
+place. And yet it was my home, just a little time ago."
+
+Demented! And it seemed to me that her accent was very queer. A
+foreigner, perhaps.
+
+She went suddenly into frantic fear. Her fists beat the window glass
+almost hard enough to shatter it.
+
+"We'd better get her out," I agreed. "Smash it, Larry."
+
+"Yes." He waved at the girl. "Get back. I'll break the glass. Get away
+so you won't get hurt."
+
+The girl receded into the dimness.
+
+"Watch your hand," I cautioned. Larry took off his coat and wrapped
+his hand and the brick in it. I gazed behind us. The street was still
+empty. The slight commotion we had made had attracted no attention.
+
+The girl cried out again as Larry smashed the pane. "Easy," I called
+to her. "Take it easy. We won't hurt you."
+
+The splintering glass fell inward, and Larry pounded around the
+casement until it was all clear. The rectangular opening was fairly
+large. We could see a dim basement room of dilapidated furniture: a
+door opening into a back room; the girl; nearby, a white shape
+watching us.
+
+There seemed no one else. "Come on," I said. "You can get out here."
+
+But she backed away. I was half in the window so I swung my legs over
+the sill. Larry came after me, and together we advanced on the girl,
+who shrank before us.
+
+Then suddenly she ran to meet us, and I had the sudden feeling that
+she was not insane. Her fear of us was overshadowed by her terror at
+something else in this dark, deserted house. The terror communicated
+itself to Larry and me. Something eery, here.
+
+"Come on," Larry muttered. "Let's get her out of here."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had indeed no desire to investigate anything further. The girl let
+us help her through the window. I stood in the entryway holding her
+arms. Her dress was of billowing white satin with a single red rose at
+the breast; her snowy arms and shoulders were bare; white hair was
+piled high on her small head. Her face, still terrified, showed parted
+red lips; a little round black beauty patch adorned one of her
+powdered cheeks. The thought flashed to me that this was a girl in a
+fancy dress costume. This was a white wig she was wearing!
+
+I stood with the girl in the entryway, at a loss what to do. I held
+her soft warm arms; the perfume of her enveloped me.
+
+"What do you want us to do with you?" I demanded softly. McGuire, the
+policeman on the block, might at any moment pass. "We might get
+arrested! What's the matter with you? Can't you explain? Are you
+hurt?"
+
+She was staring as though I were a ghost, or some strange animal. "Oh,
+take me away from this place! I will talk--though I do not know what
+to say--"
+
+Demented or sane, I had no desire to have her fall into the clutches
+of the police. Nor could we very well take her to our apartment. But
+there was my friend Dr. Alten, alienist, who lived within a mile of
+here.
+
+"We'll take her to Alten's," I said to Larry, "and find out what this
+means. She isn't crazy."
+
+A sudden wild emotion swept me, then. Whatever this mystery, more than
+anything in the world I did not want the girl to be insane!
+
+Larry said, "There was a taxi down the street."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It came, now, slowly along the deserted block. The chauffeur had
+perhaps heard us, and was cruising past to see if we were possible
+fares. He halted at the curb. The girl had quieted; but when she saw
+the taxi her face registered wildest terror, and she shrank against
+me.
+
+"No! No! Don't let it kill me!"
+
+Larry and I were pulling her forward. "What the devil's the matter
+with you?" Larry demanded again.
+
+She was suddenly wildly fighting with us. "No! That--that mechanism--"
+
+"Get her in it!" Larry panted. "We'll have the neighborhood on us!"
+
+It seemed the only thing to do. We flung her, scrambling and fighting,
+into the taxi. To the half-frightened, reluctant driver, Larry said
+vigorously:
+
+"It's all right; we're just taking her to a doctor. Hurry and get us
+away from here. There's good money in it for you!"
+
+The promise--and the reassurance of the physician's address--convinced
+the chauffeur. We whirled off toward Washington Square.
+
+Within the swaying taxi I sat holding the trembling girl. She was
+sobbing now, but quieting.
+
+"There," I murmured. "We won't hurt you; we're just taking you to a
+doctor. You can explain to him. He's very intelligent."
+
+"Yes," she said softly. "Yes. Thank you. I'm all right now."
+
+She relaxed against me. So beautiful, so dainty a creature.
+
+Larry leaned toward us. "You're better now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That's fine. You'll be all right. Don't think about it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was convinced she was insane. I breathed again the vague hope that
+it might not be so. She was huddled against me. Her face, upturned to
+mine, had color in it now; red lips; a faint rose tint in the pale
+cheeks.
+
+She murmured, "Is this New York?"
+
+My heart sank. "Yes," I answered. "Of course it is."
+
+"But when?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean, what year?"
+
+"Why, 1935!"
+
+She caught her breath. "And your name is--"
+
+"George Rankin."
+
+"And I,"--her laugh had a queer break in it--"I am Mistress Mary
+Atwood. But just a few minutes ago--oh, am I dreaming? Surely I'm not
+insane!"
+
+Larry again leaned over us. "What are you talking about?"
+
+"You're friendly, you two. Like men; strange, so very strange-looking
+young men. This--this carriage without any horses--I know now it won't
+hurt me."
+
+She sat up. "Take me to your doctor. And then to the general of your
+army. I must see him, and warn him. Warn you all." She was turning
+half hysterical again. She laughed wildly. "Your general--he won't be
+General Washington, of course. But I must warn him."
+
+She gripped me. "You think I am demented. But I am not. I am Mary
+Atwood, daughter of Major Charles Atwood, of General Washington's
+staff. That was my home, where you broke the window. But it did not
+look like that a few moments ago. You tell me this is the year 1935,
+but just a few moments ago I was living in the year 1777!"
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_From Out of the Past_
+
+"Sane?" said Dr. Alten. "Of course she's sane." He stood gazing down
+at Mary Atwood. He was a tall, slim fellow, this famous young
+alienist, with dark hair turning slightly grey at the temples and a
+neat black mustache that made him look older than he was. Dr. Alten at
+this time, in spite of his eminence, had not yet turned forty.
+
+"She's sane," he reiterated. "Though from what you tell me, it's a
+wonder that she is." He smiled gently at the girl. "If you don't mind,
+my dear, tell us just what happened to you, as calmly as you can."
+
+She sat by an electrolier in Dr. Alten's living room. The yellow light
+gleamed on her white satin dress, on her white shoulders, her
+beautiful face with its little round black beauty patch, and the curls
+of the white wig dangling to her neck. From beneath the billowing,
+flounced skirt the two satin points of her slippers showed.
+
+A beauty of the year 1777! This thing so strange! I gazed at her with
+quickened pulse. It seemed that I was dreaming; that as I sat before
+her in my tweed business suit with its tubular trousers I was the
+anachronism! This should have been candle-light illumining us; I
+should have been a powdered and bewigged gallant, in gorgeous satin
+and frilled shirt to match her dress. How strange, how futuristic we
+three men of 1935 must have looked to her! And this city through which
+we had whirled her in the throbbing taxi--no wonder she was
+overwrought.
+
+Alten fumbled in the pockets of his dressing gown for cigarettes. "Go
+ahead, Miss Mary. You are among friends. I promise we will try and
+understand."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She smiled. "Yes. I--I believe you." Her voice was low. She sat
+staring at the floor, choosing her words carefully; and though she
+stumbled a little, her story was coherent. Upon the wings of her words
+my fancy conjured that other Time-world, more than a hundred and fifty
+years ago.
+
+"I was at home to-night," she began. "To-night after dinner. I have no
+relatives except my father. He is General Washington's aide. We
+live--our home is north of the city. I was alone, except for the
+servants.
+
+"Father sent word to-night that he was coming to see me. The
+messenger got through the British lines. But the redcoats are
+everywhere. They were quartered in our house. For months I have been
+little more than a servant to a dozen of My Lord's Howe's officers.
+They are gentlemen, though: I have no complaint. Then they left, and
+father, knowing it, wanted to come to see me.
+
+"He should not have tried it. Our house is watched. He promised me he
+would not wear the British red." She shuddered. "Anything but that--to
+have him executed as a spy. He would not risk that, but wear merely a
+long black cloak.
+
+"He was to come about ten o'clock. But at midnight there was no sign
+of him. The servants were asleep. I sat alone, and every pounding
+hoof-beat on the road matched my heart.
+
+"Then I went into the garden. There was a dim moon in and out of the
+clouds. It was hot, like to-night. I mean, why it _was_ to-night. It's
+so strange--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the silence of Alten's living room we could hear the hurried
+ticking of his little mantle clock, and from the street outside came
+the roar of a passing elevated train and the honk of a taxi. This was
+New York of 1935. But to me the crowding ghosts of the past were here.
+In fancy I saw the white pillars of the moonlit Atwood home. A garden
+with a dirt road beside it. Red-coated British soldiers passing....
+And to the south the little city of New York extending northward from
+crooked Maiden Lane and the Bowling Green....
+
+"Go on, Mistress Mary."
+
+"I sat on a bench in the garden. And suddenly before me there was a
+white ghost. A shape. A wraith of something which a moment before had
+not been there. I sat too frightened to move. I could not call out. I
+tried to, but the sound would not come.
+
+"The shape was like a mist, a little ball of cloud in the center of
+the garden lawn. Then in a second or two it was solid--a thing like a
+shining cage, with crisscrossing white bars. It was like a room; a
+metal cage like a room. I thought that the thing was a phantom or that
+I was asleep and dreaming. But it was real."
+
+Alten interrupted. "How big was it?"
+
+"As large as this room; perhaps larger. But it was square, and about
+twice as high as a man."
+
+A cage, then, some twenty feet square and twelve feet high.
+
+She went on: "The cage door opened. I think I was standing, then, and
+I tried to run but could not. The--the _thing_ came from the door of
+the cage and walked toward me. It was about ten feet tall. It
+looked--oh, it looked like a man!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She buried her face in her hands. Again the room was silent. Larry was
+seated, staring at her; all of us were breathless.
+
+"Like a man?" Alten prompted gently.
+
+"Yes; like a man." She raised her white face. This girl out of the
+past! Admiration for her swept me anew--she was bravely trying to
+smile.
+
+"Like a man. A thing with legs, a body, a great round head and swaying
+arms. A jointed man of metal! You surely must know all about them."
+
+"A Robot!" Larry muttered.
+
+"You have them here, I suppose. Like that rumbling carriage without
+horses, this jointed iron man came walking toward me. And it spoke! A
+most horrible hollow voice--but it seemed almost human. And what it
+said I do not know, for I fainted. I remember falling as it came
+walking toward me, with stiff-jointed legs.
+
+"When I came to my senses I was in the cage. Everything was humming and
+glowing. There was a glow outside the bars like a moonlit mist. The iron
+monster was sitting at a table, with peculiar things--mechanical things--"
+
+"The controls of the cage-mechanisms," said Alten. "How long were you
+in the cage?"
+
+"I don't know. Time seemed to stop. Everything was silent except the
+humming noises. They were everywhere. I guess I was only half
+conscious. The monster sat motionless. In front of him were big round
+clock faces with whirling hands. Oh, I suppose you don't find this
+strange; but to me--!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Could you see anything outside the cage?" Alten persisted. "No. Just
+a fog. But it was crawling and shifting. Yes!--I remember now--I could
+not see anything out there, but I had the thought, the feeling, that
+there were tremendous things to see! The monster spoke again and told
+me to be careful; that we were going to stop. Its iron hands pulled at
+levers. Then the humming grew fainter; died away; and I felt a shock.
+
+"I thought I had fainted again. I could just remember being pulled
+through the cage door. The monster left me on the ground. It said,
+'Lie there, for I will return very soon.'
+
+"The cage vanished. I saw a great cliff of stone near me; it had
+yellow-lighted openings, high up in the air. And big stone fences
+hemmed me in. Then I realized I was in an open space between a lot of
+stone houses. One towered like a cliff, or the side of a pyramid--"
+
+"The back yard of that house on Patton Place!" Larry exclaimed. He
+looked at me. "Has it any back yard, George?"
+
+"How should I know?" I retorted. "Probably has."
+
+"Go on," Alten was prompting.
+
+"That is nearly all. I found a doorway leading to a dark room. I
+crawled through it toward a glow of light. I passed through another
+room. I thought I was in a nightmare, and that this was my home. I
+remembered that the cage had not moved. It had hardly lurched. Just
+trembled; vibrated.
+
+"But this was not my home. The rooms were small and dark. Then I
+peered through a window on a strange stone street. And saw these
+strange-looking young men. And that is all--all I can tell you."
+
+She had evidently held herself calm by a desperate effort. She broke
+down now, sobbing without restraint.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_Tugh, the Cripple_
+
+The portals of this mystery had swung wide to receive us. The tumbling
+events which menaced all our world of 1935 were upon us now. A
+maelstrom. A torrent in the midst of which we were caught up like tiny
+bits of cork and whirled away.
+
+But we thought we understood the mystery. We believed we were acting
+for the best. What we did was no doubt ill-considered; but the human
+mind is so far from omniscient! And this thing was so strange!
+
+Alten said, "You have a right to be overwrought, Mistress Mary Atwood.
+But this thing is as strange to us as it is to you. I called that iron
+monster a Robot. But it does not belong to our age: if it does I have
+never seen one such as you describe. And traveling through Time--"
+
+He smiled down at her. "That is not a commonplace everyday occurrence
+to us, I assure you. The difference is that in this world of ours we
+can understand--or at least explain--these things as being scientific.
+And so they have not the terror of the supernatural."
+
+Mary was calmer now. She returned his smile. "I realize that; or at
+least I am trying to realize it."
+
+What a level-headed girl was this! I touched her arm. "You are very
+wonderful--"
+
+Alten brushed me away. "Let's try and reduce it to rationality. The
+cage was--is, I should say, since of course it still exists--that cage
+is a Time-traveling vehicle. It is traveling back and forth through
+Time, operated by a Robot. Call it that. A pseudo-human monster
+fashioned of metal in the guise of a man."
+
+Even Alten had to force himself to speak calmly, as he gazed from one
+to the other of us. "It came, no doubt from some future age, where
+half-human mechanisms are common, and Time-traveling is known. That
+cage probably does not travel in Space, but only in Time. In the
+future--somewhere--the Space of that house on Patton Place may be the
+laboratory of a famous scientist. And in the past--in the year
+1777--that same Space was the garden of Mistress Atwood's home. So
+much is obvious. But why--"
+
+"Why," Larry burst out, "did that iron monster stop in 1777 and abduct
+this girl?"
+
+"And why," I intercepted, "did it stop here in 1935?" I gazed at Mary.
+"And it told you it would return?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alten was pondering. "There must be some connection, of course....
+Mistress Mary, had you never seen this cage before?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor anything like it? Was anything like that known to your Time?"
+
+"No. Oh, I cannot truly say that. Some people believe in phantoms,
+omens and witchcraft. There was in Salem, in the Massachusetts Colony,
+not so many years ago--"
+
+"I don't mean that. I mean Time-traveling."
+
+"There were soothsayers and fortune-tellers, and necromancers with
+crystals to gaze into the future."
+
+"We still have them," Alten smiled. "You see, we don't know much more
+than you do about this thing."
+
+I said, "Did you have any enemy? Anyone who wished you harm?"
+
+She thought a moment. "No--yes, there was one." She shuddered at the
+memory. "A man--a cripple--a horribly repulsive man of about one score
+and ten years. He lives down near the Battery." She paused.
+
+"Tell us about him," Larry urged.
+
+She nodded. "But what could he have to do with this? He is horribly
+deformed. Thin, bent legs, a body like a cask and a bulging forehead
+with goggling eyes. My Lord Howe's officers say he is very intelligent
+and very learned. Loyal to the King, too. There was a munitions plot
+in the Bermudas, and this cripple and Lord Howe were concerned in it.
+But Father likes the fellow and says that in reality he wishes our
+cause well. He is rich.
+
+"But you don't want to hear all this. He--he made love to me, and I
+repulsed him. There was a scene with Father, and Father had our
+lackeys throw him out. That was a year ago. He cursed horribly. He
+vowed then that some day he--he would have me; and get revenge on
+Father. But he has kept away. I have not seen him for a twelvemonth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We were silent. I chanced to glance at Alten, and a strange look was
+on his face.
+
+He said abruptly, "What is this cripple's name, Mistress Mary?"
+
+"Tugh. He is known to all the city as Tugh. Just that. I never heard
+any Christian name."
+
+Alten rose sharply to his feet. "A cripple named Tugh?"
+
+"Yes," she affirmed wonderingly. "Does it mean anything to you?"
+
+Alten swung on me. "What is the number of that house on Patton Place?
+Did you happen to notice?"
+
+I had, and wondering I told him.
+
+"Just a minute," he said. "I want to use the phone."
+
+He came back to us in a moment: his face was very solemn. "That house
+on Patton Place is owned by a man named Tugh! I just called a reporter
+friend; he remembers a certain case: he confirmed what I thought.
+Mistress Mary, did this Tugh in your Time ever consult doctors, trying
+to have his crippled body made whole?"
+
+"Why, of course he did. I have heard that many times. But his
+crippled, deformed body cannot be cured."
+
+Alten checked Larry and me when we would have broken in with
+astonished questions. He said:
+
+"Don't ask me what it means; I don't know. But I think that this
+cripple--this Tugh--has lived both in 1777 and 1935, and is traveling
+between them in this Time-traveling cage. And perhaps he is the human
+master of that Robot."
+
+Alten made a vehement gesture. "But we'd better not theorize; it's too
+fantastic. Here is the story of Tugh in our Time. He came to me some
+three years ago; in 1932, I think. He offered any price if I could
+cure his crippled body. All the New York medical fraternity knew him.
+He seemed sane, but obsessed with the idea that he must have a body
+like other men. Like Faust, who, as an old man, paid the price of his
+soul to become youthful, he wanted to have the beautiful body of a
+young man."
+
+Alten was speaking vehemently. My thoughts ran ahead of his words; I
+could imagine with grewsome fancy so many things. A cripple, traveling
+to different ages seeking to be cured. Desiring a different body....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alten was saying, "This fellow Tugh lived alone in that house on
+Patton Place. He was all you say of him, Mistress Mary. Hideously
+repulsive. A sinister personality. About thirty years old.
+
+"And, in 1932, he got mixed up with a girl who had a somewhat dubious
+reputation herself. A dancer, a frequenter of night-clubs, as they
+used to be called. Her name was Doris Johns--something like that. She
+evidently thought she could get money out of Tugh. Whatever it was,
+there was a big uproar. The girl had him arrested, saying that he had
+assaulted her. The police had quite a time with the cripple."
+
+Larry and I remembered a few of the details of it now, though neither
+of us had been in New York at the time.
+
+Alten went on: "Tugh fought with the police. Went berserk. I imagine
+they handled him pretty roughly. In the Magistrate's Court he made
+another scene, and fought with the court attendants. With ungovernable
+rage he screamed vituperatives, and was carried kicking, biting and
+snarling from the court-room. He threatened some wild weird revenge
+upon all the city officials--even upon the city itself."
+
+"Nice sort of chap," Larry commented.
+
+But Alten did not smile. "The Magistrate could only hold him for
+contempt of Court. The girl had absolutely no evidence to support her
+accusation of assault. Tugh was finally dismissed. A week later he
+murdered the girl.
+
+"The details are unimportant; but he did it. The police had him
+trapped in his house; had the house surrounded--this same one on
+Patton Place--but when they burst in to take him, he had inexplicably
+vanished. He was never heard from again."
+
+Alten continued to regard us with grim, solemn face. "Never heard
+from--until to-night. And now we hear of him. How he vanished, with
+the police guarding every exit to that house--well, it's obvious,
+isn't it? He went into another Time-world. Back to 1777, doubtless."
+
+Mary Atwood gave a little cry. "I had forgotten that I must warn you.
+Tugh told me once, before Father and I quarreled with him, that he had
+a mysterious power. He was a most wonderful man, he said. And there
+was a world in the future--he mentioned 1934 or 1935--which he hated.
+A great city whose people had wronged him; and he was going to bring
+death to them. Death to them all! I did not heed him. I thought he was
+demented, raving...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alten's little clock ticked with tumultuous heartbeat through another
+silence. The great city around us, even though this was two o'clock
+in the morning, throbbed with a myriad of blended sounds.
+
+A warning! Was the girl from out of the past giving us a warning of
+coming disaster to this great city?
+
+Alten was pacing the floor. "What are we to do--tell the authorities?
+Take Mistress Mary Atwood to Police Headquarters and inform them that
+she has come from the year 1777? And that, if we are not careful,
+there will be an attack upon New York?"
+
+"No!" I burst out. I could fancy how we would be received at Police
+Headquarters if we did that! And our pictures in to-morrow's
+newspapers. Mary's picture, with a jibing headline ridiculing us.
+
+"No," echoed Alten. "I have no intention of doing it. I'm not so
+foolish as that." He stopped before Mary. "What do you want to do?
+You're obviously an exceptionally intelligent, level-headed girl.
+Heaven knows you need to be."
+
+"I--I want to get back home," she stammered.
+
+A pang shot through me as she said it. A hundred and fifty years to
+separate us. A vast gulf. An impassible barrier.
+
+"That mechanism said it would return!"
+
+"Exactly," agreed Alten. An excitement was upon us all. "Exactly what
+I mean! Shall we chance it? Try it? There's nothing else I can think
+of to do. I have a revolver and two hunting rifles."
+
+"Just what do you mean?" I demanded.
+
+"I mean, we'll take my car and go to Tugh's house on Patton Place.
+Right now! And if that mechanical monster returns, we'll seize it!"
+
+Alten, the usually calm, precise man of science, was tensely vehement.
+"Seize it! Why not? Three of us, armed, ought to be able to overcome a
+Robot! Then we'll seize the Time-traveling cage. Perhaps we can
+operate it. If not, with it in our possession we'll at least have
+something to show the authorities; there'll be no ridicule then!"
+
+Our inescapable destiny was making us plunge so rashly into this
+mystery! With the excitement and the strange fantasy of it upon us, we
+thought we were acting for the best.
+
+Within a quarter of an hour, armed and with a long overcoat and a
+scarf to hide Mary Atwood's beauty, we took Alten's car and drove to
+Patton Place.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_The Fight With the Robot_
+
+Patrolman McGuire quite evidently had not passed through Patton Place
+since we left it; or at least he had not noticed the broken window.
+The house appeared as before, dark, silent, deserted, and the broken
+basement window yawned with its wide black opening.
+
+"I'll leave the car around on the other street," Alten said as slowly
+we passed the house. "Quick--no one's in sight; you three get out
+here."
+
+We crouched in the dim entryway and in a moment he joined us.
+
+I clung to Mary Atwood's arm. "You're not afraid?" I asked.
+
+"No. Yes; of course I am afraid. But I want to do what we planned. I
+want to go back to my own world, to my Father."
+
+"Inside!" Alten whispered. "I'll go first. You two follow with her."
+
+I can say now that we should not have taken her into that house. It is
+so easy to look back upon what one might have done!
+
+We climbed through the window, into the dark front basement room.
+There was only silence, and our faintly padding footsteps on the
+carpeted floor. The furniture was shrouded with cotton covers standing
+like ghosts in the gloom. I clutched the loaded rifle which Alten had
+given me. Larry was similarly armed; and Alten carried a revolver.
+
+"Which way, Mary?" I whispered. "You're sure it was outdoors?"
+
+"Yes. This way, I think."
+
+We passed through the connecting door. The back room seemed to be a
+dismantled kitchen.
+
+"You stay with her here, a moment," Alten whispered to me. "Come on,
+Larry. Let's make sure no one--nothing--is down here."
+
+I stood silent with Mary, while they prowled about the lower floor.
+
+"It may have come and gone," I whispered.
+
+"Yes." She was trembling against me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seemed to me an eternity while we stood there listening to the
+faint footfalls of Larry and Alten. Once they must have stood quiet;
+then the silence leaped and crowded us. It is horrible to listen to a
+pregnant silence which every moment might be split by some weird
+unearthly sound.
+
+Larry and Alten returned. "Seems to be all clear," Alten whispered.
+"Let's go into the back yard."
+
+The little yard was dim. The big apartment house against its rear wall
+loomed with a blank brick face, save that there were windows some
+eight stories up. Only a few windows overlooked this dim area with its
+high enclosing walls. The space was some forty feet square, and there
+was a faded grass plot in the center.
+
+We crouched near the kitchen door, with Mary behind us in the room.
+She said she could recall the cage having stood near the center of the
+yard, with its door facing this way....
+
+Nearly an hour passed. It seemed that the dawn must be near, but it
+was only around four o'clock. The same storm clouds hung overhead--a
+threatening storm which would not break. The heat was oppressing.
+
+"It's come and gone," Larry whispered; "or it isn't coming. I guess
+that this--"
+
+And then it came! We were just outside the doorway, crouching against
+the shadowed wall of the house. I had Mary close behind me, my rifle
+ready.
+
+"There!" whispered Alten.
+
+We all saw it--a faint luminous mist out near the center of the
+yard--a crawling, shifting ball of fog.
+
+Alten and Larry, one on each side of me, shifted sidewise, away from
+me. Mary stood and cast off her dark overcoat. We men were in dark
+clothes, but she stood in gleaming white against the dark rectangle of
+doorway. It was as we had arranged. A moment only, she stood there;
+then she moved back, further behind me in the black kitchen.
+
+And in that moment the cage had materialized. We were hoping its
+occupant had seen the girl, and not us. A breathless moment passed
+while we stared for the first time at this strange thing from the
+Unknown.... A formless, glowing mist, it quickly gathered itself into
+solidity. It seemed to shrink. It took form. From a wraith of a cage,
+in a second it was solid. And so silently, so swiftly, came this thing
+out of Time into what we call the Present! The dim yard a second ago
+had been empty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The cage stood there, a thing of gleaming silver bars. It seemed to
+enclose a single room. From within its dim interior came a faint glow,
+which outlined something standing at the bars, peering out.
+
+The doorway was facing us. There had been utter silence; but suddenly,
+as though to prove how solid was this apparition, we heard the clank
+of metal, and the door slid open.
+
+I turned to make sure that Mary was hiding well behind me. The way
+back to the street, if need for escape arose, was open to her.
+
+I turned again, to face the shining cage. In the doorway something
+stood peering out, a light behind it. It was a great jointed thing of
+dark metal some ten feet high. For a moment it stood motionless. I
+could not see its face clearly, though I knew there was a suggestion
+of human features, and two great round glowing spots of eyes.
+
+It stepped forward--toward us. A jointed, stiff-legged step. Its arms
+were dangling loosely; I heard one of its mailed hands clank against
+its sides.
+
+"Now!" Alten whispered.
+
+I saw Alten's revolver leveling, and my own rifle went up.
+
+"Aim at its face," I murmured.
+
+We pulled our triggers together, and two spurts of flame spat before
+us. But the thing had stooped an instant before, and we missed. Then
+came Larry's shot. And then chaos.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I recall hearing the ping of Larry's bullet against the mailed body of
+the Robot. At that it crouched, and from it leaped a dull red-black
+beam of light. I heard Mary scream. She had not fled but was clinging
+to me. I cast her off.
+
+"Run! Get back! Get away!" I cried.
+
+Larry shouted, as we all stood bathed in the dull light from the
+Robot:
+
+"Look out! It sees us!"
+
+He fired again, into the light--and murmured, "Why--why--"
+
+A great surprise and terror was in his tone. Beside me, with
+half-leveled revolver, Alten stood transfixed. And he too was
+muttering something.
+
+All this happened in an instant. And there I was aware that I was
+trying to get my rifle up for firing again; but I could not. My arms
+stiffened. I tried to take a step, tried to move a foot, but could
+not. I was rooted there; held, as though by some giant magnet, to the
+ground!
+
+This horrible dull-red light! It was cold--a frigid, paralyzing blast.
+The blood ran like cold water in my veins. My feet were heavy with the
+weight of my body pressing them down.
+
+Then the Robot was moving; coming forward; holding the light upon us.
+I thought I heard its voice--and a horrible, hollow, rasping laugh.
+
+My brain was chilling. I had confused thoughts; impressions, vague and
+dreamlike. As though in a dream I felt myself standing there with
+Mary clinging to me. Both of us were frozen inert upon our feet.
+
+I tried to shout, but my tongue was too thick; my throat seemed
+swelling inside. I heard Alten's revolver clatter to the stone
+pavement of the yard. And saw him fall forward--out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I felt that in another instant I too would fall. This damnable,
+chilling light! Then the beam turned partly away, and fell more fully
+upon Larry. With his youth and greater strength than Alten's or mine,
+he had resisted its first blast. His weapon had fallen; now he stooped
+and tried to seize it; but he lost his balance and staggered backward
+against the house wall.
+
+And then the Robot was upon him. It sprang--this mechanism!--this
+machine in human form! And, with whatever pseudo-human intelligence
+actuated its giant metal body, it reached under Larry for his rifle!
+Its great mailed hand swept the ground, seized the rifle and flung it
+away. And as Larry twisted sidewise, the Robot's arm with a sweep
+caught him and rolled him across the yard. When he stopped, he lay
+motionless.
+
+I heard myself thickly calling to Mary, and the light flashed again
+upon us. And then we fell forward. Clinging together, we fell....
+
+I did not quite lose consciousness. It seemed that I was frozen, and
+drifting off half into a nightmare sleep. Great metal arms were
+gathering Mary and me from the ground. Lifting us; carrying us....
+
+We were in the cage. I felt myself lying on the grid of a metal floor.
+I could vaguely see the crossed bars of the ceiling overhead, and the
+latticed walls around me....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the dull-red light was gone. The chill was gone. I was warming.
+The blessed warm blood again was coursing through my veins, reviving
+me, bringing back my strength.
+
+I turned over, and found Mary lying beside me. I heard her softly
+murmur:
+
+"George! George Rankin!"
+
+The giant mechanism clanked the door closed, and came with stiff,
+stilted steps back into the center of the cage. I heard the hollow
+rumble of its voice, chuckling, as its hand pulled a switch.
+
+At once the cage-room seemed to reel. It was not a physical movement,
+though, but more a reeling of my senses, a wild shock to all my being.
+
+Then, after a nameless interval, I steadied. Around me was a humming,
+glowing intensity of tiny sounds and infinitely small, infinitely
+rapid vibrations. The whole room grew luminous. The Robot, seated now
+at a table, showed for a moment as thin as an apparition. All this
+room--Mary lying beside me, the mechanism, myself--all this was
+imponderable, intangible, unreal.
+
+And outside the bars stretched a shining mist of movement. Blurred
+shifting shapes over a vast illimitable vista. Changing things;
+melting landscapes. Silent, tumbling, crowding events blurred by our
+movement as we swept past them.
+
+We were traveling through Time!
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_The Girl from 2930_
+
+I must take up now the sequence of events as Larry saw them. I was
+separated from Larry during most of the strange incidents which befell
+us later; but from his subsequent account of what happened to him I am
+constructing several portions of this history, using my own words
+based upon Larry's description of the events in which I personally did
+not participate; I think that this method avoids complications in the
+narrative and makes more clear my own and Larry's simultaneous
+actions.
+
+Larry recovered consciousness in the back yard of the house on Patton
+Place probably only a moment or two after Mary and I had been snatched
+away in the Time-traveling cage. He found himself bruised and
+battered, but apparently without injuries. He got to his feet, weak
+and shaken. His head was roaring.
+
+He recalled what had happened to him, but it seemed like a dream. The
+back yard was then empty. He remembered vaguely that he had seen the
+mechanism carry Mary and me into the cage, and that the cage had
+vanished.
+
+Larry knew that only a few moments had passed. The shots had aroused
+the neighborhood. As he stood now against the house wall, dizzily
+looking around, he was aware of calling voices from the nearby
+windows.
+
+Then Larry stumbled over Alten, who was lying on his face near the
+kitchen doorway. Still alive, he groaned as Larry fell over him; but
+he was unconscious.
+
+Forgetting all about his weapon, Larry's first thought was to rush out
+for help. He staggered through the dark kitchen into the front room,
+and through the corridor into the street.
+
+Patton Place, as before, was deserted. The houses were dark; the alarm
+was all in the rear. There were no pedestrians, no vehicles, and no
+sign of a policeman. Dawn was just coming; as Larry turned eastward he
+saw, in a patch of clearing sky, stars paling with the coming
+daylight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With uncertain steps, out in the middle of the street, Larry ran
+eastward through the middle of the street, hoping that at the next
+corner he might encounter someone, or find a telephone over which he
+might call the police.
+
+But he had not gone more than five hundred feet when suddenly he
+stopped; stood there wavering, panting, staring with whirling senses.
+Near the middle of the street, with the faint dawn behind it, a ball
+of gathering mist had appeared directly in his path. It was a
+luminous, shining mist--and it was gathering into form!
+
+In seconds a small, glowing cage of white luminous bars stood there in
+the street, where there had just been nothing! It was not the
+Time-traveling cage from the house yard he had just left. No--he knew
+it was not that one. This one was similar, but much smaller.
+
+The shock of its appearance held Larry for a moment transfixed. It had
+so silently, so suddenly appeared in his path that Larry was now
+within a foot or two of its doorway.
+
+The doorway slid open, and a man leaped out. Behind him, a girl peered
+from the doorway. Larry stood gaping, wholly confused. The cage had
+materialized so abruptly that the leaping man collided with him before
+either man could avoid the other. Larry gripped the man before him;
+struck out with his fists and shouted. The girl in the doorway called
+frantically:
+
+"Harl-no noise! Harl-stop him!"
+
+Then, suddenly the two of them were upon Larry and pulling him toward
+the doorway of the cage. Inside, he was jerked; he shouted wildly; but
+the girl slammed the door. Then in a soft, girlish voice, in English
+with a curiously indescribable accent and intonation, the girl said
+hastily:
+
+"Hold him, Harl! Hold him! I'll start the traveler!"
+
+The black garbed figure of a slim young man was gripping Larry as the
+girl pulled a switch and there was a shock, a reeling of Larry's
+senses, as the cage, motionless in Space, sped off into Time....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seems needless to encumber this narrative with prolonged details of
+how Larry explained himself to his two captors. Or how they told him
+who they were; and from whence they had come; and why. To Larry it was
+a fantastic--and confusing at first--series of questions and answers.
+An hour? The words have no meaning. They were traveling through Time.
+Years were minutes--the words meaning nothing save how they impressed
+the vehicle's human occupants. To them all it was an interval of
+mutual distrust which was gradually changing into friendship. Larry
+found the two strangers singularly direct; singularly forceful in
+quiet, calm fashion; singularly keen of perception. They had not meant
+to capture him. The encounter had startled them, and Larry's shouts
+would have brought others upon the scene.
+
+Almost at once they knew Larry was no enemy, and told him so. And in a
+moment Larry was pouring out all that had happened to him; and to
+Alten and Mary Atwood and me. This strange thing! But to Larry now,
+telling it to these strange new companions, it abruptly seemed not
+fantastic, but only sinister. The Robot, an enemy, had captured Mary
+Atwood and me, and whirled us off in the other--the larger--cage.
+
+And in this smaller cage Larry was with friends--for he suddenly found
+their purpose the same as his! They were chasing this other
+Time-traveler, with its semi-human, mechanical operator!
+
+The young man said, "You explain to him, Tina. I will watch."
+
+He was a slim, pale fellow, handsome in a queer, tight-lipped,
+stern-faced fashion. His close-fitting black silk jacket had a white
+neck ruching and white cuffs; he wore a wide white-silk belt, snug
+black-silk knee-length trousers and black stockings.
+
+And the girl was similarly dressed. Her black hair was braided and
+coiled upon her head, and ornaments dangled from her ears. Over her
+black blouse was a brocaded network jacket; her white belt,
+compressing her slim waist, dangled with tassels; and there were other
+tassels on the garters at the knees of her trousers.
+
+She was a pale-faced, beautiful girl, with black brows arching in a
+thin line, with purple-black eyes like somber pools. She was no more
+than five feet tall, and slim and frail. But, like her companion,
+there was about her a queer aspect of calm, quiet power and force of
+personality--physical vitality merged with an intellect keenly sharp.
+
+She sat with Larry on a little metal bench, listening, almost without
+interruption, to his explanation. And then, succinctly she gave her
+own. The young man, Harl, sat at his instruments, with his gaze
+searching for the other cage, five hundred feet away in Space, but in
+Time unknown.
+
+And outside the shining bars Larry could vaguely see the blurred,
+shifting, melting vistas of New York City hastening through the
+changes Time had brought to it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This young man, Harl, and this girl, Tina, lived in New York City in
+the Time-world of 2930 A. D. To Larry it was a thousand years in the
+future. Tina was the Princess of the American Nation. It was an
+hereditary title, non-political, added several hundred years
+previously as a picturesque symbol. A tradition; something to make
+less prosaic the political machine of Republican government. Tina was
+loved by her people, we afterward came to learn.
+
+Harl was an aristocrat of the New York City of Tina's Time-world, a
+scientist. In the Government laboratories, under the same roof where
+Tina dwelt, Harl had worked with another, older scientist, and--so
+Tina told me--together they had discovered the secret of
+Time-traveling. They had built two cages, a large and a small, which
+could travel freely through Time.
+
+The smaller vehicle--this one in which Larry now was speeding--was, in
+the Time-world of 2930, located in the garden of Tina's palace. The
+other, somewhat larger, they had built some five hundred feet distant,
+just beyond the palace walls, within a great Government laboratory.
+
+Harl's fellow scientist--the leader in their endeavors, since he was
+much older and of wider experience--was not altogether trusted by
+Tina. He took the credit for the discovery of Time-traveling; yet,
+said Tina, it was Harl's genius which in reality had worked out the
+final problems.
+
+And this older scientist was a cripple. A hideously repulsive fellow,
+named Tugh!
+
+"Tugh!" exclaimed Larry.
+
+"The same," said Tina in her crisp fashion. "Yes--undoubtedly the
+same. So you see why what you have told us was of such interest. Tugh
+is a Government leader in our world; and now we find he has lived in
+_your_ Time, and in the Time of this Mary Atwood."
+
+From his seat at the instrument table, Harl burst out: "So he murdered
+a girl of 1935, and has abducted another of 1777? You would not have
+me judge him, Tina--"
+
+"No one," she said, "may judge without full facts. This man here--this
+Larry of 1935--tells us that only a mechanism is in the larger
+cage--which is what we thought, Harl. And this mechanism, without a
+doubt, is the treacherous Migul."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was, in 2930, a vast world of machinery. The god of the machine
+had developed them to almost human intricacy. Almost all the work of
+the world, particularly in America, and most particularly in the
+mechanical center of New York City, was done by machinery. And the
+machinery itself was guided, handled, operated--even, in some
+instances, constructed--by other, more intricate machines. They were
+fashioned in pseudo-human form--thinking, logically acting,
+independently acting mechanisms: the Robots. All but human, they
+were--a new race. Inferior to humans, yet similar.
+
+And in 2930 the machines, slaves of idle human masters, had been
+developed too highly! They were upon the verge of a revolt!
+
+All this Tina briefly sketched now to Larry. And to Larry it seemed a
+very distant, very academic danger. Yet so soon all of us were plunged
+into the midst of it!
+
+The revolt had not yet come, but it was feared. A great Robot named
+Migul seemed fomenting it. The revolt was smouldering; at any moment
+it would burst; and then the machines would rise to destroy the
+humans.
+
+This was the situation when Harl and Tugh completed the Time-traveling
+vehicles in this world. They had been tested, but never used. Then
+Tugh had vanished; was gone now; and the larger of the two vehicles
+was also gone.
+
+Both Harl and Tina had always distrusted Tugh. They thought him allied
+to the Robots. But they had no proof; and suavely he denied it, and
+helped always with the Government activities struggling to keep the
+mechanical slaves docile and at work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tugh and the larger vehicle had vanished, and so had Migul, the
+insubordinate, giant mechanism--at which, unknown to the Government
+officials, Tina and Harl had taken the other cage and started in
+pursuit. It was possible that Tugh was loyal; that Migul had abducted
+him and stolen the cage.
+
+"Wait!" exclaimed Larry. "I'm trying to figure this out. It seems to
+hang together. It almost does, but not quite. When did Tugh vanish
+from your world?"
+
+"To our consciousness," Tina answered, "about three hours ago. Perhaps
+a little longer than that."
+
+"But look here," Larry protested: "according to my story and that of
+Mary Atwood, Tugh lived in 1935 and in 1777 for three years."
+
+Confusing? But in a moment Larry understood it. Tugh could have taken
+the cage, gone to 1777 and to 1935, alternated between them for what
+was to him, and to those Time-worlds, three years--then have returned
+to 2930 _on the same day of his departure_. He would have lived these
+three years; grown that much older; but to the Time-world of 2930
+neither he nor the cage would have been missed.
+
+"That," said Tina, "is what doubtless he did. The cage is traveling
+again. But you, Larry, tell us only Migul is in it."
+
+"I couldn't say that of my own knowledge," said Larry. "Mary Atwood
+said so. It held only the mechanism you call Migul. And now Migul has
+with him Mary and my friend George Rankin. We must reach them."
+
+"We want that quite as much as you do," said Harl. "And to find Tugh.
+If he is a friend we must save him; if a traitor--punish him."
+
+Larry began, "But can you get to the other cage?"
+
+"Only if it stops," said Tina. "_When_ it stops, I should say."
+
+"Come here," said Harl. "I will show you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Larry crossed the glowing room. He had forgotten its aspect--the
+ghostly unreality around him. He too--his body, like Harl's and
+Tina's--was of the same wraith-like substance.... Then, suddenly,
+Larry's viewpoint shifted. The room and its occupants were real and
+tangible. And outside the glowing bars--everything out there was the
+unreality.
+
+"Here," said Harl. "I will show you. It is not visible yet."
+
+Each of the cages was equipped with an intricate device, strange of
+name, which Larry and I have since termed a Time-telespectroscope.
+Larry saw it now as a small metal box, with tuning vibration dials,
+batteries, coils, a series of tiny prisms and an image-mirror--the
+whole surmounted by what appeared the barrel of a small telescope.
+Harl had it leveled and was gazing through it.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: The workings of the Time-telespectroscope involve all the
+intricate postulates and mathematical formulae of Time-traveling
+itself. As a matter of practicality, however, the results obtained are
+simple of understanding. The etheric vibratory rate of the vehicles
+while traveling through Time was constantly changing. Through the
+telespectroscope one cage was visible to the other across the five
+hundred feet of intervening Space when they approached a simultaneous
+Time; when they, so to speak, were tuned in unison.
+
+Thus, Harl explained, the other cage would show as a ghost, the
+faintest of wraiths, over a Time-distance of some five or ten years.
+And the closer in Time they approached it, the more solid it would
+appear.]
+
+The enemy cage was not visible, now. But Harl and Tina had glimpsed it
+on several occasions. What vast realms Time opens within a single
+small segment of Space! The larger vehicle seemed speeding back and
+forth. A dash into the year 1777! as Larry learned from Mary Atwood.
+
+And there had been several evidences of the cage halting in 1935.
+Larry's account explained two such pauses. But the others? Those
+others, which brought to the City of New York such amazing disaster?
+We did not learn of them until much later. But Alten lived through
+them, and presently I shall reconstruct them from his account.
+
+The larger cage was difficult to trace in its sweep along the
+corridors of Time. Never once had Tina and Harl been able to stop
+simultaneously with it, for a year has so many separate days and
+hours. The nearest they came was the halt in the night of June 8-9,
+when they encountered Larry, and, startled, seized him and moved on
+again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Harl continued to gaze through the eyepiece of the detecting
+instrument. But nothing showed, and the mirror-grid on the table was
+dark.
+
+"But--which way are we going?" Larry stammered.
+
+"Back," said Tina. "The retrograde.... Wait! Do not do that!"
+
+Larry had turned toward where the bars, less luminous, showed a dark
+rectangle like a window. The desire swept him to gaze out at the
+shining, changing scene.
+
+But Tina checked him. "Do not do that! Not yet! It is too great a
+shock in the retrograde. It was to me."
+
+"But where are we?"
+
+In answer she gestured toward a series of tiny dials on the table
+edge. There were at least two score of them, laid in a triple bank.
+Dials to record the passing minutes, hours, days; the years, the
+centuries! Larry stared at the small whirring pointers. Some were a
+blur of swift whirling movement--the hours and days. Tina showed Larry
+how to read them. The cage was passing through the year 1880. In a few
+moments of Larry's consciousness it was 1799. Then 1793. The infant
+American nation was here now. But with the cage retrograding, soon
+they would be in the Revolutionary War.
+
+Tina said. "The other cage may go back to 1777, if Tugh meant ill to
+Mary Atwood, or wants revenge upon her father, at you said. We shall
+see."
+
+They had reached 1790 when Harl gave a low ejaculation.
+
+"You see it?" Tina murmured.
+
+"Yes. Very faintly."
+
+Larry bent tensely forward. "Will it show on the mirror?"
+
+"Yes; presently. We are about ten years from it. If we get closer, the
+mirror will show it."
+
+But the mirror held dark. No--now it was glowing a trifle. A vague
+luminosity.
+
+Tina moved toward the instrument controls nearby. "Watch closely,
+Harl. I will slow us down."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seemed to Larry that the humming with which everything around him
+was endowed, now began descending in pitch. And his head suddenly was
+unsteady. A singular, wild, queer feeling was within him. An unrest. A
+tugging torment of every tiny cell of his body.
+
+Tina said. "Hold steady, Larry, for when we stop."
+
+"Will it shock me?"
+
+"Yes--at first. But the shock will not harm you: it is nearly all
+mental."
+
+The mirror held an image now--the other cage. Larry saw, on the
+six-inch square mirror surface, a crawling, melting scene of movement.
+And in the midst of it, the image of the other cage, faint and
+spectral. In all the mirrored movement, only the apparition of the
+cage was still. And this marked it; made it visible.
+
+Over an interval, while Larry stared, the ghostly image grew plainer.
+They were approaching its Time-factor!
+
+"It is stopping," Harl murmured. Larry was aware that he had left the
+eyepiece and joined Tina at the controls.
+
+"Tina, let us try to get it right this time."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In 1777; but which month, would you say?"
+
+"It has stopped! See?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Larry heard them clicking switches, and setting the controls for a
+stop. Then he felt Tina gently push him.
+
+"Sit here. Standing, you might fall."
+
+He found himself on a bench. He could still see the mirror. The ghost
+of the other cage was now lined more plainly upon it.
+
+"This month," said Tina, setting a switch. "Would not you say so? And
+this day."
+
+"But the hour, Tina? The minute?"
+
+The vast intricate corridors of Time!
+
+"It would be in the night. Hasten, Harl, or we will pass! Try the
+night--around midnight. Even Migul has the mechanical intelligence to
+fear a daylight pausing."
+
+The controls were set for the stop. Larry heard Tina murmuring, "Oh, I
+pray we may have judged with correctness!"
+
+The vehicle was rapidly coming to a stop. Larry gripped the table,
+struggling to hold firm to his reeling senses. This soundless,
+grinding halt! His swaying gaze strayed from the mirror. Outside the
+glowing bars he could now discern the luminous greyness separating.
+Swift, soundless claps of light and dark, alternating. Daylight and
+darkness. They had been blended, but now they were separating. The
+passing, retrograding days--a dozen to the second of Larry's
+consciousness. Then fewer. Vivid daylight. Black night. Daylight
+again.
+
+"Not too slowly, Harl; we will be seen!... Oh, it is gone!"
+
+Larry saw the mirror go blank. The image on it had flared to great
+distinctness, faded, and was gone. Darkness was around Larry. Then
+daylight. Then darkness again.
+
+"Gone!" echoed Harl's disappointed voice. "But it stopped here!...
+Shall we stop, Tina?"
+
+"Yes! Leave the control settings as they are. Larry--be careful, now."
+
+A dragging second of grey daylight. A plunge into night. It seemed to
+Larry that all the universe was soundlessly reeling. Out of the chaos,
+Tina was saying:
+
+"We have stopped. Are you all right, Larry?"
+
+"Yes," he stammered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stood up. The cage room, with its faint lights, benches and
+settles, instrument tables and banks of controls, was flooded with
+moonlight from outside the bars. Night, and the moon and stars out
+there.
+
+Harl slid the door open. "Come, let us look."
+
+The reeling chaos had fallen swiftly from Larry. With Tina's small
+black and white figure beside him, he stood at the threshold of the
+cage. A warm gentle night breeze fanned his face.
+
+A moonlit landscape lay somnolent around the cage. Trees were nearby.
+The cage stood in a corner of a field by a low picket fence. Behind
+the trees, a ribbon of road stretched away toward a distant shining
+river. Down the road some five hundred feet, the white columns of a
+large square brick house gleamed in the moonlight. And behind the
+house was a garden and a group of barns and stables.
+
+The three in the cage doorway stood whispering, planning. Then two of
+them stepped to the ground. They were Larry and Tina; Harl remained to
+guard the cage.
+
+The two figures on the ground paused a moment and then moved
+cautiously along the inside line of the fence toward the home of Major
+Atwood. Strange anachronisms, these two prowling figures! A girl from
+the year 2930; a man from 1935!
+
+And this was revolutionary New York, now. The little city lay well to
+the south. It was open country up here. The New York of 1935 had
+melted away and was gone....
+
+This was a night in August of 1777.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_The New York Massacre of 1935_
+
+Dr. Alten recovered consciousness in the back yard of the house on
+Patton Place just a few moments after Larry had encountered the
+smaller Time-traveling cage and been carried off by Harl and Tina.
+Previously to that, of course, the mysterious mechanism in the guise
+of a giant man had abducted Mary Atwood and me in the larger
+Time-cage.
+
+Alten became aware that people were bending over him. The shots we had
+taken at the Robot had aroused the neighborhood. A policeman arrived.
+
+The sleeping neighbors had heard the shots, but it seemed that none
+had seen the cage, or the metal man who had come from it. Alten said
+nothing. He was taken to the nearest police station where grudgingly,
+he told his story. He was laughed at; reprimanded for alcoholism.
+Evidently, according to the police sergeant, there had been a fight,
+and Alten had drawn the loser's end. The police confiscated the two
+rifles and the revolver and decided that no one but Alten had been
+hurt. But at best it was a queer affair. Alten had not been shot; he
+was just stiff with cold; he said a dull-red ray had fallen upon him
+and stiffened him with its frigid blast. Utter nonsense!
+
+Dr. Alten was a man of standing. It was a reprehensible affair, but he
+was released upon his own recognizance. He was charged with breaking
+into the untenanted home of one Tugh; of illegally possessing
+firearms; of disturbing the peace--a variety of offenses all rational
+to the year 1935.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Alten's case never reached even its hearing in the Magistrate's
+Court. He arrived home just after dawn, that June 9, still cold and
+stiff from the effects of the ray, and bruised and battered by the
+sweeping blow of Miguel's great iron arm. He recalled vaguely seeing
+Larry fall, and the iron monster bearing Mary Atwood and me away. What
+had happened to Larry, Alten could not guess, unless the Robot had
+returned, ignored him and taken his friend away.
+
+During that day of June 9 Alten summoned several of his scientific
+friends, and to them he told fully what had happened to him. They
+listened with a keen understanding and a rational knowledge of the
+possibility that what he said was true; but credibility they could not
+give him.
+
+The noon papers came out.
+
+     NOTED ALIENIST ATTACKED BY GHOST Felled by One of the
+     Fantastic Monsters of His Brain
+
+A jocular, jibing account. Then Alten gave it up. He had about decided
+to plead guilty in the Magistrate's Court to disorderly conduct and
+all the rest of it! That was preferable to being judged a liar, or
+insane.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then, at about 9 P.M. on the evening of June 9, the first of the
+mechanical monsters came stalking from the house on Patton Place--the
+beginning of the revenge which Tugh had threatened when arrested. The
+policeman at the corner--one McGuire--turned in the first hysterical
+alarm. He rushed into a little candy and stationery store shouting
+that he had seen a piece of machinery running wild. His telephone call
+brought a squad of his comrades. The Robot at first did no damage.
+
+McGuire later told how he saw it as it emerged from the entryway of
+the Tugh house. It came lurching out into the street--a giant thing of
+dull grey metal, with tubular, jointed legs; a body with a great
+bulging chest; a round head, eight or ten feet above the pavement;
+eyes that shot fire.
+
+The policeman took to his heels. There was a commotion in Patton Place
+during those next few minutes. Pedestrians saw the thing standing in
+the middle of the street, staring stupidly around it. The head
+wobbled. Some said that the eyes shot fire; others, that it was not
+the eyes, but more like a torch in its mailed hand. The torch shot a
+small beam of light around the street--a beam which was dull-red.
+
+The pedestrians fled. Their cries brought people to the nearby house
+windows. Women screamed. Presently bottles were thrown from the
+windows. One of these crashed against the iron shoulder of the
+monster. It turned its head: as though its neck were rubber, some
+said. And it gazed upward, with a human gesture as though it were not
+angry, but contemptuous.
+
+But still, beyond a step or two in one direction or another, it merely
+stood and waved its torch. The little dull-red beam of light carried
+no more than twenty or thirty feet. The street in a few moments was
+clear of pedestrians; remained littered with glass from the broken
+bottles. A taxi came suddenly around the corner, and the driver, with
+an almost immediate tire puncture, saw the monster. He hauled up to
+the curb, left his cab and ran.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Robot saw the taxicab, and stood gazing. It turned its torch-beam
+on it, and seemed surprised that the thing did not move. Then thinking
+evidently that this was a less cowardly enemy than the humans, it made
+a rush to it. The chauffeur had not turned off his engine when he
+fled, so the cab stood throbbing.
+
+The Robot reached it; cuffed it with a huge mailed fist. The
+windshield broke; the windows were shattered; but the cab stood
+purring, planted upon its four wheels.
+
+Strange encounter! They say that the Robot tried to talk to it. At
+last, exasperated, it stepped backward, gathered itself and pounced on
+it again. Stooping, it put one of its great arms down under the
+wheels, the other over the hood, and with prodigious strength heaved
+the cab into the air. It crashed on its side across the street, and in
+a moment was covered with flames.
+
+It was about this time that Patrolman McGuire came back to the scene.
+He shot at the monster a few times; hit it, he was sure. But the Robot
+did not heed him.
+
+The block was now in chaos. People stood at most of the windows,
+crowds gathered at the distant street corners, while the blazing
+taxicab lighted the block with a lurid glare. No one dared approach
+within a hundred feet or so of the monster. But when, after a time, it
+showed no disposition to attack, throngs at every distinct point of
+vantage tried to gather where they could see it. Those nearest
+reported back that its face was iron; that it had a nose, a wide,
+yawning mouth, and holes for eyes. There were certainly little lights
+in the eye-holes.
+
+A small, fluffy white dog went dashing up to the monster and barked
+bravely at its heels. It leaped nimbly away when the Robot stooped to
+seize it. Then, from the Robot's chest, the dull-red torch beam leaped
+out and down. It caught the little dog, and clung to it for an
+instant. The dog stood transfixed; its bark turned to a yelp; then a
+gurgle. In a moment it fell on its side; then lay motionless with
+stiffened legs sticking out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All this happened within five minutes. McGuire's riot squad arrived,
+discreetly ranged itself at the end of the block and fired. The Robot
+by then had retreated to the entryway of the Tugh house, where it
+stood peering as though with curiosity at all this commotion. There
+came a clanging from the distance: someone had turned in a fire alarm.
+Through the gathered crowds and vehicles the engines came tearing up.
+
+Presently there was not one Robot, but three: a dozen! More than that,
+many reports said. But certain it is that within half an hour of the
+first alarm, the block in front of Tugh's home held many of the iron
+monsters. And there were many human bodies lying strewn there, by
+then. A few policemen had made a stand at the corner, to protect the
+crowd against one of the Robots. The thing had made an unexpected
+infuriated rush....
+
+There was a panic in the next block, when a thousand people suddenly
+tried to run. A score of people were trampled under foot. Two or three
+of the Robots ran into that next block--ran impervious to the many
+shots which now were fired at them. From what was described as slots
+in the sides of their iron bodies they drew swords--long, dark,
+burnished blades. They ran, and at each fallen human body they made a
+single stroke of decapitation, or, more generally, cut the body in
+half.
+
+The Robots did not attack the fire engines. Emboldened by this,
+firemen connected a hose and pumped a huge jet of water toward the
+Tugh house. The Robots then rushed it. One huge mechanism--some said
+it was twelve feet tall--ran heedlessly into the firemen's
+high-pressure stream, toppled backward from the force of the water and
+very strangely lay still. Killed? Rather, out of order: deranged: it
+was not human, to be killed. But it lay motionless, with the fire hose
+playing upon it. Then abruptly there was an explosion. The fallen
+Robot, with a deafening report and a puff of green flame, burst into
+flying metallic fragments like shrapnel. Nearby windows were broken
+from the violent explosion, and pieces of the flying metal were hurled
+a hundred feet or more. One huge chunk, evidently a plate of the
+thing's body, struck into the crowd two blocks away, and felled
+several people.
+
+At this smashing of one of the mechanisms, its brother Robots went for
+the first time into aggressive action. A hundred or more were pouring
+now from the vacant house of the absent Tugh....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The alarm by ten o'clock had spread throughout the entire city. Police
+reserves were called out, and by midnight soldiers were being
+mobilized. Panics were starting everywhere. Millions of people crowded
+in on small Manhattan Island, in the heart of which was this strange
+enemy.
+
+Panics.... Yet human nature is very strange. Thousands of people
+started to leave Manhattan, but there were other thousands during that
+first skirmish who did their best to try and get to the neighborhood
+of Patton Place to see what was going on. They added greatly to the
+confusion. Traffic soon was stalled everywhere. Traffic officers,
+confused, frightened by the news which was bubbled at them from every
+side, gave wrong orders; accidents began to occur. And then, out of
+the growing confusion, came tangles, until, like a dammed stream, all
+the city mid-section was paralyzed. Vehicles were abandoned
+everywhere.
+
+Reports of what was happening on Patton Place grew more confused. The
+gathering nearby crowds impeded the police and firemen. The Robots, by
+ten o'clock, were using a single great beam of dull-red light. It was
+two or three feet broad. It came from a spluttering, hissing cylinder
+mounted on runners which the Robots dragged along the ground, and the
+beam was like that of a great red searchlight. It swung the length of
+Patton Place in both directions. It hissed against the houses;
+penetrated the open windows which now were all deserted; swept the
+front cornices of the roofs, where crowds of tenants and others were
+trying to hide. The red beam drove back the ones near the edge, except
+those who were stricken by its frigid blast and dropped like plummets
+into the street, where the Robots with flashing blades pounced upon
+them.
+
+Frigid was the blast of this giant light-beam. The street, wet from
+the fire-hose, was soon frozen with ice--ice which increased under the
+blast of the beam, and melted in the warm air of the night when the
+ray turned away.
+
+From every distant point in the city, awed crowds could see that great
+shaft when it occasionally shot upward, to stain the sky with blood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dr. Alten by midnight was with the city officials, telling them what
+he could of the origin of this calamity. They were a distracted group
+indeed! There were a thousand things to do, and frantically they were
+giving orders, struggling to cope with conditions so suddenly
+unprecedented. A great city, millions of people, plunged into
+conditions unfathomable. And every moment growing worse. One calamity
+bringing another, in the city, with its myriad diverse activities so
+interwoven. Around Alten the clattering, terrifying reports were
+surging. He sat there nearly all that night; and near dawn, an
+official plane carried him in a flight over the city.
+
+The panics, by midnight, were causing the most deaths. Thousands,
+hundreds of thousands, were trying to leave the island. The tube
+trains, the subways, the elevateds were jammed. There were riots
+without number in them. Ferryboats and bridges were thronged to their
+capacity. Downtown Manhattan, fortunately comparatively empty, gave
+space to the crowds plunging down from the crowded foreign quarters
+bordering Greenwich Village. By dawn it was estimated that five
+thousand people had been trampled to death by the panics in various
+parts of the city, in the tubes beneath the rivers and on departing
+trains.
+
+And another thousand or more had been killed by the Robots. How many
+of these monstrous metal men were now in evidence, no one could
+guess. A hundred--or a thousand. The Time-cage made many trips between
+that night of June 9 and 10, 1935, and a night in 2930. Always it
+gauged its return to this same night.
+
+The Robots poured out into Patton Place. With running, stiff-legged
+steps, flashing swords, small light-beams darting before them, they
+spread about the city....
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The Vengeance of Tugh
+
+A myriad individual scenes of horror were enacted. Metal travesties of
+the human form ran along the city streets, overturning stalled
+vehicles, climbing into houses, roaming dark hallways, breaking into
+rooms.
+
+There was a woman who afterward told that she crouched in a corner,
+clutching her child, when the door of her room was burst in. Her
+husband, who had kept them there thinking it was the safest thing to
+do, fought futilely with the great thing of iron. Its sword slashed
+his head from his body with a single stroke. The woman and the little
+child screamed, but the monster ignored them. They had a radio, tuned
+to a station in New Jersey which was broadcasting the events. The
+Robot seized the instrument as though in a frenzy of anger, tore it
+apart, then rushed from the room.
+
+No one could give a connected picture of the events of that horrible
+night. It was a series of disjointed incidents out of which the
+imagination must construct the whole.
+
+The panics were everywhere. The streets were stalled with traffic and
+running, shouting, fighting people. And the area around Greenwich
+Village brought reports of continued horror.
+
+The Robots were of many different forms; some pseudo-human; others,
+great machines running amuck--things more monstrous, more horrible
+even, than those which mocked humanity. There was a great pot-bellied
+monster which forced its way somehow to a roof. It encountered a
+crouching woman and child in a corner of the parapet, seized them, one
+in each of its great iron hands, and whirled them out over the
+housetops.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By dawn it seemed that the Robots had mounted several projectors of
+the giant red beam on the roofs of Patton Place. They held a full
+square mile, now, around Tugh's house. The police and firemen had long
+since given up fighting them. They were needed elsewhere--the police
+to try and cope with the panics, and the firemen to fight the
+conflagrations which everywhere began springing up. Fires, the natural
+outcome of chaos; and fires, incendiary--made by criminals who took
+advantage of the disaster to fatten like ghouls upon the dead. They
+prowled the streets. They robbed and murdered at will.
+
+The giant beams of the Robots carried a frigid blast for miles. By
+dawn of that June 10th, the south wind was carrying from the enemy
+area a perceptible wave of cold even as far as Westchester. Allen,
+flying over the city, saw the devastated area clearly. Ice in the
+streets--smashed vehicles--the gruesome litter of sword-slashed human
+bodies. And other human bodies, plucked apart; strewn....
+
+Alten's plane flew at an altitude of some two thousand feet. In the
+growing daylight the dark prowling figures of the metal men were
+plainly seen. There were no humans left alive in the captured area.
+The plane dropped a bomb into Washington Square where a dozen or two
+of the Robots were gathered. It missed them. The plane's pilot had not
+realized that they were grouped around a projector; its red shaft
+sprang up, caught the plane and clung to it. Frigid blast! Even at
+that two thousand feet altitude, for a few seconds Alten and the
+others were stiffened by the cold. The motor missed; very nearly
+stopped. Then an intervening rooftop cut off the beam, and the plane
+escaped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All this I have pictured from what Dr. Alten subsequently told me. He
+leaves my narrative now, since fate hereafter held him in the New York
+City of 1935. But he has described for me three horrible days, and
+three still more horrible nights. The whole world now was alarmed.
+Every nation offered its forces of air and land and sea to overcome
+these gruesome invaders. Warships steamed for New York harbor.
+Soldiers were entrained and brought to the city outskirts. Airplanes
+flew overhead. On Long Island, Staten Island, and in New Jersey,
+infantry, tanks and artillery were massed in readiness.
+
+But they were all very nearly powerless to attack. Manhattan Island
+still was thronged with refugees. It was not possible for the millions
+to escape; and for the first day there were hundreds of thousands
+hiding in their homes. The city could not be shelled. The influx of
+troops was hampered by the outrush of civilians.
+
+By the night of the tenth, nevertheless, ten thousand soldiers were
+surrounding the enemy area. It embraced now all the mid-section of the
+island. The soldiers rushed in. Machine-guns were set up.
+
+But the Robots were difficult to find. With this direct attack they
+began fighting with an almost human caution. Their bodies were
+impervious to bullets, save perhaps in the orifices of the face which
+might or might not be vulnerable. But when attacked, they skulked in
+the houses, or crouched like cautious animals under the smashed
+vehicles. Then there were times when they would wade forward directly
+into machine-gun fire--unharmed--plunging on until the gunners fled
+and the Robots wreaked their fury upon the abandoned gun.
+
+The only hand-to-hand conflicts took place on the afternoon of June
+10th. A full thousand soldiers were killed--and possibly six or eight
+of the Robots. The troops were ordered away after that; they made
+lines across the island to the north and to the south, to keep the
+enemy from increasing its area. Over Greenwich Village now, the
+circling planes--at their highest altitude, to avoid the upflung
+crimson beams--dropped bombs. Hundreds of houses there were wrecked.
+Tugh's house could not be positively identified, though the attack was
+directed at it most particularly. Afterward, it was found by chance to
+have escaped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The night of June 10th brought new horrors. The city lights failed.
+Against all the efforts of the troops and the artillery fire which now
+was shelling the Washington Square area, the giant mechanisms pushed
+north and south. By midnight, with their dull-red beams illumining the
+darkness of the canyon streets, they had reached the Battery, and
+spread northward beyond the northern limits of Central Park.
+
+It is estimated that by then there were still a million people on
+Manhattan Island.
+
+The night of the 11th, the Robots made their real attack. Those who
+saw it, from planes overhead, say that upon a roof near Washington
+Square a machine was mounted from which a red beam sprang. It was not
+of parallel rays, like the others; this one spread. And of such power
+it was, that it painted the leaden clouds of the threatening, overcast
+night. Every plane, at whatever high altitude, felt its frigid blast
+and winged hastily away to safety.
+
+Spreading, dull-red beam! It flashed with a range of miles. Its light
+seemed to cling to the clouds, staining like blood; and to cling to
+the air itself with a dull lurid radiance.
+
+It was a hot night, that June 11th, with a brewing thunderstorm. There
+had been occasional rumbles of thunder and lightning flashes. The
+temperature was perhaps 90° F.
+
+Then the temperature began falling. A million people were hiding in
+the great apartment houses and homes of the northern sections, or
+still struggling to escape over the littered bridges or by the
+paralyzed transportation systems--and that million people saw the
+crimson radiance and felt the falling temperature.
+
+80°. Then 70°. Within half an hour it was at 30°! In unheated houses,
+in midsummer, in the midst of panic, the people were swept by chilling
+cold. With no adequate clothing available they suffered greatly--and
+then abruptly they were freezing. Children wailing with the cold; then
+asleep in numbed, last slumber....
+
+Zero weather in midsummer! And below zero! How cold it got, there is
+no one to say. The abandoned recording instrument in the Weather
+Bureau was found, at 2:16 A.M., the morning of June 12, 1935, to have
+touched minus 42° F.
+
+The gathering storm over the city burst with lightning and thunder
+claps through the blood-red radiance. And then snow began falling. A
+steady white downpour, a winter blizzard with the lightning flashing
+above it, and the thunder crashing.
+
+With the lightning and thunder and snow, crazy winds sprang up. They
+whirled and tossed the thick white snowflakes; swept in blasts along
+the city streets. It piled the snow in great drifts against the
+houses; whirled and sucked it upward in white powdery geysers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At 2:30 A.M. there came a change. The dull-red radiance which swept
+the city changed in color. Through the shades of the spectrum it swung
+up to violet. And no longer was it a blast of cold, but of heat! Of
+what inherent temperature the ray of that spreading beam may have
+been, no one can say. It caught the houses, and everything inflammable
+burst into flame. Conflagrations were everywhere--a thousand spots of
+yellow-red flames, like torches, with smoke rolling up from them to
+mingle with the violet glow overhead.
+
+The blizzard was gone. The snow ceased. The storm clouds rolled away,
+blasted by the pendulum winds which lashed the city.
+
+By 3 A.M. the city temperature was over 100° F--the dry, blistering
+heat of a midsummer desert. The northern city streets were littered
+with the bodies of people who had rushed from their homes and fallen
+in the heat, the wild winds and the suffocating smoke outside.
+
+And then, flung back by the abnormal winds, the storm clouds crashed
+together overhead. A terrible storm, born of outraged nature, vent
+itself on the city. The fires of the burning metropolis presently died
+under the torrent of falling water. Clouds of steam whirled and tossed
+and hissed close overhead, and there was a boiling hot rain.
+
+By dawn the radiance of that strange spreading beam died away. The
+daylight showed a wrecked, dead city. Few humans indeed were left
+alive on Manhattan that dawn. The Robots and their apparatus had
+gone....
+
+The vengeance of Tugh against the New York City of 1935 was
+accomplished.
+
+(_To be continued._)
+
+[Illustration: Advertisement.]
+
+
+
+
+Hell's Dimension
+
+_By Tom Curry_
+
+[Illustration: _Just as the terrific unknown force reached its apex, she stepped
+across the plate._]
+
+[Sidenote: Professor Lambert deliberately ventures into a Vibrational
+Dimension to join his fiancee in its magnetic torture-fields.]
+
+
+"Now, Professor Lambert, tell us what you have done with the body of
+your assistant Miss Madge Crawford. Her car is outside your door, has
+stood there since early yesterday morning. There are no footprints
+leading away from the house and you can't expect us to believe that an
+airplane picked her off the roof. It will make it a lot easier if you
+tell us where she is. Her parents are greatly worried about her. When
+they telephoned, you refused to talk to them, would not allow them to
+speak to Miss Crawford. They are alarmed as to her fate. While you are
+not the sort of man who would injure a young woman, still, things look
+bad for you. You had better explain fully."
+
+John Lambert, a man of about thirty-six, tall, spare, with black hair
+which was slightly tinged with gray at the temples in spite of his
+youth, turned large eyes which were filled with agony upon his
+questioners.
+
+Lambert was already internationally famous for his unique and
+astounding experiments in the realm of sound and rhythm. He had been
+endowed by one of the great electrical companies to do original work,
+and his laboratory, in which he lived, was situated in a large tract
+of isolated woodland some forty miles from New York City. It was
+necessary for the success of his work that as few disturbing noises as
+possible be made in the neighborhood. Many of his experiments with
+sound and etheric waves required absolute quiet and freedom from
+interrupting noises. The delicate nature of some of the machines he
+used would not tolerate so much as the footsteps of a man within a
+hundred yards, and a passing car would have disrupted them entirely.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lambert was terribly nervous; he trembled under the gaze of the stern
+detective, come with several colleagues from a neighboring town at the
+call of Madge Crawford's frightened family. The girl, whose picture
+stood on a working table nearby, looked at them from the photograph as
+a beautiful young woman of twenty-five, light of hair, with large eyes
+and a lovely face.
+
+Detective Phillips pointed dramatically to the likeness of the missing
+girl. "Can you," he said, "look at her there, and deny you loved her?
+And if she did not love you in return, then we have a motive for what
+you have done--jealousy. Come, tell us what you have done with her.
+Our men will find her, anyway; they are searching the cellar for her
+now. You can't hope to keep her, alive, and if she is dead--"
+
+Lambert uttered a cry of despair, and put his face in his long
+fingers. "She--she--don't say she's dead!"
+
+"Then you did love her!" exclaimed Phillips triumphantly, and
+exchanged glances with his companions.
+
+"Of course I love her. And she returned my love. We were secretly
+engaged, and were to be married when we had finished these extremely
+important experiments. It is infamous though, to accuse me of having
+killed her; if I have done so, then it was no fault of mine."
+
+"Then you did kill her?"
+
+"No, no. I cannot believe she is really gone."
+
+"Why did you evade her parents' inquiries?"
+
+"Because ... I have been trying to bring her ... to re-materialize
+her."
+
+"You mean to bring her back to life?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Couldn't a doctor do that better than you, if she is hidden somewhere
+about here?" asked Phillips gravely.
+
+"No, no. You do not understand. She cannot be seen, she has
+dematerialized. Oh, go away. I'm the only man, save, possibly, my
+friend Doctor Morgan, who can help her now. And Morgan--I've thought
+of calling him, but I've been working every instant to get the right
+combination. Go away, for God's sake!"
+
+"We can't go away until we have found out Miss Crawford's fate," said
+Phillips patiently.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another sleuth entered the immense laboratory. He made his way through
+the myriad strange machines, a weird collection of xylophones, gongs,
+stone slabs cut in peculiar patterns to produce odd rhythmic sounds,
+electrical apparatus of all sorts. Near Phillips was a plate some feet
+square, of heavy metal, raised from the floor on poles of a different
+substance. About the ceiling were studs thickly set of the same sort
+of metal as was the big plate.
+
+One of the sleuths tapped his forehead, pointing to Lambert as the
+latter nervously lighted a cigarette.
+
+The newcomer reported to Phillips. He held in his hand two or three
+sheets of paper on which something was written.
+
+"The only other person here is a deaf mute," said the sleuth to
+Phillips, his superior. "I've got his story. He writes that he takes
+care of things, cooks their meals and so on. And he writes further
+that he thinks the woman and this guy Lambert were in love with each
+other. He has no idea where she has gone to. Here, you read it."
+
+Phillips took the sheets and continued: "'Yesterday morning about ten
+o'clock I was passing the door of the laboratory on my way to make up
+Professor Lambert's bed. Suddenly I noticed a queer, shimmering,
+greenish-blue light streaming down from the walls and ceiling of the
+laboratory. I was right outside the place and though I cannot hear
+anything, I was knocked down and I twisted and wriggled around like a
+snake. It felt like something with a thousand little paws but with
+great strength was pushing me every way. When there was a lull, and
+the light had stopped for a few moments, I staggered to my feet and
+ran madly for my own quarters, scared out of my head. As I went by the
+kitchen, I saw Miss Crawford at the sink there, filling some vases and
+arranging flowers as she usually did every morning.
+
+"'If she called to me, I did not hear her or notice her lips moving. I
+believe she came to the door.
+
+"'I was going to quit, when I recovered myself, angry at what had
+occurred; but then, I began to feel ashamed for being such a baby, for
+Professor Lambert has been very good to me. About fifteen minutes
+after I went to my room, I was able to return to the kitchen. Miss
+Crawford was not there, though the flowers and vases were. Then, as I
+started to work, still a little alarmed, Professor Lambert came
+rushing into the kitchen, an expression of terror on his face. His
+mouth was open, and I think he was calling. He then ran out, back to
+the laboratory, and I have not seen Miss Madge since. Professor
+Lambert has been almost continuously in the work-room since then,
+and--I kept away from it, because I was afraid.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two more members of Phillips' squad broke into the laboratory and came
+toward the chief. They had been working at physical labor, for they
+were still perspiring and one regarded his hands with a rueful
+expression.
+
+"Any luck?" asked Phillips eagerly.
+
+"No, boss. We been all over the place, and we dug every spot we could
+get to earth in the cellar. Most of it's three-inch concrete, without
+a sign of a break."
+
+"Did you look in the furnace?"
+
+"We looked there the first thing. She ain't there."
+
+There were several closets in the laboratory, and Phillips opened all
+of them and inspected them. As he moved near the big plate, Lambert
+uttered a cry of warning. "Don't disturb that, don't touch anything
+near it!"
+
+"All right, all right," said Phillips testily.
+
+The skeptical sleuths had classified Lambert as a "nut," and were
+practically sure he had done away with Madge Crawford because she
+would not marry him.
+
+Still, they needed better evidence than their mere beliefs. There was
+no corpus delicti, for instance.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Lambert at last, controlling his emotions with a
+great effort. "I will admit to you that I am in trepidation and a
+state of mental torture as to Miss Crawford's fate. You are delaying
+matters, keeping me from my work."
+
+"He thinks about work when the girl he claims he loves has
+disappeared," said Doherty, in a loud whisper to Phillips. Doherty was
+one of the sleuths who had been digging in the cellar, and the hard
+work had made his temper short.
+
+"You must help us find Miss Crawford before we can let you alone,"
+said Phillips. "Can't you understand that you are under grave
+suspicion of having injured her, hidden her away? This is a serious
+matter, Professor Lambert. Your experiments can wait."
+
+"This one cannot," shouted Lambert, shaking his fists. "You are
+fools!"
+
+"Steady now," said Doherty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Perhaps you had better come with us to the district attorney's
+office," went on Phillips. "There you may come to your senses and
+realize the futility of trying to cover up your crime--if you have
+committed one. If you have not, why do you not tell us where Miss
+Crawford is?"
+
+"Because I do not know myself," replied Lambert. "But you can't take
+me away from here. I beg of you, gentlemen, allow me a little more
+time. I must have it."
+
+Phillips shook his head. "Not unless you tell us logically what has
+occurred," he said.
+
+"Then I must, though I do not think you will comprehend or even
+believe me. Briefly, it is this: yesterday morning I was working on
+the final series of experiments with a new type of harmonic overtones
+plus a new type of sinusoidal current which I had arranged with a
+series of selenium cells. When I finally threw the switch--remember, I
+was many weeks preparing the apparatus, and had just put the final
+touches on early that morning--there was a sound such as never had
+been heard before by human ears, an indescribable sound, terrifying
+and mysterious. Also, there was a fierce, devouring verditer blue
+light, and this came from the plates and studs you see, but so great
+was its strength that it got out of control and leaped about the room
+like a live thing. For some moments, while it increased in intensity
+as I raised the power of the current by means of the switch I held in
+my hand, I watched and listened in fascination. My instruments had
+ceased to record, though they are the most delicate ever invented and
+can handle almost anything which man can even surmise."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The perspiration was pouring from Lambert's face, as he recounted his
+story. The detectives listened, comprehending but a little of the
+meaning of the scientist's words.
+
+"What has this to do with Miss Crawford?" asked Doherty impatiently.
+
+Phillips held up his hand to silence the other sleuth. "Let him
+finish," he ordered. "Go on, professor."
+
+"The sensations which I was undergoing became unendurable," went on
+Lambert, in a low, hoarse voice. "I was forced to cry out in pain and
+confusion.
+
+"Miss Crawford evidently heard my call, for a few moments later, just
+as the terrific unknown force reached its apex, she dashed into the
+laboratory, and stepped across the plate you see there.
+
+"I was powerless. Though I shut off the current by a superhuman
+effort, she--she was gone!"
+
+Lambert put his face in his hands, a sob shook his broad shoulders.
+
+"Gone?" repeated Phillips. "What do you mean, gone?"
+
+"She disappeared, before my very eyes," said the professor shakily.
+"Torn into nothingness by the fierce force of the current or sound.
+Since then, I have been trying to reproduce the conditions of the
+experiment, for I wish to bring her back. If I cannot do so, then I
+want to join her, wherever she has gone. I love her, I know now that I
+cannot possibly live without her. Will you please leave me alone, now,
+so that I can continue?"
+
+Doherty laughed derisively. "What a story," he jeered.
+
+"Keep quiet, Doherty," ordered Phillips. "Now, Professor Lambert, your
+explanation of Miss Crawford's disappearance does not sound logical to
+us, but still we are willing to give you every chance to bring her
+back, if what you say is true. We cannot leave you entirely alone,
+because you might try to escape or you might carry out your threat of
+suicide. Therefore, I am going to sit over there in the corner,
+quietly, where I can watch you but will not interfere with your work.
+We will give you until midnight to prove your story. Then you must go
+with us to the district attorney. Do you agree to that?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lambert nodded, eagerly. "I agree. Let me work in peace, and if I do
+not succeed then you may take me anywhere you wish. If you can," he
+added, in an undertone.
+
+Doherty and the others, at Phillips' orders, filed from the
+laboratory. "One thing more, professor," said Phillips, when they were
+alone and the professor was preparing to work. "How do you explain the
+fact, if your story is true, that Miss Crawford was killed and made to
+disappear, while you yourself, close by, were uninjured?"
+
+"Do you see these garments?" asked Lambert, indicating some black
+clothes which lay on a bench nearby. "They insulated me from the
+current and partially protected me from the sound. Though the force
+was very great, great enough to penetrate my insulation, it was
+handicapped in my case because of the garments."
+
+"I see. Well, you may go on."
+
+Phillips moved in the chair he had taken, from time to time. He could
+hear the noises of his men, still searching the premises for Madge
+Crawford, and Professor Lambert heard them, too.
+
+"Will you tell your men to be quiet?" he cried at last.
+
+There were dark circles under Lambert's eyes. He was working in a
+state of feverish anxiety. When the girl he loved had dematerialized
+from under his very eyes, panic had seized him; he had ripped away
+wires to break the current and lost the thread of his experiment, so
+that he could not reproduce it exactly without much labor.
+
+The scientist put on the black robes, and Phillips wished he too had
+some protective armor, even though he did believe that Lambert had
+told them a parcel of lies. The deaf mute's story was not too
+reassuring. Phillips warned his companions to be more quiet, and he
+himself sat quite still.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lambert knew that the sleuths thought he was stark mad. He was aware
+of the fact that he had but a few hours in which to save the girl who
+had come at his cry to help him, who had loved him and whom he loved,
+only to be torn into some place unknown by the forces which were
+released in his experiment. And he knew he would rather die with her
+than live without her.
+
+He labored feverishly, though he tried to keep his brain calm in order
+to win. His notes helped him up to a certain point, but when he had
+made the final touches he had not had time to bring the data up to the
+moment, being eager to test out his apparatus. It was while testing
+that the awful event had occurred and he had seen Madge Crawford
+disappear before his very eyes.
+
+Her eyes, large and frightened, burned in his mind.
+
+The deaf mute, Felix, a small, spare man of about fifty, sent the
+professor some food and coffee through one of the sleuths. Lambert
+swallowed the coffee, but waved away the rest, impatiently. Phillips,
+watching his suspect constantly, was served a light supper at the end
+of the afternoon.
+
+There seemed to be a million wires to be touched, tested, and various
+strange apparatus. Several times, later on in the evening. Lambert
+threw the big switch with an air of expectancy, but little happened.
+Then Lambert would go to work again, testing, testing--adjusting this
+and that till Phillips swore under his breath.
+
+"Only an hour more, professor," said Phillips, who was bored to death
+and cramped from trying to obey the professor's orders to keep still.
+A circle of cigarette-ends surrounded the sleuth.
+
+"Only an hour," agreed Lambert. "Will you please be quiet, my man?
+This is a matter of my fiancée's life or death."
+
+Phillips was somewhat disgruntled, for he felt he had done Lambert
+quite a favor in allowing him to remain in the laboratory for so long,
+to prove his story.
+
+"I wish Doctor Morgan were here; I ought to have sent for him, I
+suppose," said Lambert, a few minutes later. "Will you allow me to get
+him? I cannot seem to perfect this last stage."
+
+"No time, now," declared Phillips. "I said till midnight."
+
+It was obvious to Lambert that the detective had become certain during
+the course of the evening that the scientist was mad. The ceaseless
+fiddling and the lack of results or even spectacular sights had
+convinced Phillips that he had to do with a crank.
+
+"I think I have it now," said Lambert coolly.
+
+"What?" asked Phillips.
+
+"The original combination. I had forgotten one detail in the
+excitement, and this threw me off. Now I believe I will succeed--in
+one way or another. I warn you, be careful. I am about to release
+forces which may get out of my control."
+
+"Well, now, don't get reckless," begged Phillips nervously. The array
+of machines had impressed him, even if Lambert did seem a fool.
+
+"You insist upon remaining, so it is your own risk," said Lambert
+coolly.
+
+Lambert, in the strange robes, was a bizarre figure. The hood was
+thrown back, exposing his pale, black-bearded face, the wan eyes with
+dark circles under them, and the twitching lips.
+
+"If you find yourself leaving this vale of tears," went on the
+scientist, ironically, to the sleuth, "you will at least have the
+comfort of realizing that as the sound-force disintegrates your mortal
+form you are among the first of men to be attuned to the vibrations of
+the unknown sound world. All matter is vibration; that has been
+proven. A building of bricks, if shaken in the right manner, falls
+into its component parts; a bridge, crossed by soldiers in certain
+rhythmic time, is torn from its moorings. A tuning fork, receiving the
+sound vibrations from one of a similar size and shape begins to
+vibrate in turn. These are homely analogies, but applied to the less
+familiar sound vibrations, which make up our atomic world, they may
+help you to understand how the terrific forces I have discovered can
+disintegrate flesh."
+
+The scientist looked inquiringly at Phillips. As the sleuth did not
+move, but sat with folded arms, Lambert shrugged and said, "I am
+ready."
+
+Lambert raised his hood, and Phillips said, in a spirit of bravado,
+"You can't scare me out of here."
+
+"Here goes the switch," cried Lambert.
+
+He made the contact, as he had before. He stood for a moment, and this
+time the current gained force. The experimenter pushed his lever all
+the way over.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A terrible greenish-blue light suddenly illuminated the laboratory,
+and through the air there came sound vibrations which seemed to tear
+at Phillips' body. He found himself on the floor, knocked from his
+chair, and he writhed this way and that, speechless, suffering a
+torment of agony. His whole flesh seemed to tremble in unison with the
+waves which emanated from the machines which Lambert manipulated.
+
+After what seemed hours to the suffering sleuth, the force diminished,
+and soon Phillips was able to rise. Trembling, the detective cursed
+and yelled for help in a high-pitched voice.
+
+Lambert had thrown back his hood, and was rocking to and fro in agony.
+
+"Madge, Madge," he cried, "what have I done! Come back to me, come
+back!"
+
+Doherty and the others came running in at their chief's shouts.
+"Arrest him," ordered Phillips shakily. "I've stood enough of this
+nonsense."
+
+The detectives started for Lambert. He saw them coming, and swiftly
+threw off the protective garments he wore.
+
+"Stand back!" he cried, and threw the switch all the way over. The
+verditer green light smashed through the air, and the queer sound
+sensations smacked and tore them; Doherty, who had drawn a revolver
+when he was answering Phillips' cries, fired the gun into the air, and
+the report seemed to battle with the vibrating ether.
+
+Lambert, as he threw the switch, leaped forward and landed on the
+metal plate under the ceiling studs, in the very center of the awful
+disturbance and unprotected from its force.
+
+For a few moments, Lambert felt racking pain, as though something were
+tearing at his flesh, separating the very atoms. The scientist saw the
+wriggling figures of the sleuths, in various strange positions, but his
+impressions were confused. His head whirled round and round, he swayed
+to and fro, and, finally, he thought he fell down, or rather, that he
+had melted, as a lump of sugar dissolves in water.
+
+"He's gone--gone--"
+
+In the heart of nothingness was Lambert, his body torn and racked in a
+shrieking chaos of sound and a blinding glare of iridescent light
+which seemed too much to bear.
+
+His last conscious thought was a prayer, that, having failed to bring
+back his sweetheart, Madge Crawford, he was undergoing a step toward
+the same destination to which he had sent her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+John Lambert came to with a shudder. But it was not a mortal shudder.
+He could sense no body; had no sense of being confined by matter. He
+was in a strange, chilly place--a twilight region, limitless, without
+dimensions.
+
+Yet he could feel something, in an impersonal way, vaguely
+indifferent. He had no pain now.
+
+He was moving, somehow. He had one impelling desire, and that was to
+discover Madge Crawford. Perhaps it was this thought which directed
+his movements.
+
+Intent upon finding the girl, if she was indeed in this same strange
+world that he was, he did not notice for some time--how long, he had
+no way of telling--that there were other beings which tried to impede
+his progress. But as he grew more accustomed to the unfamiliar
+sensations he was undergoing, he found his path blocked again and
+again by queer beings.
+
+They were living, without doubt, and had intelligence, and evinced
+hostility toward him. But they were shapeless, shapeless as amoebas.
+He heard them in a sort of soundless whisper, and could see them
+without the use of eyes. And he shuddered, though he could feel no
+body in which he might be confined. Still, when he pinched viciously
+with invisible fingers at the spot where his face should have been, a
+twinge of pain registered on the vague consciousness which appeared to
+be all there was to him.
+
+He was not sure of his substance, though he could evidently experience
+human sensations with his amorphous body. He did not know whether he
+could see; yet, he was dodging this way and that, as the beings who
+occupied this world tried to stop him.
+
+They gave him the impression of gray shapes, and in coppery shadows
+things gleamed and closed in on him.
+
+He seemed to hear a cry, and he knew that he was receiving a call for
+help from Madge Crawford. He tried to run, pushed determinedly toward
+the spot, impelled by his love for the girl.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, as he hurried, he occasionally was stopped short by collision
+with the formless shapes which were all about him. He was hampered by
+them, for they followed him, making a sound like wind heard in a
+dream. Whatever medium he was in was evidently thickly inhabited by
+the hostile beings who claimed this world as their own. Though he
+could not actually feel the medium, he could sense that it was heavy.
+He leaped and ran, fighting his way through the increasing hosts, and
+the roar of their voice-impressions increased in his consciousness.
+
+Yet there seemed to be nothing, nothing tangible save vagueness. He
+felt he was in a blind spot in space, a place of no dimensions, no
+time, where beings abhorred by nature, things which had never
+developed any dimensional laws, existed.
+
+The cry for help struck him, with more force this time. Lambert,
+whatever form he was in, realised that he was close to the end of his
+journey to Madge Crawford.
+
+He tried to speak, and had the impression that he said something
+reassuring. He then bumped into some vibrational being which he knew
+was Madge. His ears could not hear, nor could his flesh feel, but his
+whole form or cerebrum sensed he held the woman he loved in his arms.
+
+And she was speaking to him, in accents of fear, begging him to save
+her.
+
+"John, John, you have come at last. They have been torturing me
+terribly. Save me."
+
+"Darling Madge, I will do everything I can. Now I have found you, and
+we are together and will never part. Can you hear me?"
+
+"I know what you are thinking, and what you wish to say. I can't
+exactly hear; it all seems vague, and impossible. Yet I can suffer.
+They have been hitting me with something which makes me shudder and
+shake--there, they are at it again."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lambert felt the sensations, now, which the girl had made known to
+him. He felt crowded by gray beings, and his existence was troubled by
+spasms of pain-impressions. He knew Madge was crying out, too.
+
+He could not comprehend the attacks, or guess their meaning. But the
+situation was unendurable.
+
+Anger shook him, and he began to fight, furiously but vaguely. They
+were closely hemmed in, but when Lambert began to strike out with
+hands and legs, the beings gave way a little. The scientist tried to
+shout, and though he could actually hear nothing, the result was
+gratifying. The formless creatures seemed to scatter and draw back in
+confusion as he yelled his defiance.
+
+"They hate that," Madge said to him. "I have screamed myself hoarse
+and that is why they have not killed me--if I can be killed."
+
+"I do not believe we can. But they can torture us," replied Lambert.
+"It is an everlasting half-life or quarter-life, and these creatures
+who call this Hell's Dimension home, have nothing but hatred for us in
+their consciousness."
+
+The inhabitants of the imperfect world had closed in once again and
+the sharp instruments of torture they used were being thrust into the
+invisible bodies of the two humans. Each time, Lambert was unable to
+restrain his cries, for it seemed that he was being torn to pieces by
+vibrations.
+
+He yelled until he could not speak above a whisper, or at least until
+the impressions of speech he gave forth did not trouble the beings.
+The two humans, still bound to some extent by their mortal beliefs,
+were chivvied to and fro, and struck and bullied. The creatures seemed
+to delight in this sport.
+
+The two felt they could not die; yet they could suffer terribly. Would
+this go on through eternity? Was there no release?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were trying to tear Madge away from him. She was fighting them,
+and Lambert, in a frenzy of rage, made a determined effort to get away
+with the girl from their tormentors.
+
+They retreated before his onslaughts. Drawing Madge after him, Lambert
+put down his head--or believed he was doing so--and ran as fast as he
+could at the beings.
+
+He bumped into some invisible forms and was slowed in his rush, but he
+shouted and flailed about with his arms, and tried to kick. Madge
+helped by screaming and striking out. They made some distance in this
+way, or so they thought, and the horrid creatures gave way before
+them.
+
+All about them was the coppery sensation of the medium in which they
+moved: Lambert as he became more used to the form he was inhabiting,
+he began to think he could discern dreadful eyes which stared
+unblinkingly at the couple.
+
+He fought on, and believed they had come to a spot where the beings
+did not molest them, though they still sensed the things glaring at
+them.
+
+Were they on some invisible eminence, above the reach of these queer
+creatures?
+
+"We might as well stop here, for if we try to go farther we may come
+to a worse place," said Lambert.
+
+They rested there, in temporary peace, together at last.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I seem to be happy now," said Madge, clinging close. "I feared I
+would never see you again. John dear. I ran to you when you called out
+that day and when I crossed the plate, I was torn and racked and
+knocked down. When I next experienced sensation, it was in this
+terrible form. I am becoming more used to it, but I kept crying out
+for you: the beings, as soon as they discovered my presence, began to
+torment me. More and more have been collecting, and I have a sensation
+of seeing them as horrible, revolting beasts. Oh, John, I don't think
+I could have stood it much longer, if you hadn't come to me. They were
+driving me on, on, on, ceaselessly torturing me."
+
+"Curse them," said Lambert. "I wish I could really get hold of some of
+them. Perhaps, Madge, I will be able to think of some escape for us
+from this Hell's Dimension."
+
+"Yes, darling. I could not bear to think that we are eternally damned
+to exist among these beings, hurt by them and unable to get away. How
+I wish we were back in the laboratory, at the tea table. How happy we
+were there!"
+
+"And we will be again, Madge." Lambert was far from feeling hopeful,
+but he tried to encourage the girl into thinking they might get away.
+
+However, he was unable to dissimulate. She felt his anguish for her
+safety. "But I know now that you love me. I can feel it stronger than
+ever before, John. It seems like a great rock to which I can always
+cling, your love. It projects me from the hatred that these beasts
+pour out against us."
+
+Since they had no sense of time, they could not tell how long they
+were allowed to remain unmolested. But in each other's company they
+were happy, though each one was afraid for the safety of the loved
+one.
+
+They spoke of the mortal life they had lived, and their love. They
+felt no need of food or water, but clung together in a dimensionless
+universe, held up by love.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lull came to an end, at last. There was no change in the coppery
+vagueness about them which they sensed as the surrounding ether, but
+all was changeless, boundless. Lambert, close to Madge Crawford, felt
+that they were about to be attacked.
+
+He had swift, temporary impressions of seeing saucerlike, unblinking
+eyes, and then hordes of bizarre inhabitants started to climb up to
+their perch.
+
+For a short while, Lambert and Madge fought them off, thrusting at
+them, seeming to push them backward down the intangible slope; the
+cries which the dematerialized humans uttered also helped to hold the
+leaders of the attacking army partially in check, but the vast number
+of beings swept forward.
+
+The thrusts of the torture-fields they emanated became more and more
+racking, as the two unfortunates shuddered in horror and pain.
+
+The power to demonstrate loud noise was evidently impossible to the
+creatures, for their only sounds came to Madge Crawford and John
+Lambert as long-drawn out, almost unbearable squeaks, mouse-like in
+character. Perhaps they had never had the faculty of speech, since
+they did not need it to communicate with one another; perhaps they
+realized that the racket they could make would hurt them as much as it
+did their enemies.
+
+Lambert, Madge clinging to him, was forced backward down the slope,
+and the beings had the advantage of height. He could not again reach
+the eminence, but the way behind seemed to clear quickly enough,
+though thrusts were made at him, innumerable times with the
+torture-fields.
+
+The hordes pushed them backward, and ever back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were forced on for some distance. As they retreated, the way
+become easier, and fewer and fewer of the beings impeded the channel
+along which they moved, though in front of them and on all sides,
+above, beneath, they were pressed by the hordes.
+
+"They are forcing us to some place they want us to go," said Lambert
+desperately.
+
+"We can do nothing more," replied the girl.
+
+Lambert felt her quiet confidence in him, and that as long as they
+were together, all was well.
+
+"Maybe they can kill us, somehow," he said.
+
+And now, Lambert felt the way was clear to the rear. There was a
+sudden rush of the creatures, and needlelike fields were impelled
+viciously into the spaces the two humans occupied.
+
+Madge cried out in pain, and Lambert shouted. The throng drew away
+from them as suddenly as it had surged forward, and an instant later
+the pair, clinging together, felt that they were falling, falling,
+falling....
+
+"Are you all right, Madge?"
+
+"Yes, John."
+
+But he knew she was suffering. How long they fell he did not know, but
+they stopped at last. No sooner had they come to rest than they were
+assailed with sensations of pain which made both cry out in anguish.
+
+There, in the spot where they had been thrust by the hordes, they felt
+that there was some terrific vibration which racked and tore at their
+invisible forms continuously, sending them into spasms of sharp
+misery.
+
+They both were forced to give vent to their feelings by loud cries.
+But they could not command their movements any longer. When they tried
+to get away, their limbs moved but they felt that they remained in the
+same spot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The pain shook every fraction of their souls.
+
+"We--we are in some pit of hell, into which they have thrown us,
+John," gasped Madge.
+
+He knew she was shivering with the torture of that great vibration
+from which there was no escape, that they were in a prison-pit of
+Hell's Dimension.
+
+"I--oh--John--I'm dying!"
+
+But he was powerless to help her. He suffered as much as she. Yet
+there was no weakening of his sensations; he was in as much torture as
+he had been at the start. He knew that they could not die and could
+never escape from this misery of hell.
+
+Their cries seemed to disturb the vacuum about. Lambert, shivering and
+shaking with pain, was aware that great eyes, similar to those which
+they had thought they saw above, were now upon them. Squeaks were
+impressed upon him, squeaks which expressed disapprobation. There were
+some of the beings in the pit with them.
+
+Madge knew they were there, too. She cried out in terror, "Will they
+add to our misery?"
+
+But the creatures in the vacuum were pinned to the spots they
+occupied, as were Madge and Lambert. From their squeaks it was evident
+they suffered, too, and were fellow prisoners of the mortals.
+
+"Probably the cries we make disturb them," said Lambert. "Vibrations
+to which we and they are not attuned are torture to the form we are
+in. Evidently the inhabitants of this hell world punish offenders by
+condemning them to this eternal torture."
+
+"Why--why did they treat us so?"
+
+"Perhaps we jarred upon them, hurt them, because we were not of their
+kind exactly," said Lambert. "Perhaps it was just their natural hatred
+of us as strangers."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They did not grow used to the terrible eternity of torments. No, if
+anything, it grew worse as it went on. Still, they could visualize no
+end to the existence to which they were bound. Throbs of awful
+intensity rent them, tore them apart myriad times, yet they still felt
+as keenly as before and suffered just as much. There was no death for
+them, no release from the intangible world in which they were.
+
+Their fellow prisoners squeaked at them, as though imploring them not
+to add to the agony by uttering discordant cries. But it was
+impossible for Madge to keep quiet, and Lambert shouted in anguish
+from time to time.
+
+There seemed to be no end to it.
+
+And yet, after what was eternity to the sufferers, Madge spoke
+hopefully.
+
+"Darling John, I--I fear I am really going to die. I am growing
+weaker. I can feel the pain very little now. It is all vague, and is
+getting less real to me. Good-by, sweetheart, I love you, and I always
+will--"
+
+Lambert uttered a strangled cry, "No, no. Don't leave me, Madge."
+
+He clung to her, yet she was becoming extremely intangible to him. She
+was melting away from his embrace, and Lambert felt that he, too, was
+weaker, even less real than he had been. He hoped that if it was the
+end, they would go together.
+
+Desperately, he tried to hold her with him, but he had little ability
+to do so. The torture was still racking his consciousness, but was
+becoming more dreamlike.
+
+There was a terrific snap, suddenly, and Lambert lost all
+consciousness....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Water, water!"
+
+Lambert, opening his eyes, felt his body writhing about, and
+experienced pain that was--mortal. A bluish-green light dazzled his
+pupils and made him blink.
+
+Something cut into his flesh, and Lambert rolled about, trying to
+escape. He bumped into something, something soft; he clung to this
+form, and knew that he was holding on to a human being. Then the light
+died out, and in its stead was the yellow, normal glow of the electric
+lights. Weak, famished, almost dead of thirst, Lambert looked about
+him at the familiar sights of his laboratory. He was lying on the
+floor, close by the metal plate, and at his side, unconscious but
+still alive to judge by her rising and falling breast, was Madge
+Crawford.
+
+Someone bent over him, and pressed a glass of water against his lips.
+He drank, watching while a mortal whom Lambert at last realized was
+Detective Phillips bathed Madge Crawford's temples with water from a
+pitcher and forced a little between her pale, drawn lips.
+
+Lambert tried to rise, but he was weak, and required assistance. He
+was dazed, still, and they sat him down in a chair and allowed him to
+come to.
+
+He shuddered from time to time, for he still thought he could feel the
+torture which he had been undergoing. But he was worried about Madge,
+and watched anxiously as Phillips, assisted by another man, worked
+over the girl.
+
+At last, Madge stirred and moaned faintly. They lifted her to a bench,
+where they gently restored her to full consciousness.
+
+When she could sit up, she at once cried out for Lambert.
+
+The scientist had recovered enough to rise to his feet and stagger
+toward her. "Here I am, darling," he said.
+
+"John--we're alive--we're back in the laboratory!"
+
+"Ah, Lambert. Glad to see you." A heavy voice spoke, and Lambert for
+the first time noticed the black-clad figure which stood to one side,
+near the switchboard, hidden by a large piece of apparatus.
+
+"Dr. Morgan!" cried Lambert.
+
+Althaus Morgan, the renowned physicist, came forward calmly, with
+outstretched hand. "So, you realized your great ambition, eh?" he said
+curiously. "But where would you be if I had not been able to bring you
+back?"
+
+"In Hell--or Hell's Dimension, anyway," said Lambert.
+
+He went to Madge, took her in his arms. "Darling, we are safe. Morgan
+has managed to re-materialize us. We will never again be cast into the
+void in this way. I shall destroy the apparatus and my notes."
+
+Doherty, who had been out of the room on some errand, came into the
+laboratory. He shouted when he saw Lambert standing before him.
+
+"So you got him," he cried. "Where was he hidin'?"
+
+His eyes fell upon Madge Crawford, then, and he exclaimed in
+satisfaction. "You found her, eh?"
+
+"No," said Phillips. "They came back. They suddenly appeared out of
+nothing, Doherty."
+
+"Don't kid me," growled Doherty. "They were hidin' in a closet
+somewhere. Maybe they can fool you guys, but not me."
+
+Lambert spoke to Phillips. "I'm starving to death and I think Miss
+Crawford must be, too. Will you tell Felix to bring us some food,
+plenty of it?"
+
+One of the sleuths went to the kitchen to give the order. Lambert
+turned to Morgan.
+
+"How did you manage to bring us back?" he asked.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Morgan shrugged. "It was all guess work at the last. I at first could
+check the apparatus by your notes, and this took some time. You know
+you have written me in detail about what you were working on, so when
+I was summoned by Detective Phillips, who said you had mentioned my
+name to him as the only one who could help, I could make a good
+conjecture as to what had occurred. I heard the stories of all
+concerned, and realized that you must have dematerialized Miss
+Crawford by mistake, and then, unable to bring her back, had followed
+her yourself.
+
+"I put on your insulation outfit, and went to work. I have not left
+here for a moment, but have snatched an hour or two of sleep from time
+to time. Detective Phillips has been very good and helpful.
+
+"Finally, I had everything in shape, but I reversed the apparatus in
+vital spots, and tried each combination until suddenly, a few minutes
+ago, you were re-materialized. It was a desperate chance, but I was
+forced to take it in an endeavor to save you."
+
+Lambert held out his hand to his friend. "I can never thank you
+enough," he said gratefully. "You saved us from a horrible fate. But
+you speak as though we had been gone a long while. Was it many hours?"
+
+"Hours?" repeated Morgan, his lips parting under his black beard.
+"Man, it was eight days! You have been gone since a week ago last
+night!"
+
+Lambert turned to Phillips. "I must ask you not to release this story
+to the newspapers," he begged.
+
+Phillips smiled and turned up his hands in a gesture of frank wonder.
+"Professor Lambert," he said, "I can't believe what I have seen
+myself. If I told such a yarn to the reporters, they'd never forget
+it. They'd kid me out of the department."
+
+"Aw, they were hidin' in a closet," growled Doherty. "Come on, we've
+wasted too much time on this job already. Just a couple of nuts, says
+I."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sleuths, after Phillips had shaken hands with Lambert, left the
+laboratory. Morgan, a large man of middle age, joined them in a meal
+which Felix served to the three on a folding table brought in for the
+purpose. Felix was terribly glad to see Madge and Lambert again, and
+manifested his joy by many bobs and leaps as he waited upon them. A
+grin spread across his face from ear to ear.
+
+Morgan asked innumerable questions. They described as best they could
+what they could recall of the strange dominion in which they had been,
+and the physicist listened intently.
+
+"It is some Hell's Dimension, as you call it," he said at last.
+
+"Where it is, or exactly what, I cannot say," said Lambert. "I surely
+have no desire to return to that world of hate."
+
+Madge, happy now, smiled at him and he leaned over and kissed her
+tenderly.
+
+"We have come from Hell, together," said Lambert, "and now we are in
+Heaven!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: Advertisement]
+
+
+
+
+The World Behind the Moon
+
+_By Paul Ernst_
+
+[Illustration: _They fell, for hours, into a deep chasm._]
+
+[Sidenote: Two intrepid Earth-men fight it out with the horrific
+monsters of Zeud's frightful jungles.]
+
+
+Like pitiless jaws, a distant crater opened for their ship.
+Helplessly, they hurtled toward it: helplessly, because they were
+still in the nothingness of space, with no atmospheric resistance on
+which their rudders, or stern or bow tubes, could get a purchase to
+steer them.
+
+Professor Dorn Wichter waited anxiously for the slight vibration that
+should announce that the projectile-shaped shell had entered the new
+planet's atmosphere.
+
+"Have we struck it yet?" asked Joyce, a tall blond young man with the
+shoulders of an athlete and the broad brow and square chin of one who
+combines dreams with action. He made his way painfully toward
+Wichter. It was the first time he had attempted to move since the
+shell had passed the neutral point--that belt midway between the moon
+and the world behind it, where the pull of gravity of each satellite
+was neutralized by the other. They, and all the loose objects in the
+shell, had floated uncomfortably about the middle of the chamber for
+half an hour or so, gradually settling down again; until now it was
+possible, with care, to walk.
+
+"Have we struck it?" he repeated, leaning over the professor's
+shoulder and staring at the resistance gauge.
+
+"No." Absently Wichter took off his spectacles and polished them.
+"There's not a trace of resistance yet."
+
+They gazed out the bow window toward the vast disc, like a serrated,
+pock-marked plate of blue ice, that was the planet Zeud--discovered
+and named by them. The same thought was in the mind of each. Suppose
+there were no atmosphere surrounding Zeud to cushion their descent
+into the hundred-mile crater that yawned to receive them?
+
+"Well," said Joyce after a time, "we're taking no more of a chance
+here than we did when we pointed our nose toward the moon. We were
+almost sure that was no atmosphere there--which meant we'd nose dive
+into the rocks at five thousand miles an hour. On Zeud there might be
+anything." His eyes shone. "How wonderful that there should be such a
+planet, unsuspected during all the centuries men have been studying
+the heavens!"
+
+Wichter nodded agreement. It was indeed wonderful. But what was more
+wonderful was its present discovery: for that would never have
+transpired had not he and Joyce succeeded in their attempt to fly to
+the moon. From there, after following the sun in its slow journey
+around to the lost side of the lunar globe--that face which the earth
+has never yet observed--they had seen shining in the near distance
+the great ball which they had christened Zeud.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Astronomical calculations had soon described the mysterious hidden
+satellite. It was almost a twin to the moon; a very little smaller,
+and less than eighty thousand miles away. Its rotation was nearly
+similar, which made its days not quite sixteen of our earthly days. It
+was of approximately the weight, per cubic mile, of Earth. And there
+it whirled, directly in a line with the earth and the moon, moving as
+the moon moved so that it was ever out of sight beyond it, as a dime
+would be out of sight if placed in a direct line behind a penny.
+
+Zeud, the new satellite, the world beyond the moon! In their
+excitement at its discovery, Joyce and Wichter had left the
+moon--which they had found to be as dead and cold as it had been
+surmised to be--and returned summarily to Earth. They had replenished
+their supplies and their oxygen tanks, and had come back--to circle
+around the moon and point the sharp prow of the shell toward Zeud. The
+gift of the moon to Earth was a dubious one; but the gift of a
+possibly living planet-colony to mankind might be the solution of the
+overcrowded conditions of the terrestial sphere!
+
+"Speed, three thousand miles an hour," computed Wichter. "Distance to
+Zeud, nine hundred and eighty miles. If we don't strike a few atoms of
+hydrogen or something soon we're going to drill this nearest crater a
+little deeper!"
+
+Joyce nodded grimly. At two thousand miles from Earth there had still
+been enough hydrogen traces in the ether to give purchase to the
+explosions of their water-motor. At six hundred miles from the moon
+they had run into a sparse gaseous belt that had enabled them to
+change direction and slow their speed. They had hoped to find hydrogen
+at a thousand or twelve hundred miles from Zeud.
+
+"Eight hundred and thirty miles," commented Wichter, his slender,
+bent body tensed. "Eight hundred miles--ah!"
+
+A thrumming sound came to their ears as the shell quivered,
+imperceptibly almost, but unmistakeably, at the touch of some faint
+resistance outside in space.
+
+"We've struck it, Joyce. And it's much denser than the moon's, even as
+we'd hoped. There'll be life on Zeud, my boy, unless I'm vastly
+mistaken. You'd better look to the motor now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joyce went to the water-motor. This was a curious, but extremely
+simple affair. There was a glass box, ribbed with polished steel,
+about the size and shape of a cigar box, which was full of water.
+Leading away from this, to the bow and stern of the shell, were two
+small pipes. The pipes were greatly thickened for a period of three
+feet or so, directly under the little tank, and were braced by
+bed-plates so heavy as to look all out of proportion. Around the
+thickened parts of the pipes were coils of heavy, insulated copper
+wire. There were no valves nor cylinders, no revolving parts: that was
+all there was to the "motor."
+
+Joyce didn't yet understand the device. The water dripped from the
+tank, drop by drop, to be abruptly disintegrated, made into an
+explosive, by being subjected to a powerful magnetic field induced in
+the coils by a generator in the bow of the shell. As each drop of
+water passed into the pipes, and was instantaneously broken up, there
+was a violent but controlled explosion--and the shell was kicked
+another hundred miles ahead on its journey. That was all Joyce knew
+about it.
+
+He threw the bow switch. There was a soft shock as the motor exhausted
+through the forward tube, slowing their speed.
+
+"Turn on the outside generator propellers," ordered Wichter. "I think
+our batteries are getting low."
+
+Joyce slipped the tiny, slim-bladed propellers into gear. They began
+to turn, slowly at first in the almost non-existent atmosphere.
+
+"Four hundred miles," announced Wichter. "How's the temperature?"
+
+Joyce stepped to the thermometer that registered the heat of the outer
+wall. "Nine hundred degrees," he said.
+
+"Cut down to a thousand miles an hour," commanded Wichter. "Five
+hundred as soon as the motor will catch that much. I'll keep our
+course straight toward this crater. It's in wells like that, that
+we'll find livable air--if we're right in believing there is such a
+thing on Zeud."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joyce glanced at the thermometer. It still registered hundreds of
+degrees, though their speed had been materially reduced.
+
+"I guess there's livable air, all right," he said. "It's pretty thick
+outside already."
+
+The professor smiled. "Another theory vindicated. I was sure that
+Zeud, swinging on the outside of the Earth-moon-Zeud chain and hence
+traveling at a faster rate, would pick up most of the moon's
+atmosphere over a period of millions of years. Also it must have been
+shielded by the moon, to some extent, against the constant small
+atmospheric leakage most celestial globes are subject to. Just the
+same, when we land, we'll test conditions with a rat or two."
+
+At a signal from him, Joyce checked their speed to four hundred miles
+an hour, then to two hundred, and then, as they descended below the
+highest rim of the circular cliffs of the crater, almost to a full
+stop. They floated toward the surface of Zeud, watching with
+breathless interest the panorama that unfolded beneath them.
+
+They were nosing toward a spot that was being favored with the Zeudian
+sunrise. Sharp and clear the light rays slanted down, illuminating
+about half the crater's floor and leaving the cliff protected half in
+dim shadow.
+
+The illuminated part of the giant pit was as bizarre as the landscape
+of a nightmare. There were purplish trees, immense beyond belief.
+There were broad, smooth pools of inky black fluid that was oily and
+troubled in spots as though disturbed by some moving things under the
+surface. There were bare, rocky patches where the stones, the long
+drippings of ancient lava flow, were spread like bleaching gray
+skeletons of monsters. And over all, rising from pools and bare ground
+and jungle alike, was a thin, miasmic mist.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sustained by the slow, steady exhaust of the motor, rising a little
+with each partly muffled explosion and sinking a little further in
+each interval, they settled toward a bare, lava strewn spot that
+appealed to Wichter as being a good landing place. With a last hiss,
+and a grinding jar, they grounded. Joyce opened the switch to cut off
+the generator.
+
+"Now let's see what the air's like," said Wichter, lifting down a
+small cage in which was penned an active rat.
+
+He opened a double panel in the shell's hull, and freed the little
+animal. In an agony of suspense they watched it as it leaped onto the
+bare lava and halted a moment....
+
+"Seems to like it," said Joyce, drawing a great breath.
+
+The rat, as though intoxicated by its sudden freedom, raced away out
+of sight, covering eight or ten feet at a bound, its legs scurrying
+ludicrously in empty air during its short flights.
+
+"That means that we can dispense with oxygen helmets--and that we'd
+better take our guns," said Wichter, his voice tense, his eyes
+snapping behind his glasses.
+
+He stepped to the gun rack. In this were half a dozen air-guns. Long
+and of very small bore, they discharged a tiny steel shell in which
+was a liquid of his invention that, about a second after the heat of
+its forced passage through the rifle barrel, expanded instantly in
+gaseous form to millions of times its liquid bulk. It was the most
+powerful explosive yet found, but one that was beautifully safe to
+carry inasmuch as it could be exploded only by heat.
+
+"Are we ready?" he said, handing a gun to Joyce. "Then--let's go!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But for a breath or two they hesitated before opening the heavy double
+door in the side of the hull, savoring to the full the immensity of
+the moment.
+
+The rapture of the explorer who is the first to set foot on a vast new
+continent was theirs, magnified a hundredfold. For they were the first
+to set foot on a vast new planet! An entire new world, containing
+heaven alone knew what forms of life, what monstrous or infinitesimal
+creatures, lay before them. Even the profound awe they had experienced
+when landing on the moon was dwarfed by the solemnity of this
+occasion; just as it is less soul stirring to discover an arctic
+continent which is perpetually cased in barren ice, than to discover a
+continent which is warmly fruitful and, probably, teeming with life.
+
+Still wordless, too stirred to speak, they opened the vault-like door
+and stepped out--into a humid heat which was like that of their own
+tropical regions, but not so unendurable.
+
+In their short stay on the moon, during which they had taken several
+walks in their insulated suits, they had become somewhat accustomed to
+the decreased weight of their bodies due to the lesser gravity, so
+that here, where their weight was even less, they did not make any
+blunders of stepping twenty feet instead of a yard.
+
+Walking warily, glancing alertly in all directions to guard against
+any strange animals that might rush out to destroy them, they moved
+toward the nearest stretch of jungle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first thing that arrested their attention was the size of the
+trees they were approaching. They had got some idea of their hugeness
+from the shell, but viewed from ground level they loomed even larger.
+Eight hundred, a thousand feet they reared their mighty tops, with
+trunks hundreds of feet in circumference; living pyramids whose bases
+wove together to make an impenetrable ceiling over the jungle floor.
+The leaves were thick and bloated like cactus growths, and their color
+was a pronounced lavender.
+
+"We must take back several of those leaves," said Wichter, his
+scientific soul filled with cold excitement.
+
+"I wish we could take back some of this air, too." Joyce filled his
+lungs to capacity. "Isn't it great? Like wine! It almost counteracts
+the effects of the heat."
+
+"There's more oxygen in it than in our own," surmised Wichter. "My
+God! What's that!"
+
+They halted for an instant. From the depths of the lavender jungle had
+come an ear shattering, screaming hiss, as though some monstrous
+serpent were in its death agony.
+
+They waited to hear if the noise would be repeated. It wasn't.
+Dubiously they started on again.
+
+"We'd better not go in there too far," said Joyce. "If we didn't come
+out again it would cost Earth a new planet. No one else knows the
+secret of your water-motor."
+
+"Oh, nothing living can stand against these guns of ours," replied
+Wichter confidently. "And that noise might not have been caused by
+anything living. It might have been steam escaping from some volcanic
+crevice."
+
+They started cautiously down a well defined, hard packed trail through
+thorny lavender underbrush. As they went, Joyce blazed marks on
+various tree trunks marking the direction back to the shell. The tough
+fibres exuded a bluish liquid from the cuts that bubbled slowly like
+blood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To the right and left of them were cup-shaped bushes that looked like
+traps; and that their looks were not deceiving was proved by a
+muffled, bleating cry that rose from the compressed leaves of one of
+them they passed. Sluggish, blind crawling things like three-foot
+slugs flowed across their path and among the tree trunks, leaving
+viscous trails of slime behind them. And there were larger things....
+
+"Careful," said Wichter suddenly, coming to a halt and peering into
+the gloom at their right.
+
+"What did you see?" whispered Joyce.
+
+Wichter shook his head. The gigantic, two-legged, purplish figure he
+had dimly made out in the steamy dark, had moved away. "I don't know.
+It looked a little like a giant ape."
+
+They halted and took stock of their situation, mechanically wiping
+perspiration from their streaming faces, and pondering as to whether
+or not they should turn back. Joyce, who was far from being a coward,
+thought they should.
+
+"In this undergrowth," he pointed out, "we might be rushed before we
+could even fire our guns. And we're nearly a mile from the shell."
+
+But Wichter was like an eager child.
+
+"We'll press on just a little," he urged. "To that clear spot in front
+of us." He pointed along the trail to where sunlight was blazing down
+through an opening in the trees. "As soon as we see what's there,
+we'll go back."
+
+With a shrug, Joyce followed the eager little man down the weird trail
+under the lavender trees. In a few moments they had reached the
+clearing which was Wichter's goal. They halted on its edge, gazing at
+it with awe and repulsion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a circular quagmire of festering black mud about a hundred
+yards across. Near at hand they could see the mud heaving, very
+slowly, as though abysmal forms of life were tunneling along just
+under the surface. They glanced toward the center of the bog, which
+was occupied by one of the smooth black pools, and cried aloud at
+what they saw.
+
+At the brink of the pool was lying a gigantic creature like a great,
+thick snake--a snake with a lizard's head, and a series of
+many-jointed, scaled legs running down its powerful length. Its mouth
+was gaping open to reveal hundreds of needle-sharp, backward pointing
+teeth. Its legs and thick, stubbed tail were threshing feebly in the
+mud as though it were in distress; and its eyes, so small as to be
+invisible in its repulsive head, were glazed and dull.
+
+"Was that what we heard back a ways?" wondered Joyce.
+
+"Probably," said Wichter. His eyes shone as he gazed at the nightmare
+shape. Impulsively he took a step toward the stirring mud.
+
+"Don't be entirely insane," snapped Joyce, catching his arm.
+
+"I must see it closer," said Wichter, tugging to be free.
+
+"Then we'll climb a tree and look down on it. We'll probably be safer
+up off the ground anyway."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They ascended the nearest jungle giant--whose rubbery bark was so
+ringed and scored as to be as easy to climb as a staircase--to the
+first great bough, about fifty feet from the ground, and edged out
+till they hung over the rim of the quagmire. From there, with the aid
+of their binoculars, they expected to see the dying monster in every
+detail. But when they looked toward the pool it was not in sight!
+
+"Were we seeing things?" exclaimed Wichter, rubbing his glasses. "I'd
+have sworn it was lying there!"
+
+"It was," said Joyce grimly. "Look at the pool. That'll tell you where
+it went."
+
+The black, secretive surface was bubbling and waving as though, down
+in its depths, a terrific fight were taking place.
+
+"Something came up and dragged our ten-legged lizard down to its den.
+Then that something's brothers got onto the fact that a feast was
+being held, and rushed in. That pool would be no place for a
+before-breakfast dip!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wichter started to say something in reply, then gazed, hypnotized, at
+the opposite wall of the jungle.
+
+From the dense screen of lavender foliage stretched a glistening,
+scale-armored neck, as thick as a man's body at its thinnest point,
+which was just behind a tremendous-jawed crocodilian head. It tapered
+back for a distance of at least thirty feet, to merge into a body as
+big as that of a terrestial whale, that was supported by four squat,
+ponderous legs.
+
+Moving with surprising rapidity, the enormous thing slid into the mud
+and began ploughing a way, belly deep, toward the pool. Shapeless,
+slow-writhing forms were cast up in its wake, to quiver for a moment
+in the sunlight and then melt below the mud again.
+
+One of the bloated, formless mud-crawlers was snapped up in the huge
+jaws with an abrupt plunge of the long neck, and the monster began to
+feed, hog-like, slobbering over the loathsome carcass.
+
+Wichter shook his head, half in fanatical eagerness, half in despair.
+"I'd like to stay and see more," he said with a sigh, "but if that's
+the kind of creatures we're apt to encounter in the Zeudian jungle,
+we'd better be going at once--"
+
+"Sh-h!" snapped Joyce. Then, in a barely audible whisper: "I think the
+thing heard your voice!"
+
+The monster had abruptly ceased its feeding. Its head, thrust high in
+the air, was waving inquisitively from side to side. Suddenly it
+expelled the air from its vast lungs in a roaring cough--and started
+directly for their tree.
+
+"Shoot!" cried Wichter, raising his gun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Moving with the speed of an express train, the monster had almost got
+to their overhanging branch before they could pull the triggers. Both
+shells imbedded themselves in the enormous chest, just as the long
+neck reached up for them. And at once things began to happen with
+cataclysmic rapidity.
+
+Almost with their impact the shells exploded. The monster stopped,
+with a great hole torn in its body. Then, dying on its feet, it thrust
+its great head up and its huge jaws crunched over the branch to which
+its two puny destroyers were clinging.
+
+With all its dozens of tons of weight, it jerked in a gargantuan death
+agony. The tree, enormous as it was, shook with it, and the branch
+itself was tossed as though in a hurricane.
+
+There was a splintering sound. Wichter and Joyce dropped their guns to
+cling more tightly to the bole of the drooping branch that was their
+only security. The guns glanced off the mountainous body--and, with a
+last convulsion of the mighty legs, were swept underneath!
+
+The monster was still at last, its insensate jaws yet gripping the
+bough. The two men looked at each other in speechless consternation.
+The shell a mile off through the dreadful jungle.... Themselves,
+helpless without their guns....
+
+"Well," said Joyce at last. "I guess we'd better be on our way.
+Waiting here, thinking it over, won't help any. Lucky there's no
+night, for a couple of weeks at least, to come stealing down on us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He started down the great trunk, with Wichter following close behind.
+Walking as rapidly as they could, they hurried back along the tunneled
+trail toward their shell.
+
+They hadn't covered a hundred yards when they heard a mighty crashing
+of underbrush behind them. Glancing back, they saw tooth-studded jaws
+gaping cavernously at the end of a thirty-foot neck--little,
+dead-looking eyes glaring at them--a hundred-foot body smashing its
+way over the trap-bushes and through tangles of vines and
+down-drooping branches.
+
+"The mate to the thing we killed back there!" Joyce panted. "Run, for
+God's sake!"
+
+Wichter needed no urging. He hadn't an ounce of fear in his spare,
+small body. But he had an overwhelming desire to get back to Earth and
+deliver his message. He was trembling as he raced after Joyce, thirty
+feet to a bound, ducking his head to avoid hitting the thick lavender
+foliage that roofed the trail.
+
+"One of us must get through!" he panted over and over. "One of us must
+make it!"
+
+It was speedily apparent that they could never outrun their pursuer.
+The reaching jaws were only a few yards behind them now.
+
+"You go," called Joyce, sobbing for breath. He slowed his pace
+deliberately.
+
+"No--you--" Wichter slowed too. In a frenzy, Joyce shoved him along
+the trail.
+
+"I tell you--"
+
+He got no further. In front of them, where there had appeared to be
+solid ground, they suddenly saw a yawning pit. Desperately, they tried
+to veer aside, but they were too close. Their last long birdlike leap
+carried them over the edge. They fell, far down, into a deep chasm,
+splashing into a shallow pool of water.
+
+A few clods of earth cascaded after them as the monster above dug its
+great splay feet into the ground and checked its rush in time to keep
+from falling after them. Then the top of the pit slowly darkened as a
+covering of some sort slid across it. They were in a prison as
+profoundly quiet and utterly black as a tomb.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dorn," shouted Joyce. "Are you all right?"
+
+"Yes," came a voice in the near darkness. "And you?"
+
+"I'm still in one piece as far as I can feel." There was a splashing
+noise. He waded toward it and in a moment his outstretched hand
+touched the professor's shoulder.
+
+"This is a fine mess," he observed shakily. "We got away from those
+tooth-lined jaws, all right, but I'm wondering if we're much better
+off than we would have been if we hadn't escaped."
+
+"I'm wondering the same thing." Wichter's voice was strained. "Did you
+see the way the top of the pit closed above us? That means we're in a
+trap. And a most ingenious trap it is, too! The roof of it is
+camouflaged until it looks exactly like the rest of the trail floor.
+The water in here is just shallow enough to let large animals break
+their necks when they fall in and just deep enough to preserve small
+animals--like ourselves--alive. We're in the hands of some sort of
+reasoning, intelligent beings, Joyce!"
+
+"In that case," said Joyce with a shudder, "we'd better do our best to
+get out of here!"
+
+But this was found to be impossible. They couldn't climb up out of the
+pit, and nowhere could they feel any openings in the walls. Only
+smooth, impenetrable stone met their questing fingers.
+
+"It looks as though we're in to stay," said Joyce finally. "At least
+until our Zeudian hosts, whatever kind of creatures they may be, come
+and take us out. What'll we do then? Sail in and die fighting? Or go
+peaceably along with them--assuming we aren't killed at once--on the
+chance that we can make a break later?"
+
+"I'd advise the latter," answered Wichter. "There is a small animal on
+our own planet whose example might be a good one for us to follow.
+That's the 'possum." He stopped abruptly, and gripped Joyce's arm.
+
+From the opposite side of the pit came a grating sound. A crack of
+greenish light appeared, low down near the water. This widened jerkily
+as though a door were being hoisted by some sort of pulley
+arrangement. The walls of the pit began to glow faintly with
+reflected light.
+
+"Down," breathed Wichter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Noiselessly they let themselves sink into the water until they were
+floating, eyes closed and motionless, on the surface. Playing dead to
+the best of their ability, they waited for what might happen next.
+
+They heard a splashing near the open rock door. The splashing neared them,
+and high-pitched hissing syllables came to their ears--variegated sounds
+that resembled excited conversation in some unknown language.
+
+Joyce felt himself touched by something, and it was all he could do to
+keep from shouting aloud and springing to his feet at the contact.
+
+He'd had no idea, of course, what might be the nature of their
+captors, but he had imagined them as man-like, to some extent at
+least. And the touch of his hand, or flipper, or whatever it was,
+indicated that they were not!
+
+They were cold-blooded, reptilian things, for the flesh that had
+touched him was cold; as clammy and repulsive as the belly of a dead
+fish. So repulsive was that flesh that, when he presently felt himself
+lifted high up and roughly carried, he shuddered in spite of himself
+at the contact.
+
+Instantly the thing that bore him stopped. Joyce held his breath. He
+felt an excruciating, stabbing pain in his arm, after which the
+journey through the water was resumed. Stubbornly he kept up his
+pretence of lifelessness.
+
+The splashing ceased, and he heard flat wet feet slapping along on dry
+rock, indicating that they had emerged from the pit. Then he sank into
+real unconsciousness.
+
+The next thing he knew was that he was lying on smooth, bare rock in a
+perfect bedlam of noises. Howls and grunts, snuffling coughs and
+snarls beat at his ear-drums. It was as though he had fallen into a
+vast cage in which were hundreds of savage, excited animals--animals,
+however, that in spite of their excitement and ferocity were
+surprisingly motionless, for he heard no scraping of claws, or padding
+of feet.
+
+Cautiously he opened his eyes....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was in a large cave, the walls of which were glowing with greenish,
+phosphorescent light. Strewn about the floor were seemingly dead
+carcasses of animals. And what carcasses there were! Blubber-coated
+things that looked like giant tadpoles, gazelle-like creatures with a
+single, long slim horn growing from delicate small skulls, four-legged
+beasts and six-legged ones, animals with furry hides and crawlers with
+scaled coverings--several hundred assorted specimens of the smaller
+life of Zeud lay stretched out in seeming lifelessness.
+
+But they were not dead, these bizarre beasts of another world. They
+lived, and were animated with the frenzied fear of trapped things.
+Joyce could see the tortured heaving of their furred and scaled sides
+as they panted with terror. And from their throats issued the
+outlandish noises he had heard. They were alive enough--only they
+seemed unable to move!
+
+There was nothing in his range of vision that might conceivably be the
+beings that had captured them, so Joyce started to lift his head and
+look around at the rest of the cavern. He found that he could not
+move. He tried again, and his body was as unresponsive as a log. In
+fact, he couldn't feel his body at all! In growing terror, he
+concentrated all his will on moving his arm. It was as limp as a rag.
+
+He relaxed, momentarily in the grip of stark, blind panic. He was as
+helpless as the howling things around him! He was numbed, completely
+paralyzed into immobility!
+
+The professor's voice--a weak, uncertain voice--sounded from behind
+him. "Joyce! Joyce!"
+
+He found that he could talk, that the paralysis that gripped the rest
+of his muscles had not extended to the vocal cords. "Dorn! Thank God
+you're alive! I couldn't see you, and I thought--"
+
+"I'm alive, but that's about all," said Wichter. "I--I can't move."
+
+"Neither can I. We've been drugged in some manner--just as all the
+other animals in here have been drugged. I must have got my dose in
+the pit. I was cut, or stabbed, in the arm."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joyce stopped talking as he suddenly heard steps, like human footsteps
+yet weirdly different--flap-flapping sounds as though awkward flippers
+were slapping along the rock floor toward them. The steps stopped
+within a few feet of them; then, after what seemed hours, they sounded
+again, this time in front of him.
+
+He opened his eyes, cautiously, barely moving his eyelids, and saw at
+last, in every hideous detail, one of the super-beasts that had
+captured Wichter and himself.
+
+It was a horrible cartoon of a man, the thing that stood there in the
+greenish glow of the cave. Nine or ten feet high, it loomed; hairless,
+with a faintly iridescent, purplish hide. A thick, cylindrical trunk
+sloped into a neck only a little smaller than the body itself. Set on
+this was a bony, ugly head that was split clear across by lipless
+jaws. There was no nose, only slanted holes like the nostrils of an
+animal; and over these were set pale, expressionless, pupil-less eyes.
+The arms were short and thick and ended in bifurcated lumps of flesh
+like swollen hands encased in old-fashioned mittens. The legs were
+also grotesquely short, and the feet mere shapeless flaps.
+
+It was standing near one of the smaller animals, apparently regarding
+it closely. Observing it himself, Joyce saw that it was moving a
+little. As though coming out of a coma, it was raising its bizarre
+head and trying to get on its feet.
+
+Leisurely the two-legged monster bent over it. Two long fangs gleamed
+in the lipless mouth. These were buried in the neck of the reviving
+beast--and instantly it sank back into immobility.
+
+Having reduced it to helplessness--the monster ate it! The lipless
+jaws gaped widely. The shapeless hands forced in the head of the
+animal. The throat muscles expanded hugely: and in less than a minute
+it had swallowed its living prey as a boa-constrictor swallows a
+monkey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joyce closed his eyes, feeling weak and nauseated. He didn't open them
+again till long after he had heard the last of the awkward, flapping
+footsteps.
+
+"Could you see it?" asked Wichter, who was lying so closely behind him
+that he couldn't observe the monstrous Zeudian. "What did it do? What
+was it like?"
+
+Joyce told him of the way the creature had fed. "We are evidently in
+their provision room," he concluded. "They keep some of their food
+alive, it seems.... Well, it's a quick death."
+
+"Tell me more about the way the other animal moved, just before it was
+eaten."
+
+"There isn't much to tell," said Joyce wearily. "It didn't move long
+after those fangs were sunk into it."
+
+"But don't you see!" There was sudden hope in Wichter's voice. "That
+means that the effect of the poison, which is apparently injected by
+those fangs, wears off after a time. And in that case--"
+
+"In that case," Joyce interjected, "we'd have only an unknown army of
+ten-foot Zeudians, the problem of finding a way to the surface of the
+ground again, and the lack of any kind of weapons, to keep us from
+escaping!"
+
+"We're not quite weaponless, though," the professor whispered back.
+"Over in a corner there's a pile of the long, slender horns that
+sprout from the heads of some of these creatures. Evidently the
+Zeudians cut them out, or break them off before eating that
+particular type of animal. They'd be as good as lances, if we could
+get hold of them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joyce said nothing, but hope began to beat in his own breast. He had
+noticed a significant happening during the age-long hours in the
+commissary cave. Most of the Zeudians had entered from the direction
+of the pit. But one had come in through an opening in the opposite
+side. And this one had blinked pale eyes as though dazzled from bright
+sunlight--and was bearing some large, woody looking tubers that seemed
+to have been freshly uprooted! There was a good chance, thought Joyce,
+that that opening led to a tunnel up to the world above!
+
+He drew a deep breath--and felt a dim pain in his back, caused by the
+cramping position in which he had lain for so long.
+
+He could have shouted aloud with the thrill of that discovery. This
+was the first time he had felt his body at all! Did it mean that the
+effect of the poison was wearing off--that it wasn't as lastingly
+paralyzing to his earthly nerve centers as to those of Zeudian
+creatures around them? He flexed the muscles of his leg. The leg moved
+a fraction of an inch.
+
+"Dorn!" he called softly, "I can move a little! Can you?"
+
+"Yes," Wichter answered, "I've been able to wriggle my fingers for
+several minutes. I think I could walk in an hour or two."
+
+"Then pray for that hour or two. It might mean our escape!" Joyce told
+him of the seldom used entrance that he thought led to the open air.
+"I'm sure it goes to the surface, Dorn. Those woody looking tubers had
+been freshly picked."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three of the two-legged monsters came in just then. They relapsed into
+lifeless silence. There was a horrible moment as the three paused over
+them longer than any of the others had. Was it obvious that the
+effects of the numbing poison was wearing off? Would they be bitten
+again--or eaten?
+
+The Zeudians finally moved on, hissing and clicking to each other.
+Eventually the cold-blooded things fed, and dragged lethargically out
+of the cave in the direction of the pit.
+
+With every passing minute Joyce could feel life pouring back into his
+numbed body. His cramped muscles were in agony now--a pain that gave
+him fierce pleasure. At last, risking observation, he lifted his head
+and then struggled to a sitting position and looked around.
+
+No Zeudian was in sight. Evidently they were too sure of their poison
+glands to post a guard over them. He listened intently, and could hear
+no dragging footsteps. He turned to Wichter, who had followed his
+example and was sitting up, feebly rubbing his body to restore
+circulation.
+
+"Now's our chance," he whispered. "Stand up and walk a little to
+steady your legs, while I go over and get us a couple of those sharp
+horns. Then we'll see where that entrance of mine goes!"
+
+He walked to the pile of bones and horns in the corner and selected
+two of the longest and slimmest of the ivory-like things. Just as he
+had rejoined Wichter he heard the sound with which he was now so
+grimly familiar--flapping, awkward footsteps. Wildly he signaled the
+professor. They dropped in their tracks, just as the approaching
+monster stumped into the cave.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For an instant he dared hope that their movement had gone unobserved,
+but his hope was rudely shattered. He heard a sharp hiss: heard the
+Zeudian flap toward them at double-quick time. Abandoning all
+pretense, he sprang to his feet just as the thing reached him, its
+fangs gleaming wickedly in the greenish light.
+
+He leaped to the side, going twenty feet or more with the press of his
+Earth muscles against the reduced gravity. The creature rushed on
+toward the professor. That game little man crouched and awaited its
+onslaught. But Joyce had sprung back again before the two could clash.
+
+He raised the long horn and plunged it into the smooth, purplish back.
+Again and again he drove it home, as the monster writhed under him. It
+had enormous vitality. Gashed and dripping, it yet struggled on,
+attempting to encircle Joyce with its stubby arms. Once it succeeded,
+and he felt his ribs crack as it contracted its powerful body. But a
+final stroke finished the savage fight. He got up and, with an
+incoherent cry to Wichter, raced toward the opening on which they
+pinned their hopes of reaching the upper air.
+
+Hissing cries and the thudding of many feet came to them just as they
+reached the arched mouth of the passage. But the cries, and the
+constant pandemonium of the paralysed animals died behind them as they
+bounded along the tunnel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They emerged at last into the sunlight they had never expected to see
+again, beside one of the great lavender trees. They paused an instant
+to try to get their bearings.
+
+"This way," panted Joyce as he saw, on a hard-packed path ahead of
+them, one of the trail-marks he had blazed.
+
+Down the trail they raced, toward their space shell. Fortunately they
+met none of the tremendous animals that infested the jungles; and
+their journey to the clearing in which the shell was lying was
+accomplished without accident.
+
+"We're safe now," gasped Wichter, as they came in sight of the bare
+lava patch. "We can outrun them five feet to their one!"
+
+They burst into the clearing--and halted abruptly. Surrounding the
+shell, stumping curiously about it and touching it with their
+shapeless hands, were dozens of the Zeudians.
+
+"My God!" groaned Joyce. "There must be at least a hundred of them!
+We're lost for certain now!"
+
+They stared with hopeless longing at the vehicle that, if only they
+could reach it, could carry them back to Earth. Then they turned to
+each other and clasped hands, without a word. The same thought was in
+the mind of each--to rush at the swarming monsters and fight till they
+were killed. There was absolutely no chance of winning through to the
+shell, but it was infinitely better to die fighting than be swallowed
+alive.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So engrossed were the Zeudians by the strange thing that had fallen
+into their province, that Joyce and Wichter got within a hundred feet
+of them before they turned their pale eyes in their direction. Then,
+baring their fangs, they streamed toward the Earth men, just as the
+pursuing Zeudians entered the clearing from the jungle trail.
+
+The two prepared to die as effectively as possible. Each grasped his
+lace-like horn tightly. The professor mechanically adjusted his
+glasses more firmly on his nose....
+
+With his move, the narrowing circle of Zeudians halted. A violent
+clamor broke out among them. They glared at the two, but made no
+further step toward them.
+
+"What in the world--" began Wichter bewilderedly.
+
+"Your glasses!" Joyce shouted, gripping his shoulder. "When you moved
+them, they all stopped! They must be afraid of them, somehow. Take
+them clear off and see what happens."
+
+Wichter removed his spectacles, and swung them in his hand, peering
+near-sightedly at the crowding Zeudians.
+
+Their reaction to his simple move was remarkable! Hisses of
+consternation came from their lipless mouths. They faced each other
+uneasily, waving their stubby arms and covering their own eyes as
+though suddenly afraid they would lose them.
+
+Taking advantage of their indecision, Joyce and Wichter walked boldly
+toward them. They moved aside, forming a reluctant lane. Some of the
+Zeudians in the rear shoved to close in on them, but the ones in front
+held them back. It wasn't until the two were nearly through that the
+lane began to straggle into a threatening circle around them again.
+The Zeudians were evidently becoming reassured by the fact that
+Wichter continued to see all right in spite of the little strange
+creature's alarming act of removing his eyes.
+
+"Do it again," breathed Joyce, perspiration beading his forehead as
+the giants moved closed, their fangs tentatively bared for the numbing
+poison stroke.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wichter popped his glasses on, then jerked them off with a cry, as
+though he were suffering intensely. Once more the Zeudians faltered
+and drew back, feeling at their own eyes.
+
+"Run!" cried Joyce. And they raced for the haven of the shell.
+
+The Zeudians swarmed after them, snarling and hissing. Barely ahead of
+the nearest, Joyce and Wichter dove into the open panel. They slammed
+it closed just as a powerful, stubby arm reached after them. There was
+a screaming hiss, and a cold, cartilagenous lump of flesh dropped to
+the floor of the shell--half the monster's hand, sheared off between
+the sharp edge of the door and the metal hull.
+
+Joyce threw in the generator switch. With a soft roar the water-motor
+exploded into action, sending the shell far into the sky.
+
+"When we return," said Joyce, adding a final thousand miles an hour to
+their speed before they should fly free of the atmosphere of Zeud, "I
+think we'd better come at the head of an army, equipped with air-guns
+and explosive bombs."
+
+"And with glasses," added the professor, taking off his spectacles and
+gazing at them as though seeing them for the first time.
+
+
+
+
+Four Miles Within
+
+A COMPLETE NOVELETTE
+
+_By Anthony Gilmore_
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_The Monster of Metal_
+
+[Illustration: The man hurled the empty gun at the monster.]
+
+[Sidenote: Far down into the earth goes a gleaming metal sphere whose
+passengers are deadly enemies.]
+
+
+A strange spherical monster stood in the moonlight on the silent
+Mojave Desert. In the ghostly gray of the sand and sage and joshua
+trees its metal hide glimmered dully--an amazing object to be found on
+that lonely spot. But there was only pride and anticipation in the
+eyes of the three people who stood a little way off, looking at it.
+For they had constructed the strange sphere, and were soon going to
+entrust their lives to it.
+
+"Professor," said one of them, a young man with a cheerful face and a
+likable grin, "let's go down now! There's no use waiting till
+to-morrow. It's always dark down there, whether it's day or night up
+here. Everything is ready."
+
+The white-haired Professor David Guinness smiled tolerantly at the
+speaker, his partner, Phil Holmes. "I'm kind of eager to be off,
+myself," he admitted. He turned to the third person in the little
+group, a dark-haired girl. "What do you say, Sue?"
+
+"Oh, let's, Father!" came the quick reply. "We'd never be able to
+sleep to-night, anyway. As Phil says, everything is ready."
+
+"Well, I guess that settles it," Professor Guinness said to the eager
+young man.
+
+Phil Holmes' face went aglow with anticipation. "Good!" he cried.
+"Good! I'll skip over and get some water. It's barely possible that
+it'll be hot down there, in spite of your eloquent logic to the
+contrary!" And with the words he caught up a large jug standing
+nearby, waved his hand, said: "I'll be right back!" and set out for
+the water-hole, situated nearly a mile away from their little camp.
+The heavy hush of the desert night settled down once more after he
+left.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As his figure merged with the shadows in the distance, the elderly
+scientist murmured aloud to his daughter:
+
+"You know, it's good to realize that my dream is about to become a
+reality. If it hadn't been for Phil.... Or no--I really ought to thank
+you, Sue. You're the one responsible for his participation!" And he
+smiled fondly at the slender girl by his side.
+
+"Phil joined us just for the scientific interest, and for the thrill
+of going four miles down into the earth," she retorted at once, in
+spite of the blush her father saw on her face. But he did not insist.
+Once more he turned, as to a magnet, to the machine that was his
+handiwork.
+
+The fifteen-foot sphere was an earth-borer--Guinness's own invention.
+In it he had utilized for the first time for boring purposes the newly
+developed atomic disintegrators. Many holes equally spaced over the
+sphere were the outlets for the dissolving ray--most of them on the
+bottom and alternating with them on the bottom and sides were the
+outlets of powerful rocket propulsion tubes, which would enable it to
+rise easily from the hole it would presently blast into the earth. A
+small, tight-fitting door gave entrance to the double-walled interior,
+where, in spite of the space taken up by batteries and mechanisms and
+an enclosed gyroscope for keeping the borer on an even keel, there was
+room for several people.
+
+The earth-borer had been designed not so much for scientific
+investigation as the specific purpose of reaching a rich store of
+radium ore buried four miles below the Guinness desert camp. Many
+geologists and mining engineers knew that the radium was there, for
+their instruments had proven it often; but no one up to then knew how
+to get to it. David Guinness did--first. The borer had been
+constructed in his laboratory in San Francisco, then dismantled and
+freighted to the little desert town of Palmdale, from whence Holmes
+had brought the parts to their isolated camp by truck. Strict secrecy
+had been kept. Rather than risk assistants they had done all the work
+themselves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Fifteen minutes passed by, while the slight figure of the inventor
+puttered about the interior of the sphere, brightly lit by a
+detachable searchlight, inspecting all mechanisms in preparation for
+their descent. Sue stood by the door watching him, now and then
+turning to scan the desert for the returning Phil.
+
+It was then, startlingly sudden, that there cracked through the velvet
+night the faint, distant sound of a gun. And it came from the
+direction of the water-hole.
+
+Sue's face went white, and she trembled. Without a word her father
+stepped out of the borer and looked at her.
+
+"That was a gun!" he said. "Phil didn't have one with him, did he?"
+
+"No," Sue whispered. "And--why, there's nobody within miles of here!"
+
+The two looked at each other with alarm and wonder. Then, from one of
+the broken patches of scrub that ringed the space in which the borer
+stood, came a mocking voice.
+
+"Ah, you're mistaken, Sue," it affirmed. "But that was a gun."
+
+David Guinness jerked around, as did his daughter. The man who had
+spoken stood only ten yards away, clearly outlined in the bright
+moonlight--a tall, well-built man, standing quite at ease, surveying
+them pleasantly. His smile did not change when old Guinness cried:
+
+"Quade! James Quade!"
+
+The man nodded and came slowly forward. He might have been considered
+handsome, had it not been for his thin, mocking lips and a swarthy
+complexion.
+
+"What are you doing here?" demanded Guinness angrily. "And what do you
+mean--'it was a gun?' Have you--"
+
+"Easy, easy--one thing at a time," said Quade, still smiling. "About
+the gun--well, your young friend Holmes said, he'd be right back, but
+I--I'm afraid he won't be."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sue Guinness's lips formed a frightened word:
+
+"Why?"
+
+Quade made a short movement with his left hand, as is brushing the
+query aside. "Let's talk about something more pleasant," he said, and
+looked back at the professor. "The radium, and your borer, for
+instance. I hear you're all ready to go down."
+
+David Guinness gasped. "How did you know--?" he began, but a surge of
+anger choked him, and his fists clenched. He stepped forward. But
+something came to life in James Quade's right hand and pointed
+menacingly at him. It was the stubby black shape of an automatic.
+
+"Keep back, you old fool!" Quade said harshly. "I don't want to have
+to shoot you!"
+
+Unwillingly, Guinness came to a stop. "What have you done with young
+Holmes?" he demanded.
+
+"Never mind about him now," said Quade, smiling again. "Perhaps I'll
+explain later. At the moment there's something much more interesting
+to do. Possibly you'll be surprised to hear it, but we're all going to
+take a little ride in this machine of yours, Professor. Down. About
+four miles. I'll have to ask you to do the driving. You will, won't
+you--without making a fuss?"
+
+Guinness's face worked furiously. "Why, you're crazy, Quade!" he
+sputtered. "I certainly won't!"
+
+"No?" asked Quade softly. The automatic he held veered around, till it
+was pointing directly at the girl. "I wouldn't want to have to shoot
+Sue--say--through the hand...." His finger tightened perceptibly on
+the trigger.
+
+"You're mad, man!" Guinness burst out. "You're crazy! What's the
+idea--"
+
+"In due time I'll tell you. But now I'll ask you just once more,"
+Quade persisted. "Will you enter that borer, or must I--" He broke off
+with an expressive shrug.
+
+David Guinness was powerless. He had not the slightest idea what Quade
+might be about; the one thought that broke through his fear and anger
+was that the man was mad, and had better be humored. He trembled, and
+a tight sensation came to his throat at sight of the steady gun
+trained on his daughter. He dared not trifle.
+
+"I'll do it," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+James Quade laughed. "That's better. You always were essentially
+reasonable, though somewhat impulsive for a man of your age. The rash
+way you severed our partnership, for instance.... But enough of that.
+I think we'd better leave immediately. Into the sphere, please. You
+first, Miss Guinness."
+
+"Must she come?"
+
+"I'm afraid so. I can't very well leave her here all unprotected, can
+I?"
+
+Quade's voice was soft and suave, but an undercurrent of sarcasm ran
+through it. Guinness winced under it; his whole body was trembling
+with suppressed rage and indignation. As he stepped to the door of the
+earth-borer he turned and asked:
+
+"How did you know our plans? About the radium?--the borer?"
+
+Quade told him. "Have you forgotten," he said, "that you talked the
+matter over with me before we split last year? I simply had the
+laboratory watched, and when you got new financial backing from young
+Holmes, and came here. I followed you. Simple, eh?... Well, enough of
+this. Get inside. You first, Sue."
+
+Trembling, the girl obeyed, and when her father hesitated Quade jammed
+his gun viciously into his ribs and pushed him to the door. "Inside!"
+he hissed, and reluctantly, hatred in his eyes, the professor stepped
+into the control compartment after Sue. Quade gave a last quick glance
+around and, with gun ever wary, passed inside. The door slammed shut:
+there was a click as its lock shot over. The sphere was a sealed ball
+of metal.
+
+Inside, David Guinness obeyed the automatic's imperious gesture and
+pulled a shiny-handled lever slowly back, and the hush that rested
+over the Mojave was shattered by a tremendous bellow, a roar that
+shook the very earth. It was the disintegrating blast, hurled out of
+the bottom in many fan-shaped rays. The coarse gray sand beneath the
+machine stirred and flew wildly; the sphere vibrated madly; and then
+the thunder lowered in tone to a mighty humming and the earth-borer
+began to drop. Slowly it fell, at first, then more rapidly. The shiny
+top came level with the ground: disappeared; and in a moment there was
+nothing left but a gaping hole where a short while before a round
+monster of metal had stood. The hole was hot and dark, and from it
+came a steadily diminishing thunder....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a long time no one in the earth-borer spoke--didn't even try
+to--for though the thunder of the disintegrators was muted, inside, to
+a steady drone, conversation was almost impossible. The three were
+crowded quite close in the spherical inner control compartment. Sue
+sat on a little collapsible stool by the bowed, but by no means
+subdued, figure of Professor David Guinness, while Quade sat on the
+wire guard of the gyroscope, which was in the exact center of the
+floor.
+
+The depth gauge showed two hundred feet. Already the three people were
+numb from the vibration; they hardly felt any sensation at all, save
+one of great weight pressing inwards. The compartment was fairly cool
+and the air good--kept so by the automatic air rectifiers and the
+insulation, which shut out the heat born of their passage.
+
+Quade had been carefully watching Guinness's manipulation of the
+controls, when he was struck by a thought. At once he stood up, and
+shouted in the elderly inventor's ear: "Try the rockets! I want to be
+sure this thing will go back up!"
+
+Without a word Guinness shoved back the lever controlling the
+disintegrators, at the same time whirling a small wheel full over. The
+thudding drone died away to a whisper, and was replaced by sharper
+thundering, as the stream of the propulsion rockets beneath the sphere
+was released. A delicate needle trembled on a gauge, danced at the
+figure two hundred, then crept back to one-ninety ... one-sixty ...
+one-forty.... Quade's eyes took in everything.
+
+"Excellent, Guinness!" he yelled. "Now--down once more!"
+
+The rockets were slowly cut; the borer jarred at the bottom of its
+hole; again the disintegrators droned out. The sphere dug rapidly into
+the warm ground, biting lower and lower. At ten miles an hour it
+blasted a path to depths hitherto unattainable to man, sweeping away
+rock and gravel and sand--everything that stood in its way. The depth
+gauge rose to two thousand, then steadily to three and four. So it
+went on for nearly half an hour.
+
+At the end of that time, at a depth of nearly four miles, Quade got
+stiffly to his feet and once more shouted into the professor's ear.
+
+"We ought to be close to that radium, now," he said. "I think--"
+
+But his words stopped short. The floor of the sphere suddenly fell
+away from their feet, and they felt themselves tumbled into a wild
+plunge. The drone of the disintegrators, hitherto muffled by the earth
+they bit into, rose to a hollow scream. Before the professor quite
+knew what was happening, there was a stunning crash, a shriek of
+tortured metal--and the earth-borer rocked and lay still....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The whole world seemed to be filled with thunder when David Guinness
+came back to consciousness. He opened his eyes and stared up into a
+darkness to which it took him some time to accustom himself. When he
+did, he made out hazily that he was lying on the floor of a vast dark
+cavern. He could dimly see its jagged roof, perhaps fifty feet above.
+There was the strong smell of damp earth in his nostrils; his head was
+splitting from the steady drone in his ear-drums. Suddenly he
+remembered what had happened. He groaned slightly and tried to sit up.
+
+But he could not. His arms and legs were tied. Someone had removed him
+from the earth-borer and bound him on the floor of the cavern they had
+plunged into.
+
+David Guinness strained at the rope. It was futile, but in doing so he
+twisted his head around and saw another form, similarly tied, lying
+close to him. He gave a little cry of relief. It was Sue. And she was
+conscious, her eyes on his face.
+
+She spoke to him, but he could not understand her for the drone in his
+ears, and when he spoke to her it was the same. But the professor did
+not just then continue his effort to converse with her. His attention
+was drawn to the borer, now dimly illuminated by its portable light,
+which had been secured to the door. It was right side up, and appeared
+to be undamaged. The broad ray of the searchlight fell far away on one
+of the cavern's rough walls. He could just make out James Quade
+standing there, his back towards them.
+
+He was hacking at the wall with a pick. Presently he dropped the tool
+and wrenched at the rock with bare hands. A large chunk came loose. He
+hugged it to him and turned and strode back towards the two on the
+floor, and as he drew near they could plainly see a gleam of triumph
+in his eyes.
+
+"You know what this is?" he shouted. Guinness could only faintly hear
+him. "Wealth! Millions! Of course we always knew the radium was here,
+but this is the proof. And now we've a way of getting it out--thanks
+to your borer! All the credit is yours, Professor Guinness! You shall
+have the credit, and I'll have the money."
+
+Guinness tugged furiously at his bonds again. "You--you--" he gasped.
+"How dare you tie us this way! Release us at once! What do you mean by
+it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Quade smiled unpleasantly. "You're very stupid, Guinness. Haven't you
+guessed by now what I'm going to do?" He paused, as if waiting for an
+answer, and the smile on his face gave way to a look of savage menace.
+For the first time his bitter feelings came to the surface.
+
+"Have you forgotten how close I came to going to jail over those
+charges of yours a year ago?" he said. "Have you forgotten the
+disgrace to me that followed?--the stigma that forced me to disappear
+for months? You fool, do you think I've forgotten?--or that I'd let
+you--"
+
+"Quade," interrupted the older man, "you know very well you were
+guilty. I caught you red-handed. You didn't fool anyone--except the
+jury that let you go. So save your breath, and, if you've the sense
+you were born with, release my daughter and me. Why, you're crazy!" he
+cried with mounting anger. "You can't get away with this! I'll have
+you in jail within forty-eight hours, once I get back to the surface!"
+
+With an effort Quade controlled his feelings and assumed his oily,
+sarcastic manner. "That's just it," he said: "'once you get back!' How
+stupid you are! You don't seem to realize that you're not going back
+to the surface. You and your daughter."
+
+Sue gasped, and her father's eyes went wide. There was a tense
+silence.
+
+"You wouldn't dare!" the inventor cried finally. "You wouldn't dare!"
+
+"It's rather large, this cavern," Quade went on. "You'll have plenty
+of room. Perhaps I'll untie you before I go back up, so--"
+
+"You can't get away with it!" shouted the old man, tremendously
+excited. "Why, you can't, possibly! Philip Holmes'll track you
+down--he'll tell the police--he'll rescue us! And then--"
+
+Quade smiled suavely. "Oh, no, he won't. Perhaps you remember the shot
+that sounded from the water-hole? Well, when I and my assistant, Juan,
+heard Holmes say he was going for water, I told Juan to follow him to
+the water-hole and bind him, to keep him from interfering till I got
+back up. But Mr. Holmes is evidently of an impulsive disposition, and
+must have caused trouble. Juan, too, is impulsive; he is a Mexican.
+And he had a gun. I'm afraid he was forced to use it.... I am quite
+sure Philip Holmes will not, as you say, track me down."
+
+David Guinness looked at his daughter's white face and horror-filled
+eyes and suddenly crumpled. Humbly, passionately, he begged Quade to
+take her back up. "Why, she's never done anything to you, Quade!" he
+pleaded. "You can't take her life like that! Please! Leave me, if you
+must, but not her! You can't--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But suddenly the old man noticed that Quade was not listening. His
+head was tilted to one side as if he was straining to hear something
+else. Guinness was held silent for a moment by the puzzled look on the
+other's face and the strange way he was acting.
+
+"Do you hear it?" Quade asked at last; and without waiting for an
+answer, he knelt down and put his ear to the ground. When he rose his
+face was savage, and he cursed under his breath.
+
+"Why, it's a humming!" muttered Professor Guinness. "And it's getting
+louder!"
+
+"It sounds like another borer!" ventured Sue.
+
+The humming grew in volume. Then, from the ceiling, a rock dropped.
+They were looking at the cavern roof and saw it start, but they did
+not hear it strike, for the ever-growing humming echoed loudly through
+the cavern. They saw another rock fall; and another.
+
+"For God's sake, what is it?" cried Guinness.
+
+Quade looked at him and slowly drew out his automatic.
+
+"Another earth-borer, I think," he answered. "And I rather expect it
+contains your young friend Mr. Holmes. Yes--coming to rescue you."
+
+For a moment Guinness and his daughter were too astounded to do
+anything but gape. She finally exclaimed:
+
+"But--but then Phil's alive?"
+
+James Quade smiled. "Probably--for the moment. But don't let your
+hopes rise too high. The borer he's in isn't strong enough to survive
+a fifty-foot plunge." He was shouting now, so loud was the thunder
+from above. "And," he added, "I'm afraid he's not strong enough to
+survive it, either!"
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_The Man-Hunt_
+
+When Phil Holmes started off to the water-hole, his head was full of
+the earth-borer and the imminent descent. Now that the long-awaited
+time had come, he was at fever-pitch to be off, and it did not take
+him long to cover the mile of sandy waste. His thoughts were far
+inside the earth as he dipped the jug into the clear cool water and
+sloshed it full.
+
+So the rope that snaked softly through the air and dropped in a loop
+over his shoulders came as a stark surprise. Before he knew what was
+happening it had slithered down over his arms and drawn taut just
+above the elbows, and he was yanked powerfully backwards and almost
+fell.
+
+But he managed to keep his feet as he staggered backward, and turning
+his head he saw the small dark figure of his aggressor some fifteen
+feet away, keeping tight the slack.
+
+Phil's surprise turned to sudden fury and he completely lost his head.
+What he did was rash; mad; and yet, as it turned out, it was the only
+thing that could have saved him. Instinctively, without hesitating
+one second, and absolutely ignoring an excited command to stand still,
+he squirmed face-on to his aggressor, lowered his head and charged.
+
+The distance was short. Halfway across it, a gun barked, and he heard
+the bullet crack into the water jug, which he was still holding in
+front of himself. And even before the splintered fragments reached the
+ground he had crashed into the firer.
+
+He hit him with all the force of a tackling lineman, and they both
+went down. The man grunted as the wind was jarred out of him, but he
+wriggled like an eel and managed to worm aside and bring up his gun.
+
+Then there was a desperate flurry of bodies in the coarse sand. Holmes
+dived frantically for the gun hand and caught it; but, handicapped as
+he was by the rope, he could not hold it. Slowly its muzzle bent
+upward to firing position.
+
+Desperately, he wrenched the arm upwards, in the direction it had been
+straining to go, and the sudden unexpected jerk doubled the man's arm
+and brought the weapon across his chest. For a moment there was a test
+of strength as Phil lay chest to chest over his opponent, the gun
+blocked between. Then the other grunted; squirmed violently--and there
+was a muffled explosion.
+
+A cry of pain cut the midnight air, and with insane strength Holmes'
+ambusher fought free from his grip, staggered to his feet and went
+reeling away. Phil tore loose from the rope and bounded after him,
+never feeling, at the moment, his powder-burned chest.
+
+And then he halted in his tracks.
+
+A great roar came thundering over the desert!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At once he knew that it came from the earth-borer's disintegrators.
+The sphere had started down without him.
+
+He stood stock still, petrified with surprise, facing the sound, while
+his attacker melted farther and farther into the night. And then,
+suddenly, Phil Holmes was sprinting desperately back towards the
+Guinness camp.
+
+He ran until he was exhausted; walked for a little while his legs
+gathered more strength, and his laboring lungs more air; and then ran
+again. As the minutes passed, the thunder lessened rapidly into a
+muffled drone; and by the time Phil had panted up to the brink of the
+hole that gaped where but a little time before the sphere was
+standing, it had become but a distant purr. He leaned far over and
+peered into the hot blackness below, but could see nothing.
+
+Phil knelt there silently for some minutes, shocked by his strange
+attack, bewildered by the unexpected descent of the borer. For a time
+his mind would not work; he had no idea what to do. But gradually his
+thoughts came to order and made certain things clear.
+
+He had been deliberately ambushed. Only by luck had he escaped, he
+told himself. If it hadn't been for the water jug, he'd now be out of
+the picture. And on the heels of the ambush had came the surprising
+descent of the earth-borer. The two incidents coincided too well: the
+same mind had planned them. And two, men, at least, were in on the
+plot.... It suddenly became very clear to him that the answer to the
+puzzle lay with the man who had ambushed him. He would have to get
+that man. Track him down.
+
+Phil acted with decision. He got to his feet and strode rapidly to the
+deserted Guinness shack, horribly quiet and lonely now in the bright
+moonlight. In a minute he emerged with a flashlight at his belt and a
+rifle across his arm.
+
+Once again he went over to the new black hole in the desert and looked
+down. From far below still came the purr, now fainter than ever. His
+friend, the girl he loved, were down there, he reflected bitterly, and
+he was helpless to reach them. Well, there was one thing he could
+do--go man-hunting. Turning, he started off at a long lope for the
+water-hole.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ten minutes later he was there, and off to the side he found the marks
+of their scuffle--and small black blotches that could be nothing but
+blood. The other was wounded: could probably not get far. But he might
+still have his gun, so Phil kept his rifle handy, and tempered his
+impatience with caution as he set out on the trail of the widely
+spaced footprints.
+
+They led off towards the nearby hills, and in the bright moonlight
+Phil did not use his flashlight at all, except to investigate other
+round black blotches that made a line parallel to the prints. As he
+went on he found his quarry's steps coming more closely together:
+becoming erratic. Soon they showed as painful drags in the sand, a
+laborious hauling of one foot after the other.... Phil put away his
+light and advanced very cautiously.
+
+He wondered, as he went, who in the devil was behind it all. The
+radium-finding project had been kept strictly secret. Not another soul
+was supposed to know of the earth-borer and its daring mission into
+the heart of the earth. Yet, obviously, someone had found out, and
+whoever it was had laid at least part of his scheme cunningly. An old
+man and a girl cannot offer much resistance: he, Phil, would have been
+well taken care of had it not been for the water jug. So far, there
+were at least two in the plot: the man who had ambushed him and the
+unknown who had evidently kidnapped both Professor and Sue Guinness.
+But there might be still more.
+
+There might be friends, nearby, of the man he was tracking. The fellow
+might have reached them, and warned them that the scheme hadn't gone
+through, that Phil was loose. They could very easily conceal
+themselves alongside their partner's tracks and train their rifles on
+the tracker....
+
+The trail was leading up into one of the cañons in the cluster of
+hills to the west. For some distance he followed it up through a slash
+of black below the steep moonlit heights of the hills to each
+side--and then, suddenly, he vaguely made out the forms of two huts
+just ahead.
+
+Immediately he stooped low, and went skirting widely off up one side.
+He proceeded slowly, with great caution, his rifle at the ready. At
+any moment, he knew, the hush might be split by the cracks of
+waylaying guns. Warily he advanced along the narrow cañon wall above
+the huts. No lights were lit, and the place seemed unoccupied. He was
+debating what to do next when his attention was attracted to a large
+dark object lying in the cañon trail some twenty yards from the
+nearest hut. Straining his eyes in the inadequate moonlight, he saw
+that it was the outstretched figure of a man. His quarry--his
+ambusher!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Phil dropped flat, fearful of being seen. Keeping as best he could in
+the shadows, fearing every moment to hear the sharp bark of a gun, he
+crawled forward. It took him a long time to approach the sprawled
+figure, but he wasn't taking chances. When within twenty feet, he rose
+suddenly and darted forward to the man's side.
+
+His rapid glance showed him that the fellow was completely out: and
+another quick look around failed to show that anyone else was
+watching, so he returned to his examination of the man. It was the
+ambusher, all right: a Mexican. He was still breathing, though his
+face was drawn and white from the loss of blood from a wound under the
+blood-soaked clothing near his upper right arm. A hasty search showed
+that he no longer had his gun, so Phil, satisfied that he was
+powerless for some time to come, cautiously wormed his way towards the
+two shacks.
+
+There was something sinister in the strange silence that hung over
+them. One was of queer construction--a windowless, square, high box
+of galvanized iron. The other was obviously a dwelling place.
+Carefully Phil sneaked up to the latter. Then, rifle ready, he pushed
+its door open and sent a beam of light stabbing through the darkness
+of the interior.
+
+There was no one there. Only two bunks, a table, chair, a pail of
+water and some cooking utensils met his view. He crept out toward the
+other building.
+
+Come close, Phil found that a dun-colored canvas had been thrown over
+the top of it, making an adequate camouflage in daytime. The place was
+about twenty feet high. He prowled around the metal walls and
+discovered a rickety door. Again, gun ready, he flung it open. The
+beam from his flash speared a path through the blackness--and he
+gasped at sight of what stood revealed.
+
+There, inside, was a long, bullet-like tube of metal, the pointed end
+upper-most, and the bottom, which was flat, toward the ground. It was
+held in a wooden cradle, and was slanted at the floor. In the bottom
+were holes of two shapes--rocket tubes and disintegrating projectors.
+It was another earth-borer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Phil stood frozen with surprise before this totally unlooked-for
+machine. He could easily have been overcome, had the owner been in the
+building, for he had forgotten everything but what his eyes were
+staring at. He started slowly around the borer, found a long narrow
+door slightly ajar, and stepped inside.
+
+This borer, like Guinness's, had a double shell, and much the same
+instruments, though the whole job was simpler and cruder. A small
+instrument board contained inclination, temperature, depth and
+air-purity indicators, and narrow tubes led to the air rectifiers. But
+what kept Holmes' attention were the wires running from the magneto to
+the mixing chambers of the disintegrating tubes.
+
+"The fools!" he exclaimed, "--they didn't know how to wire the thing!
+Or else," he added after a moment, "didn't get around to doing it." He
+noticed that the projectile's interior contained no gyroscope: though,
+he thought, none would be needed, for the machine, being long and
+narrow, could not change keel while in the ground. Here he was
+reminded of something. Stepping outside, he estimated the angle the
+borer made with the dirt floor. Twenty degrees. "And pointed
+southwest!" he exclaimed aloud. "This borer would come close to
+meeting the professor's, four miles under our camp!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At once he knew what he would do. First he went back to the other
+shack and got the pail of water he had noticed, and took this out
+where the Mexican lay outstretched. He bathed the man's face and the
+still slightly bleeding bullet wound in his shoulder.
+
+Presently the wounded man came to. His eyes opened, and he stared up
+into a steel mask of a face, in which two level black eyes bored into
+his. He remembered that face--remembered it all too well. He trembled,
+cowered away.
+
+"No!" he gasped, as if he had seen a ghost. "No--no!"
+
+"Yes, I'm the man," Holmes told him firmly, menacingly. "The same one
+you tried to ambush." He paused a moment, then said: "Do you want to
+live?"
+
+It was a simple question, frightening in its simplicity.
+
+"Because if you don't answer my questions, I'm going to let you lie
+here," Phil went on coldly. "And that would probably mean your death.
+If you do answer, I'll fix you up so you can have a chance."
+
+The Mexican nodded eagerly. "I talk," he said.
+
+"Good," said Phil. "Then tell me who built that machine?"
+
+"Señor Quade. Señor James Quade."
+
+"Quade!" Phil had heard the name before. "Of course!" he said.
+"Guinness's old partner!"
+
+"I not know," the Mexican answered. "He hire me with much money. He
+buy thees machine inside, and we put him together. But he could no
+make him work--it take too long. We watch, hear old man go down
+to-night, and--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The greaser stopped. "And so he sent you to get me, while he kidnapped
+the old man and his daughter and forced them under the ground in their
+own borer," Holmes supplied, and the other nodded.
+
+"But I only mean to tie you!" he blurted, gesturing weakly. "I no mean
+shoot! No, no--"
+
+"All right--forget it," Phil interrupted. "And now tell me what Quade
+expects to do down there."
+
+"I not know, Señor," came the hesitant reply, "but...."
+
+"But what?" the young man jerked.
+
+Reluctantly the wounded Mexican continued. "Señor Quade--he--I think
+he don' like thees old man. I think he leave heem an' the girl down
+below. Then he come up an' say they keeled going down."
+
+Phil nodded grimly. "I see," he said, voicing his thoughts. "Then he
+would say that he and Professor Guinness are still partners--and the
+radium ore will belong to him. Very nice. Very nice...."
+
+He snapped back to action, and without another word hoisted the
+Mexican onto his back and carried him into the shack. There he
+cleansed the wound, rigged up a tight bandage for it, and tied the man
+to one of the cots. He tied him in such a fashion that he could reach
+some food and water he put by the cot.
+
+"You leave me like thees?" the Mexican asked.
+
+"Yes," Phil said, and started for the door.
+
+"But what you going to do?"
+
+Phil smiled grimly as he flung an answer back over his shoulder.
+
+"Me?--I'm going to fix the wiring on those disintegrators in your
+friend Quade's borer. Then I'm starting down after him." He stopped
+and turned before he closed the door. "And if I don't get back--well,
+it's just too bad for you!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so, a little later, once more the hushed desert night was cleft by
+a furious bellow of sound. It came, this time, from a narrow cañon.
+The steep sides threw the roar back and back again, and the echoes
+swelled to an earth-shaking blast of sound. The oblong hut from which
+it came rocked and almost fell; then, as the noise began to lessen,
+teetered on its foundations and half-slipped into the ragged hole that
+had been bored inside.
+
+The descent was a nightmare that Holmes would never forget. Quade's
+machine was much cruder and less efficient than the sphere David
+Guinness had designed. Its protecting insulation proved quite
+inadequate, and the heat rapidly grew terrific as the borer dug down.
+Phil became faint, stifled, and his body oozed streams of sweat. And
+the descent was also bumpy and uneven; often he was forced to leave
+the controls and work on the mechanism of the disintegrators when they
+faltered and threatened to stop. But in spite of everything the needle
+on the depth gauge gradually swung over to three thousand, and four,
+and five....
+
+After the first mile Holmes improvised a way to change the air more
+rapidly, and it grew a little cooler. He watched the story the depth
+gauge told with narrowed eyes, and, as it reached three miles,
+inspected his rifle. At three and a half miles he stopped the borer,
+thinking to try to hear the noise made by the other, but so paralyzed
+were his ear-drums from the terrific thunder beneath, it seemed hardly
+any quieter when it ceased.
+
+His plans were vague; they would have to be made according to the
+conditions he found. There was a coil of rope in the tube-like
+interior of the borer, and he hoped to find a cavern or cleft in the
+earth for lateral exploring. He would stop at a depth of four
+miles--where he should be very near the path of the professor's
+sphere.
+
+But Phil never saw the needle on the gauge rise to four miles. At
+three and three quarters came sudden catastrophe.
+
+He knew only that there was an awful moment of utter helplessness,
+when the borer swooped wildly downwards, and the floor was snatched
+sickeningly from under him. He was thrown violently against the
+instrument panel; then up toward the pointed top; and at the same
+instant came a rending crash that drove his senses from him....
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+"_You Haven't the Guts_"
+
+"Just as I thought," said James Quade in the silence that fell when
+the last echoes had died away, and the splinters of steel and rock had
+settled. "You see, Professor, this earth-borer belongs to me. Yes, I
+built one too. But I couldn't, unfortunately, get it working
+properly--that is, in time to get down here first. After all, I'm not
+a scientist, and remembered little enough of your borer's plans....
+It's probably young Holmes who's dropped in on us. Shall we see?"
+
+David Guinness and his daughter were speechless with dread. Quade had
+trained the searchlight on the borer, and by turning their heads they
+could see it plainly. It was all too clear that the machine was a
+total wreck. It had pitched over onto one side, its shell cracked and
+mangled irreparably. Grotesque pieces of crumpled metal lay all around
+it. Its slanting course had tumbled it within fifteen yards of the
+sphere.
+
+In silence the old man and the girl watched Quade walk deliberately
+over to it, his automatic steady in his right hand. He wrenched at the
+long, narrow door, but it was so badly bent that for a while he could
+not get it open. At last it swung out, however, and Quade peered
+inside.
+
+After a moment he reached in and drew out a rifle. He took it over to
+a nearby rock, smashed the gun's breech, then flung it, useless,
+aside. Returning to the borer, he again peered in.
+
+Sue was about to scream from the torturous suspense when he at last
+straightened up and looked around at the white-faced girl and her
+father.
+
+"Mr. Holmes is tougher than I'd thought possible," he said, with a
+thin smile; "he's still alive." And, as Sue gasped with relief, he
+added: "Would you like to see him?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He dragged the young man's unconscious body roughly out on the floor.
+There were several bad bruises on his face and head, but otherwise he
+was apparently uninjured. As Quade stood over him, playing idly with
+the automatic, he stirred, and blinked, and at last, with an effort,
+got up on one elbow and looked straight at the thin lips and narrowed
+eyes of the man standing above. He shook his head, trying to
+comprehend, then muttered hazily:
+
+"You--you're--Quade?"
+
+Quade did not have time to answer, for Sue Guinness cried out:
+
+"Phil! Are you all right?"
+
+Phil stared stupidly around, caught sight of the two who lay bound on
+the floor, and staggered to his feet. "Sue!" he cried, relief and
+understanding flooding his voice. He started towards her.
+
+"Stand where you are!" Quade snapped harshly, and the automatic in his
+hand came up. Holmes peered at it and stopped, but his blood-streaked
+face settled into tight lines, and his body tensed.
+
+"You'd better," continued Quade. "Now tell me what happened to Juan."
+
+Phil forced himself to be calm. "Your pal, the greaser?" he said
+cuttingly. "He's lying on a bunk in your shack. He shot himself,
+playing with a gun."
+
+Quade chose not to notice the way Phil said this, but a little of the
+suave self-confidence was gone from his face as he said: "Well, in
+that case I'll have to hurry back to the surface to attend to him. But
+don't be alarmed," he added, more brightly. "I'll be back for you all
+in an hour or so."
+
+At this, David Guinness struggled frantically with his bonds and
+yelled:
+
+"Don't believe him, Phil! He's going to leave us here, to starve and
+die! He told us so just before you came down!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Quade's face twitched perceptibly. His eyes were nervous.
+
+"Is that true, Quade?" Holmes asked. There was a steely note in his
+voice.
+
+"Why--no, of course not," the other said hastily, uncertain whether to
+lie or not. "Of course I didn't!"
+
+Phil Holmes looked square into his eyes. He bluffed.
+
+"You couldn't desert us, Quade. You haven't the guts. You haven't the
+guts."
+
+His face and eyes burned with the contempt that was in his words. It
+cut Quade to the raw. But he could not avoid Phil's eyes. He stared at
+them for a full moment, trembling slightly. Slowly, by inches, he
+started to back toward the sphere; then suddenly he ran for it with
+all his might, Holmes after him. Quade got to it first, and inside, as
+he yanked in the searchlight and slammed and locked the door, he
+yelled:
+
+"You'll see, you damned pup! You'll see!" And there was the smothered
+sound of half-maniacal laughter....
+
+Phil threw all his weight against the metal door, but it was hopeless
+and he knew it. He had gathered himself for another rush when he heard
+Guinness yell:
+
+"Back, Phil--back! He'll turn on the side disintegrators!"
+
+Mad with rage as the young man was, he at once saw the danger and
+leaped away--only to almost fall over the professor's prone body. With
+hurrying, trembling fingers he untied the pair's bonds, and they
+struggled to their feet, cramped and stiff. Then it was Phil who
+warned them.
+
+"Back as far as you can! Hurry!" He grabbed Sue's hand and plunged
+toward the uncertain protection of a huge rock far in the rear. At
+once he made them lie flat on the ground.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As yet the sphere had not stirred nor emitted a whisper of sound,
+though they knew the man inside was conning the controls in a fever of
+haste to leave the cavern. But they hadn't long to wait. There came a
+sputter, a starting cough from the rocket tubes beneath the sphere.
+Quickly they warmed into life, and the dully glimmering ball rocked in
+the hole it lay in. Then a cataract of noise unleashed itself; a
+devastating thunder roared through the echoing cavern as the rockets
+burst into full force. A wave of brilliant orange-red splashed out
+from under the sphere, licked back up its sides, and seemed literally
+to shove the great ball up towards the hole in the ceiling.
+
+Its ascent was very slow. As it gained height it looked--save for its
+speed--like a fantastic meteor flaming through the night, for the
+orange plumage that streamed from beneath lit the ball with dazzling
+color. A glowing sphere, it staggered midway between floor and
+ceiling, creeping jerkily upwards.
+
+"He's not going to hit the hole!" shouted Guinness.
+
+The borer had not risen in a perfectly straight line; it jarred
+against the rim of the hole, and wavered uncertainly. Every second the
+roar of its rockets, swollen by echoes, rose in a savage crescendo;
+the faces of the three who watched were painted orange in the glow.
+
+The sphere was blind. The man inside could judge his course only by
+the feel. As the three who were deserted watched, hoping ardently that
+Quade would not be able to find the opening, the left side-rockets
+spouted lances of fire, and they knew he had discovered the way to
+maneuver the borer laterally. The new flames welded with the exhaust
+of the main tubes into a great fan-shaped tail, so brilliant and shot
+through with other colors that their eyes could not stand the sight,
+except in winks. The borer jerked to the right, but still it could not
+find the hole. Then the flames lessened for a moment, and the borer
+sank down, to rise again a moment later. Its ascent was so labored
+that Phil shouted to Professor Guinness:
+
+"Why so slow?"
+
+And the inventor told him that which he had not seen for the
+intolerable light.
+
+"Only half his rockets are on!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This time the sphere was correctly aimed, however, and it roared
+straight into the hole. Immediately the fierce sound of the exhaust
+was muffled, and in a few seconds only the fiery plumage, shooting
+down from the ceiling, showed where the machine was. Then this
+disappeared, and the noise alone was left.
+
+Phil leaped forward, intending to stare up, but Guinness's yell halted
+him.
+
+"Not yet! He might still use the disintegrators!"
+
+For many minutes they waited, till the muffled exhaust had died to a
+drone. There was a puzzled expression on the professor's face as the
+three at last walked over and dared peer up into the hole. Far above,
+the splash of orange lit the walls of the tunnel.
+
+"That's funny!" the old man muttered. "He's only using half the
+rockets--about ten. I thought he'd turn them all on when he got into
+the hole, but he didn't. Either they were damaged in the fall, or
+Quade doesn't see fit to use them."
+
+"Half of them are enough," said Phil bitterly, and put his arm around
+the quiet girl standing next to him. Together, a silent little group,
+they watched the spot of orange die to a pin-point; watched it waver,
+twinkle, ever growing smaller.... And then it was gone.
+
+Gone! Back to the surface of the earth, to the normal world of
+reality. Only four miles above them--a small enough distance on the
+surface itself--and yet it might have been a million miles, so utterly
+were they barred from it....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The same thought was in their minds, though none of them dared express
+it. They were thinking of the serene desert, and the cool wind, and
+the buttes and the high hills, placid in the moonlight. Of the hushed
+rise of the dawn, the first flush of the sun that was so achingly
+lovely on the desert. The sun they would never see again, buried in a
+lifeless world of gloom four miles within.... And buried alive--and
+not alive for long....
+
+But that way lay madness. Phil Holmes drove the horrible thoughts from
+his brain and forced a smile to his face.
+
+"Well, that's that!" he said in a voice meant to be cheerful.
+
+The dim cavern echoed his words mockingly. With the earth-borer
+gone--the man-made machine that had dared break a solitude undisturbed
+since the earth first cooled--the great cavern seemed to return to its
+awful original mood. The three dwarfed humans became wholly conscious
+of it. They felt it almost a living thing, stretching vastly around
+them, tightening its unheard spell on them. Its smell, of mouldy earth
+and rocks down which water slowly dripped, filled their nostrils and
+somehow added to their fear.
+
+As they looked about, their eyes became accustomed to the dim, eery,
+phosphorescent illumination. They saw little worm-like creatures now
+and again appear from tiny holes between stalagmites in the jagged
+floor; and, as Phil wondered in his mind how long it would be before
+they would be reduced to using them for food, a strange mole-sized
+animal scraped from the darkness and pecked at one of them. As it
+slithered away, a writhing shape in its mouth, Holmes muttered
+bitterly: "A competitor!" Vague, flitting forms haunted the gloom
+among the stalactites of the distorted ceiling--hints of the things
+that lived in the terrible silence of this nether world. Here Time had
+paused, and life had halted in primate form.
+
+A little moan came from Sue Guinness's pale lips. She plucked at her
+arm; a sickly white worm, only an inch long, had fallen on it from the
+ceiling. "Oh!" she gasped. "Oh!"
+
+Phil drew her closer to him, and walked with her over to Quade's
+wrecked borer. "Let's see what we've got here," he suggested
+cheerfully.
+
+The machine was over on its side, the metal mangled and crushed beyond
+repair. Nevertheless, he squeezed into it. "Stand back!" he warned.
+"I'm going to try its rockets!" There was a click of broken machinery,
+and that was all. "Rockets gone," Phil muttered.
+
+He pulled another lever over. There was a sputter from within the
+borer, then a furious roar that sent great echoes beating through the
+cavern. A cloud of dust reared up before the bottom of the machine,
+whipped madly for a moment, and sank as the bellow of sound died down.
+Sue saw that a rocky rise in the floor directly in front of the
+disintegrators had been planed off levelly.
+
+Phil scrambled out. "The disintegrators work," he said, "but a lot of
+good they do us. The borer's hopelessly cracked." He shrugged his
+shoulders, and with a discouraged gesture cast to the ground a coil of
+rope he had found inside.
+
+Then suddenly he swung around. "Professor!" he called to the old
+figure standing bowed beneath the hole in the ceiling. "There's a
+draft blowing from somewhere! Do you feel it?"
+
+Guinness felt with his hands a moment and nodded slowly. "Yes," he
+said.
+
+"It's coming from this way!" Sue said excitedly, pointing into the
+darkness on one side of the cavern. "And it goes up the hole we made
+in the ceiling!"
+
+Phil turned eagerly to the old inventor. "It must come from
+somewhere," he said, "and that somewhere may take us toward the
+surface. Let's follow it!"
+
+"We might as well," the other agreed wearily. His was the tone of a
+man who has only a certain time to live.
+
+But Phil was more eager. "While there's life, there's hope," he said
+cheerfully. "Come on, Sue, Professor!" And he led the way forward
+toward the dim, distorted rock shapes in the distance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The roof and sides of the cavern angled down into a rough, tunnel-like
+opening, from which the draft swept. It was a heavy air, weighted with
+the smell of moist earth and lifeless water and a nameless, flat,
+stale gas. They slowly made their way through the impeding
+stalagmites, surrounded by a dark blur of shadows, the ghostly
+phosphorescent light illuminating well only the few rods around them.
+Utter silence brooded over the tunnel.
+
+Phil paused when they had gone about seventy-five feet. "I left that
+rope behind," he said, "and we may need it. I'll return and get it,
+and you both wait right here." With the words he turned and went back
+into the shadows.
+
+He went as fast as he could, not liking to leave the other two alone.
+But when he had retrieved the rope and tied it to his waist, he
+permitted himself a last look up as he passed under the hole in the
+ceiling--and what he saw there tensed every muscle in his body, and
+made his heart beat like mad. Again there was a tiny spot of orange in
+the blackness above!
+
+"Professor!" he yelled excitedly. "Sue! Come here! The sphere's
+coming back!"
+
+There was no doubt about it. The pin-point of light was growing each
+second, with the flame of the descending exhausts. Guinness and his
+daughter ran from the tunnel, and, guided by Phil's excited
+ejaculations, hurried to his side. Their eyes confirmed what his had
+seen. The earth-borer was coming down!
+
+"But," Guinness said bewilderedly, "those rockets were enough to lift
+him!"
+
+This was a mystery. Even though ten rockets were on--ten tiny spots of
+orange flame--the sphere came down swiftly. The same force which some
+time before had lifted it slowly up was now insufficient. The roar of
+the tubes rose rapidly. "Get back!" Phil ordered, remembering the
+danger, and they all retreated to the mouth of the tunnel, ready to
+peep cautiously around the edge. Holmes' jaws were locked tight with
+grim resolution. Quade was coming back! he told himself exultantly.
+This time he must not go up alone! This time--!
+
+But his half-formed resolutions were idle. He could not know what
+frightful thing was bringing Quade down--what frightful experience was
+in store for them all....
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_Spawn of the Cavern_
+
+In a crescendo of noise that stunned their ears, the earth-borer came
+down. Tongues of fire flared from the hole, speared to the ground and
+were deflected upward, cradling the metal ball in a wave of flame.
+Through this fiery curtain the machine slowly lowered to the floor,
+where a shower of sparks spattered out, blinding the eyes of the
+watchers with their brilliance. For a full minute the orange-glowing
+sphere lay there, quivering from the vibration; then the exhausts died
+and the wave of flame wavered and sank into nothingness. While their
+ear-drums continued the thunder, the three stared at the borer, not
+daring to approach, yet striving to solve the mystery of why it had
+sunk despite the up-thrust of ten rocket tubes.
+
+As their eyes again became accustomed to the familiar phosphorescent
+illumination, pallid and cold after the fierce orange flame, they saw
+why--and their eyes went wide with surprise and horror.
+
+A strange mass was covering the top of the earth-borer--something that
+looked like a heap of viscid, whitish jelly. It was sprawled
+shapelessly over the round upper part of the metal sphere, a
+half-transparent, loathsome stuff, several feet thick in places.
+
+And Phil Holmes, striving to understand what it could be, saw an awful
+thing. "It's moving!" he whispered, unconsciously drawing Sue closer.
+"There's--there's life in it!"
+
+Lazy quiverings were running through the mound of jelly, pulsings that
+gave evidence of its low organism. They saw little ripples of even
+beat run over it, and under them steady, sluggish convulsions that
+told of life; that showed, perhaps, that the thing was hungry and
+preparing to move its body in quest of food.
+
+It was alive, unquestionably. The borer lay still, but this thing
+moved internally, of itself. It was life in its lowest, most primate
+form. The mass was mind, stomach, muscle and body all in one, stark
+and raw before their startled eyes.
+
+"Oh, God!" Phil whispered through the long pause. "It can't be
+real!..."
+
+"Protoplasm--a monster amoeba," David Guinness's curiously cracked
+voice said. "Just as it exists on the surface, only microscopically.
+Primate life...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lock of the earth-borer clicked. Phil gasped. "Quade is coming
+out!" he said. A little cry of horror came from Sue. And the metal
+door opened.
+
+James Quade stepped through, automatic in hand. He was fresh from the
+light inside, and he could not see well. He was quite unconscious of
+what was oozing down on him from above, of the flabby heap that was
+carefully stretching down for him. He peered into the gloom, looking
+for the three he had deserted, and all the time an arm from the mass
+above crept nearer. Sue Guinness's nerves suddenly gave, and she
+shrieked; but Quade's ears were deaf from the borer's thunder, and he
+did not hear her.
+
+It was when he lifted one foot back into the sphere--probably to get
+out the searchlight--that he felt the thing's presence. He looked
+up--and a strange sound came from him. For seconds he apparently could
+not move, stark fear rooting him to the ground, the gun limp in his
+hand.
+
+Then a surge ran through the mound of flesh, and the arm, a pseudopod,
+reached more rapidly for him.
+
+It stung Quade into action. He leaped back, brought up his automatic,
+and fired at the thing once; then three times more. He, and each one
+of the others, saw four bullets thud into the heap of pallid matter
+and heard them clang on the metal of the sphere beneath. They had gone
+right through its flesh--but they showed no slightest effect!
+
+Quade was evidently unwilling to leave the sphere. Jerking his arm up
+he brought his trigger finger back again. A burst of three more shots
+barked through the cavern, echoing and re-echoing. The man screamed an
+inarticulate oath as he saw how useless his bullets were, and hurled
+the empty gun at the monster--which was down on the floor now, and
+bunching its sluggish body together.
+
+The automatic went right into it. They could all see it there, in the
+middle of the amorphous body, while the creature stopped, as if
+determining whether or not it was food. Quade screwed his courage
+together in the pause, and tried to dodge past to the door of the
+sphere; but the monster was alert: another pseudopod sprang out from
+its shapeless flesh, sending him back on his heels.
+
+The feeler had all but touched Quade, and with the closeness of his
+escape, the remnants of his courage gave. He yelled, and turned and
+ran.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He ran straight for the three who watched from the tunnel mouth, and
+the mound of shapeless jelly came fast on his trail. It came in
+surging rolls, like thick fluid oozing forward; it would have been
+hard to measure its size, for each moment it changed. The only
+impression the four humans had was that of a wave of half-transparent
+matter that one instant was a sticky ball of viscid flesh and the next
+a rapidly advancing crescent whose horns reached far out on each flank
+to cut off retreat.
+
+By instinct Phil jerked Sue around and yelled at the professor to run,
+for the old man seemed to be frozen into an attitude of fearful
+interest. Bullets would not stop the thing--could anything? Holmes
+wondered. He could visualize all too easily the death they would meet
+if that shapeless, naked protoplasmic mass overtook and flowed over
+them....
+
+But he wasted no time with such thoughts. They ran, all three, into
+the dark tunnel.
+
+Quade caught up with them quickly. Personal enmity was suspended
+before this common peril. They could not run at full speed, for a
+multitude of obstacles hindered them. Tortuous ridges of rock lay
+directly across their path, formations that had been whipped in some
+mad, eon-old convulsion and then, through the ages, remained frozen
+into their present distortion; black pits gaped suddenly before them;
+half-seen stalagmites, whose crystalline edges were razor-sharp, tore
+through to their flesh. Haste was perilous where every moment they
+might stumble into an unseen cleft and go pitching into awful depths
+below. They were staking everything on the draft that blew steadily
+in their faces; Phil told himself desperately that it must lead to
+some opening--it must!
+
+But what if the opening were a vertical, impassable tunnel? He would
+not think of that....
+
+Old David Guinness tired fast, and was already lagging in the rear
+when Quade gasped hoarsely:
+
+"Hurry! It's close behind!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Surging rapidly at a constant distance behind them, it came on. It was
+as fast as they were, and evidently untiring. It was in its own
+element; obstacles meant nothing to it. It oozed over the jagged
+ridges that took the humans precious moments to scramble past, and the
+speed of its weird progress seemed to increase as theirs faltered. It
+was a heartless mass driven inexorably by primal instinct towards the
+food that lay ahead. The dim phosphorescent illumination tinged its
+flabby tissues a weird white.
+
+The passage they stumbled through narrowed. Long irregular spears of
+stalactites hung from the unseen ceiling; others, the drippings of
+ages, pronged up from the floor, shredding their clothes as they
+jarred into them. One moment they were clambering up-hill, slipping on
+the damp rock; the next they were sliding down into unprobed darkness,
+reckless of where they would land. They were aware only that the
+water-odorous draft was still in their faces, and the hungry mound of
+flesh behind....
+
+"I can't last much longer!" old Guinness's winded voice gasped. "Best
+leave me behind. I--I might delay it!"
+
+For answer, Phil went back, grabbed him by the arm and dragged his
+tired body forward. He was snatching a glance behind to see how close
+the monster was, when Sue's frightened voice reached him from ahead.
+
+"There's a wall here, Phil--and no way through!"
+
+And then Holmes came to it. It barred the passage, and was apparently
+unbroken. Yet the draft still came!
+
+"Search for where the draft enters!" he yelled. "You take that side!"
+And he started feeling over the clammy, uneven surface, searching
+frantically for a cleft. It seemed to be hopeless. Quade stood staring
+back into the gloom, his eyes looking for what he knew was surging
+towards them. His face had gone sickly white, he was trembling as if
+with fever, and he sucked in air with long, racking gasps.
+
+"Here! I have it!" cried the girl suddenly at her end of the wall. The
+other three ran over, and saw, just above her head, a narrow rift in
+the rock, barely wide enough to squirm through. "Into it!" Phil
+ordered tersely. He grasped her, raised her high, and she wormed
+through. Quade scrambled to get in next, but Holmes shoved him aside
+and boosted the old man through. Then he helped the other.
+
+A second after he had swung himself up, a wave of whitish matter
+rolled up below, hungry pseudopods reaching for the food it knew was
+near. It began to trickle up the wall....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The crack was narrow and jagged; utterly black. Phil could hear Quade
+frantically worming himself ahead, and he wondered achingly if it
+would lead anywhere. Then a faint, clear voice from ahead rang out:
+
+"It's opening up!"
+
+Sue's voice! Phil breathed more easily. The next moment Quade
+scrambled through; dim light came; and they were in another vast,
+ghostly-lit cavern.
+
+The crack came out on its floor-level; Guinness was resting near, and
+his daughter had her hands on a large boulder of rock. "Let's shove it
+against the hole!" she suggested to Phil. "It might stop it!"
+
+"Good, Sue, good!" he exclaimed, and at once all four of them strained
+at the chunk, putting forth every bit of strength they had. The
+boulder stirred, rolled over, and thudded neatly in front of the
+crack, almost completely sealing it. There was only a cleft of five
+inches on one side.
+
+But their expression of relief died in their throats. A tiny trickle
+of white appeared through the niche. The amorphous monster was
+compressing itself to a single stream, thin enough to squeeze through
+even that narrow space.
+
+They could not block it. They had nothing to attack it with. There was
+nothing to do but run.... And hope for a chance to double back....
+
+As nearly as they could make out, this second cavern was as large as
+the first. They could dimly see the fantastic shapes of hundreds of
+stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Clumps of stalagmites made the
+floor a maze which they threaded painfully. The strong steady draft
+guided them like a radio beacon, leading them to their only faint hope
+of escape and life. Guinness, very tired, staggered along
+mechanically, a heavy weight on Phil's supporting arm; James Quade ran
+here and there in frantic spurts of speed. Sue was silent, but the
+hopelessness in her eyes tortured Phil like a wound. His shirt had
+long since been ripped to shreds; his face, bruised in the first place
+by the borer he had crashed in, now was scratched and bloody from
+contact with rough stalagmites.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then, without warning, they suddenly found among the rough walls on
+the far side of the cavern, the birthplace of the draft. It lay at the
+edge of the floor--a dark hole, very wide. Black, sinister and clammy
+from the draft that poured from it, it pierced vertically down into
+the very bowels of the earth. It was impassable.
+
+James Quade crumpled at the brink; "It's the end!" he moaned. "We
+can't go farther! It's the end of the draft!"
+
+The hole blocked their forward path completely. They could not go
+ahead.... In seconds, it seemed, the slithering that told of the
+monster's approach sounded from behind. Sue's eyes were already fixed
+on the awful, surging mass when a voice off to one side yelled:
+
+"Here! Quick!"
+
+It was Phil Holmes. He had been scouting through the gloom, and had
+found something.
+
+The other three ran to him. "There's another draft going through
+here," he explained rapidly, pointing to an angled crevice in the
+rocky wall. "There's a good chance it goes to the cavern where the
+sphere and the hole to the surface are. Anyway, we've got to take it.
+I'd better go first, after this--and you, Quade, last. I trust you
+less than the monster behind."
+
+He turned and edged into the crack, and the others followed as he had
+ordered. Quickly the passageway broadened, and they found the going
+much easier than it had been before. For perhaps ten minutes they
+scrambled along, with the draft always on their backs and the blessed,
+though faint, fire of hope kindling again. In all that time they did
+not see their pursuer once, and the hope that they had lost it brought
+a measure of much needed optimism to drive their tired bodies onward.
+They found but few time-wasting obstacles. If only the tunnel would
+continue right into the original cavern! If only their path would stay
+clear and unhindered!
+
+But it did not. The sound of Phil's footsteps ahead stopped, and when
+Sue and her father came up they saw why.
+
+"A river!" Phil said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were standing on a narrow ledge that overhung an underground
+river. A fetid smell of age-old, lifeless water rose from it. Dimly,
+at least fifty feet across, they could see the other side, shrouded in
+vague shadows. The inky stream beneath did not seem to move at all,
+but remained smooth and hard and thick-looking.
+
+They could not go around it. The ledge was only a few feet wide, and
+blocked at each side.
+
+"Got to cross!" Phil said tersely.
+
+Quade, sickly-faced, stared down. "There--there might be other things
+in that water!" he gasped. "Monsters!"
+
+"Sure," agreed Phil contemptuously. "You'd better stay here." He
+turned to the others. "I'll see how deep it is," he said, and without
+the faintest hesitation dove flatly in.
+
+Oily ripples washed back, and they saw his head poke through,
+sputtering. "Not deep," he said. "Chest-high. Come on."
+
+He reached for Sue, helped her down, and did the same for her father.
+Holding each by the hand, Sue's head barely above the water, he
+started across. They had not gone more than twenty feet when they
+heard Quade, left on the bank, give a hoarse yell of fear and dive
+into the water. Their dread pursuer had caught up with them.
+
+And it followed--on the water! Phil had hoped it would not be able to
+cross, but once more the thing's astounding adaptability dashed his
+hopes. Without hesitation, the whitish jelly sprawled out over the
+water, rolling after them with ghastly, snake-like ripples, its pallid
+body standing out gruesomely against the black, odorous tide.
+
+Quade came up thrashing madly, some feet to the side of the other
+three. He was swimming--and swimming with such strength that he
+quickly left them behind. He would be across before they; and that
+meant there was a good chance that the earth-borer would go up again
+with only one passenger....
+
+Phil fought against the water, pulling Sue and her father forward as
+best he could. From behind came the rippling sound of their shapeless
+pursuer. "Ten feet more--" Holmes began--then abruptly stopped.
+
+There had been a swish, a ripple upstream. And as their heads turned
+they saw the water part and a black head, long, evil, glistening,
+pointing coldly down to where they were struggling towards the shore.
+Phil Holmes felt his strength ooze out. He heard Professor Guinness
+gasp:
+
+"A water-snake!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Its head was reared above the surface, gliding down on them silently,
+leaving a wedge of long, sluggish ripples behind. When thirty feet
+away the glistening head dipped under, and a great half-circle of
+leg-thick body arched out. It was like an oily stream of curved cable;
+then it ended in a pointed tail--and the creature was entirely under
+water....
+
+With desperate strength Phil hauled the girl to the bank and, standing
+in several feet of water, pushed her up. Then he whirled and yanked
+old Guinness past him up into the hands of his daughter. With them
+safe, and Sue reaching out her hand for him, he began to scramble up
+himself.
+
+But he was too late. There was a swish in the water behind him, and
+toothless, hard-gummed jaws clamped tight over one leg and drew him
+back and under. And with the touch of the creature's mouth a stiff
+shock jolted him; his body went numb; his arms flopped limply down. He
+was paralyzed.
+
+Sue Guinness cried out. Her father stared helplessly at the spot where
+his young partner had disappeared with so little commotion.
+
+"It was an eel," he muttered dully. "Some kind of electric eel...."
+
+Phil dimly realized the same thing. A moment later his face broke the
+surface, but he could not cry out; he could not move his little
+finger. Only his involuntary muscles kept working--his heart and his
+lungs. He found he could control his breathing a little.... And then
+he was wondering why he was remaining motionless on the surface.
+Gradually he came to understand.
+
+He had not felt it, but the eel had let go its hold on his leg, and
+had disappeared. But only for a moment. Suddenly, from somewhere near,
+its gleaming body writhed crazily, and a terrific twist of its tail
+hit Phil a glancing blow on the chest. He was swept under, and the
+water around him became a maelstrom. When next he bobbed to the
+tumultuous surface, he managed to get a much-needed breath of
+air--and in the swirling currents glimpsed the long, snake-like head
+of the eel go shooting by, with thin trickles of stuff that looked
+like white jelly clinging to it.
+
+That explained what was happening. The eel had been challenged by the
+ameboid monster, and they were fighting for possession of him--the
+common prey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The water became an inferno of whipping and lashing movements, of
+whitish fibers and spearing thrusts of a glistening black electric
+body. Unquestionably the eel was using its numbing electric shock on
+its foe. Time and time again Phil felt the amoeba grasp him,
+searingly, only to be wrenched free by the force of the currents the
+combat stirred up. Once he thudded into the bottom of the river, and
+his lungs seemed about to burst before he was again shot to the top
+and managed to get a breath. At last the water quieted somewhat, and
+Phil, at the surface, saw the eel bury its head in a now apathetic
+mound of flesh.
+
+It tore a portion loose with savage jaws, a portion that still writhed
+after it was separated from the parent mass; and then the victor
+glided swiftly downstream, and disappeared under the surface....
+
+Holmes floated helplessly on the inky water. He could see the amoeba
+plainly; it was still partly paralyzed, for it was very still. But
+then a faint tremor ran through it; a wave ran over its surface--and
+it moved slowly towards him once again.
+
+Desperately Phil tried to retreat. The will was there, but the body
+would not work. Save for a feeble flutter of his hands and feet, he
+could not move. He could not even turn around to bid Sue and David
+Guinness good-by--with his eyes....
+
+Then a fresh, loved voice sounded just behind him, and he felt
+something tighten around his waist.
+
+"It's all right, dear!" the voice called. "Hang on; we'll get you
+out!"
+
+Sue had come in after him! She had grasped the rope tied to his belt,
+and she and her father were pulling him back to the bank!
+
+He wanted to tell her to go back--the amoeba was only feet away--but
+he could only manage a little croak. And then he was safe up on the
+ledge at the other side of the river.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A surge of strength filled his limbs, and he knew the shock was
+rapidly wearing off. But it was also wearing off of the monster in the
+water. Its speed increased; the ripplings of its amorphous
+body-substance became quicker, more excited. It came on steadily.
+
+While it came, the girl and her father worked desperately over Phil,
+massaging his body and pulling him further up the bank. It had all but
+reached the bank when Holmes gasped:
+
+"I think I can walk now. Where--where did Quade go to?"
+
+Guinness gestured over to the right, up a dim winding passage through
+the rocks.
+
+"Then we must follow--fast!" Phil said, staggering to his feet. "He
+may get to the sphere first; he'll go up by himself even yet! I'm all
+right!"
+
+Despite his words, he could not run, and could only command an awkward
+walk. Sue lifted one of his arms around her shoulder, and her father
+took the other, and without a backward glance they labored ahead. But
+Phil's strength quickly returned, and they raised the pace until they
+had broken once more into a stumbling run.
+
+How far ahead James Quade was, they did not know, but obviously they
+could follow where he had gone. Once again the draft was strong on
+their backs. They felt sure they were on the last stretch, headed for
+the earth-borer. But, unless they could overtake Quade, he would be
+there first. They had no illusions about what that would mean....
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_A Death More Hideous_
+
+Quade was there first.
+
+When they burst out of a narrow crevice, not far from the
+funnel-shaped opening they had originally entered, they saw him
+standing beside the open door of the sphere as if waiting. The
+searchlight inside was still on, and in its shaft of light they could
+see that he was smiling thinly, once more his old, confident self. It
+would only take him a second to jump in, slam the door and lock it. He
+could afford a last gesture....
+
+The three stopped short. They saw something he did not.
+
+"So!" he observed in his familiar, mocking voice. He paused, seeing
+that they did not come on. He had plenty of time.
+
+He said something else, but the two men and the girl did not hear what
+it was. As if by a magnet their eyes were held by what was hanging
+above him, clinging to the lip of the hole the sphere had made in the
+ceiling.
+
+It was an amoeba, another of those single-celled, protoplasmic mounds
+of flesh. It had evidently come down through the hole; and now it was
+stretching, rubber-like, lower and lower, a living, reaching
+stalactite of whitish hunger.
+
+Quade was all unconscious of it. His final words reached Phil's
+consciousness.
+
+"... And this time, of course, I will keep the top disintegrators on.
+No other monster will then be able to weigh me down!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and turned to the door. And that movement
+was the signal that brought his doom. Without a sound, the poised mass
+above dropped.
+
+James Quade never knew what hit him. The heap of whitish jelly fell
+squarely. There was a brief moment of frantic lashing, of tortured
+struggles--then only tiny ripples running through the monster as it
+fed.
+
+Sue Guinness turned her head. But the two men for some reason could
+not take their eyes away....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the girl's voice that jerked them back to reality. "The other!"
+she gasped. "It's coming, behind!"
+
+They had completely forgotten the mass in the tunnel. Turning, they
+saw that it was only fifteen feet away and approaching fast, and
+instinctively they ran out into the cavern, skirting the sphere
+widely. When they came to Quade's wrecked borer Phil, who had snatched
+a glance behind, dragged them down behind it. For he had seen their
+pursuer abandon the chase and go to share in the meal of its fellow.
+
+"We'd best not get too far away," he whispered. "When they leave the
+front of the borer, maybe we can make a dash for it."
+
+For minutes that went like hours the young man watched, waiting for
+the creatures to be done, hoping that they would go away. Fortunately
+the sphere lay between, and he was not forced to see too much. Only
+one portion of one of the monsters was visible, lapping out from
+behind the machine....
+
+At last his body tensed, and he gripped Sue and her father's arm in
+quick warning. The things were leaving the sphere. Or, rather, only
+one was. For Phil saw that they had agglutenated--merged into
+oneness--and now the monster that remained was the sum of the sizes of
+the original two. And more....
+
+They all watched. And they all saw the amoeba stop, hesitate for a
+moment--and come straight for the wrecked borer behind which they were
+hidden.
+
+"Damn!" Phil whispered hoarsely. "It's still hungry--and it's after
+us!"
+
+David Guinness sighed wearily. "It's heavy and sluggish, now," he
+said, "so maybe if we run again.... Though I don't know how I can last
+any longer...."
+
+Holmes did not answer. His eyes were narrowed; he was casting about
+desperately for a plan. He hardly felt Sue's light touch on his arm as
+she whispered:
+
+"In case, Phil--in case.... This must be good-by...."
+
+But the young man turned to her with gleaming eyes. "Good-by,
+nothing!" he cried. "We've still got a card to play!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She stared at him, wondering if he had cracked from the strain of what
+he had passed through. But his next words assured her he had not. "Go
+back, Sue," he said levelly. "Go far back. We'll win through this
+yet."
+
+She hesitated, then obeyed. She crept back from the wrecked borer,
+back into the dim rear, eyes on Phil and the sluggish mass that moved
+inexorably towards him. When she had gone fifteen or twenty yards she
+paused, and watched the two men anxiously.
+
+Phil was talking swiftly to Professor Guinness. His voice was low and
+level, and though she could not hear the words she could catch the
+tone of assurance that ran through them. She saw her father nod his
+head, and he seemed to make the gesture with vigor. "I will," she
+heard him say; and he slapped Phil on the back, adding: "But for God's
+sake, be careful!"
+
+And with these words the old man wormed inside Quade's wrecked borer
+and was gone from the girl's sight.
+
+She wanted desperately to run forward and learn what Phil intended to
+do, but she restrained herself and obeyed his order. She waited, and
+watched; and saw the young man stand up, look at the slowly advancing
+monster--and deliberately walk right into its path!
+
+Sue could not move from her fright. In a daze she saw Phil advance
+cautiously towards the amoeba and pause when within five feet of it.
+The thing stopped; remained absolutely motionless. She saw him take
+another short step forward. This time a pseudopod emerged, and reached
+slowly out for him. Phil avoided it easily, but by so narrow a margin
+that the girl's heart stopped beating. Then she saw him step back;
+and, snail-like, the creature followed, pausing twice, as if wary and
+suspicious. Slowly Phil Holmes drew it after him.
+
+To Sue, who did not know what was his plan, it seemed a deliberate
+invitation to death. She forgot about her father, lying inside the
+mangled borer, waiting. She did not see that Phil was leading the
+monster directly in front of it....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a grotesque, silent pursuit. The creature appeared to be
+unalert; its movements were sloth-like; yet the girl knew that if Phil
+once ventured an inch too close, or slipped, or tried to dodge past it
+to the sphere, its torpidness would vanish and it would have him. His
+maneuvering had to be delicate, judged to a matter of inches. Tense
+with the suspense, the strain of the slow-paced seconds, she
+watched--and yet hardly dared to watch, fearful of the awful thing she
+might see.
+
+It was a fantastic game of tag her lover was playing, with death the
+penalty for tardiness. The slow, enticing movements were repeated
+again and again, Phil advancing very close, and stepping back in the
+nick of time. Always he barely avoided the clutching white arms that
+were extended, and little by little he decoyed the thing onward....
+
+Then came the end. As Holmes was almost in front of the wrecked
+machine, Sue saw him glance quickly aside--and, as if waiting for that
+moment when he would be off guard, the monster whipped forward in a
+great, reaching surge.
+
+Sue's ragged nerves cracked: she shrieked. They had him! She started
+forward, then halted abruptly. With a tremendous leap, Phil Holmes had
+wrenched free and flung himself backwards. She heard his yell:
+
+"Now!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a sputter from the bottom of the outstretched borer; then,
+like the crack of a whip, came a bellow of awful sound.
+
+A thick cloud of dust reared up, and the ear-numbing thunder rolled
+through the cavern in great pulsing echoes. And then Sue Guinness
+understood what the young man had been about.
+
+The disintegrators of James Quade's borer had sent a broad beam of
+annihilation into the monster. His own machine had destroyed his
+destroyer--and given his intended victims their only chance to escape
+from the dread fate he had schemed for them.
+
+Sue could see no trace of the creature in its pyre of slow-swirling
+dust. Caught squarely, its annihilation had been utter. And then,
+through the thunder that still echoed in her ear-drums, she heard a
+joyful voice.
+
+"We got 'em!"
+
+Through the dusty haze Phil appeared at her side. He flung his arms up
+exultantly, swept her off the ground, hugged her close.
+
+"We got 'em!" he cried again. "We're free--free to go up!"
+
+Professor David Guinness crawled from the borer. His face, for the
+first time since the descent, wore a broad smile. Phil ran over to
+him, slapped him on the back; and the older man said:
+
+"You did it beautifully, Phil." He turned to Sue. "He had to decoy
+them right in front of the disintegrators. It was--well, it was
+magnificent!"
+
+"All credit to Sue: she was my inspiration!" Phil said, laughing. "But
+now," he added, "let's see if we can fix those dead rocket-tubes. I
+have a patient up above--and, anyway, I'm not over-fond of this
+place!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three had won through. They had blasted four miles down from the
+surface of the earth. The brain of an elderly scientist, the
+quick-witted courage of a young engineer, had achieved the seemingly
+impossible--and against obstacles that could not have been predicted.
+Death had attended that achievement, as death often does accompany
+great forward steps; James Quade had gone to a death more hideous than
+that he devised for the others. But, in spite of the justice of it, a
+moment of silence fell on the three survivors as they came to the spot
+where his fate at last had caught up to him.
+
+But it was only a moment. It was relieved by Professor Guinness's
+picking up the chunk of radium ore his former partner had hewn from
+the cavern's wall. He held it up for all to see, and smiled.
+
+"Here it is," he said simply.
+
+Then he led the way into his earth-borer, and the little door closed
+quietly and firmly into place.
+
+For a few minutes slight tappings came from within, as if a wrench or
+a screwdriver were being used. Then the tappings stopped, and all was
+silence.
+
+A choke, a starting cough, came from beneath the sphere. A torrent of
+rushing sound burst out, and spears of orange flame spurted from the
+bottom and splashed up its sides, bathing it in fierce, brilliant
+light. It stirred. Then, slowly and smoothly, the great ball of metal
+raised up.
+
+It hit the edge of the hole in the ceiling, and hung there,
+hesitating. Side-rockets flared, and the sphere angled over. Then it
+slid, roaring, through the hole.
+
+Swiftly the spots of orange from its rocket-tube exhausts died to
+pin-points. There were now almost twenty of them. And soon these
+pin-points wavered, and vanished utterly.
+
+Then there was only blackness in the hole that went up to the surface.
+Blackness in the hole, calm night on the desert above--and silence, as
+if the cavern were brooding on the puny figures and strange machines
+that had for the first time dared invade its solitude, in the realms
+four miles within the earth....
+
+
+
+
+The Lake of Light
+
+_By Jack Williamson_
+
+[Illustration: _The monster emanated power, sinister, malevolent
+power._]
+
+[Sidenote: In the frozen wastes at the bottom of the world two
+explorers find a strange pool of white fire--and have a strange
+adventure.]
+
+
+The roar of the motor rang loud in the frosty air above a desert of
+ice. The sky above us was a deep purple-blue; the red sun hung like a
+crimson eye low in the north. Three thousand feet below, through a
+hazy blue mist of wind-whipped, frozen vapor, was the rugged
+wilderness of black ice-peaks and blizzard-carved hummocks of snow--a
+grim, undulating waste, black and yellow, splotched with crystal
+white. The icy wind howled dismally through the struts. We were flying
+above the weird ice-mountains of the Enderby quadrant of Antarctica.
+
+That was a perilous flight, across the blizzard-whipped bottom of the
+world. In all the years of polar exploration by air, since Byrd's
+memorable flights, this area had never been crossed. The intrepid
+Britisher, Major Meriden, with the daring American aviatrix whom the
+world had known as Mildred Cross before she married him, had flown
+into it nineteen years before--and like many others they had never
+returned.
+
+Faintly, above the purring drone of the motor, I heard Ray Summers'
+shout. I drew my gaze from the desolate plateau of ice below and
+leaned forward. His lean, fur-hooded face was turned back toward me. A
+mittened hand was pointing, and thin lips moved in words that I did
+not hear above the roar of the engine and the scream of the wind.
+
+I turned and looked out to the right, past the shimmering silver disk
+of the propeller. Under the blue haze of ice-crystals in the air, the
+ice lay away in a vast undulating plain of black and yellow, broken
+with splotches of prismatic whiteness, lying away in frozen desolation
+to the rim of the cold violet sky. Rising against that sky I saw a
+curious thing.
+
+It was a mountain of fire!
+
+Beyond the desert of ice, a great conical peak pointed straight into
+the amethystine gloom of the polar heavens. It was brilliantly white,
+a finger of milky fire, a sharp cone of pure light. It shone with
+white radiance. It was brighter, far brighter, than is the sacred cone
+of Fujiyama in the vivid day of Japan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For many minutes I stared in wonder at it. Far away it was; it looked
+very small. It was like a little heap of light poured from the hand of
+a fire-god. What it might be, I could not imagine. At first sight, I
+imagined it might be a volcano with streams of incandescent lava
+flowing down the side. I knew that this continent of mystery boasted
+Mt. Erebus and other active craters. But there was none of the smoke
+or lurid yellow flame which accompanies volcanic eruptions.
+
+I was still watching it, and wondering, when the catastrophe took
+place--the catastrophe which hurled us into a mad extravaganza of
+amazing adventure.
+
+Our little two-place amphibian was flying smoothly, through air
+unusually good for this continent of storms. The twelve cylinders of
+the motor had been firing regularly since we took off from Byrd's old
+station at Little America fifteen hours before. We had crossed the
+pole in safety. It looked as if we might succeed in this attempt to
+penetrate the last white spot on the map. Then it Happened.
+
+A sudden crack of snapping metal rang out sharp as a pistol report. A
+bright blade of metal flashed past the wing-struts, to fall in a
+flashing arc. The motor broke abruptly into a mad, deep-voiced roar.
+Terrific vibration shook the ship, until I feared that it would go to
+pieces.
+
+Ray Summers, with his usual quick efficiency, cut the throttle.
+Quickly the motor slowed to idling speed; the vibration stopped. A
+last cough of the engine, and there was no sound save the shrill
+screaming of the wind in the gloomy twilight of this unknown land
+beyond the pole.
+
+"What in the devil!" I exclaimed.
+
+"The prop! See!" Ray pointed ahead.
+
+I looked, and the dreadful truth flashed upon me. The steel propeller
+was gone, or half of it at least. One blade was broken off at a jagged
+line just above the hub.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The propeller! What made it break? I've never heard--"
+
+"Search me!" Ray grinned. "The important thing is that it did. It was
+all-metal, of course, tested and guaranteed. The guarantee isn't worth
+much here. A flaw in the forging, perhaps, that escaped detection.
+And this low temperature. Makes metal as brittle as glass. And the
+thing may have been crystallized by the vibration."
+
+The plane was coming down in a shallow glide. I looked out at the grim
+expanse of black ice-crags and glistening snow below us, and it was
+far from a comforting prospect. But I had a huge amount of confidence
+in Ray Summers. I have known him since the day he appeared, from his
+father's great Arizona ranch, to be a freshman in the School of Mines
+at El Paso, where I was then an instructor in geology. We have knocked
+about queer corners of the world together for a good many years. But
+he is still but a great boy, with the bluff, simple manners of the
+West.
+
+"Do you think we can land?" I asked.
+
+"Looks like we've got to," he said, grimly.
+
+"And what after that?"
+
+"How should I know? We have the sledge, tent, furs. Food, and fuel for
+the primus to last a week. There's the rifle, but it must be a
+thousand miles to anything to shoot. We can do our best."
+
+"We should have had an extra prop."
+
+"Of course. But it was so many pounds, when every pound counted. And
+who knew the thing would break?"
+
+"We'll never get out on a week's provisions."
+
+"Not a shot! Too bad to disappoint Captain Harper." Ray grinned wanly.
+"He ought to have the _Albatross_ around there by this time, waiting
+for us." The _Albatross_ was the ship which had left us at Little
+America a few months before, to steam around and pick us up at our
+destination beyond Enderby Land. "We're in the same boat with Major
+Meriden and his wife--and all those others. Lost without a trace."
+
+"You've read Scott's diary--that he wrote after he visited the pole in
+1912--the one they found with the bodies?"
+
+"Yes. Not altogether cheerful. But we won't be trying to get out. No
+use of that." He looked at me suddenly, grinning again. "Say, Jim, why
+not try for that shining mountain we saw? It looks queer enough to be
+interesting. We ought to make it in a week."
+
+"I'm with you," I said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I did not speak again, for the jagged ice-peaks were coming rather
+near. I held my breath as the little plane veered around a slender
+black spire and dropped toward a tiny scrap of smooth snow among the
+ice-hummocks. I might have spared my anxiety. Under Ray's consumately
+skilful piloting, the skids struck the snow with hardly a shock. We
+glided swiftly over the ice and came to rest just short of a yawning
+crevasse.
+
+"Suppose," said Ray, "that we spend the first night in the plane. We
+are tired already. We can keep warm here, and sleep. We've plenty of
+ice to melt for water. Then we're off for the shining mountain."
+
+I agreed: Ray Summers is usually right. We got out the sledge, packed
+it, took our bearings, and made all preparations for a start to the
+luminous mountain, which was about a hundred miles away. The
+thermometer stood at twenty below, but we were comfortable enough in
+our furs as we ate a scanty supper and went to sleep in the cabin of
+the plane.
+
+We started promptly the next morning, after draining the last of the
+hot chocolate from our vacuum bottles, which we left behind. We had a
+light but powerful sporting rifle, with telescopic sights, and several
+hundred rounds of ammunition. Ray put them in the pack, though I
+insisted that we would never need them, unless a quick way out of our
+predicament.
+
+"No, Jim," he said. "We take 'em along. We don't know what we're going
+to find at the shining mountain."
+
+The air was bitterly cold as we set out: it was twenty-five below and
+a sharp wind was blowing. Only our toiling at the sledge kept us warm.
+We covered eighteen miles that day, and made a good camp in the lee
+of a bare stone ridge.
+
+That night there was a slight fall of snow. When we went on it was
+nearly thirty-five degrees below zero. The layer of fresh snow
+concealed irregularities in the ice, making our pulling very hard.
+After an exhausting day we had made hardly fifteen miles.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the following day the sky was covered with gray clouds, and a
+bitterly cold wind blew. We should have remained in the tent, but the
+shortage of food made it imperative that we keep moving. We felt
+immensely better after a reckless, generous fill of hot pemmican stew;
+but the next morning my feet were so painful from frost-bite that I
+could hardly get on my fur boots.
+
+Walking was very painful to me that day, but we made a good distance,
+having come to smoother ice. Ray was very kind in caring for me. I
+became discouraged about going on at all: it was very painful, and I
+knew there was no hope of getting out. I tried to get some of our
+morphine tablets, but Ray had them, and refused to be convinced that
+he ought to go on without me.
+
+On the next march we came in sight of the luminous mountain, which
+cheered me considerably. It was a curious thing, indeed. A
+straight-sided cone of light it was, rather steeper than the average
+volcano. Its point was sharp, its sides smooth as if cut with a
+mammoth plane. And it shone with a pure white light, with a steady and
+unchanging milky radiance. It rose out of the black and dull yellow of
+the ice wilderness like a white finger of hope.
+
+The next morning it was a little warmer. Ray had been caring for my
+feet very attentively, but it took me nearly two hours to get on my
+footgear. Again I tried to get him to leave me, but he refused.
+
+We arrived at the base of the shining mountain in three more marches.
+On the last night the fuel for the primus was all gone, having been
+used up during the very cold weather, and we were unable to melt water
+to drink. We munched the last of our pemmican dry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few minutes after we had started on the last morning, Ray stopped
+suddenly.
+
+"Look at that!" he cried.
+
+I saw what he had seen--the wreck of an airplane, the wings crumpled
+up and blackened with fire. We limped up to it.
+
+"A Harley biplane!" Ray exclaimed. "That is Major Meriden's ship! And
+look at that wing! It looks like it's been in an electric furnace!"
+
+I examined the metal wing; saw that it had been blackened with heat.
+The metal was fused and twisted.
+
+"I've seen a good many wrecks, Jim. I've seen planes that burned as
+they fell. But nothing like that. The fuselage and engines were not
+even afire. Jim, something struck out from that shining mountain and
+brought them down!"
+
+"Are they--" I began.
+
+Ray was poking about in the snow in the cockpits.
+
+"No. Not here. Probably would have been better for them if they had
+been killed in the plane. Quick and merciful."
+
+He examined the engines and propellers.
+
+"No. Seems to be nothing wrong. Something struck them down!"
+
+Soon we went on.
+
+The shining mountain rose before us like a great cone of fire. It must
+have been three thousand feet high, and about that in diameter at the
+bottom. Its walls were as smooth and straight as though turned from
+milky rock crystal in a gigantic lathe. It shone with a steady,
+brilliantly white radiance.
+
+"That's no natural hill!" Ray grunted beside me as we limped on.
+
+We were less than a mile from the foot of the cone of fire. Soon we
+observed another remarkable thing about it. It seemed that a straight
+band of silvery metal rose from the snow about its foot.
+
+"Has it a wall around it?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Evidently," said Ray. "Looks as if it's built on a round metal
+platform. But by whom? When? Why?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We approached the curious wall. It was of a white metal, apparently
+aluminum, or a silvery alloy of that metal. In places it was
+twenty-five feet high, but more usually the snow and ice was banked
+high against it. The smooth white wall of the gleaming mountain stood
+several hundred yards back from the wall.
+
+"Let's have a look over it." Ray suggested. "We can get up on that
+hummock, against it. You know, this place must have been built by
+men!"
+
+We clambered up over the ice, as he suggested, until our heads came
+above the top of the wall.
+
+"A lake of fire!" cried Ray.
+
+Indeed, a lake of liquid fire lay before us. The white aluminum wall
+was hardly a foot thick. It formed a great circular tank, nearly a
+mile across, with the cone of white fire rising in the center. And the
+tank was filled, to within a foot of the top, with shimmeringly
+brilliant white fluid, bright and luminous as the cone--liquid light!
+
+Ray dipped a hand into it. The hand came up with fingers of fire,
+radiant, gleaming, with shining drops falling from them. With a
+spasmodic effort, he flung off the luminous drops, rubbed his hand on
+his garments, and got it back into its fur mitten.
+
+"Gee, it's cold!" he muttered. "Freeze the horns off a brass
+billy-goat!"
+
+"Cold light!" I exclaimed. "What wouldn't a bottle of that stuff be
+worth to a chemist back in the States!"
+
+"That cone must be a factory to make the stuff." Ray suggested,
+hugging his hand. "They might pump the liquid up to the top, and then
+let it trickle down over the sides: that would explain why the cone is
+so bright. The stuff might absorb sunlight, like barium sulphide. And
+there could be chemical action with the air, under the actinic rays."
+
+"Well, if somebody's making cold light, where does he use it?"
+
+"I'd like to find out, and strike him for a hot meal," Ray said,
+grinning. "It's too cold to live on top of the ground around here.
+They must run it down in a cave."
+
+"Then let's find the hole."
+
+"You know it's possible we won't be welcome. This mountain of light
+may be connected with the vanishing of all the aviators. We'd better
+take along the rifle."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We set off around just outside the white metal wall. The snow and ice
+was irregularly banked against it, but the wall itself was smooth and
+unbroken. We had limped along for some two miles, or more than halfway
+around the amazing lake of light. I had begun to doubt that we would
+find anything.
+
+Then we came to a square metal tower, ten feet on a side, that rose
+just outside the silvery wall, to a level with its top. The ice was
+low here; the tower rose twenty feet above its unequal surface. We
+found metal flanges riveted to its side, like the steps of a ladder.
+They were most inconveniently placed, nearly four feet apart; but we
+were able to climb them, and to look down the shaft.
+
+It was a straight-sided pit, evidently some hundreds of feet deep. We
+could see a tiny square of light at the bottom, very far away. The
+flanges ran down the side forming the rungs of a ladder that gave
+access to whatever lay at the bottom.
+
+Without hesitation, Ray climbed over the side and started down. I
+followed him, feeling a great relief in getting out of the freezing
+wind. Ray had the rifle and ammunition strapped to his back, along
+with a few other articles; and I had a small pack. We had abandoned
+the sledge, with the useless stove and the most of our instruments.
+Our food was all gone.
+
+The metal flanges were fully four feet apart, and it was not easy to
+scramble down from one to another; certainly not easy for one who was
+cold, hungry, thirsty, worn out with a week of exhausting marches, and
+suffering the torture of frozen feet.
+
+"You know, this thing was not built by men," Ray observed.
+
+"Not built by men? What do you mean?"
+
+"Men would have put the steps closer together. Jim, I'm afraid we are
+up against something--well--that we aren't used to."
+
+"If men didn't build this, what did?" I was astounded.
+
+"Search me! This continent has been cut off from the rest of the world
+for geologic ages. Such life as has been found here is not common to
+the rest of the earth. It is not impossible that some form of life,
+isolated here, has developed intelligence and acquired the power to
+erect that cone of light--and to burn the wing off a metal airplane."
+
+My thoughts whirled madly as we clambered down the shaft.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It must have taken us an hour to reach the bottom. I did not count the
+steps, but it must have been at least a thousand feet. The air grew
+rapidly warmer as we descended. We both took off most of our heavy fur
+garments, and left them hanging on the rungs.
+
+I was rather nervous. I felt the nearness of an intelligent, hostile
+power. I had a great fear that the owners of those steps would use
+them to find us, and then crush us ruthlessly as they had brought down
+Meriden's plane.
+
+The little square of white light below grew larger. Finally I saw Ray
+swing off and stand on his feet in a flood of white radiance below me.
+The air was warm, moist, laden with a subtle unfamiliar fragrance that
+suggested growing things. Then I stood beside Ray.
+
+We stood on the bare stone floor of a huge cavern. It must have been
+of volcanic origin. The walls glistened with the sparkling smoothness
+of volcanic glass. It was a huge space. The black roof was a hundred
+feet high, or more; the cave was some hundreds of feet wide. And it
+sloped away from us into dim distance as though leading into huger
+cavities below.
+
+The light that shone upon us came from an amazing thing--a fall of
+liquid fire. From the roof plunged a sheer torrent of white
+brilliantly luminous fluid, falling a hundred feet into a shimmering
+pool of moon-flame. Shining opalescent mists swirled about it, and the
+ceaseless roar of it filled the cave with sound. It seemed that a
+stream of the phosphorescent stuff ran off down the cave from the
+pool, to light the lower caverns.
+
+"Very clever!" said Ray. "They make the stuff up there at the cone and
+run it in here to see by."
+
+"This warm air feels mighty good," I remarked, pulling off another
+garment.
+
+Ray sniffed the air. "A curious odor. Smells like something growing.
+Where anything is growing there ought to be something to eat. Let's
+see what we can find."
+
+Only black obsidian covered the floor about us. Cautiously we skirted
+the overflowing pool of white fire, and followed down the stream of it
+that flowed toward the inner cavern. We had gone but a few hundred
+yards when suddenly Ray stopped me with a hand on my arm.
+
+"Lie flat!" he hissed. "Quick!"
+
+He dived behind a huge mass of fire-born granite. I flung myself down
+beside him.
+
+"Something is coming up the trail by the shining river. And it isn't a
+man! It's between us and the light; we should be able to see it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon I heard a curious scraping sound, and a little tinkle of metal. I
+caught a whiff of a powerful odor--a strange, fishy odor--so strong
+that it almost knocked me down.
+
+The thing that made the scraping and the tinkle and the smell came
+into view. The sight of it sickened me with horror.
+
+It was far larger than a man; its body was heavy as a horse's, but
+nearer the ground. In form it suggested a huge crab, though it was not
+very much like any crustacean I had ever seen. It was mostly red in
+color, and covered with a huge scarlet shell. It had five pairs of
+limbs. The two forward pairs had pinchers, seemingly used as hands; it
+scraped along on the other three pairs. Yard-long antennae, slender
+and luminously green, wavered above a grotesque head. The many facets
+of compound eyes stood on the end of foot-long stalks.
+
+The amazing crab-thing wore a metal harness. Bands of silvery aluminum
+were fastened about its shell, with little cases of white metal
+dangling to them. In one of its uplifted claws it carried what seemed
+to be an aluminum bar, two feet long and an inch thick.
+
+It scraped lumberingly past, between us and the racing stream of white
+fire. It passed less than a dozen feet from us. The curious fishy
+smell of it was overpowering, disgusting.
+
+Sweat of horror chilled my limbs. The monster emanated power,
+sinister, malevolent power, power intelligent, alien and hostile to
+man.
+
+I trembled with the fear that it would see us, but it scrambled
+grotesquely on. When it was twenty yards past, Ray picked up a block
+of black lava that lay beneath his hand and hurled it silently and
+swiftly. It crashed splinteringly on the rocks far beyond the
+creature, on the other side of the stream of light.
+
+In fascination I watched the monster as it paused as if astonished.
+The glittering compound eyes twisted about on their stalks, and the
+long shining green tentacles wavered questioningly. Then the knobbed
+limbs snapped the white metal tube to a level position. A metallic
+click came from it.
+
+And a ray of red light, vivid and intense, burst from the tube. It
+flashed across the river of fire. With a dull, thudding burst it
+struck the rocks where the stone had fallen. It must have been a ray
+of concentrated heat. Rocks beneath it flashed into sudden
+incandescence, splintered and cracked, flowed in molten streams.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a moment the intensely brilliant ruby ray flashed off. The rocks in
+the circle where it had struck faded to a dull red and then to
+blackness, still cracking and crumbling.
+
+To my intense relief, the monstrous crab lumbered on.
+
+"That," Ray whispered, "is what got Major Meriden's airplane wing."
+
+When we could hear its scraping progress no longer, we climbed up from
+behind our boulder and continued cautiously down the cavern, beside
+the rushing luminous river. In half a mile we came to a bend. Rounding
+it, we gazed upon a remarkable sight.
+
+We looked into a huge cavity in the heart of the earth. A vast
+underground plain lay before us, with the black lava of the roof
+arching above it. It must have been miles across, though we had no way
+to measure it, and it stretched down into dim hazy distance. Its level
+was hundreds of feet below us.
+
+At our feet the glistening river of fire plunged down again in a
+magnificent flaming fall. Below, its luminous liquid was spread out in
+rivers and lakes and canals, over all the vast plain. The channels ran
+through an amazing jungle. It was a forest of fungus, of mushroom
+things with great fleshy stalks and spreading circular tops. But they
+were not the sickly white and yellow of ordinary mushrooms, but were
+of brilliant colors, bright green, flaming scarlet, gold and
+purple-blue. Huge brilliant yellow stalks, fringed with crimson and
+black, lifted mauve tops thirty feet or more. It was a veritable
+forest of flame-bright fungus.
+
+In the center of this weirdly forested subterranean plain was a great
+lake, filled, not with the flaming liquid, but with dark crystal
+water. And on the bottom of that lake, clearly visible from the
+elevation upon which we stood, was a city!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A city below the water! The buildings were upright cylinders in groups
+of two or three, of dozens, even of hundreds. For miles, the bottom of
+the great lake was covered with them. They were all of crystal,
+azure-blue, brilliant as cylinders turned from immense sapphires. They
+were vividly visible beneath the transparent water. Not one of them
+broke the surface.
+
+Through the clear black water we saw moving hundreds, thousands of the
+giant crabs. The crawled over the hard, pebbled bottom of the lake, or
+swam between the crystal cylinders of the city. They were huge as the
+one we had seen, with red shells, great ominous looking stalked eyes,
+luminous green tentacular antennae and knobbed claws on forelimbs.
+
+"Looks as if we've run on something to write home about," Ray muttered
+in amazement.
+
+"A whole city of them! A whole world! No wonder they could build that
+cone-mountain for a lighting plant!"
+
+"When they got to knocking down airplanes with that heat-ray," he
+speculated, "they were probably surprised to find that other animals
+had developed intelligence."
+
+"Do you suppose those mushroom things are good to eat?"
+
+"We can try and see--if the crabs don't get us first with a heat-ray.
+I'm hungry enough to try anything!"
+
+Again we cautiously advanced. The river of light fell over a sheer
+precipice, but we found a metal ladder spiked to the rock, with rungs
+as inconveniently far apart as those in the shaft. It was five hundred
+feet, I suppose, to the bottom; it took us many minutes to descend.
+
+At last we stepped off in a little rocky clearing. The forest of
+brilliant mushrooms rose about us, great fleshy stalks of gold and
+graceful fringes of black and scarlet about them, with flattened heads
+of purple.
+
+We started eagerly across toward the fungoid forest. I had visions of
+tearing off great pieces of soft, golden flesh and filling my aching
+stomach with it.
+
+We were stopped by a sharp, poignantly eager human cry.
+
+A human being, a girl, darted from among the mushroom stalks and ran
+across to us. Sobbing out great incoherent cries, she dropped at Ray's
+feet, wrapped her arms about his knees and clung to him, while her
+slender body was wracked with sobbing cries.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My first impression was that she was very beautiful--and that
+impression I was never called upon to revise. About her lithe young
+body she had the merest scrap of some curious green fabric--ample in
+the warm air of the great cavern. Luxuriant brown hair fell loose
+about her white shoulders. She was not quite twenty years old, I
+supposed; her body was superbly formed, with the graceful curves and
+the free, smooth movements of a wild thing.
+
+Ray stood motionless for a moment, thunder-struck as I was, while the
+sobbing girl clung to his knees. Then the astonishment on his face
+gave place to pity.
+
+"Poor kid!" he murmured.
+
+He bent, took her tenderly by the shoulder, helped her to her feet.
+
+Her beauty burst upon us like a great light. Smoothly white, her skin
+was, perfect. Wide blue eyes, now appealing, even piteous, looked
+from beneath a wealth of golden brown hair. White teeth, straight and
+even, flashed behind the natural crimson of her lips.
+
+She stood staring at Ray, in a sort of enchantment of wonder. An eager
+light of incredible joy flamed in her amazing eyes; red lips were
+parted in an unconscious smile of joy. She looked like the troubled
+princess in the fairy tale, when the prince of her dreams appeared in
+the flesh.
+
+"God, but you're beautiful!" Ray's words slipped out as if he were
+hardly conscious of them. He flushed quickly, stepped back a little.
+
+The girl's lips opened. She voiced a curious cry. It was deep toned,
+pealing with a wonderful timbre. A happy burst of sound, like a baby
+makes. But strong, ringing, musically golden. And pathetically eager,
+pitifully glad, so that it brought tears to my eyes, cynical old man
+that I am.
+
+I saw Ray wipe his eyes.
+
+"Can you talk?" Ray put the question in a clear, deliberate voice,
+with great kindness ringing in it.
+
+"Talk?" The chiming, golden voice was slow, uncertain. "Talk? Yes. I
+talked--with mother. But for long--I have had no need to talk."
+
+"Where is your mother?" Ray's voice was gentle.
+
+"She is gone. She was here when I was little." The clear, silvery
+voice was more certain now. "Once, when I was almost as big as
+she--she was still. She was cold. She did not move when I called her.
+The Things took her away. She was dead. She told me that sometime she
+would be dead."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bright tears came in the wide blue eyes, trickled down over the
+perfect face. A pathetic catch was in the deliberate, halting voice. I
+turned away, and Ray put a handkerchief to his face.
+
+"What is your name? Who are you?" Ray spoke kindly.
+
+"I am Mildred. Mildred Meriden."
+
+"Meriden!" Ray turned to me. "I bet this is a daughter of the major
+and his wife!"
+
+"Father was the major," the girl said slowly. "He and mother came in a
+machine that flew, from a far land. The Things burned the machine with
+the red fire. They came here and the Things kept them. They made
+mother sing over the water. They killed father. I never saw him."
+
+"I know," Ray, said gently. "We came from the same land. We saw your
+father's machine above."
+
+"You came from outside! And you are going back? Oh, take me with you!
+Take me!" Piteous pleading was in her voice. "It is so--lonely since
+the Things took Mother away. Mother told me that sometime men would
+come, and take me away to see the people and the outside that she told
+me of. Oh, please take me!"
+
+"Don't worry! You go along whenever we leave--if we can get out."
+
+"Oh, I am so glad! You are very good!"
+
+Impulsively, she threw her arms around Ray's neck. Gently, he
+disengaged himself, flushing a little. I noticed, however, that he did
+not seem particularly displeased.
+
+"But can we get out?"
+
+"Mother and I tried. We could never get out. The Things watch. They
+make me come to the water to sing, when the great bell rings."
+
+"Are these things goods to eat?" I motioned to the brilliant fungal
+forest. I had begun to fear that Ray would never get to this very
+important topic.
+
+Blue eyes regarded me. "Eat? Oh, you are hungry! Come! I have food."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Like a child, she grasped Ray's hand, pulled him toward the mushroom
+jungle. I followed, and we slipped in between the brilliantly golden,
+fleshy stalks. They rose to the tangle of bright feathery fringes
+above, huge and substantial as the trunks of trees.
+
+In a few minutes we came to a wide, shallow canal, metal-walled,
+through which a slow current of the opalescent, luminous liquid was
+flowing. We crossed this on a narrow metal foot-bridge, and went on
+through the brilliant forest.
+
+Suddenly we emerged into a little clearing, with the black waters of
+the great lake visible beyond it, across a quarter-mile of rocky
+beach. In the middle of the open space, rose three straight cylinders
+of azure crystal, side by side. Each must have been twenty feet in
+diameter, and forty high. They shone with a clear blue light, like the
+cylindrical buildings we had seen in the strange city of the
+crab-creatures below the great lake.
+
+Mildred Meriden, the strangely beautiful girl who had known no other
+world than this amazing cavern empire where giant crabs reigned,
+beckoned us with unconscious queenly grace to enter the arched door in
+the blue sapphire wall of her remarkable abode of clustered cylinders.
+
+The crystal of the walls seemed luminous, the lofty cylinders were
+filled with a liquid, azure radiance. The high round room we entered
+was strangely furnished. There was a silken couch, a bathing pool of
+blue crystal filled with sparkling water, a curious chest of drawers
+made of bright aluminum with a mirror of polished crystal, its top
+bearing odd combs and other articles. The furnishings must have been
+done by the giant crabs, under human direction.
+
+Mildred led us quickly across the room, through an arched opening into
+another. A round aluminum table stood in the center of the room, with
+two curious metal chairs beside it. Odd metal cabinets stood about the
+shining blue walls. The girl made us sit down, and put dishes before
+us.
+
+She gave us each a bowl of thick, sweetish soup, darkly red; placed
+before us a dish piled high with little circular cakes, crisp and
+brown, which had a tantalizing fragrance; poured for each of us a
+transparent crystal goblet full of clear amber drink.
+
+We fell to with enthusiasm and abandon.
+
+"The Things made this place for father," the girl told us, as she
+watched us eat, attentively replenishing the red soup in the great
+blue crystal bowl, or the little cakes, or the fragrant amber drink.
+"They would give him anything he wanted. But he tried to go away with
+mother, and they killed him."
+
+"We must get out of here," Ray declared when at last we had done. "We
+must get together a lot of food, and enough clothing for all of us. We
+ought to be able to make it to the edge of the ice-pack. We've got to
+give these crab-things the slip; we ought to get off before they know
+we're here--unless they already do."
+
+Mildred was eagerly attentive: she was so unused to human speech that
+it took the best of her efforts to understand us, though it seems that
+her mother had given her quite a wide education. She promised that
+there would be no difficulty about the food.
+
+"Mother taught me how to fix food," she said. "She always said that
+sometime men would come, with weapons of fire and great noise that
+would tear and kill the Things. I have food ready, in bags--more than
+we can carry. I have, too, the furs that mother and father wore."
+
+She ran into another room and returned with a great pile of fur
+garments, which we examined and found to be in good condition.
+
+"Now is the time," Ray said. "I'd like to know more about the big
+crabs, but there'll be a chance for that, later. Mildred is the
+important thing, now. We must get her out. Then we can tell the world
+about this place and come back with a bigger expedition."
+
+"You think we can reach the coast?"
+
+"I think so. It might be hard on Mildred. But we will have food; we
+can probably find fuel for the stove in Meriden's plane, if the tanks
+were well sealed. And Captain Harper should have a relief party landed
+and sent to meet us. We should have only three or four hundred miles
+to go alone."
+
+"Three or four hundred miles, over country like we've been crossing in
+the last week, with a girl! Ray, we'd never make it!"
+
+"It's the only chance."
+
+I said nothing more. I knew that I could stand no such march on my
+frozen feet, but I resolved to say nothing about it. I would help them
+as far as I could, and then walk out of camp some night. Men have done
+just that.
+
+Mildred brought out sacks of the little cakes, and of a red powder
+that seemed to be the dried and ground flesh of a crimson mushroom. We
+made a pack for each of us, as heavy as we could carry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just before we were ready to start Ray took off my footgear and
+treated my feet from his medicine kit. I had feared gangrene, but he
+assured me that there was no danger if they were well cared for.
+Walking was still exquisitely painful to me as we slipped out through
+the arched door and into the fungoid forest beyond the three blue
+cylinders.
+
+As rapidly and silently as possible we hastened through the brilliant
+fungous forest, across the river of opalescent liquid, to the foot of
+the fall of fire. A weird and splendid sight was that sheer arc of
+shimmering white flame, roaring into a pool of opal light, and
+surrounded with a mist of moon-flame.
+
+We reached the foot of the metal ladder spiked to the rocks beside the
+fall and started up immediately. The going was not easy. The packs of
+food, heavy enough when we were on level ground, were difficult indeed
+to lift when one was scrambling up over rungs four feet apart.
+
+Ray climbed ahead, with a piece of rope fastened from his waist to
+Mildred's, so that he could help her if she slipped. I was below the
+girl. We were halfway up the rock when suddenly a glare of red light
+shone upon me, casting my shadow sharply on the cliff. I looked up
+and saw the broad, intensely red beam of a heat-ray like that we had
+seen the giant crab use.
+
+The ray came, evidently, from the shore of the great lake with its
+submerged city of blue cylinders. It fell upon the face of the cliff
+just above us. Quickly the ladder was heated to cherry red. The face
+of the rock grew incandescent, cracked. Hot sparks rained down upon
+us.
+
+Slowly the ray moved down, toward us.
+
+"Guess we'd better call it off," said Ray. "They have the advantage
+right now. Better get to climbing down, Jim. This ladder is going to
+be burning my hands pretty soon."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I climbed down. Mildred and Ray scrambled down behind me.
+
+The ray followed us, keeping the metal at a cherry red just above
+Ray's hands.
+
+I looked down and saw a dozen of the giant crabs lumbering up out of
+the fungoid jungle from the direction of the great lake. Hideous
+things they were, with staring, stalked eyes, shining green antennae,
+polished red shells, claw-armed limbs. Like the one that had passed us
+in the upper cavern, they wore glistening white metal accoutrements.
+
+We clambered down, with the red ray following.
+
+I dropped to the ground among them, wet with the sweat of horror. I
+reeled in nausea from the intolerable odor of the crab-things; it was
+indescribable, overpowering.
+
+Curious rasping stridulations came from them, sounds which seemed to
+serve as means of communication, and which Mildred evidently
+understood.
+
+"They say that you will not be harmed, but that you must not go out,"
+she called down.
+
+I was seized by the pincher-like claws, held writhing in an
+unbreakable grasp, while the glittering eyes twisted about, looked at
+me, and the shining green tentacles wavered questioningly over me. My
+stomach revolted at the horrible odor.
+
+The crabs tore off my pack, even my clothing. Ray was similarly
+treated as soon as he reached the ground. Though they took Mildred's
+pack, they treated her with a curious respect.
+
+In a few minutes they released us. They had taken the packs, the rifle
+and ammunition, our medicine kit and the few instruments we had
+brought with us down the shaft, even our clothing. They turned us
+loose stark naked. Ray's face and neck went beet-red when he saw
+Mildred standing by him.
+
+The rasping sound came from one of them again.
+
+"It says you may stay with me," Mildred said. "They will not harm you
+unless you try again to get away. If you do, you die--as father did.
+They will keep what they took from you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Several of the creatures went scraping off, carrying the articles they
+had taken from us either in their claws or in the metal cases they
+wore. Several waited, staring at us with the stalked compound eyes,
+and waving the green antennae as if they were organs of some special
+sense.
+
+Two of the creatures waited at the foot of the metal ladder, holding
+the long slender white tubes of the heat-ray in their claws.
+
+"They say we can go now," Mildred said.
+
+She led the way toward the edge of the brilliant jungle. She seemed to
+be without false modesty, for I saw her glancing with evident
+admiration at Ray's lithe and powerful white-skinned figure. We
+followed her into the giant mushrooms, glad to escape the overpowering
+stench of the crabs.
+
+In a few minutes we arrived again at the strange building of the three
+blue cylinders. Mildred, noticing our discomfort, produced for each of
+us a piece of white silken fabric with which we draped ourselves.
+
+She had noticed my difficulty in walking on bare feet. She had me
+bathe them, then dressed them with a soothing yellow oil, and bandaged
+them skilfully.
+
+"Anyhow," she said later, "it is good to have both of you here with
+me. I am sorry indeed for you that you may never see your country
+again. But it is good fortune for me. I was so lonely."
+
+"These damned crabs don't know me!" Ray Summers muttered. "They think
+I'll play around like a pet kitten, for the rest of my life! They'll
+get their eyes opened. We'll spend the winter on Palm Beach yet!"
+
+"It seems to me that we're rather outnumbered." I said. "And it's
+rather more pleasant in here than outside."
+
+"I'm going to get that rifle," Ray declared, "and give these big crabs
+a little respect for humanity!"
+
+"Let's rest up a while first, anyhow," I urged.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently Mildred noticed how tired we were. She went into the third
+of the connected cylinders of blue crystal, was busy a few minutes and
+called us to the couches she had prepared there.
+
+"You may sleep," she told us. "The Things never come here. And they
+said they would not harm you, if you did not try to go out."
+
+We lay down on the silken beds. In a few minutes I was sleep. I awoke
+to feel a curious unease, a sense of impending catastrophe. Ray was
+bending over me, his face drawn with anxiety.
+
+"Something's happened!" he whispered. "She's gone!"
+
+I sat up, staring into the liquid blue vastness of the tall cylinder
+above us.
+
+"Listen! What's that?"
+
+A deep bell-note sounded out, brazen, clanging. Sonorous, throbbing,
+mighty, it rang through the cylindered rooms. Slowly it died; faded to
+silence with a last ringing pulse. Tense minutes of silence passed.
+Again it boomed out, throbbed, and died. After more long minutes there
+was yet a third.
+
+"Outside, somewhere!"
+
+Ray started; ran to the arched door. We looked out upon the dense
+forest of gold and crimson mushrooms that grew below the black cavern
+roof. Before us, across a few hundred yards of bare rocky beach, was
+the edge of the crystal lake with the city of blue cylinders upon its
+floor.
+
+"God! What's that?" Ray gripped my arm crushingly.
+
+A thin wailing scream came across the beach from the black lake. A
+piteous sound it was, plaintive, pleading. Higher and higher it rose,
+until it was a piercing silver note. Clear and sweet it was, but
+inexpressibly lonely, sorrowful, mournful. It sank slowly, died away.
+Again it rose and fell, and again.
+
+"It's Mildred!" I gasped. "Didn't she say something about singing to
+the crabs?"
+
+"Yes! I think she did. Well, if that's singing, it's wonderful! Had me
+feeling like I'd never see another human. But listen--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Liquid, trilling notes were rising, pealing out in a queer, swift
+rhythm. It was happy, joyous, carefree. The rippling golden tones made
+me think of the caroling of birds on a spring morning. Swiftly it rose
+and fell, pure and clear as the tinkle of a mountain brook.
+
+Mildred sang not words but notes of pure music.
+
+The gay song died.
+
+And the strong clear voice rose again with the force and challenge of
+bugle notes, with a swift marching time beating through it. It
+throbbed to a rhythm strange to me. It set my feet tingling to move;
+it set my heart to pulsing faster. It was a challenge to action, to
+battle.
+
+Unconsciously obeying the suggestion of the song, Ray whispered,
+"Let's get over and see what's going on."
+
+We leaped through the door and ran across four hundred yards of rocky
+beach to the edge of the lake. We stepped on a granite bluff a few
+yards above the water, to gaze upon as strange a sight as men ever
+saw.
+
+The black water lay before us, a transparent crystal sheet. On its
+rocky bottom we could see the innumerable clusters of upright azure
+cylinders that were the city of the crabs. The blue cylinders seemed
+to bend and waver in the water.
+
+A hundred yards away from us, over the dark water, was Mildred. She
+stood on a slender azure cylinder that came just to the surface. Tall,
+slender, superbly graceful, with only the scant bodice of green silken
+stuff about her, she looked like the statue of a goddess in white
+marble. Her head was thrown up, golden-brown hair fell behind her
+shoulders, and the pure notes of her song rang over the water.
+
+Beyond her, all about her, were thousands upon thousands of the giant
+crabs, swimming at the surface of the water. Their green antenna rose
+above the water, a curious forest of luminous tentacles, flexing,
+wavering. Green coils moved and swung in time to the strange rhythm of
+her song.
+
+The last note died. Her white arms fell in a gesture of finality. The
+thousands of twisting green antennae vanished below the water, and the
+giant red crabs swam swiftly back to the tall blue cylinders of their
+submerged city.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The white goddess turned and saw us.
+
+Her voice rang out in a golden shout of welcome. With a clean dive she
+slipped into the water and came swimming swiftly toward us. Her slim
+white body glided through the crystal water as smoothly as a fish.
+Reaching the shore she sprang to her feet and ran to meet Ray.
+
+"The Things come together when the giant bell rings, to listen to my
+song," she said. "They like my singing, as they liked mother's. But
+for that, they would not let us live. That is the reason they would
+not let us go."
+
+"I like your singing, too," Ray informed her. "Though at first you
+made me cry. It was so lonely."
+
+"The song was lonely because I have been lonely. Did you hear the glad
+song I sang because you have come?"
+
+"Sure! Great stuff! Made me feel like a kid at Christmas!"
+
+"Come," she said. "We will eat."
+
+Like a child, she took Ray's hand again, smiling naively up at him as
+she led the way toward the three sapphire cylinders.
+
+Back in the blue-vaulted dining room, Ray made Mildred sit with me at
+the little metal table while he served the little brown cakes and the
+dark-red soup and the fragrant amber drink. Mildred got up and brought
+a great metal bowl filled with tiny purple fruits that had a
+delicious, piquant tang.
+
+Ray was deeply thoughtful as he ate. Suddenly he sat back and cried
+out:
+
+"I've got it!"
+
+"Got what?" I demanded.
+
+"I want that rifle! Mildred can find out where it is. Then, when she
+sings, the crabs will all come. I'll get the gun, while she is
+singing, and hide it. Then when it comes time to get out, she will
+sing while you and I are getting our packs up the cliff. I can cover
+them with the rifle while she gets up to us."
+
+"Looks good enough," I agreed, "provided they all come to hear the
+singing."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He explained the plan at greater length to the girl. She assured him
+that the crabs all come when the bell-notes sound. She thought that
+she could make them return her furs, and find out where they had put
+the gun.
+
+My feet were much better than they had been, and Mildred dressed them
+again with the yellow oil. Ray examined them, said that I should be
+able to walk as well as ever in a few days.
+
+Considerable time went by. Since the crabs had taken our watches, we
+had no very accurate way of counting days; but I think we slept about
+a dozen times. Ray and Mildred spent a good deal of time together, and
+seemed not altogether to hate each other. By the end of the time my
+feet were quite well; I did not even lose a toe.
+
+We went over our plans for escape in great detail. The crabs had
+confiscated our clothing. Mildred managed to secure the return of her
+furs, and, incidentally, while she was about it, learned where the
+rifle was.
+
+Fortunately, perhaps realizing that it would be ruined by water, the
+crabs had not taken it to their submerged city. Being amphibious, they
+lived above water as easily as below, and much of their industrial
+equipment was above the surface. The great pumps which lifted the
+white phosphorescent liquid from the canals back to the cone above the
+ground were located beyond the great lake. I did not see the place,
+but Ray tells me that they had great engines and a wealth of strange
+and complex machinery there. It was at these pumps that they had left
+our rifle and instruments, as Mildred found when she was recovering
+her furs.
+
+They had taken our food, and we prepared as much more as we could
+carry, arranged sacks for it, and made quilted garments for ourselves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the three brazen notes clanged out, and Mildred ran across the
+beach and swam out to the blue cylinder to sing. Ray slipped hurriedly
+away, while the green forest of antennae was still growing up from the
+water about the girl.
+
+I waited above the beach, enchanted by the haunting, wordless melody
+of the gongs. It seemed that only a few minutes had passed, though it
+may have been an hour or more, when Ray was by my side again. He
+flourished the rifle.
+
+"I've got it! In good shape, too. Hasn't even been fired, though it
+looks like they have opened a box of cartridges, and cut open one or
+two. Maybe they didn't understand the outfit--or it may be such a
+primitive weapon that they aren't interested in it."
+
+We hurried up to the building of blue cylinders and carefully hid the
+gun and ammunition, as well as a sun compass, a pair of prism
+binoculars, and a few other articles Ray had recovered.
+
+In a few minutes Mildred, having seen Ray's return, finished her song
+and ran up to join us. We arranged our packs, and waited the next call
+of the throbbing brazen gong to make the attempt for freedom.
+
+We slept twice again before the clang of the great gong. Ray and
+Mildred were always together; I could not see that they were at all
+impatient.
+
+The bell note came, the awful brazen vibration of it ringing on the
+black cavern roof. It came when we were eating, in the liquid
+turquoise radiance of the lofty cylinder. We sprang out. Ray gave his
+last directions to Mildred.
+
+"Give us time to get to the top of the cliff by the shining fall. Then
+swim ashore and run. They may not notice. And if they do, we give 'em
+a taste of lead!"
+
+I was not very much surprised when he took the girl in his arms and
+put a burning kiss on her red lips. She gasped, but her struggles
+subsided very quickly; she clung to him as he freed her.
+
+She paused a moment in the door, before she ran down across the beach.
+A radiant light of joy was burning in her great blue eyes, even though
+tears were glistening there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ray and I waited, to give time for the giant crabs that guarded the
+ladder to get away. In about ten more minutes the second brazen gong
+sounded, and presently the third. We gathered up the heavy packs of
+food. Ray took the rifle and I the binoculars, and we slipped out into
+the brilliant mushroom forest.
+
+I stepped confidently out of the jungle into the clearing below the
+splendid opalescent fall of fire--and threw myself backward in
+trembling panic. A flaming crimson ray cut hissing into the towering
+mushrooms above my head.
+
+Mildred's confidence that the crabs would all gather at the ringing of
+the gong had been mistaken. The two guards had been waiting at the
+foot of the ladder, their flaming heat-rays ready for use.
+
+As I dived back into the jungle, I heard two quick reports of the
+rifle. I scrambled awkwardly to my feet, beneath the heavy pack. Ray
+stood alert beside me, the smoking rifle in his hand. The giant crabs
+had collapsed by the foot of the ladder, in grotesque and hideous
+metal-bound heaps of red shell and twisted limb. Blood was oozing from
+a ragged hole in the head of each.
+
+"Glad they were here," Ray muttered. "I wanted to try the gun out on
+'em. They're soft enough beneath the shell; the bullet tears 'em up
+inside. Let's get a move on!"
+
+He sprang past the revolting carcasses. I followed, holding my nose
+against their nauseating, charnel-house odor. We scrambled up the
+metal ladder.
+
+As we climbed, I could hear the haunting melody of Mildred's wordless
+song coming faint across the distance. Once I glanced back for a
+moment, and glimpsed her tiny white figure above the black water, with
+the thousands of green antennae rising in a luminous forest about her.
+
+We reached the top of the cliff, where the opalescent river plunged
+down in the flaming fall. Ray chose convenient boulders for shelter
+and quickly we flung ourselves flat. Ray replaced the fired cartridges
+in the rifle and leveled it across the rock before him. I unslung the
+binoculars and focussed them.
+
+"Watch 'em close," Ray muttered. "And tell me when to shoot."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The black lake lay below us, with the weird city of sapphire cylinders
+on its floor. I got the glasses upon Mildred's white form. Soon she
+dived from the turquoise pedestal, swam swiftly ashore and vanished in
+the vivid fungous jungle. The wavering green antennae vanished below
+the water; I watched the crabs swimming away. Some of them climbed out
+of the water and lumbered off in various directions.
+
+In fifteen minutes the slender white form of Mildred appeared at the
+foot of the ladder. She sprang over the dead crabs and scrambled
+nimbly up. Soon she was halfway up the face of the cliff, and there
+had been no sign of discovery. My hopes ran high.
+
+I was sweeping the whole plain with the binoculars, while Ray peered
+through the telescopic sights of the rifle. Suddenly I saw a giant
+crab pause as he lumbered along the edge of the black lake. He rose
+upright; his shining green antennae wavered. Then I saw him reaching
+with a knobbed claw for a slender silver tube slung to his harness.
+
+"Quick! The one by the lake! To the right of that canal!"
+
+I pointed quickly. Ray swung his gun about, aimed. A broad red beam
+flashed from the tube the thing carried, and fell upon the cliff. The
+report of Ray's rifle rang thunderously in my ears. The red ray was
+snapped off abruptly, and the giant crab rolled over into the black
+water of the lake. Half a dozen of the huge crabs were in sight. They
+all took alarm, probably having seen the flash of the red ray. They
+raised grotesque heads, twisted stalked eyes and waved green antennae.
+Some of them began to raise the metal tubes of the heat-ray.
+
+"Let's get all there are in sight!" Ray muttered.
+
+He began firing regularly, with deliberate precision. A few times he
+had to take two shots, but ordinarily one was enough to bring down a
+giant crab in a writhing red mass. Three times a red ray flashed out,
+once at the girl clambering up the ladder, twice at our position above
+the precipice. But the intense color of the ray announced its source,
+and Ray stopped each before it could be focussed to do damage.
+
+I looked over at Mildred and saw that she was still climbing bravely,
+a little over a hundred feet below.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the great red crabs began to climb out of the water, heat-ray
+tubes grasped in their claws. Ray fired as fast as he could load and
+aim. Still he shot with deliberate care, and almost every shot was
+effective.
+
+Intense, ruby-red rays flashed up from the lake shore. Twice, one of
+them beat scorchingly upon us for a moment. Once a rock beside us was
+fused and cracked with the heat. But Ray fired rapidly, and the rays
+winked out as fast as they were born.
+
+He was powder-stained, black and grimy. The heat-ray had singed his
+clothing. He was dripping perspiration. The gun was so hot that he
+could hardly handle it. But still the angry bark of the rifle rang
+out, almost with a deliberate rhythm. Ray was a fine shot in his youth
+on his father's Arizona ranch, but his best shooting, I think, was
+done from above that cascade of liquid fire, at the hordes of monster
+scarlet crabs.
+
+Mildred scrambled over the edge, unharmed. Her breast was heaving, but
+her face was bright with joy.
+
+"You are wonderful!" she gasped to Ray.
+
+We seized the packs and beat a hurried retreat. A crimson forest of
+the heat-rays flashed up behind us, and flamed upon the black walls
+and roof of the cavern until glistening lava became incandescent,
+cracked and fused.
+
+We were below the line of the rays. Quickly we made the bend in the
+cavern and followed at a halting run up the path beside the shimmering
+river of opalescent light. Before us the torrent of fire fell in a
+magnificent flaming arc from the roof.
+
+We rounded the pool of lambent milk of flame, passed the roaring
+torrent of coruscating liquid radiance and reached the ladder in the
+square, metal shaft. "If we can get to the top before they can get up
+here, we're safe," Ray said. "If we don't, this shaft will be a
+chimney of fire."
+
+In the haste of desperation, we attacked the thousand-foot climb. I
+went first, Mildred below me, and Ray, with the rifle, in the rear.
+Our heavy packs were a terrible impediment, but we dared not attempt
+to go on without them. The metal rungs were four feet apart; it was no
+easy task to scramble from one to the next, again and again, for
+hundreds of times.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It must have taken us an hour to make it. We should have been caught
+long before we reached the top, but the giant crabs were slow in their
+lumbering movements. Despite their evident intelligence, they seemed
+to lack anything like our railways and automobiles.
+
+The cold gray light of the polar sky came about us; a dull,
+purple-blue square grew larger above. I clambered over the last rung,
+flung myself across the top of the metal shaft. Looking down at the
+tiny fleck of white light so far below, I saw a bit of red move in it.
+
+"A crab!" I shouted. "Hurry!"
+
+Mildred was just below me. I took her pack and helped her over the
+edge.
+
+Red flame flared up the shaft.
+
+We reached over, seized Ray's arms and fairly jerked him out of the
+ruby ray.
+
+The bitterly cold wind struck our hot, perspiring bodies as we
+scrambled down the rungs outside the square metal shaft. Mildred
+shivered in her thin attire.
+
+"Out of the frying pan into the ice box!" Ray jested grimly as we
+dropped, to the frozen plain.
+
+Quickly we tore open our packs. Ray and I snatched out clothing and
+wrapped up the trembling girl. In a few minutes we had her snugly
+dressed in the fur garments that had been Major Meriden's. Then we got
+into the quilted garments we had made for ourselves.
+
+The intensely red heat-beam still flared up the shaft. Ray looked at
+it in satisfaction.
+
+"They'll have it so hot they can't get up it for some time yet," he
+remarked hopefully.
+
+We shouldered our packs and set out over the wilderness of snow,
+turning our backs upon the metal-bound lake of fire, with the tall
+cone of iridescent flame rising in its center.
+
+The deep, purple-blue sky was clear, and, for a rarity, there was not
+much wind. I doubt that the temperature was twenty below. But it was a
+violent change from the warm cavern. Mildred was blue and shivering.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In two hours the metal rim below the great white cone had vanished
+behind the black ice-crags. We passed near the wreck of Major
+Meriden's plane and reached our last camp, where we had left the tent
+sledge, primus stove, and most of our instruments. The tent was still
+stretched, though banked with snow. We got Mildred inside, chafed her
+hands, and soon had her comfortable.
+
+Then Ray went out and soon returned with a sealed tin of oil from the
+wrecked plane, with which he lit the primus stove. Soon the tent was
+warm. We melted snow and cooked thick red soup. After the girl had
+made a meal of the scalding soup, with the little golden cakes, she
+professed to be feeling as well as ever.
+
+"We can fix our plane!" Ray said. "There's a perfectly good prop on
+Meriden's plane!"
+
+We went back to the wreck, found the tools, and removed an undamaged
+propeller. This we packed on the sledge, with a good supply of fuel
+for the stove.
+
+"I'm sure we're safe now, so far as the crab-things go," he said. "I
+don't fancy they'd get around very well in the snow."
+
+In an hour we broke camp, and made ten miles of the distance back to
+the plane before we stopped. We were anxious about Mildred, but she
+seemed to stand the journey admirably; she is a marvelous physical
+specimen. She seemed running over with gay vivacity of spirit; she
+asked innumerable questions of the world which she had known only at
+second-hand from her mother's words.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The weather smiled on us during the march back to the plane as much as
+it had frowned on the terrible journey to the cone. We had an
+abundance of food and fuel, and we made it in eight easy stages. Once
+there was a light fall of snow, but the air was unusually warm and
+calm for the season.
+
+We found the plane safe. It was the work of but a short time to remove
+the broken propeller and replace it with the one we had brought from
+the wrecked ship. We warmed and started the engine, broke the skids
+loose from the ice, turned the plane around, and took off safely from
+the tiny scrap of smooth ice.
+
+Mildred seemed amazed and immensely delighted at the sensations of her
+first trip aloft.
+
+A few hours later we were landing beside the _Albatross_, in the
+leaden blue sea beyond the ice barrier. Bluff Captain Harper greeted
+us in amazed delight as we climbed to the deck.
+
+"You're just in time!" he said. "The relief expedition we landed came
+back a week ago. We had no idea you could still be alive, with only a
+week's provisions. We were sailing to-morrow. But tell us! What
+happened? Your passenger--"
+
+"We just stopped to pick up my fiancee," Ray grinned. "Captain, may I
+present Miss Mildred Meriden? We'll be wanting you to marry us right
+away."
+
+
+THE MENACE OF THE INSECT
+
+It is possible that future study may tell man enough about insects to
+enable him to eradicate them. This, however, is more than can be
+reasonably expected, for the more we cultivate the earth the better we
+make conditions for these enemies. The insect thrives on the work of
+man. And having made conditions ideal for the insect, with great
+expanses of cultivated food fitted to his needs, it is an optimist who
+can believe that at the same time we can make other conditions which
+will be so unfavorable as to cause him to disappear completely. The
+two things do not go together.
+
+The insect is much better fitted for life than is man. He can survive
+long periods of famine, he can survive extremes of heat and cold. The
+insect produces great numbers of young which have no long period of
+infancy requiring the attention of the parents over a large part of
+their life. Every function of the insect is directed toward the
+propagation of the race and the use of minimum effort in every other
+direction.
+
+It is even possible in some cases, the water flea, for example, for
+the female to produce young without the necessity of fertilization by
+the male. In order to perform the necessary work to insure food
+supplies for the winter other insects have developed highly
+specialized workers, especially fitted to do particular kinds of
+labor. Ants and termites are in this class.
+
+If we examine the organization of insects closely we shall find but
+one point at which they are vulnerable. This is in their lack of
+ability to reason. True, there is considerable evidence to support the
+belief that some insects are capable of simple reasoning, but the
+development in this direction is only of the most elementary nature.
+As compared to man it is safe to say that they do not reason. They are
+guided by instinct.
+
+This again is the most efficient way to organize their affairs. It
+requires no long period of training. They can begin performing all
+their useful functions as soon as their bodily development makes it
+possible. No one need teach them how to catch their prey, how to build
+their nests or shelters. Instinct takes care of this. But this,
+obviously the best system in a world wholly governed by instinct, is
+not so desirable when the instinctively actuated insect encounters
+another form of life, as man, which is capable of reason. The
+reasoning individual can play all kinds of tricks on the individual
+who is actuated by instinct.
+
+
+
+
+The Ghost World
+
+_By Sewell Peaslee Wright_
+
+[Illustration: _My whole attention was focused upon the strange
+beings._]
+
+[Sidenote: Commander John Hanson records another of his thrilling
+interplanetary adventures with the Special Patrol Service.]
+
+
+I was asleep when our danger was discovered, but I knew the instant
+the attention signal sounded that the situation was serious. Kincaide,
+my second officer, had a cool head, and he would not have called me
+except in a tremendous emergency.
+
+"Hanson speaking!" I snapped into the microphone. "What's up, Mr.
+Kincaide?"
+
+"A field of meteorites sweeping into our path, sir." Kincaide's voice
+was tense. "I have altered our course as much as I dared and am
+reducing speed at emergency rate, but this is the largest swarm of
+meteorites I have ever seen. I am afraid that we must pass through at
+least a section of it."
+
+"With you in a moment, Mr. Kincaide!" I dropped the microphone and
+snatched up my robe, knotting its cord about me as I hurried out of my
+stateroom. In those days, interplanetary ships did not have their
+auras of repulsion rays to protect them from meteorites, it must be
+remembered. Two skins of metal were all that lay between the _Ertak_
+and all the dangers of space.
+
+I took the companionway to the navigating room two steps at a time and
+fairly burst into the room.
+
+Kincaide was crouched over the two charts that pictured the space
+around us, microphone pressed to his lips. Through the plate glass
+partition I could see the men in the operating room tensed over their
+wheels and levers and dials. Kincaide glanced up as I entered, and
+motioned with his free hand towards the charts.
+
+One glance convinced me that he had not overestimated our danger. The
+space to right and left, and above and below, was fairly peppered with
+tiny pricks of greenish light that moved slowly across the milky faces
+of the charts.
+
+From the position of the ship, represented as a glowing red spark, and
+measuring the distances roughly by means of the fine black lines
+graved in both directions upon the surface of the chart, it was
+evident to any understanding observer that disaster of a most terrible
+kind was imminent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kincaide muttered into his microphone, and out of the tail of my eye I
+could see his orders obeyed on the instant by the men in the operating
+room. I could feel the peculiar, sickening surge that told of speed
+being reduced, and the course being altered, but the cold, brutally
+accurate charts before me assured me that no action we dared take
+would save us from the meteorites.
+
+"We're in for it, Mr. Kincaide. Continue to reduce speed as much as
+possible, and keep bearing away, as at present. I believe we can avoid
+the thickest portion of the field, but we shall have to take our
+chances with the fringe."
+
+"Yes, sir!" said Kincaide, without lifting his eyes from the chart.
+His voice was calm and businesslike, now; with the responsibility on
+my shoulders, as commander, he was the efficient, level-headed
+thinking machine that had endeared him to me as both fellow-officer
+and friend.
+
+Leaving the charts to Kincaide, I sounded the general emergency
+signal, calling every man and officer of the _Ertak's_ crew to his
+post, and began giving orders through the microphone.
+
+"Mr. Correy,"--Correy was my first officer--"please report at once to
+the navigating room. Mr. Hendricks, make the rounds of all duty posts,
+please, and give special attention to the disintegrator ray operators.
+The ray generators are to be started at once, full speed." Hendricks,
+I might say, was a junior officer, and a very good one, although
+quick-tempered and excitable--failings of youth. He had only recently
+shipped with us to replace Anderson Croy, who--but that has already
+been recorded.[2]
+
+[Footnote 2: "The Dark Side of Antri," in the January, 1931, issue of
+Astounding Stories.]
+
+These preparations made, I glanced at the twin charts again. The
+peppering of tiny green lights, each of which represented a meteoritic
+body, had definitely shifted in relation to the position of the
+strongly-glowing red spark that was the _Ertak_, but a quick
+comparison of the two charts showed that we would be certain to pass
+through--again I use land terms to make my meaning clear--the upper
+right fringe of the field.
+
+The great cluster of meteorites was moving in the same direction as
+ourselves now; Kincaide's change of course had settled that matter
+nicely. Naturally, this was the logical course, since should we come
+in contact with any of them, the impact would bear a relation to only
+the _difference_ in our speeds, instead of the _sum_, as would be the
+case if we struck at a wide angle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was difficult to stand without grasping a support of some kind, and
+walking was almost impossible, for the reduction of our tremendous
+speed, and even the slightest change of direction, placed terrific
+strains upon the ship and everything in it. Space ships, at space
+speeds, must travel like the old-fashioned bullets if those within are
+to feel at ease.
+
+"I believe, Mr. Kincaide, it might be well to slightly increase the
+power in the gravity pads," I suggested. Kincaide nodded and spoke
+briefly into his microphone; an instant later I felt my weight
+increase perhaps fifty per cent, and despite the inertia of my body,
+opposed to both the change in speed and direction of the _Ertak_, I
+could now stand without support, and could walk without too much
+difficulty.
+
+The door of the navigating room was flung open, and Correy entered,
+his face alight with curiosity and eagerness. An emergency meant
+danger, and few beings in the universe have loved danger more than
+Correy.
+
+"We're in for it, Mr. Correy," I said, with a nod towards the charts.
+"Swarm of meteorites, and we can't avoid them."
+
+"Well, we've dodged through them before, sir," smiled Correy. "We can
+do it again."
+
+"I hope so, but this is the largest field of them I have ever seen.
+Look at the charts: they're thicker than flies."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Correy glanced at the charts, slapped Kincaide across his bowed, tense
+shoulders, and laughed aloud.
+
+"Trust the old _Ertak_ to worm her way through, sir," he said. "The
+ray crews are on duty, I presume?"
+
+"Yes. But I doubt that the rays will be of much assistance to us.
+Particularly if these are stony meteorites--and as you know, the odds
+are about ten to one against their being of ferrous composition. The
+rays, deducting the losses due to the utter lack of a conducting
+medium, will be insufficient protection. They will help, of course.
+The iron meteorites they will take care of effectively, but the
+conglomerate nature of the stony meteorites does not make them
+particularly susceptible to the disintegrating rays.
+
+"We shall do what we can, but our success will depend largely upon
+good luck--or Divine Providence."
+
+"At any rate, sir," replied Correy, and his voice had lost some of its
+lightness, "we are upon routine patrol and not upon special mission.
+If we do crack up, there is no emergency call that will remain
+unanswered."
+
+"No," I said dryly. "There will be just another 'Lost in Space' report
+in the records of the Service, and the _Ertak's_ name will go up on
+the tablet of lost ships. In any case, we have done and shall do what
+we can. In ten minutes we shall know all there is to know. That about
+right, Mr. Kincaide?"
+
+"Ten minutes?" Kincaide studied the charts with narrowed eyes,
+mentally balancing distance and speed. "We should be within the danger
+area in about that length of time, sir," he answered. "And out of
+it--if we come out--three or four minutes later."
+
+"We'll come out of it," said Correy positively.
+
+I walked heavily across the room and studied the charts again. Space
+above and below, to the right and the left of us, was powdered with
+the green points of light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Correy joined me, his feet thumping with the unaccustomed weight given
+him by the increase in gravity. As he bent over the charts, I heard
+him draw in his breath sharply.
+
+Kincaide looked up. Correy looked up. I looked up. The glance of each
+man swept the faces, read the eyes, of the other two. Then, with one
+accord, we all three glanced up at the clocks--more properly, at the
+twelve-figured dial of the Earth clock, for none of us had any great
+love for the metric Universal system of time-keeping.
+
+Ten minutes.... Less than that, now.
+
+"Mr. Correy," I said, as calmly as I could, "you will relieve Mr.
+Kincaide as navigating officer. Mr. Kincaide, present my compliments
+to Mr. Hendricks, and ask him to explain the situation to the crew.
+You will instruct the disintegrator ray operators in their duties, and
+take charge of their activities. Start operation at your discretion;
+you understand the necessity."
+
+"Yes, sir!" Kincaide saluted sharply, and I returned his salute. We
+did not shake hands, the Earth gesture of--strangely enough--both
+greeting and farewell, but we both realized that this might well be a
+final parting. The door closed behind him, and Correy and I were left
+together to watch the creeping hands of the Earth clock, the twin
+charts with their thick spatter of green lights, and the two fiery red
+sparks, one on each chart, that represented the _Ertak_ sweeping
+recklessly towards the swarming danger ahead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In other accounts of my experiences in the Special Patrol Service I
+feel that I have written too much about myself. After all, I have run
+my race; a retired commander of the Service, and an old, old man, with
+the century mark well behind me, my only use is to record, in this
+fashion, some of those things the Service accomplished in the old days
+when the worlds of the Universe were strange to each other, and space
+travel was still an adventure to many.
+
+The Universe is not interested in old men; it is concerned only with
+youth and action. It forgets that once we were young men, strong,
+impetuous, daring. It forgets what we did; but that has always been
+so. It always will be so. John Hanson, retired Commander of the
+Special Patrol Service, is fit only to amuse the present generation
+with his tales of bygone days.
+
+Well, so be it. I am content. I have lived greatly; certainly I would
+not exchange my memories of those bold, daring days even for youth and
+strength again, had I to live that youth and waste that strength in
+this softened, gilded age.
+
+But no more of this; it is too easy for an old man to rumble on about
+himself. It is only the young John Hanson, Commander of the _Ertak_,
+who can interest those who may pick up and read what I am writing
+here.
+
+I did not waste the minutes measured by that clock, grouped with our
+other instruments in the navigating room of the _Ertak_. I wrote
+hastily in the ship's log, stating the facts briefly and without
+feeling. If we came through, the log would read better thus; if not,
+and by some strange chance it came to human eyes, then the Universe
+would know at least that the _Ertak's_ officers did not flinch from
+even such a danger.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As I finished the entry, Correy spoke:
+
+"Kincaide's estimate was not far off, sir," he said, with a swift
+glance at the clock. "Here we go!" It was less than half a minute
+short of the ten estimated by Kincaide.
+
+I nodded and bent over the television disc--one of the huge, hooded
+affairs we used in those days. Widening the field to the greatest
+angle, and with low power, I inspected the space before us on all
+sides.
+
+The charts, operated by super-radio reflexes, had not lied about the
+danger into which we were passing--had passed. We were in the midst of
+a veritable swarm of meteorites of all sizes.
+
+They were not large; I believe the largest I saw had a mass of not
+more than three or four times that of the _Ertak_ herself. Some of the
+smaller bodies were only fifty or sixty feet in diameter.
+
+They were jagged and irregular in shape, and they seemed to spin at
+varying speeds, like tiny worlds.
+
+As I watched, fixing my view now on the space directly in our path, I
+saw that our disintegrator ray men were at work. Deep in the bowels of
+the _Ertak_, the moan of the ray generators had deepened in note; I
+could even feel the slight vibration beneath my feet.
+
+One of the meteorites slowly crumbled on top, the dust of
+disintegration hovering in a compact mass about the body. More and
+more of it melted away. The spinning motion grew irregular, eccentric,
+as the center of gravity was changed by the action of the ray.
+
+Another ray, two more, centered on the wobbling mass. It was directly
+in our path, looming up larger and larger every second.
+
+Faster and faster it melted, the rays eating into it from four sides.
+But it was perilously near now; I had to reduce power in order to keep
+all of it within the field of my disc. If--
+
+The thing vanished before the very nose of the ship, not an instant
+too soon. I glanced up at the surface temperature indicator, and saw
+the big black hand move slowly for a degree or two, and stop. It was a
+very sensitive instrument, and registered even the slight friction of
+our passage through the disintegrated dust of the meteorite.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our rays were working desperately, but disintegrator rays are not
+nearly so effective in space as in an atmosphere of some kind. Half a
+dozen times it seemed that we must crash head on into one of the
+flying bodies, but our speed was reduced now to such an extent that we
+were going but little faster than the meteorites, and this fact was
+all that saved us. We had more time for utilizing our rays.
+
+We nosed upward through the trailing fringe of the swarm in safety.
+The great field of meteorites was now below and ahead of us. We had
+won through! The _Ertak_ was safe, and--
+
+"There seems to be another directly above us, sir," commented Correy
+quietly, speaking for the first time since we had entered the area of
+danger. "I believe your disc is not picking it up."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Correy," I said. While operating on an entirely
+different principle, his two charts had certain very definite
+advantages: they showed the entire space around us, instead of but a
+portion.
+
+I picked up the meteorite he had mentioned without difficulty. It was
+a large body, about three times the mass of the _Ertak_, and some
+distance above us--a laggard in the group we had just eluded.
+
+"Will it coincide with our path at any point, Mr. Correy?" I asked
+doubtfully. The television disc could not, of course, give me this
+information.
+
+"I believe so; yes," replied Correy, frowning over his charts. "Are
+the rays on it, sir?"
+
+"Yes. All of them, I judge, but they are making slow work of it." I
+fell silent, bending lower over the great hooded disc.
+
+There were a dozen, a score of rays playing upon the surface of the
+meteorite. A halo of dust hung around the rapidly diminishing body,
+but still the mass melted all too slowly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pressing the attention signal for Kincaide, I spoke sharply into the
+microphone:
+
+"Mr. Kincaide, is every ray on that large meteorite above us?"
+
+"Yes, sir," he replied instantly.
+
+"Full power?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Very well; carry on, Mr. Kincaide." I turned to Correy; he had just
+glanced from his charts to the clock, with its jerking second hand,
+and back to his charts.
+
+"They'll have to do it in the next ten seconds, sir," he said.
+"Otherwise--" Correy shrugged, and his eyes fixed with a peculiar,
+fascinated stare on the charts. He was looking death squarely in the
+eyes.
+
+Ten seconds! It was not enough. I had watched the rays working, and I
+knew their power to disintegrate this death-dealing stone that was
+hurtling along above us while we rose, helplessly, into its path.
+
+I did not ask Correy if it was possible to alter the course enough,
+and quickly enough, to avoid that fateful path. Had it been possible
+without tearing the _Ertak_ to pieces with the strain of it, Correy
+would have done it seconds ago.
+
+I glanced up swiftly at the relentless, jerking second hand. Seven
+seconds gone! Three seconds more.
+
+The rays were doing all that could be expected of them. There was only
+a tiny fragment of the meteorite left, and it was dwindling swiftly.
+But our time was passing even more rapidly.
+
+The bit of rock loomed up at me from the disc. It seemed to fly up
+into my face, to meet me.
+
+"Got us, Correy!" I said hoarsely. "Good-by, old-man!"
+
+I think he tried to reply. I saw his lips open; the flash of the
+bright light from the ethon tubes on his big white teeth.
+
+Then there was a crash that shook the whole ship. I shot into the air.
+I remember falling ... terribly.
+
+A blinding flash of light that emanated from the very center of my
+brain, a sickening sense of utter catastrophe, and ... blackness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think I was conscious several seconds before I finally opened my
+eyes. My mind was still wandering; my thoughts kept flying around in
+huge circles that kept closing in.
+
+We had hit the meteorite. I remembered the crash. I remembered
+falling. I remembered striking my head.
+
+But I was still alive. There was air to breathe and there was firm
+material under me. I opened my eyes.
+
+For the first instant, it seemed I was in an utterly strange room.
+Nothing was familiar. Everything was--was _inverted_. Then I glanced
+upward, and I saw what had happened.
+
+I was lying on the ceiling of the navigating room. Over my head were
+the charts, still glowing, the chronometers in their gimballed beds,
+and the television disc. Beside me, sprawled out limply, was Correy, a
+trickle of dried blood on his cheek. A litter of papers, chairs,
+framed licenses and other movable objects were strewn on and around
+us.
+
+My first instinctive, foolish thought was that the ship was upside
+down. Man has a ground-trained mind, no matter how many years he may
+travel space. Then, of course, I realized that in the open void there
+is not top nor bottom; the illusion is supplied, in space ships, by
+the gravity pads. Somehow, the shock of impact had reversed the
+polarity of the leads to the pads, and they had become repulsion pads.
+That was why I had dropped from the floor to the ceiling.
+
+All this flashed through my mind in an instant as I dragged myself
+toward Correy. Dragged myself because my head was throbbing so that I
+dared not stand up, and one shoulder, my left, was numb.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For an instant I thought that Correy was dead. Then, as I bent over
+him, I saw a pulse leaping just under the angle of his jaw.
+
+"Correy, old man!" I whispered. "Do you hear me?" All the formality of
+the Service was forgotten for the time. "Are you hurt badly?"
+
+His eyelids flickered, and he sighed; then, suddenly, he looked up at
+me--and smiled!
+
+"We're still here, sir?"
+
+"After a fashion. Look around; see what's happened?"
+
+He glanced about curiously, frowning. His wits were not all with him
+yet.
+
+"We're in a mess, aren't we?" he grinned. "What's the matter?"
+
+I told him what I thought, and he nodded slowly, feeling his head
+tenderly.
+
+"How long ago did it happen?" he asked. "The blooming clock's upside
+down; can you read it?"
+
+I could--with an effort.
+
+"Over twenty minutes," I said. "I wonder how the rest of the men are?"
+
+With an effort, I got to my feet and peered into the operating room.
+Several of the men were moving about, dazedly, and as I signalled to
+them, reassuringly, a voice hailed us from the doorway:
+
+"Any orders, sir?"
+
+It was Kincaide. He was peering over what had been the top of the
+doorway, and he was probably the most disreputable-looking officer who
+had ever worn the blue-and-silver uniform of the Service. His nose was
+bloody and swollen to twice its normal size. Both eyes were blackened,
+and his hair, matted with blood, was plastered in ragged swirls across
+his forehead.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Kincaide; plenty of them. Round up enough of the men to
+locate the trouble with the gravity pads; there's a reversed
+connection somewhere. But don't let them make the repairs until the
+signal is given. Otherwise, we'll all fall on our heads again. Mr.
+Correy and I will take care of the injured."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next half hour was a trying one. Two men had been killed outright,
+and another died before we could do anything to save him. Every man in
+the crew was shaken up and bruised, but by the time the check was
+completed, we had a good half of our personnel on duty.
+
+Returning at last to the navigating room, I pressed the attention
+signal for Kincaide, and got his answer immediately.
+
+"Located the trouble yet, Mr. Kincaide?" I asked anxiously.
+
+"Yes, sir! Mr. Hendricks has been working with a group of men and has
+just made his report. They are ready when you are."
+
+"Good!" I drew a sigh of relief. It had been easier than I thought.
+Pressing the general attention signal, I broadcasted the warning,
+giving particular instructions to the men in charge of the injured.
+Then I issued orders to Hendricks:
+
+"Reverse the current in five seconds, Mr. Hendricks, and stand by for
+further instructions."
+
+Hastily, then, Correy and I followed the orders we had given the men.
+Briefly we stood on our heads against the wall, feeling very foolish,
+and dreading the fall we knew was coming.
+
+It came. We slid down the wall and lit heavily on our feet, while the
+litter that had been on the ceiling with us fell all around us.
+Miraculously, the ship seemed to have righted herself. Correy and I
+picked ourselves up and looked around.
+
+"We're still operating smoothly," I commented with a sweeping glance
+at the instruments over the operating table. "Everything seems in
+order."
+
+"Did you notice the speed indicator, sir?" asked Correy grimly. "When
+he fell, one of the men in the operating room must have pulled the
+speed lever all the way over. We're at maximum space speed, sir, and
+have been for nearly an hour, with no one at the controls."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We stared at each other dully. Nearly an hour, at maximum space
+speed--a speed seldom used except in case of great emergency. With no
+one at the controls, and the ship set at maximum deflection from her
+course.
+
+That meant that for nearly an hour we had been sweeping into infinite
+space in a great arc, at a speed I disliked to think about.
+
+"I'll work out our position at once," I said, "and in the meantime,
+reduce speed to normal as quickly as possible. We must get back on our
+course at the earliest possible moment."
+
+We hurried across to the charts that were our most important aides in
+proper navigation. By comparing the groups of stars there with our
+space charts of the universe, the working out of our position was
+ordinarily, a simple matter.
+
+But now, instead of milky rectangles, ruled with fine black lines,
+with a fiery red speck in the center and the bodies of the universe
+grouped around in green points of light, there were only nearly blank
+rectangles, shot through with vague, flickering lights that revealed
+nothing except the presence of disaster.
+
+"The meteoric fragment wiped out some of our plates, I imagine," said
+Correy slowly. "The thing's useless."
+
+I nodded, staring down at the crawling lights on the charts.
+
+"We'll have to set down for repairs, Mr. Correy. If," I added, "we can
+find a place."
+
+Correy glanced up at the attraction meter.
+
+"I'll take a look in the big disc," he suggested. "There's a sizeable
+body off to port. Perhaps our luck's changed."
+
+He bent his head under the big hood, adjusting the controls until he
+located the source of the registered attraction.
+
+"Right!" he said, after a moment's careful scrutiny. "She's as big as
+Earth, I'd venture, and I believe I can detect clouds, so there should
+be atmosphere. Shall we try it, sir?"
+
+"Yes. We're helpless until we make repairs. As big as Earth, you said?
+Is she familiar?"
+
+Correy studied the image under the hood again, long and carefully.
+
+"No, sir," he said, looking up and shaking his head. "She's a new one
+on me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Conning the ship first by means of the television disc, and navigating
+visually as we neared the strange sphere, we were soon close enough to
+make out the physical characteristics of this unknown world.
+
+Our spectroscopic tests had revealed the presence of atmosphere
+suitable for breathing, although strongly laden with mineral fumes
+which, while possibly objectionable, would probably not be dangerous.
+
+So far as we could see, there was but one continent, somewhat north of
+the equator, roughly triangular in shape, with its northernmost point
+reaching nearly to the Pole.
+
+"It's an unexplored world, sir. I'm certain of that," said Correy. "I
+am sure I would have remembered that single, triangular continent had
+I seen it on any of our charts." In those days, of course, the
+Universe was by no means so well mapped as it is today.
+
+"If not unknown, it is at least uncharted," I replied. "Rough looking
+country, isn't it? No sign of life, either, that the disc will
+reveal."
+
+"That's as well, sir. Better no people than wild natives who might
+interfere with our work. Any choice in the matter of a spot on which
+to set her down?"
+
+I inspected the great, triangular continent carefully. Towards the
+north it was a mass of snow covered mountains, some of them, from
+their craters, dead volcanoes. Long spurs of these ranges reached
+southward, with green and apparently fertile valleys between. The
+southern edge was covered with dense tropical vegetation; a veritable
+jungle.
+
+"At the base of that central spur there seems to be a sort of
+plateau," I suggested. "I believe that would be a likely spot."
+
+"Very well, sir," replied Correy, and the old _Ertak_, reduced to
+atmospheric speed, swiftly swept toward the indicated position, while
+Correy kept a wary eye on the surface temperature gauge, and I swept
+the terrain for any sign of intelligent life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I found a number of trails, particularly around the base of the
+foothills, but they were evidently game trails, for there were no
+dwelling places of any kind; no cities, no villages, not even a single
+habitation of any kind that the searching eyes of the disc could
+detect.
+
+Correy set her down as neatly and as softly as a rose petal drifts to
+the ground. Roses, I may add, are a beautiful and delicate flower,
+with very soft petals, peculiar to my native Earth.
+
+We opened the main exit immediately. I watched the huge, circular door
+back slowly out of its threads, and finally swing aside, swiftly and
+silently, in the grip of its mighty gimbals, with the weird,
+unearthly feeling I have always had when about to step foot on some
+strange star where no man has trod before.
+
+The air was sweet, and delightfully fresh after being cooped up for
+weeks in the _Ertak_, with her machine-made air. A little thinner, I
+should judge, than the air to which we were accustomed, but strangely
+exhilarating, and laden with a faint scent of some unknown
+constituent--undoubtedly the mineral element our spectroscope had
+revealed but not identified. Gravity, I found upon passing through the
+exit, was normal. Altogether an extremely satisfactory repair station.
+
+Correy's guess as to what had happened proved absolutely accurate.
+Along the top of the _Ertak_, from amidships to within a few feet of
+her pointed stem, was a jagged groove that had destroyed hundreds of
+the bright, coppery discs, set into the outer skin of the ship, that
+operated our super-radio reflex charts. The groove was so deep, in
+places, that it must have bent the outer skin of the _Ertak_ down
+against the inner skin. A foot or more--it was best not to think of
+what would have happened then.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the time we completed our inspection dusk was upon us--a long,
+lingering dusk, due, no doubt, to the afterglow resulting from the
+mineral content of the air. I'm no white-skinned, stoop-shouldered
+laboratory man, so I'm not sure that was the real reason. It sounds
+logical, however.
+
+"Mr. Correy, I think we shall break out our field equipment and give
+all men not on watch an opportunity to sleep out in the fresh air," I
+said. "Will you give the orders, please?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Mr. Hendricks will stand the eight to twelve watch as
+usual?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Mr. Kincaide will relieve him at midnight, and you will take over at
+four."
+
+"Very well, sir." Correy turned to give the orders, and in a few
+minutes an orderly array of shelter tents made a single street in
+front of the fat, dully-gleaming side of the _Ertak_. Our tents were
+at the head of this short company street, three of them in a little
+row.
+
+After the evening meal, cooked over open fires, with the smoke of the
+very resinous wood we had collected hanging comfortably in the still
+air, the men gave themselves up to boisterous, noisy games, which, I
+confess, I should have liked very much to participate in. They raced
+and tumbled around the two big fires like schoolboys on a lark. Only
+those who have spent most of their days in the metal belly of a space
+ship know the sheer joy of utter physical freedom.
+
+Correy, Kincaide and I sat before our tents and watched them, chatting
+about this and that--I have long since forgotten what. But I shall
+never forget what occurred just before the watch changed that night.
+Nor will any man of the _Ertak's_ crew.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was just a few minutes before midnight. The men had quieted down
+and were preparing to turn in. I had given orders that this first
+night they could suit themselves about retiring; a good officer, and I
+tried to be one, is never afraid to give good men a little rein, now
+and then.
+
+The fires had died down to great heaps of red coals, filmed with
+ashes, and, aside from the brilliant galaxy of stars overhead, there
+was no light from above. Either this world had no moons, not even a
+single moon, like my native Earth, or it had not yet arisen.
+
+Kincaide rose lazily, stretched himself, and glanced at his watch.
+
+"Seven till twelve, sir," he said. "I believe I'll run along and
+relieve--"
+
+He never finished that sentence. From somewhere there came a rushing
+sound, and a damp, stringy net, a living, horrible, _something_,
+descended upon us out of the night.
+
+In an instant, what had been an orderly encampment became a bedlam. I
+tried to fight against the stringy, animated, nearly intangible mass,
+or masses, that held me, but my arms, my legs, my whole body, was
+bound as with strings and loops of elastic bands.
+
+Strange whispering sounds filled the air, audible above the shouting
+of the men. The net about me grew tighter; I felt myself being lifted
+from the ground. Others were being treated the same way; one of the
+_Ertak's_ crew shot straight up, not a dozen feet away, writhing and
+squirming. Then, at an elevation of perhaps twice my height, he was
+hurried away.
+
+Hendrick's voice called out my name from the _Ertak's_ exit, and I
+shouted a warning:
+
+"Hendrick! Go back! Close the emergency--" Then a gluey mass cut
+across my mouth, and, as though carried on huge soft springs, I was
+hurried away, with the sibilant, whispering sounds louder and closer
+than ever. With me, as nearly as I could judge, went every man who had
+not been on duty in the ship.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I ceased struggling, and immediately the rubbery network about me
+loosened. It seemed to me that the whisperings about me were suddenly
+approving. We were in the grip, then, of some sort of intelligent
+beings, ghost-like and invisible though they were.
+
+After a time, during which we were all, in a ragged group, being borne
+swiftly towards the mountains, all at a common level from the ground,
+I managed to turn my head so that I could see, against the star-lit
+sky, something of the nature of the things that had made us captive.
+
+As is not infrequently the case, in trying to describe things of an
+utterly different world, I find myself at a loss for words. I think of
+jellyfish, such as inhabit the seas of most of the inhabited planets,
+and yet this is not a good description.
+
+These creatures were pale, and almost completely transparent. What
+their forms might be, I could not even guess. I could make out
+writhing, tentacle-like arms, and wrinkled, flabby excrudescences and
+that was all. That these creatures were huge, was evident from the
+fact that they, apparently walking, from the irregular, undulating
+motion, held us easily ten or a dozen feet from the ground.
+
+With the release of the pressure about my body I was able to talk
+again, and I called out to Correy, who was fighting his way along,
+muttering, angrily, just ahead of me.
+
+"Correy! No use fighting them. Save your strength, man!"
+
+"Then? What are they, in God's name? What spawn of hell--"
+
+"The Commander is right, Correy," interrupted Kincaide, who was not
+far from my first officer. "Let's get our breaths and try to figure
+out what's happened. I'm winded!" His voice gave plentiful evidence of
+the struggle he had put up.
+
+"I want to know where I'm going, and why!" growled Correy, ceasing his
+struggling, nevertheless. "What have us? Are they fish or flesh or
+fowl?"
+
+"I think we shall know before very long, Correy," I replied. "Look
+ahead!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The bearers of the men in the fore part of the group had apparently
+stopped before a shadowy wall, like the face of a cliff. Rapidly, the
+rest of us were brought up, until we were in a compact group, some in
+sitting positions, some upside down, the majority reclining on back or
+side. The whispering sound now was intense and excited, as though our
+strange bearers awaited some momentous happening.
+
+I took advantage of the opportunity to speak very briefly to my
+companions.
+
+"Men, I'll admit frankly that I don't know what we're up against," I
+said. "But I do know this: we'll come out on top of the heap. Conserve
+your strength, keep your eyes open, and be prepared to obey,
+instantly, any orders that may be issued: I know that last remark is
+not needed. If any of you should see or learn something of interest or
+value, report at once to Mr. Correy, Mr. Kincaide or my--"
+
+A simultaneous, involuntary exclamation from the men interrupted me,
+and it was not surprising that this was so, for the wall before us had
+suddenly opened, and there was a great burst of yellow light in our
+faces. A strong odor, like the faint scent we had first noticed in the
+air, but infinitely more powerful, struck our nostrils, but I was not
+conscious of the fact for several seconds. My whole attention, my
+every startled thought, was focused upon the group of strange beings,
+silhouetted against the glowing light, that stood in the opening.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Imagine, if you can, a huge globe, perhaps eight feet in diameter,
+flattened slightly at the bottom, and supported on six short, huge
+stumps, like the feet of an elephant, and topped by an excrudescence
+like a rounded coning tower, merging into the globular body. From
+points slightly below this excrudescence, visualize six long, limp
+tentacles, so long that they drop from the equators of these animated
+spheres, and trail on the ground. Now you have some conception of the
+beings that stood before us.
+
+A sharp, sibilant whispering came from one of these figures, to be
+answered in an eager chorus from our bearers. There was a reply like a
+command, and the group in the doorway marched forward. One by one
+these visible tentacles wrapped themselves around a member of the
+_Ertak's_ crew, each one of the globular creatures bearing one of us.
+
+I heard a disappointed whisper go up from the outer darkness where,
+but a moment before, we had been. Then there was a grating sound, and
+a thud as the stone doorway was rolled back into place.
+
+The entrance was sealed. We were prisoners indeed!
+
+"All right, now what?" gritted Correy. "God! If I ever get a hand
+loose!"
+
+Swiftly, each of us held above the head-like excrudescence atop the
+globular body of the thing that held us, we were carried down a
+widening rocky corridor, towards the source of the yellow light that
+beat about us.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The passage led to a great cavern, irregular in shape, and apparently
+possessed of numerous other outlets which converged here.
+
+I am not certain as to the size of the cavern, save that it was great,
+and that the roof was so high in most sections that it was lost in
+shadow.
+
+The great cavern was nearly filled with creatures similar to those
+which were bearing us, and they fell back in orderly passage to permit
+our conductors to pass.
+
+I could see, now, that the hump atop each rounded body was a travesty
+of a head, hairless, and without a neck. Their features were
+particularly hideous, and I shall pass over a description as rapidly
+as possible.
+
+The eyes were round, and apparently lidless; a pale drab or bluff in
+color. Instead of a nose, as, we understand the term, they had a
+convoluted rosette in the center of the face, not unlike the olfactory
+organ of a bat. Their ears were placed as are ours, but were of thin,
+pale parchment, and hugged the side of the head tightly. Instead of a
+mouth, there was a slightly depressed oval of fluttering skin near the
+point where the head melted into the rounded body: the rapid
+fluttering or vibration of this skin produced the whispering sound I
+have already remarked.
+
+The cavern, as I have said, was flooded with yellow light, which came
+from a great column of fire near the center of the clear space. I had
+no opportunity to inspect the exact arrangements but from what I did
+see, I judged that this flame was fed by some sort of highly
+inflammable substance, not unlike crude oil, except that it burned
+clearly and without smoke. This substance was conducted to the font
+from which the flame leaped by means of a large pipe of hollow reed or
+wood.
+
+At the far end of the cavern a procession entered from one of the
+passages--nine figures similar to those which bore us, save that by
+the greater darkness of their skin, and the wrinkles upon both face
+and body, I judged these to be older than the rest. From the respect
+with which they were treated, and the dignity of their movements, I
+gathered that these were persons of authority, a surmise which quickly
+verified itself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These nine elders arranged themselves, standing, in the form of a
+semicircle, the center creature standing a pace or two in front of the
+others. At a whispered command, we were all dumped unceremoniously on
+the floor of the cavern before this august council of nine.
+
+Nine pairs of fish-like, unblinking eyes inspected us, whether with
+enmity or otherwise; I could not determine. One of the nine spoke
+briefly to one of our conductors, and received an even more brief
+reply.
+
+I felt the gaze of the creature in the center fix on me. I had taken
+my proper position in front of my men; he apparently recognized me as
+the leader of the group.
+
+In a sharp whisper, he addressed me; I gathered from the tone that he
+uttered a command, but I could only shake my head in response. No
+words could convey thought from his mind to mine--but we did have a
+means of communication at hand.
+
+"Mr. Correy," I said, "your menore, please!" I released my own from
+the belt which held it, along with the other expeditionary equipment
+which we always wore when outside our ship, and placed it in position
+upon my head, motioning for one of the nine to do likewise with
+Correy's menore.
+
+They watched me suspiciously, despite my attempt to convey, by gestures,
+that by means of these instruments we could convey thoughts to each other.
+The menores of those days were bulky, heavy things, and undoubtedly they
+looked dangerous to these creatures: thought-transference instruments at
+that time were complicated affairs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+However, I must have made myself partially understood, at least, for
+the chief of the nine uttered a whispered command to one of the beings
+who had borne us to the large cavern, and motioned with a writhing
+gesture of one tentacle that I was to place the menore upon this
+creature's head.
+
+"The old boy's playing it safe, sir," muttered Correy, chuckling.
+"Wants to try it out on the dog first."
+
+"Right!" I nodded, and, not without difficulty, placed the other
+menore upon the rounded dome of the individual selected for the trial.
+
+Both instruments were adjusted to full power, and I concentrated my
+mental energy upon the simple pictures that I thought I could convey
+to the limited mentality of which I suspected these creatures,
+watching his fishy eyes the while.
+
+It was several seconds before he realized what was happening; then he
+began talking excitedly to the waiting nine. The words fairly burned
+themselves in my consciousness, but of course were utterly
+unintelligible to me. Before the creature had finished, a lash-like
+tentacle shot out from the chief of the nine and removed the menore; a
+moment later it reposed, at a rather rakish slant, on the shining dome
+of its new possessor.
+
+"Get anything, sir?" asked Correy in a low voice.
+
+"Not yet. I'm trying to make him see how we came here, and that we're
+friends. Then I'll see what I can get out of him; he'll have to get
+the idea of coming back at me with pictures instead of words, and it
+may take a long time to make him understand."
+
+It did take a long time. I could feel the sweat trickling down my face
+as I strove to make him understand. His eyes revealed wonderment and a
+little fear, but an almost utter lack of understanding.
+
+I pictured for him the heavens, and our ship sailing along through
+space. Then I showed him the _Ertak_ coming to rest on the plateau,
+and he made little impatient noises as though to convey that he knew
+all about that.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a long time he got the idea. Crudely, dimly, he pictured the
+_Ertak_ leaving this strange world, and soaring off into vacant space.
+Then his scene faded out, and he pictured the same thing again, as one
+might repeat a question not understood. He wanted to know where we
+would go if we left this world of his.
+
+I pictured for him other worlds, peopled with men more or less like
+myself. I showed him the great cities, and the fleets of ships like
+the _Ertak_ that plied between them. Then, as best I could, I asked
+him about himself and his people.
+
+It came to me jerkily and poorly pictured, but I managed to piece out
+the story. Whether I guess correctly on all points, I am not sure, nor
+will I ever be sure. But this is the story as I got it.
+
+These people at one time lived in the open, and all the people of this
+world were like those in the cavern, possessed of opaque bodies and
+great strength. There were none of the ghost-like creatures who had
+captured us.
+
+But after a long time, a ruling class arose. They tried to dominate
+the masses, and the masses refused to be dominated. But the ruling
+classes were wise, and versed in certain sciences; the masses were
+ignorant. So the ruling classes devised a plan.
+
+These creatures did not eat. There was a tradition that at one time
+they had had mouths, as I had, but that was not known. Their strength,
+their vitality, came from the powerful mineral vapor which came forth
+from the bowels of the earth. The ruling classes decided that if they
+could control the supply of this vapor, they would have the whip hand,
+and they set about realizing this condition.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was quickly done. All the sources of supply, save one, were sealed.
+This one source of supply was the cavern in which we stood. These were
+members of the ruling class, and outside was the rabble, starved and
+unhappy, living on the faint seepage of the vital fumes, without which
+they became almost bodiless, and the helpless slaves of those within
+the cavern.
+
+These creatures, then, were boneless; as boneless as sponges, and,
+like sponges, capable of absorbing huge quantities of a foreign
+substance, which distended them and gave them weight. I could see,
+now, why the rotund bodies sagged and flattened at the base, and why
+six short, stubby legs were needed to support that body. There was
+only tissue, unsupported by bone, to bear the weight!
+
+This chief of the nine went on to show me how ruthlessly, how cruelly
+those within the cavern ruled those without. The substance that fed
+the flame had to be gathered and a great reservoir on the side of the
+mountain kept filled. Great masses of dry, sweet grass, often changed,
+must be harvested and brought to the entrance of the cavern, for
+bedding. A score of other tasks kept the outsiders busy always--and
+the driving force was that, did the slaves become disobedient, the
+slight supply of mineral vapor available in the outside world would be
+cut off utterly, and all outside would surely die, slowly and in
+agony.
+
+Those within the cavern were the rulers. They would always remain the
+rulers, and those outside would remain the slaves to wait upon them.
+And we--how strangely he pictured us, as he saw us!--were not to
+return to our queer worlds, that we might bring many other ships like
+the _Ertak_ back to interfere. No.
+
+The pupils of his eyes contracted, and the leafy structure of his nose
+fluttered as though with strong emotion.
+
+No, we would not go back. He would give a signal to those of his
+creatures who stood behind us--a sort of soldiery, I gathered--and our
+heads, our legs, our arms, would be torn from our bodies. Then we
+would not go back to bring--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That was enough for me.
+
+"Men!" I spoke softly, but with an intensity that gave me their
+instant attention, "it's going to be a fight for life. When I give the
+signal, make a rush for the entrance by which we came in. I'll lead
+the way. Use your pistols, and your bombs if necessary. All
+right--forward!"
+
+Correy's great shout rang out after mine, and I flung my menore in the
+face of the nearest guard. It bounced off as though it had struck a
+rubber ball. Behind me, one of the men called out sharply; I heard a
+sharp crunch of bone, and with a pang realized that the _Ertak's_ log
+would have at least one death to record.
+
+A dozen tentacles lashed out at me, and I sprayed their owners with
+pellets from my atomic pistol. The air was filled with the shouts of
+my men and the whispers of our enemies. All around me I could hear the
+screaming of ricochets from our pistols. Twice atomic bombs exploded
+not far away, and the solid rock shook beneath my feet. Something shot
+by close to my face; an instant later a limp bundle in the blue and
+silver uniform of our Service struck the rock wall of the cavern,
+thirty feet away. The strength in those rubbery tentacles was
+terrible.
+
+The pistols seemed to have but little effect. They wounded, but they
+did not kill unless the pellet struck the head. Then the victim
+rolled over, rocking idiotically on its middle.
+
+"In the head, men!" I shouted. "That downs them! And keep the bombs in
+action. Throw them against the walls of the cavern. Take a chance!"
+
+A ragged cheer went up, and I heard Correy's voice raised in angry
+conversation with the enemy:
+
+"You will, eh? There!... Now!... Ah!--right--through--the--eye.
+That's--the place!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A score of times I was grasped and held by the writhing arms of the
+angry horde whispering all around me. Each time I literally shot the
+tentacle away with my atomic pistol, leaving the severed end to unwrap
+itself and drop from my struggling body. The things had no blood in
+them.
+
+Steadily, we fought our way toward the doorway, out of the cavern,
+down the passageway, pressed into a compact, sweating mass by the
+pressure of the eager bodies around us. I have never heard any sound
+even remotely like the babel of angry, sibilant whispering that beat
+against the walls and roof of that cavern.
+
+I had saved my own bombs for a specific purpose, and now I unslung
+them and managed to work them up above my shoulders, one in either
+hand.
+
+"I'm going to try to blow the entrance clear, men," I shouted. "The
+instant I fling the bombs, drop! The fragments will be stopped by the
+enemy crowding around us. One ... two ... three ... _drop_!"
+
+The two bombs exploded almost simultaneously. The ground shook, and
+all over the cavern masses of stone came crashing to the floor. Bits
+of rock hummed and shrieked over our heads. And--yes! There was a
+draft of cooler, purer air on our faces. The bombs had done their
+work.
+
+"One more effort and we're outside, men," I called. "The passage is
+open, and there are only a few of the enemy before us. Ready?"
+
+"Ready!" went up the hoarse shout.
+
+"Then, forward!"
+
+It was easy to give the command, but hard to execute it. We were
+pressed so hard that only the men on the outside of the group could
+use their weapons. And our captors were making a terrible, desperate
+effort to hold us.
+
+Two more of our men were literally torn to pieces before my eyes, but
+I had the satisfaction of ripping holes in the heads of the creatures
+whose tentacles had done the beastly work. And in the meantime we were
+working our way slowly but surely to the entrance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I glanced up as I dodged out into the open. That soft humming sound
+was familiar, and properly so. There, at an elevation of less than
+fifty feet, was the _Ertak_, with Hendricks standing in the exit,
+leaning forward at a perilous angle.
+
+"Ahoy the _Ertak_!" I hailed. "Descend at once!"
+
+"Right, sir!" Hendricks turned to relay the order, and, as the rest of
+the men burst forth from the cavern, the ship struck the ground before
+us.
+
+"All hands board ship!" I ordered. "Lively, now." As many years as I
+have commanded men, I have never seen an order obeyed with more
+alacrity.
+
+I was the last man to enter, and as I did so, I turned for a last
+glance at the enemy.
+
+They could not come through the small opening my bombs had driven in
+the rock, although they were working desperately to enlarge it.
+Leaping back and forth between me and the entrance I could see the
+vague, shadowy figures of the outside slaves, eagerly seeping up the
+life-giving fumes that escaped from the cavern.
+
+"Your orders, sir?" asked Hendricks anxiously; he was a very young
+officer, and he had been through a very trying experience.
+
+"Ascend five hundred feet, Mr. Hendricks," I said thoughtfully.
+"Directly over this spot. Then I'll take over.
+
+"It isn't often," I added, "that the Service concerns itself with
+economic conditions. This, however, is one of the exceptions."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Hendricks, for the very good reason, I suppose, that
+that was about all a third officer could say to his commander, under
+the circumstances.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Five hundred feet, sir," said Hendricks.
+
+"Very well," I nodded, and pressed the attention signal of the
+non-commissioned officer in charge of the big forward ray projector.
+
+"Ott? Commander Hanson speaking. I have special orders for you."
+
+"Yes, sir!"
+
+"Direct your ray, narrowed to normal beam and at full intensity, on
+the spot directly below. Keep the ray motionless, and carry on until
+further orders. Is that clear?"
+
+"Perfectly, sir." The disintegrator ray generators deepened their purr
+as I turned away.
+
+"I trust, sir, that I did the right thing in following you with the
+_Ertak_?" asked Hendricks. "I was absolutely without precedent, and
+the circumstances were so mysterious--"
+
+"You handled the situation very well indeed," I told him. "Had you not
+been waiting when we fought our way into the open, the nearly
+invisible things on the outside might have--but you don't know about
+them yet."
+
+Picking up the microphone again, I ordered a pair of searchlights to
+follow the disintegrator ray, and made my way forward, where I could
+observe activities through a port.
+
+The ray was boring straight down into a shoulder of a rocky hill, and
+the bright beams of the searchlights glowed redly with the dust of
+disintegration. Here and there I could see the shadowy, transparent
+forms of the creatures that the self-constituted rulers of this world
+had doomed to a demi-existence, and I smiled grimly to myself. The
+tables would soon be turned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For perhaps an hour the ray melted its way into the solid rock, while
+I stood beside Ott and his crew, watching. Then, down below us, things
+began to happen.
+
+Little fragments of rock flew up from the shaft the ray had drilled.
+Jets of black mud leaped into the air. There was a sudden blast from
+below that rocked the _Ertak_, and the shaft became a miniature
+volcano, throwing rocky fragments and mud high into the air.
+
+"Very good, Ott," I said triumphantly. "Cease action." As I spoke, the
+first light of the dawn, unnoticed until now, spread itself over the
+scene, and we witnessed then one of the strangest scenes that the
+Universe has ever beheld.
+
+Up to the very edge of that life-giving blast of mineral-laden gas the
+tenuous creatures came crowding. There were hundreds of them,
+thousands of them. And they were still coming, crowding closer and
+closer and closer, a mass of crawling, yellowish shadows against the
+sombre earth.
+
+Slowly, they began to fill out and darken, as they drew in the fumes
+that were more than bread and meat and water to us. Where there had
+been formless shadows, rotund creatures such as we had met in the
+cavern stood and lashed their tentacles about in a sort of frenzied
+gladness, and fell back to make room for their brothers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It's a sight to make a man doubt his own eyes, sir," said Correy, who
+had come to stand beside me. "Look at them! Thousands of them pouring
+from every direction. How did it happen?"
+
+"It didn't happen. I used our disintegrator ray as a drill; we simply
+sunk a huge shaft down into the bowels of the earth until we struck
+the source of the vapor which the self-appointed 'ruling class' has
+bottled up. We have emancipated a whole people, Mr. Correy."
+
+"I hate to think of what will happen to those in the cavern," replied
+Correy, smiling grimly. "Or rather, since you've told me of the
+pleasant little death they had arranged for us. I'm mighty glad of it.
+They'll receive rough treatment, I'm afraid!"
+
+"They deserve it. It has been a great sight to watch, but I believe
+we've seen enough. It has been a good night's work, but it's daylight,
+now, and it will take hours to repair the damage to the _Ertak's_
+hull. Take over in the navigating room, if you will, and pick a likely
+spot where we will not be disturbed. We should be on our course by
+to-night, Mr. Correy."
+
+"Right, sir," said Correy, with a last wondering look at the strange
+miracle we had brought to pass on the earth below us. "It will seem
+good to be off in space again, away from the troubles of these little
+worlds."
+
+"There are troubles in space, too," I said dryly, thinking of the
+swarm of meteorites that had come so close to wiping the _Ertak_ off
+the records of the Service. "You can't escape trouble even in space."
+
+"No, sir," said Correy from the doorway. "But you can get your sleep
+regularly!"
+
+And sleep is, when one comes to think of it, a very precious thing.
+
+Particularly for an old man, whose eyelids are heavy with years.
+
+
+
+
+Readers' Corner
+
+[Illustration: Readers' Corner]
+
+
+     _Now In Book Form_
+
+     Readers of Astounding Stories will be interested to hear
+     that two of the continued novels which appeared in our pages
+     during last year are coming out in book form.
+
+     The first of these is "Murder Madness," by Murray Leinster.
+     It is due sometime in February, so by the time this issue is
+     on the newsstands it will no doubt be already out. The
+     publishers are Brewer and Warren, and the price is $2.00.
+     Here's your chance, collectors, and those who missed an
+     instalment or two.
+
+     The other book is "Brigands of the Moon," by--everyone
+     knows--Ray Cummings. It should be coming along in a month or
+     so. Watch out for it!
+
+
+_Mr. Cummings Sits In_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Thank you for the opportunity to address our Readers on
+     certain side-lights of my tale, "The Exile of Time." I
+     particularly welcome it, for the theme of Time-traveling is,
+     I think, the most interesting of any upon which I have
+     written.
+
+     Some of you will no doubt recall my stories "The Man Who
+     Mastered Time" and "The Shadow Girl." In "The Exile of
+     Time," I present the third of the trilogy. It has no
+     fictional connection with the others; it is in no sense a
+     sequel, but rather a companion story.
+
+     To write about Time-traveling is for me a difficult but
+     fascinating task. The opportunities are endless; and I hope
+     you may think I have taken advantage of them with a measure
+     of success.
+
+     I wrote those conceptions of Time and Space and the Great
+     Cosmos, which you will find in the text of the story,
+     because I feel them very deeply. Each occasion upon which
+     circumstances allow me to present my theories, I eagerly
+     welcome. How much of the conception is original with me, I
+     cannot say. It is the product of my groping interpretation
+     of the theories of many brilliant scientific minds of
+     today--humbly combined with perhaps some originality of my
+     own. The mind flings far afield when it starts to grope with
+     the Unknown. Try it! Read what I have written and then let
+     your mind roam a little further. Probe a little deeper.
+     Perhaps we may contribute something. It is only by that
+     process--each mind following some other's cleared path and
+     pushing forward a little on his own--that the Unknown can be
+     pierced.
+
+     When once you admit the basic idea of Time-traveling to be
+     plausible, what fascinating vistas are opened to the
+     imagination!
+
+     Space is so crowded! The room in which you are now sitting
+     as you read these words--just think what that Space around
+     you has held in the Past, and will hold in the Future! You
+     occupy it now, playing out your little part; but think what
+     has happened where you are now sitting so calmly reading!
+     What tumultuous, crowding events! Your room is quiet now,
+     but its space has rung with war-cries; the ground under you
+     has been drenched with blood; and further back it was lush
+     with primeval jungle; and in another age it was frozen
+     beneath a great ice-cap; and before that it blazed, molten
+     with fire. Back to the Beginning.
+
+     And your little Space in the Future? It will be in the heart
+     of a great mechanical city, perhaps. A mechanical servant
+     may murder his human master in the space which you now call
+     your room. The great revolt of the mechanisms may start in
+     your room....
+
+     I think that your room will some day again be shrouded under
+     a forest growth. The mechanical city will be neglected,
+     tumbled into ruins, buried beneath the silt of the passing
+     centuries. The sun will slowly rise--a giant dull red ball,
+     burning out, cooling. And the Earth will cool. Humans,
+     perhaps, will have passed decadence and reverted to
+     savagery. Perhaps the polar ice-caps will again come down,
+     and ice slowly cover the dying world. All nature will be
+     struggling and dying, with the sun a red ball turning dark
+     like a cooling ember.
+
+     Millions of centuries, with whatever events--who am I to
+     say?--but it will go on to the End. That's a long way from
+     the Beginning, isn't it? And yet ours is only a tiny planet
+     living briefly in the great cosmos of Time and Space!
+
+     A segment of Everything that ever was and ever will be
+     marches through the Space of your room. What an enormously
+     thronged little Space! There is only Time, to keep
+     consecutive and orderly the myriad events which in your room
+     are pushing and jostling one another! I say, then, "Time is
+     what keeps everything from happening at once." It seems a
+     good definition.
+
+     I do hope you like "The Exile of Time." The writing of it
+     made me realize how unimportant I am. A human lifetime is
+     really as brief as the flash of an electric spark. The whole
+     lifetime of our Earth is not much more than that. Stars,
+     worlds, are born, live and die, and the Great Cosmos goes
+     majestically on. Yet some people seem to feel that they and
+     the Space they occupy in this Time they call the Present are
+     the most important things that ever were or ever will be in
+     the whole Universe. It is a good thing to realize that that
+     isn't so.--Ray Cummings.
+
+
+_Likes_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Starting with the August issue, I am going to give my
+     opinion of the stories.
+
+     "The Planet of Dread," by R. F. Starzl, couldn't have been
+     better. Get more stories by him. "Murder Madness," by Murray
+     Leinster, was a good story, but it didn't belong in a
+     Science Fiction magazine. "The Terrible Tentacles of L-472,"
+     a good story; "The Invisible Death," a very good story;
+     "Prisoners on the Electron," very good; "The Ape-Men of
+     Xlotli," a good story, but it does not belong in a Science
+     Fiction magazine; "The Pirate Planet," very excellent--much
+     more so because it is an interplanetary story. "Vagabonds of
+     Space," "The Fifth Dimension Catapult," "The Gate of Xoran,"
+     "The Dark Side of Antri"--all good.
+
+     Well, I guess I will sign off and give somebody else a
+     chance to broadcast.--Wm. McCalvy, 1244 Beech St., St. Paul,
+     Minn.
+
+
+_I Do; I Don't_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     "I like the magazine the way it is," "I want a larger
+     magazine," "I want a magazine twice a month," "I want a
+     quarterly," and so do I, "There is a terrible flaw in one of
+     the stories," "All of the stories are flawless," "I want
+     reprints," "I don't," "I like Ray Cummings," "I don't," "I
+     want a better grade paper," "The paper's O. K. with me," "I
+     want smooth edges on the magazine," "So do I," "And so do
+     I!"--these seem to be the most often repeated sentences in
+     the letters from Readers.
+
+     However, I have a new one to add: I would like to see an
+     answer, by the Editor, to each letter that is printed in
+     "The Readers' Corner," like this: "I liked 'An Extra Man,'
+     etc.--Mr. Syence Ficshun" (I am very glad to hear that you
+     liked this little masterpiece, etc.--Editor). Why not?
+
+     The illustration on the cover of the January issue surely
+     shows that you're starting the new year out right by putting
+     on an extremely astounding cover. The story "The Gate to
+     Xoran" is simply amazing. Let's read many more of Mr. Wells
+     stories. It is far surpassed, however, by "The Fifth
+     Dimension Catapult," which is the best story (novelette)
+     that I have ever read in "our" magazine.
+
+     The Boys' Scientification Club is now a branch of the famous
+     Science Correspondence Club. Remember, boys between the ages
+     of 10 and 15, if you're interested in reading Science
+     Fiction, by all means join the B. S. C. We have many copies
+     of Astounding Stories in our library and members are welcome
+     to read them. For further details write to me.--Forrest J.
+     Ackerman, President-Librarian, B. S. C., 530 Staples Avenue,
+     San Francisco, Cal.
+
+
+_Souls and Integrations_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     You are starting your second year as Editor of Astounding
+     Stories. If your standard during 1931 is up to your standard
+     of 1930, we shall be satisfied. If possible, give us, the
+     Readers, the best in Science Fiction. I have no doubt but
+     that the Readers of Astounding Stories would not want
+     fantasy unless written by a master; and to my mind there is
+     only one whom I will forgive for not making his stories
+     Science Fiction, and that writer is A. Merritt. Every other
+     writer should and must put plausible science in his stories.
+     If he doesn't, he won't go far; not with Science Fiction
+     readers, anyway.
+
+     I do not agree to your answer, by letter, to my complaint
+     about the science in the story, "An Extra Man," by Jackson
+     Gee. You say that two men, each the size and half the weight
+     of the original man could have been formed from the
+     integrated particles of the original man. In the story, the
+     weight of the two men was exactly the same as that of the
+     original man. [?] Anyway, I do not believe that these two
+     men could have been formed. Most likely, when the
+     laboratories began the process of reintegration, the person
+     integrated would have been cut in half, provided of course,
+     that the laboratories began the process at the same time. If
+     not, one laboratory would produce a larger portion of an
+     integrated man than the other.
+
+     But to come back to the original question. Can a man be
+     disintegrated into his component atoms and then reintegrated
+     into two men each half the size, weight, ability and brains?
+     I say no. I believe that the component atoms of the man when
+     reintegrated would be in exactly the same place as they were
+     before the disintegration occurred. If a part and not the
+     whole of a man is reintegrated in one place, then the part
+     would be one part of that man and not a complete man in
+     itself.
+
+     It would be as preposterous and absurd for anything but a
+     part of that man to be reintegrated, as it would be for two
+     apes, pigs or hens to come from him. I leave out the
+     question of what would happen to the soul. Imagine a soul
+     divided in half. Mr. Gee might say that he doesn't believe
+     in souls. Neither do I, much. I notice that some Readers say
+     that they liked that story. One even says that it was
+     perfect. Every man to his taste. I've read worse, myself.
+
+     Anyway, Mr. Editor, Astounding Stories is the finest and
+     best Science Fiction magazine on the market.
+
+     Many Readers want to keep their magazines and bind them,
+     including myself. Why change the size? I'm certain that that
+     won't be done. Astounding Stories started small (in size
+     only) and it will remain small (also only in size). Let us
+     have reprints.--Nathan Greenfeld, 373 Whitlock Ave., New
+     York City.
+
+
+_The Defense Rests_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     I have just read the January issue for 1931 and noticed some
+     so-called helpful letters by Readers. Looking over Mr.
+     Waite's letter, would like to suggest that he stop to think,
+     if possible, that if he wants absolute bone-dry facts, that
+     he doesn't want fiction at all. And Mr. Johnson--he seems
+     to have the impression that everyone who can take things for
+     granted without having a detailed explanation of the facts
+     of the story is a moron or a small child. He should go find
+     a volume of scientific research if he enjoys that sort of
+     stuff. I read fiction stories for the enjoyment I get out of
+     them and not to criticize them for lack of explanation. I
+     would rather read some of his so-called nonsense than a lot
+     of far-flung, intricate, baseless scientific explanations.
+     Why doesn't Mr. Johnson use his imagination?--Donald Kahl,
+     360 Selby Ave., St. Paul, Minn.
+
+
+_"High Time"_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     I have been reading the magazine ever since it first came
+     out, a year ago, so it is high time for me to write. It
+     certainly grows better with every new issue.
+
+     I think that the ten best stories published during 1930 were
+     (not in order of merit): "Brigands of the Moon," "Vandals of
+     the Stars," "The Atom Smasher," "The Moon Master," "Earth,
+     the Marauder," "The Planet of Dread," "Silver Dome," "The
+     Second Satellite," "Jetta of the Lowlands" and "The Pirate
+     Planet."
+
+     Your ten best authors are: Harl Vincent, Ray Cummings,
+     Charles W. Diffin, Victor Rousseau, Capt. S. P. Meek, Murray
+     Leinster, Arthur J. Burks, R. F. Starzl, Sewell P. Wright
+     and Edmond Hamilton.
+
+     The Commander Hanson stories by S. P. Wright are great.
+     Let's have lots more of them.
+
+     And now about reprints. I cast my vote like many other
+     readers in favor of them. Many Readers, in fact over half,
+     are new Readers of Science Fiction. They, like myself, have
+     not read the great masterpieces such as "The Time Machine,"
+     "The Moon Pool" and countless other stories. Now, why not
+     reprint some of them and give us a chance to read them? A
+     few Readers who have read them before do not want them
+     reprinted because they do not want anybody else to read
+     them.
+
+     A brickbat: Why not cut the edges of the magazine smooth? It
+     would be much easier to handle.
+
+     A bouquet: You have a fine magazine. Keep up the good stuff.
+     My criticism is exhausted, so good-by until next
+     time.--Oswald Train, P. O. Box 94, Barnesboro, Pa.
+
+
+_Two Dimensions Off?_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     It was just by accident that I came across your magazine,
+     and I have read every issue since.
+
+     In the January number there is one story that I don't like,
+     "The Fifth Dimension Catapult." As far as the story is
+     concerned it is very good, but Professor Denham was not
+     marooned in the fifth dimension. If you read the story you
+     will find that Professor Denham was marooned on a three
+     dimensional world. That is all I can make out.
+
+     Astounding Stories is the best Science Fiction magazine I
+     have ever read, and I shall keep on reading it.
+
+     Keep up the good cover illustrations.--Richard Meindle, R.
+     1, Box 91, Butternut, Wisconsin.
+
+
+_To the Colors!_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Being a passionate admirer of Dr. Breuer and his writings, I
+     cannot permit the contumelious, unfounded aggression of one
+     George K. Addison to go on unconfuted.
+
+     Perceiving that Dr. Breuer cannot possibly vindicate himself
+     against this disparagement I feel obliged to extenuate Dr.
+     Breuer in the eyes of the Readers.
+
+     In the first place, Dr. Breuer writes rarely and sparingly
+     and does not grind out his stories month after month as do
+     some other authors. His stories are highly original and are
+     presented in a purely literary style. The story to which Mr.
+     Addison refers, "A Problem in Communication," is a fine
+     example of his work. Should his story be remonstrated
+     against because it is lacking in adventure, because it did
+     not delineate mushy love episodes, because it does not cause
+     chills to run down one's spine? Positively not! It lives up
+     to the standard of the highest Science Fiction. Here is a
+     story unbesmirched by the love element, exceedingly
+     plausible and interestingly narrated.
+
+     If all stories were thought out and written just half as
+     carefully as Dr. Breuer's, Astounding Stories would become a
+     periodical justified to be considered on a par with The
+     Golden Book.
+
+     In closing, I wish to express my desire that more stories of
+     the Breuer quality be bestowed upon the Readers.--Mortimer
+     Weisinger, 266 Van Cortland Ave., Bronx, New York.
+
+
+_And It Wasn't!_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Having read "The Readers' Corner" since its first appearance
+     in Astounding Stories and noted the various criticisms
+     offered, may I tell you about a story written by a Science
+     Fiction author?
+
+     The author, by the way, is the perfect author; he makes
+     absolutely no mistakes in his story, and is in no danger of
+     starving if his works aren't accepted and older stories are
+     reprinted instead. His science is correct and the story
+     contains nothing that cannot be understood.
+
+     The story is of interplanetary adventure. Strange to say,
+     there is no war in the story; there is no villain; there is
+     no hero to save a world from destruction or his sweetheart
+     from the monsters of another planet. Instead, there are
+     nothing but characters--if you get what I mean. The persons
+     involved in this interplanetary novel reach their goal due
+     to the tremendous strides of science in experimenting with
+     air and space vehicles.
+
+     When they arrive on the planet they do not meet hostile
+     nations. They do not meet monstrosities. They do, however,
+     meet people much like themselves who do not welcome the
+     travelers with open arms and show them about their city, but
+     regard them with curiosity and treat them with all due
+     respect for their achievement in conquering space.
+
+     As I said before, there is no hero who falls in love with
+     the beautiful girl from the planet visited, and saves her
+     and her country from other warring nations. To tell the
+     truth, the adventurers have their own loved ones at home.
+     They meet no intrigue. When they have learned all they
+     can--experiencing many difficulties in mastering the
+     language used, for the people of the planet have not
+     perfected a brain-copier or other like mechanism--they
+     arrange for commerce and travel between the two worlds and
+     return to Earth. On their return, they are not met with
+     world wide ovations and made heroes of, but receive credit
+     for their undertaking and are soon forgotten about.
+
+     To cap the climax, the story is acceptable to the Editors.
+     It is not in need of corrections and is published
+     immediately. The story is gratefully accepted by the public
+     and not one single soul writes a scathing letter to the
+     Editor telling why it was not good. In fact, I can hardly
+     believe that such a story was written. Possibly it
+     wasn't!--Robert R. Young, 86 Third Avenue, Kingston, Penn.
+
+
+_Ha-ha!_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Christmas day, and because I'm not acquainted in this city
+     I'm writing you a letter.
+
+     I have just finished reading your magazine. I came close to
+     not buying it, being not overly prosperous, but decided to
+     take a chance when I saw you had a dimensional story by
+     Murray Leinster. That story was up to expectations. The
+     others were down to expectations.
+
+     If you want me to choose your magazine to spend my reading
+     allowance on, have more stories by Leinster, Starzl, Breuer
+     and Wells. It may take a little more effort, but it's worth
+     it. Sax Rohmer is good on science stuff, too.
+
+     Before you print any more undersea stories have a diver look
+     at them. You tell about standing at the bottom of the ocean
+     and seeing the submarine "not more than a quarter of a mile
+     away." Ha-ha! [No fair, that ha-ha! For the story says,
+     quoted exactly: "... there gleamed the reassuring LIGHTS of
+     the Nereid, not a quarter of a mile away." Probably, intense
+     searchlight beams could be seen that far.--Ed.] You couldn't
+     see it if you stood more than ten feet away. I'm not trying
+     to be critical, but you should be more careful.--Myron
+     Higgins, 524 West 100th St., New York City.
+
+
+_We Never Will_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     I have been an enthusiastic reader of Astounding Stories
+     since it was founded, and I think it about time that I
+     voiced my opinion of your great magazine.
+
+     Taking all in all it's a vow, but of course it could be
+     made better by having a quarterly, which I am sure would go
+     over big.
+
+     Wesso is great, so why not have all the illustrations by
+     him?
+
+     Your authors are also great. Nearly every story I have read
+     was perfect, and whatever you do don't lose R. F. Starzl.
+     His ideas are very good, as illustrated in "The Planet of
+     Dread."
+
+     There is only one more thing I would like to ask of you, and
+     that is the reason why I write. Please don't spoil the
+     magazine by endeavoring to please a very small minority by
+     putting in unnecessary scientific explanations. The reason
+     why I like your magazine so much is because of the fact that
+     it is unique in that respect. I have read a few stories in
+     other scientific magazines and found that they contained too
+     much explanation. I hope for the benefit of other Readers
+     and myself that you will not change the stories by adding
+     too much explanation.
+
+     In the coming year I wish you all possible success.--John
+     Sheehan, 32 Elm St., Cambridge, Mass.
+
+
+_This and That_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     In the October issue of Astounding Stories Mr. Woodrow
+     Gelman cast vote number 1 for reprints. In the February,
+     1931, issue, Mr. Forgaris throws in number 2 and here goes
+     number 3. I really don't see why, even after the arguments
+     you printed, you don't print at least one a year. I have
+     been reading your magazine ever since it came out and have
+     found that at least one-half of your Readers want reprints.
+     Can't you print at least one for an experiment?
+
+     Ray Cummings, S. P. Meek, Dr. Miles J. Breuer, Sewell P.
+     Wright and Harl Vincent are your best authors. Wesso is your
+     best artist by far.
+
+     There were several stories I did not like. They are:
+     "Monsters of Moyen," "Earth, the Marauder," and I guess
+     those are all.
+
+     How about giving us some short short stories? And how about
+     cutting the edges of the paper smooth? And giving us a
+     quarterly? But all in all I think your magazine is one of
+     the best in the field.--Vernon H. Jones, 1603 Sixth Ave.,
+     Des Moines, Iowa.
+
+
+_It's Your Imagination_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Well, well! Astounding Stories was two days early this
+     month. See that this happens more often.
+
+     Of course, "The Pirate Planet" took first place in the
+     February number. The story was very well written and the
+     characters very realistic. It deserves to be put in book
+     form, also in the talkies. It would be much better than
+     "Just Imagine."
+
+     I welcome Anthony Gilmore, D. W. Hall and F. V. W. Mason to
+     Astounding Stories. Their stories proved to be very
+     interesting and I hope to read more.
+
+     Do you know how to write editorials? Yes? Then prove it. I
+     have to be shown. Write on some scientific subject each
+     month, and every so often write on Astounding Stories itself
+     and of its stories and authors.
+
+     Is it my imagination or have you been using a better grade
+     of paper in the past two issues? it seems to be much
+     smoother and a little thinner than that used previously.
+
+     I notice that you are giving more room to some of the
+     illustrations, as in "Werewolves of War" and "The Pirate
+     Planet." The larger the illustrations are the more there can
+     be put in them.--Jack Darrow, 4225 No. Spaulding Ave.,
+     Chicago, Illinois.
+
+
+_If He But Could!_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Astounding Stories is without doubt the most preeminent in
+     its field.
+
+     With such versatile authors as Burks (When does his next
+     story appear?), Starzl, Cummings, Leinster, Vincent and all
+     the rest, how can it help but to overshadow all periodicals!
+
+     The illustrations are superfine. Wesso is a marvel! If he
+     could only write his own stories and illustrate them!
+
+     Now, a suggestion. I am positive that every Reader of your
+     magazine wants you to start a department in which
+     biographies of the authors and their photographs are given.
+     Why not start one?--Julius Schwartz, 407 East 183rd St.,
+     Bronx, New York.
+
+
+_"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!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Astounding Stories,  April, 1931, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTOUNDING STORIES,  APRIL, 1931 ***
+
+***** This file should be named 30452-8.txt or 30452-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/4/5/30452/
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+
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Astounding Stories,  April, 1931, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Astounding Stories,  April, 1931
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: November 11, 2009 [EBook #30452]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTOUNDING STORIES,  APRIL, 1931 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 370px;"><a name="Cover" id="Cover"></a>
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Cover" width="370" height="528" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image_001.jpg" width="500" height="212" alt="Cover"  />
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>ASTOUNDING</h1>
+  <h2>STORIES</h2>
+
+<h3>20&cent;</h3>
+
+<h3><i>On Sale the First Thursday of Each Month</i></h3>
+<p>W. M. CLAYTON, Publisher&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;HARRY BATES, Editor&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;DR. DOUGLAS M. DOLD,
+Consulting Editor</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h3>The Clayton Standard on a Magazine Guarantees</h3>
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>That</i> the stories therein are clean, interesting, vivid, by
+leading writers of the day and purchased under conditions
+approved by the Authors' League of America;</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 150px;">
+<img src="images/image_002.jpg" width="150" height="280" alt=""  />
+</div>
+
+<p><i>That</i> such magazines are manufactured in Union shops by
+American workmen;</p>
+
+<p><i>That</i> each newsdealer and agent is insured a fair profit;</p>
+
+<p><i>That</i> an intelligent censorship guards their advertising
+pages.</p></div>
+
+<p><i>The other Clayton magazines are</i>:</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+ACE-HIGH MAGAZINE, RANCH ROMANCES, COWBOY STORIES, CLUES, FIVE-NOVELS
+MONTHLY, ALL STAR DETECTIVE STORIES, RANGELAND LOVE STORY
+MAGAZINE, WESTERN ADVENTURES, and WESTERN LOVE STORIES.
+</p>
+
+<p><i>More than Two Million Copies Required to Supply the Monthly Demand
+for Clayton Magazines.</i></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>VOL. VI, No. 1&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;CONTENTS&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;April, 1931</h2>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<table summary="Contents">
+<tr><td><a href="#Cover">COVER DESIGN</a></td>
+<td>H. W. WESSO</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>Painted in Water-Colors from a Scene in "Monsters of Mars."</i></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#Monsters_of_Mars">MONSTERS OF MARS</a></td>
+<td>EDMOND HAMILTON</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_4">4</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>Three Martian-Duped Earth-Men Swing Open the Gates of Space That for So Long Had Barred the Greedy Hordes of the Red Planet.</i> (A Complete Novelette.)</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#The_Exile_of_Time">THE EXILE OF TIME</a></td>
+<td>RAY CUMMINGS</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>From Somewhere Out of Time Come a Swarm of Robots Who Inflict on
+New York the Awful Vengeance of the Diabolical Cripple Tugh.</i>
+(Beginning a Four-Part Novel.)</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#Hells_Dimension">HELL'S DIMENSION</a></td>
+<td>TOM CURRY</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>Professor Lambert Deliberately Ventures into a Vibrational Dimension to Join His Fiancée in Its Magnetic Torture-Fields.</i></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#The_World_Behind_the_Moon">THE WORLD BEHIND THE MOON</a></td>
+<td>PAUL ERNST</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>Two Intrepid Earth-Men Fight It Out with the Horrific Monsters of
+Zeud's Frightful Jungles.</i></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#Four_Miles_Within">FOUR MILES WITHIN</a></td>
+<td>ANTHONY GILMORE</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>Far Down into the Earth Goes a Gleaming Metal Sphere Whose Passengers Are Deadly Enemies.</i> (A Complete Novelette.)</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#The_Lake_of_Light">THE LAKE OF LIGHT</a></td>
+<td>JACK WILLIAMSON</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>In the Frozen Wastes at the Bottom of the World Two Explorers Find a Strange Pool of White Fire&mdash;and Have a Strange Adventure.</i></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#The_Ghost_World">THE GHOST WORLD</a></td>
+<td>SEWELL PEASLEE WRIGHT</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td>
+</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>Commander John Hanson Records Another of His Thrilling Interplanetary Adventures with the Special Patrol Service.</i></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#Readers_Corner">THE READERS' CORNER</a></td>
+<td>ALL OF US</td>
+<td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_134">134</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="td1"><i>A Meeting Place for Readers of Astounding Stories.</i></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><b>Single Copies, 20 Cents (In Canada, 25 Cents)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yearly Subscription,
+$2.00</b></p>
+
+<p>Issued monthly by Readers' Guild, Inc., 80 Lafayette Street, New York,
+N. Y. W. M. Clayton, President; Francis P. Pace, Secretary. Entered as
+second-class matter December 7, 1929, at the Post Office at New York,
+N. Y., under Act of March 3, 1879. Title registered as a Trade Mark in
+the U. S. Patent Office. Member Newsstand Group&mdash;Men's List. For
+advertising rates address E. R. Crowe &amp; Co., Inc., 25 Vanderbilt Ave.,
+New York; or 225 North Michigan Ave., Chicago.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Monsters_of_Mars" id="Monsters_of_Mars"></a>Monsters of Mars</h2>
+
+<h4>A COMPLETE NOVELETTE</h4>
+<h3><i>By Edmond Hamilton</i></h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img class="img1" src="images/image_003.jpg" width="600" height="270" alt=""  /><span class="caption">
+<i>The Martian gestured with a reptilian arm toward the
+ladder.</i></span></div>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+<p>llan Randall stared at the man before him. "And that's why you sent
+for me, Milton?" he finally asked.</p>
+
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence, in which Randall's eyes moved as though
+uncomprehendingly from the face of Milton to those of the two men
+beside him. The four sat together at the end of a roughly furnished
+and electric-lit living-room, and in that momentary silence there came
+in to them from the outside night the distant pounding of the Atlantic
+upon the beach. It was Randall who first spoke again.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Three Martian-duped Earth-men swing open the gates of space
+that for so long had barred the greedy hordes of the Red Planet.</div>
+
+<p>The other's face was unsmiling. "That's why I sent for you, Allan," he
+said quietly. "To go to Mars with us to-night!"</p>
+
+<p>"To Mars!" he repeated. "Have you gone crazy, Milton&mdash;or is this some
+joke you've put up with Lanier and Nelson here?"</p>
+
+<p>Milton shook his head gravely. "It is not a joke, Allan. Lanier and I
+are actually going to flash out over the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> gulf to the planet Mars
+to-night. Nelson must stay here, and since we wanted three to go I
+wired you as the most likely of my friends to make the venture."</p>
+
+<p>"But good God!" Randall exploded, rising. "You, Milton, as a physicist
+ought to know better. Space-ships and projectiles and all that are but
+fictionists' dreams."</p>
+
+<p>"We are not going in either space-ship or projectile," said Milton
+calmly. And then as he saw his friend's bewilderment he rose and led
+the way to a door at the room's end, the other three following him
+into the room beyond.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was a long laboratory of unusual size in which Randall found
+himself, one in which every variety of physical and electrical
+apparatus seemed represented. Three huge dynamo-motor arrangements
+took up the room's far end, and from them a tangle of wiring led
+through square black condensers and transformers to a battery of great
+tubes. Most remarkable, though, was the object at the room's center.</p>
+
+<p>It was like a great double cube of dull metal, being in effect two
+metal cubes each twelve feet square, supported a few feet above the
+floor by insulated standards. One side of each cube was open, exposing
+the hollow interiors of the two cubical chambers. Other wiring led
+from the big electronic tubes and from the dynamos to the sides of the
+two cubes.</p>
+
+<p>The four men gazed at the enigmatic thing for a time in silence.
+Milton's strong, capable face showed only in its steady eyes what
+feelings were his, but Lanier's younger countenance was alight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> with
+excitement; and so too to some degree was that of Nelson. Randall
+simply stared at the thing, until Milton nodded toward it.</p>
+
+<p>"That," he said, "is what will flash us out to Mars to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Randall could only turn his stare upon the other, and Lanier chuckled.
+"Can't take it in yet, Randall? Well, neither could I when the idea
+was first sprung on us."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ilton nodded to seats behind them, and as the half-dazed Randall sank
+into one the physicist faced him earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>"Randall, there isn't much time now, but I am going to tell you what I
+have been doing in the last two years on this God-forsaken Maine
+coast. I have been for those two years in unbroken communication by
+radio with beings on the planet Mars!</p>
+
+<p>"It was when I still held my physics professorship back at the
+university that I got first onto the track of the thing. I was
+studying the variation of static vibrations, and in so doing caught
+steady signals&mdash;not static&mdash;at an unprecedentedly high wave-length.
+They were dots and dashes of varying length in an entirely
+unintelligible code, the same arrangement of them being sent out
+apparently every few hours.</p>
+
+<p>"I began to study them and soon ascertained that they could be sent
+out by no station on earth. The signals seemed to be growing louder
+each day, and it suddenly occurred to me that Mars was approaching
+opposition with earth! I was startled, and kept careful watch. On the
+day that Mars was closest the earth the signals were loudest.
+Thereafter, as the red planet receded, they grew weaker. The signals
+were from some being or beings on Mars!</p>
+
+<p>"At first I was going to give the news to the world, but saw in time
+that I could not. There was not sufficient proof, and a premature
+statement would only wreck my own scientific reputation. So I decided
+to study the signals farther until I had irrefutable proof, and to
+answer them if possible. I came up here and had this place built, and
+the aerial towers and other equipment I wanted set up. Lanier and
+Nelson came with me from the university, and we began our work.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_o1.jpg" alt="O" width="60" height="54" /></div>
+<p>ur chief object was to answer those signals, but it proved
+heartbreaking work at first. We could not produce a radio wave of
+great enough length to pierce out through earth's insulating layer and
+across the gulf to Mars. We used all the power of our great
+windmill-dynamo hook-ups, but for long could not make it. Every few
+hours like clockwork the Martian signals came through. Then at last we
+heard them repeating one of our own signals. We had been heard!</p>
+
+<p>"For a time we hardly left our instruments. We began the slow and
+almost impossible work of establishing intelligent communication with
+the Martians. It was with numbers we began. Earth is the third planet
+from the sun and Mars the fourth, so three represented earth and four
+stood for Mars. Slowly we felt our way to an exchange of ideas, and
+within months were in steady and intelligent communication with them.</p>
+
+<p>"They asked us first concerning earth, its climates and seas and
+continents, and concerning ourselves, our races and mechanisms and
+weapons. Much information we flashed out to them, the language of our
+communication being English, the elements, of which they had learned,
+with a mixture of numbers and symbolical dot-dash signals.</p>
+
+<p>"We were as eager to learn about them. They were somewhat reticent, we
+found, concerning their planet and themselves. They admitted that
+their world was a dying one and that their great canals were to make
+life possible on it, and also admitted that they were different in
+bodily form from ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>"They told us finally that communi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>cation like this was too
+ineffective to give us a clear picture of their world, or vice versa.
+If we could visit Mars, and then they visit earth, both worlds would
+benefit by the knowledge of the other. It seemed impossible to me,
+though I was eager enough for it. But the Martians said that while
+spaceships and the like were impossible, there was a way by which
+living beings could flash from earth to Mars and back by radio waves,
+even as our signals flashed!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_r.jpg" alt="R" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>andall broke in in amazement. "By radio!" he exclaimed, and Milton
+nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, so they said, nor did the idea of sending matter by radio seem
+too insane, after all. We send sound, music by radio waves across half
+the world from our broadcasting stations. We send light, pictures,
+across the world from our television stations. We do that by changing
+the wave length of the light-vibrations to make them radio vibrations,
+flashing them out thus over the world, to receivers which alter their
+wave-lengths again and change them back into light-vibrations.</p>
+
+<p>"Why then could not matter be sent in the same way? Matter, it has
+been long believed, is but another vibration of the ether, like light
+and radiant heat and radio vibrations and the like, having a lower
+wave-length than any of the others. Suppose we take matter and by
+applying electrical force to it change its wave-length, step it up to
+the wave-length of radio vibrations? Then those vibrations can be
+flashed forth from the sending station to a special receiver that will
+step them down again from radio vibrations to matter vibrations. Thus
+matter, living or non-living, could be flashed tremendous distances in
+a second!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_t1.jpg" alt="T" width="64" height="54" /></div>
+
+<p>his the Martians told us, and said they would set up a
+matter-transmitter and receiver on Mars and would aid and instruct us
+so that we could set up a similar transmitter and receiver here. Then
+part of us could be flashed out to Mars as radio vibrations by the
+transmitter, and in moments would have flashed across the gulf to the
+red planet and would be transformed back from radio vibrations to
+matter-vibrations by the receiver awaiting us there!</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally we agreed enthusiastically to build such a
+matter-transmitter and receiver, and then, with their instructions
+signalled to us constantly, started the work. Weeks it took, but at
+last, only yesterday, we finished it. The thing's two cubical chambers
+are one for the transmitting of matter and the other for its
+reception. At a time agreed on yesterday we tested the thing, placing
+a guinea pig in the transmitting chamber and turning on the actuating
+force. Instantly the animal vanished, and in moments came a signal
+from the Martians saying that they had received it unharmed in their
+receiving chamber.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we tested it the other way, they sending the same guinea pig to
+us, and in moments it flashed into being in our receiving chamber. Of
+course the step-down force in the receiving chamber had to be in
+operation, since had it not been at that moment the radio-vibrations
+of the animal would have simply flashed on endlessly in endless space.
+And the same would happen to any of us were we flashed forth and no
+receiving chamber turned on to receive us.</p>
+
+<p>"We signalled the Martians that all tests were satisfactory, and told
+them that on the next night at exactly midnight by our time we would
+flash out ourselves on our first visit to them. They have promised to
+have their receiving chamber operating to receive us at that moment,
+of course, and it is my plan to stay there twenty-four hours,
+gathering ample proofs of our visit, and then flash back to earth.</p>
+
+<p>"Nelson must stay here, not only to flash us forth to-night, but above
+all to have the receiving chamber operating to receive us at the
+destined mo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>ment twenty-four hours later. The force required to
+operate it is too great to use for more than a few minutes at a time,
+so it is necessary above all that that force be turned on and the
+receiving chamber ready for us at the moment we flash back. And since
+Nelson must stay, and Lanier and I wanted another, we wired you,
+Randall, in the hope that you would want to go with us on this
+venture. And do you?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>s Milton's question hung, Randall drew a long breath. His eyes were
+on the two great cubical chambers, and his brain seemed whirling at
+what he had heard. Then he was on his feet with the others.</p>
+
+<p>"Go? Could you keep me from going? Why, man, it's the greatest
+adventure in history!"</p>
+
+<p>Milton grasped his hand, as did Lanier, and then the physicist shot a
+glance at the square clock on the wall. "Well, there's little enough
+time left us," he said, "for we've hardly an hour before midnight, and
+at midnight we must be in that transmitting chamber for Nelson to send
+us flashing out!"</p>
+
+<p>Randall could never recall but dimly afterward how that tense hour
+passed. It was an hour in which Milton and Nelson went with anxious
+faces and low-voiced comments from one to another of the pieces of
+apparatus in the room, inspecting each carefully, from the great
+dynamos to the transmitting and receiving chambers, while Lanier
+quickly got out and made ready the rough khaki suits and equipment
+they were to take.</p>
+
+<p>It lacked but a quarter-hour of midnight when they had finally donned
+those suits, each making sure that he was in possession of the small
+personal kit Milton had designated. This included for each a heavy
+automatic, a small supply of concentrated foods, and a small case of
+drugs chosen to counteract the rarer atmosphere and lesser gravity
+which Milton had been warned to expect on the red planet. Each had
+also a strong wrist-watch, the three synchronized exactly with the
+big laboratory clock.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hen they had finished checking up on this equipment the clock's
+longer hand pointed almost to the figure twelve, and the physicist
+gestured expressively toward the transmitting chamber. Lanier, though,
+strode for a moment to one of the laboratory's doors and flung it
+open. As Randall gazed out with him they could see far out over the
+tossing sea, dimly lit by the great canopy of the summer stars
+overhead. Right at the zenith among those stars shone brightest a
+crimson spark.</p>
+
+<p>"Mars," said Lanier, his voice a half-whisper. "And they're waiting
+out there for us now&mdash;out there where we'll be in minutes!"</p>
+
+<p>"And if they shouldn't be waiting&mdash;their receiving chamber not
+ready&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Milton's calm voice came across the room to them: "Zero hour," he
+said, stepping up into the big transmitting chamber.</p>
+
+<p>Lanier and Randall slowly followed, and despite himself a slight
+shudder shook the latter's body as he stepped into the mechanism that
+in moments would send him flashing out through the great void as
+impalpable ether-vibrations. Milton and Lanier were standing silent
+beside him, their eyes on Nelson, who stood watchfully now at the big
+switchboard beside the chambers, his own gaze on the clock. They saw
+him touch a stud, and another, and the hum of the great dynamos at the
+room's end grew loud as the swarming of angry bees.</p>
+
+<p>The clock's longer hand was crawling over the last space to cover the
+smaller hand. Nelson turned a knob and the battery of great glass
+tubes broke into brilliant white light, a crackling coming from them.
+Randall saw the clock's pointer clicking over the last divisions, and
+as he saw Nelson grip a great switch there came over him a wild
+impulse to bolt from the transmitting chamber. But then as his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+thoughts whirled maelstromlike there came a clang from the clock and
+Nelson flung down the switch in his grasp. Blinding light seemed to
+break from all the chamber onto the three; Randall felt himself hurled
+into nothingness by forces titanic, inconceivable, and then knew no
+more.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_r.jpg" alt="R" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>andall came back to consciousness with a humming sound in his ears
+and with a sharp pain piercing his lungs at every breath. He felt
+himself lying on a smooth hard surface, and heard the humming stop and
+be succeeded by a complete silence. He opened his eyes, drawing
+himself to his feet as Milton and Lanier were doing, and stared about
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He was standing with his two friends inside a cubical metal chamber
+almost exactly the same as the one they had occupied in Milton's
+laboratory a few moments before. But it was not the same, as their
+first astounded glance out through its open side told them.</p>
+
+<p>For it was not the laboratory that lay around them, but a vast
+conelike hall that seemed to Randall's dazed eyes of dimensions
+illimitable. Its dull-gleaming metal walls slanted up for a thousand
+feet over their heads, and through a round aperture at the tip far
+above and through great doors in the walls came a thin sunlight. At
+the center of the great hall's circular floor stood the two cubical
+chambers in one of which the three were, while around the chambers
+were grouped masses of unfamiliar-looking apparatus.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>o Randall's untrained eyes it seemed electrical apparatus of very
+strange design, but neither he nor Milton nor Lanier paid it but small
+attention in that first breathless moment. They were gazing in
+fascinated horror at the scores of creatures who stood silent amid the
+apparatus and at its switches, gazing back at them. Those creatures
+were erect and roughly man-like in shape, but they were not human
+men. They were&mdash;the thought blasted to Randall's brain in that
+horror-filled moment&mdash;crocodile-men.</p>
+
+<p>Crocodile-men! It was only so that he could think of them in that
+moment. For they were terribly like great crocodile shapes that had
+learned in some way to carry themselves erect upon their hinder limbs.
+The bodies were not covered with skin, but with green bony plates. The
+limbs, thick and taloned at their paw-ends, seemed greater in size and
+stronger, the upper two great arms and the lower two the legs upon
+which each walked, while there was but the suggestion of a tail. But
+the flat head set on the neckless body was most crocodilian of all,
+with great fanged, hinged jaws projecting forward, and with dark
+unwinking eyes set back in bony sockets.</p>
+
+<p>Each of the creatures wore on his torso a gleaming garment like a coat
+of metal scales, with metal belts in which some had shining tubes.
+They were standing in groups here and there about the mechanisms, the
+nearest group at a strange big switch-panel not a half-dozen feet from
+the three men. Milton and Lanier and Randall returned in a tense
+silence the unwinking stare of the monstrous beings around them.</p>
+
+<p>"The Martians!" Lanier's horror-filled exclamation was echoed in the
+next instant by Randall's.</p>
+
+<p>"The Martians! God, Milton! They're not like anything we know&mdash;they're
+reptilian!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ilton's hand clutched his shoulder. "Steady, Randall," he muttered.
+"They're terrible enough, God knows&mdash;but remember we must seem just as
+grotesque to them."</p>
+
+<p>The sound of their voices seemed to break the great hall's spell of
+silence, and they saw the crocodilian Martians before them turning and
+speaking swiftly to each other in low hissing speech-sounds that were
+quite unintelligible to the three. Then from the small group nearest
+them one came<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> forward, until he stood just outside the chamber in
+which they were.</p>
+
+<p>Randall felt dimly the momentousness of the moment, in which beings of
+earth and Mars were confronting each other for the first time in the
+solar system's history. The creature before them opened his great jaws
+and uttered slowly a succession of sounds that for the moment puzzled
+them, so different were they from the hissing speech of the others,
+though with the same sibilance of tone. Again the thing repeated the
+sounds, and this time Milton uttered an exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>"He's speaking to us!" he cried. "Trying to speak the English that I
+taught them in our communication! I caught a word&mdash;listen...."</p>
+
+<p>As the creature repeated the sounds, Randall and Lanier started to
+hear also vaguely expressed in that hissing voice familiar words:
+"You&mdash;are Milton and&mdash;others from&mdash;earth?"</p>
+
+<p>Milton spoke very clearly and slowly to the creature: "We are those
+from earth," he said. "And you are the Martians with whom we have
+communicated?"</p>
+
+<p>"We are those Martians," said the other's hissing voice slowly.
+"These"&mdash;he waved a taloned paw toward those behind him&mdash;"have charge
+of the matter-transmitter and receiver. I am of our ruler's council."</p>
+
+<p>"Ruler?" Milton repeated. "A ruler of all Mars?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of all Mars," the other said. "Our name for him would mean in your
+words the Martian Master. I am to take you to him."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ilton turned to the other two with face alight with excitement.
+"These Martians have some supreme ruler they call the Martian Master,"
+he said quickly; "and we're to go before him. As the first visitors
+from earth we're of immense importance here."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, the Martian official before them had uttered a hissing
+call, and in answer to it a long shape of shining metal raced into
+the vast hall and halted beside them. It was like a fifty-foot
+centipede of metal, its scores of supporting short legs actuated by
+some mechanism inside the cylindrical body. There was a
+transparent-walled control room at the front end of that body, and in
+it a Martian at the controls who snapped open a door from which a
+metal ladder automatically descended.</p>
+
+<p>The Martian official gestured with a reptilian arm toward the ladder,
+and Milton and Lanier and Randall moved carefully out of the
+cube-chamber and across the floor to it, each of their steps being
+made a short leap forward by the lesser gravity of the smaller planet.
+They climbed up into the centipede-machine's control room, their guide
+following, and then as the door snapped shut, the operator of the
+thing pulled and turned the knob in his grasp and the long machine
+scuttled forward with amazing smoothness and speed.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment it was out of the building and into the feeble sunlight of
+a broad metal-paved street. About them lay a Martian city, seen by
+their eager eyes for the first time. It was a city whose structures
+were giant metal cones like that from which they had just come, though
+none seemed as large as that titanic one. Throngs of the hideous
+crocodilian Martians were moving busily to and fro in the streets,
+while among them there scuttled and flashed numbers of the
+centipede-machines.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>s their strange vehicle raced along, Randall saw that the conelike
+structures were for the most part divided into many levels, and that
+inside some could be glimpsed ranks of great mechanisms and hurrying
+Martians tending them. Away to their right across the vast forest of
+cones that was the city the sun's little disk was shining, and he
+glimpsed in that direction higher ground covered with a vast tangle of
+bright crimson jungle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> that sloped upward from a great, half-glimpsed
+waterway.</p>
+
+<p>The Martian beside them saw the direction of his gaze and leaned
+toward him. "No Martians live there," he hissed slowly. "Martians live
+only in cities where canals meet."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there's no life in those crimson jungles?" Randall asked,
+repeating the question a moment later more slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"No Martians there, but life&mdash;living things," the other told him,
+searching for words. "But not intelligent, like Martians and you."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to gaze ahead, then pointed. "The Martian Master's cone," he
+hissed.</p>
+
+<p>The three saw that at the end of the broad metal street down which
+their vehicle was racing there loomed another titanic cone-structure,
+fully as large as the mighty one in which they first found themselves.
+As the centipede-machine swept up to its great door-opening and
+halted, they descended to the metal paving and then followed their
+reptilian guide through the opening.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey found themselves in a great hall in which scores of the Martians
+were coming and going. At the hall's end stood a row of what seemed
+guards, Martians grasping shining tubes such as they had already
+glimpsed. These gave way to allow their passage when their conductor
+uttered a hissing order, and then they were moving down a shorter hall
+at whose end also were guards. As these sprang aside before them, a
+great door of massive metal they guarded moved softly upward,
+disclosing a mighty circular hall or room inside. Their crocodilian
+guide turned to them.</p>
+
+<p>"The hall of the Martian Master," he hissed.</p>
+
+<p>They passed inside with him. The great hall seemed to extend upward to
+the giant cone's tip, thin light coming down from an opening there.
+Upon the dull metal of its looming walls were running friezes of
+lighter metal, grotesque representations of reptilian shapes that they
+could but vaguely glimpse. Around the walls stood rank after rank of
+guards.</p>
+
+<p>At the hall's center was a low dias, and in a semicircle around and
+behind it stood a half-hundred great crocodilian shapes. Randall
+guessed even at the moment that they were the council of which their
+conductor had named himself a member. But like Milton and Lanier, he
+had eyes in that first moment only for the dais itself. For on it
+was&mdash;the Martian Master.</p>
+
+<p>Randall heard Milton and Lanier choke with the horror that shook his
+own heart and brain as he gazed. It was not simply another great
+crocodilian shape that sat upon that dais. It was a monstrous thing
+formed by the joining of three of the great reptilian bodies! Three
+distinct crocodile-like bodies sitting close together upon a metal
+seat, that had but a single great head. A great, grotesque crocodilian
+head that bulged backward and to either side, and that rested on the
+three thick short necks that rose from the triple body! And that head,
+that triple-bodied thing, was living, its unwinking eyes gazing at the
+three men!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he Martian Master! Randall felt his brain reel as he gazed at that
+mind-shattering thing. The Martian Master&mdash;this great head with three
+bodies! Reason told Randall, even as he strove for sanity, that the
+thing was but logical, that even on earth biologists had formed
+multiple-headed creatures by surgery, and that the Martians had done
+so to combine in one great head, one great brain, the brains of three
+bodies. Reason told him that the great triple brain inside that
+bulging head needed the bloodstreams of all three bodies to nourish
+it, must be a giant intellect indeed, one fitted to be the supreme
+Martian Master. But reason could not overcome the horror that choked
+him as he gazed at the awful thing.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A hissing voice sounding before him made him aware that the Martian
+Master was speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"You are the Earth-beings with whom we communicated, and whom we
+instructed to build a matter-transmitter and receiver on earth?" the
+slow voice asked. "You have come safely to Mars by means of that
+station?"</p>
+
+<p>"We have come safely." Milton's voice was shaken and he could find no
+other words.</p>
+
+<p>"That is well. Long had we desired to have such a station built on
+earth, since with it there to flash back and forth between the two
+worlds is easy. You have come, then, to learn of this world and to
+take back what you learn to your races?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is why we came." Milton said, more steadily. "We want to stay
+only hours on this first visit, and then flash back to earth as we
+came."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he head's awful eyes seemed to consider them. "But when do you intend
+to go back?" its strange voice asked. "Unless the one at your earth
+station has its receiver operating at the right moment you will simply
+flash on endlessly as radio waves&mdash;will be annihilated."</p>
+
+<p>Milton found the courage to smile. "We started from earth at our
+midnight exactly, and at midnight exactly twenty-four earth hours
+later, we are to flash back and the receiver will be awaiting us."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence when he had said that, a silence that seemed to
+Randall's strained mind to have become suddenly tense, sinister. The
+great triple-bodied creature before them considered them again, its
+eyes moving over them, and when it again spoke the hissing words came
+very slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty-four earth hours," it said; "and then your receiver on earth
+will be awaiting you. That time we can measure to the moment, and that
+is well. For it is not you three Earth-beings who will flash back to
+earth when that moment comes! It will be Martians, the first of our
+Martian masses who have waited for ages for that moment and who will
+begin then our conquest of the earth!</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Earth-beings, our great plan comes to its end now at last! At
+last! Age on age, prisoned on this dying, arid world, we have desired
+the earth that by right of power shall be ours, have sought for ages
+to communicate with its beings. You finally heard us, you hearkened to
+us, you built the matter-transmitting and receiving station on earth
+that was the one thing needed for our plan. For when the
+matter-receiver of that station is turned on in twenty-four of your
+hours, and ready to receive matter flashes from here, it will be the
+first of our millions who will flash at last to earth!</p>
+
+<p>"I, the Martian Master, say it. Those first to go shall seize that
+matter-receiver on earth when first they appear there, shall build
+other and larger receivers, and through them within days all our
+Martian hordes shall have been flashed to earth! Shall have poured out
+over it and conquered with our weapons your weak races of
+Earth-beings, who cannot stand before us, and whose world you have
+delivered at last into our hands!"</p>
+
+<p>For a moment, when the great monster's hissing voice had ceased,
+Milton and Randall and Lanier gazed toward it as though petrified, the
+whole unearthly scene spinning about them. And then, through the thick
+silence, the thin sound of Milton's voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Our world&mdash;our earth&mdash;delivered to the Martians, and by us! God&mdash;no!"</p>
+
+<p>With that last cry of agonized comprehension and horror, Milton did
+what surely had never any in the great hall expected, leaped onto the
+dais with a single spring toward the Martian Master! Randall heard a
+hundred wild hissing cries break from about him, saw the crocodilian
+forms of guards and council rushing forward even as he and Lanier
+sprang after Milton, and then glimpsed shining tubes levelled from
+which brilliant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> shafts of dazzling crimson light or force were
+stabbing toward them!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>o Randall the moment that followed was but a split-second flash and
+whirl of action. As his earthly muscles took him forward with Lanier
+after Milton in a great leap to the dais, he was aware of the
+brilliant red rays stabbing behind him closely, and knew that only the
+tremendous size of his leap had taken him past them. In the succeeding
+instant he was made aware of what he had escaped, for the
+hastily-loosed rays struck squarely a group of three or four Martian
+guards rushing to the dais from the opposite side, and they vanished
+from view with a sharp detonation as though clicked out of existence!</p>
+
+<p>Randall was not to know then, that the red rays were ones that
+annihilated matter by neutralizing or damping the matter-vibrations in
+the ether. But he did know that no more rays were loosed, for by then
+he and Milton and Lanier were on the dais and were wrapped in a
+hurricane combat with the guards that had rushed between them and the
+Martian Master.</p>
+
+<p>Gleaming fangs&mdash;great scaled forms&mdash;reaching talons&mdash;it was all a wild
+phantasmagoria of grotesque forms spinning around him as he struck
+with all the power of his earthly muscles and felt crocodilian forms
+staggering and going down beneath his frenzied blows. He heard the
+roar of an automatic close beside him in the melee as Milton
+remembered at last through the red haze of his fury the weapon he
+carried, but before either Randall or Lanier could reach their own
+weapons a new wave of crocodilian forms had poured onto them that by
+sheer pressing weight held them helpless, to be disarmed.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>issing orders sounded, the arms and legs of the three were tightly
+grasped by great taloned paws, and the masses of Martians about them
+melted back from the dais. Held each by two great creatures, Milton
+and Randall and Lanier faced again the triple-bodied Martian Master,
+who in all that wild moment of struggle appeared not to have changed
+his position. The big monster's black eyes stared unmovedly down at
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"You Earth-beings seem of lower intelligence even than we thought,"
+his hissing voice informed them. "And those weapons&mdash;crude, very
+crude."</p>
+
+<p>Milton, his face set, spoke back: "It may be that you will find human
+weapons of some power if your hordes reach earth," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"But what compared with the power of ours?" the other asked coldly.
+"And since our scientists even now devise new weapons to annihilate
+the earth's races, I think they would be glad of three of those races
+to experiment with now. The one use we can make of you, certainly."</p>
+
+<p>The creature turned its bulging head a little towards the guards who
+held the three men, and uttered a brief hissing order. Instantly the
+six Martians, grasping the three tightly, marched them across the
+great hall and through a different door than that by which they had
+entered.</p>
+
+<p>They were taken down a narrow corridor that turned sharply twice as
+they went on. Randall saw that it was lit by squares inset in the
+walls that glowed with crimson light. It came to him as they marched
+on that night must be upon the Martian city without, since the sun had
+been sinking when they had crossed it in the centipede-machine.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hrough what seemed an ante-room they were taken, and then into a long
+hall instantly recognizable as a laboratory. There were many glowing
+squares illuminating it, and narrow windows high in the wall gave them
+a glimpse of the city outside, a pattern of crimson lights. Long metal
+tables and racks filled the big room's farther end, while along the
+walls were ranged shining mechanisms of un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>familiar and grotesque
+appearance. Fully a score of the crocodilian Martians were busy in the
+room, some intent on their work at the racks and tables, others
+operating some of the strange machines.</p>
+
+<p>The guards conducted the three to an open space by the wall, below one
+of the high window-openings and between two great cylindrical
+mechanisms. Then, while five of their number held the three men
+prisoned in that space by the threat of their levelled ray-tubes, the
+other moved toward one of the busy Martian scientists and held with
+him a brief interchange of hissing speech.</p>
+
+<p>Milton leaned to whisper to the other two: "We've got to get out of
+this while we're still living," he whispered. "You heard the Martian
+Master&mdash;in constructing that matter-receiver on earth, we've opened a
+door through which all the Martian millions will pour onto our world!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's useless, Milton," said Randall dully. "Even if we got clear of
+this the Martians will be at their matter-transmitter in hordes when
+the moment comes to flash back to earth."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that, but we've got to try," the other insisted. "If we or
+some of us could get clear of this, we might in some way hide near the
+matter-transmitter until the moment came and then fight to it."</p>
+
+<p>"But how to get out of the hands of these, even?" asked Lanier,
+nodding toward the alert guards before them.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_t1.jpg" alt="T" width="64" height="54" /></div>
+
+<p>here's but one way," Milton whispered swiftly. "Our earthly muscles
+would enable us, I think, to get through this window-opening above us
+in a leap, if we had a moment's chance. Well, whichever of us they
+take to experiment with or examine first, must make a struggle or
+disturbance that will turn the guards' attention for a moment and give
+the other two a chance to make the attempt!"</p>
+
+<p>"One to stay and the other two to get away...." Randall said slowly;
+but Milton's tense whisper interrupted:</p>
+
+<p>"It's the only way, and even then a thousand to one chance! But it's
+we who have opened this gate for the Martian invasion of our world and
+it's we who must&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Before he could finish, the approach of hissing voices told them that
+the leader of the six guards and the Martian who seemed the chief of
+the experimenters in the hall were nearing them. The three men stood
+silent and tense as the two crocodilian monsters stopped before them.
+The scientist, who carried in his metal-belt, instead of a ray-tube a
+compact case of instruments, surveyed them as though in curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>He came closer, his quick reptilian eyes taking in with evident
+interest every feature of their bodily appearance. Intuitively the
+three knew that one of them was to be chosen for a first investigation
+by the Martian scientists, and that that one would have not even the
+slender hope of escape open to the other two. A strange lottery of
+life and death!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_r.jpg" alt="R" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>andall saw the creature's gaze turn from one to another of them, and
+then heard the hiss of his voice as he pointed a taloned paw toward
+Milton. Instantly two of the guards had seized Milton and had jerked
+him out from the wall, the other guards holding back Randall and
+Lanier with threatening tubes. It was upon Milton that the fatal
+choice had fallen!</p>
+
+<p>Randall and Lanier made together a half-movement forward, but Milton,
+a tense message in his eyes, forced them back. The guards who held the
+physicist led him, at the direction of the Martian scientist, toward a
+great upright frame at the room's far end, upon which were clustered a
+score of dial-indicators. From these flexible cords led; and now the
+scientists began attaching these by clips to various spots on Milton's
+body. Some mechanical examination of his bodily characteris<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>tics were
+apparently to be made. Milton shot suddenly a glance at the two by the
+wall, and his head nodded in an almost imperceptible signal. The
+muscles of Lanier and Randall tensed.</p>
+
+<p>Then abruptly Milton seemed to go mad. He shouted aloud in a terrible
+voice, and at the same moment tore from him the cords just attached,
+his fists striking out then at the amazed Martians around him. As they
+leaped back from that sudden explosion of activity and sound on
+Milton's part the guards before Randall and Lanier whirled
+instinctively for an instant toward it. And in that instant the two
+had leaped.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was upward they leaped, with all the force of their earthly
+muscles, toward the big window-opening a half-dozen feet in the wall
+above them. Like released steel springs they sat up, and Randall heard
+the thump of their feet as they struck the opening's sill, heard wild
+cries suddenly coming from beneath them, as the guards turned back
+toward them. Crimson rays clove up like light toward them, but the
+instant's surprise had been enough, and in it they had leaped on and
+through the opening, into the outside night!</p>
+
+<p>As they shot downward and struck the metal paving outside, Randall
+heard a wild babble of cries from inside. A moment he and Lanier gazed
+frenziedly around them, then were running with great leaps along the
+base of the building from which they had just escaped.</p>
+
+<p>In the darkness of night the Martian city stretched away to their
+right, its massive dark cone-structures outlined by points of glowing
+ruddy light here and there upon them. Beside the city's metal streets
+were illuminated by the brilliant field of stars overhead and by the
+soft light of the two moons, one much larger than the other, that
+moved among those stars.</p>
+
+<p>Along the street crocodilian Martians were coming and going still,
+though in small numbers, there being but few in sight in the dim-lit
+street's length. Lanier pointed ahead as they leaped onward.</p>
+
+<p>"Straight onward, Randall!" he jerked. "There seem fewer of the
+Martians this way!"</p>
+
+<p>"But the great cone of the matter-station is the other way!" Randall
+exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"We can't risk making for it now!" cried the other. "We've got to keep
+clear of them until the alarm is over. Hear them now?"</p>
+
+<p>For even as they leaped forward a rising clamor of hissing cries and
+rush of feet was coming from behind as scores of Martians poured out
+into the darkness from the great cone-building. The two fugitives had
+passed by then from the shadow of the mighty structure, and as they
+ran along the broad metal street toward the shadow of the next cone,
+through the light of the moons above, they heard higher cries and then
+glimpsed narrow shafts of crimson force cleaving the night around
+them.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_r.jpg" alt="R" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>andall, as the deadly rays drove past him, heard the low detonating
+sound made by their destruction of the air in their path, and the
+inrush of new air. But in the misty and uncertain moonlight the rays
+could not be loosed accurately, and before they could be swept
+sidewise to annihilate the two fleeing men they had gained, with a
+last great leap, the shadow of the next building.</p>
+
+<p>On they ran, the clatter of the Martian pursuit growing more noisy
+behind them. Randall heard Lanier gasping with each great leap, and
+felt himself at every breath a knife of pain stabbing through his
+lungs, the rarified atmosphere of the red planet taking its toll.
+Again from the darkness behind them the crimson rays clove, but this
+time were wide of their mark.</p>
+
+<p>With every moment the clamor of pursuit seemed growing louder, the
+alarm spreading out over the Martian city and arousing it. As they
+raced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> past cone after cone, Randall knew even the increased power of
+their muscles could not long aid them against the exhaustion which the
+thin air was imposing on them. His thoughts spun for a moment to
+Milton, in the laboratory behind, and then back to their own desperate
+plight.</p>
+
+<p>Abruptly shapes loomed in the misty light before them! A group of
+three great Martians, reptilian shapes that had been coming toward
+them and had stopped for an instant in amazement at sight of the
+running pair. There was no time to halt themselves, to evade the
+three, and with a mutual instinct Lanier and Randall seized together
+the last expedient open to them. They ran straight forward toward the
+astounded three, and when a half-score feet from them, leaped with all
+their force upward and toward them, their tensed bodies flying through
+the air with feet outstretched before them.</p>
+
+<p>Then they had struck the group of three with feet-foremost, and with
+the impetus of that great leap had knocked them sprawling to this side
+and that, while with a supreme effort the two kept their balance and
+leaped on. The cries of the three added to the din behind them as they
+threw themselves forward.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey flung themselves past a last cone building to halt for an instant
+in utter amazement despite the nearing pursuit. Before them were no
+more streets and structures, but a huge smooth-flowing waterway! It
+gleamed in the moonlight and lay at right angles across their path,
+seeming to flow along the Martian city's edge.</p>
+
+<p>"A canal!" cried Lanier. "It's one of the canals that meet at this
+city and flow around it! We're trapped&mdash;we've reached the city's
+edge!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet!" Randall gasped. "Look!"</p>
+
+<p>As he pointed to the left Lanier shot a glance there; and then both of
+them were running in that direction, along the smooth metal paving
+that bordered the mighty canal. They came to what Randall had seen, a
+mighty metal arch that soared out over the waterway to its opposite
+side. A bridge!</p>
+
+<p>They were on it, were racing up the smooth incline of it. Randall
+glanced back as they reached the arch's summit. From that height the
+city stretched far away behind them, a lace of crimson lights in the
+night. He glimpsed the gleam of the giant waterway that encircled the
+city completely, one that was fed by other canals from far away that
+emptied into it, the great city's vital water-supply brought thus from
+this world's melting polar snows.</p>
+
+<p>There were moving lights behind now, too, pouring out onto the metal
+paving by the waterway, moving to and fro as though in confusion, with
+a babel of hissing cries. It was not until Randall and Lanier were
+running down the descending incline of the great arched bridge,
+though, that the lights and shouts of their pursuers began to move up
+on that bridge after them.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_r.jpg" alt="R" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>unning off the bridge's smooth way, the two found themselves
+stumbling on through the darkness over more metal paving, and then
+over soft ground. There were no lights or buildings or sounds of any
+sort on this farther side of the great waterway. A tall dark wall
+seemed suddenly to loom up out of the darkness some distance ahead of
+the two.</p>
+
+<p>"The crimson jungle!" Randall cried. "The jungles we glimpsed from the
+city! It's a chance to hide!"</p>
+
+<p>They raced toward the protecting blackness of that wall of vegetation.
+They reached it, flung themselves inside, just as the pursuing
+Martians, a mass of running crocodilian shapes and of great racing
+centipede-machines, swept up over the bridge's arch behind. A moment
+the two halted in the thick vegetation's shelter, gasping for breath,
+then were moving forward through the jungle's denser darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Thick about them and far above them towered the masses of strange
+trees<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> and plant life through which they made their way. Randall could
+see but dimly the nature of these plant-forms, but could make out that
+they were grotesque and unearthly in appearance, all leafless, and
+with masses of thin tendrils branching from them instead of leaves. He
+realized that it was only beside the arid planet's great canals that
+this profusion of plant life had sufficient moisture for existence,
+and that it was the broad bands of jungle bordering the canals that
+had made the latter visible to earth's astronomers.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>anier and he halted for a moment to listen. The thick jungle about
+them seemed quite silent. But from behind there came through it a
+vague tumult of hissing calls; and then, as they glimpsed red flashes
+far behind, they heard the crashing of great masses of the leafless
+trees.</p>
+
+<p>"The rays!" whispered Lanier. "They're beating through the jungle with
+them and the centipede-machines after us!"</p>
+
+<p>They paused no more, but pushed on through the thick growths with
+renewed urgency. Now and then, as they passed through small clearings,
+Randall glimpsed overhead the fast-moving nearer moon and slower
+sailing farther moon of Mars, moving across the steady stars. In some
+of these clearings they saw, too, strange great openings burrowed in
+the ground as though by some strange animal.</p>
+
+<p>The crashing clamor of the Martians beating the jungle behind was
+coming close, ever closer, and as they came to still another misty-lit
+clearing, Lanier paused, with face white and tense.</p>
+
+<p>"They're closing in on us!" he said. "They're hunting us down by
+beating the jungle with those centipede-machines, and even if we
+escape them we're getting farther from the city and the matter-station
+each moment!"</p>
+
+<p>Randall's eyes roved desperately around the clearing; and then, as
+they fell on a group of the great burrowed openings that seemed
+present everywhere about them, he uttered an exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>"These holes! We can hide in one until they've passed over us, and
+then steal back to the city!"</p>
+
+<p>Lanier's eyes lit. "It's a chance!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey sprang toward the openings. They were each of some four feet
+diameter, extending indefinitely downward as though the mouths of
+tunnels. In a moment Randall was lowering himself into one, Lanier
+after him. The tunnel in which they were, they found, curved to one
+side a few feet below the surface. They crawled down this curve until
+they were out of sight of the opening above. They crouched silent,
+then, listening.</p>
+
+<p>There came down to them the dull, distant clamor of the
+centipede-machines crashing through the jungle, cutting a way with
+rays, their clamor growing ever louder. Then Randall, who was lowest
+in the tunnel, turned suddenly as there came to him a strange rustling
+sound from <i>beneath</i> him. It was as though some crawling or creeping
+thing was moving in the tunnel below them!</p>
+
+<p>He grasped the arm of Lanier, beside and a little above him, to warn
+him, but the words he was about to whisper never were uttered. For at
+this moment a big shapeless living thing seemed to flash up toward
+them through the darkness from beneath, cold ropelike tentacles
+gripped both tightly; and then in an instant they were being dragged
+irresistibly down into the lightless tunnel's depths!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>s they were pulled swiftly downward into the tunnel by the tentacles
+that grasped them an involuntary cry of horror came from Randall and
+Lanier alike. They twisted frantically in the cold grip that held
+them, but found it of the quality of steel. And as Randall twisted in
+it to strike frantically down through the darkness at whatever thing
+of horror held them, his clenched fist met but the cold<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> smooth skin
+of some big, soft-bodied creature!</p>
+
+<p>Down&mdash;down&mdash;remorselessly they were being drawn farther into the black
+depths of the tunnel by the great thing crawling down below them.
+Again and again the two twisted and struck, but could not shake its
+hold. In sheer exhaustion they ceased to struggle, dragged helplessly
+farther down.</p>
+
+<p>Was it minutes or hours, Randall wondered afterward, of that horrible
+progress downward, that passed before they glimpsed light beneath? A
+feeble glow, hardly discernible, it was, and as they went lower still
+he saw that it was caused by the tunnel passing through a strata of
+radio-active rock that gave off the faint light. In that light they
+glimpsed for the first time the horror dragging them downward.</p>
+
+<p>It was a huge worm creature! A thing like a giant angleworm, three
+feet or more in thickness and thrice that in length, its great body
+soft and cold and worm-like. From the end nearest them projected two
+long tentacles with which it had gripped the two men and was dragging
+them down the tunnel after it! Randall glimpsed a mouth-aperture in
+the tentacled end of the worm body also, and two scarlike marks above
+it, placed like eyes, although eyes the monstrous thing had not.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ut a moment they glimpsed it and then were in darkness again as the
+tunnel passed through the radio-active strata and lower. The horror of
+that moment's glimpse, though, made them strike out in blind
+repulsion, but relentlessly the creature dragged them after it.</p>
+
+<p>"God!" It was Lanier's panting cry as they were dragged on. "This worm
+monster&mdash;we're hundreds of feet below the surface!"</p>
+
+<p>Randall sought to reply, but his voice choked. The air about them was
+close and damp, with an overpowering earthy smell. He felt
+consciousness leaving him.</p>
+
+<p>A gleam of soft light&mdash;they were passing more radio-active patches. He
+felt the wild convulsive struggles of Lanier against the thing; and
+then suddenly the tunnel ended, debouched into a far-stretching,
+low-ceilinged cavity. It was feebly illuminated by radio-active
+patches here and there in walls and ceiling, and as the monster that
+held them halted on entering the cavity, Randall and Lanier lay in its
+grip and stared across the weird place with intensified horror.</p>
+
+<p>For it was swarming with countless worm monsters! All were like the
+one who held them, thick long worm bodies with projecting tentacles
+and with black eyeless faces. They were crawling to and fro in this
+cavern far beneath the surface, swarming in hordes around and over
+each other, pouring in and out of the awful place from countless
+tunnels that led upward and downward from it!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;world of worm monsters, beneath the surface of the Martian jungles!
+As Randall stared across that swarming, dim-lit cave of horror,
+physically sick at sight of it, he remembered the countless tunnel
+openings they had glimpsed in their flight through the jungle, and
+remembered the remark of the Martian who had first guided them across
+the city, that in the jungles were living things, of a sort. These
+were the things, worm monsters whose unthinkable networks of tunnels
+and burrows formed beneath the surface a veritable worm world!</p>
+
+<p>"Randall!" It was Lanier's thick exclamation. "Randall&mdash;those
+scar-marks on their&mdash;faces&mdash;you see&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"See?"</p>
+
+<p>"Those marks! These creatures had eyes once but must have been forced
+down here by the Martians. These may once have been&mdash;ages ago&mdash;human!"</p>
+
+<p>At that thought Randall felt horror overcoming his senses. He was
+aware that the great worm monster holding them was dragging them
+forward through the cavern, that others of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> swarms there were
+crowding around them, feeling them blindly with their tentacles,
+helping to drag them forward.</p>
+
+<p>Half-carried and half-dragged they went, scores of tentacles now
+holding them, great worm shapes crawling forward on all sides of them
+and accompanying them along the cavern's length. He glimpsed worm
+monsters here and there emerging from the upward tunnels with masses
+of strange plant stuff in their grasp that others blindly devoured.
+His senses reeled from the suffocating air, the great cavity being but
+a half-score feet in height, burrowed from the damp earth by these
+numberless things.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he faint, strange light of the radio-active patches showed him that
+they were approaching the cavern's end. Tunnels opened from its end as
+from all its walls and floor, and into one Randall was dragged by the
+creatures, one before and one behind, grasping him, and Lanier being
+brought behind him in the same way. In the close tunnel the heavy air
+was deadly, and he was but partly conscious when again, after moments
+of crawling along it, he felt himself dragged out into another cavern.</p>
+
+<p>This earth-walled cavity, though, seemed to extend farther than the
+first, though of the same height as the first and with a few
+radio-active illuminating patches. In it seethed and swarmed literally
+hundreds on hundreds of the worm monsters, a sea of great crawling
+bodies. Randall and Lanier saw that they were being carried and
+dragged now toward the farther end of this larger cavity.</p>
+
+<p>As they approached it, pushing through the swarming creatures who felt
+them with inquisitive tentacles as their captors took them forward,
+the two men saw that a great shape was looming up in the faint light
+at the cave's far end. In moments they were close enough to discern
+its nature, and a horror and awe filled them at sight of it more
+intense than they had yet felt.</p>
+
+<p>For the looming shape was a huge earthen image or statue of a worm! It
+was shaped with a childish crudeness from the solid earth, a giant
+earthen worm shape whose body looped across the cave's end, and whose
+tentacled head or front end was reared upward to the cavity's roof.
+Before this awful earthen shape was a section of the cave's floor
+higher than the rest, and on it a great crudely shaped rectangular
+earthen block.</p>
+
+<p>"Lanier&mdash;that shape!" whispered Randall in his horror. "That earthen
+image, made by these creatures&mdash;it's the worm god they've made for
+themselves!"</p>
+
+<p>"A worm god!" Lanier repeated, staring toward it as they were dragged
+nearer. "Then that block...."</p>
+
+<p>"Its altar!" Randall exclaimed. "These things have some dim spark of
+intelligence or memory! They're brought us here to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>efore he could finish, the clutching tentacles of the worm monsters
+about them had dragged them up onto the raised floor beside the block,
+beneath the looming earthen worm shape. There they glimpsed for the
+first time in the faint light another who stood there held tightly by
+the tentacles of two worm monsters. It was a Martian!</p>
+
+<p>The big crocodilian shape was apparently a prisoner like themselves,
+captured and brought down from above. His reptilian eyes surveyed
+Lanier and Randall quickly as they were dragged up and held beside
+him, but he took no other interest. To the two men, at the moment, it
+seemed that his great crocodilian shape was human, almost, so much
+more man-like was it than the grotesque worm monsters before them.</p>
+
+<p>With a half-dozen of the creatures holding the two men and the Martian
+tightly, another great worm monster crawled to the edge of the raised
+earth floor in front of the giant worm god's image, and then reared up
+the first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> third of his thick body into the air. By then the great,
+faint-lit cavity stretching before them was filled with countless
+numbers of the monsters, pouring into it from all the tunnels that
+opened into it from above and below, packing it thick with their
+grotesque bodies as far as the eye could reach in the dim light.</p>
+
+<p>They were seething and crawling in that great mass; but as the worm
+monster on the elevation upreared, all in the cavity seemed suddenly
+to quiet. Then the upreared eyeless thing began to move his long
+tentacles. Very slowly at first he waved them back and forth, and
+slowly the masses of monsters in the cavity, all turned by some sense
+toward him, did likewise, the cavity becoming a forest of upraised
+tentacles waving rhythmically back and forth in unison with those of
+the leader.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ack and forth&mdash;back and forth&mdash;Randall felt caught in some torturing
+nightmare as he watched the countless tentacle-feelers waving thus
+from one side to the other. It was a ceremony, he knew&mdash;some strange
+rite springing perhaps from dim memory alone, that these worm monsters
+carried out thus before the looming shape of their worm god. Only the
+six that held the three captives never relaxed their grip.</p>
+
+<p>Still on and on went the strange and senseless rite. By then the
+close, damp air of that cavity far beneath Mars' surface was sinking
+Randall and Lanier deeper into a half-consciousness. The Martian
+beside them never moved or spoke. The upstretched tentacles of the
+leader and of the great worm horde before him never ceased swaying
+rhythmically from side to side.</p>
+
+<p>Randall, half-hypnotized by those swaying tentacles and but
+semi-conscious by then, could only estimate afterward how long that
+grotesque rite went on. Hours it must have endured, he knew, hours in
+which each opening of his eyes revealed only the dimly-illuminated
+cavern, the worm monsters that filled it, the forest of tentacles
+waving in unison. It was only toward the end of those hours that he
+noticed vaguely that the tentacles were waving faster and faster.</p>
+
+<p>And as the tentacles of leader and worm horde waved alike ever more
+swiftly an atmosphere of growing excitement and expectation seemed to
+hold the horde. At last the upstretched feelers were whipping back and
+forth almost too swiftly for the eye to follow. Then abruptly the worm
+leader ceased the motion himself, and while the horde before him
+continued it, turned and crawled to the three captives.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>In an instant, as though in answer to a second command, the two worm
+monsters who held the Martian dragged him forward toward the great
+earthen block before the worm god's image. Two others of the creatures
+came from the side, and the four swiftly stretched the Martian flat on
+the block's top, each of the four grasping with their tentacles one of
+his four taloned limbs. They seemed to hesitate then, the worm leader
+beside them, the tentacles of the horde waving swiftly still.</p>
+
+<p>Abruptly the tentacles of the leader flashed up as though in a signal.
+There was a dull ripping sound, and in that moment Randall and Lanier
+saw the Martian on the block torn literally limb from limb by the four
+great worm monsters who had held his four limbs!</p>
+
+<p>The tentacles of the horde waved suddenly with increased, excited
+swiftness at that. Randall shrank in horror.</p>
+
+<p>"They've brought us here for that!" he cried. "To sacrifice us on that
+altar that way to their worm god!"</p>
+
+<p>But Lanier too had cried out, appalled, as he saw that awful
+sacrifice, and both strained madly against the grip of the worm
+creatures. Their struggles were in vain, and then in answer to another
+unspoken command the two monsters that held Randall were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> dragging him
+also to the earthen altar!</p>
+
+<p>He felt himself gripped by the four great creatures around the block,
+felt as he struggled with his last strength that he was being
+stretched out on the block, each of the four at one of its corners
+grasping one of his limbs. He heard Lanier's mad cries as though from
+a great distance, glimpsed as he was held thus on his back the great
+shape of the earthen worm god reared over him, and then glimpsed the
+leader of the monsters rearing beside him.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he dull sound of the swift-waving tentacles of the horde came to him,
+there was a tense moment of agony of waiting, and then the tentacles
+of the leader flashed up in the signal!</p>
+
+<p>But at the same moment Randall felt his limbs released by the four
+monsters that had held them! There seemed sudden wild confusion in the
+great cave. The strange rite broke off; the horde of worm monsters
+crawled frantically this way and that in it. Randall slipped off the
+block; staggered to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>The worm monsters in the cave were swarming toward the downward tunnel
+openings! The two captives forgotten, the creatures were pouring in
+crawling, fighting swarms toward those openings. And then, as Randall
+and Lanier stared stupefied, there came a red flash from one of the
+upward tunnels and a brilliant crimson ray stabbed down and mowed a
+path of annihilation in the cave's earthen side!</p>
+
+<p>The two heard great thumping sounds from above, saw the tunnels
+leading from above becoming suddenly many times greater in size as red
+rays flashed down along them to gouge the tunnel's walls. Then down
+from those enlarged tunnels there were bursting long shining shapes,
+great centipede-machines crawling down the tunnels which their rays
+made larger before them! And as the centipede-machines burst down into
+the cavern their crimson rays stabbed right and left to cut paths of
+annihilation among the worms.</p>
+
+<p>"The Martians!" Lanier cried. "They didn't find us above&mdash;they knew we
+must have been taken by these things&mdash;and they've come down after us!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_b1.jpg" alt="B" width="46" height="52" /></div>
+<p>ack, Lanier!" Randall shouted. "Quick, before they see us, behind
+this&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he was jerking Lanier with him behind the looming earthen
+statue of the great worm god. Crouched there between the statue and
+the cave's wall they were hidden precariously from the view of those
+in the cavern. And now that cavern had become a scene of horror
+unthinkable as the centipede-machines pouring down into it blasted the
+frantically crawling worm monsters with their rays.</p>
+
+<p>The worm monsters attempted no resistance, but sought only to escape
+into their downward tunnels, and in moments those not caught by the
+rays had vanished in the openings. But the centipede-machines, after
+racing swiftly around the cavity, were following them, were going down
+into those downward tunnels also, their rays blasting down ahead of
+each to make the tunnel large enough for them to follow.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment all but one had vanished down into the openings, the
+remaining one having its front or head jammed in one of the openings
+from the failure of its operator to blast a large enough opening
+before him. As Lanier and Randall watched tensely they saw the
+machine's control room door open and a Martian descend. He inspected
+the tunnel opening in which his vehicle was jammed, then with a hand
+ray-tube began to disintegrate the earth around that opening to free
+his machine.</p>
+
+<p>Randall clutched his companion's arm. "That machine!" he whispered.
+"If we could capture it, it would give us a chance to get back to the
+city&mdash;to Milton and the matter-transmitter!"</p>
+
+<p>Lanier started, then nodded swiftly. "We'll chance it," he whispered.
+"For our twenty-four hours here must be almost up."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey hesitated a moment, then crept forward from behind the great
+earthen statue. The Martian had his back to them, his attention on the
+freeing of his mechanism. Across the dim-lit cavern they crept softly,
+and were within a dozen feet of the Martian when some sound made him
+wheel quickly to confront them with the deadly tube. But even as he
+whirled the two had leaped.</p>
+
+<p>The force of their leap sent them flying through that dozen feet of
+space to strike the Martian at the moment his tube levelled. One
+hissing call he uttered as they struck him, and then with all his
+strength Lanier had grasped the crocodilian body and bent it backward.
+Something in it snapped, and the Martian collapsed limply. The two
+looked wildly around.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing showed that the Martian's call had been heard, and after a
+moment's glance that showed the head of the centipede machine already
+freed, they were clambering up into its control room, closing the
+door. Randall seized the knob with which he had seen the machines
+operated. As he pulled it toward him the machine moved across the
+tunnel opening and raced smoothly over the cavern's floor. As he
+turned the knob the machine turned swiftly in the same direction.</p>
+
+<p>He headed the long mechanism toward one of the upward-curving tunnels
+which the Martians had blasted larger in descending. They were almost
+to it when there flashed up into the cavity from one of the downward
+tunnel openings a centipede-machine, and then another, and another.
+The Martians in their transparent-windowed control rooms took in at a
+glance the dead crocodilian on the floor, and then the three great
+machines were darting toward that of Randall and Lanier.</p>
+
+<p>"The Martian we killed!" Randall cried. "They heard his call and are
+coming after us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Turn to the wall!" Lanier shouted to him. "I have the rays&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t that moment there was a clicking beside Randall and he glimpsed
+Lanier pulling forth two small grips he had found, then saw that two
+crimson rays were stabbing from tubes in their machine's front toward
+the others even as their own rays darted back. The beams that had been
+loosed toward them grazed past them as Randall whirled their machine
+to the wall, and he saw one of the three attacking mechanisms vanish
+as Lanier's beams struck it.</p>
+
+<p>Around&mdash;back&mdash;with instinctive, lightninglike motions he whirled their
+centipede-machine in the great dim-lit cave as the two remaining ones
+leapt again to the attack. Their rays shot right and left to catch the
+two men's vehicle in a trap of death, and as Randall swung their own
+mechanism straight ahead he glimpsed at the cavern's far end the great
+earthen worm god still upreared.</p>
+
+<p>On either side of them the red beams burned as they leapt forward, but
+as though running a gauntlet of death Randall kept the machine racing
+forward in the succeeding second until the two others loomed on either
+side of it. Then Lanier's beams were driving in turn to right and left
+of them and the two vanished as though by magic as they were struck.</p>
+
+<p>"Up to the surface!" Lanier cried, his eyes on the glowing dial of his
+wrist-watch. "We've been held hours here&mdash;we've but a half-hour or
+more before earth midnight!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_r.jpg" alt="R" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>andall sent their machine racing again toward one of the upward
+tunnels, and as the long mechanism began to climb smoothly up the
+darkness he heard Lanier agonizing beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"God, if we have only enough time to get to that matter-transmitter
+before the Martians start flashing to earth through it!"</p>
+
+<p>"But Milton?" Randall cried. "We don't know whether he's alive or
+dead! We can't leave him!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We must!" said Lanier solemnly. "Our duty's to the earth now, man, to
+the world that we alone can save from the Martian invasion and
+conquest! At the hour of twelve Nelson will have the matter-receiver
+turned on and at that hour the Martian will start flashing to
+earth&mdash;unless we prevent!"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Randall grasped the knob in his hands more tightly as light
+showed above them. They had been climbing upward through the enlarged
+tunnel at their machine's highest speed, and now as the tunnel curved
+the light grew stronger. Suddenly they were emerging into the thin
+sunlight of the Martian day.</p>
+
+<p>In the crimson jungle about them were many Martians, milling excitedly
+to and fro, and other centipede-machines that were blasting their way
+down through tunnels to the worm world beneath.</p>
+
+<p>Randall and Lanier, breathless, crouched low in the
+transparent-windowed control room as they sent their mechanism racing
+through this scene of swarming activity. Both gasped as one of the
+centipede-machines clashed against their own in passing, its Martian
+driver turning to stare after them. But there came no alarm, and in a
+moment they had passed out of the swarm of Martians and machines and
+were heading through the jungle in the direction of the city.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hrough the weird red vegetation their mechanism raced with them,
+Randall holding it at its highest speed, and in minutes they came out
+of the jungle and were racing over the clear space between it and the
+great canal. Beyond that canal loomed into the thin sunlight the
+clustering cones of the mighty Martian city, two towering above all
+the others&mdash;the cone of the Martian Master and the other cone in which
+was the matter-transmitter and receiver.</p>
+
+<p>It was toward the latter that Lanier pointed. "Head straight toward
+that cone, Randall&mdash;we've but minutes left!"</p>
+
+<p>They were racing now up over the great arch of the canal's metal
+bridge, and then scuttling smoothly off it and along the broad metal
+street through which they had fled in darkness hours before. In it
+Martians and centipede-machines were coming and going in great
+numbers, but none noticed the human forms of the two crouched low in
+their mechanism's control room.</p>
+
+<p>They were rushing then toward the looming cone of the Martian Master.
+As they flashed past it Randall saw Lanier's face working, knew the
+desire that tore at him even as at himself to burst inside and
+ascertain whether or not Milton still lived in the laboratories from
+which they had fled. But they were past it, faces white and grim, were
+rushing on through the Martian city at reckless speed toward the other
+mighty cone.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t seemed that all in the great city were heading toward the same
+goal, streams of crocodilian Martians and masses of shining
+centipede-machines filling the streets as they moved toward it. As
+they came closer to the mighty structure, hearts pounding, they saw
+that around it surged a mighty mass of Martians and machines. The
+hordes waiting to be released through the matter-transmitter inside
+upon the unsuspecting earth!</p>
+
+<p>"Try to get the machine inside!" Lanier whispered tensely. "If we can
+smash that transmitter yet...."</p>
+
+<p>Randall nodded grimly. "Keep ready at the ray-tubes," he told the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>As unobtrusively as possible he sent their long mechanism worming
+forward through the vast throng of machines and Martians, toward the
+great cone's door. Crouching low, the hands of their watches closing
+fast toward the twelfth figure, they edged forward in the long
+machine. At last they were moving through the mighty door, into the
+cone's interior.</p>
+
+<p>They moved slowly on through the mass of machines and crocodile forms<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+inside, then halted. For at the great crowd's center was a clear
+circle hundreds of feet across, and as Randall gazed across it his
+heart seemed to leap once and then stop.</p>
+
+<p>At the center of that clear circle rose the two cubical metal chambers
+of the matter-transmitter and receiver. The transmitting chamber, they
+saw, was flooded with humming force, with white light pouring from its
+inner walls. It was already in operation, and the masses of Martians
+in the great cone were only waiting for the moment to sound when the
+receiver on earth would be operating also. Then they would pour into
+the chamber to be flashed in masses across the gulf to earth! The eyes
+of all in the cone seemed turned toward an erect dial-mechanism beside
+the chambers which was clocklike in appearance, and that would mark
+the moment when the first Martian could enter the transmitting-chamber
+and flash out.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;little distance from the two metal chambers stood a low dais on
+which there sat the hideous triple-bodied form of the Martian Master.
+Around him were the massed members of his council, waiting like him
+for the start of their age-planned invasion of earth. And beside the
+dais was a figure between two crocodilian guards at sight of whom
+Randall forgot all else.</p>
+
+<p>"Milton! My God, Lanier, it's Milton!"</p>
+
+<p>"Milton! They've brought him here to torture or kill him if they find
+he's lied about the moment they could flash to earth!"</p>
+
+<p>Milton! And at sight of him something snapped in Randall's brain.</p>
+
+<p>With a single motion of the knob he sent their centipede-machine
+crashing out into the clear circle at the mighty cone's center. A wild
+uproar of hissing cries broke from all the thousands in it as he sent
+the mechanism whirling toward the dais of the Martian Master. He saw
+the crocodilian forms there scattering blindly before him, and then
+as his rays drove out and spun and stabbed in mad figures of crimson
+death through the astounded Martian masses he saw Milton looking up
+toward them, crying out crazily to them as his two guards loosed him
+for the moment.</p>
+
+<p>A high call from the Martian Master ripped across the hall and was
+answered by a shattering roar of hissing voices as Martians and
+machines surged madly toward them. Randall and Lanier in a single leap
+were out of the centipede-machine, and in an instant had half-dragged
+Milton with them in a great leap up to the edge of the humming
+transmitting chamber.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ilton was shouting hoarsely to them over the wild uproar. To enter
+that transmitting chamber before the destined moment was annihilation,
+to be flashed out with no receiver on earth awaiting them. They
+turned, struck with all their strength at the first Martians rushing
+up to them. No rays flashed, for a ray loosed would destroy the
+chamber behind them that was the one gate for the Martians to the
+world they would invade. But as the Martian Master's high call hissed
+again all the countless crocodilian forms in the great cone were
+rushing toward them.</p>
+
+<p>Braced at the very edge of the humming, light-filled chamber, Randall
+and Lanier and Milton struck madly at the Martians surging up toward
+them. Randall seemed in a dream. A score of taloned paws clutched him
+from beneath; scaled forms collapsed under his insane blows.</p>
+
+<p>The whole vast cone and surging reptilian hordes seemed spinning at
+increasing speed around him. As his clenched fists flashed with waning
+strength he glimpsed crocodilian forms swarming up on either side of
+them, glimpsed Lanier down, talons reaching toward him, Milton
+fighting over him like a madman. Another moment would see it
+ended&mdash;reptilian arms reaching in scores to drag him down&mdash;Milton<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+jerking Lanier half to his feet. The Martian Master's call
+sounded&mdash;and then came a great clanging sound at which the Martian
+hordes seemed to freeze for an instant motionless, at which Milton's
+voice reached him in a supreme cry.</p>
+
+<p><i>"Randall&mdash;the transmitter!"</i></p>
+
+<p>For in that instant Milton was leaping back with Lanier, and as
+Randall with his last strength threw himself backward with them into
+the humming transmitting-chamber's brilliant light, he heard a last
+frenzied roar of hissing cries from the Martian hordes about them.
+Then as the brilliant light and force from the chamber's walls smote
+them, Randall felt himself hurled into blackness inconceivable, that
+smashed like a descending curtain across his brain.</p>
+
+<p>The curtain of blackness lifted for a moment. He was lying with Milton
+and Lanier in another chamber whose force beat upon them. He saw a
+yellow-lit room instead of the great cone&mdash;saw the tense, anxious face
+of Nelson at the switch beside them. He strove to move, made to Nelson
+a gesture with his arm that seemed to drain all strength and life from
+him; and then, as in answer to it Nelson drove up the switch and
+turned off the force of the matter-receiver in which they lay, the
+black curtain descended on Randall's brain once more.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>wo hours later it was when Milton and Randall and Lanier and Nelson
+turned to the laboratory's door. They paused to glance behind them. Of
+the great matter-transmitter and receiver, of the apparatus that had
+crowded the laboratory, there remained now but wreckage.</p>
+
+<p>For that had been their first thought, their first task, when the
+astounded Nelson had brought the three back to consciousness and had
+heard their amazing tale. They had wrecked so completely the
+matter-station and its actuating apparatus that none could ever have
+guessed what a mechanism of wonder the laboratory a short time before
+had held.</p>
+
+<p>The cubical chambers had been smashed beyond all recognition, the
+dynamos were masses of split metal and fused wiring, the batteries of
+tubes were shattered, the condensers and transformers and wiring
+demolished. And it had only been when the last written plans and
+blue-prints of the mechanism had been burned that Milton and Randall
+and Lanier had stopped to allow their exhausted bodies a moment of
+rest.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_n.jpg" alt="N" width="49" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ow as they paused at the laboratory's door, Lanier reached and swung
+it open. Together, silent, they gazed out.</p>
+
+<p>It all seemed to Randall exactly as upon the night before. The shadowy
+masses in the darkness, the heaving, dim-lit sea stretching far away
+before them, the curtain of summer stars stretched across the heavens.
+And, sinking westward amid those stars, the red spark of Mars toward
+which as though toward a magnet all their eyes had turned.</p>
+
+<p>Milton was speaking. "Up there it has shone for centuries&mdash;ages&mdash;a
+crimson spot of light. And up there the Martians have been watching,
+watching&mdash;until at last we opened to them the gate."</p>
+
+<p>Randall's hand was on his shoulder. "But we closed that gate, too, in
+the end."</p>
+
+<p>Milton nodded slowly. "We&mdash;or the fate that rules our worlds. But the
+gate is closed, and God grant, shall never again be opened by any on
+this world."</p>
+
+<p>"God grant it," the other echoed.</p>
+
+<p>And they were all gazing still toward the thing. Gazing up toward the
+crimson spot of light that burned there among the stars, toward the
+planet that shone red, menacing, terrible, but whose menace and whose
+terror had been thrust back even as they had crouched to spring at
+last upon the earth.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_004.jpg" width="600" height="396" alt="" title="" /><span class
+="caption"><i>Presently there was not one Robot, but three!</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="The_Exile_of_Time" id="The_Exile_of_Time"></a>The Exile of Time</h2>
+
+<h4>BEGINNING A FOUR-PART NOVEL</h4>
+<h3><i>By Ray Cummings</i></h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4>CHAPTER I</h4>
+<h4><i>Mysterious Girl</i></h4>
+<div class="sidenote">From somewhere out of Time come a swarm of Robots who
+inflict on New York the awful vengeance of the diabolical cripple
+Tugh.</div>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he extraordinary incidents began about 1 A.M. in the night of June
+8-9, 1935. I was walking through Patton Place, in New York City, with
+my friend Larry Gregory. My name is George Rankin. My business&mdash;and
+Larry's&mdash;are details quite unimportant to this narrative. We had been
+friends in college. Both of us were working in New York; and with all
+our relatives in the middle west we were sharing an apartment on this
+Patton Place&mdash;a short crooked, little-known street of not particularly
+impressive residential buildings lying near the section known as
+Greenwich Village, where towering office buildings of the business
+districts encroach close upon it.</p>
+
+<p>This night at 1 A. M. it was deserted. A taxi stood at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> a corner; its
+chauffeur had left it there, and evidently gone to a nearby lunch
+room. The street lights were, as always, inadequate. The night was
+sultry and dark, with a leaden sky and a breathless humidity that
+presaged a thunder storm. The houses were mostly unlighted at this
+hour. There was an occasional apartment house among them, but mostly
+they were low, ramshackle affairs of brick and stone.</p>
+
+<p>We were still three blocks from our apartment when without warning the
+incidents began which were to plunge us and all the city into
+disaster. We were upon the threshold of a mystery weird and strange,
+but we did not know it. Mysterious portals were swinging<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> to engulf
+us. And all unknowing, we walked into them.</p>
+
+<p>Larry was saying, "Wish we would get a storm to clear this air&mdash;<i>what
+the devil?</i> George, did you hear that?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e stood listening. There had sounded a choking, muffled scream. We
+were midway in the block. There was not a pedestrian in sight, nor any
+vehicle save the abandoned taxi at the corner.</p>
+
+<p>"A woman," he said. "Did it come from this house?"</p>
+
+<p>We were standing before a three-story brick residence. All its windows
+were dark. There was a front stoop of several steps, and a basement
+entryway. The windows were all closed, and the place had the look of
+being unoccupied.</p>
+
+<p>"Not in there, Larry," I answered. "It's closed for the summer&mdash;" But
+I got no further; we heard it again. And this time it sounded, not
+like a scream, but like a woman's voice calling to attract our
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>"George! Look there!" Larry cried.</p>
+
+<p>The glow from a street light illumined the basement entryway, and
+behind one of the dark windows a girl's face was pressed against the
+pane.</p>
+
+<p>Larry stood gripping me, then drew me forward and down the steps of
+the entryway. There was a girl in the front basement room. Darkness
+was behind her, but we could see her white frightened face close to
+the glass. She tapped on the pane, and in the silence we heard her
+muffled voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me out! Oh, let me get out!"</p>
+
+<p>The basement door had a locked iron gate. I rattled it. "No way of
+getting in," I said, then stopped short with surprise. "What the
+devil&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>I joined Larry by the window. The girl was only a few inches from us.
+She had a pale, frightened face; wide, terrified eyes. Even with that
+first glimpse, I was transfixed by her beauty. And startled; there was
+something weird about her. A low-necked, white satin dress disclosed
+her snowy shoulders; her head was surmounted by a pile of snow-white
+hair, with dangling white curls framing her pale ethereal beauty. She
+called again.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with you?" Larry demanded. "Are you alone in there?
+What is it?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he backed from the window; we could see her only as a white blob in
+the darkness of the basement room.</p>
+
+<p>I called, "Can you hear us? What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>Then she screamed again. A low scream; but there was infinite terror
+in it. And again she was at the window.</p>
+
+<p>"You will not hurt me? Let me&mdash;oh please let me come out!" Her fists
+pounded the casement.</p>
+
+<p>What I would have done I don't know. I recall wondering if the
+policeman would be at our corner down the block; he very seldom was
+there. I heard Larry saying:</p>
+
+<p>"What the hell!&mdash;I'll get her out. George, get me that brick.... Now,
+get back, girl&mdash;I'm going to smash the window."</p>
+
+<p>But the girl kept her face pressed against the pane. I had never seen
+such terrified eyes. Terrified at something behind her in the house;
+and equally frightened at us.</p>
+
+<p>I call to her: "Come to the door. Can't you come to the door and open
+it?" I pointed to the basement gate. "Open it! Can you hear me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;I can hear you, and you speak my language. But you&mdash;you will not
+hurt me? Where am I? This&mdash;this was my house a moment ago. I was
+living here."</p>
+
+<p>Demented! It flashed to me. An insane girl, locked in this empty
+house. I gripped Larry; said to him: "Take it easy; there's something
+queer about this. We can't smash windows. Let's&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You open the door," he called to the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot."</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Is it locked on the inside?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Because&mdash;oh, hurry! If he&mdash;if it comes again&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e could see her turn to look behind her.</p>
+
+<p>Larry demanded, "Are you alone in there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;now. But, oh! a moment ago he was here!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then come to the door."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot. I don't know where it is. This is so strange and dark a
+place. And yet it was my home, just a little time ago."</p>
+
+<p>Demented! And it seemed to me that her accent was very queer. A
+foreigner, perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>She went suddenly into frantic fear. Her fists beat the window glass
+almost hard enough to shatter it.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd better get her out," I agreed. "Smash it, Larry."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." He waved at the girl. "Get back. I'll break the glass. Get away
+so you won't get hurt."</p>
+
+<p>The girl receded into the dimness.</p>
+
+<p>"Watch your hand," I cautioned. Larry took off his coat and wrapped
+his hand and the brick in it. I gazed behind us. The street was still
+empty. The slight commotion we had made had attracted no attention.</p>
+
+<p>The girl cried out again as Larry smashed the pane. "Easy," I called
+to her. "Take it easy. We won't hurt you."</p>
+
+<p>The splintering glass fell inward, and Larry pounded around the
+casement until it was all clear. The rectangular opening was fairly
+large. We could see a dim basement room of dilapidated furniture: a
+door opening into a back room; the girl; nearby, a white shape
+watching us.</p>
+
+<p>There seemed no one else. "Come on," I said. "You can get out here."</p>
+
+<p>But she backed away. I was half in the window so I swung my legs over
+the sill. Larry came after me, and together we advanced on the girl,
+who shrank before us.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly she ran to meet us, and I had the sudden feeling that
+she was not insane. Her fear of us was overshadowed by her terror at
+something else in this dark, deserted house. The terror communicated
+itself to Larry and me. Something eery, here.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on," Larry muttered. "Let's get her out of here."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;had indeed no desire to investigate anything further. The girl let
+us help her through the window. I stood in the entryway holding her
+arms. Her dress was of billowing white satin with a single red rose at
+the breast; her snowy arms and shoulders were bare; white hair was
+piled high on her small head. Her face, still terrified, showed parted
+red lips; a little round black beauty patch adorned one of her
+powdered cheeks. The thought flashed to me that this was a girl in a
+fancy dress costume. This was a white wig she was wearing!</p>
+
+<p>I stood with the girl in the entryway, at a loss what to do. I held
+her soft warm arms; the perfume of her enveloped me.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want us to do with you?" I demanded softly. McGuire, the
+policeman on the block, might at any moment pass. "We might get
+arrested! What's the matter with you? Can't you explain? Are you
+hurt?"</p>
+
+<p>She was staring as though I were a ghost, or some strange animal. "Oh,
+take me away from this place! I will talk&mdash;though I do not know what
+to say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Demented or sane, I had no desire to have her fall into the clutches
+of the police. Nor could we very well take her to our apartment. But
+there was my friend Dr. Alten, alienist, who lived within a mile of
+here.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll take her to Alten's," I said to Larry, "and find out what this
+means. She isn't crazy."</p>
+
+<p>A sudden wild emotion swept me, then. Whatever this mystery, more than
+anything in the world I did not want the girl to be insane!</p>
+
+<p>Larry said, "There was a taxi down the street."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t came, now, slowly along the deserted block. The chauffeur had
+perhaps heard us, and was cruising past to see if we were possible
+fares. He halted at the curb. The girl had quieted; but when she saw
+the taxi her face registered wildest terror, and she shrank against
+me.</p>
+
+<p>"No! No! Don't let it kill me!"</p>
+
+<p>Larry and I were pulling her forward. "What the devil's the matter
+with you?" Larry demanded again.</p>
+
+<p>She was suddenly wildly fighting with us. "No! That&mdash;that mechanism&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Get her in it!" Larry panted. "We'll have the neighborhood on us!"</p>
+
+<p>It seemed the only thing to do. We flung her, scrambling and fighting,
+into the taxi. To the half-frightened, reluctant driver, Larry said
+vigorously:</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right; we're just taking her to a doctor. Hurry and get us
+away from here. There's good money in it for you!"</p>
+
+<p>The promise&mdash;and the reassurance of the physician's address&mdash;convinced
+the chauffeur. We whirled off toward Washington Square.</p>
+
+<p>Within the swaying taxi I sat holding the trembling girl. She was
+sobbing now, but quieting.</p>
+
+<p>"There," I murmured. "We won't hurt you; we're just taking you to a
+doctor. You can explain to him. He's very intelligent."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said softly. "Yes. Thank you. I'm all right now."</p>
+
+<p>She relaxed against me. So beautiful, so dainty a creature.</p>
+
+<p>Larry leaned toward us. "You're better now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"That's fine. You'll be all right. Don't think about it."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e was convinced she was insane. I breathed again the vague hope that
+it might not be so. She was huddled against me. Her face, upturned to
+mine, had color in it now; red lips; a faint rose tint in the pale
+cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>She murmured, "Is this New York?"</p>
+
+<p>My heart sank. "Yes," I answered. "Of course it is."</p>
+
+<p>"But when?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean, what year?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, 1935!"</p>
+
+<p>She caught her breath. "And your name is&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"George Rankin."</p>
+
+<p>"And I,"&mdash;her laugh had a queer break in it&mdash;"I am Mistress Mary
+Atwood. But just a few minutes ago&mdash;oh, am I dreaming? Surely I'm not
+insane!"</p>
+
+<p>Larry again leaned over us. "What are you talking about?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're friendly, you two. Like men; strange, so very strange-looking
+young men. This&mdash;this carriage without any horses&mdash;I know now it won't
+hurt me."</p>
+
+<p>She sat up. "Take me to your doctor. And then to the general of your
+army. I must see him, and warn him. Warn you all." She was turning
+half hysterical again. She laughed wildly. "Your general&mdash;he won't be
+General Washington, of course. But I must warn him."</p>
+
+<p>She gripped me. "You think I am demented. But I am not. I am Mary
+Atwood, daughter of Major Charles Atwood, of General Washington's
+staff. That was my home, where you broke the window. But it did not
+look like that a few moments ago. You tell me this is the year 1935,
+but just a few moments ago I was living in the year 1777!"</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER II</h4>
+<h4><i>From Out of the Past</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_s1.jpg" alt="S" width="45" height="57" /></div>
+<p>ane?" said Dr. Alten. "Of course she's sane." He stood gazing down
+at Mary Atwood. He was a tall, slim fellow, this famous young
+alienist, with dark hair turning slightly grey at the temples and a
+neat black mustache that made him look older than he was. Dr. Alten at
+this time, in spite of his eminence, had not yet turned forty.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She's sane," he reiterated. "Though from what you tell me, it's a
+wonder that she is." He smiled gently at the girl. "If you don't mind,
+my dear, tell us just what happened to you, as calmly as you can."</p>
+
+<p>She sat by an electrolier in Dr. Alten's living room. The yellow light
+gleamed on her white satin dress, on her white shoulders, her
+beautiful face with its little round black beauty patch, and the curls
+of the white wig dangling to her neck. From beneath the billowing,
+flounced skirt the two satin points of her slippers showed.</p>
+
+<p>A beauty of the year 1777! This thing so strange! I gazed at her with
+quickened pulse. It seemed that I was dreaming; that as I sat before
+her in my tweed business suit with its tubular trousers I was the
+anachronism! This should have been candle-light illumining us; I
+should have been a powdered and bewigged gallant, in gorgeous satin
+and frilled shirt to match her dress. How strange, how futuristic we
+three men of 1935 must have looked to her! And this city through which
+we had whirled her in the throbbing taxi&mdash;no wonder she was
+overwrought.</p>
+
+<p>Alten fumbled in the pockets of his dressing gown for cigarettes. "Go
+ahead, Miss Mary. You are among friends. I promise we will try and
+understand."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he smiled. "Yes. I&mdash;I believe you." Her voice was low. She sat
+staring at the floor, choosing her words carefully; and though she
+stumbled a little, her story was coherent. Upon the wings of her words
+my fancy conjured that other Time-world, more than a hundred and fifty
+years ago.</p>
+
+<p>"I was at home to-night," she began. "To-night after dinner. I have no
+relatives except my father. He is General Washington's aide. We
+live&mdash;our home is north of the city. I was alone, except for the
+servants.</p>
+
+<p>"Father sent word to-night that he was coming to see me. The
+messenger got through the British lines. But the redcoats are
+everywhere. They were quartered in our house. For months I have been
+little more than a servant to a dozen of My Lord's Howe's officers.
+They are gentlemen, though: I have no complaint. Then they left, and
+father, knowing it, wanted to come to see me.</p>
+
+<p>"He should not have tried it. Our house is watched. He promised me he
+would not wear the British red." She shuddered. "Anything but that&mdash;to
+have him executed as a spy. He would not risk that, but wear merely a
+long black cloak.</p>
+
+<p>"He was to come about ten o'clock. But at midnight there was no sign
+of him. The servants were asleep. I sat alone, and every pounding
+hoof-beat on the road matched my heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I went into the garden. There was a dim moon in and out of the
+clouds. It was hot, like to-night. I mean, why it <i>was</i> to-night. It's
+so strange&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>n the silence of Alten's living room we could hear the hurried
+ticking of his little mantle clock, and from the street outside came
+the roar of a passing elevated train and the honk of a taxi. This was
+New York of 1935. But to me the crowding ghosts of the past were here.
+In fancy I saw the white pillars of the moonlit Atwood home. A garden
+with a dirt road beside it. Red-coated British soldiers passing....
+And to the south the little city of New York extending northward from
+crooked Maiden Lane and the Bowling Green....</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, Mistress Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"I sat on a bench in the garden. And suddenly before me there was a
+white ghost. A shape. A wraith of something which a moment before had
+not been there. I sat too frightened to move. I could not call out. I
+tried to, but the sound would not come.</p>
+
+<p>"The shape was like a mist, a little ball of cloud in the center of
+the garden lawn. Then in a second or two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> it was solid&mdash;a thing like a
+shining cage, with crisscrossing white bars. It was like a room; a
+metal cage like a room. I thought that the thing was a phantom or that
+I was asleep and dreaming. But it was real."</p>
+
+<p>Alten interrupted. "How big was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"As large as this room; perhaps larger. But it was square, and about
+twice as high as a man."</p>
+
+<p>A cage, then, some twenty feet square and twelve feet high.</p>
+
+<p>She went on: "The cage door opened. I think I was standing, then, and
+I tried to run but could not. The&mdash;the <i>thing</i> came from the door of
+the cage and walked toward me. It was about ten feet tall. It
+looked&mdash;oh, it looked like a man!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he buried her face in her hands. Again the room was silent. Larry was
+seated, staring at her; all of us were breathless.</p>
+
+<p>"Like a man?" Alten prompted gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; like a man." She raised her white face. This girl out of the
+past! Admiration for her swept me anew&mdash;she was bravely trying to
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Like a man. A thing with legs, a body, a great round head and swaying
+arms. A jointed man of metal! You surely must know all about them."</p>
+
+<p>"A Robot!" Larry muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"You have them here, I suppose. Like that rumbling carriage without
+horses, this jointed iron man came walking toward me. And it spoke! A
+most horrible hollow voice&mdash;but it seemed almost human. And what it
+said I do not know, for I fainted. I remember falling as it came
+walking toward me, with stiff-jointed legs.</p>
+
+<p>"When I came to my senses I was in the cage. Everything was humming and
+glowing. There was a glow outside the bars like a moonlit mist. The iron
+monster was sitting at a table, with peculiar things&mdash;mechanical things&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The controls of the cage-mechanisms," said Alten. "How long were you
+in the cage?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Time seemed to stop. Everything was silent except the
+humming noises. They were everywhere. I guess I was only half
+conscious. The monster sat motionless. In front of him were big round
+clock faces with whirling hands. Oh, I suppose you don't find this
+strange; but to me&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_c1.jpg" alt="C" width="54" height="58" /></div>
+<p>ould you see anything outside the cage?" Alten persisted. "No. Just
+a fog. But it was crawling and shifting. Yes!&mdash;I remember now&mdash;I could
+not see anything out there, but I had the thought, the feeling, that
+there were tremendous things to see! The monster spoke again and told
+me to be careful; that we were going to stop. Its iron hands pulled at
+levers. Then the humming grew fainter; died away; and I felt a shock.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I had fainted again. I could just remember being pulled
+through the cage door. The monster left me on the ground. It said,
+'Lie there, for I will return very soon.'</p>
+
+<p>"The cage vanished. I saw a great cliff of stone near me; it had
+yellow-lighted openings, high up in the air. And big stone fences
+hemmed me in. Then I realized I was in an open space between a lot of
+stone houses. One towered like a cliff, or the side of a pyramid&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The back yard of that house on Patton Place!" Larry exclaimed. He
+looked at me. "Has it any back yard, George?"</p>
+
+<p>"How should I know?" I retorted. "Probably has."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," Alten was prompting.</p>
+
+<p>"That is nearly all. I found a doorway leading to a dark room. I
+crawled through it toward a glow of light. I passed through another
+room. I thought I was in a nightmare, and that this was my home. I
+remembered that the cage had not moved. It had hardly lurched. Just
+trembled; vibrated.</p>
+
+<p>"But this was not my home. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> rooms were small and dark. Then I
+peered through a window on a strange stone street. And saw these
+strange-looking young men. And that is all&mdash;all I can tell you."</p>
+
+<p>She had evidently held herself calm by a desperate effort. She broke
+down now, sobbing without restraint.</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER III</h4>
+<h4><i>Tugh, the Cripple</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he portals of this mystery had swung wide to receive us. The tumbling
+events which menaced all our world of 1935 were upon us now. A
+maelstrom. A torrent in the midst of which we were caught up like tiny
+bits of cork and whirled away.</p>
+
+<p>But we thought we understood the mystery. We believed we were acting
+for the best. What we did was no doubt ill-considered; but the human
+mind is so far from omniscient! And this thing was so strange!</p>
+
+<p>Alten said, "You have a right to be overwrought, Mistress Mary Atwood.
+But this thing is as strange to us as it is to you. I called that iron
+monster a Robot. But it does not belong to our age: if it does I have
+never seen one such as you describe. And traveling through Time&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled down at her. "That is not a commonplace everyday occurrence
+to us, I assure you. The difference is that in this world of ours we
+can understand&mdash;or at least explain&mdash;these things as being scientific.
+And so they have not the terror of the supernatural."</p>
+
+<p>Mary was calmer now. She returned his smile. "I realize that; or at
+least I am trying to realize it."</p>
+
+<p>What a level-headed girl was this! I touched her arm. "You are very
+wonderful&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Alten brushed me away. "Let's try and reduce it to rationality. The
+cage was&mdash;is, I should say, since of course it still exists&mdash;that cage
+is a Time-traveling vehicle. It is traveling back and forth through
+Time, operated by a Robot. Call it that. A pseudo-human monster
+fashioned of metal in the guise of a man."</p>
+
+<p>Even Alten had to force himself to speak calmly, as he gazed from one
+to the other of us. "It came, no doubt from some future age, where
+half-human mechanisms are common, and Time-traveling is known. That
+cage probably does not travel in Space, but only in Time. In the
+future&mdash;somewhere&mdash;the Space of that house on Patton Place may be the
+laboratory of a famous scientist. And in the past&mdash;in the year
+1777&mdash;that same Space was the garden of Mistress Atwood's home. So
+much is obvious. But why&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why," Larry burst out, "did that iron monster stop in 1777 and abduct
+this girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"And why," I intercepted, "did it stop here in 1935?" I gazed at Mary.
+"And it told you it would return?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>lten was pondering. "There must be some connection, of course....
+Mistress Mary, had you never seen this cage before?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor anything like it? Was anything like that known to your Time?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Oh, I cannot truly say that. Some people believe in phantoms,
+omens and witchcraft. There was in Salem, in the Massachusetts Colony,
+not so many years ago&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean that. I mean Time-traveling."</p>
+
+<p>"There were soothsayers and fortune-tellers, and necromancers with
+crystals to gaze into the future."</p>
+
+<p>"We still have them," Alten smiled. "You see, we don't know much more
+than you do about this thing."</p>
+
+<p>I said, "Did you have any enemy? Anyone who wished you harm?"</p>
+
+<p>She thought a moment. "No&mdash;yes, there was one." She shuddered at the
+memory. "A man&mdash;a cripple&mdash;a horribly repulsive man of about one score
+and ten years. He lives down near the Battery." She paused.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Tell us about him," Larry urged.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded. "But what could he have to do with this? He is horribly
+deformed. Thin, bent legs, a body like a cask and a bulging forehead
+with goggling eyes. My Lord Howe's officers say he is very intelligent
+and very learned. Loyal to the King, too. There was a munitions plot
+in the Bermudas, and this cripple and Lord Howe were concerned in it.
+But Father likes the fellow and says that in reality he wishes our
+cause well. He is rich.</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't want to hear all this. He&mdash;he made love to me, and I
+repulsed him. There was a scene with Father, and Father had our
+lackeys throw him out. That was a year ago. He cursed horribly. He
+vowed then that some day he&mdash;he would have me; and get revenge on
+Father. But he has kept away. I have not seen him for a twelvemonth."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e were silent. I chanced to glance at Alten, and a strange look was
+on his face.</p>
+
+<p>He said abruptly, "What is this cripple's name, Mistress Mary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tugh. He is known to all the city as Tugh. Just that. I never heard
+any Christian name."</p>
+
+<p>Alten rose sharply to his feet. "A cripple named Tugh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she affirmed wonderingly. "Does it mean anything to you?"</p>
+
+<p>Alten swung on me. "What is the number of that house on Patton Place?
+Did you happen to notice?"</p>
+
+<p>I had, and wondering I told him.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a minute," he said. "I want to use the phone."</p>
+
+<p>He came back to us in a moment: his face was very solemn. "That house
+on Patton Place is owned by a man named Tugh! I just called a reporter
+friend; he remembers a certain case: he confirmed what I thought.
+Mistress Mary, did this Tugh in your Time ever consult doctors, trying
+to have his crippled body made whole?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course he did. I have heard that many times. But his
+crippled, deformed body cannot be cured."</p>
+
+<p>Alten checked Larry and me when we would have broken in with
+astonished questions. He said:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask me what it means; I don't know. But I think that this
+cripple&mdash;this Tugh&mdash;has lived both in 1777 and 1935, and is traveling
+between them in this Time-traveling cage. And perhaps he is the human
+master of that Robot."</p>
+
+<p>Alten made a vehement gesture. "But we'd better not theorize; it's too
+fantastic. Here is the story of Tugh in our Time. He came to me some
+three years ago; in 1932, I think. He offered any price if I could
+cure his crippled body. All the New York medical fraternity knew him.
+He seemed sane, but obsessed with the idea that he must have a body
+like other men. Like Faust, who, as an old man, paid the price of his
+soul to become youthful, he wanted to have the beautiful body of a
+young man."</p>
+
+<p>Alten was speaking vehemently. My thoughts ran ahead of his words; I
+could imagine with grewsome fancy so many things. A cripple, traveling
+to different ages seeking to be cured. Desiring a different body....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>lten was saying, "This fellow Tugh lived alone in that house on
+Patton Place. He was all you say of him, Mistress Mary. Hideously
+repulsive. A sinister personality. About thirty years old.</p>
+
+<p>"And, in 1932, he got mixed up with a girl who had a somewhat dubious
+reputation herself. A dancer, a frequenter of night-clubs, as they
+used to be called. Her name was Doris Johns&mdash;something like that. She
+evidently thought she could get money out of Tugh. Whatever it was,
+there was a big uproar. The girl had him arrested, saying that he had
+assaulted her. The police had quite a time with the cripple."</p>
+
+<p>Larry and I remembered a few of the details of it now, though neither
+of us had been in New York at the time.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Alten went on: "Tugh fought with the police. Went berserk. I imagine
+they handled him pretty roughly. In the Magistrate's Court he made
+another scene, and fought with the court attendants. With ungovernable
+rage he screamed vituperatives, and was carried kicking, biting and
+snarling from the court-room. He threatened some wild weird revenge
+upon all the city officials&mdash;even upon the city itself."</p>
+
+<p>"Nice sort of chap," Larry commented.</p>
+
+<p>But Alten did not smile. "The Magistrate could only hold him for
+contempt of Court. The girl had absolutely no evidence to support her
+accusation of assault. Tugh was finally dismissed. A week later he
+murdered the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"The details are unimportant; but he did it. The police had him
+trapped in his house; had the house surrounded&mdash;this same one on
+Patton Place&mdash;but when they burst in to take him, he had inexplicably
+vanished. He was never heard from again."</p>
+
+<p>Alten continued to regard us with grim, solemn face. "Never heard
+from&mdash;until to-night. And now we hear of him. How he vanished, with
+the police guarding every exit to that house&mdash;well, it's obvious,
+isn't it? He went into another Time-world. Back to 1777, doubtless."</p>
+
+<p>Mary Atwood gave a little cry. "I had forgotten that I must warn you.
+Tugh told me once, before Father and I quarreled with him, that he had
+a mysterious power. He was a most wonderful man, he said. And there
+was a world in the future&mdash;he mentioned 1934 or 1935&mdash;which he hated.
+A great city whose people had wronged him; and he was going to bring
+death to them. Death to them all! I did not heed him. I thought he was
+demented, raving...."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>lten's little clock ticked with tumultuous heartbeat through another
+silence. The great city around us, even though this was two o'clock
+in the morning, throbbed with a myriad of blended sounds.</p>
+
+<p>A warning! Was the girl from out of the past giving us a warning of
+coming disaster to this great city?</p>
+
+<p>Alten was pacing the floor. "What are we to do&mdash;tell the authorities?
+Take Mistress Mary Atwood to Police Headquarters and inform them that
+she has come from the year 1777? And that, if we are not careful,
+there will be an attack upon New York?"</p>
+
+<p>"No!" I burst out. I could fancy how we would be received at Police
+Headquarters if we did that! And our pictures in to-morrow's
+newspapers. Mary's picture, with a jibing headline ridiculing us.</p>
+
+<p>"No," echoed Alten. "I have no intention of doing it. I'm not so
+foolish as that." He stopped before Mary. "What do you want to do?
+You're obviously an exceptionally intelligent, level-headed girl.
+Heaven knows you need to be."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I want to get back home," she stammered.</p>
+
+<p>A pang shot through me as she said it. A hundred and fifty years to
+separate us. A vast gulf. An impassible barrier.</p>
+
+<p>"That mechanism said it would return!"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," agreed Alten. An excitement was upon us all. "Exactly what
+I mean! Shall we chance it? Try it? There's nothing else I can think
+of to do. I have a revolver and two hunting rifles."</p>
+
+<p>"Just what do you mean?" I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean, we'll take my car and go to Tugh's house on Patton Place.
+Right now! And if that mechanical monster returns, we'll seize it!"</p>
+
+<p>Alten, the usually calm, precise man of science, was tensely vehement.
+"Seize it! Why not? Three of us, armed, ought to be able to overcome a
+Robot! Then we'll seize the Time-traveling cage. Perhaps we can
+operate it. If not, with it in our possession we'll at least have
+something to show<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> the authorities; there'll be no ridicule then!"</p>
+
+<p>Our inescapable destiny was making us plunge so rashly into this
+mystery! With the excitement and the strange fantasy of it upon us, we
+thought we were acting for the best.</p>
+
+<p>Within a quarter of an hour, armed and with a long overcoat and a
+scarf to hide Mary Atwood's beauty, we took Alten's car and drove to
+Patton Place.</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER IV</h4>
+<h4><i>The Fight With the Robot</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_p.jpg" alt="P" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+<p>atrolman McGuire quite evidently had not passed through Patton Place
+since we left it; or at least he had not noticed the broken window.
+The house appeared as before, dark, silent, deserted, and the broken
+basement window yawned with its wide black opening.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll leave the car around on the other street," Alten said as slowly
+we passed the house. "Quick&mdash;no one's in sight; you three get out
+here."</p>
+
+<p>We crouched in the dim entryway and in a moment he joined us.</p>
+
+<p>I clung to Mary Atwood's arm. "You're not afraid?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Yes; of course I am afraid. But I want to do what we planned. I
+want to go back to my own world, to my Father."</p>
+
+<p>"Inside!" Alten whispered. "I'll go first. You two follow with her."</p>
+
+<p>I can say now that we should not have taken her into that house. It is
+so easy to look back upon what one might have done!</p>
+
+<p>We climbed through the window, into the dark front basement room.
+There was only silence, and our faintly padding footsteps on the
+carpeted floor. The furniture was shrouded with cotton covers standing
+like ghosts in the gloom. I clutched the loaded rifle which Alten had
+given me. Larry was similarly armed; and Alten carried a revolver.</p>
+
+<p>"Which way, Mary?" I whispered. "You're sure it was outdoors?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. This way, I think."</p>
+
+<p>We passed through the connecting door. The back room seemed to be a
+dismantled kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"You stay with her here, a moment," Alten whispered to me. "Come on,
+Larry. Let's make sure no one&mdash;nothing&mdash;is down here."</p>
+
+<p>I stood silent with Mary, while they prowled about the lower floor.</p>
+
+<p>"It may have come and gone," I whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." She was trembling against me.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t seemed to me an eternity while we stood there listening to the
+faint footfalls of Larry and Alten. Once they must have stood quiet;
+then the silence leaped and crowded us. It is horrible to listen to a
+pregnant silence which every moment might be split by some weird
+unearthly sound.</p>
+
+<p>Larry and Alten returned. "Seems to be all clear," Alten whispered.
+"Let's go into the back yard."</p>
+
+<p>The little yard was dim. The big apartment house against its rear wall
+loomed with a blank brick face, save that there were windows some
+eight stories up. Only a few windows overlooked this dim area with its
+high enclosing walls. The space was some forty feet square, and there
+was a faded grass plot in the center.</p>
+
+<p>We crouched near the kitchen door, with Mary behind us in the room.
+She said she could recall the cage having stood near the center of the
+yard, with its door facing this way....</p>
+
+<p>Nearly an hour passed. It seemed that the dawn must be near, but it
+was only around four o'clock. The same storm clouds hung overhead&mdash;a
+threatening storm which would not break. The heat was oppressing.</p>
+
+<p>"It's come and gone," Larry whispered; "or it isn't coming. I guess
+that this&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And then it came! We were just outside the doorway, crouching against
+the shadowed wall of the house. I had Mary close behind me, my rifle
+ready.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There!" whispered Alten.</p>
+
+<p>We all saw it&mdash;a faint luminous mist out near the center of the
+yard&mdash;a crawling, shifting ball of fog.</p>
+
+<p>Alten and Larry, one on each side of me, shifted sidewise, away from
+me. Mary stood and cast off her dark overcoat. We men were in dark
+clothes, but she stood in gleaming white against the dark rectangle of
+doorway. It was as we had arranged. A moment only, she stood there;
+then she moved back, further behind me in the black kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>And in that moment the cage had materialized. We were hoping its
+occupant had seen the girl, and not us. A breathless moment passed
+while we stared for the first time at this strange thing from the
+Unknown.... A formless, glowing mist, it quickly gathered itself into
+solidity. It seemed to shrink. It took form. From a wraith of a cage,
+in a second it was solid. And so silently, so swiftly, came this thing
+out of Time into what we call the Present! The dim yard a second ago
+had been empty.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he cage stood there, a thing of gleaming silver bars. It seemed to
+enclose a single room. From within its dim interior came a faint glow,
+which outlined something standing at the bars, peering out.</p>
+
+<p>The doorway was facing us. There had been utter silence; but suddenly,
+as though to prove how solid was this apparition, we heard the clank
+of metal, and the door slid open.</p>
+
+<p>I turned to make sure that Mary was hiding well behind me. The way
+back to the street, if need for escape arose, was open to her.</p>
+
+<p>I turned again, to face the shining cage. In the doorway something
+stood peering out, a light behind it. It was a great jointed thing of
+dark metal some ten feet high. For a moment it stood motionless. I
+could not see its face clearly, though I knew there was a suggestion
+of human features, and two great round glowing spots of eyes.</p>
+
+<p>It stepped forward&mdash;toward us. A jointed, stiff-legged step. Its arms
+were dangling loosely; I heard one of its mailed hands clank against
+its sides.</p>
+
+<p>"Now!" Alten whispered.</p>
+
+<p>I saw Alten's revolver leveling, and my own rifle went up.</p>
+
+<p>"Aim at its face," I murmured.</p>
+
+<p>We pulled our triggers together, and two spurts of flame spat before
+us. But the thing had stooped an instant before, and we missed. Then
+came Larry's shot. And then chaos.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;recall hearing the ping of Larry's bullet against the mailed body of
+the Robot. At that it crouched, and from it leaped a dull red-black
+beam of light. I heard Mary scream. She had not fled but was clinging
+to me. I cast her off.</p>
+
+<p>"Run! Get back! Get away!" I cried.</p>
+
+<p>Larry shouted, as we all stood bathed in the dull light from the
+Robot:</p>
+
+<p>"Look out! It sees us!"</p>
+
+<p>He fired again, into the light&mdash;and murmured, "Why&mdash;why&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A great surprise and terror was in his tone. Beside me, with
+half-leveled revolver, Alten stood transfixed. And he too was
+muttering something.</p>
+
+<p>All this happened in an instant. And there I was aware that I was
+trying to get my rifle up for firing again; but I could not. My arms
+stiffened. I tried to take a step, tried to move a foot, but could
+not. I was rooted there; held, as though by some giant magnet, to the
+ground!</p>
+
+<p>This horrible dull-red light! It was cold&mdash;a frigid, paralyzing blast.
+The blood ran like cold water in my veins. My feet were heavy with the
+weight of my body pressing them down.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Robot was moving; coming forward; holding the light upon us.
+I thought I heard its voice&mdash;and a horrible, hollow, rasping laugh.</p>
+
+<p>My brain was chilling. I had confused thoughts; impressions, vague and
+dreamlike. As though in a dream I felt myself standing there with
+Mary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> clinging to me. Both of us were frozen inert upon our feet.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to shout, but my tongue was too thick; my throat seemed
+swelling inside. I heard Alten's revolver clatter to the stone
+pavement of the yard. And saw him fall forward&mdash;out.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;felt that in another instant I too would fall. This damnable,
+chilling light! Then the beam turned partly away, and fell more fully
+upon Larry. With his youth and greater strength than Alten's or mine,
+he had resisted its first blast. His weapon had fallen; now he stooped
+and tried to seize it; but he lost his balance and staggered backward
+against the house wall.</p>
+
+<p>And then the Robot was upon him. It sprang&mdash;this mechanism!&mdash;this
+machine in human form! And, with whatever pseudo-human intelligence
+actuated its giant metal body, it reached under Larry for his rifle!
+Its great mailed hand swept the ground, seized the rifle and flung it
+away. And as Larry twisted sidewise, the Robot's arm with a sweep
+caught him and rolled him across the yard. When he stopped, he lay
+motionless.</p>
+
+<p>I heard myself thickly calling to Mary, and the light flashed again
+upon us. And then we fell forward. Clinging together, we fell....</p>
+
+<p>I did not quite lose consciousness. It seemed that I was frozen, and
+drifting off half into a nightmare sleep. Great metal arms were
+gathering Mary and me from the ground. Lifting us; carrying us....</p>
+
+<p>We were in the cage. I felt myself lying on the grid of a metal floor.
+I could vaguely see the crossed bars of the ceiling overhead, and the
+latticed walls around me....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hen the dull-red light was gone. The chill was gone. I was warming.
+The blessed warm blood again was coursing through my veins, reviving
+me, bringing back my strength.</p>
+
+<p>I turned over, and found Mary lying beside me. I heard her softly
+murmur:</p>
+
+<p>"George! George Rankin!"</p>
+
+<p>The giant mechanism clanked the door closed, and came with stiff,
+stilted steps back into the center of the cage. I heard the hollow
+rumble of its voice, chuckling, as its hand pulled a switch.</p>
+
+<p>At once the cage-room seemed to reel. It was not a physical movement,
+though, but more a reeling of my senses, a wild shock to all my being.</p>
+
+<p>Then, after a nameless interval, I steadied. Around me was a humming,
+glowing intensity of tiny sounds and infinitely small, infinitely
+rapid vibrations. The whole room grew luminous. The Robot, seated now
+at a table, showed for a moment as thin as an apparition. All this
+room&mdash;Mary lying beside me, the mechanism, myself&mdash;all this was
+imponderable, intangible, unreal.</p>
+
+<p>And outside the bars stretched a shining mist of movement. Blurred
+shifting shapes over a vast illimitable vista. Changing things;
+melting landscapes. Silent, tumbling, crowding events blurred by our
+movement as we swept past them.</p>
+
+<p>We were traveling through Time!</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER V</h4>
+<h4><i>The Girl from 2930</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;must take up now the sequence of events as Larry saw them. I was
+separated from Larry during most of the strange incidents which befell
+us later; but from his subsequent account of what happened to him I am
+constructing several portions of this history, using my own words
+based upon Larry's description of the events in which I personally did
+not participate; I think that this method avoids complications in the
+narrative and makes more clear my own and Larry's simultaneous
+actions.</p>
+
+<p>Larry recovered consciousness in the back yard of the house on Patton
+Place probably only a moment or two after Mary and I had been snatched
+away in the Time-traveling cage. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> found himself bruised and
+battered, but apparently without injuries. He got to his feet, weak
+and shaken. His head was roaring.</p>
+
+<p>He recalled what had happened to him, but it seemed like a dream. The
+back yard was then empty. He remembered vaguely that he had seen the
+mechanism carry Mary and me into the cage, and that the cage had
+vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Larry knew that only a few moments had passed. The shots had aroused
+the neighborhood. As he stood now against the house wall, dizzily
+looking around, he was aware of calling voices from the nearby
+windows.</p>
+
+<p>Then Larry stumbled over Alten, who was lying on his face near the
+kitchen doorway. Still alive, he groaned as Larry fell over him; but
+he was unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>Forgetting all about his weapon, Larry's first thought was to rush out
+for help. He staggered through the dark kitchen into the front room,
+and through the corridor into the street.</p>
+
+<p>Patton Place, as before, was deserted. The houses were dark; the alarm
+was all in the rear. There were no pedestrians, no vehicles, and no
+sign of a policeman. Dawn was just coming; as Larry turned eastward he
+saw, in a patch of clearing sky, stars paling with the coming
+daylight.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ith uncertain steps, out in the middle of the street, Larry ran
+eastward through the middle of the street, hoping that at the next
+corner he might encounter someone, or find a telephone over which he
+might call the police.</p>
+
+<p>But he had not gone more than five hundred feet when suddenly he
+stopped; stood there wavering, panting, staring with whirling senses.
+Near the middle of the street, with the faint dawn behind it, a ball
+of gathering mist had appeared directly in his path. It was a
+luminous, shining mist&mdash;and it was gathering into form!</p>
+
+<p>In seconds a small, glowing cage of white luminous bars stood there in
+the street, where there had just been nothing! It was not the
+Time-traveling cage from the house yard he had just left. No&mdash;he knew
+it was not that one. This one was similar, but much smaller.</p>
+
+<p>The shock of its appearance held Larry for a moment transfixed. It had
+so silently, so suddenly appeared in his path that Larry was now
+within a foot or two of its doorway.</p>
+
+<p>The doorway slid open, and a man leaped out. Behind him, a girl peered
+from the doorway. Larry stood gaping, wholly confused. The cage had
+materialized so abruptly that the leaping man collided with him before
+either man could avoid the other. Larry gripped the man before him;
+struck out with his fists and shouted. The girl in the doorway called
+frantically:</p>
+
+<p>"Harl-no noise! Harl-stop him!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, suddenly the two of them were upon Larry and pulling him toward
+the doorway of the cage. Inside, he was jerked; he shouted wildly; but
+the girl slammed the door. Then in a soft, girlish voice, in English
+with a curiously indescribable accent and intonation, the girl said
+hastily:</p>
+
+<p>"Hold him, Harl! Hold him! I'll start the traveler!"</p>
+
+<p>The black garbed figure of a slim young man was gripping Larry as the
+girl pulled a switch and there was a shock, a reeling of Larry's
+senses, as the cage, motionless in Space, sped off into Time....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t seems needless to encumber this narrative with prolonged details of
+how Larry explained himself to his two captors. Or how they told him
+who they were; and from whence they had come; and why. To Larry it was
+a fantastic&mdash;and confusing at first&mdash;series of questions and answers.
+An hour? The words have no meaning. They were traveling through Time.
+Years were minutes&mdash;the words meaning nothing save how they impressed
+the vehicle's human occupants. To them all it was an interval of
+mutual distrust which was gradually changing into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> friendship. Larry
+found the two strangers singularly direct; singularly forceful in
+quiet, calm fashion; singularly keen of perception. They had not meant
+to capture him. The encounter had startled them, and Larry's shouts
+would have brought others upon the scene.</p>
+
+<p>Almost at once they knew Larry was no enemy, and told him so. And in a
+moment Larry was pouring out all that had happened to him; and to
+Alten and Mary Atwood and me. This strange thing! But to Larry now,
+telling it to these strange new companions, it abruptly seemed not
+fantastic, but only sinister. The Robot, an enemy, had captured Mary
+Atwood and me, and whirled us off in the other&mdash;the larger&mdash;cage.</p>
+
+<p>And in this smaller cage Larry was with friends&mdash;for he suddenly found
+their purpose the same as his! They were chasing this other
+Time-traveler, with its semi-human, mechanical operator!</p>
+
+<p>The young man said, "You explain to him, Tina. I will watch."</p>
+
+<p>He was a slim, pale fellow, handsome in a queer, tight-lipped,
+stern-faced fashion. His close-fitting black silk jacket had a white
+neck ruching and white cuffs; he wore a wide white-silk belt, snug
+black-silk knee-length trousers and black stockings.</p>
+
+<p>And the girl was similarly dressed. Her black hair was braided and
+coiled upon her head, and ornaments dangled from her ears. Over her
+black blouse was a brocaded network jacket; her white belt,
+compressing her slim waist, dangled with tassels; and there were other
+tassels on the garters at the knees of her trousers.</p>
+
+<p>She was a pale-faced, beautiful girl, with black brows arching in a
+thin line, with purple-black eyes like somber pools. She was no more
+than five feet tall, and slim and frail. But, like her companion,
+there was about her a queer aspect of calm, quiet power and force of
+personality&mdash;physical vitality merged with an intellect keenly sharp.</p>
+
+<p>She sat with Larry on a little metal bench, listening, almost without
+interruption, to his explanation. And then, succinctly she gave her
+own. The young man, Harl, sat at his instruments, with his gaze
+searching for the other cage, five hundred feet away in Space, but in
+Time unknown.</p>
+
+<p>And outside the shining bars Larry could vaguely see the blurred,
+shifting, melting vistas of New York City hastening through the
+changes Time had brought to it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>his young man, Harl, and this girl, Tina, lived in New York City in
+the Time-world of 2930 A. D. To Larry it was a thousand years in the
+future. Tina was the Princess of the American Nation. It was an
+hereditary title, non-political, added several hundred years
+previously as a picturesque symbol. A tradition; something to make
+less prosaic the political machine of Republican government. Tina was
+loved by her people, we afterward came to learn.</p>
+
+<p>Harl was an aristocrat of the New York City of Tina's Time-world, a
+scientist. In the Government laboratories, under the same roof where
+Tina dwelt, Harl had worked with another, older scientist, and&mdash;so
+Tina told me&mdash;together they had discovered the secret of
+Time-traveling. They had built two cages, a large and a small, which
+could travel freely through Time.</p>
+
+<p>The smaller vehicle&mdash;this one in which Larry now was speeding&mdash;was, in
+the Time-world of 2930, located in the garden of Tina's palace. The
+other, somewhat larger, they had built some five hundred feet distant,
+just beyond the palace walls, within a great Government laboratory.</p>
+
+<p>Harl's fellow scientist&mdash;the leader in their endeavors, since he was
+much older and of wider experience&mdash;was not altogether trusted by
+Tina. He took the credit for the discovery of Time-traveling; yet,
+said Tina, it was Harl's genius which in reality had worked out the
+final problems.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And this older scientist was a cripple. A hideously repulsive fellow,
+named Tugh!</p>
+
+<p>"Tugh!" exclaimed Larry.</p>
+
+<p>"The same," said Tina in her crisp fashion. "Yes&mdash;undoubtedly the
+same. So you see why what you have told us was of such interest. Tugh
+is a Government leader in our world; and now we find he has lived in
+<i>your</i> Time, and in the Time of this Mary Atwood."</p>
+
+<p>From his seat at the instrument table, Harl burst out: "So he murdered
+a girl of 1935, and has abducted another of 1777? You would not have
+me judge him, Tina&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No one," she said, "may judge without full facts. This man here&mdash;this
+Larry of 1935&mdash;tells us that only a mechanism is in the larger
+cage&mdash;which is what we thought, Harl. And this mechanism, without a
+doubt, is the treacherous Migul."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>here was, in 2930, a vast world of machinery. The god of the machine
+had developed them to almost human intricacy. Almost all the work of
+the world, particularly in America, and most particularly in the
+mechanical center of New York City, was done by machinery. And the
+machinery itself was guided, handled, operated&mdash;even, in some
+instances, constructed&mdash;by other, more intricate machines. They were
+fashioned in pseudo-human form&mdash;thinking, logically acting,
+independently acting mechanisms: the Robots. All but human, they
+were&mdash;a new race. Inferior to humans, yet similar.</p>
+
+<p>And in 2930 the machines, slaves of idle human masters, had been
+developed too highly! They were upon the verge of a revolt!</p>
+
+<p>All this Tina briefly sketched now to Larry. And to Larry it seemed a
+very distant, very academic danger. Yet so soon all of us were plunged
+into the midst of it!</p>
+
+<p>The revolt had not yet come, but it was feared. A great Robot named
+Migul seemed fomenting it. The revolt was smouldering; at any moment
+it would burst; and then the machines would rise to destroy the
+humans.</p>
+
+<p>This was the situation when Harl and Tugh completed the Time-traveling
+vehicles in this world. They had been tested, but never used. Then
+Tugh had vanished; was gone now; and the larger of the two vehicles
+was also gone.</p>
+
+<p>Both Harl and Tina had always distrusted Tugh. They thought him allied
+to the Robots. But they had no proof; and suavely he denied it, and
+helped always with the Government activities struggling to keep the
+mechanical slaves docile and at work.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ugh and the larger vehicle had vanished, and so had Migul, the
+insubordinate, giant mechanism&mdash;at which, unknown to the Government
+officials, Tina and Harl had taken the other cage and started in
+pursuit. It was possible that Tugh was loyal; that Migul had abducted
+him and stolen the cage.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait!" exclaimed Larry. "I'm trying to figure this out. It seems to
+hang together. It almost does, but not quite. When did Tugh vanish
+from your world?"</p>
+
+<p>"To our consciousness," Tina answered, "about three hours ago. Perhaps
+a little longer than that."</p>
+
+<p>"But look here," Larry protested: "according to my story and that of
+Mary Atwood, Tugh lived in 1935 and in 1777 for three years."</p>
+
+<p>Confusing? But in a moment Larry understood it. Tugh could have taken
+the cage, gone to 1777 and to 1935, alternated between them for what
+was to him, and to those Time-worlds, three years&mdash;then have returned
+to 2930 <i>on the same day of his departure</i>. He would have lived these
+three years; grown that much older; but to the Time-world of 2930
+neither he nor the cage would have been missed.</p>
+
+<p>"That," said Tina, "is what doubtless he did. The cage is traveling
+again. But you, Larry, tell us only Migul is in it."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't say that of my own knowledge," said Larry. "Mary Atwood
+said so. It held only the mechanism you call Migul. And now Migul has
+with him Mary and my friend George Rankin. We must reach them."</p>
+
+<p>"We want that quite as much as you do," said Harl. "And to find Tugh.
+If he is a friend we must save him; if a traitor&mdash;punish him."</p>
+
+<p>Larry began, "But can you get to the other cage?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only if it stops," said Tina. "<i>When</i> it stops, I should say."</p>
+
+<p>"Come here," said Harl. "I will show you."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>arry crossed the glowing room. He had forgotten its aspect&mdash;the
+ghostly unreality around him. He too&mdash;his body, like Harl's and
+Tina's&mdash;was of the same wraith-like substance.... Then, suddenly,
+Larry's viewpoint shifted. The room and its occupants were real and
+tangible. And outside the glowing bars&mdash;everything out there was the
+unreality.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," said Harl. "I will show you. It is not visible yet."</p>
+
+<p>Each of the cages was equipped with an intricate device, strange of
+name, which Larry and I have since termed a Time-telespectroscope.
+Larry saw it now as a small metal box, with tuning vibration dials,
+batteries, coils, a series of tiny prisms and an image-mirror&mdash;the
+whole surmounted by what appeared the barrel of a small telescope.
+Harl had it leveled and was gazing through it.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The workings of the Time-telespectroscope involve all the
+intricate postulates and mathematical formulae of Time-traveling
+itself. As a matter of practicality, however, the results obtained are
+simple of understanding. The etheric vibratory rate of the vehicles
+while traveling through Time was constantly changing. Through the
+telespectroscope one cage was visible to the other across the five
+hundred feet of intervening Space when they approached a simultaneous
+Time; when they, so to speak, were tuned in unison.
+</p><p>
+Thus, Harl explained, the other cage would show as a ghost, the
+faintest of wraiths, over a Time-distance of some five or ten years.
+And the closer in Time they approached it, the more solid it would
+appear.</p></div>
+
+<p>The enemy cage was not visible, now. But Harl and Tina had glimpsed it
+on several occasions. What vast realms Time opens within a single
+small segment of Space! The larger vehicle seemed speeding back and
+forth. A dash into the year 1777! as Larry learned from Mary Atwood.</p>
+
+<p>And there had been several evidences of the cage halting in 1935.
+Larry's account explained two such pauses. But the others? Those
+others, which brought to the City of New York such amazing disaster?
+We did not learn of them until much later. But Alten lived through
+them, and presently I shall reconstruct them from his account.</p>
+
+<p>The larger cage was difficult to trace in its sweep along the
+corridors of Time. Never once had Tina and Harl been able to stop
+simultaneously with it, for a year has so many separate days and
+hours. The nearest they came was the halt in the night of June 8-9,
+when they encountered Larry, and, startled, seized him and moved on
+again.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>arl continued to gaze through the eyepiece of the detecting
+instrument. But nothing showed, and the mirror-grid on the table was
+dark.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;which way are we going?" Larry stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"Back," said Tina. "The retrograde.... Wait! Do not do that!"</p>
+
+<p>Larry had turned toward where the bars, less luminous, showed a dark
+rectangle like a window. The desire swept him to gaze out at the
+shining, changing scene.</p>
+
+<p>But Tina checked him. "Do not do that! Not yet! It is too great a
+shock in the retrograde. It was to me."</p>
+
+<p>"But where are we?"</p>
+
+<p>In answer she gestured toward a series of tiny dials on the table
+edge. There were at least two score of them, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>laid in a triple bank.
+Dials to record the passing minutes, hours, days; the years, the
+centuries! Larry stared at the small whirring pointers. Some were a
+blur of swift whirling movement&mdash;the hours and days. Tina showed Larry
+how to read them. The cage was passing through the year 1880. In a few
+moments of Larry's consciousness it was 1799. Then 1793. The infant
+American nation was here now. But with the cage retrograding, soon
+they would be in the Revolutionary War.</p>
+
+<p>Tina said. "The other cage may go back to 1777, if Tugh meant ill to
+Mary Atwood, or wants revenge upon her father, at you said. We shall
+see."</p>
+
+<p>They had reached 1790 when Harl gave a low ejaculation.</p>
+
+<p>"You see it?" Tina murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Very faintly."</p>
+
+<p>Larry bent tensely forward. "Will it show on the mirror?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; presently. We are about ten years from it. If we get closer, the
+mirror will show it."</p>
+
+<p>But the mirror held dark. No&mdash;now it was glowing a trifle. A vague
+luminosity.</p>
+
+<p>Tina moved toward the instrument controls nearby. "Watch closely,
+Harl. I will slow us down."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t seemed to Larry that the humming with which everything around him
+was endowed, now began descending in pitch. And his head suddenly was
+unsteady. A singular, wild, queer feeling was within him. An unrest. A
+tugging torment of every tiny cell of his body.</p>
+
+<p>Tina said. "Hold steady, Larry, for when we stop."</p>
+
+<p>"Will it shock me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;at first. But the shock will not harm you: it is nearly all
+mental."</p>
+
+<p>The mirror held an image now&mdash;the other cage. Larry saw, on the
+six-inch square mirror surface, a crawling, melting scene of movement.
+And in the midst of it, the image of the other cage, faint and
+spectral. In all the mirrored movement, only the apparition of the
+cage was still. And this marked it; made it visible.</p>
+
+<p>Over an interval, while Larry stared, the ghostly image grew plainer.
+They were approaching its Time-factor!</p>
+
+<p>"It is stopping," Harl murmured. Larry was aware that he had left the
+eyepiece and joined Tina at the controls.</p>
+
+<p>"Tina, let us try to get it right this time."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"In 1777; but which month, would you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"It has stopped! See?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>arry heard them clicking switches, and setting the controls for a
+stop. Then he felt Tina gently push him.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit here. Standing, you might fall."</p>
+
+<p>He found himself on a bench. He could still see the mirror. The ghost
+of the other cage was now lined more plainly upon it.</p>
+
+<p>"This month," said Tina, setting a switch. "Would not you say so? And
+this day."</p>
+
+<p>"But the hour, Tina? The minute?"</p>
+
+<p>The vast intricate corridors of Time!</p>
+
+<p>"It would be in the night. Hasten, Harl, or we will pass! Try the
+night&mdash;around midnight. Even Migul has the mechanical intelligence to
+fear a daylight pausing."</p>
+
+<p>The controls were set for the stop. Larry heard Tina murmuring, "Oh, I
+pray we may have judged with correctness!"</p>
+
+<p>The vehicle was rapidly coming to a stop. Larry gripped the table,
+struggling to hold firm to his reeling senses. This soundless,
+grinding halt! His swaying gaze strayed from the mirror. Outside the
+glowing bars he could now discern the luminous greyness separating.
+Swift, soundless claps of light and dark, alternating. Daylight and
+darkness. They had been blended, but now they were separating. The
+passing, retrograding days&mdash;a dozen to the second of Larry's
+consciousness. Then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> fewer. Vivid daylight. Black night. Daylight
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"Not too slowly, Harl; we will be seen!... Oh, it is gone!"</p>
+
+<p>Larry saw the mirror go blank. The image on it had flared to great
+distinctness, faded, and was gone. Darkness was around Larry. Then
+daylight. Then darkness again.</p>
+
+<p>"Gone!" echoed Harl's disappointed voice. "But it stopped here!...
+Shall we stop, Tina?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! Leave the control settings as they are. Larry&mdash;be careful, now."</p>
+
+<p>A dragging second of grey daylight. A plunge into night. It seemed to
+Larry that all the universe was soundlessly reeling. Out of the chaos,
+Tina was saying:</p>
+
+<p>"We have stopped. Are you all right, Larry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he stammered.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e stood up. The cage room, with its faint lights, benches and
+settles, instrument tables and banks of controls, was flooded with
+moonlight from outside the bars. Night, and the moon and stars out
+there.</p>
+
+<p>Harl slid the door open. "Come, let us look."</p>
+
+<p>The reeling chaos had fallen swiftly from Larry. With Tina's small
+black and white figure beside him, he stood at the threshold of the
+cage. A warm gentle night breeze fanned his face.</p>
+
+<p>A moonlit landscape lay somnolent around the cage. Trees were nearby.
+The cage stood in a corner of a field by a low picket fence. Behind
+the trees, a ribbon of road stretched away toward a distant shining
+river. Down the road some five hundred feet, the white columns of a
+large square brick house gleamed in the moonlight. And behind the
+house was a garden and a group of barns and stables.</p>
+
+<p>The three in the cage doorway stood whispering, planning. Then two of
+them stepped to the ground. They were Larry and Tina; Harl remained to
+guard the cage.</p>
+
+<p>The two figures on the ground paused a moment and then moved
+cautiously along the inside line of the fence toward the home of Major
+Atwood. Strange anachronisms, these two prowling figures! A girl from
+the year 2930; a man from 1935!</p>
+
+<p>And this was revolutionary New York, now. The little city lay well to
+the south. It was open country up here. The New York of 1935 had
+melted away and was gone....</p>
+
+<p>This was a night in August of 1777.</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER VI</h4>
+<h4><i>The New York Massacre of 1935</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_d.jpg" alt="D" width="57" height="56" /></div>
+<p>r. Alten recovered consciousness in the back yard of the house on
+Patton Place just a few moments after Larry had encountered the
+smaller Time-traveling cage and been carried off by Harl and Tina.
+Previously to that, of course, the mysterious mechanism in the guise
+of a giant man had abducted Mary Atwood and me in the larger
+Time-cage.</p>
+
+<p>Alten became aware that people were bending over him. The shots we had
+taken at the Robot had aroused the neighborhood. A policeman arrived.</p>
+
+<p>The sleeping neighbors had heard the shots, but it seemed that none
+had seen the cage, or the metal man who had come from it. Alten said
+nothing. He was taken to the nearest police station where grudgingly,
+he told his story. He was laughed at; reprimanded for alcoholism.
+Evidently, according to the police sergeant, there had been a fight,
+and Alten had drawn the loser's end. The police confiscated the two
+rifles and the revolver and decided that no one but Alten had been
+hurt. But at best it was a queer affair. Alten had not been shot; he
+was just stiff with cold; he said a dull-red ray had fallen upon him
+and stiffened him with its frigid blast. Utter nonsense!</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Alten was a man of standing. It was a reprehensible affair, but he
+was released upon his own recognizance. He was charged with breaking
+into the untenanted home of one Tugh; of il<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>legally possessing
+firearms; of disturbing the peace&mdash;a variety of offenses all rational
+to the year 1935.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ut Alten's case never reached even its hearing in the Magistrate's
+Court. He arrived home just after dawn, that June 9, still cold and
+stiff from the effects of the ray, and bruised and battered by the
+sweeping blow of Miguel's great iron arm. He recalled vaguely seeing
+Larry fall, and the iron monster bearing Mary Atwood and me away. What
+had happened to Larry, Alten could not guess, unless the Robot had
+returned, ignored him and taken his friend away.</p>
+
+<p>During that day of June 9 Alten summoned several of his scientific
+friends, and to them he told fully what had happened to him. They
+listened with a keen understanding and a rational knowledge of the
+possibility that what he said was true; but credibility they could not
+give him.</p>
+
+<p>The noon papers came out.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>NOTED ALIENIST ATTACKED BY GHOST Felled by One of the
+Fantastic Monsters of His Brain</p></div>
+
+<p>A jocular, jibing account. Then Alten gave it up. He had about decided
+to plead guilty in the Magistrate's Court to disorderly conduct and
+all the rest of it! That was preferable to being judged a liar, or
+insane.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>nd then, at about 9 P.M. on the evening of June 9, the first of the
+mechanical monsters came stalking from the house on Patton Place&mdash;the
+beginning of the revenge which Tugh had threatened when arrested. The
+policeman at the corner&mdash;one McGuire&mdash;turned in the first hysterical
+alarm. He rushed into a little candy and stationery store shouting
+that he had seen a piece of machinery running wild. His telephone call
+brought a squad of his comrades. The Robot at first did no damage.</p>
+
+<p>McGuire later told how he saw it as it emerged from the entryway of
+the Tugh house. It came lurching out into the street&mdash;a giant thing of
+dull grey metal, with tubular, jointed legs; a body with a great
+bulging chest; a round head, eight or ten feet above the pavement;
+eyes that shot fire.</p>
+
+<p>The policeman took to his heels. There was a commotion in Patton Place
+during those next few minutes. Pedestrians saw the thing standing in
+the middle of the street, staring stupidly around it. The head
+wobbled. Some said that the eyes shot fire; others, that it was not
+the eyes, but more like a torch in its mailed hand. The torch shot a
+small beam of light around the street&mdash;a beam which was dull-red.</p>
+
+<p>The pedestrians fled. Their cries brought people to the nearby house
+windows. Women screamed. Presently bottles were thrown from the
+windows. One of these crashed against the iron shoulder of the
+monster. It turned its head: as though its neck were rubber, some
+said. And it gazed upward, with a human gesture as though it were not
+angry, but contemptuous.</p>
+
+<p>But still, beyond a step or two in one direction or another, it merely
+stood and waved its torch. The little dull-red beam of light carried
+no more than twenty or thirty feet. The street in a few moments was
+clear of pedestrians; remained littered with glass from the broken
+bottles. A taxi came suddenly around the corner, and the driver, with
+an almost immediate tire puncture, saw the monster. He hauled up to
+the curb, left his cab and ran.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he Robot saw the taxicab, and stood gazing. It turned its torch-beam
+on it, and seemed surprised that the thing did not move. Then thinking
+evidently that this was a less cowardly enemy than the humans, it made
+a rush to it. The chauffeur had not turned off his engine when he
+fled, so the cab stood throbbing.</p>
+
+<p>The Robot reached it; cuffed it with a huge mailed fist. The
+windshield<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> broke; the windows were shattered; but the cab stood
+purring, planted upon its four wheels.</p>
+
+<p>Strange encounter! They say that the Robot tried to talk to it. At
+last, exasperated, it stepped backward, gathered itself and pounced on
+it again. Stooping, it put one of its great arms down under the
+wheels, the other over the hood, and with prodigious strength heaved
+the cab into the air. It crashed on its side across the street, and in
+a moment was covered with flames.</p>
+
+<p>It was about this time that Patrolman McGuire came back to the scene.
+He shot at the monster a few times; hit it, he was sure. But the Robot
+did not heed him.</p>
+
+<p>The block was now in chaos. People stood at most of the windows,
+crowds gathered at the distant street corners, while the blazing
+taxicab lighted the block with a lurid glare. No one dared approach
+within a hundred feet or so of the monster. But when, after a time, it
+showed no disposition to attack, throngs at every distinct point of
+vantage tried to gather where they could see it. Those nearest
+reported back that its face was iron; that it had a nose, a wide,
+yawning mouth, and holes for eyes. There were certainly little lights
+in the eye-holes.</p>
+
+<p>A small, fluffy white dog went dashing up to the monster and barked
+bravely at its heels. It leaped nimbly away when the Robot stooped to
+seize it. Then, from the Robot's chest, the dull-red torch beam leaped
+out and down. It caught the little dog, and clung to it for an
+instant. The dog stood transfixed; its bark turned to a yelp; then a
+gurgle. In a moment it fell on its side; then lay motionless with
+stiffened legs sticking out.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ll this happened within five minutes. McGuire's riot squad arrived,
+discreetly ranged itself at the end of the block and fired. The Robot
+by then had retreated to the entryway of the Tugh house, where it
+stood peering as though with curiosity at all this commotion. There
+came a clanging from the distance: someone had turned in a fire alarm.
+Through the gathered crowds and vehicles the engines came tearing up.</p>
+
+<p>Presently there was not one Robot, but three: a dozen! More than that,
+many reports said. But certain it is that within half an hour of the
+first alarm, the block in front of Tugh's home held many of the iron
+monsters. And there were many human bodies lying strewn there, by
+then. A few policemen had made a stand at the corner, to protect the
+crowd against one of the Robots. The thing had made an unexpected
+infuriated rush....</p>
+
+<p>There was a panic in the next block, when a thousand people suddenly
+tried to run. A score of people were trampled under foot. Two or three
+of the Robots ran into that next block&mdash;ran impervious to the many
+shots which now were fired at them. From what was described as slots
+in the sides of their iron bodies they drew swords&mdash;long, dark,
+burnished blades. They ran, and at each fallen human body they made a
+single stroke of decapitation, or, more generally, cut the body in
+half.</p>
+
+<p>The Robots did not attack the fire engines. Emboldened by this,
+firemen connected a hose and pumped a huge jet of water toward the
+Tugh house. The Robots then rushed it. One huge mechanism&mdash;some said
+it was twelve feet tall&mdash;ran heedlessly into the firemen's
+high-pressure stream, toppled backward from the force of the water and
+very strangely lay still. Killed? Rather, out of order: deranged: it
+was not human, to be killed. But it lay motionless, with the fire hose
+playing upon it. Then abruptly there was an explosion. The fallen
+Robot, with a deafening report and a puff of green flame, burst into
+flying metallic fragments like shrapnel. Nearby windows were broken
+from the violent explosion, and pieces of the flying metal were hurled
+a hundred feet or more. One huge chunk, evidently a plate of the
+thing's body, struck into the crowd<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> two blocks away, and felled
+several people.</p>
+
+<p>At this smashing of one of the mechanisms, its brother Robots went for
+the first time into aggressive action. A hundred or more were pouring
+now from the vacant house of the absent Tugh....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he alarm by ten o'clock had spread throughout the entire city. Police
+reserves were called out, and by midnight soldiers were being
+mobilized. Panics were starting everywhere. Millions of people crowded
+in on small Manhattan Island, in the heart of which was this strange
+enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Panics.... Yet human nature is very strange. Thousands of people
+started to leave Manhattan, but there were other thousands during that
+first skirmish who did their best to try and get to the neighborhood
+of Patton Place to see what was going on. They added greatly to the
+confusion. Traffic soon was stalled everywhere. Traffic officers,
+confused, frightened by the news which was bubbled at them from every
+side, gave wrong orders; accidents began to occur. And then, out of
+the growing confusion, came tangles, until, like a dammed stream, all
+the city mid-section was paralyzed. Vehicles were abandoned
+everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>Reports of what was happening on Patton Place grew more confused. The
+gathering nearby crowds impeded the police and firemen. The Robots, by
+ten o'clock, were using a single great beam of dull-red light. It was
+two or three feet broad. It came from a spluttering, hissing cylinder
+mounted on runners which the Robots dragged along the ground, and the
+beam was like that of a great red searchlight. It swung the length of
+Patton Place in both directions. It hissed against the houses;
+penetrated the open windows which now were all deserted; swept the
+front cornices of the roofs, where crowds of tenants and others were
+trying to hide. The red beam drove back the ones near the edge, except
+those who were stricken by its frigid blast and dropped like plummets
+into the street, where the Robots with flashing blades pounced upon
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Frigid was the blast of this giant light-beam. The street, wet from
+the fire-hose, was soon frozen with ice&mdash;ice which increased under the
+blast of the beam, and melted in the warm air of the night when the
+ray turned away.</p>
+
+<p>From every distant point in the city, awed crowds could see that great
+shaft when it occasionally shot upward, to stain the sky with blood.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_d.jpg" alt="D" width="57" height="56" /></div>
+
+<p>r. Alten by midnight was with the city officials, telling them what
+he could of the origin of this calamity. They were a distracted group
+indeed! There were a thousand things to do, and frantically they were
+giving orders, struggling to cope with conditions so suddenly
+unprecedented. A great city, millions of people, plunged into
+conditions unfathomable. And every moment growing worse. One calamity
+bringing another, in the city, with its myriad diverse activities so
+interwoven. Around Alten the clattering, terrifying reports were
+surging. He sat there nearly all that night; and near dawn, an
+official plane carried him in a flight over the city.</p>
+
+<p>The panics, by midnight, were causing the most deaths. Thousands,
+hundreds of thousands, were trying to leave the island. The tube
+trains, the subways, the elevateds were jammed. There were riots
+without number in them. Ferryboats and bridges were thronged to their
+capacity. Downtown Manhattan, fortunately comparatively empty, gave
+space to the crowds plunging down from the crowded foreign quarters
+bordering Greenwich Village. By dawn it was estimated that five
+thousand people had been trampled to death by the panics in various
+parts of the city, in the tubes beneath the rivers and on departing
+trains.</p>
+
+<p>And another thousand or more had been killed by the Robots. How many
+of these monstrous metal men were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> now in evidence, no one could
+guess. A hundred&mdash;or a thousand. The Time-cage made many trips between
+that night of June 9 and 10, 1935, and a night in 2930. Always it
+gauged its return to this same night.</p>
+
+<p>The Robots poured out into Patton Place. With running, stiff-legged
+steps, flashing swords, small light-beams darting before them, they
+spread about the city....</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER VII</h4>
+<h4>The Vengeance of Tugh</h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;myriad individual scenes of horror were enacted. Metal travesties of
+the human form ran along the city streets, overturning stalled
+vehicles, climbing into houses, roaming dark hallways, breaking into
+rooms.</p>
+
+<p>There was a woman who afterward told that she crouched in a corner,
+clutching her child, when the door of her room was burst in. Her
+husband, who had kept them there thinking it was the safest thing to
+do, fought futilely with the great thing of iron. Its sword slashed
+his head from his body with a single stroke. The woman and the little
+child screamed, but the monster ignored them. They had a radio, tuned
+to a station in New Jersey which was broadcasting the events. The
+Robot seized the instrument as though in a frenzy of anger, tore it
+apart, then rushed from the room.</p>
+
+<p>No one could give a connected picture of the events of that horrible
+night. It was a series of disjointed incidents out of which the
+imagination must construct the whole.</p>
+
+<p>The panics were everywhere. The streets were stalled with traffic and
+running, shouting, fighting people. And the area around Greenwich
+Village brought reports of continued horror.</p>
+
+<p>The Robots were of many different forms; some pseudo-human; others,
+great machines running amuck&mdash;things more monstrous, more horrible
+even, than those which mocked humanity. There was a great pot-bellied
+monster which forced its way somehow to a roof. It encountered a
+crouching woman and child in a corner of the parapet, seized them, one
+in each of its great iron hands, and whirled them out over the
+housetops.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>y dawn it seemed that the Robots had mounted several projectors of
+the giant red beam on the roofs of Patton Place. They held a full
+square mile, now, around Tugh's house. The police and firemen had long
+since given up fighting them. They were needed elsewhere&mdash;the police
+to try and cope with the panics, and the firemen to fight the
+conflagrations which everywhere began springing up. Fires, the natural
+outcome of chaos; and fires, incendiary&mdash;made by criminals who took
+advantage of the disaster to fatten like ghouls upon the dead. They
+prowled the streets. They robbed and murdered at will.</p>
+
+<p>The giant beams of the Robots carried a frigid blast for miles. By
+dawn of that June 10th, the south wind was carrying from the enemy
+area a perceptible wave of cold even as far as Westchester. Allen,
+flying over the city, saw the devastated area clearly. Ice in the
+streets&mdash;smashed vehicles&mdash;the gruesome litter of sword-slashed human
+bodies. And other human bodies, plucked apart; strewn....</p>
+
+<p>Alten's plane flew at an altitude of some two thousand feet. In the
+growing daylight the dark prowling figures of the metal men were
+plainly seen. There were no humans left alive in the captured area.
+The plane dropped a bomb into Washington Square where a dozen or two
+of the Robots were gathered. It missed them. The plane's pilot had not
+realized that they were grouped around a projector; its red shaft
+sprang up, caught the plane and clung to it. Frigid blast! Even at
+that two thousand feet altitude, for a few seconds Alten and the
+others were stiffened by the cold. The motor missed; very nearly
+stopped. Then an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> intervening rooftop cut off the beam, and the plane
+escaped.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ll this I have pictured from what Dr. Alten subsequently told me. He
+leaves my narrative now, since fate hereafter held him in the New York
+City of 1935. But he has described for me three horrible days, and
+three still more horrible nights. The whole world now was alarmed.
+Every nation offered its forces of air and land and sea to overcome
+these gruesome invaders. Warships steamed for New York harbor.
+Soldiers were entrained and brought to the city outskirts. Airplanes
+flew overhead. On Long Island, Staten Island, and in New Jersey,
+infantry, tanks and artillery were massed in readiness.</p>
+
+<p>But they were all very nearly powerless to attack. Manhattan Island
+still was thronged with refugees. It was not possible for the millions
+to escape; and for the first day there were hundreds of thousands
+hiding in their homes. The city could not be shelled. The influx of
+troops was hampered by the outrush of civilians.</p>
+
+<p>By the night of the tenth, nevertheless, ten thousand soldiers were
+surrounding the enemy area. It embraced now all the mid-section of the
+island. The soldiers rushed in. Machine-guns were set up.</p>
+
+<p>But the Robots were difficult to find. With this direct attack they
+began fighting with an almost human caution. Their bodies were
+impervious to bullets, save perhaps in the orifices of the face which
+might or might not be vulnerable. But when attacked, they skulked in
+the houses, or crouched like cautious animals under the smashed
+vehicles. Then there were times when they would wade forward directly
+into machine-gun fire&mdash;unharmed&mdash;plunging on until the gunners fled
+and the Robots wreaked their fury upon the abandoned gun.</p>
+
+<p>The only hand-to-hand conflicts took place on the afternoon of June
+10th. A full thousand soldiers were killed&mdash;and possibly six or eight
+of the Robots. The troops were ordered away after that; they made
+lines across the island to the north and to the south, to keep the
+enemy from increasing its area. Over Greenwich Village now, the
+circling planes&mdash;at their highest altitude, to avoid the upflung
+crimson beams&mdash;dropped bombs. Hundreds of houses there were wrecked.
+Tugh's house could not be positively identified, though the attack was
+directed at it most particularly. Afterward, it was found by chance to
+have escaped.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he night of June 10th brought new horrors. The city lights failed.
+Against all the efforts of the troops and the artillery fire which now
+was shelling the Washington Square area, the giant mechanisms pushed
+north and south. By midnight, with their dull-red beams illumining the
+darkness of the canyon streets, they had reached the Battery, and
+spread northward beyond the northern limits of Central Park.</p>
+
+<p>It is estimated that by then there were still a million people on
+Manhattan Island.</p>
+
+<p>The night of the 11th, the Robots made their real attack. Those who
+saw it, from planes overhead, say that upon a roof near Washington
+Square a machine was mounted from which a red beam sprang. It was not
+of parallel rays, like the others; this one spread. And of such power
+it was, that it painted the leaden clouds of the threatening, overcast
+night. Every plane, at whatever high altitude, felt its frigid blast
+and winged hastily away to safety.</p>
+
+<p>Spreading, dull-red beam! It flashed with a range of miles. Its light
+seemed to cling to the clouds, staining like blood; and to cling to
+the air itself with a dull lurid radiance.</p>
+
+<p>It was a hot night, that June 11th, with a brewing thunderstorm. There
+had been occasional rumbles of thunder and lightning flashes. The
+temperature was perhaps 90&deg; F.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then the temperature began falling. A million people were hiding in
+the great apartment houses and homes of the northern sections, or
+still struggling to escape over the littered bridges or by the
+paralyzed transportation systems&mdash;and that million people saw the
+crimson radiance and felt the falling temperature.</p>
+
+<p>80&deg;. Then 70&deg;. Within half an hour it was at 30&deg;! In unheated houses,
+in midsummer, in the midst of panic, the people were swept by chilling
+cold. With no adequate clothing available they suffered greatly&mdash;and
+then abruptly they were freezing. Children wailing with the cold; then
+asleep in numbed, last slumber....</p>
+
+<p>Zero weather in midsummer! And below zero! How cold it got, there is
+no one to say. The abandoned recording instrument in the Weather
+Bureau was found, at 2:16 A.M., the morning of June 12, 1935, to have
+touched minus 42&deg; F.</p>
+
+<p>The gathering storm over the city burst with lightning and thunder
+claps through the blood-red radiance. And then snow began falling. A
+steady white downpour, a winter blizzard with the lightning flashing
+above it, and the thunder crashing.</p>
+
+<p>With the lightning and thunder and snow, crazy winds sprang up. They
+whirled and tossed the thick white snowflakes; swept in blasts along
+the city streets. It piled the snow in great drifts against the
+houses; whirled and sucked it upward in white powdery geysers.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t 2:30 A.M. there came a change. The dull-red radiance which swept
+the city changed in color. Through the shades of the spectrum it swung
+up to violet. And no longer was it a blast of cold, but of heat! Of
+what inherent temperature the ray of that spreading beam may have
+been, no one can say. It caught the houses, and everything inflammable
+burst into flame. Conflagrations were everywhere&mdash;a thousand spots of
+yellow-red flames, like torches, with smoke rolling up from them to
+mingle with the violet glow overhead.</p>
+
+<p>The blizzard was gone. The snow ceased. The storm clouds rolled away,
+blasted by the pendulum winds which lashed the city.</p>
+
+<p>By 3 A.M. the city temperature was over 100&deg; F&mdash;the dry, blistering
+heat of a midsummer desert. The northern city streets were littered
+with the bodies of people who had rushed from their homes and fallen
+in the heat, the wild winds and the suffocating smoke outside.</p>
+
+<p>And then, flung back by the abnormal winds, the storm clouds crashed
+together overhead. A terrible storm, born of outraged nature, vent
+itself on the city. The fires of the burning metropolis presently died
+under the torrent of falling water. Clouds of steam whirled and tossed
+and hissed close overhead, and there was a boiling hot rain.</p>
+
+<p>By dawn the radiance of that strange spreading beam died away. The
+daylight showed a wrecked, dead city. Few humans indeed were left
+alive on Manhattan that dawn. The Robots and their apparatus had
+gone....</p>
+
+<p>The vengeance of Tugh against the New York City of 1935 was
+accomplished.</p>
+
+<p class="center">(<i>To be continued.</i>)</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_005.jpg" width="600" height="142" alt="Advertisement." title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image_006.jpg" width="500" height="404" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>Just as the terrific unknown force reached its apex, she stepped across the plate.</i></span></div>
+
+<h2><a name="Hells_Dimension" id="Hells_Dimension"></a>Hell's Dimension</h2>
+
+<h3><i>By Tom Curry</i></h3>
+<div class="sidenote">Professor Lambert deliberately ventures into a Vibrational
+Dimension to join his fiancee in its magnetic torture-fields.</div>
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_n1.jpg" alt="N" width="63" height="58" /></div>
+<p>ow, Professor Lambert, tell us what you have done with the body of
+your assistant Miss Madge Crawford. Her car is outside your door, has
+stood there since early yesterday morning. There are no footprints
+leading away from the house and you can't expect us to believe that an
+airplane picked her off the roof. It will make it a lot easier if you
+tell us where she is. Her parents are greatly worried about her. When
+they telephoned, you refused to talk to them, would not allow them to
+speak to Miss Crawford. They are alarmed as to her fate. While you are
+not the sort of man who would injure a young woman, still, things look
+bad for you. You had better explain fully."</p>
+
+<p>John Lambert, a man of about thirty-six, tall, spare, with black hair
+which was slightly tinged with gray at the temples in spite of his
+youth, turned large eyes which were filled with agony upon his
+questioners.</p>
+
+<p>Lambert was already internationally famous for his unique and
+astounding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> experiments in the realm of sound and rhythm. He had been
+endowed by one of the great electrical companies to do original work,
+and his laboratory, in which he lived, was situated in a large tract
+of isolated woodland some forty miles from New York City. It was
+necessary for the success of his work that as few disturbing noises as
+possible be made in the neighborhood. Many of his experiments with
+sound and etheric waves required absolute quiet and freedom from
+interrupting noises. The delicate nature of some of the machines he
+used would not tolerate so much as the footsteps of a man within a
+hundred yards, and a passing car would have disrupted them entirely.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ambert was terribly nervous; he trembled under the gaze of the stern
+detective, come with several colleagues from a neighboring town at the
+call of Madge Crawford's frightened family. The girl, whose picture
+stood on a working table nearby, looked at them from the photograph as
+a beautiful young woman of twenty-five, light of hair, with large eyes
+and a lovely face.</p>
+
+<p>Detective Phillips pointed dramatically to the likeness of the missing
+girl. "Can you," he said, "look at her there, and deny you loved her?
+And if she did not love you in return, then we have a motive for what
+you have done&mdash;jealousy. Come, tell us what you have done with her.
+Our men will find her, anyway; they are searching the cellar for her
+now. You can't hope to keep her, alive, and if she is dead&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Lambert uttered a cry of despair, and put his face in his long
+fingers. "She&mdash;she&mdash;don't say she's dead!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you did love her!" exclaimed Phillips triumphantly, and
+exchanged glances with his companions.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I love her. And she returned my love. We were secretly
+engaged, and were to be married when we had finished these extremely
+important experiments. It is infamous though, to accuse me of having
+killed her; if I have done so, then it was no fault of mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you did kill her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. I cannot believe she is really gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you evade her parents' inquiries?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because ... I have been trying to bring her ... to re-materialize
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean to bring her back to life?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't a doctor do that better than you, if she is hidden somewhere
+about here?" asked Phillips gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. You do not understand. She cannot be seen, she has
+dematerialized. Oh, go away. I'm the only man, save, possibly, my
+friend Doctor Morgan, who can help her now. And Morgan&mdash;I've thought
+of calling him, but I've been working every instant to get the right
+combination. Go away, for God's sake!"</p>
+
+<p>"We can't go away until we have found out Miss Crawford's fate," said
+Phillips patiently.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>nother sleuth entered the immense laboratory. He made his way through
+the myriad strange machines, a weird collection of xylophones, gongs,
+stone slabs cut in peculiar patterns to produce odd rhythmic sounds,
+electrical apparatus of all sorts. Near Phillips was a plate some feet
+square, of heavy metal, raised from the floor on poles of a different
+substance. About the ceiling were studs thickly set of the same sort
+of metal as was the big plate.</p>
+
+<p>One of the sleuths tapped his forehead, pointing to Lambert as the
+latter nervously lighted a cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>The newcomer reported to Phillips. He held in his hand two or three
+sheets of paper on which something was written.</p>
+
+<p>"The only other person here is a deaf mute," said the sleuth to
+Phillips, his superior. "I've got his story. He writes that he takes
+care of things, cooks their meals and so on. And he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> writes further
+that he thinks the woman and this guy Lambert were in love with each
+other. He has no idea where she has gone to. Here, you read it."</p>
+
+<p>Phillips took the sheets and continued: "'Yesterday morning about ten
+o'clock I was passing the door of the laboratory on my way to make up
+Professor Lambert's bed. Suddenly I noticed a queer, shimmering,
+greenish-blue light streaming down from the walls and ceiling of the
+laboratory. I was right outside the place and though I cannot hear
+anything, I was knocked down and I twisted and wriggled around like a
+snake. It felt like something with a thousand little paws but with
+great strength was pushing me every way. When there was a lull, and
+the light had stopped for a few moments, I staggered to my feet and
+ran madly for my own quarters, scared out of my head. As I went by the
+kitchen, I saw Miss Crawford at the sink there, filling some vases and
+arranging flowers as she usually did every morning.</p>
+
+<p>"'If she called to me, I did not hear her or notice her lips moving. I
+believe she came to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"'I was going to quit, when I recovered myself, angry at what had
+occurred; but then, I began to feel ashamed for being such a baby, for
+Professor Lambert has been very good to me. About fifteen minutes
+after I went to my room, I was able to return to the kitchen. Miss
+Crawford was not there, though the flowers and vases were. Then, as I
+started to work, still a little alarmed, Professor Lambert came
+rushing into the kitchen, an expression of terror on his face. His
+mouth was open, and I think he was calling. He then ran out, back to
+the laboratory, and I have not seen Miss Madge since. Professor
+Lambert has been almost continuously in the work-room since then,
+and&mdash;I kept away from it, because I was afraid.'"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>wo more members of Phillips' squad broke into the laboratory and came
+toward the chief. They had been working at physical labor, for they
+were still perspiring and one regarded his hands with a rueful
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Any luck?" asked Phillips eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, boss. We been all over the place, and we dug every spot we could
+get to earth in the cellar. Most of it's three-inch concrete, without
+a sign of a break."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you look in the furnace?"</p>
+
+<p>"We looked there the first thing. She ain't there."</p>
+
+<p>There were several closets in the laboratory, and Phillips opened all
+of them and inspected them. As he moved near the big plate, Lambert
+uttered a cry of warning. "Don't disturb that, don't touch anything
+near it!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right, all right," said Phillips testily.</p>
+
+<p>The skeptical sleuths had classified Lambert as a "nut," and were
+practically sure he had done away with Madge Crawford because she
+would not marry him.</p>
+
+<p>Still, they needed better evidence than their mere beliefs. There was
+no corpus delicti, for instance.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," said Lambert at last, controlling his emotions with a
+great effort. "I will admit to you that I am in trepidation and a
+state of mental torture as to Miss Crawford's fate. You are delaying
+matters, keeping me from my work."</p>
+
+<p>"He thinks about work when the girl he claims he loves has
+disappeared," said Doherty, in a loud whisper to Phillips. Doherty was
+one of the sleuths who had been digging in the cellar, and the hard
+work had made his temper short.</p>
+
+<p>"You must help us find Miss Crawford before we can let you alone,"
+said Phillips. "Can't you understand that you are under grave
+suspicion of having injured her, hidden her away? This is a serious
+matter, Professor Lambert. Your experiments can wait."</p>
+
+<p>"This one cannot," shouted Lambert, shaking his fists. "You are
+fools!"</p>
+
+<p>"Steady now," said Doherty.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_p1.jpg" alt="P" width="51" height="56" /></div>
+<p>erhaps you had better come with us to the district attorney's
+office," went on Phillips. "There you may come to your senses and
+realize the futility of trying to cover up your crime&mdash;if you have
+committed one. If you have not, why do you not tell us where Miss
+Crawford is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I do not know myself," replied Lambert. "But you can't take
+me away from here. I beg of you, gentlemen, allow me a little more
+time. I must have it."</p>
+
+<p>Phillips shook his head. "Not unless you tell us logically what has
+occurred," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I must, though I do not think you will comprehend or even
+believe me. Briefly, it is this: yesterday morning I was working on
+the final series of experiments with a new type of harmonic overtones
+plus a new type of sinusoidal current which I had arranged with a
+series of selenium cells. When I finally threw the switch&mdash;remember, I
+was many weeks preparing the apparatus, and had just put the final
+touches on early that morning&mdash;there was a sound such as never had
+been heard before by human ears, an indescribable sound, terrifying
+and mysterious. Also, there was a fierce, devouring verditer blue
+light, and this came from the plates and studs you see, but so great
+was its strength that it got out of control and leaped about the room
+like a live thing. For some moments, while it increased in intensity
+as I raised the power of the current by means of the switch I held in
+my hand, I watched and listened in fascination. My instruments had
+ceased to record, though they are the most delicate ever invented and
+can handle almost anything which man can even surmise."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he perspiration was pouring from Lambert's face, as he recounted his
+story. The detectives listened, comprehending but a little of the
+meaning of the scientist's words.</p>
+
+<p>"What has this to do with Miss Crawford?" asked Doherty impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>Phillips held up his hand to silence the other sleuth. "Let him
+finish," he ordered. "Go on, professor."</p>
+
+<p>"The sensations which I was undergoing became unendurable," went on
+Lambert, in a low, hoarse voice. "I was forced to cry out in pain and
+confusion.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Crawford evidently heard my call, for a few moments later, just
+as the terrific unknown force reached its apex, she dashed into the
+laboratory, and stepped across the plate you see there.</p>
+
+<p>"I was powerless. Though I shut off the current by a superhuman
+effort, she&mdash;she was gone!"</p>
+
+<p>Lambert put his face in his hands, a sob shook his broad shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Gone?" repeated Phillips. "What do you mean, gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"She disappeared, before my very eyes," said the professor shakily.
+"Torn into nothingness by the fierce force of the current or sound.
+Since then, I have been trying to reproduce the conditions of the
+experiment, for I wish to bring her back. If I cannot do so, then I
+want to join her, wherever she has gone. I love her, I know now that I
+cannot possibly live without her. Will you please leave me alone, now,
+so that I can continue?"</p>
+
+<p>Doherty laughed derisively. "What a story," he jeered.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep quiet, Doherty," ordered Phillips. "Now, Professor Lambert, your
+explanation of Miss Crawford's disappearance does not sound logical to
+us, but still we are willing to give you every chance to bring her
+back, if what you say is true. We cannot leave you entirely alone,
+because you might try to escape or you might carry out your threat of
+suicide. Therefore, I am going to sit over there in the corner,
+quietly, where I can watch you but will not interfere with your work.
+We will give you until midnight to prove your story. Then you must go
+with us to the district attorney. Do you agree to that?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ambert nodded, eagerly. "I agree. Let me work in peace, and if I do
+not succeed then you may take me anywhere you wish. If you can," he
+added, in an undertone.</p>
+
+<p>Doherty and the others, at Phillips' orders, filed from the
+laboratory. "One thing more, professor," said Phillips, when they were
+alone and the professor was preparing to work. "How do you explain the
+fact, if your story is true, that Miss Crawford was killed and made to
+disappear, while you yourself, close by, were uninjured?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see these garments?" asked Lambert, indicating some black
+clothes which lay on a bench nearby. "They insulated me from the
+current and partially protected me from the sound. Though the force
+was very great, great enough to penetrate my insulation, it was
+handicapped in my case because of the garments."</p>
+
+<p>"I see. Well, you may go on."</p>
+
+<p>Phillips moved in the chair he had taken, from time to time. He could
+hear the noises of his men, still searching the premises for Madge
+Crawford, and Professor Lambert heard them, too.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you tell your men to be quiet?" he cried at last.</p>
+
+<p>There were dark circles under Lambert's eyes. He was working in a
+state of feverish anxiety. When the girl he loved had dematerialized
+from under his very eyes, panic had seized him; he had ripped away
+wires to break the current and lost the thread of his experiment, so
+that he could not reproduce it exactly without much labor.</p>
+
+<p>The scientist put on the black robes, and Phillips wished he too had
+some protective armor, even though he did believe that Lambert had
+told them a parcel of lies. The deaf mute's story was not too
+reassuring. Phillips warned his companions to be more quiet, and he
+himself sat quite still.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ambert knew that the sleuths thought he was stark mad. He was aware
+of the fact that he had but a few hours in which to save the girl who
+had come at his cry to help him, who had loved him and whom he loved,
+only to be torn into some place unknown by the forces which were
+released in his experiment. And he knew he would rather die with her
+than live without her.</p>
+
+<p>He labored feverishly, though he tried to keep his brain calm in order
+to win. His notes helped him up to a certain point, but when he had
+made the final touches he had not had time to bring the data up to the
+moment, being eager to test out his apparatus. It was while testing
+that the awful event had occurred and he had seen Madge Crawford
+disappear before his very eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes, large and frightened, burned in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>The deaf mute, Felix, a small, spare man of about fifty, sent the
+professor some food and coffee through one of the sleuths. Lambert
+swallowed the coffee, but waved away the rest, impatiently. Phillips,
+watching his suspect constantly, was served a light supper at the end
+of the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>There seemed to be a million wires to be touched, tested, and various
+strange apparatus. Several times, later on in the evening. Lambert
+threw the big switch with an air of expectancy, but little happened.
+Then Lambert would go to work again, testing, testing&mdash;adjusting this
+and that till Phillips swore under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Only an hour more, professor," said Phillips, who was bored to death
+and cramped from trying to obey the professor's orders to keep still.
+A circle of cigarette-ends surrounded the sleuth.</p>
+
+<p>"Only an hour," agreed Lambert. "Will you please be quiet, my man?
+This is a matter of my fianc&eacute;e's life or death."</p>
+
+<p>Phillips was somewhat disgruntled, for he felt he had done Lambert
+quite a favor in allowing him to remain in the laboratory for so long,
+to prove his story.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I wish Doctor Morgan were here; I ought to have sent for him, I
+suppose," said Lambert, a few minutes later. "Will you allow me to get
+him? I cannot seem to perfect this last stage."</p>
+
+<p>"No time, now," declared Phillips. "I said till midnight."</p>
+
+<p>It was obvious to Lambert that the detective had become certain during
+the course of the evening that the scientist was mad. The ceaseless
+fiddling and the lack of results or even spectacular sights had
+convinced Phillips that he had to do with a crank.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I have it now," said Lambert coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" asked Phillips.</p>
+
+<p>"The original combination. I had forgotten one detail in the
+excitement, and this threw me off. Now I believe I will succeed&mdash;in
+one way or another. I warn you, be careful. I am about to release
+forces which may get out of my control."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, don't get reckless," begged Phillips nervously. The array
+of machines had impressed him, even if Lambert did seem a fool.</p>
+
+<p>"You insist upon remaining, so it is your own risk," said Lambert
+coolly.</p>
+
+<p>Lambert, in the strange robes, was a bizarre figure. The hood was
+thrown back, exposing his pale, black-bearded face, the wan eyes with
+dark circles under them, and the twitching lips.</p>
+
+<p>"If you find yourself leaving this vale of tears," went on the
+scientist, ironically, to the sleuth, "you will at least have the
+comfort of realizing that as the sound-force disintegrates your mortal
+form you are among the first of men to be attuned to the vibrations of
+the unknown sound world. All matter is vibration; that has been
+proven. A building of bricks, if shaken in the right manner, falls
+into its component parts; a bridge, crossed by soldiers in certain
+rhythmic time, is torn from its moorings. A tuning fork, receiving the
+sound vibrations from one of a similar size and shape begins to
+vibrate in turn. These are homely analogies, but applied to the less
+familiar sound vibrations, which make up our atomic world, they may
+help you to understand how the terrific forces I have discovered can
+disintegrate flesh."</p>
+
+<p>The scientist looked inquiringly at Phillips. As the sleuth did not
+move, but sat with folded arms, Lambert shrugged and said, "I am
+ready."</p>
+
+<p>Lambert raised his hood, and Phillips said, in a spirit of bravado,
+"You can't scare me out of here."</p>
+
+<p>"Here goes the switch," cried Lambert.</p>
+
+<p>He made the contact, as he had before. He stood for a moment, and this
+time the current gained force. The experimenter pushed his lever all
+the way over.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;terrible greenish-blue light suddenly illuminated the laboratory,
+and through the air there came sound vibrations which seemed to tear
+at Phillips' body. He found himself on the floor, knocked from his
+chair, and he writhed this way and that, speechless, suffering a
+torment of agony. His whole flesh seemed to tremble in unison with the
+waves which emanated from the machines which Lambert manipulated.</p>
+
+<p>After what seemed hours to the suffering sleuth, the force diminished,
+and soon Phillips was able to rise. Trembling, the detective cursed
+and yelled for help in a high-pitched voice.</p>
+
+<p>Lambert had thrown back his hood, and was rocking to and fro in agony.</p>
+
+<p>"Madge, Madge," he cried, "what have I done! Come back to me, come
+back!"</p>
+
+<p>Doherty and the others came running in at their chief's shouts.
+"Arrest him," ordered Phillips shakily. "I've stood enough of this
+nonsense."</p>
+
+<p>The detectives started for Lambert. He saw them coming, and swiftly
+threw off the protective garments he wore.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand back!" he cried, and threw the switch all the way over. The
+ver<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>diter green light smashed through the air, and the queer sound
+sensations smacked and tore them; Doherty, who had drawn a revolver
+when he was answering Phillips' cries, fired the gun into the air, and
+the report seemed to battle with the vibrating ether.</p>
+
+<p>Lambert, as he threw the switch, leaped forward and landed on the
+metal plate under the ceiling studs, in the very center of the awful
+disturbance and unprotected from its force.</p>
+
+<p>For a few moments, Lambert felt racking pain, as though something were
+tearing at his flesh, separating the very atoms. The scientist saw the
+wriggling figures of the sleuths, in various strange positions, but his
+impressions were confused. His head whirled round and round, he swayed
+to and fro, and, finally, he thought he fell down, or rather, that he
+had melted, as a lump of sugar dissolves in water.</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone&mdash;gone&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>In the heart of nothingness was Lambert, his body torn and racked in a
+shrieking chaos of sound and a blinding glare of iridescent light
+which seemed too much to bear.</p>
+
+<p>His last conscious thought was a prayer, that, having failed to bring
+back his sweetheart, Madge Crawford, he was undergoing a step toward
+the same destination to which he had sent her.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ohn Lambert came to with a shudder. But it was not a mortal shudder.
+He could sense no body; had no sense of being confined by matter. He
+was in a strange, chilly place&mdash;a twilight region, limitless, without
+dimensions.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he could feel something, in an impersonal way, vaguely
+indifferent. He had no pain now.</p>
+
+<p>He was moving, somehow. He had one impelling desire, and that was to
+discover Madge Crawford. Perhaps it was this thought which directed
+his movements.</p>
+
+<p>Intent upon finding the girl, if she was indeed in this same strange
+world that he was, he did not notice for some time&mdash;how long, he had
+no way of telling&mdash;that there were other beings which tried to impede
+his progress. But as he grew more accustomed to the unfamiliar
+sensations he was undergoing, he found his path blocked again and
+again by queer beings.</p>
+
+<p>They were living, without doubt, and had intelligence, and evinced
+hostility toward him. But they were shapeless, shapeless as amoebas.
+He heard them in a sort of soundless whisper, and could see them
+without the use of eyes. And he shuddered, though he could feel no
+body in which he might be confined. Still, when he pinched viciously
+with invisible fingers at the spot where his face should have been, a
+twinge of pain registered on the vague consciousness which appeared to
+be all there was to him.</p>
+
+<p>He was not sure of his substance, though he could evidently experience
+human sensations with his amorphous body. He did not know whether he
+could see; yet, he was dodging this way and that, as the beings who
+occupied this world tried to stop him.</p>
+
+<p>They gave him the impression of gray shapes, and in coppery shadows
+things gleamed and closed in on him.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to hear a cry, and he knew that he was receiving a call for
+help from Madge Crawford. He tried to run, pushed determinedly toward
+the spot, impelled by his love for the girl.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_n.jpg" alt="N" width="49" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ow, as he hurried, he occasionally was stopped short by collision
+with the formless shapes which were all about him. He was hampered by
+them, for they followed him, making a sound like wind heard in a
+dream. Whatever medium he was in was evidently thickly inhabited by
+the hostile beings who claimed this world as their own. Though he
+could not actually feel the medium, he could sense that it was heavy.
+He leaped and ran, fighting his way through the increasing hosts, and
+the roar of their voice-im<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>pressions increased in his consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there seemed to be nothing, nothing tangible save vagueness. He
+felt he was in a blind spot in space, a place of no dimensions, no
+time, where beings abhorred by nature, things which had never
+developed any dimensional laws, existed.</p>
+
+<p>The cry for help struck him, with more force this time. Lambert,
+whatever form he was in, realised that he was close to the end of his
+journey to Madge Crawford.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to speak, and had the impression that he said something
+reassuring. He then bumped into some vibrational being which he knew
+was Madge. His ears could not hear, nor could his flesh feel, but his
+whole form or cerebrum sensed he held the woman he loved in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>And she was speaking to him, in accents of fear, begging him to save
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"John, John, you have come at last. They have been torturing me
+terribly. Save me."</p>
+
+<p>"Darling Madge, I will do everything I can. Now I have found you, and
+we are together and will never part. Can you hear me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you are thinking, and what you wish to say. I can't
+exactly hear; it all seems vague, and impossible. Yet I can suffer.
+They have been hitting me with something which makes me shudder and
+shake&mdash;there, they are at it again."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ambert felt the sensations, now, which the girl had made known to
+him. He felt crowded by gray beings, and his existence was troubled by
+spasms of pain-impressions. He knew Madge was crying out, too.</p>
+
+<p>He could not comprehend the attacks, or guess their meaning. But the
+situation was unendurable.</p>
+
+<p>Anger shook him, and he began to fight, furiously but vaguely. They
+were closely hemmed in, but when Lambert began to strike out with
+hands and legs, the beings gave way a little. The scientist tried to
+shout, and though he could actually hear nothing, the result was
+gratifying. The formless creatures seemed to scatter and draw back in
+confusion as he yelled his defiance.</p>
+
+<p>"They hate that," Madge said to him. "I have screamed myself hoarse
+and that is why they have not killed me&mdash;if I can be killed."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not believe we can. But they can torture us," replied Lambert.
+"It is an everlasting half-life or quarter-life, and these creatures
+who call this Hell's Dimension home, have nothing but hatred for us in
+their consciousness."</p>
+
+<p>The inhabitants of the imperfect world had closed in once again and
+the sharp instruments of torture they used were being thrust into the
+invisible bodies of the two humans. Each time, Lambert was unable to
+restrain his cries, for it seemed that he was being torn to pieces by
+vibrations.</p>
+
+<p>He yelled until he could not speak above a whisper, or at least until
+the impressions of speech he gave forth did not trouble the beings.
+The two humans, still bound to some extent by their mortal beliefs,
+were chivvied to and fro, and struck and bullied. The creatures seemed
+to delight in this sport.</p>
+
+<p>The two felt they could not die; yet they could suffer terribly. Would
+this go on through eternity? Was there no release?</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey were trying to tear Madge away from him. She was fighting them,
+and Lambert, in a frenzy of rage, made a determined effort to get away
+with the girl from their tormentors.</p>
+
+<p>They retreated before his onslaughts. Drawing Madge after him, Lambert
+put down his head&mdash;or believed he was doing so&mdash;and ran as fast as he
+could at the beings.</p>
+
+<p>He bumped into some invisible forms and was slowed in his rush, but he
+shouted and flailed about with his arms, and tried to kick. Madge
+helped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> by screaming and striking out. They made some distance in this
+way, or so they thought, and the horrid creatures gave way before
+them.</p>
+
+<p>All about them was the coppery sensation of the medium in which they
+moved: Lambert as he became more used to the form he was inhabiting,
+he began to think he could discern dreadful eyes which stared
+unblinkingly at the couple.</p>
+
+<p>He fought on, and believed they had come to a spot where the beings
+did not molest them, though they still sensed the things glaring at
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Were they on some invisible eminence, above the reach of these queer
+creatures?</p>
+
+<p>"We might as well stop here, for if we try to go farther we may come
+to a worse place," said Lambert.</p>
+
+<p>They rested there, in temporary peace, together at last.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_i1.jpg" alt="I" width="37" height="52" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;seem to be happy now," said Madge, clinging close. "I feared I
+would never see you again. John dear. I ran to you when you called out
+that day and when I crossed the plate, I was torn and racked and
+knocked down. When I next experienced sensation, it was in this
+terrible form. I am becoming more used to it, but I kept crying out
+for you: the beings, as soon as they discovered my presence, began to
+torment me. More and more have been collecting, and I have a sensation
+of seeing them as horrible, revolting beasts. Oh, John, I don't think
+I could have stood it much longer, if you hadn't come to me. They were
+driving me on, on, on, ceaselessly torturing me."</p>
+
+<p>"Curse them," said Lambert. "I wish I could really get hold of some of
+them. Perhaps, Madge, I will be able to think of some escape for us
+from this Hell's Dimension."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, darling. I could not bear to think that we are eternally damned
+to exist among these beings, hurt by them and unable to get away. How
+I wish we were back in the laboratory, at the tea table. How happy we
+were there!"</p>
+
+<p>"And we will be again, Madge." Lambert was far from feeling hopeful,
+but he tried to encourage the girl into thinking they might get away.</p>
+
+<p>However, he was unable to dissimulate. She felt his anguish for her
+safety. "But I know now that you love me. I can feel it stronger than
+ever before, John. It seems like a great rock to which I can always
+cling, your love. It projects me from the hatred that these beasts
+pour out against us."</p>
+
+<p>Since they had no sense of time, they could not tell how long they
+were allowed to remain unmolested. But in each other's company they
+were happy, though each one was afraid for the safety of the loved
+one.</p>
+
+<p>They spoke of the mortal life they had lived, and their love. They
+felt no need of food or water, but clung together in a dimensionless
+universe, held up by love.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he lull came to an end, at last. There was no change in the coppery
+vagueness about them which they sensed as the surrounding ether, but
+all was changeless, boundless. Lambert, close to Madge Crawford, felt
+that they were about to be attacked.</p>
+
+<p>He had swift, temporary impressions of seeing saucerlike, unblinking
+eyes, and then hordes of bizarre inhabitants started to climb up to
+their perch.</p>
+
+<p>For a short while, Lambert and Madge fought them off, thrusting at
+them, seeming to push them backward down the intangible slope; the
+cries which the dematerialized humans uttered also helped to hold the
+leaders of the attacking army partially in check, but the vast number
+of beings swept forward.</p>
+
+<p>The thrusts of the torture-fields they emanated became more and more
+racking, as the two unfortunates shuddered in horror and pain.</p>
+
+<p>The power to demonstrate loud noise was evidently impossible to the
+creatures, for their only sounds came to Madge Crawford and John
+Lambert<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> as long-drawn out, almost unbearable squeaks, mouse-like in
+character. Perhaps they had never had the faculty of speech, since
+they did not need it to communicate with one another; perhaps they
+realized that the racket they could make would hurt them as much as it
+did their enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Lambert, Madge clinging to him, was forced backward down the slope,
+and the beings had the advantage of height. He could not again reach
+the eminence, but the way behind seemed to clear quickly enough,
+though thrusts were made at him, innumerable times with the
+torture-fields.</p>
+
+<p>The hordes pushed them backward, and ever back.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey were forced on for some distance. As they retreated, the way
+become easier, and fewer and fewer of the beings impeded the channel
+along which they moved, though in front of them and on all sides,
+above, beneath, they were pressed by the hordes.</p>
+
+<p>"They are forcing us to some place they want us to go," said Lambert
+desperately.</p>
+
+<p>"We can do nothing more," replied the girl.</p>
+
+<p>Lambert felt her quiet confidence in him, and that as long as they
+were together, all was well.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe they can kill us, somehow," he said.</p>
+
+<p>And now, Lambert felt the way was clear to the rear. There was a
+sudden rush of the creatures, and needlelike fields were impelled
+viciously into the spaces the two humans occupied.</p>
+
+<p>Madge cried out in pain, and Lambert shouted. The throng drew away
+from them as suddenly as it had surged forward, and an instant later
+the pair, clinging together, felt that they were falling, falling,
+falling....</p>
+
+<p>"Are you all right, Madge?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, John."</p>
+
+<p>But he knew she was suffering. How long they fell he did not know, but
+they stopped at last. No sooner had they come to rest than they were
+assailed with sensations of pain which made both cry out in anguish.</p>
+
+<p>There, in the spot where they had been thrust by the hordes, they felt
+that there was some terrific vibration which racked and tore at their
+invisible forms continuously, sending them into spasms of sharp
+misery.</p>
+
+<p>They both were forced to give vent to their feelings by loud cries.
+But they could not command their movements any longer. When they tried
+to get away, their limbs moved but they felt that they remained in the
+same spot.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he pain shook every fraction of their souls.</p>
+
+<p>"We&mdash;we are in some pit of hell, into which they have thrown us,
+John," gasped Madge.</p>
+
+<p>He knew she was shivering with the torture of that great vibration
+from which there was no escape, that they were in a prison-pit of
+Hell's Dimension.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;oh&mdash;John&mdash;I'm dying!"</p>
+
+<p>But he was powerless to help her. He suffered as much as she. Yet
+there was no weakening of his sensations; he was in as much torture as
+he had been at the start. He knew that they could not die and could
+never escape from this misery of hell.</p>
+
+<p>Their cries seemed to disturb the vacuum about. Lambert, shivering and
+shaking with pain, was aware that great eyes, similar to those which
+they had thought they saw above, were now upon them. Squeaks were
+impressed upon him, squeaks which expressed disapprobation. There were
+some of the beings in the pit with them.</p>
+
+<p>Madge knew they were there, too. She cried out in terror, "Will they
+add to our misery?"</p>
+
+<p>But the creatures in the vacuum were pinned to the spots they
+occupied, as were Madge and Lambert. From their squeaks it was evident
+they suffered, too, and were fellow prisoners of the mortals.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably the cries we make disturb<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> them," said Lambert. "Vibrations
+to which we and they are not attuned are torture to the form we are
+in. Evidently the inhabitants of this hell world punish offenders by
+condemning them to this eternal torture."</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;why did they treat us so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps we jarred upon them, hurt them, because we were not of their
+kind exactly," said Lambert. "Perhaps it was just their natural hatred
+of us as strangers."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey did not grow used to the terrible eternity of torments. No, if
+anything, it grew worse as it went on. Still, they could visualize no
+end to the existence to which they were bound. Throbs of awful
+intensity rent them, tore them apart myriad times, yet they still felt
+as keenly as before and suffered just as much. There was no death for
+them, no release from the intangible world in which they were.</p>
+
+<p>Their fellow prisoners squeaked at them, as though imploring them not
+to add to the agony by uttering discordant cries. But it was
+impossible for Madge to keep quiet, and Lambert shouted in anguish
+from time to time.</p>
+
+<p>There seemed to be no end to it.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, after what was eternity to the sufferers, Madge spoke
+hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>"Darling John, I&mdash;I fear I am really going to die. I am growing
+weaker. I can feel the pain very little now. It is all vague, and is
+getting less real to me. Good-by, sweetheart, I love you, and I always
+will&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Lambert uttered a strangled cry, "No, no. Don't leave me, Madge."</p>
+
+<p>He clung to her, yet she was becoming extremely intangible to him. She
+was melting away from his embrace, and Lambert felt that he, too, was
+weaker, even less real than he had been. He hoped that if it was the
+end, they would go together.</p>
+
+<p>Desperately, he tried to hold her with him, but he had little ability
+to do so. The torture was still racking his consciousness, but was
+becoming more dreamlike.</p>
+
+<p>There was a terrific snap, suddenly, and Lambert lost all
+consciousness....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_w1.jpg" alt="W" width="78" height="54" /></div>
+<p>ater, water!"</p>
+
+<p>Lambert, opening his eyes, felt his body writhing about, and
+experienced pain that was&mdash;mortal. A bluish-green light dazzled his
+pupils and made him blink.</p>
+
+<p>Something cut into his flesh, and Lambert rolled about, trying to
+escape. He bumped into something, something soft; he clung to this
+form, and knew that he was holding on to a human being. Then the light
+died out, and in its stead was the yellow, normal glow of the electric
+lights. Weak, famished, almost dead of thirst, Lambert looked about
+him at the familiar sights of his laboratory. He was lying on the
+floor, close by the metal plate, and at his side, unconscious but
+still alive to judge by her rising and falling breast, was Madge
+Crawford.</p>
+
+<p>Someone bent over him, and pressed a glass of water against his lips.
+He drank, watching while a mortal whom Lambert at last realized was
+Detective Phillips bathed Madge Crawford's temples with water from a
+pitcher and forced a little between her pale, drawn lips.</p>
+
+<p>Lambert tried to rise, but he was weak, and required assistance. He
+was dazed, still, and they sat him down in a chair and allowed him to
+come to.</p>
+
+<p>He shuddered from time to time, for he still thought he could feel the
+torture which he had been undergoing. But he was worried about Madge,
+and watched anxiously as Phillips, assisted by another man, worked
+over the girl.</p>
+
+<p>At last, Madge stirred and moaned faintly. They lifted her to a bench,
+where they gently restored her to full consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>When she could sit up, she at once cried out for Lambert.</p>
+
+<p>The scientist had recovered enough to rise to his feet and stagger
+toward her. "Here I am, darling," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"John&mdash;we're alive&mdash;we're back in the laboratory!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Lambert. Glad to see you." A heavy voice spoke, and Lambert for
+the first time noticed the black-clad figure which stood to one side,
+near the switchboard, hidden by a large piece of apparatus.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Morgan!" cried Lambert.</p>
+
+<p>Althaus Morgan, the renowned physicist, came forward calmly, with
+outstretched hand. "So, you realized your great ambition, eh?" he said
+curiously. "But where would you be if I had not been able to bring you
+back?"</p>
+
+<p>"In Hell&mdash;or Hell's Dimension, anyway," said Lambert.</p>
+
+<p>He went to Madge, took her in his arms. "Darling, we are safe. Morgan
+has managed to re-materialize us. We will never again be cast into the
+void in this way. I shall destroy the apparatus and my notes."</p>
+
+<p>Doherty, who had been out of the room on some errand, came into the
+laboratory. He shouted when he saw Lambert standing before him.</p>
+
+<p>"So you got him," he cried. "Where was he hidin'?"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes fell upon Madge Crawford, then, and he exclaimed in
+satisfaction. "You found her, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Phillips. "They came back. They suddenly appeared out of
+nothing, Doherty."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't kid me," growled Doherty. "They were hidin' in a closet
+somewhere. Maybe they can fool you guys, but not me."</p>
+
+<p>Lambert spoke to Phillips. "I'm starving to death and I think Miss
+Crawford must be, too. Will you tell Felix to bring us some food,
+plenty of it?"</p>
+
+<p>One of the sleuths went to the kitchen to give the order. Lambert
+turned to Morgan.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you manage to bring us back?" he asked.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>organ shrugged. "It was all guess work at the last. I at first could
+check the apparatus by your notes, and this took some time. You know
+you have written me in detail about what you were working on, so when
+I was summoned by Detective Phillips, who said you had mentioned my
+name to him as the only one who could help, I could make a good
+conjecture as to what had occurred. I heard the stories of all
+concerned, and realized that you must have dematerialized Miss
+Crawford by mistake, and then, unable to bring her back, had followed
+her yourself.</p>
+
+<p>"I put on your insulation outfit, and went to work. I have not left
+here for a moment, but have snatched an hour or two of sleep from time
+to time. Detective Phillips has been very good and helpful.</p>
+
+<p>"Finally, I had everything in shape, but I reversed the apparatus in
+vital spots, and tried each combination until suddenly, a few minutes
+ago, you were re-materialized. It was a desperate chance, but I was
+forced to take it in an endeavor to save you."</p>
+
+<p>Lambert held out his hand to his friend. "I can never thank you
+enough," he said gratefully. "You saved us from a horrible fate. But
+you speak as though we had been gone a long while. Was it many hours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hours?" repeated Morgan, his lips parting under his black beard.
+"Man, it was eight days! You have been gone since a week ago last
+night!"</p>
+
+<p>Lambert turned to Phillips. "I must ask you not to release this story
+to the newspapers," he begged.</p>
+
+<p>Phillips smiled and turned up his hands in a gesture of frank wonder.
+"Professor Lambert," he said, "I can't believe what I have seen
+myself. If I told such a yarn to the reporters, they'd never forget
+it. They'd kid me out of the department."</p>
+
+<p>"Aw, they were hidin' in a closet," growled Doherty. "Come on, we've
+wasted too much time on this job already. Just a couple of nuts, says
+I."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he sleuths, after Phillips had shaken hands with Lambert, left the
+laboratory. Morgan, a large man of middle age, joined them in a meal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+which Felix served to the three on a folding table brought in for the
+purpose. Felix was terribly glad to see Madge and Lambert again, and
+manifested his joy by many bobs and leaps as he waited upon them. A
+grin spread across his face from ear to ear.</p>
+
+<p>Morgan asked innumerable questions. They described as best they could
+what they could recall of the strange dominion in which they had been,
+and the physicist listened intently.</p>
+
+<p>"It is some Hell's Dimension, as you call it," he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Where it is, or exactly what, I cannot say," said Lambert. "I surely
+have no desire to return to that world of hate."</p>
+
+<p>Madge, happy now, smiled at him and he leaned over and kissed her
+tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"We have come from Hell, together," said Lambert, "and now we are in
+Heaven!"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image_007.jpg" width="500" height="571" alt="Advertisement" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>
+
+<div><a name="The_World_Behind_the_Moon" id="The_World_Behind_the_Moon"></a>
+<img class="figright" src="images/image_008_01.jpg" width="600" height="297" alt="They fell, for hours, into a deep chasm." title="" />
+<img class="figright" src="images/image_008_02.jpg" width="299" height="618" alt="They fell, for hours, into a deep chasm." title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="f1">The World<br />
+Behind the<br />
+Moon</p>
+<p class="f2"><i>By Paul Ernst</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ike pitiless jaws, a distant crater opened for their ship.
+Helplessly, they hurtled toward it: helplessly, because they were
+still in the nothingness of space, with no atmospheric resistance on
+which their rudders, or stern or bow tubes, could get a purchase to
+steer them.</p>
+
+
+<p>Professor Dorn Wichter waited anxiously for the slight vibration that
+should announce that the projectile-shaped shell had entered the new
+planet's atmosphere.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Two intrepid Earth-men fight it out with the horrific
+monsters of Zeud's frightful jungles.</div>
+
+<p>"Have we struck it yet?" asked Joyce, a tall blond young man with the
+shoulders of an athlete and the broad brow and square chin of one who
+com<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>bines dreams with action. He made his way painfully toward
+Wichter. It was the first time he had attempted to move since the
+shell had passed the neutral point&mdash;that belt midway between the moon
+and the world behind it, where the pull of gravity of each satellite
+was neutralized by the other. They, and all the loose objects in the
+shell, had floated uncomfortably about the middle of the chamber for
+half an hour or so, gradually settling down again; until now it was
+possible, with care, to walk.</p>
+
+<p>"Have we struck it?" he repeated, leaning over the professor's
+shoulder and staring at the resistance gauge.</p>
+
+<p>"No." Absently Wichter took off his spectacles and polished them.
+"There's not a trace of resistance yet."</p>
+
+<p>They gazed out the bow window toward the vast disc, like a serrated,
+pock-marked plate of blue ice, that was the planet Zeud&mdash;discovered
+and named by them. The same thought was in the mind of each. Suppose
+there were no atmosphere surrounding Zeud to cushion their descent
+into the hundred-mile crater that yawned to receive them?</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Joyce after a time, "we're taking no more of a chance
+here than we did when we pointed our nose toward the moon. We were
+almost sure that was no atmosphere there&mdash;which meant we'd nose dive
+into the rocks at five thousand miles an hour. On Zeud there might be
+anything." His eyes shone. "How wonderful that there should be such a
+planet, unsuspected during all the centuries men have been studying
+the heavens!"</p>
+
+<p>Wichter nodded agreement. It was indeed wonderful. But what was more
+wonderful was its present discovery: for that would never have
+transpired had not he and Joyce succeeded in their attempt to fly to
+the moon. From there, after following the sun in its slow journey
+around to the lost side of the lunar globe&mdash;that face which the earth
+has never yet observed&mdash;they had seen shining in the near distance
+the great ball which they had christened Zeud.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>stronomical calculations had soon described the mysterious hidden
+satellite. It was almost a twin to the moon; a very little smaller,
+and less than eighty thousand miles away. Its rotation was nearly
+similar, which made its days not quite sixteen of our earthly days. It
+was of approximately the weight, per cubic mile, of Earth. And there
+it whirled, directly in a line with the earth and the moon, moving as
+the moon moved so that it was ever out of sight beyond it, as a dime
+would be out of sight if placed in a direct line behind a penny.</p>
+
+<p>Zeud, the new satellite, the world beyond the moon! In their
+excitement at its discovery, Joyce and Wichter had left the
+moon&mdash;which they had found to be as dead and cold as it had been
+surmised to be&mdash;and returned summarily to Earth. They had replenished
+their supplies and their oxygen tanks, and had come back&mdash;to circle
+around the moon and point the sharp prow of the shell toward Zeud. The
+gift of the moon to Earth was a dubious one; but the gift of a
+possibly living planet-colony to mankind might be the solution of the
+overcrowded conditions of the terrestial sphere!</p>
+
+<p>"Speed, three thousand miles an hour," computed Wichter. "Distance to
+Zeud, nine hundred and eighty miles. If we don't strike a few atoms of
+hydrogen or something soon we're going to drill this nearest crater a
+little deeper!"</p>
+
+<p>Joyce nodded grimly. At two thousand miles from Earth there had still
+been enough hydrogen traces in the ether to give purchase to the
+explosions of their water-motor. At six hundred miles from the moon
+they had run into a sparse gaseous belt that had enabled them to
+change direction and slow their speed. They had hoped to find hydrogen
+at a thousand or twelve hundred miles from Zeud.</p>
+
+<p>"Eight hundred and thirty miles,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> commented Wichter, his slender,
+bent body tensed. "Eight hundred miles&mdash;ah!"</p>
+
+<p>A thrumming sound came to their ears as the shell quivered,
+imperceptibly almost, but unmistakeably, at the touch of some faint
+resistance outside in space.</p>
+
+<p>"We've struck it, Joyce. And it's much denser than the moon's, even as
+we'd hoped. There'll be life on Zeud, my boy, unless I'm vastly
+mistaken. You'd better look to the motor now."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oyce went to the water-motor. This was a curious, but extremely
+simple affair. There was a glass box, ribbed with polished steel,
+about the size and shape of a cigar box, which was full of water.
+Leading away from this, to the bow and stern of the shell, were two
+small pipes. The pipes were greatly thickened for a period of three
+feet or so, directly under the little tank, and were braced by
+bed-plates so heavy as to look all out of proportion. Around the
+thickened parts of the pipes were coils of heavy, insulated copper
+wire. There were no valves nor cylinders, no revolving parts: that was
+all there was to the "motor."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce didn't yet understand the device. The water dripped from the
+tank, drop by drop, to be abruptly disintegrated, made into an
+explosive, by being subjected to a powerful magnetic field induced in
+the coils by a generator in the bow of the shell. As each drop of
+water passed into the pipes, and was instantaneously broken up, there
+was a violent but controlled explosion&mdash;and the shell was kicked
+another hundred miles ahead on its journey. That was all Joyce knew
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>He threw the bow switch. There was a soft shock as the motor exhausted
+through the forward tube, slowing their speed.</p>
+
+<p>"Turn on the outside generator propellers," ordered Wichter. "I think
+our batteries are getting low."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce slipped the tiny, slim-bladed propellers into gear. They began
+to turn, slowly at first in the almost non-existent atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>"Four hundred miles," announced Wichter. "How's the temperature?"</p>
+
+<p>Joyce stepped to the thermometer that registered the heat of the outer
+wall. "Nine hundred degrees," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Cut down to a thousand miles an hour," commanded Wichter. "Five
+hundred as soon as the motor will catch that much. I'll keep our
+course straight toward this crater. It's in wells like that, that
+we'll find livable air&mdash;if we're right in believing there is such a
+thing on Zeud."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oyce glanced at the thermometer. It still registered hundreds of
+degrees, though their speed had been materially reduced.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess there's livable air, all right," he said. "It's pretty thick
+outside already."</p>
+
+<p>The professor smiled. "Another theory vindicated. I was sure that
+Zeud, swinging on the outside of the Earth-moon-Zeud chain and hence
+traveling at a faster rate, would pick up most of the moon's
+atmosphere over a period of millions of years. Also it must have been
+shielded by the moon, to some extent, against the constant small
+atmospheric leakage most celestial globes are subject to. Just the
+same, when we land, we'll test conditions with a rat or two."</p>
+
+<p>At a signal from him, Joyce checked their speed to four hundred miles
+an hour, then to two hundred, and then, as they descended below the
+highest rim of the circular cliffs of the crater, almost to a full
+stop. They floated toward the surface of Zeud, watching with
+breathless interest the panorama that unfolded beneath them.</p>
+
+<p>They were nosing toward a spot that was being favored with the Zeudian
+sunrise. Sharp and clear the light rays slanted down, illuminating
+about half the crater's floor and leaving the cliff protected half in
+dim shadow.</p>
+
+<p>The illuminated part of the giant pit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> was as bizarre as the landscape
+of a nightmare. There were purplish trees, immense beyond belief.
+There were broad, smooth pools of inky black fluid that was oily and
+troubled in spots as though disturbed by some moving things under the
+surface. There were bare, rocky patches where the stones, the long
+drippings of ancient lava flow, were spread like bleaching gray
+skeletons of monsters. And over all, rising from pools and bare ground
+and jungle alike, was a thin, miasmic mist.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ustained by the slow, steady exhaust of the motor, rising a little
+with each partly muffled explosion and sinking a little further in
+each interval, they settled toward a bare, lava strewn spot that
+appealed to Wichter as being a good landing place. With a last hiss,
+and a grinding jar, they grounded. Joyce opened the switch to cut off
+the generator.</p>
+
+<p>"Now let's see what the air's like," said Wichter, lifting down a
+small cage in which was penned an active rat.</p>
+
+<p>He opened a double panel in the shell's hull, and freed the little
+animal. In an agony of suspense they watched it as it leaped onto the
+bare lava and halted a moment....</p>
+
+<p>"Seems to like it," said Joyce, drawing a great breath.</p>
+
+<p>The rat, as though intoxicated by its sudden freedom, raced away out
+of sight, covering eight or ten feet at a bound, its legs scurrying
+ludicrously in empty air during its short flights.</p>
+
+<p>"That means that we can dispense with oxygen helmets&mdash;and that we'd
+better take our guns," said Wichter, his voice tense, his eyes
+snapping behind his glasses.</p>
+
+<p>He stepped to the gun rack. In this were half a dozen air-guns. Long
+and of very small bore, they discharged a tiny steel shell in which
+was a liquid of his invention that, about a second after the heat of
+its forced passage through the rifle barrel, expanded instantly in
+gaseous form to millions of times its liquid bulk. It was the most
+powerful explosive yet found, but one that was beautifully safe to
+carry inasmuch as it could be exploded only by heat.</p>
+
+<p>"Are we ready?" he said, handing a gun to Joyce. "Then&mdash;let's go!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ut for a breath or two they hesitated before opening the heavy double
+door in the side of the hull, savoring to the full the immensity of
+the moment.</p>
+
+<p>The rapture of the explorer who is the first to set foot on a vast new
+continent was theirs, magnified a hundredfold. For they were the first
+to set foot on a vast new planet! An entire new world, containing
+heaven alone knew what forms of life, what monstrous or infinitesimal
+creatures, lay before them. Even the profound awe they had experienced
+when landing on the moon was dwarfed by the solemnity of this
+occasion; just as it is less soul stirring to discover an arctic
+continent which is perpetually cased in barren ice, than to discover a
+continent which is warmly fruitful and, probably, teeming with life.</p>
+
+<p>Still wordless, too stirred to speak, they opened the vault-like door
+and stepped out&mdash;into a humid heat which was like that of their own
+tropical regions, but not so unendurable.</p>
+
+<p>In their short stay on the moon, during which they had taken several
+walks in their insulated suits, they had become somewhat accustomed to
+the decreased weight of their bodies due to the lesser gravity, so
+that here, where their weight was even less, they did not make any
+blunders of stepping twenty feet instead of a yard.</p>
+
+<p>Walking warily, glancing alertly in all directions to guard against
+any strange animals that might rush out to destroy them, they moved
+toward the nearest stretch of jungle.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he first thing that arrested their attention was the size of the
+trees they were approaching. They had got<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> some idea of their hugeness
+from the shell, but viewed from ground level they loomed even larger.
+Eight hundred, a thousand feet they reared their mighty tops, with
+trunks hundreds of feet in circumference; living pyramids whose bases
+wove together to make an impenetrable ceiling over the jungle floor.
+The leaves were thick and bloated like cactus growths, and their color
+was a pronounced lavender.</p>
+
+<p>"We must take back several of those leaves," said Wichter, his
+scientific soul filled with cold excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish we could take back some of this air, too." Joyce filled his
+lungs to capacity. "Isn't it great? Like wine! It almost counteracts
+the effects of the heat."</p>
+
+<p>"There's more oxygen in it than in our own," surmised Wichter. "My
+God! What's that!"</p>
+
+<p>They halted for an instant. From the depths of the lavender jungle had
+come an ear shattering, screaming hiss, as though some monstrous
+serpent were in its death agony.</p>
+
+<p>They waited to hear if the noise would be repeated. It wasn't.
+Dubiously they started on again.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd better not go in there too far," said Joyce. "If we didn't come
+out again it would cost Earth a new planet. No one else knows the
+secret of your water-motor."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing living can stand against these guns of ours," replied
+Wichter confidently. "And that noise might not have been caused by
+anything living. It might have been steam escaping from some volcanic
+crevice."</p>
+
+<p>They started cautiously down a well defined, hard packed trail through
+thorny lavender underbrush. As they went, Joyce blazed marks on
+various tree trunks marking the direction back to the shell. The tough
+fibres exuded a bluish liquid from the cuts that bubbled slowly like
+blood.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>o the right and left of them were cup-shaped bushes that looked like
+traps; and that their looks were not deceiving was proved by a
+muffled, bleating cry that rose from the compressed leaves of one of
+them they passed. Sluggish, blind crawling things like three-foot
+slugs flowed across their path and among the tree trunks, leaving
+viscous trails of slime behind them. And there were larger things....</p>
+
+<p>"Careful," said Wichter suddenly, coming to a halt and peering into
+the gloom at their right.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you see?" whispered Joyce.</p>
+
+<p>Wichter shook his head. The gigantic, two-legged, purplish figure he
+had dimly made out in the steamy dark, had moved away. "I don't know.
+It looked a little like a giant ape."</p>
+
+<p>They halted and took stock of their situation, mechanically wiping
+perspiration from their streaming faces, and pondering as to whether
+or not they should turn back. Joyce, who was far from being a coward,
+thought they should.</p>
+
+<p>"In this undergrowth," he pointed out, "we might be rushed before we
+could even fire our guns. And we're nearly a mile from the shell."</p>
+
+<p>But Wichter was like an eager child.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll press on just a little," he urged. "To that clear spot in front
+of us." He pointed along the trail to where sunlight was blazing down
+through an opening in the trees. "As soon as we see what's there,
+we'll go back."</p>
+
+<p>With a shrug, Joyce followed the eager little man down the weird trail
+under the lavender trees. In a few moments they had reached the
+clearing which was Wichter's goal. They halted on its edge, gazing at
+it with awe and repulsion.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was a circular quagmire of festering black mud about a hundred
+yards across. Near at hand they could see the mud heaving, very
+slowly, as though abysmal forms of life were tunneling along just
+under the surface. They glanced toward the center of the bog, which
+was occupied by one of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> smooth black pools, and cried aloud at
+what they saw.</p>
+
+<p>At the brink of the pool was lying a gigantic creature like a great,
+thick snake&mdash;a snake with a lizard's head, and a series of
+many-jointed, scaled legs running down its powerful length. Its mouth
+was gaping open to reveal hundreds of needle-sharp, backward pointing
+teeth. Its legs and thick, stubbed tail were threshing feebly in the
+mud as though it were in distress; and its eyes, so small as to be
+invisible in its repulsive head, were glazed and dull.</p>
+
+<p>"Was that what we heard back a ways?" wondered Joyce.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably," said Wichter. His eyes shone as he gazed at the nightmare
+shape. Impulsively he took a step toward the stirring mud.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be entirely insane," snapped Joyce, catching his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"I must see it closer," said Wichter, tugging to be free.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we'll climb a tree and look down on it. We'll probably be safer
+up off the ground anyway."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey ascended the nearest jungle giant&mdash;whose rubbery bark was so
+ringed and scored as to be as easy to climb as a staircase&mdash;to the
+first great bough, about fifty feet from the ground, and edged out
+till they hung over the rim of the quagmire. From there, with the aid
+of their binoculars, they expected to see the dying monster in every
+detail. But when they looked toward the pool it was not in sight!</p>
+
+<p>"Were we seeing things?" exclaimed Wichter, rubbing his glasses. "I'd
+have sworn it was lying there!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was," said Joyce grimly. "Look at the pool. That'll tell you where
+it went."</p>
+
+<p>The black, secretive surface was bubbling and waving as though, down
+in its depths, a terrific fight were taking place.</p>
+
+<p>"Something came up and dragged our ten-legged lizard down to its den.
+Then that something's brothers got onto the fact that a feast was
+being held, and rushed in. That pool would be no place for a
+before-breakfast dip!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ichter started to say something in reply, then gazed, hypnotized, at
+the opposite wall of the jungle.</p>
+
+<p>From the dense screen of lavender foliage stretched a glistening,
+scale-armored neck, as thick as a man's body at its thinnest point,
+which was just behind a tremendous-jawed crocodilian head. It tapered
+back for a distance of at least thirty feet, to merge into a body as
+big as that of a terrestial whale, that was supported by four squat,
+ponderous legs.</p>
+
+<p>Moving with surprising rapidity, the enormous thing slid into the mud
+and began ploughing a way, belly deep, toward the pool. Shapeless,
+slow-writhing forms were cast up in its wake, to quiver for a moment
+in the sunlight and then melt below the mud again.</p>
+
+<p>One of the bloated, formless mud-crawlers was snapped up in the huge
+jaws with an abrupt plunge of the long neck, and the monster began to
+feed, hog-like, slobbering over the loathsome carcass.</p>
+
+<p>Wichter shook his head, half in fanatical eagerness, half in despair.
+"I'd like to stay and see more," he said with a sigh, "but if that's
+the kind of creatures we're apt to encounter in the Zeudian jungle,
+we'd better be going at once&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Sh-h!" snapped Joyce. Then, in a barely audible whisper: "I think the
+thing heard your voice!"</p>
+
+<p>The monster had abruptly ceased its feeding. Its head, thrust high in
+the air, was waving inquisitively from side to side. Suddenly it
+expelled the air from its vast lungs in a roaring cough&mdash;and started
+directly for their tree.</p>
+
+<p>"Shoot!" cried Wichter, raising his gun.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oving with the speed of an express train, the monster had almost got
+to their overhanging branch<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> before they could pull the triggers. Both
+shells imbedded themselves in the enormous chest, just as the long
+neck reached up for them. And at once things began to happen with
+cataclysmic rapidity.</p>
+
+<p>Almost with their impact the shells exploded. The monster stopped,
+with a great hole torn in its body. Then, dying on its feet, it thrust
+its great head up and its huge jaws crunched over the branch to which
+its two puny destroyers were clinging.</p>
+
+<p>With all its dozens of tons of weight, it jerked in a gargantuan death
+agony. The tree, enormous as it was, shook with it, and the branch
+itself was tossed as though in a hurricane.</p>
+
+<p>There was a splintering sound. Wichter and Joyce dropped their guns to
+cling more tightly to the bole of the drooping branch that was their
+only security. The guns glanced off the mountainous body&mdash;and, with a
+last convulsion of the mighty legs, were swept underneath!</p>
+
+<p>The monster was still at last, its insensate jaws yet gripping the
+bough. The two men looked at each other in speechless consternation.
+The shell a mile off through the dreadful jungle.... Themselves,
+helpless without their guns....</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Joyce at last. "I guess we'd better be on our way.
+Waiting here, thinking it over, won't help any. Lucky there's no
+night, for a couple of weeks at least, to come stealing down on us."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e started down the great trunk, with Wichter following close behind.
+Walking as rapidly as they could, they hurried back along the tunneled
+trail toward their shell.</p>
+
+<p>They hadn't covered a hundred yards when they heard a mighty crashing
+of underbrush behind them. Glancing back, they saw tooth-studded jaws
+gaping cavernously at the end of a thirty-foot neck&mdash;little,
+dead-looking eyes glaring at them&mdash;a hundred-foot body smashing its
+way over the trap-bushes and through tangles of vines and
+down-drooping branches.</p>
+
+<p>"The mate to the thing we killed back there!" Joyce panted. "Run, for
+God's sake!"</p>
+
+<p>Wichter needed no urging. He hadn't an ounce of fear in his spare,
+small body. But he had an overwhelming desire to get back to Earth and
+deliver his message. He was trembling as he raced after Joyce, thirty
+feet to a bound, ducking his head to avoid hitting the thick lavender
+foliage that roofed the trail.</p>
+
+<p>"One of us must get through!" he panted over and over. "One of us must
+make it!"</p>
+
+<p>It was speedily apparent that they could never outrun their pursuer.
+The reaching jaws were only a few yards behind them now.</p>
+
+<p>"You go," called Joyce, sobbing for breath. He slowed his pace
+deliberately.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;you&mdash;" Wichter slowed too. In a frenzy, Joyce shoved him along
+the trail.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He got no further. In front of them, where there had appeared to be
+solid ground, they suddenly saw a yawning pit. Desperately, they tried
+to veer aside, but they were too close. Their last long birdlike leap
+carried them over the edge. They fell, far down, into a deep chasm,
+splashing into a shallow pool of water.</p>
+
+<p>A few clods of earth cascaded after them as the monster above dug its
+great splay feet into the ground and checked its rush in time to keep
+from falling after them. Then the top of the pit slowly darkened as a
+covering of some sort slid across it. They were in a prison as
+profoundly quiet and utterly black as a tomb.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_d1.jpg" alt="D" width="59" height="59" /></div>
+<p>orn," shouted Joyce. "Are you all right?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," came a voice in the near darkness. "And you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm still in one piece as far as I can feel." There was a splashing
+noise.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> He waded toward it and in a moment his outstretched hand
+touched the professor's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a fine mess," he observed shakily. "We got away from those
+tooth-lined jaws, all right, but I'm wondering if we're much better
+off than we would have been if we hadn't escaped."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm wondering the same thing." Wichter's voice was strained. "Did you
+see the way the top of the pit closed above us? That means we're in a
+trap. And a most ingenious trap it is, too! The roof of it is
+camouflaged until it looks exactly like the rest of the trail floor.
+The water in here is just shallow enough to let large animals break
+their necks when they fall in and just deep enough to preserve small
+animals&mdash;like ourselves&mdash;alive. We're in the hands of some sort of
+reasoning, intelligent beings, Joyce!"</p>
+
+<p>"In that case," said Joyce with a shudder, "we'd better do our best to
+get out of here!"</p>
+
+<p>But this was found to be impossible. They couldn't climb up out of the
+pit, and nowhere could they feel any openings in the walls. Only
+smooth, impenetrable stone met their questing fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks as though we're in to stay," said Joyce finally. "At least
+until our Zeudian hosts, whatever kind of creatures they may be, come
+and take us out. What'll we do then? Sail in and die fighting? Or go
+peaceably along with them&mdash;assuming we aren't killed at once&mdash;on the
+chance that we can make a break later?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd advise the latter," answered Wichter. "There is a small animal on
+our own planet whose example might be a good one for us to follow.
+That's the 'possum." He stopped abruptly, and gripped Joyce's arm.</p>
+
+<p>From the opposite side of the pit came a grating sound. A crack of
+greenish light appeared, low down near the water. This widened jerkily
+as though a door were being hoisted by some sort of pulley
+arrangement. The walls of the pit began to glow faintly with
+reflected light.</p>
+
+<p>"Down," breathed Wichter.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_n.jpg" alt="N" width="49" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oiselessly they let themselves sink into the water until they were
+floating, eyes closed and motionless, on the surface. Playing dead to
+the best of their ability, they waited for what might happen next.</p>
+
+<p>They heard a splashing near the open rock door. The splashing neared them,
+and high-pitched hissing syllables came to their ears&mdash;variegated sounds
+that resembled excited conversation in some unknown language.</p>
+
+<p>Joyce felt himself touched by something, and it was all he could do to
+keep from shouting aloud and springing to his feet at the contact.</p>
+
+<p>He'd had no idea, of course, what might be the nature of their
+captors, but he had imagined them as man-like, to some extent at
+least. And the touch of his hand, or flipper, or whatever it was,
+indicated that they were not!</p>
+
+<p>They were cold-blooded, reptilian things, for the flesh that had
+touched him was cold; as clammy and repulsive as the belly of a dead
+fish. So repulsive was that flesh that, when he presently felt himself
+lifted high up and roughly carried, he shuddered in spite of himself
+at the contact.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly the thing that bore him stopped. Joyce held his breath. He
+felt an excruciating, stabbing pain in his arm, after which the
+journey through the water was resumed. Stubbornly he kept up his
+pretence of lifelessness.</p>
+
+<p>The splashing ceased, and he heard flat wet feet slapping along on dry
+rock, indicating that they had emerged from the pit. Then he sank into
+real unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>The next thing he knew was that he was lying on smooth, bare rock in a
+perfect bedlam of noises. Howls and grunts, snuffling coughs and
+snarls beat at his ear-drums. It was as though he had fallen into a
+vast cage in which were hundreds of savage, excited ani<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>mals&mdash;animals,
+however, that in spite of their excitement and ferocity were
+surprisingly motionless, for he heard no scraping of claws, or padding
+of feet.</p>
+
+<p>Cautiously he opened his eyes....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e was in a large cave, the walls of which were glowing with greenish,
+phosphorescent light. Strewn about the floor were seemingly dead
+carcasses of animals. And what carcasses there were! Blubber-coated
+things that looked like giant tadpoles, gazelle-like creatures with a
+single, long slim horn growing from delicate small skulls, four-legged
+beasts and six-legged ones, animals with furry hides and crawlers with
+scaled coverings&mdash;several hundred assorted specimens of the smaller
+life of Zeud lay stretched out in seeming lifelessness.</p>
+
+<p>But they were not dead, these bizarre beasts of another world. They
+lived, and were animated with the frenzied fear of trapped things.
+Joyce could see the tortured heaving of their furred and scaled sides
+as they panted with terror. And from their throats issued the
+outlandish noises he had heard. They were alive enough&mdash;only they
+seemed unable to move!</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing in his range of vision that might conceivably be the
+beings that had captured them, so Joyce started to lift his head and
+look around at the rest of the cavern. He found that he could not
+move. He tried again, and his body was as unresponsive as a log. In
+fact, he couldn't feel his body at all! In growing terror, he
+concentrated all his will on moving his arm. It was as limp as a rag.</p>
+
+<p>He relaxed, momentarily in the grip of stark, blind panic. He was as
+helpless as the howling things around him! He was numbed, completely
+paralyzed into immobility!</p>
+
+<p>The professor's voice&mdash;a weak, uncertain voice&mdash;sounded from behind
+him. "Joyce! Joyce!"</p>
+
+<p>He found that he could talk, that the paralysis that gripped the rest
+of his muscles had not extended to the vocal cords. "Dorn! Thank God
+you're alive! I couldn't see you, and I thought&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm alive, but that's about all," said Wichter. "I&mdash;I can't move."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither can I. We've been drugged in some manner&mdash;just as all the
+other animals in here have been drugged. I must have got my dose in
+the pit. I was cut, or stabbed, in the arm."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oyce stopped talking as he suddenly heard steps, like human footsteps
+yet weirdly different&mdash;flap-flapping sounds as though awkward flippers
+were slapping along the rock floor toward them. The steps stopped
+within a few feet of them; then, after what seemed hours, they sounded
+again, this time in front of him.</p>
+
+<p>He opened his eyes, cautiously, barely moving his eyelids, and saw at
+last, in every hideous detail, one of the super-beasts that had
+captured Wichter and himself.</p>
+
+<p>It was a horrible cartoon of a man, the thing that stood there in the
+greenish glow of the cave. Nine or ten feet high, it loomed; hairless,
+with a faintly iridescent, purplish hide. A thick, cylindrical trunk
+sloped into a neck only a little smaller than the body itself. Set on
+this was a bony, ugly head that was split clear across by lipless
+jaws. There was no nose, only slanted holes like the nostrils of an
+animal; and over these were set pale, expressionless, pupil-less eyes.
+The arms were short and thick and ended in bifurcated lumps of flesh
+like swollen hands encased in old-fashioned mittens. The legs were
+also grotesquely short, and the feet mere shapeless flaps.</p>
+
+<p>It was standing near one of the smaller animals, apparently regarding
+it closely. Observing it himself, Joyce saw that it was moving a
+little. As though coming out of a coma, it was raising its bizarre
+head and trying to get on its feet.</p>
+
+<p>Leisurely the two-legged monster bent over it. Two long fangs gleamed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+in the lipless mouth. These were buried in the neck of the reviving
+beast&mdash;and instantly it sank back into immobility.</p>
+
+<p>Having reduced it to helplessness&mdash;the monster ate it! The lipless
+jaws gaped widely. The shapeless hands forced in the head of the
+animal. The throat muscles expanded hugely: and in less than a minute
+it had swallowed its living prey as a boa-constrictor swallows a
+monkey.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oyce closed his eyes, feeling weak and nauseated. He didn't open them
+again till long after he had heard the last of the awkward, flapping
+footsteps.</p>
+
+<p>"Could you see it?" asked Wichter, who was lying so closely behind him
+that he couldn't observe the monstrous Zeudian. "What did it do? What
+was it like?"</p>
+
+<p>Joyce told him of the way the creature had fed. "We are evidently in
+their provision room," he concluded. "They keep some of their food
+alive, it seems.... Well, it's a quick death."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me more about the way the other animal moved, just before it was
+eaten."</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't much to tell," said Joyce wearily. "It didn't move long
+after those fangs were sunk into it."</p>
+
+<p>"But don't you see!" There was sudden hope in Wichter's voice. "That
+means that the effect of the poison, which is apparently injected by
+those fangs, wears off after a time. And in that case&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"In that case," Joyce interjected, "we'd have only an unknown army of
+ten-foot Zeudians, the problem of finding a way to the surface of the
+ground again, and the lack of any kind of weapons, to keep us from
+escaping!"</p>
+
+<p>"We're not quite weaponless, though," the professor whispered back.
+"Over in a corner there's a pile of the long, slender horns that
+sprout from the heads of some of these creatures. Evidently the
+Zeudians cut them out, or break them off before eating that
+particular type of animal. They'd be as good as lances, if we could
+get hold of them."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oyce said nothing, but hope began to beat in his own breast. He had
+noticed a significant happening during the age-long hours in the
+commissary cave. Most of the Zeudians had entered from the direction
+of the pit. But one had come in through an opening in the opposite
+side. And this one had blinked pale eyes as though dazzled from bright
+sunlight&mdash;and was bearing some large, woody looking tubers that seemed
+to have been freshly uprooted! There was a good chance, thought Joyce,
+that that opening led to a tunnel up to the world above!</p>
+
+<p>He drew a deep breath&mdash;and felt a dim pain in his back, caused by the
+cramping position in which he had lain for so long.</p>
+
+<p>He could have shouted aloud with the thrill of that discovery. This
+was the first time he had felt his body at all! Did it mean that the
+effect of the poison was wearing off&mdash;that it wasn't as lastingly
+paralyzing to his earthly nerve centers as to those of Zeudian
+creatures around them? He flexed the muscles of his leg. The leg moved
+a fraction of an inch.</p>
+
+<p>"Dorn!" he called softly, "I can move a little! Can you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Wichter answered, "I've been able to wriggle my fingers for
+several minutes. I think I could walk in an hour or two."</p>
+
+<p>"Then pray for that hour or two. It might mean our escape!" Joyce told
+him of the seldom used entrance that he thought led to the open air.
+"I'm sure it goes to the surface, Dorn. Those woody looking tubers had
+been freshly picked."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hree of the two-legged monsters came in just then. They relapsed into
+lifeless silence. There was a horrible moment as the three paused over
+them longer than any of the others had. Was it obvious that the
+effects of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> numbing poison was wearing off? Would they be bitten
+again&mdash;or eaten?</p>
+
+<p>The Zeudians finally moved on, hissing and clicking to each other.
+Eventually the cold-blooded things fed, and dragged lethargically out
+of the cave in the direction of the pit.</p>
+
+<p>With every passing minute Joyce could feel life pouring back into his
+numbed body. His cramped muscles were in agony now&mdash;a pain that gave
+him fierce pleasure. At last, risking observation, he lifted his head
+and then struggled to a sitting position and looked around.</p>
+
+<p>No Zeudian was in sight. Evidently they were too sure of their poison
+glands to post a guard over them. He listened intently, and could hear
+no dragging footsteps. He turned to Wichter, who had followed his
+example and was sitting up, feebly rubbing his body to restore
+circulation.</p>
+
+<p>"Now's our chance," he whispered. "Stand up and walk a little to
+steady your legs, while I go over and get us a couple of those sharp
+horns. Then we'll see where that entrance of mine goes!"</p>
+
+<p>He walked to the pile of bones and horns in the corner and selected
+two of the longest and slimmest of the ivory-like things. Just as he
+had rejoined Wichter he heard the sound with which he was now so
+grimly familiar&mdash;flapping, awkward footsteps. Wildly he signaled the
+professor. They dropped in their tracks, just as the approaching
+monster stumped into the cave.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>or an instant he dared hope that their movement had gone unobserved,
+but his hope was rudely shattered. He heard a sharp hiss: heard the
+Zeudian flap toward them at double-quick time. Abandoning all
+pretense, he sprang to his feet just as the thing reached him, its
+fangs gleaming wickedly in the greenish light.</p>
+
+<p>He leaped to the side, going twenty feet or more with the press of his
+Earth muscles against the reduced gravity. The creature rushed on
+toward the professor. That game little man crouched and awaited its
+onslaught. But Joyce had sprung back again before the two could clash.</p>
+
+<p>He raised the long horn and plunged it into the smooth, purplish back.
+Again and again he drove it home, as the monster writhed under him. It
+had enormous vitality. Gashed and dripping, it yet struggled on,
+attempting to encircle Joyce with its stubby arms. Once it succeeded,
+and he felt his ribs crack as it contracted its powerful body. But a
+final stroke finished the savage fight. He got up and, with an
+incoherent cry to Wichter, raced toward the opening on which they
+pinned their hopes of reaching the upper air.</p>
+
+<p>Hissing cries and the thudding of many feet came to them just as they
+reached the arched mouth of the passage. But the cries, and the
+constant pandemonium of the paralysed animals died behind them as they
+bounded along the tunnel.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey emerged at last into the sunlight they had never expected to see
+again, beside one of the great lavender trees. They paused an instant
+to try to get their bearings.</p>
+
+<p>"This way," panted Joyce as he saw, on a hard-packed path ahead of
+them, one of the trail-marks he had blazed.</p>
+
+<p>Down the trail they raced, toward their space shell. Fortunately they
+met none of the tremendous animals that infested the jungles; and
+their journey to the clearing in which the shell was lying was
+accomplished without accident.</p>
+
+<p>"We're safe now," gasped Wichter, as they came in sight of the bare
+lava patch. "We can outrun them five feet to their one!"</p>
+
+<p>They burst into the clearing&mdash;and halted abruptly. Surrounding the
+shell, stumping curiously about it and touching it with their
+shapeless hands, were dozens of the Zeudians.</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" groaned Joyce. "There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> must be at least a hundred of them!
+We're lost for certain now!"</p>
+
+<p>They stared with hopeless longing at the vehicle that, if only they
+could reach it, could carry them back to Earth. Then they turned to
+each other and clasped hands, without a word. The same thought was in
+the mind of each&mdash;to rush at the swarming monsters and fight till they
+were killed. There was absolutely no chance of winning through to the
+shell, but it was infinitely better to die fighting than be swallowed
+alive.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>o engrossed were the Zeudians by the strange thing that had fallen
+into their province, that Joyce and Wichter got within a hundred feet
+of them before they turned their pale eyes in their direction. Then,
+baring their fangs, they streamed toward the Earth men, just as the
+pursuing Zeudians entered the clearing from the jungle trail.</p>
+
+<p>The two prepared to die as effectively as possible. Each grasped his
+lace-like horn tightly. The professor mechanically adjusted his
+glasses more firmly on his nose....</p>
+
+<p>With his move, the narrowing circle of Zeudians halted. A violent
+clamor broke out among them. They glared at the two, but made no
+further step toward them.</p>
+
+<p>"What in the world&mdash;" began Wichter bewilderedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Your glasses!" Joyce shouted, gripping his shoulder. "When you moved
+them, they all stopped! They must be afraid of them, somehow. Take
+them clear off and see what happens."</p>
+
+<p>Wichter removed his spectacles, and swung them in his hand, peering
+near-sightedly at the crowding Zeudians.</p>
+
+<p>Their reaction to his simple move was remarkable! Hisses of
+consternation came from their lipless mouths. They faced each other
+uneasily, waving their stubby arms and covering their own eyes as
+though suddenly afraid they would lose them.</p>
+
+<p>Taking advantage of their indecision, Joyce and Wichter walked boldly
+toward them. They moved aside, forming a reluctant lane. Some of the
+Zeudians in the rear shoved to close in on them, but the ones in front
+held them back. It wasn't until the two were nearly through that the
+lane began to straggle into a threatening circle around them again.
+The Zeudians were evidently becoming reassured by the fact that
+Wichter continued to see all right in spite of the little strange
+creature's alarming act of removing his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Do it again," breathed Joyce, perspiration beading his forehead as
+the giants moved closed, their fangs tentatively bared for the numbing
+poison stroke.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ichter popped his glasses on, then jerked them off with a cry, as
+though he were suffering intensely. Once more the Zeudians faltered
+and drew back, feeling at their own eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Run!" cried Joyce. And they raced for the haven of the shell.</p>
+
+<p>The Zeudians swarmed after them, snarling and hissing. Barely ahead of
+the nearest, Joyce and Wichter dove into the open panel. They slammed
+it closed just as a powerful, stubby arm reached after them. There was
+a screaming hiss, and a cold, cartilagenous lump of flesh dropped to
+the floor of the shell&mdash;half the monster's hand, sheared off between
+the sharp edge of the door and the metal hull.</p>
+
+<p>Joyce threw in the generator switch. With a soft roar the water-motor
+exploded into action, sending the shell far into the sky.</p>
+
+<p>"When we return," said Joyce, adding a final thousand miles an hour to
+their speed before they should fly free of the atmosphere of Zeud, "I
+think we'd better come at the head of an army, equipped with air-guns
+and explosive bombs."</p>
+
+<p>"And with glasses," added the professor, taking off his spectacles and
+gazing at them as though seeing them for the first time.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_009.jpg" width="600" height="359" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The man hurled the empty gun at the monster.</span>
+</div>
+<h2><a name="Four_Miles_Within" id="Four_Miles_Within"></a>Four Miles Within</h2>
+
+<h4>A COMPLETE NOVELETTE</h4>
+<h3><i>By Anthony Gilmore</i></h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4>CHAPTER I</h4>
+<h4><i>The Monster of Metal</i></h4>
+<div class="sidenote">Far down into the earth goes a gleaming metal sphere whose
+passengers are deadly enemies.</div>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;strange spherical monster stood in the moonlight on the silent
+Mojave Desert. In the ghostly gray of the sand and sage and joshua
+trees its metal hide glimmered dully&mdash;an amazing object to be found on
+that lonely spot. But there was only pride and anticipation in the
+eyes of the three people who stood a little way off, looking at it.
+For they had constructed the strange sphere, and were soon going to
+entrust their lives to it.</p>
+
+<p>"Professor," said one of them, a young man with a cheerful face and a
+likable grin, "let's go down now! There's no use waiting till
+to-morrow. It's always dark down there, whether it's day or night up
+here. Everything is ready."</p>
+
+<p>The white-haired Professor David Guinness smiled tolerantly at the
+speaker, his partner, Phil Holmes. "I'm kind of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> eager to be off,
+myself," he admitted. He turned to the third person in the little
+group, a dark-haired girl. "What do you say, Sue?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, let's, Father!" came the quick reply. "We'd never be able to
+sleep to-night, anyway. As Phil says, everything is ready."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I guess that settles it," Professor Guinness said to the eager
+young man.</p>
+
+<p>Phil Holmes' face went aglow with anticipation. "Good!" he cried.
+"Good! I'll skip over and get some water. It's barely possible that
+it'll be hot down there, in spite of your eloquent logic to the
+contrary!" And with the words he caught up a large jug standing
+nearby, waved his hand, said: "I'll be right back!" and set out for
+the water-hole, situated nearly a mile away from their little camp.
+The heavy hush of the desert night settled down once more after he
+left.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>s his figure merged with the shadows in the distance, the elderly
+scientist murmured aloud to his daughter:</p>
+
+<p>"You know, it's good to realize that my dream is about to become a
+reality. If it hadn't been for Phil.... Or no&mdash;I really ought to thank
+you, Sue. You're the one responsible for his participation!" And he
+smiled fondly at the slender girl by his side.</p>
+
+<p>"Phil joined us just for the scientific interest, and for the thrill
+of going four miles down into the earth," she retorted at once, in
+spite of the blush her father saw on her face. But he did not insist.
+Once more he turned, as to a magnet, to the machine that was his
+handiwork.</p>
+
+<p>The fifteen-foot sphere was an earth-borer&mdash;Guinness's own invention.
+In it he had utilized for the first time for boring purposes the newly
+developed atomic disintegrators. Many holes equally spaced over the
+sphere were the outlets for the dissolving ray&mdash;most of them on the
+bottom and alternating with them on the bottom and sides were the
+outlets of powerful rocket propulsion tubes, which would enable it to
+rise easily from the hole it would presently blast into the earth. A
+small, tight-fitting door gave entrance to the double-walled interior,
+where, in spite of the space taken up by batteries and mechanisms and
+an enclosed gyroscope for keeping the borer on an even keel, there was
+room for several people.</p>
+
+<p>The earth-borer had been designed not so much for scientific
+investigation as the specific purpose of reaching a rich store of
+radium ore buried four miles below the Guinness desert camp. Many
+geologists and mining engineers knew that the radium was there, for
+their instruments had proven it often; but no one up to then knew how
+to get to it. David Guinness did&mdash;first. The borer had been
+constructed in his laboratory in San Francisco, then dismantled and
+freighted to the little desert town of Palmdale, from whence Holmes
+had brought the parts to their isolated camp by truck. Strict secrecy
+had been kept. Rather than risk assistants they had done all the work
+themselves.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ifteen minutes passed by, while the slight figure of the inventor
+puttered about the interior of the sphere, brightly lit by a
+detachable searchlight, inspecting all mechanisms in preparation for
+their descent. Sue stood by the door watching him, now and then
+turning to scan the desert for the returning Phil.</p>
+
+<p>It was then, startlingly sudden, that there cracked through the velvet
+night the faint, distant sound of a gun. And it came from the
+direction of the water-hole.</p>
+
+<p>Sue's face went white, and she trembled. Without a word her father
+stepped out of the borer and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>"That was a gun!" he said. "Phil didn't have one with him, did he?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," Sue whispered. "And&mdash;why, there's nobody within miles of here!"</p>
+
+<p>The two looked at each other with alarm and wonder. Then, from one of
+the broken patches of scrub that ringed the space in which the borer
+stood, came a mocking voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you're mistaken, Sue," it affirmed. "But that was a gun."</p>
+
+<p>David Guinness jerked around, as did his daughter. The man who had
+spoken stood only ten yards away, clearly outlined in the bright
+moonlight&mdash;a tall, well-built man, standing quite at ease, surveying
+them pleasantly. His smile did not change when old Guinness cried:</p>
+
+<p>"Quade! James Quade!"</p>
+
+<p>The man nodded and came slowly forward. He might have been considered
+handsome, had it not been for his thin, mocking lips and a swarthy
+complexion.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing here?" demanded Guinness angrily. "And what do you
+mean&mdash;'it was a gun?' Have you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Easy, easy&mdash;one thing at a time,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> said Quade, still smiling. "About
+the gun&mdash;well, your young friend Holmes said, he'd be right back, but
+I&mdash;I'm afraid he won't be."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ue Guinness's lips formed a frightened word:</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>Quade made a short movement with his left hand, as is brushing the
+query aside. "Let's talk about something more pleasant," he said, and
+looked back at the professor. "The radium, and your borer, for
+instance. I hear you're all ready to go down."</p>
+
+<p>David Guinness gasped. "How did you know&mdash;?" he began, but a surge of
+anger choked him, and his fists clenched. He stepped forward. But
+something came to life in James Quade's right hand and pointed
+menacingly at him. It was the stubby black shape of an automatic.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep back, you old fool!" Quade said harshly. "I don't want to have
+to shoot you!"</p>
+
+<p>Unwillingly, Guinness came to a stop. "What have you done with young
+Holmes?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind about him now," said Quade, smiling again. "Perhaps I'll
+explain later. At the moment there's something much more interesting
+to do. Possibly you'll be surprised to hear it, but we're all going to
+take a little ride in this machine of yours, Professor. Down. About
+four miles. I'll have to ask you to do the driving. You will, won't
+you&mdash;without making a fuss?"</p>
+
+<p>Guinness's face worked furiously. "Why, you're crazy, Quade!" he
+sputtered. "I certainly won't!"</p>
+
+<p>"No?" asked Quade softly. The automatic he held veered around, till it
+was pointing directly at the girl. "I wouldn't want to have to shoot
+Sue&mdash;say&mdash;through the hand...." His finger tightened perceptibly on
+the trigger.</p>
+
+<p>"You're mad, man!" Guinness burst out. "You're crazy! What's the
+idea&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"In due time I'll tell you. But now I'll ask you just once more,"
+Quade persisted. "Will you enter that borer, or must I&mdash;" He broke off
+with an expressive shrug.</p>
+
+<p>David Guinness was powerless. He had not the slightest idea what Quade
+might be about; the one thought that broke through his fear and anger
+was that the man was mad, and had better be humored. He trembled, and
+a tight sensation came to his throat at sight of the steady gun
+trained on his daughter. He dared not trifle.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do it," he said.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ames Quade laughed. "That's better. You always were essentially
+reasonable, though somewhat impulsive for a man of your age. The rash
+way you severed our partnership, for instance.... But enough of that.
+I think we'd better leave immediately. Into the sphere, please. You
+first, Miss Guinness."</p>
+
+<p>"Must she come?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid so. I can't very well leave her here all unprotected, can
+I?"</p>
+
+<p>Quade's voice was soft and suave, but an undercurrent of sarcasm ran
+through it. Guinness winced under it; his whole body was trembling
+with suppressed rage and indignation. As he stepped to the door of the
+earth-borer he turned and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"How did you know our plans? About the radium?&mdash;the borer?"</p>
+
+<p>Quade told him. "Have you forgotten," he said, "that you talked the
+matter over with me before we split last year? I simply had the
+laboratory watched, and when you got new financial backing from young
+Holmes, and came here. I followed you. Simple, eh?... Well, enough of
+this. Get inside. You first, Sue."</p>
+
+<p>Trembling, the girl obeyed, and when her father hesitated Quade jammed
+his gun viciously into his ribs and pushed him to the door. "Inside!"
+he hissed, and reluctantly, hatred in his eyes, the professor stepped
+into the control compartment after Sue. Quade gave a last quick glance
+around and, with gun ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> wary, passed inside. The door slammed shut:
+there was a click as its lock shot over. The sphere was a sealed ball
+of metal.</p>
+
+<p>Inside, David Guinness obeyed the automatic's imperious gesture and
+pulled a shiny-handled lever slowly back, and the hush that rested
+over the Mojave was shattered by a tremendous bellow, a roar that
+shook the very earth. It was the disintegrating blast, hurled out of
+the bottom in many fan-shaped rays. The coarse gray sand beneath the
+machine stirred and flew wildly; the sphere vibrated madly; and then
+the thunder lowered in tone to a mighty humming and the earth-borer
+began to drop. Slowly it fell, at first, then more rapidly. The shiny
+top came level with the ground: disappeared; and in a moment there was
+nothing left but a gaping hole where a short while before a round
+monster of metal had stood. The hole was hot and dark, and from it
+came a steadily diminishing thunder....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>or a long time no one in the earth-borer spoke&mdash;didn't even try
+to&mdash;for though the thunder of the disintegrators was muted, inside, to
+a steady drone, conversation was almost impossible. The three were
+crowded quite close in the spherical inner control compartment. Sue
+sat on a little collapsible stool by the bowed, but by no means
+subdued, figure of Professor David Guinness, while Quade sat on the
+wire guard of the gyroscope, which was in the exact center of the
+floor.</p>
+
+<p>The depth gauge showed two hundred feet. Already the three people were
+numb from the vibration; they hardly felt any sensation at all, save
+one of great weight pressing inwards. The compartment was fairly cool
+and the air good&mdash;kept so by the automatic air rectifiers and the
+insulation, which shut out the heat born of their passage.</p>
+
+<p>Quade had been carefully watching Guinness's manipulation of the
+controls, when he was struck by a thought. At once he stood up, and
+shouted in the elderly inventor's ear: "Try the rockets! I want to be
+sure this thing will go back up!"</p>
+
+<p>Without a word Guinness shoved back the lever controlling the
+disintegrators, at the same time whirling a small wheel full over. The
+thudding drone died away to a whisper, and was replaced by sharper
+thundering, as the stream of the propulsion rockets beneath the sphere
+was released. A delicate needle trembled on a gauge, danced at the
+figure two hundred, then crept back to one-ninety ... one-sixty ...
+one-forty.... Quade's eyes took in everything.</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent, Guinness!" he yelled. "Now&mdash;down once more!"</p>
+
+<p>The rockets were slowly cut; the borer jarred at the bottom of its
+hole; again the disintegrators droned out. The sphere dug rapidly into
+the warm ground, biting lower and lower. At ten miles an hour it
+blasted a path to depths hitherto unattainable to man, sweeping away
+rock and gravel and sand&mdash;everything that stood in its way. The depth
+gauge rose to two thousand, then steadily to three and four. So it
+went on for nearly half an hour.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of that time, at a depth of nearly four miles, Quade got
+stiffly to his feet and once more shouted into the professor's ear.</p>
+
+<p>"We ought to be close to that radium, now," he said. "I think&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But his words stopped short. The floor of the sphere suddenly fell
+away from their feet, and they felt themselves tumbled into a wild
+plunge. The drone of the disintegrators, hitherto muffled by the earth
+they bit into, rose to a hollow scream. Before the professor quite
+knew what was happening, there was a stunning crash, a shriek of
+tortured metal&mdash;and the earth-borer rocked and lay still....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he whole world seemed to be filled with thunder when David Guinness
+came back to consciousness. He opened his eyes and stared up into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> a
+darkness to which it took him some time to accustom himself. When he
+did, he made out hazily that he was lying on the floor of a vast dark
+cavern. He could dimly see its jagged roof, perhaps fifty feet above.
+There was the strong smell of damp earth in his nostrils; his head was
+splitting from the steady drone in his ear-drums. Suddenly he
+remembered what had happened. He groaned slightly and tried to sit up.</p>
+
+<p>But he could not. His arms and legs were tied. Someone had removed him
+from the earth-borer and bound him on the floor of the cavern they had
+plunged into.</p>
+
+<p>David Guinness strained at the rope. It was futile, but in doing so he
+twisted his head around and saw another form, similarly tied, lying
+close to him. He gave a little cry of relief. It was Sue. And she was
+conscious, her eyes on his face.</p>
+
+<p>She spoke to him, but he could not understand her for the drone in his
+ears, and when he spoke to her it was the same. But the professor did
+not just then continue his effort to converse with her. His attention
+was drawn to the borer, now dimly illuminated by its portable light,
+which had been secured to the door. It was right side up, and appeared
+to be undamaged. The broad ray of the searchlight fell far away on one
+of the cavern's rough walls. He could just make out James Quade
+standing there, his back towards them.</p>
+
+<p>He was hacking at the wall with a pick. Presently he dropped the tool
+and wrenched at the rock with bare hands. A large chunk came loose. He
+hugged it to him and turned and strode back towards the two on the
+floor, and as he drew near they could plainly see a gleam of triumph
+in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You know what this is?" he shouted. Guinness could only faintly hear
+him. "Wealth! Millions! Of course we always knew the radium was here,
+but this is the proof. And now we've a way of getting it out&mdash;thanks
+to your borer! All the credit is yours, Professor Guinness! You shall
+have the credit, and I'll have the money."</p>
+
+<p>Guinness tugged furiously at his bonds again. "You&mdash;you&mdash;" he gasped.
+"How dare you tie us this way! Release us at once! What do you mean by
+it?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_q.jpg" alt="Q" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+<p>uade smiled unpleasantly. "You're very stupid, Guinness. Haven't you
+guessed by now what I'm going to do?" He paused, as if waiting for an
+answer, and the smile on his face gave way to a look of savage menace.
+For the first time his bitter feelings came to the surface.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you forgotten how close I came to going to jail over those
+charges of yours a year ago?" he said. "Have you forgotten the
+disgrace to me that followed?&mdash;the stigma that forced me to disappear
+for months? You fool, do you think I've forgotten?&mdash;or that I'd let
+you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Quade," interrupted the older man, "you know very well you were
+guilty. I caught you red-handed. You didn't fool anyone&mdash;except the
+jury that let you go. So save your breath, and, if you've the sense
+you were born with, release my daughter and me. Why, you're crazy!" he
+cried with mounting anger. "You can't get away with this! I'll have
+you in jail within forty-eight hours, once I get back to the surface!"</p>
+
+<p>With an effort Quade controlled his feelings and assumed his oily,
+sarcastic manner. "That's just it," he said: "'once you get back!' How
+stupid you are! You don't seem to realize that you're not going back
+to the surface. You and your daughter."</p>
+
+<p>Sue gasped, and her father's eyes went wide. There was a tense
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't dare!" the inventor cried finally. "You wouldn't dare!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's rather large, this cavern," Quade went on. "You'll have plenty
+of room. Perhaps I'll untie you before I go back up, so&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You can't get away with it!" shouted the old man, tremendously
+ex<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>cited. "Why, you can't, possibly! Philip Holmes'll track you
+down&mdash;he'll tell the police&mdash;he'll rescue us! And then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Quade smiled suavely. "Oh, no, he won't. Perhaps you remember the shot
+that sounded from the water-hole? Well, when I and my assistant, Juan,
+heard Holmes say he was going for water, I told Juan to follow him to
+the water-hole and bind him, to keep him from interfering till I got
+back up. But Mr. Holmes is evidently of an impulsive disposition, and
+must have caused trouble. Juan, too, is impulsive; he is a Mexican.
+And he had a gun. I'm afraid he was forced to use it.... I am quite
+sure Philip Holmes will not, as you say, track me down."</p>
+
+<p>David Guinness looked at his daughter's white face and horror-filled
+eyes and suddenly crumpled. Humbly, passionately, he begged Quade to
+take her back up. "Why, she's never done anything to you, Quade!" he
+pleaded. "You can't take her life like that! Please! Leave me, if you
+must, but not her! You can't&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ut suddenly the old man noticed that Quade was not listening. His
+head was tilted to one side as if he was straining to hear something
+else. Guinness was held silent for a moment by the puzzled look on the
+other's face and the strange way he was acting.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear it?" Quade asked at last; and without waiting for an
+answer, he knelt down and put his ear to the ground. When he rose his
+face was savage, and he cursed under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's a humming!" muttered Professor Guinness. "And it's getting
+louder!"</p>
+
+<p>"It sounds like another borer!" ventured Sue.</p>
+
+<p>The humming grew in volume. Then, from the ceiling, a rock dropped.
+They were looking at the cavern roof and saw it start, but they did
+not hear it strike, for the ever-growing humming echoed loudly through
+the cavern. They saw another rock fall; and another.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, what is it?" cried Guinness.</p>
+
+<p>Quade looked at him and slowly drew out his automatic.</p>
+
+<p>"Another earth-borer, I think," he answered. "And I rather expect it
+contains your young friend Mr. Holmes. Yes&mdash;coming to rescue you."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Guinness and his daughter were too astounded to do
+anything but gape. She finally exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but then Phil's alive?"</p>
+
+<p>James Quade smiled. "Probably&mdash;for the moment. But don't let your
+hopes rise too high. The borer he's in isn't strong enough to survive
+a fifty-foot plunge." He was shouting now, so loud was the thunder
+from above. "And," he added, "I'm afraid he's not strong enough to
+survive it, either!"</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER II</h4>
+<h4><i>The Man-Hunt</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+<p>hen Phil Holmes started off to the water-hole, his head was full of
+the earth-borer and the imminent descent. Now that the long-awaited
+time had come, he was at fever-pitch to be off, and it did not take
+him long to cover the mile of sandy waste. His thoughts were far
+inside the earth as he dipped the jug into the clear cool water and
+sloshed it full.</p>
+
+<p>So the rope that snaked softly through the air and dropped in a loop
+over his shoulders came as a stark surprise. Before he knew what was
+happening it had slithered down over his arms and drawn taut just
+above the elbows, and he was yanked powerfully backwards and almost
+fell.</p>
+
+<p>But he managed to keep his feet as he staggered backward, and turning
+his head he saw the small dark figure of his aggressor some fifteen
+feet away, keeping tight the slack.</p>
+
+<p>Phil's surprise turned to sudden fury and he completely lost his head.
+What he did was rash; mad; and yet, as it turned out, it was the only
+thing that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> could have saved him. Instinctively, without hesitating
+one second, and absolutely ignoring an excited command to stand still,
+he squirmed face-on to his aggressor, lowered his head and charged.</p>
+
+<p>The distance was short. Halfway across it, a gun barked, and he heard
+the bullet crack into the water jug, which he was still holding in
+front of himself. And even before the splintered fragments reached the
+ground he had crashed into the firer.</p>
+
+<p>He hit him with all the force of a tackling lineman, and they both
+went down. The man grunted as the wind was jarred out of him, but he
+wriggled like an eel and managed to worm aside and bring up his gun.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a desperate flurry of bodies in the coarse sand. Holmes
+dived frantically for the gun hand and caught it; but, handicapped as
+he was by the rope, he could not hold it. Slowly its muzzle bent
+upward to firing position.</p>
+
+<p>Desperately, he wrenched the arm upwards, in the direction it had been
+straining to go, and the sudden unexpected jerk doubled the man's arm
+and brought the weapon across his chest. For a moment there was a test
+of strength as Phil lay chest to chest over his opponent, the gun
+blocked between. Then the other grunted; squirmed violently&mdash;and there
+was a muffled explosion.</p>
+
+<p>A cry of pain cut the midnight air, and with insane strength Holmes'
+ambusher fought free from his grip, staggered to his feet and went
+reeling away. Phil tore loose from the rope and bounded after him,
+never feeling, at the moment, his powder-burned chest.</p>
+
+<p>And then he halted in his tracks.</p>
+
+<p>A great roar came thundering over the desert!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t once he knew that it came from the earth-borer's disintegrators.
+The sphere had started down without him.</p>
+
+<p>He stood stock still, petrified with surprise, facing the sound, while
+his attacker melted farther and farther into the night. And then,
+suddenly, Phil Holmes was sprinting desperately back towards the
+Guinness camp.</p>
+
+<p>He ran until he was exhausted; walked for a little while his legs
+gathered more strength, and his laboring lungs more air; and then ran
+again. As the minutes passed, the thunder lessened rapidly into a
+muffled drone; and by the time Phil had panted up to the brink of the
+hole that gaped where but a little time before the sphere was
+standing, it had become but a distant purr. He leaned far over and
+peered into the hot blackness below, but could see nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Phil knelt there silently for some minutes, shocked by his strange
+attack, bewildered by the unexpected descent of the borer. For a time
+his mind would not work; he had no idea what to do. But gradually his
+thoughts came to order and made certain things clear.</p>
+
+<p>He had been deliberately ambushed. Only by luck had he escaped, he
+told himself. If it hadn't been for the water jug, he'd now be out of
+the picture. And on the heels of the ambush had came the surprising
+descent of the earth-borer. The two incidents coincided too well: the
+same mind had planned them. And two, men, at least, were in on the
+plot.... It suddenly became very clear to him that the answer to the
+puzzle lay with the man who had ambushed him. He would have to get
+that man. Track him down.</p>
+
+<p>Phil acted with decision. He got to his feet and strode rapidly to the
+deserted Guinness shack, horribly quiet and lonely now in the bright
+moonlight. In a minute he emerged with a flashlight at his belt and a
+rifle across his arm.</p>
+
+<p>Once again he went over to the new black hole in the desert and looked
+down. From far below still came the purr, now fainter than ever. His
+friend, the girl he loved, were down there, he reflected bitterly, and
+he was helpless<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> to reach them. Well, there was one thing he could
+do&mdash;go man-hunting. Turning, he started off at a long lope for the
+water-hole.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>en minutes later he was there, and off to the side he found the marks
+of their scuffle&mdash;and small black blotches that could be nothing but
+blood. The other was wounded: could probably not get far. But he might
+still have his gun, so Phil kept his rifle handy, and tempered his
+impatience with caution as he set out on the trail of the widely
+spaced footprints.</p>
+
+<p>They led off towards the nearby hills, and in the bright moonlight
+Phil did not use his flashlight at all, except to investigate other
+round black blotches that made a line parallel to the prints. As he
+went on he found his quarry's steps coming more closely together:
+becoming erratic. Soon they showed as painful drags in the sand, a
+laborious hauling of one foot after the other.... Phil put away his
+light and advanced very cautiously.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered, as he went, who in the devil was behind it all. The
+radium-finding project had been kept strictly secret. Not another soul
+was supposed to know of the earth-borer and its daring mission into
+the heart of the earth. Yet, obviously, someone had found out, and
+whoever it was had laid at least part of his scheme cunningly. An old
+man and a girl cannot offer much resistance: he, Phil, would have been
+well taken care of had it not been for the water jug. So far, there
+were at least two in the plot: the man who had ambushed him and the
+unknown who had evidently kidnapped both Professor and Sue Guinness.
+But there might be still more.</p>
+
+<p>There might be friends, nearby, of the man he was tracking. The fellow
+might have reached them, and warned them that the scheme hadn't gone
+through, that Phil was loose. They could very easily conceal
+themselves alongside their partner's tracks and train their rifles on
+the tracker....</p>
+
+<p>The trail was leading up into one of the ca&ntilde;ons in the cluster of
+hills to the west. For some distance he followed it up through a slash
+of black below the steep moonlit heights of the hills to each
+side&mdash;and then, suddenly, he vaguely made out the forms of two huts
+just ahead.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately he stooped low, and went skirting widely off up one side.
+He proceeded slowly, with great caution, his rifle at the ready. At
+any moment, he knew, the hush might be split by the cracks of
+waylaying guns. Warily he advanced along the narrow ca&ntilde;on wall above
+the huts. No lights were lit, and the place seemed unoccupied. He was
+debating what to do next when his attention was attracted to a large
+dark object lying in the ca&ntilde;on trail some twenty yards from the
+nearest hut. Straining his eyes in the inadequate moonlight, he saw
+that it was the outstretched figure of a man. His quarry&mdash;his
+ambusher!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_p.jpg" alt="P" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hil dropped flat, fearful of being seen. Keeping as best he could in
+the shadows, fearing every moment to hear the sharp bark of a gun, he
+crawled forward. It took him a long time to approach the sprawled
+figure, but he wasn't taking chances. When within twenty feet, he rose
+suddenly and darted forward to the man's side.</p>
+
+<p>His rapid glance showed him that the fellow was completely out: and
+another quick look around failed to show that anyone else was
+watching, so he returned to his examination of the man. It was the
+ambusher, all right: a Mexican. He was still breathing, though his
+face was drawn and white from the loss of blood from a wound under the
+blood-soaked clothing near his upper right arm. A hasty search showed
+that he no longer had his gun, so Phil, satisfied that he was
+powerless for some time to come, cautiously wormed his way towards the
+two shacks.</p>
+
+<p>There was something sinister in the strange silence that hung over
+them. One was of queer construction&mdash;a win<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>dowless, square, high box
+of galvanized iron. The other was obviously a dwelling place.
+Carefully Phil sneaked up to the latter. Then, rifle ready, he pushed
+its door open and sent a beam of light stabbing through the darkness
+of the interior.</p>
+
+<p>There was no one there. Only two bunks, a table, chair, a pail of
+water and some cooking utensils met his view. He crept out toward the
+other building.</p>
+
+<p>Come close, Phil found that a dun-colored canvas had been thrown over
+the top of it, making an adequate camouflage in daytime. The place was
+about twenty feet high. He prowled around the metal walls and
+discovered a rickety door. Again, gun ready, he flung it open. The
+beam from his flash speared a path through the blackness&mdash;and he
+gasped at sight of what stood revealed.</p>
+
+<p>There, inside, was a long, bullet-like tube of metal, the pointed end
+upper-most, and the bottom, which was flat, toward the ground. It was
+held in a wooden cradle, and was slanted at the floor. In the bottom
+were holes of two shapes&mdash;rocket tubes and disintegrating projectors.
+It was another earth-borer.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_p.jpg" alt="P" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hil stood frozen with surprise before this totally unlooked-for
+machine. He could easily have been overcome, had the owner been in the
+building, for he had forgotten everything but what his eyes were
+staring at. He started slowly around the borer, found a long narrow
+door slightly ajar, and stepped inside.</p>
+
+<p>This borer, like Guinness's, had a double shell, and much the same
+instruments, though the whole job was simpler and cruder. A small
+instrument board contained inclination, temperature, depth and
+air-purity indicators, and narrow tubes led to the air rectifiers. But
+what kept Holmes' attention were the wires running from the magneto to
+the mixing chambers of the disintegrating tubes.</p>
+
+<p>"The fools!" he exclaimed, "&mdash;they didn't know how to wire the thing!
+Or else," he added after a moment, "didn't get around to doing it." He
+noticed that the projectile's interior contained no gyroscope: though,
+he thought, none would be needed, for the machine, being long and
+narrow, could not change keel while in the ground. Here he was
+reminded of something. Stepping outside, he estimated the angle the
+borer made with the dirt floor. Twenty degrees. "And pointed
+southwest!" he exclaimed aloud. "This borer would come close to
+meeting the professor's, four miles under our camp!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t once he knew what he would do. First he went back to the other
+shack and got the pail of water he had noticed, and took this out
+where the Mexican lay outstretched. He bathed the man's face and the
+still slightly bleeding bullet wound in his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the wounded man came to. His eyes opened, and he stared up
+into a steel mask of a face, in which two level black eyes bored into
+his. He remembered that face&mdash;remembered it all too well. He trembled,
+cowered away.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" he gasped, as if he had seen a ghost. "No&mdash;no!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm the man," Holmes told him firmly, menacingly. "The same one
+you tried to ambush." He paused a moment, then said: "Do you want to
+live?"</p>
+
+<p>It was a simple question, frightening in its simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>"Because if you don't answer my questions, I'm going to let you lie
+here," Phil went on coldly. "And that would probably mean your death.
+If you do answer, I'll fix you up so you can have a chance."</p>
+
+<p>The Mexican nodded eagerly. "I talk," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Good," said Phil. "Then tell me who built that machine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Se&ntilde;or Quade. Se&ntilde;or James Quade."</p>
+
+<p>"Quade!" Phil had heard the name<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> before. "Of course!" he said.
+"Guinness's old partner!"</p>
+
+<p>"I not know," the Mexican answered. "He hire me with much money. He
+buy thees machine inside, and we put him together. But he could no
+make him work&mdash;it take too long. We watch, hear old man go down
+to-night, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he greaser stopped. "And so he sent you to get me, while he kidnapped
+the old man and his daughter and forced them under the ground in their
+own borer," Holmes supplied, and the other nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"But I only mean to tie you!" he blurted, gesturing weakly. "I no mean
+shoot! No, no&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"All right&mdash;forget it," Phil interrupted. "And now tell me what Quade
+expects to do down there."</p>
+
+<p>"I not know, Se&ntilde;or," came the hesitant reply, "but...."</p>
+
+<p>"But what?" the young man jerked.</p>
+
+<p>Reluctantly the wounded Mexican continued. "Se&ntilde;or Quade&mdash;he&mdash;I think
+he don' like thees old man. I think he leave heem an' the girl down
+below. Then he come up an' say they keeled going down."</p>
+
+<p>Phil nodded grimly. "I see," he said, voicing his thoughts. "Then he
+would say that he and Professor Guinness are still partners&mdash;and the
+radium ore will belong to him. Very nice. Very nice...."</p>
+
+<p>He snapped back to action, and without another word hoisted the
+Mexican onto his back and carried him into the shack. There he
+cleansed the wound, rigged up a tight bandage for it, and tied the man
+to one of the cots. He tied him in such a fashion that he could reach
+some food and water he put by the cot.</p>
+
+<p>"You leave me like thees?" the Mexican asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Phil said, and started for the door.</p>
+
+<p>"But what you going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>Phil smiled grimly as he flung an answer back over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Me?&mdash;I'm going to fix the wiring on those disintegrators in your
+friend Quade's borer. Then I'm starting down after him." He stopped
+and turned before he closed the door. "And if I don't get back&mdash;well,
+it's just too bad for you!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>nd so, a little later, once more the hushed desert night was cleft by
+a furious bellow of sound. It came, this time, from a narrow ca&ntilde;on.
+The steep sides threw the roar back and back again, and the echoes
+swelled to an earth-shaking blast of sound. The oblong hut from which
+it came rocked and almost fell; then, as the noise began to lessen,
+teetered on its foundations and half-slipped into the ragged hole that
+had been bored inside.</p>
+
+<p>The descent was a nightmare that Holmes would never forget. Quade's
+machine was much cruder and less efficient than the sphere David
+Guinness had designed. Its protecting insulation proved quite
+inadequate, and the heat rapidly grew terrific as the borer dug down.
+Phil became faint, stifled, and his body oozed streams of sweat. And
+the descent was also bumpy and uneven; often he was forced to leave
+the controls and work on the mechanism of the disintegrators when they
+faltered and threatened to stop. But in spite of everything the needle
+on the depth gauge gradually swung over to three thousand, and four,
+and five....</p>
+
+<p>After the first mile Holmes improvised a way to change the air more
+rapidly, and it grew a little cooler. He watched the story the depth
+gauge told with narrowed eyes, and, as it reached three miles,
+inspected his rifle. At three and a half miles he stopped the borer,
+thinking to try to hear the noise made by the other, but so paralyzed
+were his ear-drums from the terrific thunder beneath, it seemed hardly
+any quieter when it ceased.</p>
+
+<p>His plans were vague; they would have to be made according to the
+conditions he found. There was a coil of rope in the tube-like
+interior of the borer, and he hoped to find a cavern or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> cleft in the
+earth for lateral exploring. He would stop at a depth of four
+miles&mdash;where he should be very near the path of the professor's
+sphere.</p>
+
+<p>But Phil never saw the needle on the gauge rise to four miles. At
+three and three quarters came sudden catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>He knew only that there was an awful moment of utter helplessness,
+when the borer swooped wildly downwards, and the floor was snatched
+sickeningly from under him. He was thrown violently against the
+instrument panel; then up toward the pointed top; and at the same
+instant came a rending crash that drove his senses from him....</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER III</h4>
+<h4>"<i>You Haven't the Guts</i>"</h4>
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_f1.jpg" alt="" width="53" height="56" /></div>
+<p>ust as I thought," said James Quade in the silence that fell when
+the last echoes had died away, and the splinters of steel and rock had
+settled. "You see, Professor, this earth-borer belongs to me. Yes, I
+built one too. But I couldn't, unfortunately, get it working
+properly&mdash;that is, in time to get down here first. After all, I'm not
+a scientist, and remembered little enough of your borer's plans....
+It's probably young Holmes who's dropped in on us. Shall we see?"</p>
+
+<p>David Guinness and his daughter were speechless with dread. Quade had
+trained the searchlight on the borer, and by turning their heads they
+could see it plainly. It was all too clear that the machine was a
+total wreck. It had pitched over onto one side, its shell cracked and
+mangled irreparably. Grotesque pieces of crumpled metal lay all around
+it. Its slanting course had tumbled it within fifteen yards of the
+sphere.</p>
+
+<p>In silence the old man and the girl watched Quade walk deliberately
+over to it, his automatic steady in his right hand. He wrenched at the
+long, narrow door, but it was so badly bent that for a while he could
+not get it open. At last it swung out, however, and Quade peered
+inside.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment he reached in and drew out a rifle. He took it over to
+a nearby rock, smashed the gun's breech, then flung it, useless,
+aside. Returning to the borer, he again peered in.</p>
+
+<p>Sue was about to scream from the torturous suspense when he at last
+straightened up and looked around at the white-faced girl and her
+father.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Holmes is tougher than I'd thought possible," he said, with a
+thin smile; "he's still alive." And, as Sue gasped with relief, he
+added: "Would you like to see him?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e dragged the young man's unconscious body roughly out on the floor.
+There were several bad bruises on his face and head, but otherwise he
+was apparently uninjured. As Quade stood over him, playing idly with
+the automatic, he stirred, and blinked, and at last, with an effort,
+got up on one elbow and looked straight at the thin lips and narrowed
+eyes of the man standing above. He shook his head, trying to
+comprehend, then muttered hazily:</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you're&mdash;Quade?"</p>
+
+<p>Quade did not have time to answer, for Sue Guinness cried out:</p>
+
+<p>"Phil! Are you all right?"</p>
+
+<p>Phil stared stupidly around, caught sight of the two who lay bound on
+the floor, and staggered to his feet. "Sue!" he cried, relief and
+understanding flooding his voice. He started towards her.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand where you are!" Quade snapped harshly, and the automatic in his
+hand came up. Holmes peered at it and stopped, but his blood-streaked
+face settled into tight lines, and his body tensed.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better," continued Quade. "Now tell me what happened to Juan."</p>
+
+<p>Phil forced himself to be calm. "Your pal, the greaser?" he said
+cuttingly. "He's lying on a bunk in your shack. He shot himself,
+playing with a gun."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Quade chose not to notice the way Phil said this, but a little of the
+suave self-confidence was gone from his face as he said: "Well, in
+that case I'll have to hurry back to the surface to attend to him. But
+don't be alarmed," he added, more brightly. "I'll be back for you all
+in an hour or so."</p>
+
+<p>At this, David Guinness struggled frantically with his bonds and
+yelled:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't believe him, Phil! He's going to leave us here, to starve and
+die! He told us so just before you came down!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_q.jpg" alt="Q" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+<p>uade's face twitched perceptibly. His eyes were nervous.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that true, Quade?" Holmes asked. There was a steely note in his
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;no, of course not," the other said hastily, uncertain whether to
+lie or not. "Of course I didn't!"</p>
+
+<p>Phil Holmes looked square into his eyes. He bluffed.</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't desert us, Quade. You haven't the guts. You haven't the
+guts."</p>
+
+<p>His face and eyes burned with the contempt that was in his words. It
+cut Quade to the raw. But he could not avoid Phil's eyes. He stared at
+them for a full moment, trembling slightly. Slowly, by inches, he
+started to back toward the sphere; then suddenly he ran for it with
+all his might, Holmes after him. Quade got to it first, and inside, as
+he yanked in the searchlight and slammed and locked the door, he
+yelled:</p>
+
+<p>"You'll see, you damned pup! You'll see!" And there was the smothered
+sound of half-maniacal laughter....</p>
+
+<p>Phil threw all his weight against the metal door, but it was hopeless
+and he knew it. He had gathered himself for another rush when he heard
+Guinness yell:</p>
+
+<p>"Back, Phil&mdash;back! He'll turn on the side disintegrators!"</p>
+
+<p>Mad with rage as the young man was, he at once saw the danger and
+leaped away&mdash;only to almost fall over the professor's prone body. With
+hurrying, trembling fingers he untied the pair's bonds, and they
+struggled to their feet, cramped and stiff. Then it was Phil who
+warned them.</p>
+
+<p>"Back as far as you can! Hurry!" He grabbed Sue's hand and plunged
+toward the uncertain protection of a huge rock far in the rear. At
+once he made them lie flat on the ground.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>s yet the sphere had not stirred nor emitted a whisper of sound,
+though they knew the man inside was conning the controls in a fever of
+haste to leave the cavern. But they hadn't long to wait. There came a
+sputter, a starting cough from the rocket tubes beneath the sphere.
+Quickly they warmed into life, and the dully glimmering ball rocked in
+the hole it lay in. Then a cataract of noise unleashed itself; a
+devastating thunder roared through the echoing cavern as the rockets
+burst into full force. A wave of brilliant orange-red splashed out
+from under the sphere, licked back up its sides, and seemed literally
+to shove the great ball up towards the hole in the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>Its ascent was very slow. As it gained height it looked&mdash;save for its
+speed&mdash;like a fantastic meteor flaming through the night, for the
+orange plumage that streamed from beneath lit the ball with dazzling
+color. A glowing sphere, it staggered midway between floor and
+ceiling, creeping jerkily upwards.</p>
+
+<p>"He's not going to hit the hole!" shouted Guinness.</p>
+
+<p>The borer had not risen in a perfectly straight line; it jarred
+against the rim of the hole, and wavered uncertainly. Every second the
+roar of its rockets, swollen by echoes, rose in a savage crescendo;
+the faces of the three who watched were painted orange in the glow.</p>
+
+<p>The sphere was blind. The man inside could judge his course only by
+the feel. As the three who were deserted watched, hoping ardently that
+Quade would not be able to find the opening, the left side-rockets
+spouted lances of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> fire, and they knew he had discovered the way to
+maneuver the borer laterally. The new flames welded with the exhaust
+of the main tubes into a great fan-shaped tail, so brilliant and shot
+through with other colors that their eyes could not stand the sight,
+except in winks. The borer jerked to the right, but still it could not
+find the hole. Then the flames lessened for a moment, and the borer
+sank down, to rise again a moment later. Its ascent was so labored
+that Phil shouted to Professor Guinness:</p>
+
+<p>"Why so slow?"</p>
+
+<p>And the inventor told him that which he had not seen for the
+intolerable light.</p>
+
+<p>"Only half his rockets are on!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>his time the sphere was correctly aimed, however, and it roared
+straight into the hole. Immediately the fierce sound of the exhaust
+was muffled, and in a few seconds only the fiery plumage, shooting
+down from the ceiling, showed where the machine was. Then this
+disappeared, and the noise alone was left.</p>
+
+<p>Phil leaped forward, intending to stare up, but Guinness's yell halted
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet! He might still use the disintegrators!"</p>
+
+<p>For many minutes they waited, till the muffled exhaust had died to a
+drone. There was a puzzled expression on the professor's face as the
+three at last walked over and dared peer up into the hole. Far above,
+the splash of orange lit the walls of the tunnel.</p>
+
+<p>"That's funny!" the old man muttered. "He's only using half the
+rockets&mdash;about ten. I thought he'd turn them all on when he got into
+the hole, but he didn't. Either they were damaged in the fall, or
+Quade doesn't see fit to use them."</p>
+
+<p>"Half of them are enough," said Phil bitterly, and put his arm around
+the quiet girl standing next to him. Together, a silent little group,
+they watched the spot of orange die to a pin-point; watched it waver,
+twinkle, ever growing smaller.... And then it was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Gone! Back to the surface of the earth, to the normal world of
+reality. Only four miles above them&mdash;a small enough distance on the
+surface itself&mdash;and yet it might have been a million miles, so utterly
+were they barred from it....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he same thought was in their minds, though none of them dared express
+it. They were thinking of the serene desert, and the cool wind, and
+the buttes and the high hills, placid in the moonlight. Of the hushed
+rise of the dawn, the first flush of the sun that was so achingly
+lovely on the desert. The sun they would never see again, buried in a
+lifeless world of gloom four miles within.... And buried alive&mdash;and
+not alive for long....</p>
+
+<p>But that way lay madness. Phil Holmes drove the horrible thoughts from
+his brain and forced a smile to his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's that!" he said in a voice meant to be cheerful.</p>
+
+<p>The dim cavern echoed his words mockingly. With the earth-borer
+gone&mdash;the man-made machine that had dared break a solitude undisturbed
+since the earth first cooled&mdash;the great cavern seemed to return to its
+awful original mood. The three dwarfed humans became wholly conscious
+of it. They felt it almost a living thing, stretching vastly around
+them, tightening its unheard spell on them. Its smell, of mouldy earth
+and rocks down which water slowly dripped, filled their nostrils and
+somehow added to their fear.</p>
+
+<p>As they looked about, their eyes became accustomed to the dim, eery,
+phosphorescent illumination. They saw little worm-like creatures now
+and again appear from tiny holes between stalagmites in the jagged
+floor; and, as Phil wondered in his mind how long it would be before
+they would be reduced to using them for food, a strange mole-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>sized
+animal scraped from the darkness and pecked at one of them. As it
+slithered away, a writhing shape in its mouth, Holmes muttered
+bitterly: "A competitor!" Vague, flitting forms haunted the gloom
+among the stalactites of the distorted ceiling&mdash;hints of the things
+that lived in the terrible silence of this nether world. Here Time had
+paused, and life had halted in primate form.</p>
+
+<p>A little moan came from Sue Guinness's pale lips. She plucked at her
+arm; a sickly white worm, only an inch long, had fallen on it from the
+ceiling. "Oh!" she gasped. "Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>Phil drew her closer to him, and walked with her over to Quade's
+wrecked borer. "Let's see what we've got here," he suggested
+cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>The machine was over on its side, the metal mangled and crushed beyond
+repair. Nevertheless, he squeezed into it. "Stand back!" he warned.
+"I'm going to try its rockets!" There was a click of broken machinery,
+and that was all. "Rockets gone," Phil muttered.</p>
+
+<p>He pulled another lever over. There was a sputter from within the
+borer, then a furious roar that sent great echoes beating through the
+cavern. A cloud of dust reared up before the bottom of the machine,
+whipped madly for a moment, and sank as the bellow of sound died down.
+Sue saw that a rocky rise in the floor directly in front of the
+disintegrators had been planed off levelly.</p>
+
+<p>Phil scrambled out. "The disintegrators work," he said, "but a lot of
+good they do us. The borer's hopelessly cracked." He shrugged his
+shoulders, and with a discouraged gesture cast to the ground a coil of
+rope he had found inside.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly he swung around. "Professor!" he called to the old
+figure standing bowed beneath the hole in the ceiling. "There's a
+draft blowing from somewhere! Do you feel it?"</p>
+
+<p>Guinness felt with his hands a moment and nodded slowly. "Yes," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"It's coming from this way!" Sue said excitedly, pointing into the
+darkness on one side of the cavern. "And it goes up the hole we made
+in the ceiling!"</p>
+
+<p>Phil turned eagerly to the old inventor. "It must come from
+somewhere," he said, "and that somewhere may take us toward the
+surface. Let's follow it!"</p>
+
+<p>"We might as well," the other agreed wearily. His was the tone of a
+man who has only a certain time to live.</p>
+
+<p>But Phil was more eager. "While there's life, there's hope," he said
+cheerfully. "Come on, Sue, Professor!" And he led the way forward
+toward the dim, distorted rock shapes in the distance.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he roof and sides of the cavern angled down into a rough, tunnel-like
+opening, from which the draft swept. It was a heavy air, weighted with
+the smell of moist earth and lifeless water and a nameless, flat,
+stale gas. They slowly made their way through the impeding
+stalagmites, surrounded by a dark blur of shadows, the ghostly
+phosphorescent light illuminating well only the few rods around them.
+Utter silence brooded over the tunnel.</p>
+
+<p>Phil paused when they had gone about seventy-five feet. "I left that
+rope behind," he said, "and we may need it. I'll return and get it,
+and you both wait right here." With the words he turned and went back
+into the shadows.</p>
+
+<p>He went as fast as he could, not liking to leave the other two alone.
+But when he had retrieved the rope and tied it to his waist, he
+permitted himself a last look up as he passed under the hole in the
+ceiling&mdash;and what he saw there tensed every muscle in his body, and
+made his heart beat like mad. Again there was a tiny spot of orange in
+the blackness above!</p>
+
+<p>"Professor!" he yelled excitedly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> "Sue! Come here! The sphere's
+coming back!"</p>
+
+<p>There was no doubt about it. The pin-point of light was growing each
+second, with the flame of the descending exhausts. Guinness and his
+daughter ran from the tunnel, and, guided by Phil's excited
+ejaculations, hurried to his side. Their eyes confirmed what his had
+seen. The earth-borer was coming down!</p>
+
+<p>"But," Guinness said bewilderedly, "those rockets were enough to lift
+him!"</p>
+
+<p>This was a mystery. Even though ten rockets were on&mdash;ten tiny spots of
+orange flame&mdash;the sphere came down swiftly. The same force which some
+time before had lifted it slowly up was now insufficient. The roar of
+the tubes rose rapidly. "Get back!" Phil ordered, remembering the
+danger, and they all retreated to the mouth of the tunnel, ready to
+peep cautiously around the edge. Holmes' jaws were locked tight with
+grim resolution. Quade was coming back! he told himself exultantly.
+This time he must not go up alone! This time&mdash;!</p>
+
+<p>But his half-formed resolutions were idle. He could not know what
+frightful thing was bringing Quade down&mdash;what frightful experience was
+in store for them all....</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER IV</h4>
+<h4><i>Spawn of the Cavern</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>n a crescendo of noise that stunned their ears, the earth-borer came
+down. Tongues of fire flared from the hole, speared to the ground and
+were deflected upward, cradling the metal ball in a wave of flame.
+Through this fiery curtain the machine slowly lowered to the floor,
+where a shower of sparks spattered out, blinding the eyes of the
+watchers with their brilliance. For a full minute the orange-glowing
+sphere lay there, quivering from the vibration; then the exhausts died
+and the wave of flame wavered and sank into nothingness. While their
+ear-drums continued the thunder, the three stared at the borer, not
+daring to approach, yet striving to solve the mystery of why it had
+sunk despite the up-thrust of ten rocket tubes.</p>
+
+<p>As their eyes again became accustomed to the familiar phosphorescent
+illumination, pallid and cold after the fierce orange flame, they saw
+why&mdash;and their eyes went wide with surprise and horror.</p>
+
+<p>A strange mass was covering the top of the earth-borer&mdash;something that
+looked like a heap of viscid, whitish jelly. It was sprawled
+shapelessly over the round upper part of the metal sphere, a
+half-transparent, loathsome stuff, several feet thick in places.</p>
+
+<p>And Phil Holmes, striving to understand what it could be, saw an awful
+thing. "It's moving!" he whispered, unconsciously drawing Sue closer.
+"There's&mdash;there's life in it!"</p>
+
+<p>Lazy quiverings were running through the mound of jelly, pulsings that
+gave evidence of its low organism. They saw little ripples of even
+beat run over it, and under them steady, sluggish convulsions that
+told of life; that showed, perhaps, that the thing was hungry and
+preparing to move its body in quest of food.</p>
+
+<p>It was alive, unquestionably. The borer lay still, but this thing
+moved internally, of itself. It was life in its lowest, most primate
+form. The mass was mind, stomach, muscle and body all in one, stark
+and raw before their startled eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God!" Phil whispered through the long pause. "It can't be
+real!..."</p>
+
+<p>"Protoplasm&mdash;a monster amoeba," David Guinness's curiously cracked
+voice said. "Just as it exists on the surface, only microscopically.
+Primate life...."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he lock of the earth-borer clicked. Phil gasped. "Quade is coming
+out!" he said. A little cry of horror came from Sue. And the metal
+door opened.</p>
+
+<p>James Quade stepped through, auto<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>matic in hand. He was fresh from the
+light inside, and he could not see well. He was quite unconscious of
+what was oozing down on him from above, of the flabby heap that was
+carefully stretching down for him. He peered into the gloom, looking
+for the three he had deserted, and all the time an arm from the mass
+above crept nearer. Sue Guinness's nerves suddenly gave, and she
+shrieked; but Quade's ears were deaf from the borer's thunder, and he
+did not hear her.</p>
+
+<p>It was when he lifted one foot back into the sphere&mdash;probably to get
+out the searchlight&mdash;that he felt the thing's presence. He looked
+up&mdash;and a strange sound came from him. For seconds he apparently could
+not move, stark fear rooting him to the ground, the gun limp in his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Then a surge ran through the mound of flesh, and the arm, a pseudopod,
+reached more rapidly for him.</p>
+
+<p>It stung Quade into action. He leaped back, brought up his automatic,
+and fired at the thing once; then three times more. He, and each one
+of the others, saw four bullets thud into the heap of pallid matter
+and heard them clang on the metal of the sphere beneath. They had gone
+right through its flesh&mdash;but they showed no slightest effect!</p>
+
+<p>Quade was evidently unwilling to leave the sphere. Jerking his arm up
+he brought his trigger finger back again. A burst of three more shots
+barked through the cavern, echoing and re-echoing. The man screamed an
+inarticulate oath as he saw how useless his bullets were, and hurled
+the empty gun at the monster&mdash;which was down on the floor now, and
+bunching its sluggish body together.</p>
+
+<p>The automatic went right into it. They could all see it there, in the
+middle of the amorphous body, while the creature stopped, as if
+determining whether or not it was food. Quade screwed his courage
+together in the pause, and tried to dodge past to the door of the
+sphere; but the monster was alert: another pseudopod sprang out from
+its shapeless flesh, sending him back on his heels.</p>
+
+<p>The feeler had all but touched Quade, and with the closeness of his
+escape, the remnants of his courage gave. He yelled, and turned and
+ran.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e ran straight for the three who watched from the tunnel mouth, and
+the mound of shapeless jelly came fast on his trail. It came in
+surging rolls, like thick fluid oozing forward; it would have been
+hard to measure its size, for each moment it changed. The only
+impression the four humans had was that of a wave of half-transparent
+matter that one instant was a sticky ball of viscid flesh and the next
+a rapidly advancing crescent whose horns reached far out on each flank
+to cut off retreat.</p>
+
+<p>By instinct Phil jerked Sue around and yelled at the professor to run,
+for the old man seemed to be frozen into an attitude of fearful
+interest. Bullets would not stop the thing&mdash;could anything? Holmes
+wondered. He could visualize all too easily the death they would meet
+if that shapeless, naked protoplasmic mass overtook and flowed over
+them....</p>
+
+<p>But he wasted no time with such thoughts. They ran, all three, into
+the dark tunnel.</p>
+
+<p>Quade caught up with them quickly. Personal enmity was suspended
+before this common peril. They could not run at full speed, for a
+multitude of obstacles hindered them. Tortuous ridges of rock lay
+directly across their path, formations that had been whipped in some
+mad, eon-old convulsion and then, through the ages, remained frozen
+into their present distortion; black pits gaped suddenly before them;
+half-seen stalagmites, whose crystalline edges were razor-sharp, tore
+through to their flesh. Haste was perilous where every moment they
+might stumble into an unseen cleft and go pitching into awful depths
+below. They were staking everything on the draft that blew stead<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>ily
+in their faces; Phil told himself desperately that it must lead to
+some opening&mdash;it must!</p>
+
+<p>But what if the opening were a vertical, impassable tunnel? He would
+not think of that....</p>
+
+<p>Old David Guinness tired fast, and was already lagging in the rear
+when Quade gasped hoarsely:</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry! It's close behind!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>urging rapidly at a constant distance behind them, it came on. It was
+as fast as they were, and evidently untiring. It was in its own
+element; obstacles meant nothing to it. It oozed over the jagged
+ridges that took the humans precious moments to scramble past, and the
+speed of its weird progress seemed to increase as theirs faltered. It
+was a heartless mass driven inexorably by primal instinct towards the
+food that lay ahead. The dim phosphorescent illumination tinged its
+flabby tissues a weird white.</p>
+
+<p>The passage they stumbled through narrowed. Long irregular spears of
+stalactites hung from the unseen ceiling; others, the drippings of
+ages, pronged up from the floor, shredding their clothes as they
+jarred into them. One moment they were clambering up-hill, slipping on
+the damp rock; the next they were sliding down into unprobed darkness,
+reckless of where they would land. They were aware only that the
+water-odorous draft was still in their faces, and the hungry mound of
+flesh behind....</p>
+
+<p>"I can't last much longer!" old Guinness's winded voice gasped. "Best
+leave me behind. I&mdash;I might delay it!"</p>
+
+<p>For answer, Phil went back, grabbed him by the arm and dragged his
+tired body forward. He was snatching a glance behind to see how close
+the monster was, when Sue's frightened voice reached him from ahead.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a wall here, Phil&mdash;and no way through!"</p>
+
+<p>And then Holmes came to it. It barred the passage, and was apparently
+unbroken. Yet the draft still came!</p>
+
+<p>"Search for where the draft enters!" he yelled. "You take that side!"
+And he started feeling over the clammy, uneven surface, searching
+frantically for a cleft. It seemed to be hopeless. Quade stood staring
+back into the gloom, his eyes looking for what he knew was surging
+towards them. His face had gone sickly white, he was trembling as if
+with fever, and he sucked in air with long, racking gasps.</p>
+
+<p>"Here! I have it!" cried the girl suddenly at her end of the wall. The
+other three ran over, and saw, just above her head, a narrow rift in
+the rock, barely wide enough to squirm through. "Into it!" Phil
+ordered tersely. He grasped her, raised her high, and she wormed
+through. Quade scrambled to get in next, but Holmes shoved him aside
+and boosted the old man through. Then he helped the other.</p>
+
+<p>A second after he had swung himself up, a wave of whitish matter
+rolled up below, hungry pseudopods reaching for the food it knew was
+near. It began to trickle up the wall....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he crack was narrow and jagged; utterly black. Phil could hear Quade
+frantically worming himself ahead, and he wondered achingly if it
+would lead anywhere. Then a faint, clear voice from ahead rang out:</p>
+
+<p>"It's opening up!"</p>
+
+<p>Sue's voice! Phil breathed more easily. The next moment Quade
+scrambled through; dim light came; and they were in another vast,
+ghostly-lit cavern.</p>
+
+<p>The crack came out on its floor-level; Guinness was resting near, and
+his daughter had her hands on a large boulder of rock. "Let's shove it
+against the hole!" she suggested to Phil. "It might stop it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good, Sue, good!" he exclaimed, and at once all four of them strained
+at the chunk, putting forth every bit of strength they had. The
+boulder stirred, rolled over, and thudded neatly in front of the
+crack, almost completely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> sealing it. There was only a cleft of five
+inches on one side.</p>
+
+<p>But their expression of relief died in their throats. A tiny trickle
+of white appeared through the niche. The amorphous monster was
+compressing itself to a single stream, thin enough to squeeze through
+even that narrow space.</p>
+
+<p>They could not block it. They had nothing to attack it with. There was
+nothing to do but run.... And hope for a chance to double back....</p>
+
+<p>As nearly as they could make out, this second cavern was as large as
+the first. They could dimly see the fantastic shapes of hundreds of
+stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Clumps of stalagmites made the
+floor a maze which they threaded painfully. The strong steady draft
+guided them like a radio beacon, leading them to their only faint hope
+of escape and life. Guinness, very tired, staggered along
+mechanically, a heavy weight on Phil's supporting arm; James Quade ran
+here and there in frantic spurts of speed. Sue was silent, but the
+hopelessness in her eyes tortured Phil like a wound. His shirt had
+long since been ripped to shreds; his face, bruised in the first place
+by the borer he had crashed in, now was scratched and bloody from
+contact with rough stalagmites.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hen, without warning, they suddenly found among the rough walls on
+the far side of the cavern, the birthplace of the draft. It lay at the
+edge of the floor&mdash;a dark hole, very wide. Black, sinister and clammy
+from the draft that poured from it, it pierced vertically down into
+the very bowels of the earth. It was impassable.</p>
+
+<p>James Quade crumpled at the brink; "It's the end!" he moaned. "We
+can't go farther! It's the end of the draft!"</p>
+
+<p>The hole blocked their forward path completely. They could not go
+ahead.... In seconds, it seemed, the slithering that told of the
+monster's approach sounded from behind. Sue's eyes were already fixed
+on the awful, surging mass when a voice off to one side yelled:</p>
+
+<p>"Here! Quick!"</p>
+
+<p>It was Phil Holmes. He had been scouting through the gloom, and had
+found something.</p>
+
+<p>The other three ran to him. "There's another draft going through
+here," he explained rapidly, pointing to an angled crevice in the
+rocky wall. "There's a good chance it goes to the cavern where the
+sphere and the hole to the surface are. Anyway, we've got to take it.
+I'd better go first, after this&mdash;and you, Quade, last. I trust you
+less than the monster behind."</p>
+
+<p>He turned and edged into the crack, and the others followed as he had
+ordered. Quickly the passageway broadened, and they found the going
+much easier than it had been before. For perhaps ten minutes they
+scrambled along, with the draft always on their backs and the blessed,
+though faint, fire of hope kindling again. In all that time they did
+not see their pursuer once, and the hope that they had lost it brought
+a measure of much needed optimism to drive their tired bodies onward.
+They found but few time-wasting obstacles. If only the tunnel would
+continue right into the original cavern! If only their path would stay
+clear and unhindered!</p>
+
+<p>But it did not. The sound of Phil's footsteps ahead stopped, and when
+Sue and her father came up they saw why.</p>
+
+<p>"A river!" Phil said.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hey were standing on a narrow ledge that overhung an underground
+river. A fetid smell of age-old, lifeless water rose from it. Dimly,
+at least fifty feet across, they could see the other side, shrouded in
+vague shadows. The inky stream beneath did not seem to move at all,
+but remained smooth and hard and thick-looking.</p>
+
+<p>They could not go around it. The ledge was only a few feet wide, and
+blocked at each side.</p>
+
+<p>"Got to cross!" Phil said tersely.</p>
+
+<p>Quade, sickly-faced, stared down.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> "There&mdash;there might be other things
+in that water!" he gasped. "Monsters!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," agreed Phil contemptuously. "You'd better stay here." He
+turned to the others. "I'll see how deep it is," he said, and without
+the faintest hesitation dove flatly in.</p>
+
+<p>Oily ripples washed back, and they saw his head poke through,
+sputtering. "Not deep," he said. "Chest-high. Come on."</p>
+
+<p>He reached for Sue, helped her down, and did the same for her father.
+Holding each by the hand, Sue's head barely above the water, he
+started across. They had not gone more than twenty feet when they
+heard Quade, left on the bank, give a hoarse yell of fear and dive
+into the water. Their dread pursuer had caught up with them.</p>
+
+<p>And it followed&mdash;on the water! Phil had hoped it would not be able to
+cross, but once more the thing's astounding adaptability dashed his
+hopes. Without hesitation, the whitish jelly sprawled out over the
+water, rolling after them with ghastly, snake-like ripples, its pallid
+body standing out gruesomely against the black, odorous tide.</p>
+
+<p>Quade came up thrashing madly, some feet to the side of the other
+three. He was swimming&mdash;and swimming with such strength that he
+quickly left them behind. He would be across before they; and that
+meant there was a good chance that the earth-borer would go up again
+with only one passenger....</p>
+
+<p>Phil fought against the water, pulling Sue and her father forward as
+best he could. From behind came the rippling sound of their shapeless
+pursuer. "Ten feet more&mdash;" Holmes began&mdash;then abruptly stopped.</p>
+
+<p>There had been a swish, a ripple upstream. And as their heads turned
+they saw the water part and a black head, long, evil, glistening,
+pointing coldly down to where they were struggling towards the shore.
+Phil Holmes felt his strength ooze out. He heard Professor Guinness
+gasp:</p>
+
+<p>"A water-snake!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ts head was reared above the surface, gliding down on them silently,
+leaving a wedge of long, sluggish ripples behind. When thirty feet
+away the glistening head dipped under, and a great half-circle of
+leg-thick body arched out. It was like an oily stream of curved cable;
+then it ended in a pointed tail&mdash;and the creature was entirely under
+water....</p>
+
+<p>With desperate strength Phil hauled the girl to the bank and, standing
+in several feet of water, pushed her up. Then he whirled and yanked
+old Guinness past him up into the hands of his daughter. With them
+safe, and Sue reaching out her hand for him, he began to scramble up
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>But he was too late. There was a swish in the water behind him, and
+toothless, hard-gummed jaws clamped tight over one leg and drew him
+back and under. And with the touch of the creature's mouth a stiff
+shock jolted him; his body went numb; his arms flopped limply down. He
+was paralyzed.</p>
+
+<p>Sue Guinness cried out. Her father stared helplessly at the spot where
+his young partner had disappeared with so little commotion.</p>
+
+<p>"It was an eel," he muttered dully. "Some kind of electric eel...."</p>
+
+<p>Phil dimly realized the same thing. A moment later his face broke the
+surface, but he could not cry out; he could not move his little
+finger. Only his involuntary muscles kept working&mdash;his heart and his
+lungs. He found he could control his breathing a little.... And then
+he was wondering why he was remaining motionless on the surface.
+Gradually he came to understand.</p>
+
+<p>He had not felt it, but the eel had let go its hold on his leg, and
+had disappeared. But only for a moment. Suddenly, from somewhere near,
+its gleaming body writhed crazily, and a terrific twist of its tail
+hit Phil a glancing blow on the chest. He was swept under, and the
+water around him became a maelstrom. When next he bobbed to the
+tumultuous surface, he man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>aged to get a much-needed breath of
+air&mdash;and in the swirling currents glimpsed the long, snake-like head
+of the eel go shooting by, with thin trickles of stuff that looked
+like white jelly clinging to it.</p>
+
+<p>That explained what was happening. The eel had been challenged by the
+ameboid monster, and they were fighting for possession of him&mdash;the
+common prey.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he water became an inferno of whipping and lashing movements, of
+whitish fibers and spearing thrusts of a glistening black electric
+body. Unquestionably the eel was using its numbing electric shock on
+its foe. Time and time again Phil felt the amoeba grasp him,
+searingly, only to be wrenched free by the force of the currents the
+combat stirred up. Once he thudded into the bottom of the river, and
+his lungs seemed about to burst before he was again shot to the top
+and managed to get a breath. At last the water quieted somewhat, and
+Phil, at the surface, saw the eel bury its head in a now apathetic
+mound of flesh.</p>
+
+<p>It tore a portion loose with savage jaws, a portion that still writhed
+after it was separated from the parent mass; and then the victor
+glided swiftly downstream, and disappeared under the surface....</p>
+
+<p>Holmes floated helplessly on the inky water. He could see the amoeba
+plainly; it was still partly paralyzed, for it was very still. But
+then a faint tremor ran through it; a wave ran over its surface&mdash;and
+it moved slowly towards him once again.</p>
+
+<p>Desperately Phil tried to retreat. The will was there, but the body
+would not work. Save for a feeble flutter of his hands and feet, he
+could not move. He could not even turn around to bid Sue and David
+Guinness good-by&mdash;with his eyes....</p>
+
+<p>Then a fresh, loved voice sounded just behind him, and he felt
+something tighten around his waist.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, dear!" the voice called. "Hang on; we'll get you
+out!"</p>
+
+<p>Sue had come in after him! She had grasped the rope tied to his belt,
+and she and her father were pulling him back to the bank!</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to tell her to go back&mdash;the amoeba was only feet away&mdash;but
+he could only manage a little croak. And then he was safe up on the
+ledge at the other side of the river.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp; surge of strength filled his limbs, and he knew the shock was
+rapidly wearing off. But it was also wearing off of the monster in the
+water. Its speed increased; the ripplings of its amorphous
+body-substance became quicker, more excited. It came on steadily.</p>
+
+<p>While it came, the girl and her father worked desperately over Phil,
+massaging his body and pulling him further up the bank. It had all but
+reached the bank when Holmes gasped:</p>
+
+<p>"I think I can walk now. Where&mdash;where did Quade go to?"</p>
+
+<p>Guinness gestured over to the right, up a dim winding passage through
+the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we must follow&mdash;fast!" Phil said, staggering to his feet. "He
+may get to the sphere first; he'll go up by himself even yet! I'm all
+right!"</p>
+
+<p>Despite his words, he could not run, and could only command an awkward
+walk. Sue lifted one of his arms around her shoulder, and her father
+took the other, and without a backward glance they labored ahead. But
+Phil's strength quickly returned, and they raised the pace until they
+had broken once more into a stumbling run.</p>
+
+<p>How far ahead James Quade was, they did not know, but obviously they
+could follow where he had gone. Once again the draft was strong on
+their backs. They felt sure they were on the last stretch, headed for
+the earth-borer. But, unless they could overtake Quade, he would be
+there first. They had no illusions about what that would mean....<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER V</h4>
+<h4><i>A Death More Hideous</i></h4>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_q.jpg" alt="Q" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+<p>uade was there first.</p>
+
+<p>When they burst out of a narrow crevice, not far from the
+funnel-shaped opening they had originally entered, they saw him
+standing beside the open door of the sphere as if waiting. The
+searchlight inside was still on, and in its shaft of light they could
+see that he was smiling thinly, once more his old, confident self. It
+would only take him a second to jump in, slam the door and lock it. He
+could afford a last gesture....</p>
+
+<p>The three stopped short. They saw something he did not.</p>
+
+<p>"So!" he observed in his familiar, mocking voice. He paused, seeing
+that they did not come on. He had plenty of time.</p>
+
+<p>He said something else, but the two men and the girl did not hear what
+it was. As if by a magnet their eyes were held by what was hanging
+above him, clinging to the lip of the hole the sphere had made in the
+ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>It was an amoeba, another of those single-celled, protoplasmic mounds
+of flesh. It had evidently come down through the hole; and now it was
+stretching, rubber-like, lower and lower, a living, reaching
+stalactite of whitish hunger.</p>
+
+<p>Quade was all unconscious of it. His final words reached Phil's
+consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"... And this time, of course, I will keep the top disintegrators on.
+No other monster will then be able to weigh me down!"</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders and turned to the door. And that movement
+was the signal that brought his doom. Without a sound, the poised mass
+above dropped.</p>
+
+<p>James Quade never knew what hit him. The heap of whitish jelly fell
+squarely. There was a brief moment of frantic lashing, of tortured
+struggles&mdash;then only tiny ripples running through the monster as it
+fed.</p>
+
+<p>Sue Guinness turned her head. But the two men for some reason could
+not take their eyes away....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was the girl's voice that jerked them back to reality. "The other!"
+she gasped. "It's coming, behind!"</p>
+
+<p>They had completely forgotten the mass in the tunnel. Turning, they
+saw that it was only fifteen feet away and approaching fast, and
+instinctively they ran out into the cavern, skirting the sphere
+widely. When they came to Quade's wrecked borer Phil, who had snatched
+a glance behind, dragged them down behind it. For he had seen their
+pursuer abandon the chase and go to share in the meal of its fellow.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd best not get too far away," he whispered. "When they leave the
+front of the borer, maybe we can make a dash for it."</p>
+
+<p>For minutes that went like hours the young man watched, waiting for
+the creatures to be done, hoping that they would go away. Fortunately
+the sphere lay between, and he was not forced to see too much. Only
+one portion of one of the monsters was visible, lapping out from
+behind the machine....</p>
+
+<p>At last his body tensed, and he gripped Sue and her father's arm in
+quick warning. The things were leaving the sphere. Or, rather, only
+one was. For Phil saw that they had agglutenated&mdash;merged into
+oneness&mdash;and now the monster that remained was the sum of the sizes of
+the original two. And more....</p>
+
+<p>They all watched. And they all saw the amoeba stop, hesitate for a
+moment&mdash;and come straight for the wrecked borer behind which they were
+hidden.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn!" Phil whispered hoarsely. "It's still hungry&mdash;and it's after
+us!"</p>
+
+<p>David Guinness sighed wearily. "It's heavy and sluggish, now," he
+said, "so maybe if we run again.... Though I don't know how I can last
+any longer...."</p>
+
+<p>Holmes did not answer. His eyes were narrowed; he was casting about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+desperately for a plan. He hardly felt Sue's light touch on his arm as
+she whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"In case, Phil&mdash;in case.... This must be good-by...."</p>
+
+<p>But the young man turned to her with gleaming eyes. "Good-by,
+nothing!" he cried. "We've still got a card to play!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he stared at him, wondering if he had cracked from the strain of what
+he had passed through. But his next words assured her he had not. "Go
+back, Sue," he said levelly. "Go far back. We'll win through this
+yet."</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated, then obeyed. She crept back from the wrecked borer,
+back into the dim rear, eyes on Phil and the sluggish mass that moved
+inexorably towards him. When she had gone fifteen or twenty yards she
+paused, and watched the two men anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>Phil was talking swiftly to Professor Guinness. His voice was low and
+level, and though she could not hear the words she could catch the
+tone of assurance that ran through them. She saw her father nod his
+head, and he seemed to make the gesture with vigor. "I will," she
+heard him say; and he slapped Phil on the back, adding: "But for God's
+sake, be careful!"</p>
+
+<p>And with these words the old man wormed inside Quade's wrecked borer
+and was gone from the girl's sight.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted desperately to run forward and learn what Phil intended to
+do, but she restrained herself and obeyed his order. She waited, and
+watched; and saw the young man stand up, look at the slowly advancing
+monster&mdash;and deliberately walk right into its path!</p>
+
+<p>Sue could not move from her fright. In a daze she saw Phil advance
+cautiously towards the amoeba and pause when within five feet of it.
+The thing stopped; remained absolutely motionless. She saw him take
+another short step forward. This time a pseudopod emerged, and reached
+slowly out for him. Phil avoided it easily, but by so narrow a margin
+that the girl's heart stopped beating. Then she saw him step back;
+and, snail-like, the creature followed, pausing twice, as if wary and
+suspicious. Slowly Phil Holmes drew it after him.</p>
+
+<p>To Sue, who did not know what was his plan, it seemed a deliberate
+invitation to death. She forgot about her father, lying inside the
+mangled borer, waiting. She did not see that Phil was leading the
+monster directly in front of it....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was a grotesque, silent pursuit. The creature appeared to be
+unalert; its movements were sloth-like; yet the girl knew that if Phil
+once ventured an inch too close, or slipped, or tried to dodge past it
+to the sphere, its torpidness would vanish and it would have him. His
+maneuvering had to be delicate, judged to a matter of inches. Tense
+with the suspense, the strain of the slow-paced seconds, she
+watched&mdash;and yet hardly dared to watch, fearful of the awful thing she
+might see.</p>
+
+<p>It was a fantastic game of tag her lover was playing, with death the
+penalty for tardiness. The slow, enticing movements were repeated
+again and again, Phil advancing very close, and stepping back in the
+nick of time. Always he barely avoided the clutching white arms that
+were extended, and little by little he decoyed the thing onward....</p>
+
+<p>Then came the end. As Holmes was almost in front of the wrecked
+machine, Sue saw him glance quickly aside&mdash;and, as if waiting for that
+moment when he would be off guard, the monster whipped forward in a
+great, reaching surge.</p>
+
+<p>Sue's ragged nerves cracked: she shrieked. They had him! She started
+forward, then halted abruptly. With a tremendous leap, Phil Holmes had
+wrenched free and flung himself backwards. She heard his yell:</p>
+
+<p>"Now!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>here was a sputter from the bottom of the outstretched borer; then,
+like the crack of a whip, came a bellow of awful sound.</p>
+
+<p>A thick cloud of dust reared up, and the ear-numbing thunder rolled
+through the cavern in great pulsing echoes. And then Sue Guinness
+understood what the young man had been about.</p>
+
+<p>The disintegrators of James Quade's borer had sent a broad beam of
+annihilation into the monster. His own machine had destroyed his
+destroyer&mdash;and given his intended victims their only chance to escape
+from the dread fate he had schemed for them.</p>
+
+<p>Sue could see no trace of the creature in its pyre of slow-swirling
+dust. Caught squarely, its annihilation had been utter. And then,
+through the thunder that still echoed in her ear-drums, she heard a
+joyful voice.</p>
+
+<p>"We got 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>Through the dusty haze Phil appeared at her side. He flung his arms up
+exultantly, swept her off the ground, hugged her close.</p>
+
+<p>"We got 'em!" he cried again. "We're free&mdash;free to go up!"</p>
+
+<p>Professor David Guinness crawled from the borer. His face, for the
+first time since the descent, wore a broad smile. Phil ran over to
+him, slapped him on the back; and the older man said:</p>
+
+<p>"You did it beautifully, Phil." He turned to Sue. "He had to decoy
+them right in front of the disintegrators. It was&mdash;well, it was
+magnificent!"</p>
+
+<p>"All credit to Sue: she was my inspiration!" Phil said, laughing. "But
+now," he added, "let's see if we can fix those dead rocket-tubes. I
+have a patient up above&mdash;and, anyway, I'm not over-fond of this
+place!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he three had won through. They had blasted four miles down from the
+surface of the earth. The brain of an elderly scientist, the
+quick-witted courage of a young engineer, had achieved the seemingly
+impossible&mdash;and against obstacles that could not have been predicted.
+Death had attended that achievement, as death often does accompany
+great forward steps; James Quade had gone to a death more hideous than
+that he devised for the others. But, in spite of the justice of it, a
+moment of silence fell on the three survivors as they came to the spot
+where his fate at last had caught up to him.</p>
+
+<p>But it was only a moment. It was relieved by Professor Guinness's
+picking up the chunk of radium ore his former partner had hewn from
+the cavern's wall. He held it up for all to see, and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is," he said simply.</p>
+
+<p>Then he led the way into his earth-borer, and the little door closed
+quietly and firmly into place.</p>
+
+<p>For a few minutes slight tappings came from within, as if a wrench or
+a screwdriver were being used. Then the tappings stopped, and all was
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>A choke, a starting cough, came from beneath the sphere. A torrent of
+rushing sound burst out, and spears of orange flame spurted from the
+bottom and splashed up its sides, bathing it in fierce, brilliant
+light. It stirred. Then, slowly and smoothly, the great ball of metal
+raised up.</p>
+
+<p>It hit the edge of the hole in the ceiling, and hung there,
+hesitating. Side-rockets flared, and the sphere angled over. Then it
+slid, roaring, through the hole.</p>
+
+<p>Swiftly the spots of orange from its rocket-tube exhausts died to
+pin-points. There were now almost twenty of them. And soon these
+pin-points wavered, and vanished utterly.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was only blackness in the hole that went up to the surface.
+Blackness in the hole, calm night on the desert above&mdash;and silence, as
+if the cavern were brooding on the puny figures and strange machines
+that had for the first time dared invade its solitude, in the realms
+four miles within the earth....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image_010.jpg" width="500" height="566" alt="The monster emanated power, sinister, malevolent
+power." title="" />
+<span class="caption">The monster emanated power, sinister, malevolent
+power.</span>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="The_Lake_of_Light" id="The_Lake_of_Light"></a>The Lake of Light</h2>
+
+<h3><i>By Jack Williamson</i></h3>
+<div class="sidenote">In the frozen wastes at the bottom of the world two
+explorers find a strange pool of white fire&mdash;and have a strange
+adventure.</div>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he roar of the motor rang loud in the frosty air above a desert of
+ice. The sky above us was a deep purple-blue; the red sun hung like a
+crimson eye low in the north. Three thousand feet below, through a
+hazy blue mist of wind-whipped, frozen vapor, was the rugged
+wilderness of black ice-peaks and blizzard-carved hummocks of snow&mdash;a
+grim, undulating waste, black and yellow, splotched with crystal
+white. The icy wind howled dismally through the struts. We were flying
+above the weird ice-moun<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>tains of the Enderby quadrant of Antarctica.</p>
+
+<p>That was a perilous flight, across the blizzard-whipped bottom of the
+world. In all the years of polar exploration by air, since Byrd's
+memorable flights, this area had never been crossed. The intrepid
+Britisher, Major Meriden, with the daring American aviatrix whom the
+world had known as Mildred Cross before she married him, had flown
+into it nineteen years before&mdash;and like many others they had never
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>Faintly, above the purring drone of the motor, I heard Ray Summers'
+shout. I drew my gaze from the desolate plateau of ice below and
+leaned forward. His lean, fur-hooded face was turned back toward me. A
+mittened hand was pointing, and thin lips moved in words that I did
+not hear above the roar of the engine and the scream of the wind.</p>
+
+<p>I turned and looked out to the right, past the shimmering silver disk
+of the propeller. Under the blue haze of ice-crystals in the air, the
+ice lay away in a vast undulating plain of black and yellow, broken
+with splotches of prismatic whiteness, lying away in frozen desolation
+to the rim of the cold violet sky. Rising against that sky I saw a
+curious thing.</p>
+
+<p>It was a mountain of fire!</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the desert of ice, a great conical peak pointed straight into
+the amethystine gloom of the polar heavens. It was brilliantly white,
+a finger of milky fire, a sharp cone of pure light. It shone with
+white radiance. It was brighter, far brighter, than is the sacred cone
+of Fujiyama in the vivid day of Japan.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>or many minutes I stared in wonder at it. Far away it was; it looked
+very small. It was like a little heap of light poured from the hand of
+a fire-god. What it might be, I could not imagine. At first sight, I
+imagined it might be a volcano with streams of incandescent lava
+flowing down the side. I knew that this continent of mystery boasted
+Mt. Erebus and other active craters. But there was none of the smoke
+or lurid yellow flame which accompanies volcanic eruptions.</p>
+
+<p>I was still watching it, and wondering, when the catastrophe took
+place&mdash;the catastrophe which hurled us into a mad extravaganza of
+amazing adventure.</p>
+
+<p>Our little two-place amphibian was flying smoothly, through air
+unusually good for this continent of storms. The twelve cylinders of
+the motor had been firing regularly since we took off from Byrd's old
+station at Little America fifteen hours before. We had crossed the
+pole in safety. It looked as if we might succeed in this attempt to
+penetrate the last white spot on the map. Then it Happened.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden crack of snapping metal rang out sharp as a pistol report. A
+bright blade of metal flashed past the wing-struts, to fall in a
+flashing arc. The motor broke abruptly into a mad, deep-voiced roar.
+Terrific vibration shook the ship, until I feared that it would go to
+pieces.</p>
+
+<p>Ray Summers, with his usual quick efficiency, cut the throttle.
+Quickly the motor slowed to idling speed; the vibration stopped. A
+last cough of the engine, and there was no sound save the shrill
+screaming of the wind in the gloomy twilight of this unknown land
+beyond the pole.</p>
+
+<p>"What in the devil!" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"The prop! See!" Ray pointed ahead.</p>
+
+<p>I looked, and the dreadful truth flashed upon me. The steel propeller
+was gone, or half of it at least. One blade was broken off at a jagged
+line just above the hub.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_t1.jpg" alt="T" width="64" height="54" /></div>
+
+<p>he propeller! What made it break? I've never heard&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Search me!" Ray grinned. "The important thing is that it did. It was
+all-metal, of course, tested and guaranteed. The guarantee isn't worth
+much here. A flaw in the forging, perhaps, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> escaped detection.
+And this low temperature. Makes metal as brittle as glass. And the
+thing may have been crystallized by the vibration."</p>
+
+<p>The plane was coming down in a shallow glide. I looked out at the grim
+expanse of black ice-crags and glistening snow below us, and it was
+far from a comforting prospect. But I had a huge amount of confidence
+in Ray Summers. I have known him since the day he appeared, from his
+father's great Arizona ranch, to be a freshman in the School of Mines
+at El Paso, where I was then an instructor in geology. We have knocked
+about queer corners of the world together for a good many years. But
+he is still but a great boy, with the bluff, simple manners of the
+West.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think we can land?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Looks like we've got to," he said, grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"And what after that?"</p>
+
+<p>"How should I know? We have the sledge, tent, furs. Food, and fuel for
+the primus to last a week. There's the rifle, but it must be a
+thousand miles to anything to shoot. We can do our best."</p>
+
+<p>"We should have had an extra prop."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. But it was so many pounds, when every pound counted. And
+who knew the thing would break?"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll never get out on a week's provisions."</p>
+
+<p>"Not a shot! Too bad to disappoint Captain Harper." Ray grinned wanly.
+"He ought to have the <i>Albatross</i> around there by this time, waiting
+for us." The <i>Albatross</i> was the ship which had left us at Little
+America a few months before, to steam around and pick us up at our
+destination beyond Enderby Land. "We're in the same boat with Major
+Meriden and his wife&mdash;and all those others. Lost without a trace."</p>
+
+<p>"You've read Scott's diary&mdash;that he wrote after he visited the pole in
+1912&mdash;the one they found with the bodies?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Not altogether cheerful. But we won't be trying to get out. No
+use of that." He looked at me suddenly, grinning again. "Say, Jim, why
+not try for that shining mountain we saw? It looks queer enough to be
+interesting. We ought to make it in a week."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm with you," I said.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;did not speak again, for the jagged ice-peaks were coming rather
+near. I held my breath as the little plane veered around a slender
+black spire and dropped toward a tiny scrap of smooth snow among the
+ice-hummocks. I might have spared my anxiety. Under Ray's consumately
+skilful piloting, the skids struck the snow with hardly a shock. We
+glided swiftly over the ice and came to rest just short of a yawning
+crevasse.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose," said Ray, "that we spend the first night in the plane. We
+are tired already. We can keep warm here, and sleep. We've plenty of
+ice to melt for water. Then we're off for the shining mountain."</p>
+
+<p>I agreed: Ray Summers is usually right. We got out the sledge, packed
+it, took our bearings, and made all preparations for a start to the
+luminous mountain, which was about a hundred miles away. The
+thermometer stood at twenty below, but we were comfortable enough in
+our furs as we ate a scanty supper and went to sleep in the cabin of
+the plane.</p>
+
+<p>We started promptly the next morning, after draining the last of the
+hot chocolate from our vacuum bottles, which we left behind. We had a
+light but powerful sporting rifle, with telescopic sights, and several
+hundred rounds of ammunition. Ray put them in the pack, though I
+insisted that we would never need them, unless a quick way out of our
+predicament.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Jim," he said. "We take 'em along. We don't know what we're going
+to find at the shining mountain."</p>
+
+<p>The air was bitterly cold as we set out: it was twenty-five below and
+a sharp wind was blowing. Only our toiling at the sledge kept us warm.
+We<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> covered eighteen miles that day, and made a good camp in the lee
+of a bare stone ridge.</p>
+
+<p>That night there was a slight fall of snow. When we went on it was
+nearly thirty-five degrees below zero. The layer of fresh snow
+concealed irregularities in the ice, making our pulling very hard.
+After an exhausting day we had made hardly fifteen miles.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_o.jpg" alt="O" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>n the following day the sky was covered with gray clouds, and a
+bitterly cold wind blew. We should have remained in the tent, but the
+shortage of food made it imperative that we keep moving. We felt
+immensely better after a reckless, generous fill of hot pemmican stew;
+but the next morning my feet were so painful from frost-bite that I
+could hardly get on my fur boots.</p>
+
+<p>Walking was very painful to me that day, but we made a good distance,
+having come to smoother ice. Ray was very kind in caring for me. I
+became discouraged about going on at all: it was very painful, and I
+knew there was no hope of getting out. I tried to get some of our
+morphine tablets, but Ray had them, and refused to be convinced that
+he ought to go on without me.</p>
+
+<p>On the next march we came in sight of the luminous mountain, which
+cheered me considerably. It was a curious thing, indeed. A
+straight-sided cone of light it was, rather steeper than the average
+volcano. Its point was sharp, its sides smooth as if cut with a
+mammoth plane. And it shone with a pure white light, with a steady and
+unchanging milky radiance. It rose out of the black and dull yellow of
+the ice wilderness like a white finger of hope.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning it was a little warmer. Ray had been caring for my
+feet very attentively, but it took me nearly two hours to get on my
+footgear. Again I tried to get him to leave me, but he refused.</p>
+
+<p>We arrived at the base of the shining mountain in three more marches.
+On the last night the fuel for the primus was all gone, having been
+used up during the very cold weather, and we were unable to melt water
+to drink. We munched the last of our pemmican dry.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;few minutes after we had started on the last morning, Ray stopped
+suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at that!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>I saw what he had seen&mdash;the wreck of an airplane, the wings crumpled
+up and blackened with fire. We limped up to it.</p>
+
+<p>"A Harley biplane!" Ray exclaimed. "That is Major Meriden's ship! And
+look at that wing! It looks like it's been in an electric furnace!"</p>
+
+<p>I examined the metal wing; saw that it had been blackened with heat.
+The metal was fused and twisted.</p>
+
+<p>"I've seen a good many wrecks, Jim. I've seen planes that burned as
+they fell. But nothing like that. The fuselage and engines were not
+even afire. Jim, something struck out from that shining mountain and
+brought them down!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are they&mdash;" I began.</p>
+
+<p>Ray was poking about in the snow in the cockpits.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Not here. Probably would have been better for them if they had
+been killed in the plane. Quick and merciful."</p>
+
+<p>He examined the engines and propellers.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Seems to be nothing wrong. Something struck them down!"</p>
+
+<p>Soon we went on.</p>
+
+<p>The shining mountain rose before us like a great cone of fire. It must
+have been three thousand feet high, and about that in diameter at the
+bottom. Its walls were as smooth and straight as though turned from
+milky rock crystal in a gigantic lathe. It shone with a steady,
+brilliantly white radiance.</p>
+
+<p>"That's no natural hill!" Ray grunted beside me as we limped on.</p>
+
+<p>We were less than a mile from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> foot of the cone of fire. Soon we
+observed another remarkable thing about it. It seemed that a straight
+band of silvery metal rose from the snow about its foot.</p>
+
+<p>"Has it a wall around it?" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently," said Ray. "Looks as if it's built on a round metal
+platform. But by whom? When? Why?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e approached the curious wall. It was of a white metal, apparently
+aluminum, or a silvery alloy of that metal. In places it was
+twenty-five feet high, but more usually the snow and ice was banked
+high against it. The smooth white wall of the gleaming mountain stood
+several hundred yards back from the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's have a look over it." Ray suggested. "We can get up on that
+hummock, against it. You know, this place must have been built by
+men!"</p>
+
+<p>We clambered up over the ice, as he suggested, until our heads came
+above the top of the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"A lake of fire!" cried Ray.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, a lake of liquid fire lay before us. The white aluminum wall
+was hardly a foot thick. It formed a great circular tank, nearly a
+mile across, with the cone of white fire rising in the center. And the
+tank was filled, to within a foot of the top, with shimmeringly
+brilliant white fluid, bright and luminous as the cone&mdash;liquid light!</p>
+
+<p>Ray dipped a hand into it. The hand came up with fingers of fire,
+radiant, gleaming, with shining drops falling from them. With a
+spasmodic effort, he flung off the luminous drops, rubbed his hand on
+his garments, and got it back into its fur mitten.</p>
+
+<p>"Gee, it's cold!" he muttered. "Freeze the horns off a brass
+billy-goat!"</p>
+
+<p>"Cold light!" I exclaimed. "What wouldn't a bottle of that stuff be
+worth to a chemist back in the States!"</p>
+
+<p>"That cone must be a factory to make the stuff." Ray suggested,
+hugging his hand. "They might pump the liquid up to the top, and then
+let it trickle down over the sides: that would explain why the cone is
+so bright. The stuff might absorb sunlight, like barium sulphide. And
+there could be chemical action with the air, under the actinic rays."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if somebody's making cold light, where does he use it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to find out, and strike him for a hot meal," Ray said,
+grinning. "It's too cold to live on top of the ground around here.
+They must run it down in a cave."</p>
+
+<p>"Then let's find the hole."</p>
+
+<p>"You know it's possible we won't be welcome. This mountain of light
+may be connected with the vanishing of all the aviators. We'd better
+take along the rifle."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e set off around just outside the white metal wall. The snow and ice
+was irregularly banked against it, but the wall itself was smooth and
+unbroken. We had limped along for some two miles, or more than halfway
+around the amazing lake of light. I had begun to doubt that we would
+find anything.</p>
+
+<p>Then we came to a square metal tower, ten feet on a side, that rose
+just outside the silvery wall, to a level with its top. The ice was
+low here; the tower rose twenty feet above its unequal surface. We
+found metal flanges riveted to its side, like the steps of a ladder.
+They were most inconveniently placed, nearly four feet apart; but we
+were able to climb them, and to look down the shaft.</p>
+
+<p>It was a straight-sided pit, evidently some hundreds of feet deep. We
+could see a tiny square of light at the bottom, very far away. The
+flanges ran down the side forming the rungs of a ladder that gave
+access to whatever lay at the bottom.</p>
+
+<p>Without hesitation, Ray climbed over the side and started down. I
+followed him, feeling a great relief in getting out of the freezing
+wind. Ray<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> had the rifle and ammunition strapped to his back, along
+with a few other articles; and I had a small pack. We had abandoned
+the sledge, with the useless stove and the most of our instruments.
+Our food was all gone.</p>
+
+<p>The metal flanges were fully four feet apart, and it was not easy to
+scramble down from one to another; certainly not easy for one who was
+cold, hungry, thirsty, worn out with a week of exhausting marches, and
+suffering the torture of frozen feet.</p>
+
+<p>"You know, this thing was not built by men," Ray observed.</p>
+
+<p>"Not built by men? What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Men would have put the steps closer together. Jim, I'm afraid we are
+up against something&mdash;well&mdash;that we aren't used to."</p>
+
+<p>"If men didn't build this, what did?" I was astounded.</p>
+
+<p>"Search me! This continent has been cut off from the rest of the world
+for geologic ages. Such life as has been found here is not common to
+the rest of the earth. It is not impossible that some form of life,
+isolated here, has developed intelligence and acquired the power to
+erect that cone of light&mdash;and to burn the wing off a metal airplane."</p>
+
+<p>My thoughts whirled madly as we clambered down the shaft.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t must have taken us an hour to reach the bottom. I did not count the
+steps, but it must have been at least a thousand feet. The air grew
+rapidly warmer as we descended. We both took off most of our heavy fur
+garments, and left them hanging on the rungs.</p>
+
+<p>I was rather nervous. I felt the nearness of an intelligent, hostile
+power. I had a great fear that the owners of those steps would use
+them to find us, and then crush us ruthlessly as they had brought down
+Meriden's plane.</p>
+
+<p>The little square of white light below grew larger. Finally I saw Ray
+swing off and stand on his feet in a flood of white radiance below me.
+The air was warm, moist, laden with a subtle unfamiliar fragrance that
+suggested growing things. Then I stood beside Ray.</p>
+
+<p>We stood on the bare stone floor of a huge cavern. It must have been
+of volcanic origin. The walls glistened with the sparkling smoothness
+of volcanic glass. It was a huge space. The black roof was a hundred
+feet high, or more; the cave was some hundreds of feet wide. And it
+sloped away from us into dim distance as though leading into huger
+cavities below.</p>
+
+<p>The light that shone upon us came from an amazing thing&mdash;a fall of
+liquid fire. From the roof plunged a sheer torrent of white
+brilliantly luminous fluid, falling a hundred feet into a shimmering
+pool of moon-flame. Shining opalescent mists swirled about it, and the
+ceaseless roar of it filled the cave with sound. It seemed that a
+stream of the phosphorescent stuff ran off down the cave from the
+pool, to light the lower caverns.</p>
+
+<p>"Very clever!" said Ray. "They make the stuff up there at the cone and
+run it in here to see by."</p>
+
+<p>"This warm air feels mighty good," I remarked, pulling off another
+garment.</p>
+
+<p>Ray sniffed the air. "A curious odor. Smells like something growing.
+Where anything is growing there ought to be something to eat. Let's
+see what we can find."</p>
+
+<p>Only black obsidian covered the floor about us. Cautiously we skirted
+the overflowing pool of white fire, and followed down the stream of it
+that flowed toward the inner cavern. We had gone but a few hundred
+yards when suddenly Ray stopped me with a hand on my arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Lie flat!" he hissed. "Quick!"</p>
+
+<p>He dived behind a huge mass of fire-born granite. I flung myself down
+beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"Something is coming up the trail by the shining river. And it isn't a
+man!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> It's between us and the light; we should be able to see it."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>oon I heard a curious scraping sound, and a little tinkle of metal. I
+caught a whiff of a powerful odor&mdash;a strange, fishy odor&mdash;so strong
+that it almost knocked me down.</p>
+
+<p>The thing that made the scraping and the tinkle and the smell came
+into view. The sight of it sickened me with horror.</p>
+
+<p>It was far larger than a man; its body was heavy as a horse's, but
+nearer the ground. In form it suggested a huge crab, though it was not
+very much like any crustacean I had ever seen. It was mostly red in
+color, and covered with a huge scarlet shell. It had five pairs of
+limbs. The two forward pairs had pinchers, seemingly used as hands; it
+scraped along on the other three pairs. Yard-long antennae, slender
+and luminously green, wavered above a grotesque head. The many facets
+of compound eyes stood on the end of foot-long stalks.</p>
+
+<p>The amazing crab-thing wore a metal harness. Bands of silvery aluminum
+were fastened about its shell, with little cases of white metal
+dangling to them. In one of its uplifted claws it carried what seemed
+to be an aluminum bar, two feet long and an inch thick.</p>
+
+<p>It scraped lumberingly past, between us and the racing stream of white
+fire. It passed less than a dozen feet from us. The curious fishy
+smell of it was overpowering, disgusting.</p>
+
+<p>Sweat of horror chilled my limbs. The monster emanated power,
+sinister, malevolent power, power intelligent, alien and hostile to
+man.</p>
+
+<p>I trembled with the fear that it would see us, but it scrambled
+grotesquely on. When it was twenty yards past, Ray picked up a block
+of black lava that lay beneath his hand and hurled it silently and
+swiftly. It crashed splinteringly on the rocks far beyond the
+creature, on the other side of the stream of light.</p>
+
+<p>In fascination I watched the monster as it paused as if astonished.
+The glittering compound eyes twisted about on their stalks, and the
+long shining green tentacles wavered questioningly. Then the knobbed
+limbs snapped the white metal tube to a level position. A metallic
+click came from it.</p>
+
+<p>And a ray of red light, vivid and intense, burst from the tube. It
+flashed across the river of fire. With a dull, thudding burst it
+struck the rocks where the stone had fallen. It must have been a ray
+of concentrated heat. Rocks beneath it flashed into sudden
+incandescence, splintered and cracked, flowed in molten streams.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>n a moment the intensely brilliant ruby ray flashed off. The rocks in
+the circle where it had struck faded to a dull red and then to
+blackness, still cracking and crumbling.</p>
+
+<p>To my intense relief, the monstrous crab lumbered on.</p>
+
+<p>"That," Ray whispered, "is what got Major Meriden's airplane wing."</p>
+
+<p>When we could hear its scraping progress no longer, we climbed up from
+behind our boulder and continued cautiously down the cavern, beside
+the rushing luminous river. In half a mile we came to a bend. Rounding
+it, we gazed upon a remarkable sight.</p>
+
+<p>We looked into a huge cavity in the heart of the earth. A vast
+underground plain lay before us, with the black lava of the roof
+arching above it. It must have been miles across, though we had no way
+to measure it, and it stretched down into dim hazy distance. Its level
+was hundreds of feet below us.</p>
+
+<p>At our feet the glistening river of fire plunged down again in a
+magnificent flaming fall. Below, its luminous liquid was spread out in
+rivers and lakes and canals, over all the vast plain. The channels ran
+through an amazing jungle. It was a forest of fungus, of mushroom
+things with great fleshy stalks and spreading circular tops. But they
+were not the sickly white and yellow of ordinary mushrooms, but were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+of brilliant colors, bright green, flaming scarlet, gold and
+purple-blue. Huge brilliant yellow stalks, fringed with crimson and
+black, lifted mauve tops thirty feet or more. It was a veritable
+forest of flame-bright fungus.</p>
+
+<p>In the center of this weirdly forested subterranean plain was a great
+lake, filled, not with the flaming liquid, but with dark crystal
+water. And on the bottom of that lake, clearly visible from the
+elevation upon which we stood, was a city!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;city below the water! The buildings were upright cylinders in groups
+of two or three, of dozens, even of hundreds. For miles, the bottom of
+the great lake was covered with them. They were all of crystal,
+azure-blue, brilliant as cylinders turned from immense sapphires. They
+were vividly visible beneath the transparent water. Not one of them
+broke the surface.</p>
+
+<p>Through the clear black water we saw moving hundreds, thousands of the
+giant crabs. The crawled over the hard, pebbled bottom of the lake, or
+swam between the crystal cylinders of the city. They were huge as the
+one we had seen, with red shells, great ominous looking stalked eyes,
+luminous green tentacular antennae and knobbed claws on forelimbs.</p>
+
+<p>"Looks as if we've run on something to write home about," Ray muttered
+in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"A whole city of them! A whole world! No wonder they could build that
+cone-mountain for a lighting plant!"</p>
+
+<p>"When they got to knocking down airplanes with that heat-ray," he
+speculated, "they were probably surprised to find that other animals
+had developed intelligence."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you suppose those mushroom things are good to eat?"</p>
+
+<p>"We can try and see&mdash;if the crabs don't get us first with a heat-ray.
+I'm hungry enough to try anything!"</p>
+
+<p>Again we cautiously advanced. The river of light fell over a sheer
+precipice, but we found a metal ladder spiked to the rock, with rungs
+as inconveniently far apart as those in the shaft. It was five hundred
+feet, I suppose, to the bottom; it took us many minutes to descend.</p>
+
+<p>At last we stepped off in a little rocky clearing. The forest of
+brilliant mushrooms rose about us, great fleshy stalks of gold and
+graceful fringes of black and scarlet about them, with flattened heads
+of purple.</p>
+
+<p>We started eagerly across toward the fungoid forest. I had visions of
+tearing off great pieces of soft, golden flesh and filling my aching
+stomach with it.</p>
+
+<p>We were stopped by a sharp, poignantly eager human cry.</p>
+
+<p>A human being, a girl, darted from among the mushroom stalks and ran
+across to us. Sobbing out great incoherent cries, she dropped at Ray's
+feet, wrapped her arms about his knees and clung to him, while her
+slender body was wracked with sobbing cries.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>y first impression was that she was very beautiful&mdash;and that
+impression I was never called upon to revise. About her lithe young
+body she had the merest scrap of some curious green fabric&mdash;ample in
+the warm air of the great cavern. Luxuriant brown hair fell loose
+about her white shoulders. She was not quite twenty years old, I
+supposed; her body was superbly formed, with the graceful curves and
+the free, smooth movements of a wild thing.</p>
+
+<p>Ray stood motionless for a moment, thunder-struck as I was, while the
+sobbing girl clung to his knees. Then the astonishment on his face
+gave place to pity.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor kid!" he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>He bent, took her tenderly by the shoulder, helped her to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>Her beauty burst upon us like a great light. Smoothly white, her skin
+was, perfect. Wide blue eyes, now appeal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>ing, even piteous, looked
+from beneath a wealth of golden brown hair. White teeth, straight and
+even, flashed behind the natural crimson of her lips.</p>
+
+<p>She stood staring at Ray, in a sort of enchantment of wonder. An eager
+light of incredible joy flamed in her amazing eyes; red lips were
+parted in an unconscious smile of joy. She looked like the troubled
+princess in the fairy tale, when the prince of her dreams appeared in
+the flesh.</p>
+
+<p>"God, but you're beautiful!" Ray's words slipped out as if he were
+hardly conscious of them. He flushed quickly, stepped back a little.</p>
+
+<p>The girl's lips opened. She voiced a curious cry. It was deep toned,
+pealing with a wonderful timbre. A happy burst of sound, like a baby
+makes. But strong, ringing, musically golden. And pathetically eager,
+pitifully glad, so that it brought tears to my eyes, cynical old man
+that I am.</p>
+
+<p>I saw Ray wipe his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you talk?" Ray put the question in a clear, deliberate voice,
+with great kindness ringing in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Talk?" The chiming, golden voice was slow, uncertain. "Talk? Yes. I
+talked&mdash;with mother. But for long&mdash;I have had no need to talk."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is your mother?" Ray's voice was gentle.</p>
+
+<p>"She is gone. She was here when I was little." The clear, silvery
+voice was more certain now. "Once, when I was almost as big as
+she&mdash;she was still. She was cold. She did not move when I called her.
+The Things took her away. She was dead. She told me that sometime she
+would be dead."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>right tears came in the wide blue eyes, trickled down over the
+perfect face. A pathetic catch was in the deliberate, halting voice. I
+turned away, and Ray put a handkerchief to his face.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your name? Who are you?" Ray spoke kindly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am Mildred. Mildred Meriden."</p>
+
+<p>"Meriden!" Ray turned to me. "I bet this is a daughter of the major
+and his wife!"</p>
+
+<p>"Father was the major," the girl said slowly. "He and mother came in a
+machine that flew, from a far land. The Things burned the machine with
+the red fire. They came here and the Things kept them. They made
+mother sing over the water. They killed father. I never saw him."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," Ray, said gently. "We came from the same land. We saw your
+father's machine above."</p>
+
+<p>"You came from outside! And you are going back? Oh, take me with you!
+Take me!" Piteous pleading was in her voice. "It is so&mdash;lonely since
+the Things took Mother away. Mother told me that sometime men would
+come, and take me away to see the people and the outside that she told
+me of. Oh, please take me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry! You go along whenever we leave&mdash;if we can get out."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am so glad! You are very good!"</p>
+
+<p>Impulsively, she threw her arms around Ray's neck. Gently, he
+disengaged himself, flushing a little. I noticed, however, that he did
+not seem particularly displeased.</p>
+
+<p>"But can we get out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mother and I tried. We could never get out. The Things watch. They
+make me come to the water to sing, when the great bell rings."</p>
+
+<p>"Are these things goods to eat?" I motioned to the brilliant fungal
+forest. I had begun to fear that Ray would never get to this very
+important topic.</p>
+
+<p>Blue eyes regarded me. "Eat? Oh, you are hungry! Come! I have food."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ike a child, she grasped Ray's hand, pulled him toward the mushroom
+jungle. I followed, and we slipped in between the brilliantly golden,
+fleshy stalks. They rose to the tangle of bright feathery fringes
+above, huge and substantial as the trunks of trees.</p>
+
+<p>In a few minutes we came to a wide, shallow canal, metal-walled,
+through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> which a slow current of the opalescent, luminous liquid was
+flowing. We crossed this on a narrow metal foot-bridge, and went on
+through the brilliant forest.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly we emerged into a little clearing, with the black waters of
+the great lake visible beyond it, across a quarter-mile of rocky
+beach. In the middle of the open space, rose three straight cylinders
+of azure crystal, side by side. Each must have been twenty feet in
+diameter, and forty high. They shone with a clear blue light, like the
+cylindrical buildings we had seen in the strange city of the
+crab-creatures below the great lake.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred Meriden, the strangely beautiful girl who had known no other
+world than this amazing cavern empire where giant crabs reigned,
+beckoned us with unconscious queenly grace to enter the arched door in
+the blue sapphire wall of her remarkable abode of clustered cylinders.</p>
+
+<p>The crystal of the walls seemed luminous, the lofty cylinders were
+filled with a liquid, azure radiance. The high round room we entered
+was strangely furnished. There was a silken couch, a bathing pool of
+blue crystal filled with sparkling water, a curious chest of drawers
+made of bright aluminum with a mirror of polished crystal, its top
+bearing odd combs and other articles. The furnishings must have been
+done by the giant crabs, under human direction.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred led us quickly across the room, through an arched opening into
+another. A round aluminum table stood in the center of the room, with
+two curious metal chairs beside it. Odd metal cabinets stood about the
+shining blue walls. The girl made us sit down, and put dishes before
+us.</p>
+
+<p>She gave us each a bowl of thick, sweetish soup, darkly red; placed
+before us a dish piled high with little circular cakes, crisp and
+brown, which had a tantalizing fragrance; poured for each of us a
+transparent crystal goblet full of clear amber drink.</p>
+
+<p>We fell to with enthusiasm and abandon.</p>
+
+<p>"The Things made this place for father," the girl told us, as she
+watched us eat, attentively replenishing the red soup in the great
+blue crystal bowl, or the little cakes, or the fragrant amber drink.
+"They would give him anything he wanted. But he tried to go away with
+mother, and they killed him."</p>
+
+<p>"We must get out of here," Ray declared when at last we had done. "We
+must get together a lot of food, and enough clothing for all of us. We
+ought to be able to make it to the edge of the ice-pack. We've got to
+give these crab-things the slip; we ought to get off before they know
+we're here&mdash;unless they already do."</p>
+
+<p>Mildred was eagerly attentive: she was so unused to human speech that
+it took the best of her efforts to understand us, though it seems that
+her mother had given her quite a wide education. She promised that
+there would be no difficulty about the food.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother taught me how to fix food," she said. "She always said that
+sometime men would come, with weapons of fire and great noise that
+would tear and kill the Things. I have food ready, in bags&mdash;more than
+we can carry. I have, too, the furs that mother and father wore."</p>
+
+<p>She ran into another room and returned with a great pile of fur
+garments, which we examined and found to be in good condition.</p>
+
+<p>"Now is the time," Ray said. "I'd like to know more about the big
+crabs, but there'll be a chance for that, later. Mildred is the
+important thing, now. We must get her out. Then we can tell the world
+about this place and come back with a bigger expedition."</p>
+
+<p>"You think we can reach the coast?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think so. It might be hard on Mildred. But we will have food; we
+can probably find fuel for the stove in Meriden's plane, if the tanks
+were well sealed. And Captain Harper should have a relief party landed
+and sent to meet us. We should have only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> three or four hundred miles
+to go alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Three or four hundred miles, over country like we've been crossing in
+the last week, with a girl! Ray, we'd never make it!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's the only chance."</p>
+
+<p>I said nothing more. I knew that I could stand no such march on my
+frozen feet, but I resolved to say nothing about it. I would help them
+as far as I could, and then walk out of camp some night. Men have done
+just that.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred brought out sacks of the little cakes, and of a red powder
+that seemed to be the dried and ground flesh of a crimson mushroom. We
+made a pack for each of us, as heavy as we could carry.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ust before we were ready to start Ray took off my footgear and
+treated my feet from his medicine kit. I had feared gangrene, but he
+assured me that there was no danger if they were well cared for.
+Walking was still exquisitely painful to me as we slipped out through
+the arched door and into the fungoid forest beyond the three blue
+cylinders.</p>
+
+<p>As rapidly and silently as possible we hastened through the brilliant
+fungous forest, across the river of opalescent liquid, to the foot of
+the fall of fire. A weird and splendid sight was that sheer arc of
+shimmering white flame, roaring into a pool of opal light, and
+surrounded with a mist of moon-flame.</p>
+
+<p>We reached the foot of the metal ladder spiked to the rocks beside the
+fall and started up immediately. The going was not easy. The packs of
+food, heavy enough when we were on level ground, were difficult indeed
+to lift when one was scrambling up over rungs four feet apart.</p>
+
+<p>Ray climbed ahead, with a piece of rope fastened from his waist to
+Mildred's, so that he could help her if she slipped. I was below the
+girl. We were halfway up the rock when suddenly a glare of red light
+shone upon me, casting my shadow sharply on the cliff. I looked up
+and saw the broad, intensely red beam of a heat-ray like that we had
+seen the giant crab use.</p>
+
+<p>The ray came, evidently, from the shore of the great lake with its
+submerged city of blue cylinders. It fell upon the face of the cliff
+just above us. Quickly the ladder was heated to cherry red. The face
+of the rock grew incandescent, cracked. Hot sparks rained down upon
+us.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the ray moved down, toward us.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess we'd better call it off," said Ray. "They have the advantage
+right now. Better get to climbing down, Jim. This ladder is going to
+be burning my hands pretty soon."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;climbed down. Mildred and Ray scrambled down behind me.</p>
+
+<p>The ray followed us, keeping the metal at a cherry red just above
+Ray's hands.</p>
+
+<p>I looked down and saw a dozen of the giant crabs lumbering up out of
+the fungoid jungle from the direction of the great lake. Hideous
+things they were, with staring, stalked eyes, shining green antennae,
+polished red shells, claw-armed limbs. Like the one that had passed us
+in the upper cavern, they wore glistening white metal accoutrements.</p>
+
+<p>We clambered down, with the red ray following.</p>
+
+<p>I dropped to the ground among them, wet with the sweat of horror. I
+reeled in nausea from the intolerable odor of the crab-things; it was
+indescribable, overpowering.</p>
+
+<p>Curious rasping stridulations came from them, sounds which seemed to
+serve as means of communication, and which Mildred evidently
+understood.</p>
+
+<p>"They say that you will not be harmed, but that you must not go out,"
+she called down.</p>
+
+<p>I was seized by the pincher-like claws, held writhing in an
+unbreakable grasp, while the glittering eyes twisted about, looked at
+me, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> shining green tentacles wavered questioningly over me. My
+stomach revolted at the horrible odor.</p>
+
+<p>The crabs tore off my pack, even my clothing. Ray was similarly
+treated as soon as he reached the ground. Though they took Mildred's
+pack, they treated her with a curious respect.</p>
+
+<p>In a few minutes they released us. They had taken the packs, the rifle
+and ammunition, our medicine kit and the few instruments we had
+brought with us down the shaft, even our clothing. They turned us
+loose stark naked. Ray's face and neck went beet-red when he saw
+Mildred standing by him.</p>
+
+<p>The rasping sound came from one of them again.</p>
+
+<p>"It says you may stay with me," Mildred said. "They will not harm you
+unless you try again to get away. If you do, you die&mdash;as father did.
+They will keep what they took from you."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>everal of the creatures went scraping off, carrying the articles they
+had taken from us either in their claws or in the metal cases they
+wore. Several waited, staring at us with the stalked compound eyes,
+and waving the green antennae as if they were organs of some special
+sense.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the creatures waited at the foot of the metal ladder, holding
+the long slender white tubes of the heat-ray in their claws.</p>
+
+<p>"They say we can go now," Mildred said.</p>
+
+<p>She led the way toward the edge of the brilliant jungle. She seemed to
+be without false modesty, for I saw her glancing with evident
+admiration at Ray's lithe and powerful white-skinned figure. We
+followed her into the giant mushrooms, glad to escape the overpowering
+stench of the crabs.</p>
+
+<p>In a few minutes we arrived again at the strange building of the three
+blue cylinders. Mildred, noticing our discomfort, produced for each of
+us a piece of white silken fabric with which we draped ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>She had noticed my difficulty in walking on bare feet. She had me
+bathe them, then dressed them with a soothing yellow oil, and bandaged
+them skilfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow," she said later, "it is good to have both of you here with
+me. I am sorry indeed for you that you may never see your country
+again. But it is good fortune for me. I was so lonely."</p>
+
+<p>"These damned crabs don't know me!" Ray Summers muttered. "They think
+I'll play around like a pet kitten, for the rest of my life! They'll
+get their eyes opened. We'll spend the winter on Palm Beach yet!"</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me that we're rather outnumbered." I said. "And it's
+rather more pleasant in here than outside."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to get that rifle," Ray declared, "and give these big crabs
+a little respect for humanity!"</p>
+
+<p>"Let's rest up a while first, anyhow," I urged.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_p.jpg" alt="P" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>resently Mildred noticed how tired we were. She went into the third
+of the connected cylinders of blue crystal, was busy a few minutes and
+called us to the couches she had prepared there.</p>
+
+<p>"You may sleep," she told us. "The Things never come here. And they
+said they would not harm you, if you did not try to go out."</p>
+
+<p>We lay down on the silken beds. In a few minutes I was sleep. I awoke
+to feel a curious unease, a sense of impending catastrophe. Ray was
+bending over me, his face drawn with anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"Something's happened!" he whispered. "She's gone!"</p>
+
+<p>I sat up, staring into the liquid blue vastness of the tall cylinder
+above us.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen! What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>A deep bell-note sounded out, brazen, clanging. Sonorous, throbbing,
+mighty, it rang through the cylindered rooms. Slowly it died; faded to
+silence with a last ringing pulse. Tense minutes of silence passed.
+Again it boomed out, throbbed, and died. After more long minutes there
+was yet a third.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Outside, somewhere!"</p>
+
+<p>Ray started; ran to the arched door. We looked out upon the dense
+forest of gold and crimson mushrooms that grew below the black cavern
+roof. Before us, across a few hundred yards of bare rocky beach, was
+the edge of the crystal lake with the city of blue cylinders upon its
+floor.</p>
+
+<p>"God! What's that?" Ray gripped my arm crushingly.</p>
+
+<p>A thin wailing scream came across the beach from the black lake. A
+piteous sound it was, plaintive, pleading. Higher and higher it rose,
+until it was a piercing silver note. Clear and sweet it was, but
+inexpressibly lonely, sorrowful, mournful. It sank slowly, died away.
+Again it rose and fell, and again.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Mildred!" I gasped. "Didn't she say something about singing to
+the crabs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! I think she did. Well, if that's singing, it's wonderful! Had me
+feeling like I'd never see another human. But listen&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>iquid, trilling notes were rising, pealing out in a queer, swift
+rhythm. It was happy, joyous, carefree. The rippling golden tones made
+me think of the caroling of birds on a spring morning. Swiftly it rose
+and fell, pure and clear as the tinkle of a mountain brook.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred sang not words but notes of pure music.</p>
+
+<p>The gay song died.</p>
+
+<p>And the strong clear voice rose again with the force and challenge of
+bugle notes, with a swift marching time beating through it. It
+throbbed to a rhythm strange to me. It set my feet tingling to move;
+it set my heart to pulsing faster. It was a challenge to action, to
+battle.</p>
+
+<p>Unconsciously obeying the suggestion of the song, Ray whispered,
+"Let's get over and see what's going on."</p>
+
+<p>We leaped through the door and ran across four hundred yards of rocky
+beach to the edge of the lake. We stepped on a granite bluff a few
+yards above the water, to gaze upon as strange a sight as men ever
+saw.</p>
+
+<p>The black water lay before us, a transparent crystal sheet. On its
+rocky bottom we could see the innumerable clusters of upright azure
+cylinders that were the city of the crabs. The blue cylinders seemed
+to bend and waver in the water.</p>
+
+<p>A hundred yards away from us, over the dark water, was Mildred. She
+stood on a slender azure cylinder that came just to the surface. Tall,
+slender, superbly graceful, with only the scant bodice of green silken
+stuff about her, she looked like the statue of a goddess in white
+marble. Her head was thrown up, golden-brown hair fell behind her
+shoulders, and the pure notes of her song rang over the water.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond her, all about her, were thousands upon thousands of the giant
+crabs, swimming at the surface of the water. Their green antenna rose
+above the water, a curious forest of luminous tentacles, flexing,
+wavering. Green coils moved and swung in time to the strange rhythm of
+her song.</p>
+
+<p>The last note died. Her white arms fell in a gesture of finality. The
+thousands of twisting green antennae vanished below the water, and the
+giant red crabs swam swiftly back to the tall blue cylinders of their
+submerged city.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he white goddess turned and saw us.</p>
+
+<p>Her voice rang out in a golden shout of welcome. With a clean dive she
+slipped into the water and came swimming swiftly toward us. Her slim
+white body glided through the crystal water as smoothly as a fish.
+Reaching the shore she sprang to her feet and ran to meet Ray.</p>
+
+<p>"The Things come together when the giant bell rings, to listen to my
+song," she said. "They like my singing, as they liked mother's. But
+for that, they would not let us live. That is the reason they would
+not let us go."</p>
+
+<p>"I like your singing, too," Ray in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>formed her. "Though at first you
+made me cry. It was so lonely."</p>
+
+<p>"The song was lonely because I have been lonely. Did you hear the glad
+song I sang because you have come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure! Great stuff! Made me feel like a kid at Christmas!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come," she said. "We will eat."</p>
+
+<p>Like a child, she took Ray's hand again, smiling naively up at him as
+she led the way toward the three sapphire cylinders.</p>
+
+<p>Back in the blue-vaulted dining room, Ray made Mildred sit with me at
+the little metal table while he served the little brown cakes and the
+dark-red soup and the fragrant amber drink. Mildred got up and brought
+a great metal bowl filled with tiny purple fruits that had a
+delicious, piquant tang.</p>
+
+<p>Ray was deeply thoughtful as he ate. Suddenly he sat back and cried
+out:</p>
+
+<p>"I've got it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Got what?" I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I want that rifle! Mildred can find out where it is. Then, when she
+sings, the crabs will all come. I'll get the gun, while she is
+singing, and hide it. Then when it comes time to get out, she will
+sing while you and I are getting our packs up the cliff. I can cover
+them with the rifle while she gets up to us."</p>
+
+<p>"Looks good enough," I agreed, "provided they all come to hear the
+singing."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e explained the plan at greater length to the girl. She assured him
+that the crabs all come when the bell-notes sound. She thought that
+she could make them return her furs, and find out where they had put
+the gun.</p>
+
+<p>My feet were much better than they had been, and Mildred dressed them
+again with the yellow oil. Ray examined them, said that I should be
+able to walk as well as ever in a few days.</p>
+
+<p>Considerable time went by. Since the crabs had taken our watches, we
+had no very accurate way of counting days; but I think we slept about
+a dozen times. Ray and Mildred spent a good deal of time together, and
+seemed not altogether to hate each other. By the end of the time my
+feet were quite well; I did not even lose a toe.</p>
+
+<p>We went over our plans for escape in great detail. The crabs had
+confiscated our clothing. Mildred managed to secure the return of her
+furs, and, incidentally, while she was about it, learned where the
+rifle was.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, perhaps realizing that it would be ruined by water, the
+crabs had not taken it to their submerged city. Being amphibious, they
+lived above water as easily as below, and much of their industrial
+equipment was above the surface. The great pumps which lifted the
+white phosphorescent liquid from the canals back to the cone above the
+ground were located beyond the great lake. I did not see the place,
+but Ray tells me that they had great engines and a wealth of strange
+and complex machinery there. It was at these pumps that they had left
+our rifle and instruments, as Mildred found when she was recovering
+her furs.</p>
+
+<p>They had taken our food, and we prepared as much more as we could
+carry, arranged sacks for it, and made quilted garments for ourselves.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hen the three brazen notes clanged out, and Mildred ran across the
+beach and swam out to the blue cylinder to sing. Ray slipped hurriedly
+away, while the green forest of antennae was still growing up from the
+water about the girl.</p>
+
+<p>I waited above the beach, enchanted by the haunting, wordless melody
+of the gongs. It seemed that only a few minutes had passed, though it
+may have been an hour or more, when Ray was by my side again. He
+flourished the rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got it! In good shape, too. Hasn't even been fired, though it
+looks like they have opened a box of cartridges, and cut open one or
+two.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> Maybe they didn't understand the outfit&mdash;or it may be such a
+primitive weapon that they aren't interested in it."</p>
+
+<p>We hurried up to the building of blue cylinders and carefully hid the
+gun and ammunition, as well as a sun compass, a pair of prism
+binoculars, and a few other articles Ray had recovered.</p>
+
+<p>In a few minutes Mildred, having seen Ray's return, finished her song
+and ran up to join us. We arranged our packs, and waited the next call
+of the throbbing brazen gong to make the attempt for freedom.</p>
+
+<p>We slept twice again before the clang of the great gong. Ray and
+Mildred were always together; I could not see that they were at all
+impatient.</p>
+
+<p>The bell note came, the awful brazen vibration of it ringing on the
+black cavern roof. It came when we were eating, in the liquid
+turquoise radiance of the lofty cylinder. We sprang out. Ray gave his
+last directions to Mildred.</p>
+
+<p>"Give us time to get to the top of the cliff by the shining fall. Then
+swim ashore and run. They may not notice. And if they do, we give 'em
+a taste of lead!"</p>
+
+<p>I was not very much surprised when he took the girl in his arms and
+put a burning kiss on her red lips. She gasped, but her struggles
+subsided very quickly; she clung to him as he freed her.</p>
+
+<p>She paused a moment in the door, before she ran down across the beach.
+A radiant light of joy was burning in her great blue eyes, even though
+tears were glistening there.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_r.jpg" alt="R" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ay and I waited, to give time for the giant crabs that guarded the
+ladder to get away. In about ten more minutes the second brazen gong
+sounded, and presently the third. We gathered up the heavy packs of
+food. Ray took the rifle and I the binoculars, and we slipped out into
+the brilliant mushroom forest.</p>
+
+<p>I stepped confidently out of the jungle into the clearing below the
+splendid opalescent fall of fire&mdash;and threw myself backward in
+trembling panic. A flaming crimson ray cut hissing into the towering
+mushrooms above my head.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred's confidence that the crabs would all gather at the ringing of
+the gong had been mistaken. The two guards had been waiting at the
+foot of the ladder, their flaming heat-rays ready for use.</p>
+
+<p>As I dived back into the jungle, I heard two quick reports of the
+rifle. I scrambled awkwardly to my feet, beneath the heavy pack. Ray
+stood alert beside me, the smoking rifle in his hand. The giant crabs
+had collapsed by the foot of the ladder, in grotesque and hideous
+metal-bound heaps of red shell and twisted limb. Blood was oozing from
+a ragged hole in the head of each.</p>
+
+<p>"Glad they were here," Ray muttered. "I wanted to try the gun out on
+'em. They're soft enough beneath the shell; the bullet tears 'em up
+inside. Let's get a move on!"</p>
+
+<p>He sprang past the revolting carcasses. I followed, holding my nose
+against their nauseating, charnel-house odor. We scrambled up the
+metal ladder.</p>
+
+<p>As we climbed, I could hear the haunting melody of Mildred's wordless
+song coming faint across the distance. Once I glanced back for a
+moment, and glimpsed her tiny white figure above the black water, with
+the thousands of green antennae rising in a luminous forest about her.</p>
+
+<p>We reached the top of the cliff, where the opalescent river plunged
+down in the flaming fall. Ray chose convenient boulders for shelter
+and quickly we flung ourselves flat. Ray replaced the fired cartridges
+in the rifle and leveled it across the rock before him. I unslung the
+binoculars and focussed them.</p>
+
+<p>"Watch 'em close," Ray muttered. "And tell me when to shoot."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he black lake lay below us, with the weird city of sapphire cylinders
+on its floor. I got the glasses upon Mildred's white form. Soon she
+dived from the turquoise pedestal, swam swiftly ashore and vanished in
+the vivid fungous jungle. The wavering green antennae vanished below
+the water; I watched the crabs swimming away. Some of them climbed out
+of the water and lumbered off in various directions.</p>
+
+<p>In fifteen minutes the slender white form of Mildred appeared at the
+foot of the ladder. She sprang over the dead crabs and scrambled
+nimbly up. Soon she was halfway up the face of the cliff, and there
+had been no sign of discovery. My hopes ran high.</p>
+
+<p>I was sweeping the whole plain with the binoculars, while Ray peered
+through the telescopic sights of the rifle. Suddenly I saw a giant
+crab pause as he lumbered along the edge of the black lake. He rose
+upright; his shining green antennae wavered. Then I saw him reaching
+with a knobbed claw for a slender silver tube slung to his harness.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick! The one by the lake! To the right of that canal!"</p>
+
+<p>I pointed quickly. Ray swung his gun about, aimed. A broad red beam
+flashed from the tube the thing carried, and fell upon the cliff. The
+report of Ray's rifle rang thunderously in my ears. The red ray was
+snapped off abruptly, and the giant crab rolled over into the black
+water of the lake. Half a dozen of the huge crabs were in sight. They
+all took alarm, probably having seen the flash of the red ray. They
+raised grotesque heads, twisted stalked eyes and waved green antennae.
+Some of them began to raise the metal tubes of the heat-ray.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's get all there are in sight!" Ray muttered.</p>
+
+<p>He began firing regularly, with deliberate precision. A few times he
+had to take two shots, but ordinarily one was enough to bring down a
+giant crab in a writhing red mass. Three times a red ray flashed out,
+once at the girl clambering up the ladder, twice at our position above
+the precipice. But the intense color of the ray announced its source,
+and Ray stopped each before it could be focussed to do damage.</p>
+
+<p>I looked over at Mildred and saw that she was still climbing bravely,
+a little over a hundred feet below.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hen the great red crabs began to climb out of the water, heat-ray
+tubes grasped in their claws. Ray fired as fast as he could load and
+aim. Still he shot with deliberate care, and almost every shot was
+effective.</p>
+
+<p>Intense, ruby-red rays flashed up from the lake shore. Twice, one of
+them beat scorchingly upon us for a moment. Once a rock beside us was
+fused and cracked with the heat. But Ray fired rapidly, and the rays
+winked out as fast as they were born.</p>
+
+<p>He was powder-stained, black and grimy. The heat-ray had singed his
+clothing. He was dripping perspiration. The gun was so hot that he
+could hardly handle it. But still the angry bark of the rifle rang
+out, almost with a deliberate rhythm. Ray was a fine shot in his youth
+on his father's Arizona ranch, but his best shooting, I think, was
+done from above that cascade of liquid fire, at the hordes of monster
+scarlet crabs.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred scrambled over the edge, unharmed. Her breast was heaving, but
+her face was bright with joy.</p>
+
+<p>"You are wonderful!" she gasped to Ray.</p>
+
+<p>We seized the packs and beat a hurried retreat. A crimson forest of
+the heat-rays flashed up behind us, and flamed upon the black walls
+and roof of the cavern until glistening lava became incandescent,
+cracked and fused.</p>
+
+<p>We were below the line of the rays. Quickly we made the bend in the
+cavern and followed at a halting run up the path beside the shimmering
+river of opalescent light. Before us the torrent of fire fell in a
+magnificent flaming arc from the roof.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We rounded the pool of lambent milk of flame, passed the roaring
+torrent of coruscating liquid radiance and reached the ladder in the
+square, metal shaft. "If we can get to the top before they can get up
+here, we're safe," Ray said. "If we don't, this shaft will be a
+chimney of fire."</p>
+
+<p>In the haste of desperation, we attacked the thousand-foot climb. I
+went first, Mildred below me, and Ray, with the rifle, in the rear.
+Our heavy packs were a terrible impediment, but we dared not attempt
+to go on without them. The metal rungs were four feet apart; it was no
+easy task to scramble from one to the next, again and again, for
+hundreds of times.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t must have taken us an hour to make it. We should have been caught
+long before we reached the top, but the giant crabs were slow in their
+lumbering movements. Despite their evident intelligence, they seemed
+to lack anything like our railways and automobiles.</p>
+
+<p>The cold gray light of the polar sky came about us; a dull,
+purple-blue square grew larger above. I clambered over the last rung,
+flung myself across the top of the metal shaft. Looking down at the
+tiny fleck of white light so far below, I saw a bit of red move in it.</p>
+
+<p>"A crab!" I shouted. "Hurry!"</p>
+
+<p>Mildred was just below me. I took her pack and helped her over the
+edge.</p>
+
+<p>Red flame flared up the shaft.</p>
+
+<p>We reached over, seized Ray's arms and fairly jerked him out of the
+ruby ray.</p>
+
+<p>The bitterly cold wind struck our hot, perspiring bodies as we
+scrambled down the rungs outside the square metal shaft. Mildred
+shivered in her thin attire.</p>
+
+<p>"Out of the frying pan into the ice box!" Ray jested grimly as we
+dropped, to the frozen plain.</p>
+
+<p>Quickly we tore open our packs. Ray and I snatched out clothing and
+wrapped up the trembling girl. In a few minutes we had her snugly
+dressed in the fur garments that had been Major Meriden's. Then we got
+into the quilted garments we had made for ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>The intensely red heat-beam still flared up the shaft. Ray looked at
+it in satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll have it so hot they can't get up it for some time yet," he
+remarked hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>We shouldered our packs and set out over the wilderness of snow,
+turning our backs upon the metal-bound lake of fire, with the tall
+cone of iridescent flame rising in its center.</p>
+
+<p>The deep, purple-blue sky was clear, and, for a rarity, there was not
+much wind. I doubt that the temperature was twenty below. But it was a
+violent change from the warm cavern. Mildred was blue and shivering.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>n two hours the metal rim below the great white cone had vanished
+behind the black ice-crags. We passed near the wreck of Major
+Meriden's plane and reached our last camp, where we had left the tent
+sledge, primus stove, and most of our instruments. The tent was still
+stretched, though banked with snow. We got Mildred inside, chafed her
+hands, and soon had her comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>Then Ray went out and soon returned with a sealed tin of oil from the
+wrecked plane, with which he lit the primus stove. Soon the tent was
+warm. We melted snow and cooked thick red soup. After the girl had
+made a meal of the scalding soup, with the little golden cakes, she
+professed to be feeling as well as ever.</p>
+
+<p>"We can fix our plane!" Ray said. "There's a perfectly good prop on
+Meriden's plane!"</p>
+
+<p>We went back to the wreck, found the tools, and removed an undamaged
+propeller. This we packed on the sledge, with a good supply of fuel
+for the stove.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure we're safe now, so far as the crab-things go," he said. "I
+don't fancy they'd get around very well in the snow."</p>
+
+<p>In an hour we broke camp, and made ten miles of the distance back to
+the plane before we stopped. We were anxious about Mildred, but she
+seemed to stand the journey admirably; she is a marvelous physical
+specimen. She seemed running over with gay vivacity of spirit; she
+asked innumerable questions of the world which she had known only at
+second-hand from her mother's words.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he weather smiled on us during the march back to the plane as much as
+it had frowned on the terrible journey to the cone. We had an
+abundance of food and fuel, and we made it in eight easy stages. Once
+there was a light fall of snow, but the air was unusually warm and
+calm for the season.</p>
+
+<p>We found the plane safe. It was the work of but a short time to remove
+the broken propeller and replace it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> with the one we had brought from
+the wrecked ship. We warmed and started the engine, broke the skids
+loose from the ice, turned the plane around, and took off safely from
+the tiny scrap of smooth ice.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred seemed amazed and immensely delighted at the sensations of her
+first trip aloft.</p>
+
+<p>A few hours later we were landing beside the <i>Albatross</i>, in the
+leaden blue sea beyond the ice barrier. Bluff Captain Harper greeted
+us in amazed delight as we climbed to the deck.</p>
+
+<p>"You're just in time!" he said. "The relief expedition we landed came
+back a week ago. We had no idea you could still be alive, with only a
+week's provisions. We were sailing to-morrow. But tell us! What
+happened? Your passenger&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We just stopped to pick up my fiancee," Ray grinned. "Captain, may I
+present Miss Mildred Meriden? We'll be wanting you to marry us right
+away."</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE MENACE OF THE INSECT</h3>
+<p>It is possible that future study may tell man enough about insects to
+enable him to eradicate them. This, however, is more than can be
+reasonably expected, for the more we cultivate the earth the better we
+make conditions for these enemies. The insect thrives on the work of
+man. And having made conditions ideal for the insect, with great
+expanses of cultivated food fitted to his needs, it is an optimist who
+can believe that at the same time we can make other conditions which
+will be so unfavorable as to cause him to disappear completely. The
+two things do not go together.</p>
+
+<p>The insect is much better fitted for life than is man. He can survive
+long periods of famine, he can survive extremes of heat and cold. The
+insect produces great numbers of young which have no long period of
+infancy requiring the attention of the parents over a large part of
+their life. Every function of the insect is directed toward the
+propagation of the race and the use of minimum effort in every other
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>It is even possible in some cases, the water flea, for example, for
+the female to produce young without the necessity of fertilization by
+the male. In order to perform the necessary work to insure food
+supplies for the winter other insects have developed highly
+specialized workers, especially fitted to do particular kinds of
+labor. Ants and termites are in this class.</p>
+
+<p>If we examine the organization of insects closely we shall find but
+one point at which they are vulnerable. This is in their lack of
+ability to reason. True, there is considerable evidence to support the
+belief that some insects are capable of simple reasoning, but the
+development in this direction is only of the most elementary nature.
+As compared to man it is safe to say that they do not reason. They are
+guided by instinct.</p>
+
+<p>This again is the most efficient way to organize their affairs. It
+requires no long period of training. They can begin performing all
+their useful functions as soon as their bodily development makes it
+possible. No one need teach them how to catch their prey, how to build
+their nests or shelters. Instinct takes care of this. But this,
+obviously the best system in a world wholly governed by instinct, is
+not so desirable when the instinctively actuated insect encounters
+another form of life, as man, which is capable of reason. The
+reasoning individual can play all kinds of tricks on the individual
+who is actuated by instinct.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image_011.jpg" width="500" height="471" alt="My whole attention was focused upon the strange
+beings." title="" />
+<span class="caption">My whole attention was focused upon the strange
+beings.</span>
+</div>
+<h2><a name="The_Ghost_World" id="The_Ghost_World"></a>The Ghost World</h2>
+
+<h3><i>By Sewell Peaslee Wright</i></h3>
+<div class="sidenote">Commander John Hanson records another of his thrilling
+interplanetary adventures with the Special Patrol Service.</div>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp; was asleep when our danger was discovered, but I knew the instant
+the attention signal sounded that the situation was serious. Kincaide,
+my second officer, had a cool head, and he would not have called me
+except in a tremendous emergency.</p>
+
+<p>"Hanson speaking!" I snapped into the microphone. "What's up, Mr.
+Kincaide?"</p>
+
+<p>"A field of meteorites sweeping into our path, sir." Kincaide's voice
+was tense. "I have altered our course as much as I dared and am
+reducing speed at emergency rate, but this is the largest swarm of
+meteorites I have ever seen. I am afraid that we must pass through at
+least a section of it."</p>
+
+<p>"With you in a moment, Mr. Kincaide!" I dropped the microphone and
+snatched up my robe, knotting its cord about me as I hurried out of my
+stateroom. In those days, interplanetary ships did not have their
+auras of repulsion rays to protect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> them from meteorites, it must be
+remembered. Two skins of metal were all that lay between the <i>Ertak</i>
+and all the dangers of space.</p>
+
+<p>I took the companionway to the navigating room two steps at a time and
+fairly burst into the room.</p>
+
+<p>Kincaide was crouched over the two charts that pictured the space
+around us, microphone pressed to his lips. Through the plate glass
+partition I could see the men in the operating room tensed over their
+wheels and levers and dials. Kincaide glanced up as I entered, and
+motioned with his free hand towards the charts.</p>
+
+<p>One glance convinced me that he had not overestimated our danger. The
+space to right and left, and above and below, was fairly peppered with
+tiny pricks of greenish light that moved slowly across the milky faces
+of the charts.</p>
+
+<p>From the position of the ship, represented as a glowing red spark, and
+measuring the distances roughly by means of the fine black lines
+graved in both directions upon the surface of the chart, it was
+evident to any understanding observer that disaster of a most terrible
+kind was imminent.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_k.jpg" alt="K" width="50" height="52" /></div>
+
+<p>incaide muttered into his microphone, and out of the tail of my eye I
+could see his orders obeyed on the instant by the men in the operating
+room. I could feel the peculiar, sickening surge that told of speed
+being reduced, and the course being altered, but the cold, brutally
+accurate charts before me assured me that no action we dared take
+would save us from the meteorites.</p>
+
+<p>"We're in for it, Mr. Kincaide. Continue to reduce speed as much as
+possible, and keep bearing away, as at present. I believe we can avoid
+the thickest portion of the field, but we shall have to take our
+chances with the fringe."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir!" said Kincaide, without lifting his eyes from the chart.
+His voice was calm and businesslike, now; with the responsibility on
+my shoulders, as commander, he was the efficient, level-headed
+thinking machine that had endeared him to me as both fellow-officer
+and friend.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the charts to Kincaide, I sounded the general emergency
+signal, calling every man and officer of the <i>Ertak's</i> crew to his
+post, and began giving orders through the microphone.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Correy,"&mdash;Correy was my first officer&mdash;"please report at once to
+the navigating room. Mr. Hendricks, make the rounds of all duty posts,
+please, and give special attention to the disintegrator ray operators.
+The ray generators are to be started at once, full speed." Hendricks,
+I might say, was a junior officer, and a very good one, although
+quick-tempered and excitable&mdash;failings of youth. He had only recently
+shipped with us to replace Anderson Croy, who&mdash;but that has already
+been recorded.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> "The Dark Side of Antri," in the January, 1931, issue of
+Astounding Stories.</p></div>
+
+<p>These preparations made, I glanced at the twin charts again. The
+peppering of tiny green lights, each of which represented a meteoritic
+body, had definitely shifted in relation to the position of the
+strongly-glowing red spark that was the <i>Ertak</i>, but a quick
+comparison of the two charts showed that we would be certain to pass
+through&mdash;again I use land terms to make my meaning clear&mdash;the upper
+right fringe of the field.</p>
+
+<p>The great cluster of meteorites was moving in the same direction as
+ourselves now; Kincaide's change of course had settled that matter
+nicely. Naturally, this was the logical course, since should we come
+in contact with any of them, the impact would bear a relation to only
+the <i>difference</i> in our speeds, instead of the <i>sum</i>, as would be the
+case if we struck at a wide angle.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was difficult to stand without grasping a support of some kind, and
+walking was almost impossible, for the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>reduction of our tremendous
+speed, and even the slightest change of direction, placed terrific
+strains upon the ship and everything in it. Space ships, at space
+speeds, must travel like the old-fashioned bullets if those within are
+to feel at ease.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe, Mr. Kincaide, it might be well to slightly increase the
+power in the gravity pads," I suggested. Kincaide nodded and spoke
+briefly into his microphone; an instant later I felt my weight
+increase perhaps fifty per cent, and despite the inertia of my body,
+opposed to both the change in speed and direction of the <i>Ertak</i>, I
+could now stand without support, and could walk without too much
+difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>The door of the navigating room was flung open, and Correy entered,
+his face alight with curiosity and eagerness. An emergency meant
+danger, and few beings in the universe have loved danger more than
+Correy.</p>
+
+<p>"We're in for it, Mr. Correy," I said, with a nod towards the charts.
+"Swarm of meteorites, and we can't avoid them."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we've dodged through them before, sir," smiled Correy. "We can
+do it again."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so, but this is the largest field of them I have ever seen.
+Look at the charts: they're thicker than flies."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_c.jpg" alt="C" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>orrey glanced at the charts, slapped Kincaide across his bowed, tense
+shoulders, and laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"Trust the old <i>Ertak</i> to worm her way through, sir," he said. "The
+ray crews are on duty, I presume?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But I doubt that the rays will be of much assistance to us.
+Particularly if these are stony meteorites&mdash;and as you know, the odds
+are about ten to one against their being of ferrous composition. The
+rays, deducting the losses due to the utter lack of a conducting
+medium, will be insufficient protection. They will help, of course.
+The iron meteorites they will take care of effectively, but the
+conglomerate nature of the stony meteorites does not make them
+particularly susceptible to the disintegrating rays.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall do what we can, but our success will depend largely upon
+good luck&mdash;or Divine Providence."</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate, sir," replied Correy, and his voice had lost some of its
+lightness, "we are upon routine patrol and not upon special mission.
+If we do crack up, there is no emergency call that will remain
+unanswered."</p>
+
+<p>"No," I said dryly. "There will be just another 'Lost in Space' report
+in the records of the Service, and the <i>Ertak's</i> name will go up on
+the tablet of lost ships. In any case, we have done and shall do what
+we can. In ten minutes we shall know all there is to know. That about
+right, Mr. Kincaide?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ten minutes?" Kincaide studied the charts with narrowed eyes,
+mentally balancing distance and speed. "We should be within the danger
+area in about that length of time, sir," he answered. "And out of
+it&mdash;if we come out&mdash;three or four minutes later."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll come out of it," said Correy positively.</p>
+
+<p>I walked heavily across the room and studied the charts again. Space
+above and below, to the right and the left of us, was powdered with
+the green points of light.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_c.jpg" alt="C" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>orrey joined me, his feet thumping with the unaccustomed weight given
+him by the increase in gravity. As he bent over the charts, I heard
+him draw in his breath sharply.</p>
+
+<p>Kincaide looked up. Correy looked up. I looked up. The glance of each
+man swept the faces, read the eyes, of the other two. Then, with one
+accord, we all three glanced up at the clocks&mdash;more properly, at the
+twelve-figured dial of the Earth clock, for none of us had any great
+love for the metric Universal system of time-keeping.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes.... Less than that, now.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Correy," I said, as calmly as I could, "you will relieve Mr.
+Kincaide<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> as navigating officer. Mr. Kincaide, present my compliments
+to Mr. Hendricks, and ask him to explain the situation to the crew.
+You will instruct the disintegrator ray operators in their duties, and
+take charge of their activities. Start operation at your discretion;
+you understand the necessity."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir!" Kincaide saluted sharply, and I returned his salute. We
+did not shake hands, the Earth gesture of&mdash;strangely enough&mdash;both
+greeting and farewell, but we both realized that this might well be a
+final parting. The door closed behind him, and Correy and I were left
+together to watch the creeping hands of the Earth clock, the twin
+charts with their thick spatter of green lights, and the two fiery red
+sparks, one on each chart, that represented the <i>Ertak</i> sweeping
+recklessly towards the swarming danger ahead.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>n other accounts of my experiences in the Special Patrol Service I
+feel that I have written too much about myself. After all, I have run
+my race; a retired commander of the Service, and an old, old man, with
+the century mark well behind me, my only use is to record, in this
+fashion, some of those things the Service accomplished in the old days
+when the worlds of the Universe were strange to each other, and space
+travel was still an adventure to many.</p>
+
+<p>The Universe is not interested in old men; it is concerned only with
+youth and action. It forgets that once we were young men, strong,
+impetuous, daring. It forgets what we did; but that has always been
+so. It always will be so. John Hanson, retired Commander of the
+Special Patrol Service, is fit only to amuse the present generation
+with his tales of bygone days.</p>
+
+<p>Well, so be it. I am content. I have lived greatly; certainly I would
+not exchange my memories of those bold, daring days even for youth and
+strength again, had I to live that youth and waste that strength in
+this softened, gilded age.</p>
+
+<p>But no more of this; it is too easy for an old man to rumble on about
+himself. It is only the young John Hanson, Commander of the <i>Ertak</i>,
+who can interest those who may pick up and read what I am writing
+here.</p>
+
+<p>I did not waste the minutes measured by that clock, grouped with our
+other instruments in the navigating room of the <i>Ertak</i>. I wrote
+hastily in the ship's log, stating the facts briefly and without
+feeling. If we came through, the log would read better thus; if not,
+and by some strange chance it came to human eyes, then the Universe
+would know at least that the <i>Ertak's</i> officers did not flinch from
+even such a danger.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>s I finished the entry, Correy spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"Kincaide's estimate was not far off, sir," he said, with a swift
+glance at the clock. "Here we go!" It was less than half a minute
+short of the ten estimated by Kincaide.</p>
+
+<p>I nodded and bent over the television disc&mdash;one of the huge, hooded
+affairs we used in those days. Widening the field to the greatest
+angle, and with low power, I inspected the space before us on all
+sides.</p>
+
+<p>The charts, operated by super-radio reflexes, had not lied about the
+danger into which we were passing&mdash;had passed. We were in the midst of
+a veritable swarm of meteorites of all sizes.</p>
+
+<p>They were not large; I believe the largest I saw had a mass of not
+more than three or four times that of the <i>Ertak</i> herself. Some of the
+smaller bodies were only fifty or sixty feet in diameter.</p>
+
+<p>They were jagged and irregular in shape, and they seemed to spin at
+varying speeds, like tiny worlds.</p>
+
+<p>As I watched, fixing my view now on the space directly in our path, I
+saw that our disintegrator ray men were at work. Deep in the bowels of
+the <i>Ertak</i>, the moan of the ray generators had deepened in note; I
+could even feel the slight vibration beneath my feet.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One of the meteorites slowly crumbled on top, the dust of
+disintegration hovering in a compact mass about the body. More and
+more of it melted away. The spinning motion grew irregular, eccentric,
+as the center of gravity was changed by the action of the ray.</p>
+
+<p>Another ray, two more, centered on the wobbling mass. It was directly
+in our path, looming up larger and larger every second.</p>
+
+<p>Faster and faster it melted, the rays eating into it from four sides.
+But it was perilously near now; I had to reduce power in order to keep
+all of it within the field of my disc. If&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The thing vanished before the very nose of the ship, not an instant
+too soon. I glanced up at the surface temperature indicator, and saw
+the big black hand move slowly for a degree or two, and stop. It was a
+very sensitive instrument, and registered even the slight friction of
+our passage through the disintegrated dust of the meteorite.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_o.jpg" alt="O" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ur rays were working desperately, but disintegrator rays are not
+nearly so effective in space as in an atmosphere of some kind. Half a
+dozen times it seemed that we must crash head on into one of the
+flying bodies, but our speed was reduced now to such an extent that we
+were going but little faster than the meteorites, and this fact was
+all that saved us. We had more time for utilizing our rays.</p>
+
+<p>We nosed upward through the trailing fringe of the swarm in safety.
+The great field of meteorites was now below and ahead of us. We had
+won through! The <i>Ertak</i> was safe, and&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There seems to be another directly above us, sir," commented Correy
+quietly, speaking for the first time since we had entered the area of
+danger. "I believe your disc is not picking it up."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Correy," I said. While operating on an entirely
+different principle, his two charts had certain very definite
+advantages: they showed the entire space around us, instead of but a
+portion.</p>
+
+<p>I picked up the meteorite he had mentioned without difficulty. It was
+a large body, about three times the mass of the <i>Ertak</i>, and some
+distance above us&mdash;a laggard in the group we had just eluded.</p>
+
+<p>"Will it coincide with our path at any point, Mr. Correy?" I asked
+doubtfully. The television disc could not, of course, give me this
+information.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe so; yes," replied Correy, frowning over his charts. "Are
+the rays on it, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. All of them, I judge, but they are making slow work of it." I
+fell silent, bending lower over the great hooded disc.</p>
+
+<p>There were a dozen, a score of rays playing upon the surface of the
+meteorite. A halo of dust hung around the rapidly diminishing body,
+but still the mass melted all too slowly.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_p.jpg" alt="P" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>ressing the attention signal for Kincaide, I spoke sharply into the
+microphone:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Kincaide, is every ray on that large meteorite above us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," he replied instantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Full power?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; carry on, Mr. Kincaide." I turned to Correy; he had just
+glanced from his charts to the clock, with its jerking second hand,
+and back to his charts.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll have to do it in the next ten seconds, sir," he said.
+"Otherwise&mdash;" Correy shrugged, and his eyes fixed with a peculiar,
+fascinated stare on the charts. He was looking death squarely in the
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Ten seconds! It was not enough. I had watched the rays working, and I
+knew their power to disintegrate this death-dealing stone that was
+hurtling along above us while we rose, helplessly, into its path.</p>
+
+<p>I did not ask Correy if it was possible to alter the course enough,
+and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> quickly enough, to avoid that fateful path. Had it been possible
+without tearing the <i>Ertak</i> to pieces with the strain of it, Correy
+would have done it seconds ago.</p>
+
+<p>I glanced up swiftly at the relentless, jerking second hand. Seven
+seconds gone! Three seconds more.</p>
+
+<p>The rays were doing all that could be expected of them. There was only
+a tiny fragment of the meteorite left, and it was dwindling swiftly.
+But our time was passing even more rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>The bit of rock loomed up at me from the disc. It seemed to fly up
+into my face, to meet me.</p>
+
+<p>"Got us, Correy!" I said hoarsely. "Good-by, old-man!"</p>
+
+<p>I think he tried to reply. I saw his lips open; the flash of the
+bright light from the ethon tubes on his big white teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a crash that shook the whole ship. I shot into the air.
+I remember falling ... terribly.</p>
+
+<p>A blinding flash of light that emanated from the very center of my
+brain, a sickening sense of utter catastrophe, and ... blackness.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;think I was conscious several seconds before I finally opened my
+eyes. My mind was still wandering; my thoughts kept flying around in
+huge circles that kept closing in.</p>
+
+<p>We had hit the meteorite. I remembered the crash. I remembered
+falling. I remembered striking my head.</p>
+
+<p>But I was still alive. There was air to breathe and there was firm
+material under me. I opened my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>For the first instant, it seemed I was in an utterly strange room.
+Nothing was familiar. Everything was&mdash;was <i>inverted</i>. Then I glanced
+upward, and I saw what had happened.</p>
+
+<p>I was lying on the ceiling of the navigating room. Over my head were
+the charts, still glowing, the chronometers in their gimballed beds,
+and the television disc. Beside me, sprawled out limply, was Correy, a
+trickle of dried blood on his cheek. A litter of papers, chairs,
+framed licenses and other movable objects were strewn on and around
+us.</p>
+
+<p>My first instinctive, foolish thought was that the ship was upside
+down. Man has a ground-trained mind, no matter how many years he may
+travel space. Then, of course, I realized that in the open void there
+is not top nor bottom; the illusion is supplied, in space ships, by
+the gravity pads. Somehow, the shock of impact had reversed the
+polarity of the leads to the pads, and they had become repulsion pads.
+That was why I had dropped from the floor to the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>All this flashed through my mind in an instant as I dragged myself
+toward Correy. Dragged myself because my head was throbbing so that I
+dared not stand up, and one shoulder, my left, was numb.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>or an instant I thought that Correy was dead. Then, as I bent over
+him, I saw a pulse leaping just under the angle of his jaw.</p>
+
+<p>"Correy, old man!" I whispered. "Do you hear me?" All the formality of
+the Service was forgotten for the time. "Are you hurt badly?"</p>
+
+<p>His eyelids flickered, and he sighed; then, suddenly, he looked up at
+me&mdash;and smiled!</p>
+
+<p>"We're still here, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"After a fashion. Look around; see what's happened?"</p>
+
+<p>He glanced about curiously, frowning. His wits were not all with him
+yet.</p>
+
+<p>"We're in a mess, aren't we?" he grinned. "What's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>I told him what I thought, and he nodded slowly, feeling his head
+tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"How long ago did it happen?" he asked. "The blooming clock's upside
+down; can you read it?"</p>
+
+<p>I could&mdash;with an effort.</p>
+
+<p>"Over twenty minutes," I said. "I wonder how the rest of the men are?"</p>
+
+<p>With an effort, I got to my feet and peered into the operating room.
+Sev<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>eral of the men were moving about, dazedly, and as I signalled to
+them, reassuringly, a voice hailed us from the doorway:</p>
+
+<p>"Any orders, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>It was Kincaide. He was peering over what had been the top of the
+doorway, and he was probably the most disreputable-looking officer who
+had ever worn the blue-and-silver uniform of the Service. His nose was
+bloody and swollen to twice its normal size. Both eyes were blackened,
+and his hair, matted with blood, was plastered in ragged swirls across
+his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Kincaide; plenty of them. Round up enough of the men to
+locate the trouble with the gravity pads; there's a reversed
+connection somewhere. But don't let them make the repairs until the
+signal is given. Otherwise, we'll all fall on our heads again. Mr.
+Correy and I will take care of the injured."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he next half hour was a trying one. Two men had been killed outright,
+and another died before we could do anything to save him. Every man in
+the crew was shaken up and bruised, but by the time the check was
+completed, we had a good half of our personnel on duty.</p>
+
+<p>Returning at last to the navigating room, I pressed the attention
+signal for Kincaide, and got his answer immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"Located the trouble yet, Mr. Kincaide?" I asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir! Mr. Hendricks has been working with a group of men and has
+just made his report. They are ready when you are."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" I drew a sigh of relief. It had been easier than I thought.
+Pressing the general attention signal, I broadcasted the warning,
+giving particular instructions to the men in charge of the injured.
+Then I issued orders to Hendricks:</p>
+
+<p>"Reverse the current in five seconds, Mr. Hendricks, and stand by for
+further instructions."</p>
+
+<p>Hastily, then, Correy and I followed the orders we had given the men.
+Briefly we stood on our heads against the wall, feeling very foolish,
+and dreading the fall we knew was coming.</p>
+
+<p>It came. We slid down the wall and lit heavily on our feet, while the
+litter that had been on the ceiling with us fell all around us.
+Miraculously, the ship seemed to have righted herself. Correy and I
+picked ourselves up and looked around.</p>
+
+<p>"We're still operating smoothly," I commented with a sweeping glance
+at the instruments over the operating table. "Everything seems in
+order."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you notice the speed indicator, sir?" asked Correy grimly. "When
+he fell, one of the men in the operating room must have pulled the
+speed lever all the way over. We're at maximum space speed, sir, and
+have been for nearly an hour, with no one at the controls."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>e stared at each other dully. Nearly an hour, at maximum space
+speed&mdash;a speed seldom used except in case of great emergency. With no
+one at the controls, and the ship set at maximum deflection from her
+course.</p>
+
+<p>That meant that for nearly an hour we had been sweeping into infinite
+space in a great arc, at a speed I disliked to think about.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll work out our position at once," I said, "and in the meantime,
+reduce speed to normal as quickly as possible. We must get back on our
+course at the earliest possible moment."</p>
+
+<p>We hurried across to the charts that were our most important aides in
+proper navigation. By comparing the groups of stars there with our
+space charts of the universe, the working out of our position was
+ordinarily, a simple matter.</p>
+
+<p>But now, instead of milky rectangles, ruled with fine black lines,
+with a fiery red speck in the center and the bodies of the universe
+grouped around in green points of light, there were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> only nearly blank
+rectangles, shot through with vague, flickering lights that revealed
+nothing except the presence of disaster.</p>
+
+<p>"The meteoric fragment wiped out some of our plates, I imagine," said
+Correy slowly. "The thing's useless."</p>
+
+<p>I nodded, staring down at the crawling lights on the charts.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have to set down for repairs, Mr. Correy. If," I added, "we can
+find a place."</p>
+
+<p>Correy glanced up at the attraction meter.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take a look in the big disc," he suggested. "There's a sizeable
+body off to port. Perhaps our luck's changed."</p>
+
+<p>He bent his head under the big hood, adjusting the controls until he
+located the source of the registered attraction.</p>
+
+<p>"Right!" he said, after a moment's careful scrutiny. "She's as big as
+Earth, I'd venture, and I believe I can detect clouds, so there should
+be atmosphere. Shall we try it, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. We're helpless until we make repairs. As big as Earth, you said?
+Is she familiar?"</p>
+
+<p>Correy studied the image under the hood again, long and carefully.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," he said, looking up and shaking his head. "She's a new one
+on me."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_c.jpg" alt="C" width="46" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>onning the ship first by means of the television disc, and navigating
+visually as we neared the strange sphere, we were soon close enough to
+make out the physical characteristics of this unknown world.</p>
+
+<p>Our spectroscopic tests had revealed the presence of atmosphere
+suitable for breathing, although strongly laden with mineral fumes
+which, while possibly objectionable, would probably not be dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>So far as we could see, there was but one continent, somewhat north of
+the equator, roughly triangular in shape, with its northernmost point
+reaching nearly to the Pole.</p>
+
+<p>"It's an unexplored world, sir. I'm certain of that," said Correy. "I
+am sure I would have remembered that single, triangular continent had
+I seen it on any of our charts." In those days, of course, the
+Universe was by no means so well mapped as it is today.</p>
+
+<p>"If not unknown, it is at least uncharted," I replied. "Rough looking
+country, isn't it? No sign of life, either, that the disc will
+reveal."</p>
+
+<p>"That's as well, sir. Better no people than wild natives who might
+interfere with our work. Any choice in the matter of a spot on which
+to set her down?"</p>
+
+<p>I inspected the great, triangular continent carefully. Towards the
+north it was a mass of snow covered mountains, some of them, from
+their craters, dead volcanoes. Long spurs of these ranges reached
+southward, with green and apparently fertile valleys between. The
+southern edge was covered with dense tropical vegetation; a veritable
+jungle.</p>
+
+<p>"At the base of that central spur there seems to be a sort of
+plateau," I suggested. "I believe that would be a likely spot."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, sir," replied Correy, and the old <i>Ertak</i>, reduced to
+atmospheric speed, swiftly swept toward the indicated position, while
+Correy kept a wary eye on the surface temperature gauge, and I swept
+the terrain for any sign of intelligent life.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;found a number of trails, particularly around the base of the
+foothills, but they were evidently game trails, for there were no
+dwelling places of any kind; no cities, no villages, not even a single
+habitation of any kind that the searching eyes of the disc could
+detect.</p>
+
+<p>Correy set her down as neatly and as softly as a rose petal drifts to
+the ground. Roses, I may add, are a beautiful and delicate flower,
+with very soft petals, peculiar to my native Earth.</p>
+
+<p>We opened the main exit immediately. I watched the huge, circular door
+back slowly out of its threads, and finally swing aside, swiftly and
+silently,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> in the grip of its mighty gimbals, with the weird,
+unearthly feeling I have always had when about to step foot on some
+strange star where no man has trod before.</p>
+
+<p>The air was sweet, and delightfully fresh after being cooped up for
+weeks in the <i>Ertak</i>, with her machine-made air. A little thinner, I
+should judge, than the air to which we were accustomed, but strangely
+exhilarating, and laden with a faint scent of some unknown
+constituent&mdash;undoubtedly the mineral element our spectroscope had
+revealed but not identified. Gravity, I found upon passing through the
+exit, was normal. Altogether an extremely satisfactory repair station.</p>
+
+<p>Correy's guess as to what had happened proved absolutely accurate.
+Along the top of the <i>Ertak</i>, from amidships to within a few feet of
+her pointed stem, was a jagged groove that had destroyed hundreds of
+the bright, coppery discs, set into the outer skin of the ship, that
+operated our super-radio reflex charts. The groove was so deep, in
+places, that it must have bent the outer skin of the <i>Ertak</i> down
+against the inner skin. A foot or more&mdash;it was best not to think of
+what would have happened then.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>y the time we completed our inspection dusk was upon us&mdash;a long,
+lingering dusk, due, no doubt, to the afterglow resulting from the
+mineral content of the air. I'm no white-skinned, stoop-shouldered
+laboratory man, so I'm not sure that was the real reason. It sounds
+logical, however.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Correy, I think we shall break out our field equipment and give
+all men not on watch an opportunity to sleep out in the fresh air," I
+said. "Will you give the orders, please?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. Mr. Hendricks will stand the eight to twelve watch as
+usual?"</p>
+
+<p>I nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Kincaide will relieve him at midnight, and you will take over at
+four."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, sir." Correy turned to give the orders, and in a few
+minutes an orderly array of shelter tents made a single street in
+front of the fat, dully-gleaming side of the <i>Ertak</i>. Our tents were
+at the head of this short company street, three of them in a little
+row.</p>
+
+<p>After the evening meal, cooked over open fires, with the smoke of the
+very resinous wood we had collected hanging comfortably in the still
+air, the men gave themselves up to boisterous, noisy games, which, I
+confess, I should have liked very much to participate in. They raced
+and tumbled around the two big fires like schoolboys on a lark. Only
+those who have spent most of their days in the metal belly of a space
+ship know the sheer joy of utter physical freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Correy, Kincaide and I sat before our tents and watched them, chatting
+about this and that&mdash;I have long since forgotten what. But I shall
+never forget what occurred just before the watch changed that night.
+Nor will any man of the <i>Ertak's</i> crew.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was just a few minutes before midnight. The men had quieted down
+and were preparing to turn in. I had given orders that this first
+night they could suit themselves about retiring; a good officer, and I
+tried to be one, is never afraid to give good men a little rein, now
+and then.</p>
+
+<p>The fires had died down to great heaps of red coals, filmed with
+ashes, and, aside from the brilliant galaxy of stars overhead, there
+was no light from above. Either this world had no moons, not even a
+single moon, like my native Earth, or it had not yet arisen.</p>
+
+<p>Kincaide rose lazily, stretched himself, and glanced at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"Seven till twelve, sir," he said. "I believe I'll run along and
+relieve&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He never finished that sentence. From somewhere there came a rushing
+sound, and a damp, stringy net, a living, horrible, <i>something</i>,
+descended upon us out of the night.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In an instant, what had been an orderly encampment became a bedlam. I
+tried to fight against the stringy, animated, nearly intangible mass,
+or masses, that held me, but my arms, my legs, my whole body, was
+bound as with strings and loops of elastic bands.</p>
+
+<p>Strange whispering sounds filled the air, audible above the shouting
+of the men. The net about me grew tighter; I felt myself being lifted
+from the ground. Others were being treated the same way; one of the
+<i>Ertak's</i> crew shot straight up, not a dozen feet away, writhing and
+squirming. Then, at an elevation of perhaps twice my height, he was
+hurried away.</p>
+
+<p>Hendrick's voice called out my name from the <i>Ertak's</i> exit, and I
+shouted a warning:</p>
+
+<p>"Hendrick! Go back! Close the emergency&mdash;" Then a gluey mass cut
+across my mouth, and, as though carried on huge soft springs, I was
+hurried away, with the sibilant, whispering sounds louder and closer
+than ever. With me, as nearly as I could judge, went every man who had
+not been on duty in the ship.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;ceased struggling, and immediately the rubbery network about me
+loosened. It seemed to me that the whisperings about me were suddenly
+approving. We were in the grip, then, of some sort of intelligent
+beings, ghost-like and invisible though they were.</p>
+
+<p>After a time, during which we were all, in a ragged group, being borne
+swiftly towards the mountains, all at a common level from the ground,
+I managed to turn my head so that I could see, against the star-lit
+sky, something of the nature of the things that had made us captive.</p>
+
+<p>As is not infrequently the case, in trying to describe things of an
+utterly different world, I find myself at a loss for words. I think of
+jellyfish, such as inhabit the seas of most of the inhabited planets,
+and yet this is not a good description.</p>
+
+<p>These creatures were pale, and almost completely transparent. What
+their forms might be, I could not even guess. I could make out
+writhing, tentacle-like arms, and wrinkled, flabby excrudescences and
+that was all. That these creatures were huge, was evident from the
+fact that they, apparently walking, from the irregular, undulating
+motion, held us easily ten or a dozen feet from the ground.</p>
+
+<p>With the release of the pressure about my body I was able to talk
+again, and I called out to Correy, who was fighting his way along,
+muttering, angrily, just ahead of me.</p>
+
+<p>"Correy! No use fighting them. Save your strength, man!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then? What are they, in God's name? What spawn of hell&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The Commander is right, Correy," interrupted Kincaide, who was not
+far from my first officer. "Let's get our breaths and try to figure
+out what's happened. I'm winded!" His voice gave plentiful evidence of
+the struggle he had put up.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to know where I'm going, and why!" growled Correy, ceasing his
+struggling, nevertheless. "What have us? Are they fish or flesh or
+fowl?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think we shall know before very long, Correy," I replied. "Look
+ahead!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he bearers of the men in the fore part of the group had apparently
+stopped before a shadowy wall, like the face of a cliff. Rapidly, the
+rest of us were brought up, until we were in a compact group, some in
+sitting positions, some upside down, the majority reclining on back or
+side. The whispering sound now was intense and excited, as though our
+strange bearers awaited some momentous happening.</p>
+
+<p>I took advantage of the opportunity to speak very briefly to my
+companions.</p>
+
+<p>"Men, I'll admit frankly that I don't know what we're up against," I
+said. "But I do know this: we'll come out on top of the heap. Conserve
+your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> strength, keep your eyes open, and be prepared to obey,
+instantly, any orders that may be issued: I know that last remark is
+not needed. If any of you should see or learn something of interest or
+value, report at once to Mr. Correy, Mr. Kincaide or my&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A simultaneous, involuntary exclamation from the men interrupted me,
+and it was not surprising that this was so, for the wall before us had
+suddenly opened, and there was a great burst of yellow light in our
+faces. A strong odor, like the faint scent we had first noticed in the
+air, but infinitely more powerful, struck our nostrils, but I was not
+conscious of the fact for several seconds. My whole attention, my
+every startled thought, was focused upon the group of strange beings,
+silhouetted against the glowing light, that stood in the opening.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>magine, if you can, a huge globe, perhaps eight feet in diameter,
+flattened slightly at the bottom, and supported on six short, huge
+stumps, like the feet of an elephant, and topped by an excrudescence
+like a rounded coning tower, merging into the globular body. From
+points slightly below this excrudescence, visualize six long, limp
+tentacles, so long that they drop from the equators of these animated
+spheres, and trail on the ground. Now you have some conception of the
+beings that stood before us.</p>
+
+<p>A sharp, sibilant whispering came from one of these figures, to be
+answered in an eager chorus from our bearers. There was a reply like a
+command, and the group in the doorway marched forward. One by one
+these visible tentacles wrapped themselves around a member of the
+<i>Ertak's</i> crew, each one of the globular creatures bearing one of us.</p>
+
+<p>I heard a disappointed whisper go up from the outer darkness where,
+but a moment before, we had been. Then there was a grating sound, and
+a thud as the stone doorway was rolled back into place.</p>
+
+<p>The entrance was sealed. We were prisoners indeed!</p>
+
+<p>"All right, now what?" gritted Correy. "God! If I ever get a hand
+loose!"</p>
+
+<p>Swiftly, each of us held above the head-like excrudescence atop the
+globular body of the thing that held us, we were carried down a
+widening rocky corridor, towards the source of the yellow light that
+beat about us.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>he passage led to a great cavern, irregular in shape, and apparently
+possessed of numerous other outlets which converged here.</p>
+
+<p>I am not certain as to the size of the cavern, save that it was great,
+and that the roof was so high in most sections that it was lost in
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>The great cavern was nearly filled with creatures similar to those
+which were bearing us, and they fell back in orderly passage to permit
+our conductors to pass.</p>
+
+<p>I could see, now, that the hump atop each rounded body was a travesty
+of a head, hairless, and without a neck. Their features were
+particularly hideous, and I shall pass over a description as rapidly
+as possible.</p>
+
+<p>The eyes were round, and apparently lidless; a pale drab or bluff in
+color. Instead of a nose, as, we understand the term, they had a
+convoluted rosette in the center of the face, not unlike the olfactory
+organ of a bat. Their ears were placed as are ours, but were of thin,
+pale parchment, and hugged the side of the head tightly. Instead of a
+mouth, there was a slightly depressed oval of fluttering skin near the
+point where the head melted into the rounded body: the rapid
+fluttering or vibration of this skin produced the whispering sound I
+have already remarked.</p>
+
+<p>The cavern, as I have said, was flooded with yellow light, which came
+from a great column of fire near the center of the clear space. I had
+no opportunity to inspect the exact arrangements but from what I did
+see, I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> judged that this flame was fed by some sort of highly
+inflammable substance, not unlike crude oil, except that it burned
+clearly and without smoke. This substance was conducted to the font
+from which the flame leaped by means of a large pipe of hollow reed or
+wood.</p>
+
+<p>At the far end of the cavern a procession entered from one of the
+passages&mdash;nine figures similar to those which bore us, save that by
+the greater darkness of their skin, and the wrinkles upon both face
+and body, I judged these to be older than the rest. From the respect
+with which they were treated, and the dignity of their movements, I
+gathered that these were persons of authority, a surmise which quickly
+verified itself.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hese nine elders arranged themselves, standing, in the form of a
+semicircle, the center creature standing a pace or two in front of the
+others. At a whispered command, we were all dumped unceremoniously on
+the floor of the cavern before this august council of nine.</p>
+
+<p>Nine pairs of fish-like, unblinking eyes inspected us, whether with
+enmity or otherwise; I could not determine. One of the nine spoke
+briefly to one of our conductors, and received an even more brief
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>I felt the gaze of the creature in the center fix on me. I had taken
+my proper position in front of my men; he apparently recognized me as
+the leader of the group.</p>
+
+<p>In a sharp whisper, he addressed me; I gathered from the tone that he
+uttered a command, but I could only shake my head in response. No
+words could convey thought from his mind to mine&mdash;but we did have a
+means of communication at hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Correy," I said, "your menore, please!" I released my own from
+the belt which held it, along with the other expeditionary equipment
+which we always wore when outside our ship, and placed it in position
+upon my head, motioning for one of the nine to do likewise with
+Correy's menore.</p>
+
+<p>They watched me suspiciously, despite my attempt to convey, by gestures,
+that by means of these instruments we could convey thoughts to each other.
+The menores of those days were bulky, heavy things, and undoubtedly they
+looked dangerous to these creatures: thought-transference instruments at
+that time were complicated affairs.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>owever, I must have made myself partially understood, at least, for
+the chief of the nine uttered a whispered command to one of the beings
+who had borne us to the large cavern, and motioned with a writhing
+gesture of one tentacle that I was to place the menore upon this
+creature's head.</p>
+
+<p>"The old boy's playing it safe, sir," muttered Correy, chuckling.
+"Wants to try it out on the dog first."</p>
+
+<p>"Right!" I nodded, and, not without difficulty, placed the other
+menore upon the rounded dome of the individual selected for the trial.</p>
+
+<p>Both instruments were adjusted to full power, and I concentrated my
+mental energy upon the simple pictures that I thought I could convey
+to the limited mentality of which I suspected these creatures,
+watching his fishy eyes the while.</p>
+
+<p>It was several seconds before he realized what was happening; then he
+began talking excitedly to the waiting nine. The words fairly burned
+themselves in my consciousness, but of course were utterly
+unintelligible to me. Before the creature had finished, a lash-like
+tentacle shot out from the chief of the nine and removed the menore; a
+moment later it reposed, at a rather rakish slant, on the shining dome
+of its new possessor.</p>
+
+<p>"Get anything, sir?" asked Correy in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet. I'm trying to make him see how we came here, and that we're
+friends. Then I'll see what I can get<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> out of him; he'll have to get
+the idea of coming back at me with pictures instead of words, and it
+may take a long time to make him understand."</p>
+
+<p>It did take a long time. I could feel the sweat trickling down my face
+as I strove to make him understand. His eyes revealed wonderment and a
+little fear, but an almost utter lack of understanding.</p>
+
+<p>I pictured for him the heavens, and our ship sailing along through
+space. Then I showed him the <i>Ertak</i> coming to rest on the plateau,
+and he made little impatient noises as though to convey that he knew
+all about that.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>fter a long time he got the idea. Crudely, dimly, he pictured the
+<i>Ertak</i> leaving this strange world, and soaring off into vacant space.
+Then his scene faded out, and he pictured the same thing again, as one
+might repeat a question not understood. He wanted to know where we
+would go if we left this world of his.</p>
+
+<p>I pictured for him other worlds, peopled with men more or less like
+myself. I showed him the great cities, and the fleets of ships like
+the <i>Ertak</i> that plied between them. Then, as best I could, I asked
+him about himself and his people.</p>
+
+<p>It came to me jerkily and poorly pictured, but I managed to piece out
+the story. Whether I guess correctly on all points, I am not sure, nor
+will I ever be sure. But this is the story as I got it.</p>
+
+<p>These people at one time lived in the open, and all the people of this
+world were like those in the cavern, possessed of opaque bodies and
+great strength. There were none of the ghost-like creatures who had
+captured us.</p>
+
+<p>But after a long time, a ruling class arose. They tried to dominate
+the masses, and the masses refused to be dominated. But the ruling
+classes were wise, and versed in certain sciences; the masses were
+ignorant. So the ruling classes devised a plan.</p>
+
+<p>These creatures did not eat. There was a tradition that at one time
+they had had mouths, as I had, but that was not known. Their strength,
+their vitality, came from the powerful mineral vapor which came forth
+from the bowels of the earth. The ruling classes decided that if they
+could control the supply of this vapor, they would have the whip hand,
+and they set about realizing this condition.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>t was quickly done. All the sources of supply, save one, were sealed.
+This one source of supply was the cavern in which we stood. These were
+members of the ruling class, and outside was the rabble, starved and
+unhappy, living on the faint seepage of the vital fumes, without which
+they became almost bodiless, and the helpless slaves of those within
+the cavern.</p>
+
+<p>These creatures, then, were boneless; as boneless as sponges, and,
+like sponges, capable of absorbing huge quantities of a foreign
+substance, which distended them and gave them weight. I could see,
+now, why the rotund bodies sagged and flattened at the base, and why
+six short, stubby legs were needed to support that body. There was
+only tissue, unsupported by bone, to bear the weight!</p>
+
+<p>This chief of the nine went on to show me how ruthlessly, how cruelly
+those within the cavern ruled those without. The substance that fed
+the flame had to be gathered and a great reservoir on the side of the
+mountain kept filled. Great masses of dry, sweet grass, often changed,
+must be harvested and brought to the entrance of the cavern, for
+bedding. A score of other tasks kept the outsiders busy always&mdash;and
+the driving force was that, did the slaves become disobedient, the
+slight supply of mineral vapor available in the outside world would be
+cut off utterly, and all outside would surely die, slowly and in
+agony.</p>
+
+<p>Those within the cavern were the rulers. They would always remain the
+rulers, and those outside would remain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> the slaves to wait upon them.
+And we&mdash;how strangely he pictured us, as he saw us!&mdash;were not to
+return to our queer worlds, that we might bring many other ships like
+the <i>Ertak</i> back to interfere. No.</p>
+
+<p>The pupils of his eyes contracted, and the leafy structure of his nose
+fluttered as though with strong emotion.</p>
+
+<p>No, we would not go back. He would give a signal to those of his
+creatures who stood behind us&mdash;a sort of soldiery, I gathered&mdash;and our
+heads, our legs, our arms, would be torn from our bodies. Then we
+would not go back to bring&mdash;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>hat was enough for me.</p>
+
+<p>"Men!" I spoke softly, but with an intensity that gave me their
+instant attention, "it's going to be a fight for life. When I give the
+signal, make a rush for the entrance by which we came in. I'll lead
+the way. Use your pistols, and your bombs if necessary. All
+right&mdash;forward!"</p>
+
+<p>Correy's great shout rang out after mine, and I flung my menore in the
+face of the nearest guard. It bounced off as though it had struck a
+rubber ball. Behind me, one of the men called out sharply; I heard a
+sharp crunch of bone, and with a pang realized that the <i>Ertak's</i> log
+would have at least one death to record.</p>
+
+<p>A dozen tentacles lashed out at me, and I sprayed their owners with
+pellets from my atomic pistol. The air was filled with the shouts of
+my men and the whispers of our enemies. All around me I could hear the
+screaming of ricochets from our pistols. Twice atomic bombs exploded
+not far away, and the solid rock shook beneath my feet. Something shot
+by close to my face; an instant later a limp bundle in the blue and
+silver uniform of our Service struck the rock wall of the cavern,
+thirty feet away. The strength in those rubbery tentacles was
+terrible.</p>
+
+<p>The pistols seemed to have but little effect. They wounded, but they
+did not kill unless the pellet struck the head. Then the victim
+rolled over, rocking idiotically on its middle.</p>
+
+<p>"In the head, men!" I shouted. "That downs them! And keep the bombs in
+action. Throw them against the walls of the cavern. Take a chance!"</p>
+
+<p>A ragged cheer went up, and I heard Correy's voice raised in angry
+conversation with the enemy:</p>
+
+<p>"You will, eh? There!... Now!... Ah!&mdash;right&mdash;through&mdash;the&mdash;eye.
+That's&mdash;the place!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;score of times I was grasped and held by the writhing arms of the
+angry horde whispering all around me. Each time I literally shot the
+tentacle away with my atomic pistol, leaving the severed end to unwrap
+itself and drop from my struggling body. The things had no blood in
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Steadily, we fought our way toward the doorway, out of the cavern,
+down the passageway, pressed into a compact, sweating mass by the
+pressure of the eager bodies around us. I have never heard any sound
+even remotely like the babel of angry, sibilant whispering that beat
+against the walls and roof of that cavern.</p>
+
+<p>I had saved my own bombs for a specific purpose, and now I unslung
+them and managed to work them up above my shoulders, one in either
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to try to blow the entrance clear, men," I shouted. "The
+instant I fling the bombs, drop! The fragments will be stopped by the
+enemy crowding around us. One ... two ... three ... <i>drop</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>The two bombs exploded almost simultaneously. The ground shook, and
+all over the cavern masses of stone came crashing to the floor. Bits
+of rock hummed and shrieked over our heads. And&mdash;yes! There was a
+draft of cooler, purer air on our faces. The bombs had done their
+work.</p>
+
+<p>"One more effort and we're outside, men," I called. "The passage is
+open, and there are only a few of the enemy before us. Ready?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ready!" went up the hoarse shout.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, forward!"</p>
+
+<p>It was easy to give the command, but hard to execute it. We were
+pressed so hard that only the men on the outside of the group could
+use their weapons. And our captors were making a terrible, desperate
+effort to hold us.</p>
+
+<p>Two more of our men were literally torn to pieces before my eyes, but
+I had the satisfaction of ripping holes in the heads of the creatures
+whose tentacles had done the beastly work. And in the meantime we were
+working our way slowly but surely to the entrance.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;glanced up as I dodged out into the open. That soft humming sound
+was familiar, and properly so. There, at an elevation of less than
+fifty feet, was the <i>Ertak</i>, with Hendricks standing in the exit,
+leaning forward at a perilous angle.</p>
+
+<p>"Ahoy the <i>Ertak</i>!" I hailed. "Descend at once!"</p>
+
+<p>"Right, sir!" Hendricks turned to relay the order, and, as the rest of
+the men burst forth from the cavern, the ship struck the ground before
+us.</p>
+
+<p>"All hands board ship!" I ordered. "Lively, now." As many years as I
+have commanded men, I have never seen an order obeyed with more
+alacrity.</p>
+
+<p>I was the last man to enter, and as I did so, I turned for a last
+glance at the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>They could not come through the small opening my bombs had driven in
+the rock, although they were working desperately to enlarge it.
+Leaping back and forth between me and the entrance I could see the
+vague, shadowy figures of the outside slaves, eagerly seeping up the
+life-giving fumes that escaped from the cavern.</p>
+
+<p>"Your orders, sir?" asked Hendricks anxiously; he was a very young
+officer, and he had been through a very trying experience.</p>
+
+<p>"Ascend five hundred feet, Mr. Hendricks," I said thoughtfully.
+"Directly over this spot. Then I'll take over.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't often," I added, "that the Service concerns itself with
+economic conditions. This, however, is one of the exceptions."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," said Hendricks, for the very good reason, I suppose, that
+that was about all a third officer could say to his commander, under
+the circumstances.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_f1.jpg" alt="F" width="53" height="56" /></div>
+<p>ive hundred feet, sir," said Hendricks.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," I nodded, and pressed the attention signal of the
+non-commissioned officer in charge of the big forward ray projector.</p>
+
+<p>"Ott? Commander Hanson speaking. I have special orders for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Direct your ray, narrowed to normal beam and at full intensity, on
+the spot directly below. Keep the ray motionless, and carry on until
+further orders. Is that clear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly, sir." The disintegrator ray generators deepened their purr
+as I turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"I trust, sir, that I did the right thing in following you with the
+<i>Ertak</i>?" asked Hendricks. "I was absolutely without precedent, and
+the circumstances were so mysterious&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You handled the situation very well indeed," I told him. "Had you not
+been waiting when we fought our way into the open, the nearly
+invisible things on the outside might have&mdash;but you don't know about
+them yet."</p>
+
+<p>Picking up the microphone again, I ordered a pair of searchlights to
+follow the disintegrator ray, and made my way forward, where I could
+observe activities through a port.</p>
+
+<p>The ray was boring straight down into a shoulder of a rocky hill, and
+the bright beams of the searchlights glowed redly with the dust of
+disintegration. Here and there I could see the shadowy, transparent
+forms of the creatures that the self-constituted rulers of this world
+had doomed to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> demi-existence, and I smiled grimly to myself. The
+tables would soon be turned.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>or perhaps an hour the ray melted its way into the solid rock, while
+I stood beside Ott and his crew, watching. Then, down below us, things
+began to happen.</p>
+
+<p>Little fragments of rock flew up from the shaft the ray had drilled.
+Jets of black mud leaped into the air. There was a sudden blast from
+below that rocked the <i>Ertak</i>, and the shaft became a miniature
+volcano, throwing rocky fragments and mud high into the air.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good, Ott," I said triumphantly. "Cease action." As I spoke, the
+first light of the dawn, unnoticed until now, spread itself over the
+scene, and we witnessed then one of the strangest scenes that the
+Universe has ever beheld.</p>
+
+<p>Up to the very edge of that life-giving blast of mineral-laden gas the
+tenuous creatures came crowding. There were hundreds of them,
+thousands of them. And they were still coming, crowding closer and
+closer and closer, a mass of crawling, yellowish shadows against the
+sombre earth.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly, they began to fill out and darken, as they drew in the fumes
+that were more than bread and meat and water to us. Where there had
+been formless shadows, rotund creatures such as we had met in the
+cavern stood and lashed their tentacles about in a sort of frenzied
+gladness, and fell back to make room for their brothers.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_i1.jpg" alt="I" width="37" height="52" /></div>
+
+<p>t's a sight to make a man doubt his own eyes, sir," said Correy, who
+had come to stand beside me. "Look at them! Thousands of them pouring
+from every direction. How did it happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"It didn't happen. I used our disintegrator ray as a drill; we simply
+sunk a huge shaft down into the bowels of the earth until we struck
+the source of the vapor which the self-appointed 'ruling class' has
+bottled up. We have emancipated a whole people, Mr. Correy."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate to think of what will happen to those in the cavern," replied
+Correy, smiling grimly. "Or rather, since you've told me of the
+pleasant little death they had arranged for us. I'm mighty glad of it.
+They'll receive rough treatment, I'm afraid!"</p>
+
+<p>"They deserve it. It has been a great sight to watch, but I believe
+we've seen enough. It has been a good night's work, but it's daylight,
+now, and it will take hours to repair the damage to the <i>Ertak's</i>
+hull. Take over in the navigating room, if you will, and pick a likely
+spot where we will not be disturbed. We should be on our course by
+to-night, Mr. Correy."</p>
+
+<p>"Right, sir," said Correy, with a last wondering look at the strange
+miracle we had brought to pass on the earth below us. "It will seem
+good to be off in space again, away from the troubles of these little
+worlds."</p>
+
+<p>"There are troubles in space, too," I said dryly, thinking of the
+swarm of meteorites that had come so close to wiping the <i>Ertak</i> off
+the records of the Service. "You can't escape trouble even in space."</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," said Correy from the doorway. "But you can get your sleep
+regularly!"</p>
+
+<p>And sleep is, when one comes to think of it, a very precious thing.</p>
+
+<p>Particularly for an old man, whose eyelids are heavy with years.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/image_013.jpg" width="200" height="122" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"><a name="Readers_Corner" id="Readers_Corner"></a>
+<img src="images/image_012.jpg" width="600" height="548" alt="Readers&#39; Corner" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>Now In Book Form</i></p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>Readers of Astounding Stories will be interested to hear
+that two of the continued novels which appeared in our pages
+during last year are coming out in book form.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these is "Murder Madness," by Murray Leinster.
+It is due sometime in February, so by the time this issue is
+on the newsstands it will no doubt be already out. The
+publishers are Brewer and Warren, and the price is $2.00.
+Here's your chance, collectors, and those who missed an
+instalment or two.</p>
+
+<p>The other book is "Brigands of the Moon," by&mdash;everyone
+knows&mdash;Ray Cummings. It should be coming along in a month or
+so. Watch out for it!</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>Mr. Cummings Sits In</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>Thank you for the opportunity to address our Readers on
+certain side-lights of my tale, "The Exile of Time." I
+particularly welcome it, for the theme of Time-traveling is,
+I think, the most interesting of any upon which I have
+written.</p>
+
+<p>Some of you will no doubt recall my stories "The Man Who
+Mastered Time" and "The Shadow Girl." In "The Exile of
+Time," I present the third of the trilogy. It has no
+fictional connection with the others; it is in no sense a
+sequel, but rather a companion story.</p>
+
+<p>To write about Time-traveling is for me a difficult but
+fascinating task. The opportunities are endless; and I hope
+you may think I have taken advantage of them with a measure
+of success.</p>
+
+<p>I wrote those conceptions of Time and Space and the Great
+Cosmos, which you will find in the text of the story,
+because I feel them very deeply. Each occasion upon which
+circumstances allow me to present my theories, I eagerly
+welcome. How much of the conception is original with me, I
+cannot say. It is the product of my groping interpretation
+of the theories of many brilliant scientific minds of
+today&mdash;humbly combined with perhaps some originality of my
+own. The mind flings far afield when it starts to grope with
+the Unknown. Try it! Read what I have written and then let
+your mind roam<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> a little further. Probe a little deeper.
+Perhaps we may contribute something. It is only by that
+process&mdash;each mind following some other's cleared path and
+pushing forward a little on his own&mdash;that the Unknown can be
+pierced.</p>
+
+<p>When once you admit the basic idea of Time-traveling to be
+plausible, what fascinating vistas are opened to the
+imagination!</p>
+
+<p>Space is so crowded! The room in which you are now sitting
+as you read these words&mdash;just think what that Space around
+you has held in the Past, and will hold in the Future! You
+occupy it now, playing out your little part; but think what
+has happened where you are now sitting so calmly reading!
+What tumultuous, crowding events! Your room is quiet now,
+but its space has rung with war-cries; the ground under you
+has been drenched with blood; and further back it was lush
+with primeval jungle; and in another age it was frozen
+beneath a great ice-cap; and before that it blazed, molten
+with fire. Back to the Beginning.</p>
+
+<p>And your little Space in the Future? It will be in the heart
+of a great mechanical city, perhaps. A mechanical servant
+may murder his human master in the space which you now call
+your room. The great revolt of the mechanisms may start in
+your room....</p>
+
+<p>I think that your room will some day again be shrouded under
+a forest growth. The mechanical city will be neglected,
+tumbled into ruins, buried beneath the silt of the passing
+centuries. The sun will slowly rise&mdash;a giant dull red ball,
+burning out, cooling. And the Earth will cool. Humans,
+perhaps, will have passed decadence and reverted to
+savagery. Perhaps the polar ice-caps will again come down,
+and ice slowly cover the dying world. All nature will be
+struggling and dying, with the sun a red ball turning dark
+like a cooling ember.</p>
+
+<p>Millions of centuries, with whatever events&mdash;who am I to
+say?&mdash;but it will go on to the End. That's a long way from
+the Beginning, isn't it? And yet ours is only a tiny planet
+living briefly in the great cosmos of Time and Space!</p>
+
+<p>A segment of Everything that ever was and ever will be
+marches through the Space of your room. What an enormously
+thronged little Space! There is only Time, to keep
+consecutive and orderly the myriad events which in your room
+are pushing and jostling one another! I say, then, "Time is
+what keeps everything from happening at once." It seems a
+good definition.</p>
+
+<p>I do hope you like "The Exile of Time." The writing of it
+made me realize how unimportant I am. A human lifetime is
+really as brief as the flash of an electric spark. The whole
+lifetime of our Earth is not much more than that. Stars,
+worlds, are born, live and die, and the Great Cosmos goes
+majestically on. Yet some people seem to feel that they and
+the Space they occupy in this Time they call the Present are
+the most important things that ever were or ever will be in
+the whole Universe. It is a good thing to realize that that
+isn't so.&mdash;Ray Cummings.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>Likes</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>Starting with the August issue, I am going to give my
+opinion of the stories.</p>
+
+<p>"The Planet of Dread," by R. F. Starzl, couldn't have been
+better. Get more stories by him. "Murder Madness," by Murray
+Leinster, was a good story, but it didn't belong in a
+Science Fiction magazine. "The Terrible Tentacles of L-472,"
+a good story; "The Invisible Death," a very good story;
+"Prisoners on the Electron," very good; "The Ape-Men of
+Xlotli," a good story, but it does not belong in a Science
+Fiction magazine; "The Pirate Planet," very excellent&mdash;much
+more so because it is an interplanetary story. "Vagabonds of
+Space," "The Fifth Dimension Catapult," "The Gate of Xoran,"
+"The Dark Side of Antri"&mdash;all good.</p>
+
+<p>Well, I guess I will sign off and give somebody else a
+chance to broadcast.&mdash;Wm. McCalvy, 1244 Beech St., St. Paul,
+Minn.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>I Do; I Don't</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>"I like the magazine the way it is," "I want a larger
+magazine," "I want a magazine twice a month," "I want a
+quarterly," and so do I, "There is a terrible flaw in one of
+the stories," "All of the stories are flawless," "I want
+reprints," "I don't," "I like Ray Cummings," "I don't," "I
+want a better grade paper," "The paper's O. K. with me," "I
+want smooth edges on the magazine," "So do I," "And so do
+I!"&mdash;these seem to be the most often repeated sentences in
+the letters from Readers.</p>
+
+<p>However, I have a new one to add: I would like to see an
+answer, by the Editor, to each letter that is printed in
+"The Readers' Corner," like this: "I liked 'An Extra Man,'
+etc.&mdash;Mr. Syence Ficshun" (I am very glad to hear that you
+liked this little masterpiece, etc.&mdash;Editor). Why not?</p>
+
+<p>The illustration on the cover of the January issue surely
+shows that you're starting the new year out right by putting
+on an extremely astounding cover. The story "The Gate to
+Xoran" is simply amazing. Let's read many more of Mr. Wells
+stories. It is far surpassed, however, by "The Fifth
+Dimension Catapult," which is the best story (novelette)
+that I have ever read in "our" magazine.</p>
+
+<p>The Boys' Scientification Club is now a branch of the famous
+Science Correspondence Club. Remember, boys between the ages
+of 10 and 15, if you're interested in reading Science
+Fiction, by all means join the B. S. C. We have many copies
+of Astounding Stories in our library and members are welcome
+to read them. For further details write to me.&mdash;Forrest J.
+Ackerman, President-Librarian, B. S. C., 530 Staples Avenue,
+San Francisco, Cal.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>Souls and Integrations</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>You are starting your second year as Editor of Astounding
+Stories. If your standard during 1931 is up to your standard
+of 1930,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> we shall be satisfied. If possible, give us, the
+Readers, the best in Science Fiction. I have no doubt but
+that the Readers of Astounding Stories would not want
+fantasy unless written by a master; and to my mind there is
+only one whom I will forgive for not making his stories
+Science Fiction, and that writer is A. Merritt. Every other
+writer should and must put plausible science in his stories.
+If he doesn't, he won't go far; not with Science Fiction
+readers, anyway.</p>
+
+<p>I do not agree to your answer, by letter, to my complaint
+about the science in the story, "An Extra Man," by Jackson
+Gee. You say that two men, each the size and half the weight
+of the original man could have been formed from the
+integrated particles of the original man. In the story, the
+weight of the two men was exactly the same as that of the
+original man. [?] Anyway, I do not believe that these two
+men could have been formed. Most likely, when the
+laboratories began the process of reintegration, the person
+integrated would have been cut in half, provided of course,
+that the laboratories began the process at the same time. If
+not, one laboratory would produce a larger portion of an
+integrated man than the other.</p>
+
+<p>But to come back to the original question. Can a man be
+disintegrated into his component atoms and then reintegrated
+into two men each half the size, weight, ability and brains?
+I say no. I believe that the component atoms of the man when
+reintegrated would be in exactly the same place as they were
+before the disintegration occurred. If a part and not the
+whole of a man is reintegrated in one place, then the part
+would be one part of that man and not a complete man in
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>It would be as preposterous and absurd for anything but a
+part of that man to be reintegrated, as it would be for two
+apes, pigs or hens to come from him. I leave out the
+question of what would happen to the soul. Imagine a soul
+divided in half. Mr. Gee might say that he doesn't believe
+in souls. Neither do I, much. I notice that some Readers say
+that they liked that story. One even says that it was
+perfect. Every man to his taste. I've read worse, myself.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, Mr. Editor, Astounding Stories is the finest and
+best Science Fiction magazine on the market.</p>
+
+<p>Many Readers want to keep their magazines and bind them,
+including myself. Why change the size? I'm certain that that
+won't be done. Astounding Stories started small (in size
+only) and it will remain small (also only in size). Let us
+have reprints.&mdash;Nathan Greenfeld, 373 Whitlock Ave., New
+York City.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>The Defense Rests</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>I have just read the January issue for 1931 and noticed some
+so-called helpful letters by Readers. Looking over Mr.
+Waite's letter, would like to suggest that he stop to think,
+if possible, that if he wants absolute bone-dry facts, that
+he doesn't want fiction at all. And Mr. Johnson&mdash;he seems
+to have the impression that everyone who can take things for
+granted without having a detailed explanation of the facts
+of the story is a moron or a small child. He should go find
+a volume of scientific research if he enjoys that sort of
+stuff. I read fiction stories for the enjoyment I get out of
+them and not to criticize them for lack of explanation. I
+would rather read some of his so-called nonsense than a lot
+of far-flung, intricate, baseless scientific explanations.
+Why doesn't Mr. Johnson use his imagination?&mdash;Donald Kahl,
+360 Selby Ave., St. Paul, Minn.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>"High Time"</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>I have been reading the magazine ever since it first came
+out, a year ago, so it is high time for me to write. It
+certainly grows better with every new issue.</p>
+
+<p>I think that the ten best stories published during 1930 were
+(not in order of merit): "Brigands of the Moon," "Vandals of
+the Stars," "The Atom Smasher," "The Moon Master," "Earth,
+the Marauder," "The Planet of Dread," "Silver Dome," "The
+Second Satellite," "Jetta of the Lowlands" and "The Pirate
+Planet."</p>
+
+<p>Your ten best authors are: Harl Vincent, Ray Cummings,
+Charles W. Diffin, Victor Rousseau, Capt. S. P. Meek, Murray
+Leinster, Arthur J. Burks, R. F. Starzl, Sewell P. Wright
+and Edmond Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>The Commander Hanson stories by S. P. Wright are great.
+Let's have lots more of them.</p>
+
+<p>And now about reprints. I cast my vote like many other
+readers in favor of them. Many Readers, in fact over half,
+are new Readers of Science Fiction. They, like myself, have
+not read the great masterpieces such as "The Time Machine,"
+"The Moon Pool" and countless other stories. Now, why not
+reprint some of them and give us a chance to read them? A
+few Readers who have read them before do not want them
+reprinted because they do not want anybody else to read
+them.</p>
+
+<p>A brickbat: Why not cut the edges of the magazine smooth? It
+would be much easier to handle.</p>
+
+<p>A bouquet: You have a fine magazine. Keep up the good stuff.
+My criticism is exhausted, so good-by until next
+time.&mdash;Oswald Train, P. O. Box 94, Barnesboro, Pa.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>Two Dimensions Off?</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>It was just by accident that I came across your magazine,
+and I have read every issue since.</p>
+
+<p>In the January number there is one story that I don't like,
+"The Fifth Dimension Catapult." As far as the story is
+concerned it is very good, but Professor Denham was not
+marooned in the fifth dimension. If you read the story you
+will find that Professor Denham was marooned on a three
+dimensional world. That is all I can make out.</p>
+
+<p>Astounding Stories is the best Science Fic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>tion magazine I
+have ever read, and I shall keep on reading it.</p>
+
+<p>Keep up the good cover illustrations.&mdash;Richard Meindle, R.
+1, Box 91, Butternut, Wisconsin.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>To the Colors!</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>Being a passionate admirer of Dr. Breuer and his writings, I
+cannot permit the contumelious, unfounded aggression of one
+George K. Addison to go on unconfuted.</p>
+
+<p>Perceiving that Dr. Breuer cannot possibly vindicate himself
+against this disparagement I feel obliged to extenuate Dr.
+Breuer in the eyes of the Readers.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, Dr. Breuer writes rarely and sparingly
+and does not grind out his stories month after month as do
+some other authors. His stories are highly original and are
+presented in a purely literary style. The story to which Mr.
+Addison refers, "A Problem in Communication," is a fine
+example of his work. Should his story be remonstrated
+against because it is lacking in adventure, because it did
+not delineate mushy love episodes, because it does not cause
+chills to run down one's spine? Positively not! It lives up
+to the standard of the highest Science Fiction. Here is a
+story unbesmirched by the love element, exceedingly
+plausible and interestingly narrated.</p>
+
+<p>If all stories were thought out and written just half as
+carefully as Dr. Breuer's, Astounding Stories would become a
+periodical justified to be considered on a par with The
+Golden Book.</p>
+
+<p>In closing, I wish to express my desire that more stories of
+the Breuer quality be bestowed upon the Readers.&mdash;Mortimer
+Weisinger, 266 Van Cortland Ave., Bronx, New York.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>And It Wasn't!</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>Having read "The Readers' Corner" since its first appearance
+in Astounding Stories and noted the various criticisms
+offered, may I tell you about a story written by a Science
+Fiction author?</p>
+
+<p>The author, by the way, is the perfect author; he makes
+absolutely no mistakes in his story, and is in no danger of
+starving if his works aren't accepted and older stories are
+reprinted instead. His science is correct and the story
+contains nothing that cannot be understood.</p>
+
+<p>The story is of interplanetary adventure. Strange to say,
+there is no war in the story; there is no villain; there is
+no hero to save a world from destruction or his sweetheart
+from the monsters of another planet. Instead, there are
+nothing but characters&mdash;if you get what I mean. The persons
+involved in this interplanetary novel reach their goal due
+to the tremendous strides of science in experimenting with
+air and space vehicles.</p>
+
+<p>When they arrive on the planet they do not meet hostile
+nations. They do not meet monstrosities. They do, however,
+meet people much like themselves who do not welcome the
+travelers with open arms and show them about their city, but
+regard them with curiosity and treat them with all due
+respect for their achievement in conquering space.</p>
+
+<p>As I said before, there is no hero who falls in love with
+the beautiful girl from the planet visited, and saves her
+and her country from other warring nations. To tell the
+truth, the adventurers have their own loved ones at home.
+They meet no intrigue. When they have learned all they
+can&mdash;experiencing many difficulties in mastering the
+language used, for the people of the planet have not
+perfected a brain-copier or other like mechanism&mdash;they
+arrange for commerce and travel between the two worlds and
+return to Earth. On their return, they are not met with
+world wide ovations and made heroes of, but receive credit
+for their undertaking and are soon forgotten about.</p>
+
+<p>To cap the climax, the story is acceptable to the Editors.
+It is not in need of corrections and is published
+immediately. The story is gratefully accepted by the public
+and not one single soul writes a scathing letter to the
+Editor telling why it was not good. In fact, I can hardly
+believe that such a story was written. Possibly it
+wasn't!&mdash;Robert R. Young, 86 Third Avenue, Kingston, Penn.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>Ha-ha!</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>Christmas day, and because I'm not acquainted in this city
+I'm writing you a letter.</p>
+
+<p>I have just finished reading your magazine. I came close to
+not buying it, being not overly prosperous, but decided to
+take a chance when I saw you had a dimensional story by
+Murray Leinster. That story was up to expectations. The
+others were down to expectations.</p>
+
+<p>If you want me to choose your magazine to spend my reading
+allowance on, have more stories by Leinster, Starzl, Breuer
+and Wells. It may take a little more effort, but it's worth
+it. Sax Rohmer is good on science stuff, too.</p>
+
+<p>Before you print any more undersea stories have a diver look
+at them. You tell about standing at the bottom of the ocean
+and seeing the submarine "not more than a quarter of a mile
+away." Ha-ha! [No fair, that ha-ha! For the story says,
+quoted exactly: "... there gleamed the reassuring LIGHTS of
+the Nereid, not a quarter of a mile away." Probably, intense
+searchlight beams could be seen that far.&mdash;Ed.] You couldn't
+see it if you stood more than ten feet away. I'm not trying
+to be critical, but you should be more careful.&mdash;Myron
+Higgins, 524 West 100th St., New York City.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>We Never Will</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>I have been an enthusiastic reader of Astounding Stories
+since it was founded, and I think it about time that I
+voiced my opinion of your great magazine.</p>
+
+<p>Taking all in all it's a vow, but of course<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> it could be
+made better by having a quarterly, which I am sure would go
+over big.</p>
+
+<p>Wesso is great, so why not have all the illustrations by
+him?</p>
+
+<p>Your authors are also great. Nearly every story I have read
+was perfect, and whatever you do don't lose R. F. Starzl.
+His ideas are very good, as illustrated in "The Planet of
+Dread."</p>
+
+<p>There is only one more thing I would like to ask of you, and
+that is the reason why I write. Please don't spoil the
+magazine by endeavoring to please a very small minority by
+putting in unnecessary scientific explanations. The reason
+why I like your magazine so much is because of the fact that
+it is unique in that respect. I have read a few stories in
+other scientific magazines and found that they contained too
+much explanation. I hope for the benefit of other Readers
+and myself that you will not change the stories by adding
+too much explanation.</p>
+
+<p>In the coming year I wish you all possible success.&mdash;John
+Sheehan, 32 Elm St., Cambridge, Mass.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>This and That</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>In the October issue of Astounding Stories Mr. Woodrow
+Gelman cast vote number 1 for reprints. In the February,
+1931, issue, Mr. Forgaris throws in number 2 and here goes
+number 3. I really don't see why, even after the arguments
+you printed, you don't print at least one a year. I have
+been reading your magazine ever since it came out and have
+found that at least one-half of your Readers want reprints.
+Can't you print at least one for an experiment?</p>
+
+<p>Ray Cummings, S. P. Meek, Dr. Miles J. Breuer, Sewell P.
+Wright and Harl Vincent are your best authors. Wesso is your
+best artist by far.</p>
+
+<p>There were several stories I did not like. They are:
+"Monsters of Moyen," "Earth, the Marauder," and I guess
+those are all.</p>
+
+<p>How about giving us some short short stories? And how about
+cutting the edges of the paper smooth? And giving us a
+quarterly? But all in all I think your magazine is one of
+the best in the field.&mdash;Vernon H. Jones, 1603 Sixth Ave.,
+Des Moines, Iowa.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>It's Your Imagination</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>Well, well! Astounding Stories was two days early this
+month. See that this happens more often.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, "The Pirate Planet" took first place in the
+February number. The story was very well written and the
+characters very realistic. It deserves to be put in book
+form, also in the talkies. It would be much better than
+"Just Imagine."</p>
+
+<p>I welcome Anthony Gilmore, D. W. Hall and F. V. W. Mason to
+Astounding Stories. Their stories proved to be very
+interesting and I hope to read more.</p>
+
+<p>Do you know how to write editorials? Yes? Then prove it. I
+have to be shown. Write on some scientific subject each
+month, and every so often write on Astounding Stories itself
+and of its stories and authors.</p>
+
+<p>Is it my imagination or have you been using a better grade
+of paper in the past two issues? it seems to be much
+smoother and a little thinner than that used previously.</p>
+
+<p>I notice that you are giving more room to some of the
+illustrations, as in "Werewolves of War" and "The Pirate
+Planet." The larger the illustrations are the more there can
+be put in them.&mdash;Jack Darrow, 4225 No. Spaulding Ave.,
+Chicago, Illinois.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="p1"><i>If He But Could!</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Editor:</p>
+
+<p>Astounding Stories is without doubt the most preeminent in
+its field.</p>
+
+<p>With such versatile authors as Burks (When does his next
+story appear?), Starzl, Cummings, Leinster, Vincent and all
+the rest, how can it help but to overshadow all periodicals!</p>
+
+<p>The illustrations are superfine. Wesso is a marvel! If he
+could only write his own stories and illustrate them!</p>
+
+<p>Now, a suggestion. I am positive that every Reader of your
+magazine wants you to start a department in which
+biographies of the authors and their photographs are given.
+Why not start one?&mdash;Julius Schwartz, 407 East 183rd St.,
+Bronx, New York.</p></div>
+
+
+<h3><i>"The Readers' Corner"</i></h3>
+<p>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&mdash;everything
+that's of common interest in connection with our Astounding Stories.</p>
+
+<p>Although from time to time the Editor may make a comment or so, this
+is a department primarily for <i>Readers</i>, and we want you to make full
+use of it. Likes, dislikes, criticisms, explanations, roses,
+brickbats, suggestions&mdash;everything's welcome here: so "come over in
+'The Readers' Corner'" and discuss it with all of us!</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 75px;">
+<img src="images/image_014.jpg" width="75" height="73" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Astounding Stories,  April, 1931, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTOUNDING STORIES,  APRIL, 1931 ***
+
+***** This file should be named 30452-h.htm or 30452-h.zip *****
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,10858 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Astounding Stories,  April, 1931, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Astounding Stories,  April, 1931
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: November 11, 2009 [EBook #30452]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTOUNDING STORIES,  APRIL, 1931 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              ASTOUNDING
+
+                               STORIES
+
+                                 20c
+
+
+              _On Sale the First Thursday of Each Month_
+
+
+                       W. M. CLAYTON, Publisher
+                         HARRY BATES, Editor
+                  DOUGLAS M. DOLD, Consulting Editor
+
+
+The Clayton Standard on a Magazine Guarantees
+
+    _That_ the stories therein are clean, interesting, vivid, by leading
+           writers of the day and purchased under conditions approved by
+           the Authors' League of America;
+
+    _That_ such magazines are manufactured in Union shops by American
+           workmen;
+
+    _That_ each newsdealer and agent is insured a fair profit;
+
+    _That_ an intelligent censorship guards their advertising pages.
+
+
+_The other Clayton magazines are:_
+
+ACE-HIGH MAGAZINE, RANCH ROMANCES, COWBOY STORIES, CLUES, FIVE-NOVELS
+MONTHLY, ALL STAR DETECTIVE STORIES, RANGELAND LOVE STORY MAGAZINE,
+WESTERN ADVENTURES, and WESTERN LOVE STORIES.
+
+_More than Two Million Copies Required to Supply the Monthly Demand
+for Clayton Magazines._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VOL. VI, No. 1            CONTENTS            APRIL, 1931
+
+
+COVER DESIGN                  H. W. WESSO
+    _Painted in Water-Colors from a Scene in "Monsters of Mars."_
+
+MONSTERS OF MARS              EDMOND HAMILTON             4
+    _Three Martian-Duped Earth-Men Swing Open the Gates of Space That for
+     So Long Had Barred the Greedy Hordes of the Red Planet._
+     (A Complete Novelette.)
+
+THE EXILE OF TIME             RAY CUMMINGS               26
+    _From Somewhere Out of Time Come a Swarm of Robots Who Inflict on
+     New York the Awful Vengeance of the Diabolical Cripple Tugh._
+     (Beginning a Four-Part Novel.)
+
+HELL'S DIMENSION              TOM CURRY                  51
+    _Professor Lambert Deliberately Ventures into a Vibrational Dimension
+     to Join His Fiancee in Its Magnetic Torture-Fields._
+
+THE WORLD BEHIND THE MOON     PAUL ERNST                 64
+    _Two Intrepid Earth-Men Fight It Out with the Horrific Monsters of
+     Zeud's Frightful Jungles._
+
+FOUR MILES WITHIN             ANTHONY GILMORE            76
+    _Far Down into the Earth Goes a Gleaming Metal Sphere Whose Passengers
+     Are Deadly Enemies._  (A Complete Novelette.)
+
+THE LAKE OF LIGHT             JACK WILLIAMSON           100
+    _In the Frozen Wastes at the Bottom of the World Two Explorers Find a
+     Strange Pool of White Fire--and Have a Strange Adventure._
+
+THE GHOST WORLD               SEWELL PEASLEE WRIGHT     118
+    _Commander John Hanson Records Another of His Thrilling Interplanetary
+     Adventures with the Special Patrol Service._
+
+THE READERS' CORNER           ALL OF US                 134
+    _A Meeting Place for Readers of Astounding Stories._
+
+
+Single Copies, 20 Cents (In Canada, 25 Cents) Yearly Subscription,
+$2.00
+
+Issued monthly by Readers' Guild, Inc., 80 Lafayette Street, New York,
+N. Y. W. M. Clayton, President; Francis P. Pace, Secretary. Entered as
+second-class matter December 7, 1929, at the Post Office at New York,
+N. Y., under Act of March 3, 1879. Title registered as a Trade Mark in
+the U. S. Patent Office. Member Newsstand Group--Men's List. For
+advertising rates address E. R. Crowe & Co., Inc., 25 Vanderbilt Ave.,
+New York; or 225 North Michigan Ave., Chicago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Monsters of Mars
+
+A COMPLETE NOVELETTE
+
+_By Edmond Hamilton_
+
+[Illustration: _The Martian gestured with a reptilian arm toward the
+ladder._]
+
+[Sidenote: Three Martian-duped Earth-men swing open the gates of space
+that for so long had barred the greedy hordes of the Red Planet.]
+
+
+Allan Randall stared at the man before him. "And that's why you sent
+for me, Milton?" he finally asked.
+
+The other's face was unsmiling. "That's why I sent for you, Allan," he
+said quietly. "To go to Mars with us to-night!"
+
+There was a moment's silence, in which Randall's eyes moved as though
+uncomprehendingly from the face of Milton to those of the two men
+beside him. The four sat together at the end of a roughly furnished
+and electric-lit living-room, and in that momentary silence there came
+in to them from the outside night the distant pounding of the Atlantic
+upon the beach. It was Randall who first spoke again.
+
+"To Mars!" he repeated. "Have you gone crazy, Milton--or is this some
+joke you've put up with Lanier and Nelson here?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Milton shook his head gravely. "It is not a joke, Allan. Lanier and I
+are actually going to flash out over the gulf to the planet Mars
+to-night. Nelson must stay here, and since we wanted three to go I
+wired you as the most likely of my friends to make the venture."
+
+"But good God!" Randall exploded, rising. "You, Milton, as a physicist
+ought to know better. Space-ships and projectiles and all that are but
+fictionists' dreams."
+
+"We are not going in either space-ship or projectile," said Milton
+calmly. And then as he saw his friend's bewilderment he rose and led
+the way to a door at the room's end, the other three following him
+into the room beyond.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a long laboratory of unusual size in which Randall found
+himself, one in which every variety of physical and electrical
+apparatus seemed represented. Three huge dynamo-motor arrangements
+took up the room's far end, and from them a tangle of wiring led
+through square black condensers and transformers to a battery of great
+tubes. Most remarkable, though, was the object at the room's center.
+
+It was like a great double cube of dull metal, being in effect two
+metal cubes each twelve feet square, supported a few feet above the
+floor by insulated standards. One side of each cube was open, exposing
+the hollow interiors of the two cubical chambers. Other wiring led
+from the big electronic tubes and from the dynamos to the sides of the
+two cubes.
+
+The four men gazed at the enigmatic thing for a time in silence.
+Milton's strong, capable face showed only in its steady eyes what
+feelings were his, but Lanier's younger countenance was alight with
+excitement; and so too to some degree was that of Nelson. Randall
+simply stared at the thing, until Milton nodded toward it.
+
+"That," he said, "is what will flash us out to Mars to-night."
+
+Randall could only turn his stare upon the other, and Lanier chuckled.
+"Can't take it in yet, Randall? Well, neither could I when the idea
+was first sprung on us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton nodded to seats behind them, and as the half-dazed Randall sank
+into one the physicist faced him earnestly.
+
+"Randall, there isn't much time now, but I am going to tell you what I
+have been doing in the last two years on this God-forsaken Maine
+coast. I have been for those two years in unbroken communication by
+radio with beings on the planet Mars!
+
+"It was when I still held my physics professorship back at the
+university that I got first onto the track of the thing. I was
+studying the variation of static vibrations, and in so doing caught
+steady signals--not static--at an unprecedentedly high wave-length.
+They were dots and dashes of varying length in an entirely
+unintelligible code, the same arrangement of them being sent out
+apparently every few hours.
+
+"I began to study them and soon ascertained that they could be sent
+out by no station on earth. The signals seemed to be growing louder
+each day, and it suddenly occurred to me that Mars was approaching
+opposition with earth! I was startled, and kept careful watch. On the
+day that Mars was closest the earth the signals were loudest.
+Thereafter, as the red planet receded, they grew weaker. The signals
+were from some being or beings on Mars!
+
+"At first I was going to give the news to the world, but saw in time
+that I could not. There was not sufficient proof, and a premature
+statement would only wreck my own scientific reputation. So I decided
+to study the signals farther until I had irrefutable proof, and to
+answer them if possible. I came up here and had this place built, and
+the aerial towers and other equipment I wanted set up. Lanier and
+Nelson came with me from the university, and we began our work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Our chief object was to answer those signals, but it proved
+heartbreaking work at first. We could not produce a radio wave of
+great enough length to pierce out through earth's insulating layer and
+across the gulf to Mars. We used all the power of our great
+windmill-dynamo hook-ups, but for long could not make it. Every few
+hours like clockwork the Martian signals came through. Then at last we
+heard them repeating one of our own signals. We had been heard!
+
+"For a time we hardly left our instruments. We began the slow and
+almost impossible work of establishing intelligent communication with
+the Martians. It was with numbers we began. Earth is the third planet
+from the sun and Mars the fourth, so three represented earth and four
+stood for Mars. Slowly we felt our way to an exchange of ideas, and
+within months were in steady and intelligent communication with them.
+
+"They asked us first concerning earth, its climates and seas and
+continents, and concerning ourselves, our races and mechanisms and
+weapons. Much information we flashed out to them, the language of our
+communication being English, the elements, of which they had learned,
+with a mixture of numbers and symbolical dot-dash signals.
+
+"We were as eager to learn about them. They were somewhat reticent, we
+found, concerning their planet and themselves. They admitted that
+their world was a dying one and that their great canals were to make
+life possible on it, and also admitted that they were different in
+bodily form from ourselves.
+
+"They told us finally that communication like this was too
+ineffective to give us a clear picture of their world, or vice versa.
+If we could visit Mars, and then they visit earth, both worlds would
+benefit by the knowledge of the other. It seemed impossible to me,
+though I was eager enough for it. But the Martians said that while
+spaceships and the like were impossible, there was a way by which
+living beings could flash from earth to Mars and back by radio waves,
+even as our signals flashed!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Randall broke in in amazement. "By radio!" he exclaimed, and Milton
+nodded.
+
+"Yes, so they said, nor did the idea of sending matter by radio seem
+too insane, after all. We send sound, music by radio waves across half
+the world from our broadcasting stations. We send light, pictures,
+across the world from our television stations. We do that by changing
+the wave length of the light-vibrations to make them radio vibrations,
+flashing them out thus over the world, to receivers which alter their
+wave-lengths again and change them back into light-vibrations.
+
+"Why then could not matter be sent in the same way? Matter, it has
+been long believed, is but another vibration of the ether, like light
+and radiant heat and radio vibrations and the like, having a lower
+wave-length than any of the others. Suppose we take matter and by
+applying electrical force to it change its wave-length, step it up to
+the wave-length of radio vibrations? Then those vibrations can be
+flashed forth from the sending station to a special receiver that will
+step them down again from radio vibrations to matter vibrations. Thus
+matter, living or non-living, could be flashed tremendous distances in
+a second!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"This the Martians told us, and said they would set up a
+matter-transmitter and receiver on Mars and would aid and instruct us
+so that we could set up a similar transmitter and receiver here. Then
+part of us could be flashed out to Mars as radio vibrations by the
+transmitter, and in moments would have flashed across the gulf to the
+red planet and would be transformed back from radio vibrations to
+matter-vibrations by the receiver awaiting us there!
+
+"Naturally we agreed enthusiastically to build such a
+matter-transmitter and receiver, and then, with their instructions
+signalled to us constantly, started the work. Weeks it took, but at
+last, only yesterday, we finished it. The thing's two cubical chambers
+are one for the transmitting of matter and the other for its
+reception. At a time agreed on yesterday we tested the thing, placing
+a guinea pig in the transmitting chamber and turning on the actuating
+force. Instantly the animal vanished, and in moments came a signal
+from the Martians saying that they had received it unharmed in their
+receiving chamber.
+
+"Then we tested it the other way, they sending the same guinea pig to
+us, and in moments it flashed into being in our receiving chamber. Of
+course the step-down force in the receiving chamber had to be in
+operation, since had it not been at that moment the radio-vibrations
+of the animal would have simply flashed on endlessly in endless space.
+And the same would happen to any of us were we flashed forth and no
+receiving chamber turned on to receive us.
+
+"We signalled the Martians that all tests were satisfactory, and told
+them that on the next night at exactly midnight by our time we would
+flash out ourselves on our first visit to them. They have promised to
+have their receiving chamber operating to receive us at that moment,
+of course, and it is my plan to stay there twenty-four hours,
+gathering ample proofs of our visit, and then flash back to earth.
+
+"Nelson must stay here, not only to flash us forth to-night, but above
+all to have the receiving chamber operating to receive us at the
+destined moment twenty-four hours later. The force required to
+operate it is too great to use for more than a few minutes at a time,
+so it is necessary above all that that force be turned on and the
+receiving chamber ready for us at the moment we flash back. And since
+Nelson must stay, and Lanier and I wanted another, we wired you,
+Randall, in the hope that you would want to go with us on this
+venture. And do you?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As Milton's question hung, Randall drew a long breath. His eyes were
+on the two great cubical chambers, and his brain seemed whirling at
+what he had heard. Then he was on his feet with the others.
+
+"Go? Could you keep me from going? Why, man, it's the greatest
+adventure in history!"
+
+Milton grasped his hand, as did Lanier, and then the physicist shot a
+glance at the square clock on the wall. "Well, there's little enough
+time left us," he said, "for we've hardly an hour before midnight, and
+at midnight we must be in that transmitting chamber for Nelson to send
+us flashing out!"
+
+Randall could never recall but dimly afterward how that tense hour
+passed. It was an hour in which Milton and Nelson went with anxious
+faces and low-voiced comments from one to another of the pieces of
+apparatus in the room, inspecting each carefully, from the great
+dynamos to the transmitting and receiving chambers, while Lanier
+quickly got out and made ready the rough khaki suits and equipment
+they were to take.
+
+It lacked but a quarter-hour of midnight when they had finally donned
+those suits, each making sure that he was in possession of the small
+personal kit Milton had designated. This included for each a heavy
+automatic, a small supply of concentrated foods, and a small case of
+drugs chosen to counteract the rarer atmosphere and lesser gravity
+which Milton had been warned to expect on the red planet. Each had
+also a strong wrist-watch, the three synchronized exactly with the
+big laboratory clock.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they had finished checking up on this equipment the clock's
+longer hand pointed almost to the figure twelve, and the physicist
+gestured expressively toward the transmitting chamber. Lanier, though,
+strode for a moment to one of the laboratory's doors and flung it
+open. As Randall gazed out with him they could see far out over the
+tossing sea, dimly lit by the great canopy of the summer stars
+overhead. Right at the zenith among those stars shone brightest a
+crimson spark.
+
+"Mars," said Lanier, his voice a half-whisper. "And they're waiting
+out there for us now--out there where we'll be in minutes!"
+
+"And if they shouldn't be waiting--their receiving chamber not
+ready--"
+
+But Milton's calm voice came across the room to them: "Zero hour," he
+said, stepping up into the big transmitting chamber.
+
+Lanier and Randall slowly followed, and despite himself a slight
+shudder shook the latter's body as he stepped into the mechanism that
+in moments would send him flashing out through the great void as
+impalpable ether-vibrations. Milton and Lanier were standing silent
+beside him, their eyes on Nelson, who stood watchfully now at the big
+switchboard beside the chambers, his own gaze on the clock. They saw
+him touch a stud, and another, and the hum of the great dynamos at the
+room's end grew loud as the swarming of angry bees.
+
+The clock's longer hand was crawling over the last space to cover the
+smaller hand. Nelson turned a knob and the battery of great glass
+tubes broke into brilliant white light, a crackling coming from them.
+Randall saw the clock's pointer clicking over the last divisions, and
+as he saw Nelson grip a great switch there came over him a wild
+impulse to bolt from the transmitting chamber. But then as his
+thoughts whirled maelstromlike there came a clang from the clock and
+Nelson flung down the switch in his grasp. Blinding light seemed to
+break from all the chamber onto the three; Randall felt himself hurled
+into nothingness by forces titanic, inconceivable, and then knew no
+more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Randall came back to consciousness with a humming sound in his ears
+and with a sharp pain piercing his lungs at every breath. He felt
+himself lying on a smooth hard surface, and heard the humming stop and
+be succeeded by a complete silence. He opened his eyes, drawing
+himself to his feet as Milton and Lanier were doing, and stared about
+him.
+
+He was standing with his two friends inside a cubical metal chamber
+almost exactly the same as the one they had occupied in Milton's
+laboratory a few moments before. But it was not the same, as their
+first astounded glance out through its open side told them.
+
+For it was not the laboratory that lay around them, but a vast
+conelike hall that seemed to Randall's dazed eyes of dimensions
+illimitable. Its dull-gleaming metal walls slanted up for a thousand
+feet over their heads, and through a round aperture at the tip far
+above and through great doors in the walls came a thin sunlight. At
+the center of the great hall's circular floor stood the two cubical
+chambers in one of which the three were, while around the chambers
+were grouped masses of unfamiliar-looking apparatus.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Randall's untrained eyes it seemed electrical apparatus of very
+strange design, but neither he nor Milton nor Lanier paid it but small
+attention in that first breathless moment. They were gazing in
+fascinated horror at the scores of creatures who stood silent amid the
+apparatus and at its switches, gazing back at them. Those creatures
+were erect and roughly man-like in shape, but they were not human
+men. They were--the thought blasted to Randall's brain in that
+horror-filled moment--crocodile-men.
+
+Crocodile-men! It was only so that he could think of them in that
+moment. For they were terribly like great crocodile shapes that had
+learned in some way to carry themselves erect upon their hinder limbs.
+The bodies were not covered with skin, but with green bony plates. The
+limbs, thick and taloned at their paw-ends, seemed greater in size and
+stronger, the upper two great arms and the lower two the legs upon
+which each walked, while there was but the suggestion of a tail. But
+the flat head set on the neckless body was most crocodilian of all,
+with great fanged, hinged jaws projecting forward, and with dark
+unwinking eyes set back in bony sockets.
+
+Each of the creatures wore on his torso a gleaming garment like a coat
+of metal scales, with metal belts in which some had shining tubes.
+They were standing in groups here and there about the mechanisms, the
+nearest group at a strange big switch-panel not a half-dozen feet from
+the three men. Milton and Lanier and Randall returned in a tense
+silence the unwinking stare of the monstrous beings around them.
+
+"The Martians!" Lanier's horror-filled exclamation was echoed in the
+next instant by Randall's.
+
+"The Martians! God, Milton! They're not like anything we know--they're
+reptilian!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton's hand clutched his shoulder. "Steady, Randall," he muttered.
+"They're terrible enough, God knows--but remember we must seem just as
+grotesque to them."
+
+The sound of their voices seemed to break the great hall's spell of
+silence, and they saw the crocodilian Martians before them turning and
+speaking swiftly to each other in low hissing speech-sounds that were
+quite unintelligible to the three. Then from the small group nearest
+them one came forward, until he stood just outside the chamber in
+which they were.
+
+Randall felt dimly the momentousness of the moment, in which beings of
+earth and Mars were confronting each other for the first time in the
+solar system's history. The creature before them opened his great jaws
+and uttered slowly a succession of sounds that for the moment puzzled
+them, so different were they from the hissing speech of the others,
+though with the same sibilance of tone. Again the thing repeated the
+sounds, and this time Milton uttered an exclamation.
+
+"He's speaking to us!" he cried. "Trying to speak the English that I
+taught them in our communication! I caught a word--listen...."
+
+As the creature repeated the sounds, Randall and Lanier started to
+hear also vaguely expressed in that hissing voice familiar words:
+"You--are Milton and--others from--earth?"
+
+Milton spoke very clearly and slowly to the creature: "We are those
+from earth," he said. "And you are the Martians with whom we have
+communicated?"
+
+"We are those Martians," said the other's hissing voice slowly.
+"These"--he waved a taloned paw toward those behind him--"have charge
+of the matter-transmitter and receiver. I am of our ruler's council."
+
+"Ruler?" Milton repeated. "A ruler of all Mars?"
+
+"Of all Mars," the other said. "Our name for him would mean in your
+words the Martian Master. I am to take you to him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton turned to the other two with face alight with excitement.
+"These Martians have some supreme ruler they call the Martian Master,"
+he said quickly; "and we're to go before him. As the first visitors
+from earth we're of immense importance here."
+
+As he spoke, the Martian official before them had uttered a hissing
+call, and in answer to it a long shape of shining metal raced into
+the vast hall and halted beside them. It was like a fifty-foot
+centipede of metal, its scores of supporting short legs actuated by
+some mechanism inside the cylindrical body. There was a
+transparent-walled control room at the front end of that body, and in
+it a Martian at the controls who snapped open a door from which a
+metal ladder automatically descended.
+
+The Martian official gestured with a reptilian arm toward the ladder,
+and Milton and Lanier and Randall moved carefully out of the
+cube-chamber and across the floor to it, each of their steps being
+made a short leap forward by the lesser gravity of the smaller planet.
+They climbed up into the centipede-machine's control room, their guide
+following, and then as the door snapped shut, the operator of the
+thing pulled and turned the knob in his grasp and the long machine
+scuttled forward with amazing smoothness and speed.
+
+In a moment it was out of the building and into the feeble sunlight of
+a broad metal-paved street. About them lay a Martian city, seen by
+their eager eyes for the first time. It was a city whose structures
+were giant metal cones like that from which they had just come, though
+none seemed as large as that titanic one. Throngs of the hideous
+crocodilian Martians were moving busily to and fro in the streets,
+while among them there scuttled and flashed numbers of the
+centipede-machines.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As their strange vehicle raced along, Randall saw that the conelike
+structures were for the most part divided into many levels, and that
+inside some could be glimpsed ranks of great mechanisms and hurrying
+Martians tending them. Away to their right across the vast forest of
+cones that was the city the sun's little disk was shining, and he
+glimpsed in that direction higher ground covered with a vast tangle of
+bright crimson jungle that sloped upward from a great, half-glimpsed
+waterway.
+
+The Martian beside them saw the direction of his gaze and leaned
+toward him. "No Martians live there," he hissed slowly. "Martians live
+only in cities where canals meet."
+
+"Then there's no life in those crimson jungles?" Randall asked,
+repeating the question a moment later more slowly.
+
+"No Martians there, but life--living things," the other told him,
+searching for words. "But not intelligent, like Martians and you."
+
+He turned to gaze ahead, then pointed. "The Martian Master's cone," he
+hissed.
+
+The three saw that at the end of the broad metal street down which
+their vehicle was racing there loomed another titanic cone-structure,
+fully as large as the mighty one in which they first found themselves.
+As the centipede-machine swept up to its great door-opening and
+halted, they descended to the metal paving and then followed their
+reptilian guide through the opening.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They found themselves in a great hall in which scores of the Martians
+were coming and going. At the hall's end stood a row of what seemed
+guards, Martians grasping shining tubes such as they had already
+glimpsed. These gave way to allow their passage when their conductor
+uttered a hissing order, and then they were moving down a shorter hall
+at whose end also were guards. As these sprang aside before them, a
+great door of massive metal they guarded moved softly upward,
+disclosing a mighty circular hall or room inside. Their crocodilian
+guide turned to them.
+
+"The hall of the Martian Master," he hissed.
+
+They passed inside with him. The great hall seemed to extend upward to
+the giant cone's tip, thin light coming down from an opening there.
+Upon the dull metal of its looming walls were running friezes of
+lighter metal, grotesque representations of reptilian shapes that they
+could but vaguely glimpse. Around the walls stood rank after rank of
+guards.
+
+At the hall's center was a low dias, and in a semicircle around and
+behind it stood a half-hundred great crocodilian shapes. Randall
+guessed even at the moment that they were the council of which their
+conductor had named himself a member. But like Milton and Lanier, he
+had eyes in that first moment only for the dais itself. For on it
+was--the Martian Master.
+
+Randall heard Milton and Lanier choke with the horror that shook his
+own heart and brain as he gazed. It was not simply another great
+crocodilian shape that sat upon that dais. It was a monstrous thing
+formed by the joining of three of the great reptilian bodies! Three
+distinct crocodile-like bodies sitting close together upon a metal
+seat, that had but a single great head. A great, grotesque crocodilian
+head that bulged backward and to either side, and that rested on the
+three thick short necks that rose from the triple body! And that head,
+that triple-bodied thing, was living, its unwinking eyes gazing at the
+three men!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Martian Master! Randall felt his brain reel as he gazed at that
+mind-shattering thing. The Martian Master--this great head with three
+bodies! Reason told Randall, even as he strove for sanity, that the
+thing was but logical, that even on earth biologists had formed
+multiple-headed creatures by surgery, and that the Martians had done
+so to combine in one great head, one great brain, the brains of three
+bodies. Reason told him that the great triple brain inside that
+bulging head needed the bloodstreams of all three bodies to nourish
+it, must be a giant intellect indeed, one fitted to be the supreme
+Martian Master. But reason could not overcome the horror that choked
+him as he gazed at the awful thing.
+
+A hissing voice sounding before him made him aware that the Martian
+Master was speaking.
+
+"You are the Earth-beings with whom we communicated, and whom we
+instructed to build a matter-transmitter and receiver on earth?" the
+slow voice asked. "You have come safely to Mars by means of that
+station?"
+
+"We have come safely." Milton's voice was shaken and he could find no
+other words.
+
+"That is well. Long had we desired to have such a station built on
+earth, since with it there to flash back and forth between the two
+worlds is easy. You have come, then, to learn of this world and to
+take back what you learn to your races?"
+
+"That is why we came." Milton said, more steadily. "We want to stay
+only hours on this first visit, and then flash back to earth as we
+came."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The head's awful eyes seemed to consider them. "But when do you intend
+to go back?" its strange voice asked. "Unless the one at your earth
+station has its receiver operating at the right moment you will simply
+flash on endlessly as radio waves--will be annihilated."
+
+Milton found the courage to smile. "We started from earth at our
+midnight exactly, and at midnight exactly twenty-four earth hours
+later, we are to flash back and the receiver will be awaiting us."
+
+There was silence when he had said that, a silence that seemed to
+Randall's strained mind to have become suddenly tense, sinister. The
+great triple-bodied creature before them considered them again, its
+eyes moving over them, and when it again spoke the hissing words came
+very slowly.
+
+"Twenty-four earth hours," it said; "and then your receiver on earth
+will be awaiting you. That time we can measure to the moment, and that
+is well. For it is not you three Earth-beings who will flash back to
+earth when that moment comes! It will be Martians, the first of our
+Martian masses who have waited for ages for that moment and who will
+begin then our conquest of the earth!
+
+"Yes, Earth-beings, our great plan comes to its end now at last! At
+last! Age on age, prisoned on this dying, arid world, we have desired
+the earth that by right of power shall be ours, have sought for ages
+to communicate with its beings. You finally heard us, you hearkened to
+us, you built the matter-transmitting and receiving station on earth
+that was the one thing needed for our plan. For when the
+matter-receiver of that station is turned on in twenty-four of your
+hours, and ready to receive matter flashes from here, it will be the
+first of our millions who will flash at last to earth!
+
+"I, the Martian Master, say it. Those first to go shall seize that
+matter-receiver on earth when first they appear there, shall build
+other and larger receivers, and through them within days all our
+Martian hordes shall have been flashed to earth! Shall have poured out
+over it and conquered with our weapons your weak races of
+Earth-beings, who cannot stand before us, and whose world you have
+delivered at last into our hands!"
+
+For a moment, when the great monster's hissing voice had ceased,
+Milton and Randall and Lanier gazed toward it as though petrified, the
+whole unearthly scene spinning about them. And then, through the thick
+silence, the thin sound of Milton's voice:
+
+"Our world--our earth--delivered to the Martians, and by us! God--no!"
+
+With that last cry of agonized comprehension and horror, Milton did
+what surely had never any in the great hall expected, leaped onto the
+dais with a single spring toward the Martian Master! Randall heard a
+hundred wild hissing cries break from about him, saw the crocodilian
+forms of guards and council rushing forward even as he and Lanier
+sprang after Milton, and then glimpsed shining tubes levelled from
+which brilliant shafts of dazzling crimson light or force were
+stabbing toward them!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Randall the moment that followed was but a split-second flash and
+whirl of action. As his earthly muscles took him forward with Lanier
+after Milton in a great leap to the dais, he was aware of the
+brilliant red rays stabbing behind him closely, and knew that only the
+tremendous size of his leap had taken him past them. In the succeeding
+instant he was made aware of what he had escaped, for the
+hastily-loosed rays struck squarely a group of three or four Martian
+guards rushing to the dais from the opposite side, and they vanished
+from view with a sharp detonation as though clicked out of existence!
+
+Randall was not to know then, that the red rays were ones that
+annihilated matter by neutralizing or damping the matter-vibrations in
+the ether. But he did know that no more rays were loosed, for by then
+he and Milton and Lanier were on the dais and were wrapped in a
+hurricane combat with the guards that had rushed between them and the
+Martian Master.
+
+Gleaming fangs--great scaled forms--reaching talons--it was all a wild
+phantasmagoria of grotesque forms spinning around him as he struck
+with all the power of his earthly muscles and felt crocodilian forms
+staggering and going down beneath his frenzied blows. He heard the
+roar of an automatic close beside him in the melee as Milton
+remembered at last through the red haze of his fury the weapon he
+carried, but before either Randall or Lanier could reach their own
+weapons a new wave of crocodilian forms had poured onto them that by
+sheer pressing weight held them helpless, to be disarmed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hissing orders sounded, the arms and legs of the three were tightly
+grasped by great taloned paws, and the masses of Martians about them
+melted back from the dais. Held each by two great creatures, Milton
+and Randall and Lanier faced again the triple-bodied Martian Master,
+who in all that wild moment of struggle appeared not to have changed
+his position. The big monster's black eyes stared unmovedly down at
+them.
+
+"You Earth-beings seem of lower intelligence even than we thought,"
+his hissing voice informed them. "And those weapons--crude, very
+crude."
+
+Milton, his face set, spoke back: "It may be that you will find human
+weapons of some power if your hordes reach earth," he said.
+
+"But what compared with the power of ours?" the other asked coldly.
+"And since our scientists even now devise new weapons to annihilate
+the earth's races, I think they would be glad of three of those races
+to experiment with now. The one use we can make of you, certainly."
+
+The creature turned its bulging head a little towards the guards who
+held the three men, and uttered a brief hissing order. Instantly the
+six Martians, grasping the three tightly, marched them across the
+great hall and through a different door than that by which they had
+entered.
+
+They were taken down a narrow corridor that turned sharply twice as
+they went on. Randall saw that it was lit by squares inset in the
+walls that glowed with crimson light. It came to him as they marched
+on that night must be upon the Martian city without, since the sun had
+been sinking when they had crossed it in the centipede-machine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Through what seemed an ante-room they were taken, and then into a long
+hall instantly recognizable as a laboratory. There were many glowing
+squares illuminating it, and narrow windows high in the wall gave them
+a glimpse of the city outside, a pattern of crimson lights. Long metal
+tables and racks filled the big room's farther end, while along the
+walls were ranged shining mechanisms of unfamiliar and grotesque
+appearance. Fully a score of the crocodilian Martians were busy in the
+room, some intent on their work at the racks and tables, others
+operating some of the strange machines.
+
+The guards conducted the three to an open space by the wall, below one
+of the high window-openings and between two great cylindrical
+mechanisms. Then, while five of their number held the three men
+prisoned in that space by the threat of their levelled ray-tubes, the
+other moved toward one of the busy Martian scientists and held with
+him a brief interchange of hissing speech.
+
+Milton leaned to whisper to the other two: "We've got to get out of
+this while we're still living," he whispered. "You heard the Martian
+Master--in constructing that matter-receiver on earth, we've opened a
+door through which all the Martian millions will pour onto our world!"
+
+"It's useless, Milton," said Randall dully. "Even if we got clear of
+this the Martians will be at their matter-transmitter in hordes when
+the moment comes to flash back to earth."
+
+"I know that, but we've got to try," the other insisted. "If we or
+some of us could get clear of this, we might in some way hide near the
+matter-transmitter until the moment came and then fight to it."
+
+"But how to get out of the hands of these, even?" asked Lanier,
+nodding toward the alert guards before them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There's but one way," Milton whispered swiftly. "Our earthly muscles
+would enable us, I think, to get through this window-opening above us
+in a leap, if we had a moment's chance. Well, whichever of us they
+take to experiment with or examine first, must make a struggle or
+disturbance that will turn the guards' attention for a moment and give
+the other two a chance to make the attempt!"
+
+"One to stay and the other two to get away...." Randall said slowly;
+but Milton's tense whisper interrupted:
+
+"It's the only way, and even then a thousand to one chance! But it's
+we who have opened this gate for the Martian invasion of our world and
+it's we who must--"
+
+Before he could finish, the approach of hissing voices told them that
+the leader of the six guards and the Martian who seemed the chief of
+the experimenters in the hall were nearing them. The three men stood
+silent and tense as the two crocodilian monsters stopped before them.
+The scientist, who carried in his metal-belt, instead of a ray-tube a
+compact case of instruments, surveyed them as though in curiosity.
+
+He came closer, his quick reptilian eyes taking in with evident
+interest every feature of their bodily appearance. Intuitively the
+three knew that one of them was to be chosen for a first investigation
+by the Martian scientists, and that that one would have not even the
+slender hope of escape open to the other two. A strange lottery of
+life and death!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Randall saw the creature's gaze turn from one to another of them, and
+then heard the hiss of his voice as he pointed a taloned paw toward
+Milton. Instantly two of the guards had seized Milton and had jerked
+him out from the wall, the other guards holding back Randall and
+Lanier with threatening tubes. It was upon Milton that the fatal
+choice had fallen!
+
+Randall and Lanier made together a half-movement forward, but Milton,
+a tense message in his eyes, forced them back. The guards who held the
+physicist led him, at the direction of the Martian scientist, toward a
+great upright frame at the room's far end, upon which were clustered a
+score of dial-indicators. From these flexible cords led; and now the
+scientists began attaching these by clips to various spots on Milton's
+body. Some mechanical examination of his bodily characteristics were
+apparently to be made. Milton shot suddenly a glance at the two by the
+wall, and his head nodded in an almost imperceptible signal. The
+muscles of Lanier and Randall tensed.
+
+Then abruptly Milton seemed to go mad. He shouted aloud in a terrible
+voice, and at the same moment tore from him the cords just attached,
+his fists striking out then at the amazed Martians around him. As they
+leaped back from that sudden explosion of activity and sound on
+Milton's part the guards before Randall and Lanier whirled
+instinctively for an instant toward it. And in that instant the two
+had leaped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was upward they leaped, with all the force of their earthly
+muscles, toward the big window-opening a half-dozen feet in the wall
+above them. Like released steel springs they sat up, and Randall heard
+the thump of their feet as they struck the opening's sill, heard wild
+cries suddenly coming from beneath them, as the guards turned back
+toward them. Crimson rays clove up like light toward them, but the
+instant's surprise had been enough, and in it they had leaped on and
+through the opening, into the outside night!
+
+As they shot downward and struck the metal paving outside, Randall
+heard a wild babble of cries from inside. A moment he and Lanier gazed
+frenziedly around them, then were running with great leaps along the
+base of the building from which they had just escaped.
+
+In the darkness of night the Martian city stretched away to their
+right, its massive dark cone-structures outlined by points of glowing
+ruddy light here and there upon them. Beside the city's metal streets
+were illuminated by the brilliant field of stars overhead and by the
+soft light of the two moons, one much larger than the other, that
+moved among those stars.
+
+Along the street crocodilian Martians were coming and going still,
+though in small numbers, there being but few in sight in the dim-lit
+street's length. Lanier pointed ahead as they leaped onward.
+
+"Straight onward, Randall!" he jerked. "There seem fewer of the
+Martians this way!"
+
+"But the great cone of the matter-station is the other way!" Randall
+exclaimed.
+
+"We can't risk making for it now!" cried the other. "We've got to keep
+clear of them until the alarm is over. Hear them now?"
+
+For even as they leaped forward a rising clamor of hissing cries and
+rush of feet was coming from behind as scores of Martians poured out
+into the darkness from the great cone-building. The two fugitives had
+passed by then from the shadow of the mighty structure, and as they
+ran along the broad metal street toward the shadow of the next cone,
+through the light of the moons above, they heard higher cries and then
+glimpsed narrow shafts of crimson force cleaving the night around
+them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Randall, as the deadly rays drove past him, heard the low detonating
+sound made by their destruction of the air in their path, and the
+inrush of new air. But in the misty and uncertain moonlight the rays
+could not be loosed accurately, and before they could be swept
+sidewise to annihilate the two fleeing men they had gained, with a
+last great leap, the shadow of the next building.
+
+On they ran, the clatter of the Martian pursuit growing more noisy
+behind them. Randall heard Lanier gasping with each great leap, and
+felt himself at every breath a knife of pain stabbing through his
+lungs, the rarified atmosphere of the red planet taking its toll.
+Again from the darkness behind them the crimson rays clove, but this
+time were wide of their mark.
+
+With every moment the clamor of pursuit seemed growing louder, the
+alarm spreading out over the Martian city and arousing it. As they
+raced past cone after cone, Randall knew even the increased power of
+their muscles could not long aid them against the exhaustion which the
+thin air was imposing on them. His thoughts spun for a moment to
+Milton, in the laboratory behind, and then back to their own desperate
+plight.
+
+Abruptly shapes loomed in the misty light before them! A group of
+three great Martians, reptilian shapes that had been coming toward
+them and had stopped for an instant in amazement at sight of the
+running pair. There was no time to halt themselves, to evade the
+three, and with a mutual instinct Lanier and Randall seized together
+the last expedient open to them. They ran straight forward toward the
+astounded three, and when a half-score feet from them, leaped with all
+their force upward and toward them, their tensed bodies flying through
+the air with feet outstretched before them.
+
+Then they had struck the group of three with feet-foremost, and with
+the impetus of that great leap had knocked them sprawling to this side
+and that, while with a supreme effort the two kept their balance and
+leaped on. The cries of the three added to the din behind them as they
+threw themselves forward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They flung themselves past a last cone building to halt for an instant
+in utter amazement despite the nearing pursuit. Before them were no
+more streets and structures, but a huge smooth-flowing waterway! It
+gleamed in the moonlight and lay at right angles across their path,
+seeming to flow along the Martian city's edge.
+
+"A canal!" cried Lanier. "It's one of the canals that meet at this
+city and flow around it! We're trapped--we've reached the city's
+edge!"
+
+"Not yet!" Randall gasped. "Look!"
+
+As he pointed to the left Lanier shot a glance there; and then both of
+them were running in that direction, along the smooth metal paving
+that bordered the mighty canal. They came to what Randall had seen, a
+mighty metal arch that soared out over the waterway to its opposite
+side. A bridge!
+
+They were on it, were racing up the smooth incline of it. Randall
+glanced back as they reached the arch's summit. From that height the
+city stretched far away behind them, a lace of crimson lights in the
+night. He glimpsed the gleam of the giant waterway that encircled the
+city completely, one that was fed by other canals from far away that
+emptied into it, the great city's vital water-supply brought thus from
+this world's melting polar snows.
+
+There were moving lights behind now, too, pouring out onto the metal
+paving by the waterway, moving to and fro as though in confusion, with
+a babel of hissing cries. It was not until Randall and Lanier were
+running down the descending incline of the great arched bridge,
+though, that the lights and shouts of their pursuers began to move up
+on that bridge after them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Running off the bridge's smooth way, the two found themselves
+stumbling on through the darkness over more metal paving, and then
+over soft ground. There were no lights or buildings or sounds of any
+sort on this farther side of the great waterway. A tall dark wall
+seemed suddenly to loom up out of the darkness some distance ahead of
+the two.
+
+"The crimson jungle!" Randall cried. "The jungles we glimpsed from the
+city! It's a chance to hide!"
+
+They raced toward the protecting blackness of that wall of vegetation.
+They reached it, flung themselves inside, just as the pursuing
+Martians, a mass of running crocodilian shapes and of great racing
+centipede-machines, swept up over the bridge's arch behind. A moment
+the two halted in the thick vegetation's shelter, gasping for breath,
+then were moving forward through the jungle's denser darkness.
+
+Thick about them and far above them towered the masses of strange
+trees and plant life through which they made their way. Randall could
+see but dimly the nature of these plant-forms, but could make out that
+they were grotesque and unearthly in appearance, all leafless, and
+with masses of thin tendrils branching from them instead of leaves. He
+realized that it was only beside the arid planet's great canals that
+this profusion of plant life had sufficient moisture for existence,
+and that it was the broad bands of jungle bordering the canals that
+had made the latter visible to earth's astronomers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lanier and he halted for a moment to listen. The thick jungle about
+them seemed quite silent. But from behind there came through it a
+vague tumult of hissing calls; and then, as they glimpsed red flashes
+far behind, they heard the crashing of great masses of the leafless
+trees.
+
+"The rays!" whispered Lanier. "They're beating through the jungle with
+them and the centipede-machines after us!"
+
+They paused no more, but pushed on through the thick growths with
+renewed urgency. Now and then, as they passed through small clearings,
+Randall glimpsed overhead the fast-moving nearer moon and slower
+sailing farther moon of Mars, moving across the steady stars. In some
+of these clearings they saw, too, strange great openings burrowed in
+the ground as though by some strange animal.
+
+The crashing clamor of the Martians beating the jungle behind was
+coming close, ever closer, and as they came to still another misty-lit
+clearing, Lanier paused, with face white and tense.
+
+"They're closing in on us!" he said. "They're hunting us down by
+beating the jungle with those centipede-machines, and even if we
+escape them we're getting farther from the city and the matter-station
+each moment!"
+
+Randall's eyes roved desperately around the clearing; and then, as
+they fell on a group of the great burrowed openings that seemed
+present everywhere about them, he uttered an exclamation.
+
+"These holes! We can hide in one until they've passed over us, and
+then steal back to the city!"
+
+Lanier's eyes lit. "It's a chance!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They sprang toward the openings. They were each of some four feet
+diameter, extending indefinitely downward as though the mouths of
+tunnels. In a moment Randall was lowering himself into one, Lanier
+after him. The tunnel in which they were, they found, curved to one
+side a few feet below the surface. They crawled down this curve until
+they were out of sight of the opening above. They crouched silent,
+then, listening.
+
+There came down to them the dull, distant clamor of the
+centipede-machines crashing through the jungle, cutting a way with
+rays, their clamor growing ever louder. Then Randall, who was lowest
+in the tunnel, turned suddenly as there came to him a strange rustling
+sound from _beneath_ him. It was as though some crawling or creeping
+thing was moving in the tunnel below them!
+
+He grasped the arm of Lanier, beside and a little above him, to warn
+him, but the words he was about to whisper never were uttered. For at
+this moment a big shapeless living thing seemed to flash up toward
+them through the darkness from beneath, cold ropelike tentacles
+gripped both tightly; and then in an instant they were being dragged
+irresistibly down into the lightless tunnel's depths!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As they were pulled swiftly downward into the tunnel by the tentacles
+that grasped them an involuntary cry of horror came from Randall and
+Lanier alike. They twisted frantically in the cold grip that held
+them, but found it of the quality of steel. And as Randall twisted in
+it to strike frantically down through the darkness at whatever thing
+of horror held them, his clenched fist met but the cold smooth skin
+of some big, soft-bodied creature!
+
+Down--down--remorselessly they were being drawn farther into the black
+depths of the tunnel by the great thing crawling down below them.
+Again and again the two twisted and struck, but could not shake its
+hold. In sheer exhaustion they ceased to struggle, dragged helplessly
+farther down.
+
+Was it minutes or hours, Randall wondered afterward, of that horrible
+progress downward, that passed before they glimpsed light beneath? A
+feeble glow, hardly discernible, it was, and as they went lower still
+he saw that it was caused by the tunnel passing through a strata of
+radio-active rock that gave off the faint light. In that light they
+glimpsed for the first time the horror dragging them downward.
+
+It was a huge worm creature! A thing like a giant angleworm, three
+feet or more in thickness and thrice that in length, its great body
+soft and cold and worm-like. From the end nearest them projected two
+long tentacles with which it had gripped the two men and was dragging
+them down the tunnel after it! Randall glimpsed a mouth-aperture in
+the tentacled end of the worm body also, and two scarlike marks above
+it, placed like eyes, although eyes the monstrous thing had not.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But a moment they glimpsed it and then were in darkness again as the
+tunnel passed through the radio-active strata and lower. The horror of
+that moment's glimpse, though, made them strike out in blind
+repulsion, but relentlessly the creature dragged them after it.
+
+"God!" It was Lanier's panting cry as they were dragged on. "This worm
+monster--we're hundreds of feet below the surface!"
+
+Randall sought to reply, but his voice choked. The air about them was
+close and damp, with an overpowering earthy smell. He felt
+consciousness leaving him.
+
+A gleam of soft light--they were passing more radio-active patches. He
+felt the wild convulsive struggles of Lanier against the thing; and
+then suddenly the tunnel ended, debouched into a far-stretching,
+low-ceilinged cavity. It was feebly illuminated by radio-active
+patches here and there in walls and ceiling, and as the monster that
+held them halted on entering the cavity, Randall and Lanier lay in its
+grip and stared across the weird place with intensified horror.
+
+For it was swarming with countless worm monsters! All were like the
+one who held them, thick long worm bodies with projecting tentacles
+and with black eyeless faces. They were crawling to and fro in this
+cavern far beneath the surface, swarming in hordes around and over
+each other, pouring in and out of the awful place from countless
+tunnels that led upward and downward from it!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A world of worm monsters, beneath the surface of the Martian jungles!
+As Randall stared across that swarming, dim-lit cave of horror,
+physically sick at sight of it, he remembered the countless tunnel
+openings they had glimpsed in their flight through the jungle, and
+remembered the remark of the Martian who had first guided them across
+the city, that in the jungles were living things, of a sort. These
+were the things, worm monsters whose unthinkable networks of tunnels
+and burrows formed beneath the surface a veritable worm world!
+
+"Randall!" It was Lanier's thick exclamation. "Randall--those
+scar-marks on their--faces--you see--?"
+
+"See?"
+
+"Those marks! These creatures had eyes once but must have been forced
+down here by the Martians. These may once have been--ages ago--human!"
+
+At that thought Randall felt horror overcoming his senses. He was
+aware that the great worm monster holding them was dragging them
+forward through the cavern, that others of the swarms there were
+crowding around them, feeling them blindly with their tentacles,
+helping to drag them forward.
+
+Half-carried and half-dragged they went, scores of tentacles now
+holding them, great worm shapes crawling forward on all sides of them
+and accompanying them along the cavern's length. He glimpsed worm
+monsters here and there emerging from the upward tunnels with masses
+of strange plant stuff in their grasp that others blindly devoured.
+His senses reeled from the suffocating air, the great cavity being but
+a half-score feet in height, burrowed from the damp earth by these
+numberless things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The faint, strange light of the radio-active patches showed him that
+they were approaching the cavern's end. Tunnels opened from its end as
+from all its walls and floor, and into one Randall was dragged by the
+creatures, one before and one behind, grasping him, and Lanier being
+brought behind him in the same way. In the close tunnel the heavy air
+was deadly, and he was but partly conscious when again, after moments
+of crawling along it, he felt himself dragged out into another cavern.
+
+This earth-walled cavity, though, seemed to extend farther than the
+first, though of the same height as the first and with a few
+radio-active illuminating patches. In it seethed and swarmed literally
+hundreds on hundreds of the worm monsters, a sea of great crawling
+bodies. Randall and Lanier saw that they were being carried and
+dragged now toward the farther end of this larger cavity.
+
+As they approached it, pushing through the swarming creatures who felt
+them with inquisitive tentacles as their captors took them forward,
+the two men saw that a great shape was looming up in the faint light
+at the cave's far end. In moments they were close enough to discern
+its nature, and a horror and awe filled them at sight of it more
+intense than they had yet felt.
+
+For the looming shape was a huge earthen image or statue of a worm! It
+was shaped with a childish crudeness from the solid earth, a giant
+earthen worm shape whose body looped across the cave's end, and whose
+tentacled head or front end was reared upward to the cavity's roof.
+Before this awful earthen shape was a section of the cave's floor
+higher than the rest, and on it a great crudely shaped rectangular
+earthen block.
+
+"Lanier--that shape!" whispered Randall in his horror. "That earthen
+image, made by these creatures--it's the worm god they've made for
+themselves!"
+
+"A worm god!" Lanier repeated, staring toward it as they were dragged
+nearer. "Then that block...."
+
+"Its altar!" Randall exclaimed. "These things have some dim spark of
+intelligence or memory! They're brought us here to--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before he could finish, the clutching tentacles of the worm monsters
+about them had dragged them up onto the raised floor beside the block,
+beneath the looming earthen worm shape. There they glimpsed for the
+first time in the faint light another who stood there held tightly by
+the tentacles of two worm monsters. It was a Martian!
+
+The big crocodilian shape was apparently a prisoner like themselves,
+captured and brought down from above. His reptilian eyes surveyed
+Lanier and Randall quickly as they were dragged up and held beside
+him, but he took no other interest. To the two men, at the moment, it
+seemed that his great crocodilian shape was human, almost, so much
+more man-like was it than the grotesque worm monsters before them.
+
+With a half-dozen of the creatures holding the two men and the Martian
+tightly, another great worm monster crawled to the edge of the raised
+earth floor in front of the giant worm god's image, and then reared up
+the first third of his thick body into the air. By then the great,
+faint-lit cavity stretching before them was filled with countless
+numbers of the monsters, pouring into it from all the tunnels that
+opened into it from above and below, packing it thick with their
+grotesque bodies as far as the eye could reach in the dim light.
+
+They were seething and crawling in that great mass; but as the worm
+monster on the elevation upreared, all in the cavity seemed suddenly
+to quiet. Then the upreared eyeless thing began to move his long
+tentacles. Very slowly at first he waved them back and forth, and
+slowly the masses of monsters in the cavity, all turned by some sense
+toward him, did likewise, the cavity becoming a forest of upraised
+tentacles waving rhythmically back and forth in unison with those of
+the leader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Back and forth--back and forth--Randall felt caught in some torturing
+nightmare as he watched the countless tentacle-feelers waving thus
+from one side to the other. It was a ceremony, he knew--some strange
+rite springing perhaps from dim memory alone, that these worm monsters
+carried out thus before the looming shape of their worm god. Only the
+six that held the three captives never relaxed their grip.
+
+Still on and on went the strange and senseless rite. By then the
+close, damp air of that cavity far beneath Mars' surface was sinking
+Randall and Lanier deeper into a half-consciousness. The Martian
+beside them never moved or spoke. The upstretched tentacles of the
+leader and of the great worm horde before him never ceased swaying
+rhythmically from side to side.
+
+Randall, half-hypnotized by those swaying tentacles and but
+semi-conscious by then, could only estimate afterward how long that
+grotesque rite went on. Hours it must have endured, he knew, hours in
+which each opening of his eyes revealed only the dimly-illuminated
+cavern, the worm monsters that filled it, the forest of tentacles
+waving in unison. It was only toward the end of those hours that he
+noticed vaguely that the tentacles were waving faster and faster.
+
+And as the tentacles of leader and worm horde waved alike ever more
+swiftly an atmosphere of growing excitement and expectation seemed to
+hold the horde. At last the upstretched feelers were whipping back and
+forth almost too swiftly for the eye to follow. Then abruptly the worm
+leader ceased the motion himself, and while the horde before him
+continued it, turned and crawled to the three captives.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In an instant, as though in answer to a second command, the two worm
+monsters who held the Martian dragged him forward toward the great
+earthen block before the worm god's image. Two others of the creatures
+came from the side, and the four swiftly stretched the Martian flat on
+the block's top, each of the four grasping with their tentacles one of
+his four taloned limbs. They seemed to hesitate then, the worm leader
+beside them, the tentacles of the horde waving swiftly still.
+
+Abruptly the tentacles of the leader flashed up as though in a signal.
+There was a dull ripping sound, and in that moment Randall and Lanier
+saw the Martian on the block torn literally limb from limb by the four
+great worm monsters who had held his four limbs!
+
+The tentacles of the horde waved suddenly with increased, excited
+swiftness at that. Randall shrank in horror.
+
+"They've brought us here for that!" he cried. "To sacrifice us on that
+altar that way to their worm god!"
+
+But Lanier too had cried out, appalled, as he saw that awful
+sacrifice, and both strained madly against the grip of the worm
+creatures. Their struggles were in vain, and then in answer to another
+unspoken command the two monsters that held Randall were dragging him
+also to the earthen altar!
+
+He felt himself gripped by the four great creatures around the block,
+felt as he struggled with his last strength that he was being
+stretched out on the block, each of the four at one of its corners
+grasping one of his limbs. He heard Lanier's mad cries as though from
+a great distance, glimpsed as he was held thus on his back the great
+shape of the earthen worm god reared over him, and then glimpsed the
+leader of the monsters rearing beside him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dull sound of the swift-waving tentacles of the horde came to him,
+there was a tense moment of agony of waiting, and then the tentacles
+of the leader flashed up in the signal!
+
+But at the same moment Randall felt his limbs released by the four
+monsters that had held them! There seemed sudden wild confusion in the
+great cave. The strange rite broke off; the horde of worm monsters
+crawled frantically this way and that in it. Randall slipped off the
+block; staggered to his feet.
+
+The worm monsters in the cave were swarming toward the downward tunnel
+openings! The two captives forgotten, the creatures were pouring in
+crawling, fighting swarms toward those openings. And then, as Randall
+and Lanier stared stupefied, there came a red flash from one of the
+upward tunnels and a brilliant crimson ray stabbed down and mowed a
+path of annihilation in the cave's earthen side!
+
+The two heard great thumping sounds from above, saw the tunnels
+leading from above becoming suddenly many times greater in size as red
+rays flashed down along them to gouge the tunnel's walls. Then down
+from those enlarged tunnels there were bursting long shining shapes,
+great centipede-machines crawling down the tunnels which their rays
+made larger before them! And as the centipede-machines burst down into
+the cavern their crimson rays stabbed right and left to cut paths of
+annihilation among the worms.
+
+"The Martians!" Lanier cried. "They didn't find us above--they knew we
+must have been taken by these things--and they've come down after us!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Back, Lanier!" Randall shouted. "Quick, before they see us, behind
+this--"
+
+As he spoke he was jerking Lanier with him behind the looming earthen
+statue of the great worm god. Crouched there between the statue and
+the cave's wall they were hidden precariously from the view of those
+in the cavern. And now that cavern had become a scene of horror
+unthinkable as the centipede-machines pouring down into it blasted the
+frantically crawling worm monsters with their rays.
+
+The worm monsters attempted no resistance, but sought only to escape
+into their downward tunnels, and in moments those not caught by the
+rays had vanished in the openings. But the centipede-machines, after
+racing swiftly around the cavity, were following them, were going down
+into those downward tunnels also, their rays blasting down ahead of
+each to make the tunnel large enough for them to follow.
+
+In a moment all but one had vanished down into the openings, the
+remaining one having its front or head jammed in one of the openings
+from the failure of its operator to blast a large enough opening
+before him. As Lanier and Randall watched tensely they saw the
+machine's control room door open and a Martian descend. He inspected
+the tunnel opening in which his vehicle was jammed, then with a hand
+ray-tube began to disintegrate the earth around that opening to free
+his machine.
+
+Randall clutched his companion's arm. "That machine!" he whispered.
+"If we could capture it, it would give us a chance to get back to the
+city--to Milton and the matter-transmitter!"
+
+Lanier started, then nodded swiftly. "We'll chance it," he whispered.
+"For our twenty-four hours here must be almost up."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They hesitated a moment, then crept forward from behind the great
+earthen statue. The Martian had his back to them, his attention on the
+freeing of his mechanism. Across the dim-lit cavern they crept softly,
+and were within a dozen feet of the Martian when some sound made him
+wheel quickly to confront them with the deadly tube. But even as he
+whirled the two had leaped.
+
+The force of their leap sent them flying through that dozen feet of
+space to strike the Martian at the moment his tube levelled. One
+hissing call he uttered as they struck him, and then with all his
+strength Lanier had grasped the crocodilian body and bent it backward.
+Something in it snapped, and the Martian collapsed limply. The two
+looked wildly around.
+
+Nothing showed that the Martian's call had been heard, and after a
+moment's glance that showed the head of the centipede machine already
+freed, they were clambering up into its control room, closing the
+door. Randall seized the knob with which he had seen the machines
+operated. As he pulled it toward him the machine moved across the
+tunnel opening and raced smoothly over the cavern's floor. As he
+turned the knob the machine turned swiftly in the same direction.
+
+He headed the long mechanism toward one of the upward-curving tunnels
+which the Martians had blasted larger in descending. They were almost
+to it when there flashed up into the cavity from one of the downward
+tunnel openings a centipede-machine, and then another, and another.
+The Martians in their transparent-windowed control rooms took in at a
+glance the dead crocodilian on the floor, and then the three great
+machines were darting toward that of Randall and Lanier.
+
+"The Martian we killed!" Randall cried. "They heard his call and are
+coming after us!"
+
+"Turn to the wall!" Lanier shouted to him. "I have the rays--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At that moment there was a clicking beside Randall and he glimpsed
+Lanier pulling forth two small grips he had found, then saw that two
+crimson rays were stabbing from tubes in their machine's front toward
+the others even as their own rays darted back. The beams that had been
+loosed toward them grazed past them as Randall whirled their machine
+to the wall, and he saw one of the three attacking mechanisms vanish
+as Lanier's beams struck it.
+
+Around--back--with instinctive, lightninglike motions he whirled their
+centipede-machine in the great dim-lit cave as the two remaining ones
+leapt again to the attack. Their rays shot right and left to catch the
+two men's vehicle in a trap of death, and as Randall swung their own
+mechanism straight ahead he glimpsed at the cavern's far end the great
+earthen worm god still upreared.
+
+On either side of them the red beams burned as they leapt forward, but
+as though running a gauntlet of death Randall kept the machine racing
+forward in the succeeding second until the two others loomed on either
+side of it. Then Lanier's beams were driving in turn to right and left
+of them and the two vanished as though by magic as they were struck.
+
+"Up to the surface!" Lanier cried, his eyes on the glowing dial of his
+wrist-watch. "We've been held hours here--we've but a half-hour or
+more before earth midnight!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Randall sent their machine racing again toward one of the upward
+tunnels, and as the long mechanism began to climb smoothly up the
+darkness he heard Lanier agonizing beside him.
+
+"God, if we have only enough time to get to that matter-transmitter
+before the Martians start flashing to earth through it!"
+
+"But Milton?" Randall cried. "We don't know whether he's alive or
+dead! We can't leave him!"
+
+"We must!" said Lanier solemnly. "Our duty's to the earth now, man, to
+the world that we alone can save from the Martian invasion and
+conquest! At the hour of twelve Nelson will have the matter-receiver
+turned on and at that hour the Martian will start flashing to
+earth--unless we prevent!"
+
+Suddenly Randall grasped the knob in his hands more tightly as light
+showed above them. They had been climbing upward through the enlarged
+tunnel at their machine's highest speed, and now as the tunnel curved
+the light grew stronger. Suddenly they were emerging into the thin
+sunlight of the Martian day.
+
+In the crimson jungle about them were many Martians, milling excitedly
+to and fro, and other centipede-machines that were blasting their way
+down through tunnels to the worm world beneath.
+
+Randall and Lanier, breathless, crouched low in the
+transparent-windowed control room as they sent their mechanism racing
+through this scene of swarming activity. Both gasped as one of the
+centipede-machines clashed against their own in passing, its Martian
+driver turning to stare after them. But there came no alarm, and in a
+moment they had passed out of the swarm of Martians and machines and
+were heading through the jungle in the direction of the city.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Through the weird red vegetation their mechanism raced with them,
+Randall holding it at its highest speed, and in minutes they came out
+of the jungle and were racing over the clear space between it and the
+great canal. Beyond that canal loomed into the thin sunlight the
+clustering cones of the mighty Martian city, two towering above all
+the others--the cone of the Martian Master and the other cone in which
+was the matter-transmitter and receiver.
+
+It was toward the latter that Lanier pointed. "Head straight toward
+that cone, Randall--we've but minutes left!"
+
+They were racing now up over the great arch of the canal's metal
+bridge, and then scuttling smoothly off it and along the broad metal
+street through which they had fled in darkness hours before. In it
+Martians and centipede-machines were coming and going in great
+numbers, but none noticed the human forms of the two crouched low in
+their mechanism's control room.
+
+They were rushing then toward the looming cone of the Martian Master.
+As they flashed past it Randall saw Lanier's face working, knew the
+desire that tore at him even as at himself to burst inside and
+ascertain whether or not Milton still lived in the laboratories from
+which they had fled. But they were past it, faces white and grim, were
+rushing on through the Martian city at reckless speed toward the other
+mighty cone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seemed that all in the great city were heading toward the same
+goal, streams of crocodilian Martians and masses of shining
+centipede-machines filling the streets as they moved toward it. As
+they came closer to the mighty structure, hearts pounding, they saw
+that around it surged a mighty mass of Martians and machines. The
+hordes waiting to be released through the matter-transmitter inside
+upon the unsuspecting earth!
+
+"Try to get the machine inside!" Lanier whispered tensely. "If we can
+smash that transmitter yet...."
+
+Randall nodded grimly. "Keep ready at the ray-tubes," he told the
+other.
+
+As unobtrusively as possible he sent their long mechanism worming
+forward through the vast throng of machines and Martians, toward the
+great cone's door. Crouching low, the hands of their watches closing
+fast toward the twelfth figure, they edged forward in the long
+machine. At last they were moving through the mighty door, into the
+cone's interior.
+
+They moved slowly on through the mass of machines and crocodile forms
+inside, then halted. For at the great crowd's center was a clear
+circle hundreds of feet across, and as Randall gazed across it his
+heart seemed to leap once and then stop.
+
+At the center of that clear circle rose the two cubical metal chambers
+of the matter-transmitter and receiver. The transmitting chamber, they
+saw, was flooded with humming force, with white light pouring from its
+inner walls. It was already in operation, and the masses of Martians
+in the great cone were only waiting for the moment to sound when the
+receiver on earth would be operating also. Then they would pour into
+the chamber to be flashed in masses across the gulf to earth! The eyes
+of all in the cone seemed turned toward an erect dial-mechanism beside
+the chambers which was clocklike in appearance, and that would mark
+the moment when the first Martian could enter the transmitting-chamber
+and flash out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A little distance from the two metal chambers stood a low dais on
+which there sat the hideous triple-bodied form of the Martian Master.
+Around him were the massed members of his council, waiting like him
+for the start of their age-planned invasion of earth. And beside the
+dais was a figure between two crocodilian guards at sight of whom
+Randall forgot all else.
+
+"Milton! My God, Lanier, it's Milton!"
+
+"Milton! They've brought him here to torture or kill him if they find
+he's lied about the moment they could flash to earth!"
+
+Milton! And at sight of him something snapped in Randall's brain.
+
+With a single motion of the knob he sent their centipede-machine
+crashing out into the clear circle at the mighty cone's center. A wild
+uproar of hissing cries broke from all the thousands in it as he sent
+the mechanism whirling toward the dais of the Martian Master. He saw
+the crocodilian forms there scattering blindly before him, and then
+as his rays drove out and spun and stabbed in mad figures of crimson
+death through the astounded Martian masses he saw Milton looking up
+toward them, crying out crazily to them as his two guards loosed him
+for the moment.
+
+A high call from the Martian Master ripped across the hall and was
+answered by a shattering roar of hissing voices as Martians and
+machines surged madly toward them. Randall and Lanier in a single leap
+were out of the centipede-machine, and in an instant had half-dragged
+Milton with them in a great leap up to the edge of the humming
+transmitting chamber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton was shouting hoarsely to them over the wild uproar. To enter
+that transmitting chamber before the destined moment was annihilation,
+to be flashed out with no receiver on earth awaiting them. They
+turned, struck with all their strength at the first Martians rushing
+up to them. No rays flashed, for a ray loosed would destroy the
+chamber behind them that was the one gate for the Martians to the
+world they would invade. But as the Martian Master's high call hissed
+again all the countless crocodilian forms in the great cone were
+rushing toward them.
+
+Braced at the very edge of the humming, light-filled chamber, Randall
+and Lanier and Milton struck madly at the Martians surging up toward
+them. Randall seemed in a dream. A score of taloned paws clutched him
+from beneath; scaled forms collapsed under his insane blows.
+
+The whole vast cone and surging reptilian hordes seemed spinning at
+increasing speed around him. As his clenched fists flashed with waning
+strength he glimpsed crocodilian forms swarming up on either side of
+them, glimpsed Lanier down, talons reaching toward him, Milton
+fighting over him like a madman. Another moment would see it
+ended--reptilian arms reaching in scores to drag him down--Milton
+jerking Lanier half to his feet. The Martian Master's call
+sounded--and then came a great clanging sound at which the Martian
+hordes seemed to freeze for an instant motionless, at which Milton's
+voice reached him in a supreme cry.
+
+_"Randall--the transmitter!"_
+
+For in that instant Milton was leaping back with Lanier, and as
+Randall with his last strength threw himself backward with them into
+the humming transmitting-chamber's brilliant light, he heard a last
+frenzied roar of hissing cries from the Martian hordes about them.
+Then as the brilliant light and force from the chamber's walls smote
+them, Randall felt himself hurled into blackness inconceivable, that
+smashed like a descending curtain across his brain.
+
+The curtain of blackness lifted for a moment. He was lying with Milton
+and Lanier in another chamber whose force beat upon them. He saw a
+yellow-lit room instead of the great cone--saw the tense, anxious face
+of Nelson at the switch beside them. He strove to move, made to Nelson
+a gesture with his arm that seemed to drain all strength and life from
+him; and then, as in answer to it Nelson drove up the switch and
+turned off the force of the matter-receiver in which they lay, the
+black curtain descended on Randall's brain once more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two hours later it was when Milton and Randall and Lanier and Nelson
+turned to the laboratory's door. They paused to glance behind them. Of
+the great matter-transmitter and receiver, of the apparatus that had
+crowded the laboratory, there remained now but wreckage.
+
+For that had been their first thought, their first task, when the
+astounded Nelson had brought the three back to consciousness and had
+heard their amazing tale. They had wrecked so completely the
+matter-station and its actuating apparatus that none could ever have
+guessed what a mechanism of wonder the laboratory a short time before
+had held.
+
+The cubical chambers had been smashed beyond all recognition, the
+dynamos were masses of split metal and fused wiring, the batteries of
+tubes were shattered, the condensers and transformers and wiring
+demolished. And it had only been when the last written plans and
+blue-prints of the mechanism had been burned that Milton and Randall
+and Lanier had stopped to allow their exhausted bodies a moment of
+rest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now as they paused at the laboratory's door, Lanier reached and swung
+it open. Together, silent, they gazed out.
+
+It all seemed to Randall exactly as upon the night before. The shadowy
+masses in the darkness, the heaving, dim-lit sea stretching far away
+before them, the curtain of summer stars stretched across the heavens.
+And, sinking westward amid those stars, the red spark of Mars toward
+which as though toward a magnet all their eyes had turned.
+
+Milton was speaking. "Up there it has shone for centuries--ages--a
+crimson spot of light. And up there the Martians have been watching,
+watching--until at last we opened to them the gate."
+
+Randall's hand was on his shoulder. "But we closed that gate, too, in
+the end."
+
+Milton nodded slowly. "We--or the fate that rules our worlds. But the
+gate is closed, and God grant, shall never again be opened by any on
+this world."
+
+"God grant it," the other echoed.
+
+And they were all gazing still toward the thing. Gazing up toward the
+crimson spot of light that burned there among the stars, toward the
+planet that shone red, menacing, terrible, but whose menace and whose
+terror had been thrust back even as they had crouched to spring at
+last upon the earth.
+
+
+
+
+The Exile of Time
+
+BEGINNING A FOUR-PART NOVEL
+
+_By Ray Cummings_
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_Mysterious Girl_
+
+[Illustration: _Presently there was not one Robot, but three!_]
+
+[Sidenote: From somewhere out of Time come a swarm of Robots who
+inflict on New York the awful vengeance of the diabolical cripple
+Tugh.]
+
+
+The extraordinary incidents began about 1 A.M. in the night of June
+8-9, 1935. I was walking through Patton Place, in New York City, with
+my friend Larry Gregory. My name is George Rankin. My business--and
+Larry's--are details quite unimportant to this narrative. We had been
+friends in college. Both of us were working in New York; and with all
+our relatives in the middle west we were sharing an apartment on this
+Patton Place--a short crooked, little-known street of not particularly
+impressive residential buildings lying near the section known as
+Greenwich Village, where towering office buildings of the business
+districts encroach close upon it.
+
+This night at 1 A. M. it was deserted. A taxi stood at a corner; its
+chauffeur had left it there, and evidently gone to a nearby lunch
+room. The street lights were, as always, inadequate. The night was
+sultry and dark, with a leaden sky and a breathless humidity that
+presaged a thunder storm. The houses were mostly unlighted at this
+hour. There was an occasional apartment house among them, but mostly
+they were low, ramshackle affairs of brick and stone.
+
+We were still three blocks from our apartment when without warning the
+incidents began which were to plunge us and all the city into
+disaster. We were upon the threshold of a mystery weird and strange,
+but we did not know it. Mysterious portals were swinging to engulf
+us. And all unknowing, we walked into them.
+
+Larry was saying, "Wish we would get a storm to clear this air--_what
+the devil?_ George, did you hear that?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We stood listening. There had sounded a choking, muffled scream. We
+were midway in the block. There was not a pedestrian in sight, nor any
+vehicle save the abandoned taxi at the corner.
+
+"A woman," he said. "Did it come from this house?"
+
+We were standing before a three-story brick residence. All its windows
+were dark. There was a front stoop of several steps, and a basement
+entryway. The windows were all closed, and the place had the look of
+being unoccupied.
+
+"Not in there, Larry," I answered. "It's closed for the summer--" But
+I got no further; we heard it again. And this time it sounded, not
+like a scream, but like a woman's voice calling to attract our
+attention.
+
+"George! Look there!" Larry cried.
+
+The glow from a street light illumined the basement entryway, and
+behind one of the dark windows a girl's face was pressed against the
+pane.
+
+Larry stood gripping me, then drew me forward and down the steps of
+the entryway. There was a girl in the front basement room. Darkness
+was behind her, but we could see her white frightened face close to
+the glass. She tapped on the pane, and in the silence we heard her
+muffled voice:
+
+"Let me out! Oh, let me get out!"
+
+The basement door had a locked iron gate. I rattled it. "No way of
+getting in," I said, then stopped short with surprise. "What the
+devil--"
+
+I joined Larry by the window. The girl was only a few inches from us.
+She had a pale, frightened face; wide, terrified eyes. Even with that
+first glimpse, I was transfixed by her beauty. And startled; there was
+something weird about her. A low-necked, white satin dress disclosed
+her snowy shoulders; her head was surmounted by a pile of snow-white
+hair, with dangling white curls framing her pale ethereal beauty. She
+called again.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" Larry demanded. "Are you alone in there?
+What is it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She backed from the window; we could see her only as a white blob in
+the darkness of the basement room.
+
+I called, "Can you hear us? What is it?"
+
+Then she screamed again. A low scream; but there was infinite terror
+in it. And again she was at the window.
+
+"You will not hurt me? Let me--oh please let me come out!" Her fists
+pounded the casement.
+
+What I would have done I don't know. I recall wondering if the
+policeman would be at our corner down the block; he very seldom was
+there. I heard Larry saying:
+
+"What the hell!--I'll get her out. George, get me that brick.... Now,
+get back, girl--I'm going to smash the window."
+
+But the girl kept her face pressed against the pane. I had never seen
+such terrified eyes. Terrified at something behind her in the house;
+and equally frightened at us.
+
+I call to her: "Come to the door. Can't you come to the door and open
+it?" I pointed to the basement gate. "Open it! Can you hear me?"
+
+"Yes--I can hear you, and you speak my language. But you--you will not
+hurt me? Where am I? This--this was my house a moment ago. I was
+living here."
+
+Demented! It flashed to me. An insane girl, locked in this empty
+house. I gripped Larry; said to him: "Take it easy; there's something
+queer about this. We can't smash windows. Let's--"
+
+"You open the door," he called to the girl.
+
+"I cannot."
+
+"Why? Is it locked on the inside?"
+
+"I don't know. Because--oh, hurry! If he--if it comes again--!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We could see her turn to look behind her.
+
+Larry demanded, "Are you alone in there?"
+
+"Yes--now. But, oh! a moment ago he was here!"
+
+"Then come to the door."
+
+"I cannot. I don't know where it is. This is so strange and dark a
+place. And yet it was my home, just a little time ago."
+
+Demented! And it seemed to me that her accent was very queer. A
+foreigner, perhaps.
+
+She went suddenly into frantic fear. Her fists beat the window glass
+almost hard enough to shatter it.
+
+"We'd better get her out," I agreed. "Smash it, Larry."
+
+"Yes." He waved at the girl. "Get back. I'll break the glass. Get away
+so you won't get hurt."
+
+The girl receded into the dimness.
+
+"Watch your hand," I cautioned. Larry took off his coat and wrapped
+his hand and the brick in it. I gazed behind us. The street was still
+empty. The slight commotion we had made had attracted no attention.
+
+The girl cried out again as Larry smashed the pane. "Easy," I called
+to her. "Take it easy. We won't hurt you."
+
+The splintering glass fell inward, and Larry pounded around the
+casement until it was all clear. The rectangular opening was fairly
+large. We could see a dim basement room of dilapidated furniture: a
+door opening into a back room; the girl; nearby, a white shape
+watching us.
+
+There seemed no one else. "Come on," I said. "You can get out here."
+
+But she backed away. I was half in the window so I swung my legs over
+the sill. Larry came after me, and together we advanced on the girl,
+who shrank before us.
+
+Then suddenly she ran to meet us, and I had the sudden feeling that
+she was not insane. Her fear of us was overshadowed by her terror at
+something else in this dark, deserted house. The terror communicated
+itself to Larry and me. Something eery, here.
+
+"Come on," Larry muttered. "Let's get her out of here."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had indeed no desire to investigate anything further. The girl let
+us help her through the window. I stood in the entryway holding her
+arms. Her dress was of billowing white satin with a single red rose at
+the breast; her snowy arms and shoulders were bare; white hair was
+piled high on her small head. Her face, still terrified, showed parted
+red lips; a little round black beauty patch adorned one of her
+powdered cheeks. The thought flashed to me that this was a girl in a
+fancy dress costume. This was a white wig she was wearing!
+
+I stood with the girl in the entryway, at a loss what to do. I held
+her soft warm arms; the perfume of her enveloped me.
+
+"What do you want us to do with you?" I demanded softly. McGuire, the
+policeman on the block, might at any moment pass. "We might get
+arrested! What's the matter with you? Can't you explain? Are you
+hurt?"
+
+She was staring as though I were a ghost, or some strange animal. "Oh,
+take me away from this place! I will talk--though I do not know what
+to say--"
+
+Demented or sane, I had no desire to have her fall into the clutches
+of the police. Nor could we very well take her to our apartment. But
+there was my friend Dr. Alten, alienist, who lived within a mile of
+here.
+
+"We'll take her to Alten's," I said to Larry, "and find out what this
+means. She isn't crazy."
+
+A sudden wild emotion swept me, then. Whatever this mystery, more than
+anything in the world I did not want the girl to be insane!
+
+Larry said, "There was a taxi down the street."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It came, now, slowly along the deserted block. The chauffeur had
+perhaps heard us, and was cruising past to see if we were possible
+fares. He halted at the curb. The girl had quieted; but when she saw
+the taxi her face registered wildest terror, and she shrank against
+me.
+
+"No! No! Don't let it kill me!"
+
+Larry and I were pulling her forward. "What the devil's the matter
+with you?" Larry demanded again.
+
+She was suddenly wildly fighting with us. "No! That--that mechanism--"
+
+"Get her in it!" Larry panted. "We'll have the neighborhood on us!"
+
+It seemed the only thing to do. We flung her, scrambling and fighting,
+into the taxi. To the half-frightened, reluctant driver, Larry said
+vigorously:
+
+"It's all right; we're just taking her to a doctor. Hurry and get us
+away from here. There's good money in it for you!"
+
+The promise--and the reassurance of the physician's address--convinced
+the chauffeur. We whirled off toward Washington Square.
+
+Within the swaying taxi I sat holding the trembling girl. She was
+sobbing now, but quieting.
+
+"There," I murmured. "We won't hurt you; we're just taking you to a
+doctor. You can explain to him. He's very intelligent."
+
+"Yes," she said softly. "Yes. Thank you. I'm all right now."
+
+She relaxed against me. So beautiful, so dainty a creature.
+
+Larry leaned toward us. "You're better now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That's fine. You'll be all right. Don't think about it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was convinced she was insane. I breathed again the vague hope that
+it might not be so. She was huddled against me. Her face, upturned to
+mine, had color in it now; red lips; a faint rose tint in the pale
+cheeks.
+
+She murmured, "Is this New York?"
+
+My heart sank. "Yes," I answered. "Of course it is."
+
+"But when?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean, what year?"
+
+"Why, 1935!"
+
+She caught her breath. "And your name is--"
+
+"George Rankin."
+
+"And I,"--her laugh had a queer break in it--"I am Mistress Mary
+Atwood. But just a few minutes ago--oh, am I dreaming? Surely I'm not
+insane!"
+
+Larry again leaned over us. "What are you talking about?"
+
+"You're friendly, you two. Like men; strange, so very strange-looking
+young men. This--this carriage without any horses--I know now it won't
+hurt me."
+
+She sat up. "Take me to your doctor. And then to the general of your
+army. I must see him, and warn him. Warn you all." She was turning
+half hysterical again. She laughed wildly. "Your general--he won't be
+General Washington, of course. But I must warn him."
+
+She gripped me. "You think I am demented. But I am not. I am Mary
+Atwood, daughter of Major Charles Atwood, of General Washington's
+staff. That was my home, where you broke the window. But it did not
+look like that a few moments ago. You tell me this is the year 1935,
+but just a few moments ago I was living in the year 1777!"
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_From Out of the Past_
+
+"Sane?" said Dr. Alten. "Of course she's sane." He stood gazing down
+at Mary Atwood. He was a tall, slim fellow, this famous young
+alienist, with dark hair turning slightly grey at the temples and a
+neat black mustache that made him look older than he was. Dr. Alten at
+this time, in spite of his eminence, had not yet turned forty.
+
+"She's sane," he reiterated. "Though from what you tell me, it's a
+wonder that she is." He smiled gently at the girl. "If you don't mind,
+my dear, tell us just what happened to you, as calmly as you can."
+
+She sat by an electrolier in Dr. Alten's living room. The yellow light
+gleamed on her white satin dress, on her white shoulders, her
+beautiful face with its little round black beauty patch, and the curls
+of the white wig dangling to her neck. From beneath the billowing,
+flounced skirt the two satin points of her slippers showed.
+
+A beauty of the year 1777! This thing so strange! I gazed at her with
+quickened pulse. It seemed that I was dreaming; that as I sat before
+her in my tweed business suit with its tubular trousers I was the
+anachronism! This should have been candle-light illumining us; I
+should have been a powdered and bewigged gallant, in gorgeous satin
+and frilled shirt to match her dress. How strange, how futuristic we
+three men of 1935 must have looked to her! And this city through which
+we had whirled her in the throbbing taxi--no wonder she was
+overwrought.
+
+Alten fumbled in the pockets of his dressing gown for cigarettes. "Go
+ahead, Miss Mary. You are among friends. I promise we will try and
+understand."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She smiled. "Yes. I--I believe you." Her voice was low. She sat
+staring at the floor, choosing her words carefully; and though she
+stumbled a little, her story was coherent. Upon the wings of her words
+my fancy conjured that other Time-world, more than a hundred and fifty
+years ago.
+
+"I was at home to-night," she began. "To-night after dinner. I have no
+relatives except my father. He is General Washington's aide. We
+live--our home is north of the city. I was alone, except for the
+servants.
+
+"Father sent word to-night that he was coming to see me. The
+messenger got through the British lines. But the redcoats are
+everywhere. They were quartered in our house. For months I have been
+little more than a servant to a dozen of My Lord's Howe's officers.
+They are gentlemen, though: I have no complaint. Then they left, and
+father, knowing it, wanted to come to see me.
+
+"He should not have tried it. Our house is watched. He promised me he
+would not wear the British red." She shuddered. "Anything but that--to
+have him executed as a spy. He would not risk that, but wear merely a
+long black cloak.
+
+"He was to come about ten o'clock. But at midnight there was no sign
+of him. The servants were asleep. I sat alone, and every pounding
+hoof-beat on the road matched my heart.
+
+"Then I went into the garden. There was a dim moon in and out of the
+clouds. It was hot, like to-night. I mean, why it _was_ to-night. It's
+so strange--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the silence of Alten's living room we could hear the hurried
+ticking of his little mantle clock, and from the street outside came
+the roar of a passing elevated train and the honk of a taxi. This was
+New York of 1935. But to me the crowding ghosts of the past were here.
+In fancy I saw the white pillars of the moonlit Atwood home. A garden
+with a dirt road beside it. Red-coated British soldiers passing....
+And to the south the little city of New York extending northward from
+crooked Maiden Lane and the Bowling Green....
+
+"Go on, Mistress Mary."
+
+"I sat on a bench in the garden. And suddenly before me there was a
+white ghost. A shape. A wraith of something which a moment before had
+not been there. I sat too frightened to move. I could not call out. I
+tried to, but the sound would not come.
+
+"The shape was like a mist, a little ball of cloud in the center of
+the garden lawn. Then in a second or two it was solid--a thing like a
+shining cage, with crisscrossing white bars. It was like a room; a
+metal cage like a room. I thought that the thing was a phantom or that
+I was asleep and dreaming. But it was real."
+
+Alten interrupted. "How big was it?"
+
+"As large as this room; perhaps larger. But it was square, and about
+twice as high as a man."
+
+A cage, then, some twenty feet square and twelve feet high.
+
+She went on: "The cage door opened. I think I was standing, then, and
+I tried to run but could not. The--the _thing_ came from the door of
+the cage and walked toward me. It was about ten feet tall. It
+looked--oh, it looked like a man!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She buried her face in her hands. Again the room was silent. Larry was
+seated, staring at her; all of us were breathless.
+
+"Like a man?" Alten prompted gently.
+
+"Yes; like a man." She raised her white face. This girl out of the
+past! Admiration for her swept me anew--she was bravely trying to
+smile.
+
+"Like a man. A thing with legs, a body, a great round head and swaying
+arms. A jointed man of metal! You surely must know all about them."
+
+"A Robot!" Larry muttered.
+
+"You have them here, I suppose. Like that rumbling carriage without
+horses, this jointed iron man came walking toward me. And it spoke! A
+most horrible hollow voice--but it seemed almost human. And what it
+said I do not know, for I fainted. I remember falling as it came
+walking toward me, with stiff-jointed legs.
+
+"When I came to my senses I was in the cage. Everything was humming and
+glowing. There was a glow outside the bars like a moonlit mist. The iron
+monster was sitting at a table, with peculiar things--mechanical things--"
+
+"The controls of the cage-mechanisms," said Alten. "How long were you
+in the cage?"
+
+"I don't know. Time seemed to stop. Everything was silent except the
+humming noises. They were everywhere. I guess I was only half
+conscious. The monster sat motionless. In front of him were big round
+clock faces with whirling hands. Oh, I suppose you don't find this
+strange; but to me--!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Could you see anything outside the cage?" Alten persisted. "No. Just
+a fog. But it was crawling and shifting. Yes!--I remember now--I could
+not see anything out there, but I had the thought, the feeling, that
+there were tremendous things to see! The monster spoke again and told
+me to be careful; that we were going to stop. Its iron hands pulled at
+levers. Then the humming grew fainter; died away; and I felt a shock.
+
+"I thought I had fainted again. I could just remember being pulled
+through the cage door. The monster left me on the ground. It said,
+'Lie there, for I will return very soon.'
+
+"The cage vanished. I saw a great cliff of stone near me; it had
+yellow-lighted openings, high up in the air. And big stone fences
+hemmed me in. Then I realized I was in an open space between a lot of
+stone houses. One towered like a cliff, or the side of a pyramid--"
+
+"The back yard of that house on Patton Place!" Larry exclaimed. He
+looked at me. "Has it any back yard, George?"
+
+"How should I know?" I retorted. "Probably has."
+
+"Go on," Alten was prompting.
+
+"That is nearly all. I found a doorway leading to a dark room. I
+crawled through it toward a glow of light. I passed through another
+room. I thought I was in a nightmare, and that this was my home. I
+remembered that the cage had not moved. It had hardly lurched. Just
+trembled; vibrated.
+
+"But this was not my home. The rooms were small and dark. Then I
+peered through a window on a strange stone street. And saw these
+strange-looking young men. And that is all--all I can tell you."
+
+She had evidently held herself calm by a desperate effort. She broke
+down now, sobbing without restraint.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_Tugh, the Cripple_
+
+The portals of this mystery had swung wide to receive us. The tumbling
+events which menaced all our world of 1935 were upon us now. A
+maelstrom. A torrent in the midst of which we were caught up like tiny
+bits of cork and whirled away.
+
+But we thought we understood the mystery. We believed we were acting
+for the best. What we did was no doubt ill-considered; but the human
+mind is so far from omniscient! And this thing was so strange!
+
+Alten said, "You have a right to be overwrought, Mistress Mary Atwood.
+But this thing is as strange to us as it is to you. I called that iron
+monster a Robot. But it does not belong to our age: if it does I have
+never seen one such as you describe. And traveling through Time--"
+
+He smiled down at her. "That is not a commonplace everyday occurrence
+to us, I assure you. The difference is that in this world of ours we
+can understand--or at least explain--these things as being scientific.
+And so they have not the terror of the supernatural."
+
+Mary was calmer now. She returned his smile. "I realize that; or at
+least I am trying to realize it."
+
+What a level-headed girl was this! I touched her arm. "You are very
+wonderful--"
+
+Alten brushed me away. "Let's try and reduce it to rationality. The
+cage was--is, I should say, since of course it still exists--that cage
+is a Time-traveling vehicle. It is traveling back and forth through
+Time, operated by a Robot. Call it that. A pseudo-human monster
+fashioned of metal in the guise of a man."
+
+Even Alten had to force himself to speak calmly, as he gazed from one
+to the other of us. "It came, no doubt from some future age, where
+half-human mechanisms are common, and Time-traveling is known. That
+cage probably does not travel in Space, but only in Time. In the
+future--somewhere--the Space of that house on Patton Place may be the
+laboratory of a famous scientist. And in the past--in the year
+1777--that same Space was the garden of Mistress Atwood's home. So
+much is obvious. But why--"
+
+"Why," Larry burst out, "did that iron monster stop in 1777 and abduct
+this girl?"
+
+"And why," I intercepted, "did it stop here in 1935?" I gazed at Mary.
+"And it told you it would return?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alten was pondering. "There must be some connection, of course....
+Mistress Mary, had you never seen this cage before?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor anything like it? Was anything like that known to your Time?"
+
+"No. Oh, I cannot truly say that. Some people believe in phantoms,
+omens and witchcraft. There was in Salem, in the Massachusetts Colony,
+not so many years ago--"
+
+"I don't mean that. I mean Time-traveling."
+
+"There were soothsayers and fortune-tellers, and necromancers with
+crystals to gaze into the future."
+
+"We still have them," Alten smiled. "You see, we don't know much more
+than you do about this thing."
+
+I said, "Did you have any enemy? Anyone who wished you harm?"
+
+She thought a moment. "No--yes, there was one." She shuddered at the
+memory. "A man--a cripple--a horribly repulsive man of about one score
+and ten years. He lives down near the Battery." She paused.
+
+"Tell us about him," Larry urged.
+
+She nodded. "But what could he have to do with this? He is horribly
+deformed. Thin, bent legs, a body like a cask and a bulging forehead
+with goggling eyes. My Lord Howe's officers say he is very intelligent
+and very learned. Loyal to the King, too. There was a munitions plot
+in the Bermudas, and this cripple and Lord Howe were concerned in it.
+But Father likes the fellow and says that in reality he wishes our
+cause well. He is rich.
+
+"But you don't want to hear all this. He--he made love to me, and I
+repulsed him. There was a scene with Father, and Father had our
+lackeys throw him out. That was a year ago. He cursed horribly. He
+vowed then that some day he--he would have me; and get revenge on
+Father. But he has kept away. I have not seen him for a twelvemonth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We were silent. I chanced to glance at Alten, and a strange look was
+on his face.
+
+He said abruptly, "What is this cripple's name, Mistress Mary?"
+
+"Tugh. He is known to all the city as Tugh. Just that. I never heard
+any Christian name."
+
+Alten rose sharply to his feet. "A cripple named Tugh?"
+
+"Yes," she affirmed wonderingly. "Does it mean anything to you?"
+
+Alten swung on me. "What is the number of that house on Patton Place?
+Did you happen to notice?"
+
+I had, and wondering I told him.
+
+"Just a minute," he said. "I want to use the phone."
+
+He came back to us in a moment: his face was very solemn. "That house
+on Patton Place is owned by a man named Tugh! I just called a reporter
+friend; he remembers a certain case: he confirmed what I thought.
+Mistress Mary, did this Tugh in your Time ever consult doctors, trying
+to have his crippled body made whole?"
+
+"Why, of course he did. I have heard that many times. But his
+crippled, deformed body cannot be cured."
+
+Alten checked Larry and me when we would have broken in with
+astonished questions. He said:
+
+"Don't ask me what it means; I don't know. But I think that this
+cripple--this Tugh--has lived both in 1777 and 1935, and is traveling
+between them in this Time-traveling cage. And perhaps he is the human
+master of that Robot."
+
+Alten made a vehement gesture. "But we'd better not theorize; it's too
+fantastic. Here is the story of Tugh in our Time. He came to me some
+three years ago; in 1932, I think. He offered any price if I could
+cure his crippled body. All the New York medical fraternity knew him.
+He seemed sane, but obsessed with the idea that he must have a body
+like other men. Like Faust, who, as an old man, paid the price of his
+soul to become youthful, he wanted to have the beautiful body of a
+young man."
+
+Alten was speaking vehemently. My thoughts ran ahead of his words; I
+could imagine with grewsome fancy so many things. A cripple, traveling
+to different ages seeking to be cured. Desiring a different body....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alten was saying, "This fellow Tugh lived alone in that house on
+Patton Place. He was all you say of him, Mistress Mary. Hideously
+repulsive. A sinister personality. About thirty years old.
+
+"And, in 1932, he got mixed up with a girl who had a somewhat dubious
+reputation herself. A dancer, a frequenter of night-clubs, as they
+used to be called. Her name was Doris Johns--something like that. She
+evidently thought she could get money out of Tugh. Whatever it was,
+there was a big uproar. The girl had him arrested, saying that he had
+assaulted her. The police had quite a time with the cripple."
+
+Larry and I remembered a few of the details of it now, though neither
+of us had been in New York at the time.
+
+Alten went on: "Tugh fought with the police. Went berserk. I imagine
+they handled him pretty roughly. In the Magistrate's Court he made
+another scene, and fought with the court attendants. With ungovernable
+rage he screamed vituperatives, and was carried kicking, biting and
+snarling from the court-room. He threatened some wild weird revenge
+upon all the city officials--even upon the city itself."
+
+"Nice sort of chap," Larry commented.
+
+But Alten did not smile. "The Magistrate could only hold him for
+contempt of Court. The girl had absolutely no evidence to support her
+accusation of assault. Tugh was finally dismissed. A week later he
+murdered the girl.
+
+"The details are unimportant; but he did it. The police had him
+trapped in his house; had the house surrounded--this same one on
+Patton Place--but when they burst in to take him, he had inexplicably
+vanished. He was never heard from again."
+
+Alten continued to regard us with grim, solemn face. "Never heard
+from--until to-night. And now we hear of him. How he vanished, with
+the police guarding every exit to that house--well, it's obvious,
+isn't it? He went into another Time-world. Back to 1777, doubtless."
+
+Mary Atwood gave a little cry. "I had forgotten that I must warn you.
+Tugh told me once, before Father and I quarreled with him, that he had
+a mysterious power. He was a most wonderful man, he said. And there
+was a world in the future--he mentioned 1934 or 1935--which he hated.
+A great city whose people had wronged him; and he was going to bring
+death to them. Death to them all! I did not heed him. I thought he was
+demented, raving...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alten's little clock ticked with tumultuous heartbeat through another
+silence. The great city around us, even though this was two o'clock
+in the morning, throbbed with a myriad of blended sounds.
+
+A warning! Was the girl from out of the past giving us a warning of
+coming disaster to this great city?
+
+Alten was pacing the floor. "What are we to do--tell the authorities?
+Take Mistress Mary Atwood to Police Headquarters and inform them that
+she has come from the year 1777? And that, if we are not careful,
+there will be an attack upon New York?"
+
+"No!" I burst out. I could fancy how we would be received at Police
+Headquarters if we did that! And our pictures in to-morrow's
+newspapers. Mary's picture, with a jibing headline ridiculing us.
+
+"No," echoed Alten. "I have no intention of doing it. I'm not so
+foolish as that." He stopped before Mary. "What do you want to do?
+You're obviously an exceptionally intelligent, level-headed girl.
+Heaven knows you need to be."
+
+"I--I want to get back home," she stammered.
+
+A pang shot through me as she said it. A hundred and fifty years to
+separate us. A vast gulf. An impassible barrier.
+
+"That mechanism said it would return!"
+
+"Exactly," agreed Alten. An excitement was upon us all. "Exactly what
+I mean! Shall we chance it? Try it? There's nothing else I can think
+of to do. I have a revolver and two hunting rifles."
+
+"Just what do you mean?" I demanded.
+
+"I mean, we'll take my car and go to Tugh's house on Patton Place.
+Right now! And if that mechanical monster returns, we'll seize it!"
+
+Alten, the usually calm, precise man of science, was tensely vehement.
+"Seize it! Why not? Three of us, armed, ought to be able to overcome a
+Robot! Then we'll seize the Time-traveling cage. Perhaps we can
+operate it. If not, with it in our possession we'll at least have
+something to show the authorities; there'll be no ridicule then!"
+
+Our inescapable destiny was making us plunge so rashly into this
+mystery! With the excitement and the strange fantasy of it upon us, we
+thought we were acting for the best.
+
+Within a quarter of an hour, armed and with a long overcoat and a
+scarf to hide Mary Atwood's beauty, we took Alten's car and drove to
+Patton Place.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_The Fight With the Robot_
+
+Patrolman McGuire quite evidently had not passed through Patton Place
+since we left it; or at least he had not noticed the broken window.
+The house appeared as before, dark, silent, deserted, and the broken
+basement window yawned with its wide black opening.
+
+"I'll leave the car around on the other street," Alten said as slowly
+we passed the house. "Quick--no one's in sight; you three get out
+here."
+
+We crouched in the dim entryway and in a moment he joined us.
+
+I clung to Mary Atwood's arm. "You're not afraid?" I asked.
+
+"No. Yes; of course I am afraid. But I want to do what we planned. I
+want to go back to my own world, to my Father."
+
+"Inside!" Alten whispered. "I'll go first. You two follow with her."
+
+I can say now that we should not have taken her into that house. It is
+so easy to look back upon what one might have done!
+
+We climbed through the window, into the dark front basement room.
+There was only silence, and our faintly padding footsteps on the
+carpeted floor. The furniture was shrouded with cotton covers standing
+like ghosts in the gloom. I clutched the loaded rifle which Alten had
+given me. Larry was similarly armed; and Alten carried a revolver.
+
+"Which way, Mary?" I whispered. "You're sure it was outdoors?"
+
+"Yes. This way, I think."
+
+We passed through the connecting door. The back room seemed to be a
+dismantled kitchen.
+
+"You stay with her here, a moment," Alten whispered to me. "Come on,
+Larry. Let's make sure no one--nothing--is down here."
+
+I stood silent with Mary, while they prowled about the lower floor.
+
+"It may have come and gone," I whispered.
+
+"Yes." She was trembling against me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seemed to me an eternity while we stood there listening to the
+faint footfalls of Larry and Alten. Once they must have stood quiet;
+then the silence leaped and crowded us. It is horrible to listen to a
+pregnant silence which every moment might be split by some weird
+unearthly sound.
+
+Larry and Alten returned. "Seems to be all clear," Alten whispered.
+"Let's go into the back yard."
+
+The little yard was dim. The big apartment house against its rear wall
+loomed with a blank brick face, save that there were windows some
+eight stories up. Only a few windows overlooked this dim area with its
+high enclosing walls. The space was some forty feet square, and there
+was a faded grass plot in the center.
+
+We crouched near the kitchen door, with Mary behind us in the room.
+She said she could recall the cage having stood near the center of the
+yard, with its door facing this way....
+
+Nearly an hour passed. It seemed that the dawn must be near, but it
+was only around four o'clock. The same storm clouds hung overhead--a
+threatening storm which would not break. The heat was oppressing.
+
+"It's come and gone," Larry whispered; "or it isn't coming. I guess
+that this--"
+
+And then it came! We were just outside the doorway, crouching against
+the shadowed wall of the house. I had Mary close behind me, my rifle
+ready.
+
+"There!" whispered Alten.
+
+We all saw it--a faint luminous mist out near the center of the
+yard--a crawling, shifting ball of fog.
+
+Alten and Larry, one on each side of me, shifted sidewise, away from
+me. Mary stood and cast off her dark overcoat. We men were in dark
+clothes, but she stood in gleaming white against the dark rectangle of
+doorway. It was as we had arranged. A moment only, she stood there;
+then she moved back, further behind me in the black kitchen.
+
+And in that moment the cage had materialized. We were hoping its
+occupant had seen the girl, and not us. A breathless moment passed
+while we stared for the first time at this strange thing from the
+Unknown.... A formless, glowing mist, it quickly gathered itself into
+solidity. It seemed to shrink. It took form. From a wraith of a cage,
+in a second it was solid. And so silently, so swiftly, came this thing
+out of Time into what we call the Present! The dim yard a second ago
+had been empty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The cage stood there, a thing of gleaming silver bars. It seemed to
+enclose a single room. From within its dim interior came a faint glow,
+which outlined something standing at the bars, peering out.
+
+The doorway was facing us. There had been utter silence; but suddenly,
+as though to prove how solid was this apparition, we heard the clank
+of metal, and the door slid open.
+
+I turned to make sure that Mary was hiding well behind me. The way
+back to the street, if need for escape arose, was open to her.
+
+I turned again, to face the shining cage. In the doorway something
+stood peering out, a light behind it. It was a great jointed thing of
+dark metal some ten feet high. For a moment it stood motionless. I
+could not see its face clearly, though I knew there was a suggestion
+of human features, and two great round glowing spots of eyes.
+
+It stepped forward--toward us. A jointed, stiff-legged step. Its arms
+were dangling loosely; I heard one of its mailed hands clank against
+its sides.
+
+"Now!" Alten whispered.
+
+I saw Alten's revolver leveling, and my own rifle went up.
+
+"Aim at its face," I murmured.
+
+We pulled our triggers together, and two spurts of flame spat before
+us. But the thing had stooped an instant before, and we missed. Then
+came Larry's shot. And then chaos.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I recall hearing the ping of Larry's bullet against the mailed body of
+the Robot. At that it crouched, and from it leaped a dull red-black
+beam of light. I heard Mary scream. She had not fled but was clinging
+to me. I cast her off.
+
+"Run! Get back! Get away!" I cried.
+
+Larry shouted, as we all stood bathed in the dull light from the
+Robot:
+
+"Look out! It sees us!"
+
+He fired again, into the light--and murmured, "Why--why--"
+
+A great surprise and terror was in his tone. Beside me, with
+half-leveled revolver, Alten stood transfixed. And he too was
+muttering something.
+
+All this happened in an instant. And there I was aware that I was
+trying to get my rifle up for firing again; but I could not. My arms
+stiffened. I tried to take a step, tried to move a foot, but could
+not. I was rooted there; held, as though by some giant magnet, to the
+ground!
+
+This horrible dull-red light! It was cold--a frigid, paralyzing blast.
+The blood ran like cold water in my veins. My feet were heavy with the
+weight of my body pressing them down.
+
+Then the Robot was moving; coming forward; holding the light upon us.
+I thought I heard its voice--and a horrible, hollow, rasping laugh.
+
+My brain was chilling. I had confused thoughts; impressions, vague and
+dreamlike. As though in a dream I felt myself standing there with
+Mary clinging to me. Both of us were frozen inert upon our feet.
+
+I tried to shout, but my tongue was too thick; my throat seemed
+swelling inside. I heard Alten's revolver clatter to the stone
+pavement of the yard. And saw him fall forward--out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I felt that in another instant I too would fall. This damnable,
+chilling light! Then the beam turned partly away, and fell more fully
+upon Larry. With his youth and greater strength than Alten's or mine,
+he had resisted its first blast. His weapon had fallen; now he stooped
+and tried to seize it; but he lost his balance and staggered backward
+against the house wall.
+
+And then the Robot was upon him. It sprang--this mechanism!--this
+machine in human form! And, with whatever pseudo-human intelligence
+actuated its giant metal body, it reached under Larry for his rifle!
+Its great mailed hand swept the ground, seized the rifle and flung it
+away. And as Larry twisted sidewise, the Robot's arm with a sweep
+caught him and rolled him across the yard. When he stopped, he lay
+motionless.
+
+I heard myself thickly calling to Mary, and the light flashed again
+upon us. And then we fell forward. Clinging together, we fell....
+
+I did not quite lose consciousness. It seemed that I was frozen, and
+drifting off half into a nightmare sleep. Great metal arms were
+gathering Mary and me from the ground. Lifting us; carrying us....
+
+We were in the cage. I felt myself lying on the grid of a metal floor.
+I could vaguely see the crossed bars of the ceiling overhead, and the
+latticed walls around me....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the dull-red light was gone. The chill was gone. I was warming.
+The blessed warm blood again was coursing through my veins, reviving
+me, bringing back my strength.
+
+I turned over, and found Mary lying beside me. I heard her softly
+murmur:
+
+"George! George Rankin!"
+
+The giant mechanism clanked the door closed, and came with stiff,
+stilted steps back into the center of the cage. I heard the hollow
+rumble of its voice, chuckling, as its hand pulled a switch.
+
+At once the cage-room seemed to reel. It was not a physical movement,
+though, but more a reeling of my senses, a wild shock to all my being.
+
+Then, after a nameless interval, I steadied. Around me was a humming,
+glowing intensity of tiny sounds and infinitely small, infinitely
+rapid vibrations. The whole room grew luminous. The Robot, seated now
+at a table, showed for a moment as thin as an apparition. All this
+room--Mary lying beside me, the mechanism, myself--all this was
+imponderable, intangible, unreal.
+
+And outside the bars stretched a shining mist of movement. Blurred
+shifting shapes over a vast illimitable vista. Changing things;
+melting landscapes. Silent, tumbling, crowding events blurred by our
+movement as we swept past them.
+
+We were traveling through Time!
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_The Girl from 2930_
+
+I must take up now the sequence of events as Larry saw them. I was
+separated from Larry during most of the strange incidents which befell
+us later; but from his subsequent account of what happened to him I am
+constructing several portions of this history, using my own words
+based upon Larry's description of the events in which I personally did
+not participate; I think that this method avoids complications in the
+narrative and makes more clear my own and Larry's simultaneous
+actions.
+
+Larry recovered consciousness in the back yard of the house on Patton
+Place probably only a moment or two after Mary and I had been snatched
+away in the Time-traveling cage. He found himself bruised and
+battered, but apparently without injuries. He got to his feet, weak
+and shaken. His head was roaring.
+
+He recalled what had happened to him, but it seemed like a dream. The
+back yard was then empty. He remembered vaguely that he had seen the
+mechanism carry Mary and me into the cage, and that the cage had
+vanished.
+
+Larry knew that only a few moments had passed. The shots had aroused
+the neighborhood. As he stood now against the house wall, dizzily
+looking around, he was aware of calling voices from the nearby
+windows.
+
+Then Larry stumbled over Alten, who was lying on his face near the
+kitchen doorway. Still alive, he groaned as Larry fell over him; but
+he was unconscious.
+
+Forgetting all about his weapon, Larry's first thought was to rush out
+for help. He staggered through the dark kitchen into the front room,
+and through the corridor into the street.
+
+Patton Place, as before, was deserted. The houses were dark; the alarm
+was all in the rear. There were no pedestrians, no vehicles, and no
+sign of a policeman. Dawn was just coming; as Larry turned eastward he
+saw, in a patch of clearing sky, stars paling with the coming
+daylight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With uncertain steps, out in the middle of the street, Larry ran
+eastward through the middle of the street, hoping that at the next
+corner he might encounter someone, or find a telephone over which he
+might call the police.
+
+But he had not gone more than five hundred feet when suddenly he
+stopped; stood there wavering, panting, staring with whirling senses.
+Near the middle of the street, with the faint dawn behind it, a ball
+of gathering mist had appeared directly in his path. It was a
+luminous, shining mist--and it was gathering into form!
+
+In seconds a small, glowing cage of white luminous bars stood there in
+the street, where there had just been nothing! It was not the
+Time-traveling cage from the house yard he had just left. No--he knew
+it was not that one. This one was similar, but much smaller.
+
+The shock of its appearance held Larry for a moment transfixed. It had
+so silently, so suddenly appeared in his path that Larry was now
+within a foot or two of its doorway.
+
+The doorway slid open, and a man leaped out. Behind him, a girl peered
+from the doorway. Larry stood gaping, wholly confused. The cage had
+materialized so abruptly that the leaping man collided with him before
+either man could avoid the other. Larry gripped the man before him;
+struck out with his fists and shouted. The girl in the doorway called
+frantically:
+
+"Harl-no noise! Harl-stop him!"
+
+Then, suddenly the two of them were upon Larry and pulling him toward
+the doorway of the cage. Inside, he was jerked; he shouted wildly; but
+the girl slammed the door. Then in a soft, girlish voice, in English
+with a curiously indescribable accent and intonation, the girl said
+hastily:
+
+"Hold him, Harl! Hold him! I'll start the traveler!"
+
+The black garbed figure of a slim young man was gripping Larry as the
+girl pulled a switch and there was a shock, a reeling of Larry's
+senses, as the cage, motionless in Space, sped off into Time....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seems needless to encumber this narrative with prolonged details of
+how Larry explained himself to his two captors. Or how they told him
+who they were; and from whence they had come; and why. To Larry it was
+a fantastic--and confusing at first--series of questions and answers.
+An hour? The words have no meaning. They were traveling through Time.
+Years were minutes--the words meaning nothing save how they impressed
+the vehicle's human occupants. To them all it was an interval of
+mutual distrust which was gradually changing into friendship. Larry
+found the two strangers singularly direct; singularly forceful in
+quiet, calm fashion; singularly keen of perception. They had not meant
+to capture him. The encounter had startled them, and Larry's shouts
+would have brought others upon the scene.
+
+Almost at once they knew Larry was no enemy, and told him so. And in a
+moment Larry was pouring out all that had happened to him; and to
+Alten and Mary Atwood and me. This strange thing! But to Larry now,
+telling it to these strange new companions, it abruptly seemed not
+fantastic, but only sinister. The Robot, an enemy, had captured Mary
+Atwood and me, and whirled us off in the other--the larger--cage.
+
+And in this smaller cage Larry was with friends--for he suddenly found
+their purpose the same as his! They were chasing this other
+Time-traveler, with its semi-human, mechanical operator!
+
+The young man said, "You explain to him, Tina. I will watch."
+
+He was a slim, pale fellow, handsome in a queer, tight-lipped,
+stern-faced fashion. His close-fitting black silk jacket had a white
+neck ruching and white cuffs; he wore a wide white-silk belt, snug
+black-silk knee-length trousers and black stockings.
+
+And the girl was similarly dressed. Her black hair was braided and
+coiled upon her head, and ornaments dangled from her ears. Over her
+black blouse was a brocaded network jacket; her white belt,
+compressing her slim waist, dangled with tassels; and there were other
+tassels on the garters at the knees of her trousers.
+
+She was a pale-faced, beautiful girl, with black brows arching in a
+thin line, with purple-black eyes like somber pools. She was no more
+than five feet tall, and slim and frail. But, like her companion,
+there was about her a queer aspect of calm, quiet power and force of
+personality--physical vitality merged with an intellect keenly sharp.
+
+She sat with Larry on a little metal bench, listening, almost without
+interruption, to his explanation. And then, succinctly she gave her
+own. The young man, Harl, sat at his instruments, with his gaze
+searching for the other cage, five hundred feet away in Space, but in
+Time unknown.
+
+And outside the shining bars Larry could vaguely see the blurred,
+shifting, melting vistas of New York City hastening through the
+changes Time had brought to it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This young man, Harl, and this girl, Tina, lived in New York City in
+the Time-world of 2930 A. D. To Larry it was a thousand years in the
+future. Tina was the Princess of the American Nation. It was an
+hereditary title, non-political, added several hundred years
+previously as a picturesque symbol. A tradition; something to make
+less prosaic the political machine of Republican government. Tina was
+loved by her people, we afterward came to learn.
+
+Harl was an aristocrat of the New York City of Tina's Time-world, a
+scientist. In the Government laboratories, under the same roof where
+Tina dwelt, Harl had worked with another, older scientist, and--so
+Tina told me--together they had discovered the secret of
+Time-traveling. They had built two cages, a large and a small, which
+could travel freely through Time.
+
+The smaller vehicle--this one in which Larry now was speeding--was, in
+the Time-world of 2930, located in the garden of Tina's palace. The
+other, somewhat larger, they had built some five hundred feet distant,
+just beyond the palace walls, within a great Government laboratory.
+
+Harl's fellow scientist--the leader in their endeavors, since he was
+much older and of wider experience--was not altogether trusted by
+Tina. He took the credit for the discovery of Time-traveling; yet,
+said Tina, it was Harl's genius which in reality had worked out the
+final problems.
+
+And this older scientist was a cripple. A hideously repulsive fellow,
+named Tugh!
+
+"Tugh!" exclaimed Larry.
+
+"The same," said Tina in her crisp fashion. "Yes--undoubtedly the
+same. So you see why what you have told us was of such interest. Tugh
+is a Government leader in our world; and now we find he has lived in
+_your_ Time, and in the Time of this Mary Atwood."
+
+From his seat at the instrument table, Harl burst out: "So he murdered
+a girl of 1935, and has abducted another of 1777? You would not have
+me judge him, Tina--"
+
+"No one," she said, "may judge without full facts. This man here--this
+Larry of 1935--tells us that only a mechanism is in the larger
+cage--which is what we thought, Harl. And this mechanism, without a
+doubt, is the treacherous Migul."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was, in 2930, a vast world of machinery. The god of the machine
+had developed them to almost human intricacy. Almost all the work of
+the world, particularly in America, and most particularly in the
+mechanical center of New York City, was done by machinery. And the
+machinery itself was guided, handled, operated--even, in some
+instances, constructed--by other, more intricate machines. They were
+fashioned in pseudo-human form--thinking, logically acting,
+independently acting mechanisms: the Robots. All but human, they
+were--a new race. Inferior to humans, yet similar.
+
+And in 2930 the machines, slaves of idle human masters, had been
+developed too highly! They were upon the verge of a revolt!
+
+All this Tina briefly sketched now to Larry. And to Larry it seemed a
+very distant, very academic danger. Yet so soon all of us were plunged
+into the midst of it!
+
+The revolt had not yet come, but it was feared. A great Robot named
+Migul seemed fomenting it. The revolt was smouldering; at any moment
+it would burst; and then the machines would rise to destroy the
+humans.
+
+This was the situation when Harl and Tugh completed the Time-traveling
+vehicles in this world. They had been tested, but never used. Then
+Tugh had vanished; was gone now; and the larger of the two vehicles
+was also gone.
+
+Both Harl and Tina had always distrusted Tugh. They thought him allied
+to the Robots. But they had no proof; and suavely he denied it, and
+helped always with the Government activities struggling to keep the
+mechanical slaves docile and at work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tugh and the larger vehicle had vanished, and so had Migul, the
+insubordinate, giant mechanism--at which, unknown to the Government
+officials, Tina and Harl had taken the other cage and started in
+pursuit. It was possible that Tugh was loyal; that Migul had abducted
+him and stolen the cage.
+
+"Wait!" exclaimed Larry. "I'm trying to figure this out. It seems to
+hang together. It almost does, but not quite. When did Tugh vanish
+from your world?"
+
+"To our consciousness," Tina answered, "about three hours ago. Perhaps
+a little longer than that."
+
+"But look here," Larry protested: "according to my story and that of
+Mary Atwood, Tugh lived in 1935 and in 1777 for three years."
+
+Confusing? But in a moment Larry understood it. Tugh could have taken
+the cage, gone to 1777 and to 1935, alternated between them for what
+was to him, and to those Time-worlds, three years--then have returned
+to 2930 _on the same day of his departure_. He would have lived these
+three years; grown that much older; but to the Time-world of 2930
+neither he nor the cage would have been missed.
+
+"That," said Tina, "is what doubtless he did. The cage is traveling
+again. But you, Larry, tell us only Migul is in it."
+
+"I couldn't say that of my own knowledge," said Larry. "Mary Atwood
+said so. It held only the mechanism you call Migul. And now Migul has
+with him Mary and my friend George Rankin. We must reach them."
+
+"We want that quite as much as you do," said Harl. "And to find Tugh.
+If he is a friend we must save him; if a traitor--punish him."
+
+Larry began, "But can you get to the other cage?"
+
+"Only if it stops," said Tina. "_When_ it stops, I should say."
+
+"Come here," said Harl. "I will show you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Larry crossed the glowing room. He had forgotten its aspect--the
+ghostly unreality around him. He too--his body, like Harl's and
+Tina's--was of the same wraith-like substance.... Then, suddenly,
+Larry's viewpoint shifted. The room and its occupants were real and
+tangible. And outside the glowing bars--everything out there was the
+unreality.
+
+"Here," said Harl. "I will show you. It is not visible yet."
+
+Each of the cages was equipped with an intricate device, strange of
+name, which Larry and I have since termed a Time-telespectroscope.
+Larry saw it now as a small metal box, with tuning vibration dials,
+batteries, coils, a series of tiny prisms and an image-mirror--the
+whole surmounted by what appeared the barrel of a small telescope.
+Harl had it leveled and was gazing through it.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: The workings of the Time-telespectroscope involve all the
+intricate postulates and mathematical formulae of Time-traveling
+itself. As a matter of practicality, however, the results obtained are
+simple of understanding. The etheric vibratory rate of the vehicles
+while traveling through Time was constantly changing. Through the
+telespectroscope one cage was visible to the other across the five
+hundred feet of intervening Space when they approached a simultaneous
+Time; when they, so to speak, were tuned in unison.
+
+Thus, Harl explained, the other cage would show as a ghost, the
+faintest of wraiths, over a Time-distance of some five or ten years.
+And the closer in Time they approached it, the more solid it would
+appear.]
+
+The enemy cage was not visible, now. But Harl and Tina had glimpsed it
+on several occasions. What vast realms Time opens within a single
+small segment of Space! The larger vehicle seemed speeding back and
+forth. A dash into the year 1777! as Larry learned from Mary Atwood.
+
+And there had been several evidences of the cage halting in 1935.
+Larry's account explained two such pauses. But the others? Those
+others, which brought to the City of New York such amazing disaster?
+We did not learn of them until much later. But Alten lived through
+them, and presently I shall reconstruct them from his account.
+
+The larger cage was difficult to trace in its sweep along the
+corridors of Time. Never once had Tina and Harl been able to stop
+simultaneously with it, for a year has so many separate days and
+hours. The nearest they came was the halt in the night of June 8-9,
+when they encountered Larry, and, startled, seized him and moved on
+again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Harl continued to gaze through the eyepiece of the detecting
+instrument. But nothing showed, and the mirror-grid on the table was
+dark.
+
+"But--which way are we going?" Larry stammered.
+
+"Back," said Tina. "The retrograde.... Wait! Do not do that!"
+
+Larry had turned toward where the bars, less luminous, showed a dark
+rectangle like a window. The desire swept him to gaze out at the
+shining, changing scene.
+
+But Tina checked him. "Do not do that! Not yet! It is too great a
+shock in the retrograde. It was to me."
+
+"But where are we?"
+
+In answer she gestured toward a series of tiny dials on the table
+edge. There were at least two score of them, laid in a triple bank.
+Dials to record the passing minutes, hours, days; the years, the
+centuries! Larry stared at the small whirring pointers. Some were a
+blur of swift whirling movement--the hours and days. Tina showed Larry
+how to read them. The cage was passing through the year 1880. In a few
+moments of Larry's consciousness it was 1799. Then 1793. The infant
+American nation was here now. But with the cage retrograding, soon
+they would be in the Revolutionary War.
+
+Tina said. "The other cage may go back to 1777, if Tugh meant ill to
+Mary Atwood, or wants revenge upon her father, at you said. We shall
+see."
+
+They had reached 1790 when Harl gave a low ejaculation.
+
+"You see it?" Tina murmured.
+
+"Yes. Very faintly."
+
+Larry bent tensely forward. "Will it show on the mirror?"
+
+"Yes; presently. We are about ten years from it. If we get closer, the
+mirror will show it."
+
+But the mirror held dark. No--now it was glowing a trifle. A vague
+luminosity.
+
+Tina moved toward the instrument controls nearby. "Watch closely,
+Harl. I will slow us down."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seemed to Larry that the humming with which everything around him
+was endowed, now began descending in pitch. And his head suddenly was
+unsteady. A singular, wild, queer feeling was within him. An unrest. A
+tugging torment of every tiny cell of his body.
+
+Tina said. "Hold steady, Larry, for when we stop."
+
+"Will it shock me?"
+
+"Yes--at first. But the shock will not harm you: it is nearly all
+mental."
+
+The mirror held an image now--the other cage. Larry saw, on the
+six-inch square mirror surface, a crawling, melting scene of movement.
+And in the midst of it, the image of the other cage, faint and
+spectral. In all the mirrored movement, only the apparition of the
+cage was still. And this marked it; made it visible.
+
+Over an interval, while Larry stared, the ghostly image grew plainer.
+They were approaching its Time-factor!
+
+"It is stopping," Harl murmured. Larry was aware that he had left the
+eyepiece and joined Tina at the controls.
+
+"Tina, let us try to get it right this time."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In 1777; but which month, would you say?"
+
+"It has stopped! See?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Larry heard them clicking switches, and setting the controls for a
+stop. Then he felt Tina gently push him.
+
+"Sit here. Standing, you might fall."
+
+He found himself on a bench. He could still see the mirror. The ghost
+of the other cage was now lined more plainly upon it.
+
+"This month," said Tina, setting a switch. "Would not you say so? And
+this day."
+
+"But the hour, Tina? The minute?"
+
+The vast intricate corridors of Time!
+
+"It would be in the night. Hasten, Harl, or we will pass! Try the
+night--around midnight. Even Migul has the mechanical intelligence to
+fear a daylight pausing."
+
+The controls were set for the stop. Larry heard Tina murmuring, "Oh, I
+pray we may have judged with correctness!"
+
+The vehicle was rapidly coming to a stop. Larry gripped the table,
+struggling to hold firm to his reeling senses. This soundless,
+grinding halt! His swaying gaze strayed from the mirror. Outside the
+glowing bars he could now discern the luminous greyness separating.
+Swift, soundless claps of light and dark, alternating. Daylight and
+darkness. They had been blended, but now they were separating. The
+passing, retrograding days--a dozen to the second of Larry's
+consciousness. Then fewer. Vivid daylight. Black night. Daylight
+again.
+
+"Not too slowly, Harl; we will be seen!... Oh, it is gone!"
+
+Larry saw the mirror go blank. The image on it had flared to great
+distinctness, faded, and was gone. Darkness was around Larry. Then
+daylight. Then darkness again.
+
+"Gone!" echoed Harl's disappointed voice. "But it stopped here!...
+Shall we stop, Tina?"
+
+"Yes! Leave the control settings as they are. Larry--be careful, now."
+
+A dragging second of grey daylight. A plunge into night. It seemed to
+Larry that all the universe was soundlessly reeling. Out of the chaos,
+Tina was saying:
+
+"We have stopped. Are you all right, Larry?"
+
+"Yes," he stammered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stood up. The cage room, with its faint lights, benches and
+settles, instrument tables and banks of controls, was flooded with
+moonlight from outside the bars. Night, and the moon and stars out
+there.
+
+Harl slid the door open. "Come, let us look."
+
+The reeling chaos had fallen swiftly from Larry. With Tina's small
+black and white figure beside him, he stood at the threshold of the
+cage. A warm gentle night breeze fanned his face.
+
+A moonlit landscape lay somnolent around the cage. Trees were nearby.
+The cage stood in a corner of a field by a low picket fence. Behind
+the trees, a ribbon of road stretched away toward a distant shining
+river. Down the road some five hundred feet, the white columns of a
+large square brick house gleamed in the moonlight. And behind the
+house was a garden and a group of barns and stables.
+
+The three in the cage doorway stood whispering, planning. Then two of
+them stepped to the ground. They were Larry and Tina; Harl remained to
+guard the cage.
+
+The two figures on the ground paused a moment and then moved
+cautiously along the inside line of the fence toward the home of Major
+Atwood. Strange anachronisms, these two prowling figures! A girl from
+the year 2930; a man from 1935!
+
+And this was revolutionary New York, now. The little city lay well to
+the south. It was open country up here. The New York of 1935 had
+melted away and was gone....
+
+This was a night in August of 1777.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_The New York Massacre of 1935_
+
+Dr. Alten recovered consciousness in the back yard of the house on
+Patton Place just a few moments after Larry had encountered the
+smaller Time-traveling cage and been carried off by Harl and Tina.
+Previously to that, of course, the mysterious mechanism in the guise
+of a giant man had abducted Mary Atwood and me in the larger
+Time-cage.
+
+Alten became aware that people were bending over him. The shots we had
+taken at the Robot had aroused the neighborhood. A policeman arrived.
+
+The sleeping neighbors had heard the shots, but it seemed that none
+had seen the cage, or the metal man who had come from it. Alten said
+nothing. He was taken to the nearest police station where grudgingly,
+he told his story. He was laughed at; reprimanded for alcoholism.
+Evidently, according to the police sergeant, there had been a fight,
+and Alten had drawn the loser's end. The police confiscated the two
+rifles and the revolver and decided that no one but Alten had been
+hurt. But at best it was a queer affair. Alten had not been shot; he
+was just stiff with cold; he said a dull-red ray had fallen upon him
+and stiffened him with its frigid blast. Utter nonsense!
+
+Dr. Alten was a man of standing. It was a reprehensible affair, but he
+was released upon his own recognizance. He was charged with breaking
+into the untenanted home of one Tugh; of illegally possessing
+firearms; of disturbing the peace--a variety of offenses all rational
+to the year 1935.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Alten's case never reached even its hearing in the Magistrate's
+Court. He arrived home just after dawn, that June 9, still cold and
+stiff from the effects of the ray, and bruised and battered by the
+sweeping blow of Miguel's great iron arm. He recalled vaguely seeing
+Larry fall, and the iron monster bearing Mary Atwood and me away. What
+had happened to Larry, Alten could not guess, unless the Robot had
+returned, ignored him and taken his friend away.
+
+During that day of June 9 Alten summoned several of his scientific
+friends, and to them he told fully what had happened to him. They
+listened with a keen understanding and a rational knowledge of the
+possibility that what he said was true; but credibility they could not
+give him.
+
+The noon papers came out.
+
+     NOTED ALIENIST ATTACKED BY GHOST Felled by One of the
+     Fantastic Monsters of His Brain
+
+A jocular, jibing account. Then Alten gave it up. He had about decided
+to plead guilty in the Magistrate's Court to disorderly conduct and
+all the rest of it! That was preferable to being judged a liar, or
+insane.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then, at about 9 P.M. on the evening of June 9, the first of the
+mechanical monsters came stalking from the house on Patton Place--the
+beginning of the revenge which Tugh had threatened when arrested. The
+policeman at the corner--one McGuire--turned in the first hysterical
+alarm. He rushed into a little candy and stationery store shouting
+that he had seen a piece of machinery running wild. His telephone call
+brought a squad of his comrades. The Robot at first did no damage.
+
+McGuire later told how he saw it as it emerged from the entryway of
+the Tugh house. It came lurching out into the street--a giant thing of
+dull grey metal, with tubular, jointed legs; a body with a great
+bulging chest; a round head, eight or ten feet above the pavement;
+eyes that shot fire.
+
+The policeman took to his heels. There was a commotion in Patton Place
+during those next few minutes. Pedestrians saw the thing standing in
+the middle of the street, staring stupidly around it. The head
+wobbled. Some said that the eyes shot fire; others, that it was not
+the eyes, but more like a torch in its mailed hand. The torch shot a
+small beam of light around the street--a beam which was dull-red.
+
+The pedestrians fled. Their cries brought people to the nearby house
+windows. Women screamed. Presently bottles were thrown from the
+windows. One of these crashed against the iron shoulder of the
+monster. It turned its head: as though its neck were rubber, some
+said. And it gazed upward, with a human gesture as though it were not
+angry, but contemptuous.
+
+But still, beyond a step or two in one direction or another, it merely
+stood and waved its torch. The little dull-red beam of light carried
+no more than twenty or thirty feet. The street in a few moments was
+clear of pedestrians; remained littered with glass from the broken
+bottles. A taxi came suddenly around the corner, and the driver, with
+an almost immediate tire puncture, saw the monster. He hauled up to
+the curb, left his cab and ran.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Robot saw the taxicab, and stood gazing. It turned its torch-beam
+on it, and seemed surprised that the thing did not move. Then thinking
+evidently that this was a less cowardly enemy than the humans, it made
+a rush to it. The chauffeur had not turned off his engine when he
+fled, so the cab stood throbbing.
+
+The Robot reached it; cuffed it with a huge mailed fist. The
+windshield broke; the windows were shattered; but the cab stood
+purring, planted upon its four wheels.
+
+Strange encounter! They say that the Robot tried to talk to it. At
+last, exasperated, it stepped backward, gathered itself and pounced on
+it again. Stooping, it put one of its great arms down under the
+wheels, the other over the hood, and with prodigious strength heaved
+the cab into the air. It crashed on its side across the street, and in
+a moment was covered with flames.
+
+It was about this time that Patrolman McGuire came back to the scene.
+He shot at the monster a few times; hit it, he was sure. But the Robot
+did not heed him.
+
+The block was now in chaos. People stood at most of the windows,
+crowds gathered at the distant street corners, while the blazing
+taxicab lighted the block with a lurid glare. No one dared approach
+within a hundred feet or so of the monster. But when, after a time, it
+showed no disposition to attack, throngs at every distinct point of
+vantage tried to gather where they could see it. Those nearest
+reported back that its face was iron; that it had a nose, a wide,
+yawning mouth, and holes for eyes. There were certainly little lights
+in the eye-holes.
+
+A small, fluffy white dog went dashing up to the monster and barked
+bravely at its heels. It leaped nimbly away when the Robot stooped to
+seize it. Then, from the Robot's chest, the dull-red torch beam leaped
+out and down. It caught the little dog, and clung to it for an
+instant. The dog stood transfixed; its bark turned to a yelp; then a
+gurgle. In a moment it fell on its side; then lay motionless with
+stiffened legs sticking out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All this happened within five minutes. McGuire's riot squad arrived,
+discreetly ranged itself at the end of the block and fired. The Robot
+by then had retreated to the entryway of the Tugh house, where it
+stood peering as though with curiosity at all this commotion. There
+came a clanging from the distance: someone had turned in a fire alarm.
+Through the gathered crowds and vehicles the engines came tearing up.
+
+Presently there was not one Robot, but three: a dozen! More than that,
+many reports said. But certain it is that within half an hour of the
+first alarm, the block in front of Tugh's home held many of the iron
+monsters. And there were many human bodies lying strewn there, by
+then. A few policemen had made a stand at the corner, to protect the
+crowd against one of the Robots. The thing had made an unexpected
+infuriated rush....
+
+There was a panic in the next block, when a thousand people suddenly
+tried to run. A score of people were trampled under foot. Two or three
+of the Robots ran into that next block--ran impervious to the many
+shots which now were fired at them. From what was described as slots
+in the sides of their iron bodies they drew swords--long, dark,
+burnished blades. They ran, and at each fallen human body they made a
+single stroke of decapitation, or, more generally, cut the body in
+half.
+
+The Robots did not attack the fire engines. Emboldened by this,
+firemen connected a hose and pumped a huge jet of water toward the
+Tugh house. The Robots then rushed it. One huge mechanism--some said
+it was twelve feet tall--ran heedlessly into the firemen's
+high-pressure stream, toppled backward from the force of the water and
+very strangely lay still. Killed? Rather, out of order: deranged: it
+was not human, to be killed. But it lay motionless, with the fire hose
+playing upon it. Then abruptly there was an explosion. The fallen
+Robot, with a deafening report and a puff of green flame, burst into
+flying metallic fragments like shrapnel. Nearby windows were broken
+from the violent explosion, and pieces of the flying metal were hurled
+a hundred feet or more. One huge chunk, evidently a plate of the
+thing's body, struck into the crowd two blocks away, and felled
+several people.
+
+At this smashing of one of the mechanisms, its brother Robots went for
+the first time into aggressive action. A hundred or more were pouring
+now from the vacant house of the absent Tugh....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The alarm by ten o'clock had spread throughout the entire city. Police
+reserves were called out, and by midnight soldiers were being
+mobilized. Panics were starting everywhere. Millions of people crowded
+in on small Manhattan Island, in the heart of which was this strange
+enemy.
+
+Panics.... Yet human nature is very strange. Thousands of people
+started to leave Manhattan, but there were other thousands during that
+first skirmish who did their best to try and get to the neighborhood
+of Patton Place to see what was going on. They added greatly to the
+confusion. Traffic soon was stalled everywhere. Traffic officers,
+confused, frightened by the news which was bubbled at them from every
+side, gave wrong orders; accidents began to occur. And then, out of
+the growing confusion, came tangles, until, like a dammed stream, all
+the city mid-section was paralyzed. Vehicles were abandoned
+everywhere.
+
+Reports of what was happening on Patton Place grew more confused. The
+gathering nearby crowds impeded the police and firemen. The Robots, by
+ten o'clock, were using a single great beam of dull-red light. It was
+two or three feet broad. It came from a spluttering, hissing cylinder
+mounted on runners which the Robots dragged along the ground, and the
+beam was like that of a great red searchlight. It swung the length of
+Patton Place in both directions. It hissed against the houses;
+penetrated the open windows which now were all deserted; swept the
+front cornices of the roofs, where crowds of tenants and others were
+trying to hide. The red beam drove back the ones near the edge, except
+those who were stricken by its frigid blast and dropped like plummets
+into the street, where the Robots with flashing blades pounced upon
+them.
+
+Frigid was the blast of this giant light-beam. The street, wet from
+the fire-hose, was soon frozen with ice--ice which increased under the
+blast of the beam, and melted in the warm air of the night when the
+ray turned away.
+
+From every distant point in the city, awed crowds could see that great
+shaft when it occasionally shot upward, to stain the sky with blood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dr. Alten by midnight was with the city officials, telling them what
+he could of the origin of this calamity. They were a distracted group
+indeed! There were a thousand things to do, and frantically they were
+giving orders, struggling to cope with conditions so suddenly
+unprecedented. A great city, millions of people, plunged into
+conditions unfathomable. And every moment growing worse. One calamity
+bringing another, in the city, with its myriad diverse activities so
+interwoven. Around Alten the clattering, terrifying reports were
+surging. He sat there nearly all that night; and near dawn, an
+official plane carried him in a flight over the city.
+
+The panics, by midnight, were causing the most deaths. Thousands,
+hundreds of thousands, were trying to leave the island. The tube
+trains, the subways, the elevateds were jammed. There were riots
+without number in them. Ferryboats and bridges were thronged to their
+capacity. Downtown Manhattan, fortunately comparatively empty, gave
+space to the crowds plunging down from the crowded foreign quarters
+bordering Greenwich Village. By dawn it was estimated that five
+thousand people had been trampled to death by the panics in various
+parts of the city, in the tubes beneath the rivers and on departing
+trains.
+
+And another thousand or more had been killed by the Robots. How many
+of these monstrous metal men were now in evidence, no one could
+guess. A hundred--or a thousand. The Time-cage made many trips between
+that night of June 9 and 10, 1935, and a night in 2930. Always it
+gauged its return to this same night.
+
+The Robots poured out into Patton Place. With running, stiff-legged
+steps, flashing swords, small light-beams darting before them, they
+spread about the city....
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The Vengeance of Tugh
+
+A myriad individual scenes of horror were enacted. Metal travesties of
+the human form ran along the city streets, overturning stalled
+vehicles, climbing into houses, roaming dark hallways, breaking into
+rooms.
+
+There was a woman who afterward told that she crouched in a corner,
+clutching her child, when the door of her room was burst in. Her
+husband, who had kept them there thinking it was the safest thing to
+do, fought futilely with the great thing of iron. Its sword slashed
+his head from his body with a single stroke. The woman and the little
+child screamed, but the monster ignored them. They had a radio, tuned
+to a station in New Jersey which was broadcasting the events. The
+Robot seized the instrument as though in a frenzy of anger, tore it
+apart, then rushed from the room.
+
+No one could give a connected picture of the events of that horrible
+night. It was a series of disjointed incidents out of which the
+imagination must construct the whole.
+
+The panics were everywhere. The streets were stalled with traffic and
+running, shouting, fighting people. And the area around Greenwich
+Village brought reports of continued horror.
+
+The Robots were of many different forms; some pseudo-human; others,
+great machines running amuck--things more monstrous, more horrible
+even, than those which mocked humanity. There was a great pot-bellied
+monster which forced its way somehow to a roof. It encountered a
+crouching woman and child in a corner of the parapet, seized them, one
+in each of its great iron hands, and whirled them out over the
+housetops.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By dawn it seemed that the Robots had mounted several projectors of
+the giant red beam on the roofs of Patton Place. They held a full
+square mile, now, around Tugh's house. The police and firemen had long
+since given up fighting them. They were needed elsewhere--the police
+to try and cope with the panics, and the firemen to fight the
+conflagrations which everywhere began springing up. Fires, the natural
+outcome of chaos; and fires, incendiary--made by criminals who took
+advantage of the disaster to fatten like ghouls upon the dead. They
+prowled the streets. They robbed and murdered at will.
+
+The giant beams of the Robots carried a frigid blast for miles. By
+dawn of that June 10th, the south wind was carrying from the enemy
+area a perceptible wave of cold even as far as Westchester. Allen,
+flying over the city, saw the devastated area clearly. Ice in the
+streets--smashed vehicles--the gruesome litter of sword-slashed human
+bodies. And other human bodies, plucked apart; strewn....
+
+Alten's plane flew at an altitude of some two thousand feet. In the
+growing daylight the dark prowling figures of the metal men were
+plainly seen. There were no humans left alive in the captured area.
+The plane dropped a bomb into Washington Square where a dozen or two
+of the Robots were gathered. It missed them. The plane's pilot had not
+realized that they were grouped around a projector; its red shaft
+sprang up, caught the plane and clung to it. Frigid blast! Even at
+that two thousand feet altitude, for a few seconds Alten and the
+others were stiffened by the cold. The motor missed; very nearly
+stopped. Then an intervening rooftop cut off the beam, and the plane
+escaped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All this I have pictured from what Dr. Alten subsequently told me. He
+leaves my narrative now, since fate hereafter held him in the New York
+City of 1935. But he has described for me three horrible days, and
+three still more horrible nights. The whole world now was alarmed.
+Every nation offered its forces of air and land and sea to overcome
+these gruesome invaders. Warships steamed for New York harbor.
+Soldiers were entrained and brought to the city outskirts. Airplanes
+flew overhead. On Long Island, Staten Island, and in New Jersey,
+infantry, tanks and artillery were massed in readiness.
+
+But they were all very nearly powerless to attack. Manhattan Island
+still was thronged with refugees. It was not possible for the millions
+to escape; and for the first day there were hundreds of thousands
+hiding in their homes. The city could not be shelled. The influx of
+troops was hampered by the outrush of civilians.
+
+By the night of the tenth, nevertheless, ten thousand soldiers were
+surrounding the enemy area. It embraced now all the mid-section of the
+island. The soldiers rushed in. Machine-guns were set up.
+
+But the Robots were difficult to find. With this direct attack they
+began fighting with an almost human caution. Their bodies were
+impervious to bullets, save perhaps in the orifices of the face which
+might or might not be vulnerable. But when attacked, they skulked in
+the houses, or crouched like cautious animals under the smashed
+vehicles. Then there were times when they would wade forward directly
+into machine-gun fire--unharmed--plunging on until the gunners fled
+and the Robots wreaked their fury upon the abandoned gun.
+
+The only hand-to-hand conflicts took place on the afternoon of June
+10th. A full thousand soldiers were killed--and possibly six or eight
+of the Robots. The troops were ordered away after that; they made
+lines across the island to the north and to the south, to keep the
+enemy from increasing its area. Over Greenwich Village now, the
+circling planes--at their highest altitude, to avoid the upflung
+crimson beams--dropped bombs. Hundreds of houses there were wrecked.
+Tugh's house could not be positively identified, though the attack was
+directed at it most particularly. Afterward, it was found by chance to
+have escaped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The night of June 10th brought new horrors. The city lights failed.
+Against all the efforts of the troops and the artillery fire which now
+was shelling the Washington Square area, the giant mechanisms pushed
+north and south. By midnight, with their dull-red beams illumining the
+darkness of the canyon streets, they had reached the Battery, and
+spread northward beyond the northern limits of Central Park.
+
+It is estimated that by then there were still a million people on
+Manhattan Island.
+
+The night of the 11th, the Robots made their real attack. Those who
+saw it, from planes overhead, say that upon a roof near Washington
+Square a machine was mounted from which a red beam sprang. It was not
+of parallel rays, like the others; this one spread. And of such power
+it was, that it painted the leaden clouds of the threatening, overcast
+night. Every plane, at whatever high altitude, felt its frigid blast
+and winged hastily away to safety.
+
+Spreading, dull-red beam! It flashed with a range of miles. Its light
+seemed to cling to the clouds, staining like blood; and to cling to
+the air itself with a dull lurid radiance.
+
+It was a hot night, that June 11th, with a brewing thunderstorm. There
+had been occasional rumbles of thunder and lightning flashes. The
+temperature was perhaps 90 deg. F.
+
+Then the temperature began falling. A million people were hiding in
+the great apartment houses and homes of the northern sections, or
+still struggling to escape over the littered bridges or by the
+paralyzed transportation systems--and that million people saw the
+crimson radiance and felt the falling temperature.
+
+80 deg.. Then 70 deg.. Within half an hour it was at 30 deg.! In unheated houses,
+in midsummer, in the midst of panic, the people were swept by chilling
+cold. With no adequate clothing available they suffered greatly--and
+then abruptly they were freezing. Children wailing with the cold; then
+asleep in numbed, last slumber....
+
+Zero weather in midsummer! And below zero! How cold it got, there is
+no one to say. The abandoned recording instrument in the Weather
+Bureau was found, at 2:16 A.M., the morning of June 12, 1935, to have
+touched minus 42 deg. F.
+
+The gathering storm over the city burst with lightning and thunder
+claps through the blood-red radiance. And then snow began falling. A
+steady white downpour, a winter blizzard with the lightning flashing
+above it, and the thunder crashing.
+
+With the lightning and thunder and snow, crazy winds sprang up. They
+whirled and tossed the thick white snowflakes; swept in blasts along
+the city streets. It piled the snow in great drifts against the
+houses; whirled and sucked it upward in white powdery geysers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At 2:30 A.M. there came a change. The dull-red radiance which swept
+the city changed in color. Through the shades of the spectrum it swung
+up to violet. And no longer was it a blast of cold, but of heat! Of
+what inherent temperature the ray of that spreading beam may have
+been, no one can say. It caught the houses, and everything inflammable
+burst into flame. Conflagrations were everywhere--a thousand spots of
+yellow-red flames, like torches, with smoke rolling up from them to
+mingle with the violet glow overhead.
+
+The blizzard was gone. The snow ceased. The storm clouds rolled away,
+blasted by the pendulum winds which lashed the city.
+
+By 3 A.M. the city temperature was over 100 deg. F--the dry, blistering
+heat of a midsummer desert. The northern city streets were littered
+with the bodies of people who had rushed from their homes and fallen
+in the heat, the wild winds and the suffocating smoke outside.
+
+And then, flung back by the abnormal winds, the storm clouds crashed
+together overhead. A terrible storm, born of outraged nature, vent
+itself on the city. The fires of the burning metropolis presently died
+under the torrent of falling water. Clouds of steam whirled and tossed
+and hissed close overhead, and there was a boiling hot rain.
+
+By dawn the radiance of that strange spreading beam died away. The
+daylight showed a wrecked, dead city. Few humans indeed were left
+alive on Manhattan that dawn. The Robots and their apparatus had
+gone....
+
+The vengeance of Tugh against the New York City of 1935 was
+accomplished.
+
+(_To be continued._)
+
+[Illustration: Advertisement.]
+
+
+
+
+Hell's Dimension
+
+_By Tom Curry_
+
+[Illustration: _Just as the terrific unknown force reached its apex, she stepped
+across the plate._]
+
+[Sidenote: Professor Lambert deliberately ventures into a Vibrational
+Dimension to join his fiancee in its magnetic torture-fields.]
+
+
+"Now, Professor Lambert, tell us what you have done with the body of
+your assistant Miss Madge Crawford. Her car is outside your door, has
+stood there since early yesterday morning. There are no footprints
+leading away from the house and you can't expect us to believe that an
+airplane picked her off the roof. It will make it a lot easier if you
+tell us where she is. Her parents are greatly worried about her. When
+they telephoned, you refused to talk to them, would not allow them to
+speak to Miss Crawford. They are alarmed as to her fate. While you are
+not the sort of man who would injure a young woman, still, things look
+bad for you. You had better explain fully."
+
+John Lambert, a man of about thirty-six, tall, spare, with black hair
+which was slightly tinged with gray at the temples in spite of his
+youth, turned large eyes which were filled with agony upon his
+questioners.
+
+Lambert was already internationally famous for his unique and
+astounding experiments in the realm of sound and rhythm. He had been
+endowed by one of the great electrical companies to do original work,
+and his laboratory, in which he lived, was situated in a large tract
+of isolated woodland some forty miles from New York City. It was
+necessary for the success of his work that as few disturbing noises as
+possible be made in the neighborhood. Many of his experiments with
+sound and etheric waves required absolute quiet and freedom from
+interrupting noises. The delicate nature of some of the machines he
+used would not tolerate so much as the footsteps of a man within a
+hundred yards, and a passing car would have disrupted them entirely.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lambert was terribly nervous; he trembled under the gaze of the stern
+detective, come with several colleagues from a neighboring town at the
+call of Madge Crawford's frightened family. The girl, whose picture
+stood on a working table nearby, looked at them from the photograph as
+a beautiful young woman of twenty-five, light of hair, with large eyes
+and a lovely face.
+
+Detective Phillips pointed dramatically to the likeness of the missing
+girl. "Can you," he said, "look at her there, and deny you loved her?
+And if she did not love you in return, then we have a motive for what
+you have done--jealousy. Come, tell us what you have done with her.
+Our men will find her, anyway; they are searching the cellar for her
+now. You can't hope to keep her, alive, and if she is dead--"
+
+Lambert uttered a cry of despair, and put his face in his long
+fingers. "She--she--don't say she's dead!"
+
+"Then you did love her!" exclaimed Phillips triumphantly, and
+exchanged glances with his companions.
+
+"Of course I love her. And she returned my love. We were secretly
+engaged, and were to be married when we had finished these extremely
+important experiments. It is infamous though, to accuse me of having
+killed her; if I have done so, then it was no fault of mine."
+
+"Then you did kill her?"
+
+"No, no. I cannot believe she is really gone."
+
+"Why did you evade her parents' inquiries?"
+
+"Because ... I have been trying to bring her ... to re-materialize
+her."
+
+"You mean to bring her back to life?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Couldn't a doctor do that better than you, if she is hidden somewhere
+about here?" asked Phillips gravely.
+
+"No, no. You do not understand. She cannot be seen, she has
+dematerialized. Oh, go away. I'm the only man, save, possibly, my
+friend Doctor Morgan, who can help her now. And Morgan--I've thought
+of calling him, but I've been working every instant to get the right
+combination. Go away, for God's sake!"
+
+"We can't go away until we have found out Miss Crawford's fate," said
+Phillips patiently.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another sleuth entered the immense laboratory. He made his way through
+the myriad strange machines, a weird collection of xylophones, gongs,
+stone slabs cut in peculiar patterns to produce odd rhythmic sounds,
+electrical apparatus of all sorts. Near Phillips was a plate some feet
+square, of heavy metal, raised from the floor on poles of a different
+substance. About the ceiling were studs thickly set of the same sort
+of metal as was the big plate.
+
+One of the sleuths tapped his forehead, pointing to Lambert as the
+latter nervously lighted a cigarette.
+
+The newcomer reported to Phillips. He held in his hand two or three
+sheets of paper on which something was written.
+
+"The only other person here is a deaf mute," said the sleuth to
+Phillips, his superior. "I've got his story. He writes that he takes
+care of things, cooks their meals and so on. And he writes further
+that he thinks the woman and this guy Lambert were in love with each
+other. He has no idea where she has gone to. Here, you read it."
+
+Phillips took the sheets and continued: "'Yesterday morning about ten
+o'clock I was passing the door of the laboratory on my way to make up
+Professor Lambert's bed. Suddenly I noticed a queer, shimmering,
+greenish-blue light streaming down from the walls and ceiling of the
+laboratory. I was right outside the place and though I cannot hear
+anything, I was knocked down and I twisted and wriggled around like a
+snake. It felt like something with a thousand little paws but with
+great strength was pushing me every way. When there was a lull, and
+the light had stopped for a few moments, I staggered to my feet and
+ran madly for my own quarters, scared out of my head. As I went by the
+kitchen, I saw Miss Crawford at the sink there, filling some vases and
+arranging flowers as she usually did every morning.
+
+"'If she called to me, I did not hear her or notice her lips moving. I
+believe she came to the door.
+
+"'I was going to quit, when I recovered myself, angry at what had
+occurred; but then, I began to feel ashamed for being such a baby, for
+Professor Lambert has been very good to me. About fifteen minutes
+after I went to my room, I was able to return to the kitchen. Miss
+Crawford was not there, though the flowers and vases were. Then, as I
+started to work, still a little alarmed, Professor Lambert came
+rushing into the kitchen, an expression of terror on his face. His
+mouth was open, and I think he was calling. He then ran out, back to
+the laboratory, and I have not seen Miss Madge since. Professor
+Lambert has been almost continuously in the work-room since then,
+and--I kept away from it, because I was afraid.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two more members of Phillips' squad broke into the laboratory and came
+toward the chief. They had been working at physical labor, for they
+were still perspiring and one regarded his hands with a rueful
+expression.
+
+"Any luck?" asked Phillips eagerly.
+
+"No, boss. We been all over the place, and we dug every spot we could
+get to earth in the cellar. Most of it's three-inch concrete, without
+a sign of a break."
+
+"Did you look in the furnace?"
+
+"We looked there the first thing. She ain't there."
+
+There were several closets in the laboratory, and Phillips opened all
+of them and inspected them. As he moved near the big plate, Lambert
+uttered a cry of warning. "Don't disturb that, don't touch anything
+near it!"
+
+"All right, all right," said Phillips testily.
+
+The skeptical sleuths had classified Lambert as a "nut," and were
+practically sure he had done away with Madge Crawford because she
+would not marry him.
+
+Still, they needed better evidence than their mere beliefs. There was
+no corpus delicti, for instance.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Lambert at last, controlling his emotions with a
+great effort. "I will admit to you that I am in trepidation and a
+state of mental torture as to Miss Crawford's fate. You are delaying
+matters, keeping me from my work."
+
+"He thinks about work when the girl he claims he loves has
+disappeared," said Doherty, in a loud whisper to Phillips. Doherty was
+one of the sleuths who had been digging in the cellar, and the hard
+work had made his temper short.
+
+"You must help us find Miss Crawford before we can let you alone,"
+said Phillips. "Can't you understand that you are under grave
+suspicion of having injured her, hidden her away? This is a serious
+matter, Professor Lambert. Your experiments can wait."
+
+"This one cannot," shouted Lambert, shaking his fists. "You are
+fools!"
+
+"Steady now," said Doherty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Perhaps you had better come with us to the district attorney's
+office," went on Phillips. "There you may come to your senses and
+realize the futility of trying to cover up your crime--if you have
+committed one. If you have not, why do you not tell us where Miss
+Crawford is?"
+
+"Because I do not know myself," replied Lambert. "But you can't take
+me away from here. I beg of you, gentlemen, allow me a little more
+time. I must have it."
+
+Phillips shook his head. "Not unless you tell us logically what has
+occurred," he said.
+
+"Then I must, though I do not think you will comprehend or even
+believe me. Briefly, it is this: yesterday morning I was working on
+the final series of experiments with a new type of harmonic overtones
+plus a new type of sinusoidal current which I had arranged with a
+series of selenium cells. When I finally threw the switch--remember, I
+was many weeks preparing the apparatus, and had just put the final
+touches on early that morning--there was a sound such as never had
+been heard before by human ears, an indescribable sound, terrifying
+and mysterious. Also, there was a fierce, devouring verditer blue
+light, and this came from the plates and studs you see, but so great
+was its strength that it got out of control and leaped about the room
+like a live thing. For some moments, while it increased in intensity
+as I raised the power of the current by means of the switch I held in
+my hand, I watched and listened in fascination. My instruments had
+ceased to record, though they are the most delicate ever invented and
+can handle almost anything which man can even surmise."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The perspiration was pouring from Lambert's face, as he recounted his
+story. The detectives listened, comprehending but a little of the
+meaning of the scientist's words.
+
+"What has this to do with Miss Crawford?" asked Doherty impatiently.
+
+Phillips held up his hand to silence the other sleuth. "Let him
+finish," he ordered. "Go on, professor."
+
+"The sensations which I was undergoing became unendurable," went on
+Lambert, in a low, hoarse voice. "I was forced to cry out in pain and
+confusion.
+
+"Miss Crawford evidently heard my call, for a few moments later, just
+as the terrific unknown force reached its apex, she dashed into the
+laboratory, and stepped across the plate you see there.
+
+"I was powerless. Though I shut off the current by a superhuman
+effort, she--she was gone!"
+
+Lambert put his face in his hands, a sob shook his broad shoulders.
+
+"Gone?" repeated Phillips. "What do you mean, gone?"
+
+"She disappeared, before my very eyes," said the professor shakily.
+"Torn into nothingness by the fierce force of the current or sound.
+Since then, I have been trying to reproduce the conditions of the
+experiment, for I wish to bring her back. If I cannot do so, then I
+want to join her, wherever she has gone. I love her, I know now that I
+cannot possibly live without her. Will you please leave me alone, now,
+so that I can continue?"
+
+Doherty laughed derisively. "What a story," he jeered.
+
+"Keep quiet, Doherty," ordered Phillips. "Now, Professor Lambert, your
+explanation of Miss Crawford's disappearance does not sound logical to
+us, but still we are willing to give you every chance to bring her
+back, if what you say is true. We cannot leave you entirely alone,
+because you might try to escape or you might carry out your threat of
+suicide. Therefore, I am going to sit over there in the corner,
+quietly, where I can watch you but will not interfere with your work.
+We will give you until midnight to prove your story. Then you must go
+with us to the district attorney. Do you agree to that?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lambert nodded, eagerly. "I agree. Let me work in peace, and if I do
+not succeed then you may take me anywhere you wish. If you can," he
+added, in an undertone.
+
+Doherty and the others, at Phillips' orders, filed from the
+laboratory. "One thing more, professor," said Phillips, when they were
+alone and the professor was preparing to work. "How do you explain the
+fact, if your story is true, that Miss Crawford was killed and made to
+disappear, while you yourself, close by, were uninjured?"
+
+"Do you see these garments?" asked Lambert, indicating some black
+clothes which lay on a bench nearby. "They insulated me from the
+current and partially protected me from the sound. Though the force
+was very great, great enough to penetrate my insulation, it was
+handicapped in my case because of the garments."
+
+"I see. Well, you may go on."
+
+Phillips moved in the chair he had taken, from time to time. He could
+hear the noises of his men, still searching the premises for Madge
+Crawford, and Professor Lambert heard them, too.
+
+"Will you tell your men to be quiet?" he cried at last.
+
+There were dark circles under Lambert's eyes. He was working in a
+state of feverish anxiety. When the girl he loved had dematerialized
+from under his very eyes, panic had seized him; he had ripped away
+wires to break the current and lost the thread of his experiment, so
+that he could not reproduce it exactly without much labor.
+
+The scientist put on the black robes, and Phillips wished he too had
+some protective armor, even though he did believe that Lambert had
+told them a parcel of lies. The deaf mute's story was not too
+reassuring. Phillips warned his companions to be more quiet, and he
+himself sat quite still.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lambert knew that the sleuths thought he was stark mad. He was aware
+of the fact that he had but a few hours in which to save the girl who
+had come at his cry to help him, who had loved him and whom he loved,
+only to be torn into some place unknown by the forces which were
+released in his experiment. And he knew he would rather die with her
+than live without her.
+
+He labored feverishly, though he tried to keep his brain calm in order
+to win. His notes helped him up to a certain point, but when he had
+made the final touches he had not had time to bring the data up to the
+moment, being eager to test out his apparatus. It was while testing
+that the awful event had occurred and he had seen Madge Crawford
+disappear before his very eyes.
+
+Her eyes, large and frightened, burned in his mind.
+
+The deaf mute, Felix, a small, spare man of about fifty, sent the
+professor some food and coffee through one of the sleuths. Lambert
+swallowed the coffee, but waved away the rest, impatiently. Phillips,
+watching his suspect constantly, was served a light supper at the end
+of the afternoon.
+
+There seemed to be a million wires to be touched, tested, and various
+strange apparatus. Several times, later on in the evening. Lambert
+threw the big switch with an air of expectancy, but little happened.
+Then Lambert would go to work again, testing, testing--adjusting this
+and that till Phillips swore under his breath.
+
+"Only an hour more, professor," said Phillips, who was bored to death
+and cramped from trying to obey the professor's orders to keep still.
+A circle of cigarette-ends surrounded the sleuth.
+
+"Only an hour," agreed Lambert. "Will you please be quiet, my man?
+This is a matter of my fiancee's life or death."
+
+Phillips was somewhat disgruntled, for he felt he had done Lambert
+quite a favor in allowing him to remain in the laboratory for so long,
+to prove his story.
+
+"I wish Doctor Morgan were here; I ought to have sent for him, I
+suppose," said Lambert, a few minutes later. "Will you allow me to get
+him? I cannot seem to perfect this last stage."
+
+"No time, now," declared Phillips. "I said till midnight."
+
+It was obvious to Lambert that the detective had become certain during
+the course of the evening that the scientist was mad. The ceaseless
+fiddling and the lack of results or even spectacular sights had
+convinced Phillips that he had to do with a crank.
+
+"I think I have it now," said Lambert coolly.
+
+"What?" asked Phillips.
+
+"The original combination. I had forgotten one detail in the
+excitement, and this threw me off. Now I believe I will succeed--in
+one way or another. I warn you, be careful. I am about to release
+forces which may get out of my control."
+
+"Well, now, don't get reckless," begged Phillips nervously. The array
+of machines had impressed him, even if Lambert did seem a fool.
+
+"You insist upon remaining, so it is your own risk," said Lambert
+coolly.
+
+Lambert, in the strange robes, was a bizarre figure. The hood was
+thrown back, exposing his pale, black-bearded face, the wan eyes with
+dark circles under them, and the twitching lips.
+
+"If you find yourself leaving this vale of tears," went on the
+scientist, ironically, to the sleuth, "you will at least have the
+comfort of realizing that as the sound-force disintegrates your mortal
+form you are among the first of men to be attuned to the vibrations of
+the unknown sound world. All matter is vibration; that has been
+proven. A building of bricks, if shaken in the right manner, falls
+into its component parts; a bridge, crossed by soldiers in certain
+rhythmic time, is torn from its moorings. A tuning fork, receiving the
+sound vibrations from one of a similar size and shape begins to
+vibrate in turn. These are homely analogies, but applied to the less
+familiar sound vibrations, which make up our atomic world, they may
+help you to understand how the terrific forces I have discovered can
+disintegrate flesh."
+
+The scientist looked inquiringly at Phillips. As the sleuth did not
+move, but sat with folded arms, Lambert shrugged and said, "I am
+ready."
+
+Lambert raised his hood, and Phillips said, in a spirit of bravado,
+"You can't scare me out of here."
+
+"Here goes the switch," cried Lambert.
+
+He made the contact, as he had before. He stood for a moment, and this
+time the current gained force. The experimenter pushed his lever all
+the way over.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A terrible greenish-blue light suddenly illuminated the laboratory,
+and through the air there came sound vibrations which seemed to tear
+at Phillips' body. He found himself on the floor, knocked from his
+chair, and he writhed this way and that, speechless, suffering a
+torment of agony. His whole flesh seemed to tremble in unison with the
+waves which emanated from the machines which Lambert manipulated.
+
+After what seemed hours to the suffering sleuth, the force diminished,
+and soon Phillips was able to rise. Trembling, the detective cursed
+and yelled for help in a high-pitched voice.
+
+Lambert had thrown back his hood, and was rocking to and fro in agony.
+
+"Madge, Madge," he cried, "what have I done! Come back to me, come
+back!"
+
+Doherty and the others came running in at their chief's shouts.
+"Arrest him," ordered Phillips shakily. "I've stood enough of this
+nonsense."
+
+The detectives started for Lambert. He saw them coming, and swiftly
+threw off the protective garments he wore.
+
+"Stand back!" he cried, and threw the switch all the way over. The
+verditer green light smashed through the air, and the queer sound
+sensations smacked and tore them; Doherty, who had drawn a revolver
+when he was answering Phillips' cries, fired the gun into the air, and
+the report seemed to battle with the vibrating ether.
+
+Lambert, as he threw the switch, leaped forward and landed on the
+metal plate under the ceiling studs, in the very center of the awful
+disturbance and unprotected from its force.
+
+For a few moments, Lambert felt racking pain, as though something were
+tearing at his flesh, separating the very atoms. The scientist saw the
+wriggling figures of the sleuths, in various strange positions, but his
+impressions were confused. His head whirled round and round, he swayed
+to and fro, and, finally, he thought he fell down, or rather, that he
+had melted, as a lump of sugar dissolves in water.
+
+"He's gone--gone--"
+
+In the heart of nothingness was Lambert, his body torn and racked in a
+shrieking chaos of sound and a blinding glare of iridescent light
+which seemed too much to bear.
+
+His last conscious thought was a prayer, that, having failed to bring
+back his sweetheart, Madge Crawford, he was undergoing a step toward
+the same destination to which he had sent her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+John Lambert came to with a shudder. But it was not a mortal shudder.
+He could sense no body; had no sense of being confined by matter. He
+was in a strange, chilly place--a twilight region, limitless, without
+dimensions.
+
+Yet he could feel something, in an impersonal way, vaguely
+indifferent. He had no pain now.
+
+He was moving, somehow. He had one impelling desire, and that was to
+discover Madge Crawford. Perhaps it was this thought which directed
+his movements.
+
+Intent upon finding the girl, if she was indeed in this same strange
+world that he was, he did not notice for some time--how long, he had
+no way of telling--that there were other beings which tried to impede
+his progress. But as he grew more accustomed to the unfamiliar
+sensations he was undergoing, he found his path blocked again and
+again by queer beings.
+
+They were living, without doubt, and had intelligence, and evinced
+hostility toward him. But they were shapeless, shapeless as amoebas.
+He heard them in a sort of soundless whisper, and could see them
+without the use of eyes. And he shuddered, though he could feel no
+body in which he might be confined. Still, when he pinched viciously
+with invisible fingers at the spot where his face should have been, a
+twinge of pain registered on the vague consciousness which appeared to
+be all there was to him.
+
+He was not sure of his substance, though he could evidently experience
+human sensations with his amorphous body. He did not know whether he
+could see; yet, he was dodging this way and that, as the beings who
+occupied this world tried to stop him.
+
+They gave him the impression of gray shapes, and in coppery shadows
+things gleamed and closed in on him.
+
+He seemed to hear a cry, and he knew that he was receiving a call for
+help from Madge Crawford. He tried to run, pushed determinedly toward
+the spot, impelled by his love for the girl.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, as he hurried, he occasionally was stopped short by collision
+with the formless shapes which were all about him. He was hampered by
+them, for they followed him, making a sound like wind heard in a
+dream. Whatever medium he was in was evidently thickly inhabited by
+the hostile beings who claimed this world as their own. Though he
+could not actually feel the medium, he could sense that it was heavy.
+He leaped and ran, fighting his way through the increasing hosts, and
+the roar of their voice-impressions increased in his consciousness.
+
+Yet there seemed to be nothing, nothing tangible save vagueness. He
+felt he was in a blind spot in space, a place of no dimensions, no
+time, where beings abhorred by nature, things which had never
+developed any dimensional laws, existed.
+
+The cry for help struck him, with more force this time. Lambert,
+whatever form he was in, realised that he was close to the end of his
+journey to Madge Crawford.
+
+He tried to speak, and had the impression that he said something
+reassuring. He then bumped into some vibrational being which he knew
+was Madge. His ears could not hear, nor could his flesh feel, but his
+whole form or cerebrum sensed he held the woman he loved in his arms.
+
+And she was speaking to him, in accents of fear, begging him to save
+her.
+
+"John, John, you have come at last. They have been torturing me
+terribly. Save me."
+
+"Darling Madge, I will do everything I can. Now I have found you, and
+we are together and will never part. Can you hear me?"
+
+"I know what you are thinking, and what you wish to say. I can't
+exactly hear; it all seems vague, and impossible. Yet I can suffer.
+They have been hitting me with something which makes me shudder and
+shake--there, they are at it again."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lambert felt the sensations, now, which the girl had made known to
+him. He felt crowded by gray beings, and his existence was troubled by
+spasms of pain-impressions. He knew Madge was crying out, too.
+
+He could not comprehend the attacks, or guess their meaning. But the
+situation was unendurable.
+
+Anger shook him, and he began to fight, furiously but vaguely. They
+were closely hemmed in, but when Lambert began to strike out with
+hands and legs, the beings gave way a little. The scientist tried to
+shout, and though he could actually hear nothing, the result was
+gratifying. The formless creatures seemed to scatter and draw back in
+confusion as he yelled his defiance.
+
+"They hate that," Madge said to him. "I have screamed myself hoarse
+and that is why they have not killed me--if I can be killed."
+
+"I do not believe we can. But they can torture us," replied Lambert.
+"It is an everlasting half-life or quarter-life, and these creatures
+who call this Hell's Dimension home, have nothing but hatred for us in
+their consciousness."
+
+The inhabitants of the imperfect world had closed in once again and
+the sharp instruments of torture they used were being thrust into the
+invisible bodies of the two humans. Each time, Lambert was unable to
+restrain his cries, for it seemed that he was being torn to pieces by
+vibrations.
+
+He yelled until he could not speak above a whisper, or at least until
+the impressions of speech he gave forth did not trouble the beings.
+The two humans, still bound to some extent by their mortal beliefs,
+were chivvied to and fro, and struck and bullied. The creatures seemed
+to delight in this sport.
+
+The two felt they could not die; yet they could suffer terribly. Would
+this go on through eternity? Was there no release?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were trying to tear Madge away from him. She was fighting them,
+and Lambert, in a frenzy of rage, made a determined effort to get away
+with the girl from their tormentors.
+
+They retreated before his onslaughts. Drawing Madge after him, Lambert
+put down his head--or believed he was doing so--and ran as fast as he
+could at the beings.
+
+He bumped into some invisible forms and was slowed in his rush, but he
+shouted and flailed about with his arms, and tried to kick. Madge
+helped by screaming and striking out. They made some distance in this
+way, or so they thought, and the horrid creatures gave way before
+them.
+
+All about them was the coppery sensation of the medium in which they
+moved: Lambert as he became more used to the form he was inhabiting,
+he began to think he could discern dreadful eyes which stared
+unblinkingly at the couple.
+
+He fought on, and believed they had come to a spot where the beings
+did not molest them, though they still sensed the things glaring at
+them.
+
+Were they on some invisible eminence, above the reach of these queer
+creatures?
+
+"We might as well stop here, for if we try to go farther we may come
+to a worse place," said Lambert.
+
+They rested there, in temporary peace, together at last.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I seem to be happy now," said Madge, clinging close. "I feared I
+would never see you again. John dear. I ran to you when you called out
+that day and when I crossed the plate, I was torn and racked and
+knocked down. When I next experienced sensation, it was in this
+terrible form. I am becoming more used to it, but I kept crying out
+for you: the beings, as soon as they discovered my presence, began to
+torment me. More and more have been collecting, and I have a sensation
+of seeing them as horrible, revolting beasts. Oh, John, I don't think
+I could have stood it much longer, if you hadn't come to me. They were
+driving me on, on, on, ceaselessly torturing me."
+
+"Curse them," said Lambert. "I wish I could really get hold of some of
+them. Perhaps, Madge, I will be able to think of some escape for us
+from this Hell's Dimension."
+
+"Yes, darling. I could not bear to think that we are eternally damned
+to exist among these beings, hurt by them and unable to get away. How
+I wish we were back in the laboratory, at the tea table. How happy we
+were there!"
+
+"And we will be again, Madge." Lambert was far from feeling hopeful,
+but he tried to encourage the girl into thinking they might get away.
+
+However, he was unable to dissimulate. She felt his anguish for her
+safety. "But I know now that you love me. I can feel it stronger than
+ever before, John. It seems like a great rock to which I can always
+cling, your love. It projects me from the hatred that these beasts
+pour out against us."
+
+Since they had no sense of time, they could not tell how long they
+were allowed to remain unmolested. But in each other's company they
+were happy, though each one was afraid for the safety of the loved
+one.
+
+They spoke of the mortal life they had lived, and their love. They
+felt no need of food or water, but clung together in a dimensionless
+universe, held up by love.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lull came to an end, at last. There was no change in the coppery
+vagueness about them which they sensed as the surrounding ether, but
+all was changeless, boundless. Lambert, close to Madge Crawford, felt
+that they were about to be attacked.
+
+He had swift, temporary impressions of seeing saucerlike, unblinking
+eyes, and then hordes of bizarre inhabitants started to climb up to
+their perch.
+
+For a short while, Lambert and Madge fought them off, thrusting at
+them, seeming to push them backward down the intangible slope; the
+cries which the dematerialized humans uttered also helped to hold the
+leaders of the attacking army partially in check, but the vast number
+of beings swept forward.
+
+The thrusts of the torture-fields they emanated became more and more
+racking, as the two unfortunates shuddered in horror and pain.
+
+The power to demonstrate loud noise was evidently impossible to the
+creatures, for their only sounds came to Madge Crawford and John
+Lambert as long-drawn out, almost unbearable squeaks, mouse-like in
+character. Perhaps they had never had the faculty of speech, since
+they did not need it to communicate with one another; perhaps they
+realized that the racket they could make would hurt them as much as it
+did their enemies.
+
+Lambert, Madge clinging to him, was forced backward down the slope,
+and the beings had the advantage of height. He could not again reach
+the eminence, but the way behind seemed to clear quickly enough,
+though thrusts were made at him, innumerable times with the
+torture-fields.
+
+The hordes pushed them backward, and ever back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were forced on for some distance. As they retreated, the way
+become easier, and fewer and fewer of the beings impeded the channel
+along which they moved, though in front of them and on all sides,
+above, beneath, they were pressed by the hordes.
+
+"They are forcing us to some place they want us to go," said Lambert
+desperately.
+
+"We can do nothing more," replied the girl.
+
+Lambert felt her quiet confidence in him, and that as long as they
+were together, all was well.
+
+"Maybe they can kill us, somehow," he said.
+
+And now, Lambert felt the way was clear to the rear. There was a
+sudden rush of the creatures, and needlelike fields were impelled
+viciously into the spaces the two humans occupied.
+
+Madge cried out in pain, and Lambert shouted. The throng drew away
+from them as suddenly as it had surged forward, and an instant later
+the pair, clinging together, felt that they were falling, falling,
+falling....
+
+"Are you all right, Madge?"
+
+"Yes, John."
+
+But he knew she was suffering. How long they fell he did not know, but
+they stopped at last. No sooner had they come to rest than they were
+assailed with sensations of pain which made both cry out in anguish.
+
+There, in the spot where they had been thrust by the hordes, they felt
+that there was some terrific vibration which racked and tore at their
+invisible forms continuously, sending them into spasms of sharp
+misery.
+
+They both were forced to give vent to their feelings by loud cries.
+But they could not command their movements any longer. When they tried
+to get away, their limbs moved but they felt that they remained in the
+same spot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The pain shook every fraction of their souls.
+
+"We--we are in some pit of hell, into which they have thrown us,
+John," gasped Madge.
+
+He knew she was shivering with the torture of that great vibration
+from which there was no escape, that they were in a prison-pit of
+Hell's Dimension.
+
+"I--oh--John--I'm dying!"
+
+But he was powerless to help her. He suffered as much as she. Yet
+there was no weakening of his sensations; he was in as much torture as
+he had been at the start. He knew that they could not die and could
+never escape from this misery of hell.
+
+Their cries seemed to disturb the vacuum about. Lambert, shivering and
+shaking with pain, was aware that great eyes, similar to those which
+they had thought they saw above, were now upon them. Squeaks were
+impressed upon him, squeaks which expressed disapprobation. There were
+some of the beings in the pit with them.
+
+Madge knew they were there, too. She cried out in terror, "Will they
+add to our misery?"
+
+But the creatures in the vacuum were pinned to the spots they
+occupied, as were Madge and Lambert. From their squeaks it was evident
+they suffered, too, and were fellow prisoners of the mortals.
+
+"Probably the cries we make disturb them," said Lambert. "Vibrations
+to which we and they are not attuned are torture to the form we are
+in. Evidently the inhabitants of this hell world punish offenders by
+condemning them to this eternal torture."
+
+"Why--why did they treat us so?"
+
+"Perhaps we jarred upon them, hurt them, because we were not of their
+kind exactly," said Lambert. "Perhaps it was just their natural hatred
+of us as strangers."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They did not grow used to the terrible eternity of torments. No, if
+anything, it grew worse as it went on. Still, they could visualize no
+end to the existence to which they were bound. Throbs of awful
+intensity rent them, tore them apart myriad times, yet they still felt
+as keenly as before and suffered just as much. There was no death for
+them, no release from the intangible world in which they were.
+
+Their fellow prisoners squeaked at them, as though imploring them not
+to add to the agony by uttering discordant cries. But it was
+impossible for Madge to keep quiet, and Lambert shouted in anguish
+from time to time.
+
+There seemed to be no end to it.
+
+And yet, after what was eternity to the sufferers, Madge spoke
+hopefully.
+
+"Darling John, I--I fear I am really going to die. I am growing
+weaker. I can feel the pain very little now. It is all vague, and is
+getting less real to me. Good-by, sweetheart, I love you, and I always
+will--"
+
+Lambert uttered a strangled cry, "No, no. Don't leave me, Madge."
+
+He clung to her, yet she was becoming extremely intangible to him. She
+was melting away from his embrace, and Lambert felt that he, too, was
+weaker, even less real than he had been. He hoped that if it was the
+end, they would go together.
+
+Desperately, he tried to hold her with him, but he had little ability
+to do so. The torture was still racking his consciousness, but was
+becoming more dreamlike.
+
+There was a terrific snap, suddenly, and Lambert lost all
+consciousness....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Water, water!"
+
+Lambert, opening his eyes, felt his body writhing about, and
+experienced pain that was--mortal. A bluish-green light dazzled his
+pupils and made him blink.
+
+Something cut into his flesh, and Lambert rolled about, trying to
+escape. He bumped into something, something soft; he clung to this
+form, and knew that he was holding on to a human being. Then the light
+died out, and in its stead was the yellow, normal glow of the electric
+lights. Weak, famished, almost dead of thirst, Lambert looked about
+him at the familiar sights of his laboratory. He was lying on the
+floor, close by the metal plate, and at his side, unconscious but
+still alive to judge by her rising and falling breast, was Madge
+Crawford.
+
+Someone bent over him, and pressed a glass of water against his lips.
+He drank, watching while a mortal whom Lambert at last realized was
+Detective Phillips bathed Madge Crawford's temples with water from a
+pitcher and forced a little between her pale, drawn lips.
+
+Lambert tried to rise, but he was weak, and required assistance. He
+was dazed, still, and they sat him down in a chair and allowed him to
+come to.
+
+He shuddered from time to time, for he still thought he could feel the
+torture which he had been undergoing. But he was worried about Madge,
+and watched anxiously as Phillips, assisted by another man, worked
+over the girl.
+
+At last, Madge stirred and moaned faintly. They lifted her to a bench,
+where they gently restored her to full consciousness.
+
+When she could sit up, she at once cried out for Lambert.
+
+The scientist had recovered enough to rise to his feet and stagger
+toward her. "Here I am, darling," he said.
+
+"John--we're alive--we're back in the laboratory!"
+
+"Ah, Lambert. Glad to see you." A heavy voice spoke, and Lambert for
+the first time noticed the black-clad figure which stood to one side,
+near the switchboard, hidden by a large piece of apparatus.
+
+"Dr. Morgan!" cried Lambert.
+
+Althaus Morgan, the renowned physicist, came forward calmly, with
+outstretched hand. "So, you realized your great ambition, eh?" he said
+curiously. "But where would you be if I had not been able to bring you
+back?"
+
+"In Hell--or Hell's Dimension, anyway," said Lambert.
+
+He went to Madge, took her in his arms. "Darling, we are safe. Morgan
+has managed to re-materialize us. We will never again be cast into the
+void in this way. I shall destroy the apparatus and my notes."
+
+Doherty, who had been out of the room on some errand, came into the
+laboratory. He shouted when he saw Lambert standing before him.
+
+"So you got him," he cried. "Where was he hidin'?"
+
+His eyes fell upon Madge Crawford, then, and he exclaimed in
+satisfaction. "You found her, eh?"
+
+"No," said Phillips. "They came back. They suddenly appeared out of
+nothing, Doherty."
+
+"Don't kid me," growled Doherty. "They were hidin' in a closet
+somewhere. Maybe they can fool you guys, but not me."
+
+Lambert spoke to Phillips. "I'm starving to death and I think Miss
+Crawford must be, too. Will you tell Felix to bring us some food,
+plenty of it?"
+
+One of the sleuths went to the kitchen to give the order. Lambert
+turned to Morgan.
+
+"How did you manage to bring us back?" he asked.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Morgan shrugged. "It was all guess work at the last. I at first could
+check the apparatus by your notes, and this took some time. You know
+you have written me in detail about what you were working on, so when
+I was summoned by Detective Phillips, who said you had mentioned my
+name to him as the only one who could help, I could make a good
+conjecture as to what had occurred. I heard the stories of all
+concerned, and realized that you must have dematerialized Miss
+Crawford by mistake, and then, unable to bring her back, had followed
+her yourself.
+
+"I put on your insulation outfit, and went to work. I have not left
+here for a moment, but have snatched an hour or two of sleep from time
+to time. Detective Phillips has been very good and helpful.
+
+"Finally, I had everything in shape, but I reversed the apparatus in
+vital spots, and tried each combination until suddenly, a few minutes
+ago, you were re-materialized. It was a desperate chance, but I was
+forced to take it in an endeavor to save you."
+
+Lambert held out his hand to his friend. "I can never thank you
+enough," he said gratefully. "You saved us from a horrible fate. But
+you speak as though we had been gone a long while. Was it many hours?"
+
+"Hours?" repeated Morgan, his lips parting under his black beard.
+"Man, it was eight days! You have been gone since a week ago last
+night!"
+
+Lambert turned to Phillips. "I must ask you not to release this story
+to the newspapers," he begged.
+
+Phillips smiled and turned up his hands in a gesture of frank wonder.
+"Professor Lambert," he said, "I can't believe what I have seen
+myself. If I told such a yarn to the reporters, they'd never forget
+it. They'd kid me out of the department."
+
+"Aw, they were hidin' in a closet," growled Doherty. "Come on, we've
+wasted too much time on this job already. Just a couple of nuts, says
+I."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sleuths, after Phillips had shaken hands with Lambert, left the
+laboratory. Morgan, a large man of middle age, joined them in a meal
+which Felix served to the three on a folding table brought in for the
+purpose. Felix was terribly glad to see Madge and Lambert again, and
+manifested his joy by many bobs and leaps as he waited upon them. A
+grin spread across his face from ear to ear.
+
+Morgan asked innumerable questions. They described as best they could
+what they could recall of the strange dominion in which they had been,
+and the physicist listened intently.
+
+"It is some Hell's Dimension, as you call it," he said at last.
+
+"Where it is, or exactly what, I cannot say," said Lambert. "I surely
+have no desire to return to that world of hate."
+
+Madge, happy now, smiled at him and he leaned over and kissed her
+tenderly.
+
+"We have come from Hell, together," said Lambert, "and now we are in
+Heaven!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: Advertisement]
+
+
+
+
+The World Behind the Moon
+
+_By Paul Ernst_
+
+[Illustration: _They fell, for hours, into a deep chasm._]
+
+[Sidenote: Two intrepid Earth-men fight it out with the horrific
+monsters of Zeud's frightful jungles.]
+
+
+Like pitiless jaws, a distant crater opened for their ship.
+Helplessly, they hurtled toward it: helplessly, because they were
+still in the nothingness of space, with no atmospheric resistance on
+which their rudders, or stern or bow tubes, could get a purchase to
+steer them.
+
+Professor Dorn Wichter waited anxiously for the slight vibration that
+should announce that the projectile-shaped shell had entered the new
+planet's atmosphere.
+
+"Have we struck it yet?" asked Joyce, a tall blond young man with the
+shoulders of an athlete and the broad brow and square chin of one who
+combines dreams with action. He made his way painfully toward
+Wichter. It was the first time he had attempted to move since the
+shell had passed the neutral point--that belt midway between the moon
+and the world behind it, where the pull of gravity of each satellite
+was neutralized by the other. They, and all the loose objects in the
+shell, had floated uncomfortably about the middle of the chamber for
+half an hour or so, gradually settling down again; until now it was
+possible, with care, to walk.
+
+"Have we struck it?" he repeated, leaning over the professor's
+shoulder and staring at the resistance gauge.
+
+"No." Absently Wichter took off his spectacles and polished them.
+"There's not a trace of resistance yet."
+
+They gazed out the bow window toward the vast disc, like a serrated,
+pock-marked plate of blue ice, that was the planet Zeud--discovered
+and named by them. The same thought was in the mind of each. Suppose
+there were no atmosphere surrounding Zeud to cushion their descent
+into the hundred-mile crater that yawned to receive them?
+
+"Well," said Joyce after a time, "we're taking no more of a chance
+here than we did when we pointed our nose toward the moon. We were
+almost sure that was no atmosphere there--which meant we'd nose dive
+into the rocks at five thousand miles an hour. On Zeud there might be
+anything." His eyes shone. "How wonderful that there should be such a
+planet, unsuspected during all the centuries men have been studying
+the heavens!"
+
+Wichter nodded agreement. It was indeed wonderful. But what was more
+wonderful was its present discovery: for that would never have
+transpired had not he and Joyce succeeded in their attempt to fly to
+the moon. From there, after following the sun in its slow journey
+around to the lost side of the lunar globe--that face which the earth
+has never yet observed--they had seen shining in the near distance
+the great ball which they had christened Zeud.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Astronomical calculations had soon described the mysterious hidden
+satellite. It was almost a twin to the moon; a very little smaller,
+and less than eighty thousand miles away. Its rotation was nearly
+similar, which made its days not quite sixteen of our earthly days. It
+was of approximately the weight, per cubic mile, of Earth. And there
+it whirled, directly in a line with the earth and the moon, moving as
+the moon moved so that it was ever out of sight beyond it, as a dime
+would be out of sight if placed in a direct line behind a penny.
+
+Zeud, the new satellite, the world beyond the moon! In their
+excitement at its discovery, Joyce and Wichter had left the
+moon--which they had found to be as dead and cold as it had been
+surmised to be--and returned summarily to Earth. They had replenished
+their supplies and their oxygen tanks, and had come back--to circle
+around the moon and point the sharp prow of the shell toward Zeud. The
+gift of the moon to Earth was a dubious one; but the gift of a
+possibly living planet-colony to mankind might be the solution of the
+overcrowded conditions of the terrestial sphere!
+
+"Speed, three thousand miles an hour," computed Wichter. "Distance to
+Zeud, nine hundred and eighty miles. If we don't strike a few atoms of
+hydrogen or something soon we're going to drill this nearest crater a
+little deeper!"
+
+Joyce nodded grimly. At two thousand miles from Earth there had still
+been enough hydrogen traces in the ether to give purchase to the
+explosions of their water-motor. At six hundred miles from the moon
+they had run into a sparse gaseous belt that had enabled them to
+change direction and slow their speed. They had hoped to find hydrogen
+at a thousand or twelve hundred miles from Zeud.
+
+"Eight hundred and thirty miles," commented Wichter, his slender,
+bent body tensed. "Eight hundred miles--ah!"
+
+A thrumming sound came to their ears as the shell quivered,
+imperceptibly almost, but unmistakeably, at the touch of some faint
+resistance outside in space.
+
+"We've struck it, Joyce. And it's much denser than the moon's, even as
+we'd hoped. There'll be life on Zeud, my boy, unless I'm vastly
+mistaken. You'd better look to the motor now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joyce went to the water-motor. This was a curious, but extremely
+simple affair. There was a glass box, ribbed with polished steel,
+about the size and shape of a cigar box, which was full of water.
+Leading away from this, to the bow and stern of the shell, were two
+small pipes. The pipes were greatly thickened for a period of three
+feet or so, directly under the little tank, and were braced by
+bed-plates so heavy as to look all out of proportion. Around the
+thickened parts of the pipes were coils of heavy, insulated copper
+wire. There were no valves nor cylinders, no revolving parts: that was
+all there was to the "motor."
+
+Joyce didn't yet understand the device. The water dripped from the
+tank, drop by drop, to be abruptly disintegrated, made into an
+explosive, by being subjected to a powerful magnetic field induced in
+the coils by a generator in the bow of the shell. As each drop of
+water passed into the pipes, and was instantaneously broken up, there
+was a violent but controlled explosion--and the shell was kicked
+another hundred miles ahead on its journey. That was all Joyce knew
+about it.
+
+He threw the bow switch. There was a soft shock as the motor exhausted
+through the forward tube, slowing their speed.
+
+"Turn on the outside generator propellers," ordered Wichter. "I think
+our batteries are getting low."
+
+Joyce slipped the tiny, slim-bladed propellers into gear. They began
+to turn, slowly at first in the almost non-existent atmosphere.
+
+"Four hundred miles," announced Wichter. "How's the temperature?"
+
+Joyce stepped to the thermometer that registered the heat of the outer
+wall. "Nine hundred degrees," he said.
+
+"Cut down to a thousand miles an hour," commanded Wichter. "Five
+hundred as soon as the motor will catch that much. I'll keep our
+course straight toward this crater. It's in wells like that, that
+we'll find livable air--if we're right in believing there is such a
+thing on Zeud."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joyce glanced at the thermometer. It still registered hundreds of
+degrees, though their speed had been materially reduced.
+
+"I guess there's livable air, all right," he said. "It's pretty thick
+outside already."
+
+The professor smiled. "Another theory vindicated. I was sure that
+Zeud, swinging on the outside of the Earth-moon-Zeud chain and hence
+traveling at a faster rate, would pick up most of the moon's
+atmosphere over a period of millions of years. Also it must have been
+shielded by the moon, to some extent, against the constant small
+atmospheric leakage most celestial globes are subject to. Just the
+same, when we land, we'll test conditions with a rat or two."
+
+At a signal from him, Joyce checked their speed to four hundred miles
+an hour, then to two hundred, and then, as they descended below the
+highest rim of the circular cliffs of the crater, almost to a full
+stop. They floated toward the surface of Zeud, watching with
+breathless interest the panorama that unfolded beneath them.
+
+They were nosing toward a spot that was being favored with the Zeudian
+sunrise. Sharp and clear the light rays slanted down, illuminating
+about half the crater's floor and leaving the cliff protected half in
+dim shadow.
+
+The illuminated part of the giant pit was as bizarre as the landscape
+of a nightmare. There were purplish trees, immense beyond belief.
+There were broad, smooth pools of inky black fluid that was oily and
+troubled in spots as though disturbed by some moving things under the
+surface. There were bare, rocky patches where the stones, the long
+drippings of ancient lava flow, were spread like bleaching gray
+skeletons of monsters. And over all, rising from pools and bare ground
+and jungle alike, was a thin, miasmic mist.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sustained by the slow, steady exhaust of the motor, rising a little
+with each partly muffled explosion and sinking a little further in
+each interval, they settled toward a bare, lava strewn spot that
+appealed to Wichter as being a good landing place. With a last hiss,
+and a grinding jar, they grounded. Joyce opened the switch to cut off
+the generator.
+
+"Now let's see what the air's like," said Wichter, lifting down a
+small cage in which was penned an active rat.
+
+He opened a double panel in the shell's hull, and freed the little
+animal. In an agony of suspense they watched it as it leaped onto the
+bare lava and halted a moment....
+
+"Seems to like it," said Joyce, drawing a great breath.
+
+The rat, as though intoxicated by its sudden freedom, raced away out
+of sight, covering eight or ten feet at a bound, its legs scurrying
+ludicrously in empty air during its short flights.
+
+"That means that we can dispense with oxygen helmets--and that we'd
+better take our guns," said Wichter, his voice tense, his eyes
+snapping behind his glasses.
+
+He stepped to the gun rack. In this were half a dozen air-guns. Long
+and of very small bore, they discharged a tiny steel shell in which
+was a liquid of his invention that, about a second after the heat of
+its forced passage through the rifle barrel, expanded instantly in
+gaseous form to millions of times its liquid bulk. It was the most
+powerful explosive yet found, but one that was beautifully safe to
+carry inasmuch as it could be exploded only by heat.
+
+"Are we ready?" he said, handing a gun to Joyce. "Then--let's go!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But for a breath or two they hesitated before opening the heavy double
+door in the side of the hull, savoring to the full the immensity of
+the moment.
+
+The rapture of the explorer who is the first to set foot on a vast new
+continent was theirs, magnified a hundredfold. For they were the first
+to set foot on a vast new planet! An entire new world, containing
+heaven alone knew what forms of life, what monstrous or infinitesimal
+creatures, lay before them. Even the profound awe they had experienced
+when landing on the moon was dwarfed by the solemnity of this
+occasion; just as it is less soul stirring to discover an arctic
+continent which is perpetually cased in barren ice, than to discover a
+continent which is warmly fruitful and, probably, teeming with life.
+
+Still wordless, too stirred to speak, they opened the vault-like door
+and stepped out--into a humid heat which was like that of their own
+tropical regions, but not so unendurable.
+
+In their short stay on the moon, during which they had taken several
+walks in their insulated suits, they had become somewhat accustomed to
+the decreased weight of their bodies due to the lesser gravity, so
+that here, where their weight was even less, they did not make any
+blunders of stepping twenty feet instead of a yard.
+
+Walking warily, glancing alertly in all directions to guard against
+any strange animals that might rush out to destroy them, they moved
+toward the nearest stretch of jungle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first thing that arrested their attention was the size of the
+trees they were approaching. They had got some idea of their hugeness
+from the shell, but viewed from ground level they loomed even larger.
+Eight hundred, a thousand feet they reared their mighty tops, with
+trunks hundreds of feet in circumference; living pyramids whose bases
+wove together to make an impenetrable ceiling over the jungle floor.
+The leaves were thick and bloated like cactus growths, and their color
+was a pronounced lavender.
+
+"We must take back several of those leaves," said Wichter, his
+scientific soul filled with cold excitement.
+
+"I wish we could take back some of this air, too." Joyce filled his
+lungs to capacity. "Isn't it great? Like wine! It almost counteracts
+the effects of the heat."
+
+"There's more oxygen in it than in our own," surmised Wichter. "My
+God! What's that!"
+
+They halted for an instant. From the depths of the lavender jungle had
+come an ear shattering, screaming hiss, as though some monstrous
+serpent were in its death agony.
+
+They waited to hear if the noise would be repeated. It wasn't.
+Dubiously they started on again.
+
+"We'd better not go in there too far," said Joyce. "If we didn't come
+out again it would cost Earth a new planet. No one else knows the
+secret of your water-motor."
+
+"Oh, nothing living can stand against these guns of ours," replied
+Wichter confidently. "And that noise might not have been caused by
+anything living. It might have been steam escaping from some volcanic
+crevice."
+
+They started cautiously down a well defined, hard packed trail through
+thorny lavender underbrush. As they went, Joyce blazed marks on
+various tree trunks marking the direction back to the shell. The tough
+fibres exuded a bluish liquid from the cuts that bubbled slowly like
+blood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To the right and left of them were cup-shaped bushes that looked like
+traps; and that their looks were not deceiving was proved by a
+muffled, bleating cry that rose from the compressed leaves of one of
+them they passed. Sluggish, blind crawling things like three-foot
+slugs flowed across their path and among the tree trunks, leaving
+viscous trails of slime behind them. And there were larger things....
+
+"Careful," said Wichter suddenly, coming to a halt and peering into
+the gloom at their right.
+
+"What did you see?" whispered Joyce.
+
+Wichter shook his head. The gigantic, two-legged, purplish figure he
+had dimly made out in the steamy dark, had moved away. "I don't know.
+It looked a little like a giant ape."
+
+They halted and took stock of their situation, mechanically wiping
+perspiration from their streaming faces, and pondering as to whether
+or not they should turn back. Joyce, who was far from being a coward,
+thought they should.
+
+"In this undergrowth," he pointed out, "we might be rushed before we
+could even fire our guns. And we're nearly a mile from the shell."
+
+But Wichter was like an eager child.
+
+"We'll press on just a little," he urged. "To that clear spot in front
+of us." He pointed along the trail to where sunlight was blazing down
+through an opening in the trees. "As soon as we see what's there,
+we'll go back."
+
+With a shrug, Joyce followed the eager little man down the weird trail
+under the lavender trees. In a few moments they had reached the
+clearing which was Wichter's goal. They halted on its edge, gazing at
+it with awe and repulsion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a circular quagmire of festering black mud about a hundred
+yards across. Near at hand they could see the mud heaving, very
+slowly, as though abysmal forms of life were tunneling along just
+under the surface. They glanced toward the center of the bog, which
+was occupied by one of the smooth black pools, and cried aloud at
+what they saw.
+
+At the brink of the pool was lying a gigantic creature like a great,
+thick snake--a snake with a lizard's head, and a series of
+many-jointed, scaled legs running down its powerful length. Its mouth
+was gaping open to reveal hundreds of needle-sharp, backward pointing
+teeth. Its legs and thick, stubbed tail were threshing feebly in the
+mud as though it were in distress; and its eyes, so small as to be
+invisible in its repulsive head, were glazed and dull.
+
+"Was that what we heard back a ways?" wondered Joyce.
+
+"Probably," said Wichter. His eyes shone as he gazed at the nightmare
+shape. Impulsively he took a step toward the stirring mud.
+
+"Don't be entirely insane," snapped Joyce, catching his arm.
+
+"I must see it closer," said Wichter, tugging to be free.
+
+"Then we'll climb a tree and look down on it. We'll probably be safer
+up off the ground anyway."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They ascended the nearest jungle giant--whose rubbery bark was so
+ringed and scored as to be as easy to climb as a staircase--to the
+first great bough, about fifty feet from the ground, and edged out
+till they hung over the rim of the quagmire. From there, with the aid
+of their binoculars, they expected to see the dying monster in every
+detail. But when they looked toward the pool it was not in sight!
+
+"Were we seeing things?" exclaimed Wichter, rubbing his glasses. "I'd
+have sworn it was lying there!"
+
+"It was," said Joyce grimly. "Look at the pool. That'll tell you where
+it went."
+
+The black, secretive surface was bubbling and waving as though, down
+in its depths, a terrific fight were taking place.
+
+"Something came up and dragged our ten-legged lizard down to its den.
+Then that something's brothers got onto the fact that a feast was
+being held, and rushed in. That pool would be no place for a
+before-breakfast dip!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wichter started to say something in reply, then gazed, hypnotized, at
+the opposite wall of the jungle.
+
+From the dense screen of lavender foliage stretched a glistening,
+scale-armored neck, as thick as a man's body at its thinnest point,
+which was just behind a tremendous-jawed crocodilian head. It tapered
+back for a distance of at least thirty feet, to merge into a body as
+big as that of a terrestial whale, that was supported by four squat,
+ponderous legs.
+
+Moving with surprising rapidity, the enormous thing slid into the mud
+and began ploughing a way, belly deep, toward the pool. Shapeless,
+slow-writhing forms were cast up in its wake, to quiver for a moment
+in the sunlight and then melt below the mud again.
+
+One of the bloated, formless mud-crawlers was snapped up in the huge
+jaws with an abrupt plunge of the long neck, and the monster began to
+feed, hog-like, slobbering over the loathsome carcass.
+
+Wichter shook his head, half in fanatical eagerness, half in despair.
+"I'd like to stay and see more," he said with a sigh, "but if that's
+the kind of creatures we're apt to encounter in the Zeudian jungle,
+we'd better be going at once--"
+
+"Sh-h!" snapped Joyce. Then, in a barely audible whisper: "I think the
+thing heard your voice!"
+
+The monster had abruptly ceased its feeding. Its head, thrust high in
+the air, was waving inquisitively from side to side. Suddenly it
+expelled the air from its vast lungs in a roaring cough--and started
+directly for their tree.
+
+"Shoot!" cried Wichter, raising his gun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Moving with the speed of an express train, the monster had almost got
+to their overhanging branch before they could pull the triggers. Both
+shells imbedded themselves in the enormous chest, just as the long
+neck reached up for them. And at once things began to happen with
+cataclysmic rapidity.
+
+Almost with their impact the shells exploded. The monster stopped,
+with a great hole torn in its body. Then, dying on its feet, it thrust
+its great head up and its huge jaws crunched over the branch to which
+its two puny destroyers were clinging.
+
+With all its dozens of tons of weight, it jerked in a gargantuan death
+agony. The tree, enormous as it was, shook with it, and the branch
+itself was tossed as though in a hurricane.
+
+There was a splintering sound. Wichter and Joyce dropped their guns to
+cling more tightly to the bole of the drooping branch that was their
+only security. The guns glanced off the mountainous body--and, with a
+last convulsion of the mighty legs, were swept underneath!
+
+The monster was still at last, its insensate jaws yet gripping the
+bough. The two men looked at each other in speechless consternation.
+The shell a mile off through the dreadful jungle.... Themselves,
+helpless without their guns....
+
+"Well," said Joyce at last. "I guess we'd better be on our way.
+Waiting here, thinking it over, won't help any. Lucky there's no
+night, for a couple of weeks at least, to come stealing down on us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He started down the great trunk, with Wichter following close behind.
+Walking as rapidly as they could, they hurried back along the tunneled
+trail toward their shell.
+
+They hadn't covered a hundred yards when they heard a mighty crashing
+of underbrush behind them. Glancing back, they saw tooth-studded jaws
+gaping cavernously at the end of a thirty-foot neck--little,
+dead-looking eyes glaring at them--a hundred-foot body smashing its
+way over the trap-bushes and through tangles of vines and
+down-drooping branches.
+
+"The mate to the thing we killed back there!" Joyce panted. "Run, for
+God's sake!"
+
+Wichter needed no urging. He hadn't an ounce of fear in his spare,
+small body. But he had an overwhelming desire to get back to Earth and
+deliver his message. He was trembling as he raced after Joyce, thirty
+feet to a bound, ducking his head to avoid hitting the thick lavender
+foliage that roofed the trail.
+
+"One of us must get through!" he panted over and over. "One of us must
+make it!"
+
+It was speedily apparent that they could never outrun their pursuer.
+The reaching jaws were only a few yards behind them now.
+
+"You go," called Joyce, sobbing for breath. He slowed his pace
+deliberately.
+
+"No--you--" Wichter slowed too. In a frenzy, Joyce shoved him along
+the trail.
+
+"I tell you--"
+
+He got no further. In front of them, where there had appeared to be
+solid ground, they suddenly saw a yawning pit. Desperately, they tried
+to veer aside, but they were too close. Their last long birdlike leap
+carried them over the edge. They fell, far down, into a deep chasm,
+splashing into a shallow pool of water.
+
+A few clods of earth cascaded after them as the monster above dug its
+great splay feet into the ground and checked its rush in time to keep
+from falling after them. Then the top of the pit slowly darkened as a
+covering of some sort slid across it. They were in a prison as
+profoundly quiet and utterly black as a tomb.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dorn," shouted Joyce. "Are you all right?"
+
+"Yes," came a voice in the near darkness. "And you?"
+
+"I'm still in one piece as far as I can feel." There was a splashing
+noise. He waded toward it and in a moment his outstretched hand
+touched the professor's shoulder.
+
+"This is a fine mess," he observed shakily. "We got away from those
+tooth-lined jaws, all right, but I'm wondering if we're much better
+off than we would have been if we hadn't escaped."
+
+"I'm wondering the same thing." Wichter's voice was strained. "Did you
+see the way the top of the pit closed above us? That means we're in a
+trap. And a most ingenious trap it is, too! The roof of it is
+camouflaged until it looks exactly like the rest of the trail floor.
+The water in here is just shallow enough to let large animals break
+their necks when they fall in and just deep enough to preserve small
+animals--like ourselves--alive. We're in the hands of some sort of
+reasoning, intelligent beings, Joyce!"
+
+"In that case," said Joyce with a shudder, "we'd better do our best to
+get out of here!"
+
+But this was found to be impossible. They couldn't climb up out of the
+pit, and nowhere could they feel any openings in the walls. Only
+smooth, impenetrable stone met their questing fingers.
+
+"It looks as though we're in to stay," said Joyce finally. "At least
+until our Zeudian hosts, whatever kind of creatures they may be, come
+and take us out. What'll we do then? Sail in and die fighting? Or go
+peaceably along with them--assuming we aren't killed at once--on the
+chance that we can make a break later?"
+
+"I'd advise the latter," answered Wichter. "There is a small animal on
+our own planet whose example might be a good one for us to follow.
+That's the 'possum." He stopped abruptly, and gripped Joyce's arm.
+
+From the opposite side of the pit came a grating sound. A crack of
+greenish light appeared, low down near the water. This widened jerkily
+as though a door were being hoisted by some sort of pulley
+arrangement. The walls of the pit began to glow faintly with
+reflected light.
+
+"Down," breathed Wichter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Noiselessly they let themselves sink into the water until they were
+floating, eyes closed and motionless, on the surface. Playing dead to
+the best of their ability, they waited for what might happen next.
+
+They heard a splashing near the open rock door. The splashing neared them,
+and high-pitched hissing syllables came to their ears--variegated sounds
+that resembled excited conversation in some unknown language.
+
+Joyce felt himself touched by something, and it was all he could do to
+keep from shouting aloud and springing to his feet at the contact.
+
+He'd had no idea, of course, what might be the nature of their
+captors, but he had imagined them as man-like, to some extent at
+least. And the touch of his hand, or flipper, or whatever it was,
+indicated that they were not!
+
+They were cold-blooded, reptilian things, for the flesh that had
+touched him was cold; as clammy and repulsive as the belly of a dead
+fish. So repulsive was that flesh that, when he presently felt himself
+lifted high up and roughly carried, he shuddered in spite of himself
+at the contact.
+
+Instantly the thing that bore him stopped. Joyce held his breath. He
+felt an excruciating, stabbing pain in his arm, after which the
+journey through the water was resumed. Stubbornly he kept up his
+pretence of lifelessness.
+
+The splashing ceased, and he heard flat wet feet slapping along on dry
+rock, indicating that they had emerged from the pit. Then he sank into
+real unconsciousness.
+
+The next thing he knew was that he was lying on smooth, bare rock in a
+perfect bedlam of noises. Howls and grunts, snuffling coughs and
+snarls beat at his ear-drums. It was as though he had fallen into a
+vast cage in which were hundreds of savage, excited animals--animals,
+however, that in spite of their excitement and ferocity were
+surprisingly motionless, for he heard no scraping of claws, or padding
+of feet.
+
+Cautiously he opened his eyes....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was in a large cave, the walls of which were glowing with greenish,
+phosphorescent light. Strewn about the floor were seemingly dead
+carcasses of animals. And what carcasses there were! Blubber-coated
+things that looked like giant tadpoles, gazelle-like creatures with a
+single, long slim horn growing from delicate small skulls, four-legged
+beasts and six-legged ones, animals with furry hides and crawlers with
+scaled coverings--several hundred assorted specimens of the smaller
+life of Zeud lay stretched out in seeming lifelessness.
+
+But they were not dead, these bizarre beasts of another world. They
+lived, and were animated with the frenzied fear of trapped things.
+Joyce could see the tortured heaving of their furred and scaled sides
+as they panted with terror. And from their throats issued the
+outlandish noises he had heard. They were alive enough--only they
+seemed unable to move!
+
+There was nothing in his range of vision that might conceivably be the
+beings that had captured them, so Joyce started to lift his head and
+look around at the rest of the cavern. He found that he could not
+move. He tried again, and his body was as unresponsive as a log. In
+fact, he couldn't feel his body at all! In growing terror, he
+concentrated all his will on moving his arm. It was as limp as a rag.
+
+He relaxed, momentarily in the grip of stark, blind panic. He was as
+helpless as the howling things around him! He was numbed, completely
+paralyzed into immobility!
+
+The professor's voice--a weak, uncertain voice--sounded from behind
+him. "Joyce! Joyce!"
+
+He found that he could talk, that the paralysis that gripped the rest
+of his muscles had not extended to the vocal cords. "Dorn! Thank God
+you're alive! I couldn't see you, and I thought--"
+
+"I'm alive, but that's about all," said Wichter. "I--I can't move."
+
+"Neither can I. We've been drugged in some manner--just as all the
+other animals in here have been drugged. I must have got my dose in
+the pit. I was cut, or stabbed, in the arm."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joyce stopped talking as he suddenly heard steps, like human footsteps
+yet weirdly different--flap-flapping sounds as though awkward flippers
+were slapping along the rock floor toward them. The steps stopped
+within a few feet of them; then, after what seemed hours, they sounded
+again, this time in front of him.
+
+He opened his eyes, cautiously, barely moving his eyelids, and saw at
+last, in every hideous detail, one of the super-beasts that had
+captured Wichter and himself.
+
+It was a horrible cartoon of a man, the thing that stood there in the
+greenish glow of the cave. Nine or ten feet high, it loomed; hairless,
+with a faintly iridescent, purplish hide. A thick, cylindrical trunk
+sloped into a neck only a little smaller than the body itself. Set on
+this was a bony, ugly head that was split clear across by lipless
+jaws. There was no nose, only slanted holes like the nostrils of an
+animal; and over these were set pale, expressionless, pupil-less eyes.
+The arms were short and thick and ended in bifurcated lumps of flesh
+like swollen hands encased in old-fashioned mittens. The legs were
+also grotesquely short, and the feet mere shapeless flaps.
+
+It was standing near one of the smaller animals, apparently regarding
+it closely. Observing it himself, Joyce saw that it was moving a
+little. As though coming out of a coma, it was raising its bizarre
+head and trying to get on its feet.
+
+Leisurely the two-legged monster bent over it. Two long fangs gleamed
+in the lipless mouth. These were buried in the neck of the reviving
+beast--and instantly it sank back into immobility.
+
+Having reduced it to helplessness--the monster ate it! The lipless
+jaws gaped widely. The shapeless hands forced in the head of the
+animal. The throat muscles expanded hugely: and in less than a minute
+it had swallowed its living prey as a boa-constrictor swallows a
+monkey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joyce closed his eyes, feeling weak and nauseated. He didn't open them
+again till long after he had heard the last of the awkward, flapping
+footsteps.
+
+"Could you see it?" asked Wichter, who was lying so closely behind him
+that he couldn't observe the monstrous Zeudian. "What did it do? What
+was it like?"
+
+Joyce told him of the way the creature had fed. "We are evidently in
+their provision room," he concluded. "They keep some of their food
+alive, it seems.... Well, it's a quick death."
+
+"Tell me more about the way the other animal moved, just before it was
+eaten."
+
+"There isn't much to tell," said Joyce wearily. "It didn't move long
+after those fangs were sunk into it."
+
+"But don't you see!" There was sudden hope in Wichter's voice. "That
+means that the effect of the poison, which is apparently injected by
+those fangs, wears off after a time. And in that case--"
+
+"In that case," Joyce interjected, "we'd have only an unknown army of
+ten-foot Zeudians, the problem of finding a way to the surface of the
+ground again, and the lack of any kind of weapons, to keep us from
+escaping!"
+
+"We're not quite weaponless, though," the professor whispered back.
+"Over in a corner there's a pile of the long, slender horns that
+sprout from the heads of some of these creatures. Evidently the
+Zeudians cut them out, or break them off before eating that
+particular type of animal. They'd be as good as lances, if we could
+get hold of them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joyce said nothing, but hope began to beat in his own breast. He had
+noticed a significant happening during the age-long hours in the
+commissary cave. Most of the Zeudians had entered from the direction
+of the pit. But one had come in through an opening in the opposite
+side. And this one had blinked pale eyes as though dazzled from bright
+sunlight--and was bearing some large, woody looking tubers that seemed
+to have been freshly uprooted! There was a good chance, thought Joyce,
+that that opening led to a tunnel up to the world above!
+
+He drew a deep breath--and felt a dim pain in his back, caused by the
+cramping position in which he had lain for so long.
+
+He could have shouted aloud with the thrill of that discovery. This
+was the first time he had felt his body at all! Did it mean that the
+effect of the poison was wearing off--that it wasn't as lastingly
+paralyzing to his earthly nerve centers as to those of Zeudian
+creatures around them? He flexed the muscles of his leg. The leg moved
+a fraction of an inch.
+
+"Dorn!" he called softly, "I can move a little! Can you?"
+
+"Yes," Wichter answered, "I've been able to wriggle my fingers for
+several minutes. I think I could walk in an hour or two."
+
+"Then pray for that hour or two. It might mean our escape!" Joyce told
+him of the seldom used entrance that he thought led to the open air.
+"I'm sure it goes to the surface, Dorn. Those woody looking tubers had
+been freshly picked."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three of the two-legged monsters came in just then. They relapsed into
+lifeless silence. There was a horrible moment as the three paused over
+them longer than any of the others had. Was it obvious that the
+effects of the numbing poison was wearing off? Would they be bitten
+again--or eaten?
+
+The Zeudians finally moved on, hissing and clicking to each other.
+Eventually the cold-blooded things fed, and dragged lethargically out
+of the cave in the direction of the pit.
+
+With every passing minute Joyce could feel life pouring back into his
+numbed body. His cramped muscles were in agony now--a pain that gave
+him fierce pleasure. At last, risking observation, he lifted his head
+and then struggled to a sitting position and looked around.
+
+No Zeudian was in sight. Evidently they were too sure of their poison
+glands to post a guard over them. He listened intently, and could hear
+no dragging footsteps. He turned to Wichter, who had followed his
+example and was sitting up, feebly rubbing his body to restore
+circulation.
+
+"Now's our chance," he whispered. "Stand up and walk a little to
+steady your legs, while I go over and get us a couple of those sharp
+horns. Then we'll see where that entrance of mine goes!"
+
+He walked to the pile of bones and horns in the corner and selected
+two of the longest and slimmest of the ivory-like things. Just as he
+had rejoined Wichter he heard the sound with which he was now so
+grimly familiar--flapping, awkward footsteps. Wildly he signaled the
+professor. They dropped in their tracks, just as the approaching
+monster stumped into the cave.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For an instant he dared hope that their movement had gone unobserved,
+but his hope was rudely shattered. He heard a sharp hiss: heard the
+Zeudian flap toward them at double-quick time. Abandoning all
+pretense, he sprang to his feet just as the thing reached him, its
+fangs gleaming wickedly in the greenish light.
+
+He leaped to the side, going twenty feet or more with the press of his
+Earth muscles against the reduced gravity. The creature rushed on
+toward the professor. That game little man crouched and awaited its
+onslaught. But Joyce had sprung back again before the two could clash.
+
+He raised the long horn and plunged it into the smooth, purplish back.
+Again and again he drove it home, as the monster writhed under him. It
+had enormous vitality. Gashed and dripping, it yet struggled on,
+attempting to encircle Joyce with its stubby arms. Once it succeeded,
+and he felt his ribs crack as it contracted its powerful body. But a
+final stroke finished the savage fight. He got up and, with an
+incoherent cry to Wichter, raced toward the opening on which they
+pinned their hopes of reaching the upper air.
+
+Hissing cries and the thudding of many feet came to them just as they
+reached the arched mouth of the passage. But the cries, and the
+constant pandemonium of the paralysed animals died behind them as they
+bounded along the tunnel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They emerged at last into the sunlight they had never expected to see
+again, beside one of the great lavender trees. They paused an instant
+to try to get their bearings.
+
+"This way," panted Joyce as he saw, on a hard-packed path ahead of
+them, one of the trail-marks he had blazed.
+
+Down the trail they raced, toward their space shell. Fortunately they
+met none of the tremendous animals that infested the jungles; and
+their journey to the clearing in which the shell was lying was
+accomplished without accident.
+
+"We're safe now," gasped Wichter, as they came in sight of the bare
+lava patch. "We can outrun them five feet to their one!"
+
+They burst into the clearing--and halted abruptly. Surrounding the
+shell, stumping curiously about it and touching it with their
+shapeless hands, were dozens of the Zeudians.
+
+"My God!" groaned Joyce. "There must be at least a hundred of them!
+We're lost for certain now!"
+
+They stared with hopeless longing at the vehicle that, if only they
+could reach it, could carry them back to Earth. Then they turned to
+each other and clasped hands, without a word. The same thought was in
+the mind of each--to rush at the swarming monsters and fight till they
+were killed. There was absolutely no chance of winning through to the
+shell, but it was infinitely better to die fighting than be swallowed
+alive.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So engrossed were the Zeudians by the strange thing that had fallen
+into their province, that Joyce and Wichter got within a hundred feet
+of them before they turned their pale eyes in their direction. Then,
+baring their fangs, they streamed toward the Earth men, just as the
+pursuing Zeudians entered the clearing from the jungle trail.
+
+The two prepared to die as effectively as possible. Each grasped his
+lace-like horn tightly. The professor mechanically adjusted his
+glasses more firmly on his nose....
+
+With his move, the narrowing circle of Zeudians halted. A violent
+clamor broke out among them. They glared at the two, but made no
+further step toward them.
+
+"What in the world--" began Wichter bewilderedly.
+
+"Your glasses!" Joyce shouted, gripping his shoulder. "When you moved
+them, they all stopped! They must be afraid of them, somehow. Take
+them clear off and see what happens."
+
+Wichter removed his spectacles, and swung them in his hand, peering
+near-sightedly at the crowding Zeudians.
+
+Their reaction to his simple move was remarkable! Hisses of
+consternation came from their lipless mouths. They faced each other
+uneasily, waving their stubby arms and covering their own eyes as
+though suddenly afraid they would lose them.
+
+Taking advantage of their indecision, Joyce and Wichter walked boldly
+toward them. They moved aside, forming a reluctant lane. Some of the
+Zeudians in the rear shoved to close in on them, but the ones in front
+held them back. It wasn't until the two were nearly through that the
+lane began to straggle into a threatening circle around them again.
+The Zeudians were evidently becoming reassured by the fact that
+Wichter continued to see all right in spite of the little strange
+creature's alarming act of removing his eyes.
+
+"Do it again," breathed Joyce, perspiration beading his forehead as
+the giants moved closed, their fangs tentatively bared for the numbing
+poison stroke.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wichter popped his glasses on, then jerked them off with a cry, as
+though he were suffering intensely. Once more the Zeudians faltered
+and drew back, feeling at their own eyes.
+
+"Run!" cried Joyce. And they raced for the haven of the shell.
+
+The Zeudians swarmed after them, snarling and hissing. Barely ahead of
+the nearest, Joyce and Wichter dove into the open panel. They slammed
+it closed just as a powerful, stubby arm reached after them. There was
+a screaming hiss, and a cold, cartilagenous lump of flesh dropped to
+the floor of the shell--half the monster's hand, sheared off between
+the sharp edge of the door and the metal hull.
+
+Joyce threw in the generator switch. With a soft roar the water-motor
+exploded into action, sending the shell far into the sky.
+
+"When we return," said Joyce, adding a final thousand miles an hour to
+their speed before they should fly free of the atmosphere of Zeud, "I
+think we'd better come at the head of an army, equipped with air-guns
+and explosive bombs."
+
+"And with glasses," added the professor, taking off his spectacles and
+gazing at them as though seeing them for the first time.
+
+
+
+
+Four Miles Within
+
+A COMPLETE NOVELETTE
+
+_By Anthony Gilmore_
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_The Monster of Metal_
+
+[Illustration: The man hurled the empty gun at the monster.]
+
+[Sidenote: Far down into the earth goes a gleaming metal sphere whose
+passengers are deadly enemies.]
+
+
+A strange spherical monster stood in the moonlight on the silent
+Mojave Desert. In the ghostly gray of the sand and sage and joshua
+trees its metal hide glimmered dully--an amazing object to be found on
+that lonely spot. But there was only pride and anticipation in the
+eyes of the three people who stood a little way off, looking at it.
+For they had constructed the strange sphere, and were soon going to
+entrust their lives to it.
+
+"Professor," said one of them, a young man with a cheerful face and a
+likable grin, "let's go down now! There's no use waiting till
+to-morrow. It's always dark down there, whether it's day or night up
+here. Everything is ready."
+
+The white-haired Professor David Guinness smiled tolerantly at the
+speaker, his partner, Phil Holmes. "I'm kind of eager to be off,
+myself," he admitted. He turned to the third person in the little
+group, a dark-haired girl. "What do you say, Sue?"
+
+"Oh, let's, Father!" came the quick reply. "We'd never be able to
+sleep to-night, anyway. As Phil says, everything is ready."
+
+"Well, I guess that settles it," Professor Guinness said to the eager
+young man.
+
+Phil Holmes' face went aglow with anticipation. "Good!" he cried.
+"Good! I'll skip over and get some water. It's barely possible that
+it'll be hot down there, in spite of your eloquent logic to the
+contrary!" And with the words he caught up a large jug standing
+nearby, waved his hand, said: "I'll be right back!" and set out for
+the water-hole, situated nearly a mile away from their little camp.
+The heavy hush of the desert night settled down once more after he
+left.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As his figure merged with the shadows in the distance, the elderly
+scientist murmured aloud to his daughter:
+
+"You know, it's good to realize that my dream is about to become a
+reality. If it hadn't been for Phil.... Or no--I really ought to thank
+you, Sue. You're the one responsible for his participation!" And he
+smiled fondly at the slender girl by his side.
+
+"Phil joined us just for the scientific interest, and for the thrill
+of going four miles down into the earth," she retorted at once, in
+spite of the blush her father saw on her face. But he did not insist.
+Once more he turned, as to a magnet, to the machine that was his
+handiwork.
+
+The fifteen-foot sphere was an earth-borer--Guinness's own invention.
+In it he had utilized for the first time for boring purposes the newly
+developed atomic disintegrators. Many holes equally spaced over the
+sphere were the outlets for the dissolving ray--most of them on the
+bottom and alternating with them on the bottom and sides were the
+outlets of powerful rocket propulsion tubes, which would enable it to
+rise easily from the hole it would presently blast into the earth. A
+small, tight-fitting door gave entrance to the double-walled interior,
+where, in spite of the space taken up by batteries and mechanisms and
+an enclosed gyroscope for keeping the borer on an even keel, there was
+room for several people.
+
+The earth-borer had been designed not so much for scientific
+investigation as the specific purpose of reaching a rich store of
+radium ore buried four miles below the Guinness desert camp. Many
+geologists and mining engineers knew that the radium was there, for
+their instruments had proven it often; but no one up to then knew how
+to get to it. David Guinness did--first. The borer had been
+constructed in his laboratory in San Francisco, then dismantled and
+freighted to the little desert town of Palmdale, from whence Holmes
+had brought the parts to their isolated camp by truck. Strict secrecy
+had been kept. Rather than risk assistants they had done all the work
+themselves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Fifteen minutes passed by, while the slight figure of the inventor
+puttered about the interior of the sphere, brightly lit by a
+detachable searchlight, inspecting all mechanisms in preparation for
+their descent. Sue stood by the door watching him, now and then
+turning to scan the desert for the returning Phil.
+
+It was then, startlingly sudden, that there cracked through the velvet
+night the faint, distant sound of a gun. And it came from the
+direction of the water-hole.
+
+Sue's face went white, and she trembled. Without a word her father
+stepped out of the borer and looked at her.
+
+"That was a gun!" he said. "Phil didn't have one with him, did he?"
+
+"No," Sue whispered. "And--why, there's nobody within miles of here!"
+
+The two looked at each other with alarm and wonder. Then, from one of
+the broken patches of scrub that ringed the space in which the borer
+stood, came a mocking voice.
+
+"Ah, you're mistaken, Sue," it affirmed. "But that was a gun."
+
+David Guinness jerked around, as did his daughter. The man who had
+spoken stood only ten yards away, clearly outlined in the bright
+moonlight--a tall, well-built man, standing quite at ease, surveying
+them pleasantly. His smile did not change when old Guinness cried:
+
+"Quade! James Quade!"
+
+The man nodded and came slowly forward. He might have been considered
+handsome, had it not been for his thin, mocking lips and a swarthy
+complexion.
+
+"What are you doing here?" demanded Guinness angrily. "And what do you
+mean--'it was a gun?' Have you--"
+
+"Easy, easy--one thing at a time," said Quade, still smiling. "About
+the gun--well, your young friend Holmes said, he'd be right back, but
+I--I'm afraid he won't be."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sue Guinness's lips formed a frightened word:
+
+"Why?"
+
+Quade made a short movement with his left hand, as is brushing the
+query aside. "Let's talk about something more pleasant," he said, and
+looked back at the professor. "The radium, and your borer, for
+instance. I hear you're all ready to go down."
+
+David Guinness gasped. "How did you know--?" he began, but a surge of
+anger choked him, and his fists clenched. He stepped forward. But
+something came to life in James Quade's right hand and pointed
+menacingly at him. It was the stubby black shape of an automatic.
+
+"Keep back, you old fool!" Quade said harshly. "I don't want to have
+to shoot you!"
+
+Unwillingly, Guinness came to a stop. "What have you done with young
+Holmes?" he demanded.
+
+"Never mind about him now," said Quade, smiling again. "Perhaps I'll
+explain later. At the moment there's something much more interesting
+to do. Possibly you'll be surprised to hear it, but we're all going to
+take a little ride in this machine of yours, Professor. Down. About
+four miles. I'll have to ask you to do the driving. You will, won't
+you--without making a fuss?"
+
+Guinness's face worked furiously. "Why, you're crazy, Quade!" he
+sputtered. "I certainly won't!"
+
+"No?" asked Quade softly. The automatic he held veered around, till it
+was pointing directly at the girl. "I wouldn't want to have to shoot
+Sue--say--through the hand...." His finger tightened perceptibly on
+the trigger.
+
+"You're mad, man!" Guinness burst out. "You're crazy! What's the
+idea--"
+
+"In due time I'll tell you. But now I'll ask you just once more,"
+Quade persisted. "Will you enter that borer, or must I--" He broke off
+with an expressive shrug.
+
+David Guinness was powerless. He had not the slightest idea what Quade
+might be about; the one thought that broke through his fear and anger
+was that the man was mad, and had better be humored. He trembled, and
+a tight sensation came to his throat at sight of the steady gun
+trained on his daughter. He dared not trifle.
+
+"I'll do it," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+James Quade laughed. "That's better. You always were essentially
+reasonable, though somewhat impulsive for a man of your age. The rash
+way you severed our partnership, for instance.... But enough of that.
+I think we'd better leave immediately. Into the sphere, please. You
+first, Miss Guinness."
+
+"Must she come?"
+
+"I'm afraid so. I can't very well leave her here all unprotected, can
+I?"
+
+Quade's voice was soft and suave, but an undercurrent of sarcasm ran
+through it. Guinness winced under it; his whole body was trembling
+with suppressed rage and indignation. As he stepped to the door of the
+earth-borer he turned and asked:
+
+"How did you know our plans? About the radium?--the borer?"
+
+Quade told him. "Have you forgotten," he said, "that you talked the
+matter over with me before we split last year? I simply had the
+laboratory watched, and when you got new financial backing from young
+Holmes, and came here. I followed you. Simple, eh?... Well, enough of
+this. Get inside. You first, Sue."
+
+Trembling, the girl obeyed, and when her father hesitated Quade jammed
+his gun viciously into his ribs and pushed him to the door. "Inside!"
+he hissed, and reluctantly, hatred in his eyes, the professor stepped
+into the control compartment after Sue. Quade gave a last quick glance
+around and, with gun ever wary, passed inside. The door slammed shut:
+there was a click as its lock shot over. The sphere was a sealed ball
+of metal.
+
+Inside, David Guinness obeyed the automatic's imperious gesture and
+pulled a shiny-handled lever slowly back, and the hush that rested
+over the Mojave was shattered by a tremendous bellow, a roar that
+shook the very earth. It was the disintegrating blast, hurled out of
+the bottom in many fan-shaped rays. The coarse gray sand beneath the
+machine stirred and flew wildly; the sphere vibrated madly; and then
+the thunder lowered in tone to a mighty humming and the earth-borer
+began to drop. Slowly it fell, at first, then more rapidly. The shiny
+top came level with the ground: disappeared; and in a moment there was
+nothing left but a gaping hole where a short while before a round
+monster of metal had stood. The hole was hot and dark, and from it
+came a steadily diminishing thunder....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a long time no one in the earth-borer spoke--didn't even try
+to--for though the thunder of the disintegrators was muted, inside, to
+a steady drone, conversation was almost impossible. The three were
+crowded quite close in the spherical inner control compartment. Sue
+sat on a little collapsible stool by the bowed, but by no means
+subdued, figure of Professor David Guinness, while Quade sat on the
+wire guard of the gyroscope, which was in the exact center of the
+floor.
+
+The depth gauge showed two hundred feet. Already the three people were
+numb from the vibration; they hardly felt any sensation at all, save
+one of great weight pressing inwards. The compartment was fairly cool
+and the air good--kept so by the automatic air rectifiers and the
+insulation, which shut out the heat born of their passage.
+
+Quade had been carefully watching Guinness's manipulation of the
+controls, when he was struck by a thought. At once he stood up, and
+shouted in the elderly inventor's ear: "Try the rockets! I want to be
+sure this thing will go back up!"
+
+Without a word Guinness shoved back the lever controlling the
+disintegrators, at the same time whirling a small wheel full over. The
+thudding drone died away to a whisper, and was replaced by sharper
+thundering, as the stream of the propulsion rockets beneath the sphere
+was released. A delicate needle trembled on a gauge, danced at the
+figure two hundred, then crept back to one-ninety ... one-sixty ...
+one-forty.... Quade's eyes took in everything.
+
+"Excellent, Guinness!" he yelled. "Now--down once more!"
+
+The rockets were slowly cut; the borer jarred at the bottom of its
+hole; again the disintegrators droned out. The sphere dug rapidly into
+the warm ground, biting lower and lower. At ten miles an hour it
+blasted a path to depths hitherto unattainable to man, sweeping away
+rock and gravel and sand--everything that stood in its way. The depth
+gauge rose to two thousand, then steadily to three and four. So it
+went on for nearly half an hour.
+
+At the end of that time, at a depth of nearly four miles, Quade got
+stiffly to his feet and once more shouted into the professor's ear.
+
+"We ought to be close to that radium, now," he said. "I think--"
+
+But his words stopped short. The floor of the sphere suddenly fell
+away from their feet, and they felt themselves tumbled into a wild
+plunge. The drone of the disintegrators, hitherto muffled by the earth
+they bit into, rose to a hollow scream. Before the professor quite
+knew what was happening, there was a stunning crash, a shriek of
+tortured metal--and the earth-borer rocked and lay still....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The whole world seemed to be filled with thunder when David Guinness
+came back to consciousness. He opened his eyes and stared up into a
+darkness to which it took him some time to accustom himself. When he
+did, he made out hazily that he was lying on the floor of a vast dark
+cavern. He could dimly see its jagged roof, perhaps fifty feet above.
+There was the strong smell of damp earth in his nostrils; his head was
+splitting from the steady drone in his ear-drums. Suddenly he
+remembered what had happened. He groaned slightly and tried to sit up.
+
+But he could not. His arms and legs were tied. Someone had removed him
+from the earth-borer and bound him on the floor of the cavern they had
+plunged into.
+
+David Guinness strained at the rope. It was futile, but in doing so he
+twisted his head around and saw another form, similarly tied, lying
+close to him. He gave a little cry of relief. It was Sue. And she was
+conscious, her eyes on his face.
+
+She spoke to him, but he could not understand her for the drone in his
+ears, and when he spoke to her it was the same. But the professor did
+not just then continue his effort to converse with her. His attention
+was drawn to the borer, now dimly illuminated by its portable light,
+which had been secured to the door. It was right side up, and appeared
+to be undamaged. The broad ray of the searchlight fell far away on one
+of the cavern's rough walls. He could just make out James Quade
+standing there, his back towards them.
+
+He was hacking at the wall with a pick. Presently he dropped the tool
+and wrenched at the rock with bare hands. A large chunk came loose. He
+hugged it to him and turned and strode back towards the two on the
+floor, and as he drew near they could plainly see a gleam of triumph
+in his eyes.
+
+"You know what this is?" he shouted. Guinness could only faintly hear
+him. "Wealth! Millions! Of course we always knew the radium was here,
+but this is the proof. And now we've a way of getting it out--thanks
+to your borer! All the credit is yours, Professor Guinness! You shall
+have the credit, and I'll have the money."
+
+Guinness tugged furiously at his bonds again. "You--you--" he gasped.
+"How dare you tie us this way! Release us at once! What do you mean by
+it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Quade smiled unpleasantly. "You're very stupid, Guinness. Haven't you
+guessed by now what I'm going to do?" He paused, as if waiting for an
+answer, and the smile on his face gave way to a look of savage menace.
+For the first time his bitter feelings came to the surface.
+
+"Have you forgotten how close I came to going to jail over those
+charges of yours a year ago?" he said. "Have you forgotten the
+disgrace to me that followed?--the stigma that forced me to disappear
+for months? You fool, do you think I've forgotten?--or that I'd let
+you--"
+
+"Quade," interrupted the older man, "you know very well you were
+guilty. I caught you red-handed. You didn't fool anyone--except the
+jury that let you go. So save your breath, and, if you've the sense
+you were born with, release my daughter and me. Why, you're crazy!" he
+cried with mounting anger. "You can't get away with this! I'll have
+you in jail within forty-eight hours, once I get back to the surface!"
+
+With an effort Quade controlled his feelings and assumed his oily,
+sarcastic manner. "That's just it," he said: "'once you get back!' How
+stupid you are! You don't seem to realize that you're not going back
+to the surface. You and your daughter."
+
+Sue gasped, and her father's eyes went wide. There was a tense
+silence.
+
+"You wouldn't dare!" the inventor cried finally. "You wouldn't dare!"
+
+"It's rather large, this cavern," Quade went on. "You'll have plenty
+of room. Perhaps I'll untie you before I go back up, so--"
+
+"You can't get away with it!" shouted the old man, tremendously
+excited. "Why, you can't, possibly! Philip Holmes'll track you
+down--he'll tell the police--he'll rescue us! And then--"
+
+Quade smiled suavely. "Oh, no, he won't. Perhaps you remember the shot
+that sounded from the water-hole? Well, when I and my assistant, Juan,
+heard Holmes say he was going for water, I told Juan to follow him to
+the water-hole and bind him, to keep him from interfering till I got
+back up. But Mr. Holmes is evidently of an impulsive disposition, and
+must have caused trouble. Juan, too, is impulsive; he is a Mexican.
+And he had a gun. I'm afraid he was forced to use it.... I am quite
+sure Philip Holmes will not, as you say, track me down."
+
+David Guinness looked at his daughter's white face and horror-filled
+eyes and suddenly crumpled. Humbly, passionately, he begged Quade to
+take her back up. "Why, she's never done anything to you, Quade!" he
+pleaded. "You can't take her life like that! Please! Leave me, if you
+must, but not her! You can't--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But suddenly the old man noticed that Quade was not listening. His
+head was tilted to one side as if he was straining to hear something
+else. Guinness was held silent for a moment by the puzzled look on the
+other's face and the strange way he was acting.
+
+"Do you hear it?" Quade asked at last; and without waiting for an
+answer, he knelt down and put his ear to the ground. When he rose his
+face was savage, and he cursed under his breath.
+
+"Why, it's a humming!" muttered Professor Guinness. "And it's getting
+louder!"
+
+"It sounds like another borer!" ventured Sue.
+
+The humming grew in volume. Then, from the ceiling, a rock dropped.
+They were looking at the cavern roof and saw it start, but they did
+not hear it strike, for the ever-growing humming echoed loudly through
+the cavern. They saw another rock fall; and another.
+
+"For God's sake, what is it?" cried Guinness.
+
+Quade looked at him and slowly drew out his automatic.
+
+"Another earth-borer, I think," he answered. "And I rather expect it
+contains your young friend Mr. Holmes. Yes--coming to rescue you."
+
+For a moment Guinness and his daughter were too astounded to do
+anything but gape. She finally exclaimed:
+
+"But--but then Phil's alive?"
+
+James Quade smiled. "Probably--for the moment. But don't let your
+hopes rise too high. The borer he's in isn't strong enough to survive
+a fifty-foot plunge." He was shouting now, so loud was the thunder
+from above. "And," he added, "I'm afraid he's not strong enough to
+survive it, either!"
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_The Man-Hunt_
+
+When Phil Holmes started off to the water-hole, his head was full of
+the earth-borer and the imminent descent. Now that the long-awaited
+time had come, he was at fever-pitch to be off, and it did not take
+him long to cover the mile of sandy waste. His thoughts were far
+inside the earth as he dipped the jug into the clear cool water and
+sloshed it full.
+
+So the rope that snaked softly through the air and dropped in a loop
+over his shoulders came as a stark surprise. Before he knew what was
+happening it had slithered down over his arms and drawn taut just
+above the elbows, and he was yanked powerfully backwards and almost
+fell.
+
+But he managed to keep his feet as he staggered backward, and turning
+his head he saw the small dark figure of his aggressor some fifteen
+feet away, keeping tight the slack.
+
+Phil's surprise turned to sudden fury and he completely lost his head.
+What he did was rash; mad; and yet, as it turned out, it was the only
+thing that could have saved him. Instinctively, without hesitating
+one second, and absolutely ignoring an excited command to stand still,
+he squirmed face-on to his aggressor, lowered his head and charged.
+
+The distance was short. Halfway across it, a gun barked, and he heard
+the bullet crack into the water jug, which he was still holding in
+front of himself. And even before the splintered fragments reached the
+ground he had crashed into the firer.
+
+He hit him with all the force of a tackling lineman, and they both
+went down. The man grunted as the wind was jarred out of him, but he
+wriggled like an eel and managed to worm aside and bring up his gun.
+
+Then there was a desperate flurry of bodies in the coarse sand. Holmes
+dived frantically for the gun hand and caught it; but, handicapped as
+he was by the rope, he could not hold it. Slowly its muzzle bent
+upward to firing position.
+
+Desperately, he wrenched the arm upwards, in the direction it had been
+straining to go, and the sudden unexpected jerk doubled the man's arm
+and brought the weapon across his chest. For a moment there was a test
+of strength as Phil lay chest to chest over his opponent, the gun
+blocked between. Then the other grunted; squirmed violently--and there
+was a muffled explosion.
+
+A cry of pain cut the midnight air, and with insane strength Holmes'
+ambusher fought free from his grip, staggered to his feet and went
+reeling away. Phil tore loose from the rope and bounded after him,
+never feeling, at the moment, his powder-burned chest.
+
+And then he halted in his tracks.
+
+A great roar came thundering over the desert!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At once he knew that it came from the earth-borer's disintegrators.
+The sphere had started down without him.
+
+He stood stock still, petrified with surprise, facing the sound, while
+his attacker melted farther and farther into the night. And then,
+suddenly, Phil Holmes was sprinting desperately back towards the
+Guinness camp.
+
+He ran until he was exhausted; walked for a little while his legs
+gathered more strength, and his laboring lungs more air; and then ran
+again. As the minutes passed, the thunder lessened rapidly into a
+muffled drone; and by the time Phil had panted up to the brink of the
+hole that gaped where but a little time before the sphere was
+standing, it had become but a distant purr. He leaned far over and
+peered into the hot blackness below, but could see nothing.
+
+Phil knelt there silently for some minutes, shocked by his strange
+attack, bewildered by the unexpected descent of the borer. For a time
+his mind would not work; he had no idea what to do. But gradually his
+thoughts came to order and made certain things clear.
+
+He had been deliberately ambushed. Only by luck had he escaped, he
+told himself. If it hadn't been for the water jug, he'd now be out of
+the picture. And on the heels of the ambush had came the surprising
+descent of the earth-borer. The two incidents coincided too well: the
+same mind had planned them. And two, men, at least, were in on the
+plot.... It suddenly became very clear to him that the answer to the
+puzzle lay with the man who had ambushed him. He would have to get
+that man. Track him down.
+
+Phil acted with decision. He got to his feet and strode rapidly to the
+deserted Guinness shack, horribly quiet and lonely now in the bright
+moonlight. In a minute he emerged with a flashlight at his belt and a
+rifle across his arm.
+
+Once again he went over to the new black hole in the desert and looked
+down. From far below still came the purr, now fainter than ever. His
+friend, the girl he loved, were down there, he reflected bitterly, and
+he was helpless to reach them. Well, there was one thing he could
+do--go man-hunting. Turning, he started off at a long lope for the
+water-hole.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ten minutes later he was there, and off to the side he found the marks
+of their scuffle--and small black blotches that could be nothing but
+blood. The other was wounded: could probably not get far. But he might
+still have his gun, so Phil kept his rifle handy, and tempered his
+impatience with caution as he set out on the trail of the widely
+spaced footprints.
+
+They led off towards the nearby hills, and in the bright moonlight
+Phil did not use his flashlight at all, except to investigate other
+round black blotches that made a line parallel to the prints. As he
+went on he found his quarry's steps coming more closely together:
+becoming erratic. Soon they showed as painful drags in the sand, a
+laborious hauling of one foot after the other.... Phil put away his
+light and advanced very cautiously.
+
+He wondered, as he went, who in the devil was behind it all. The
+radium-finding project had been kept strictly secret. Not another soul
+was supposed to know of the earth-borer and its daring mission into
+the heart of the earth. Yet, obviously, someone had found out, and
+whoever it was had laid at least part of his scheme cunningly. An old
+man and a girl cannot offer much resistance: he, Phil, would have been
+well taken care of had it not been for the water jug. So far, there
+were at least two in the plot: the man who had ambushed him and the
+unknown who had evidently kidnapped both Professor and Sue Guinness.
+But there might be still more.
+
+There might be friends, nearby, of the man he was tracking. The fellow
+might have reached them, and warned them that the scheme hadn't gone
+through, that Phil was loose. They could very easily conceal
+themselves alongside their partner's tracks and train their rifles on
+the tracker....
+
+The trail was leading up into one of the canons in the cluster of
+hills to the west. For some distance he followed it up through a slash
+of black below the steep moonlit heights of the hills to each
+side--and then, suddenly, he vaguely made out the forms of two huts
+just ahead.
+
+Immediately he stooped low, and went skirting widely off up one side.
+He proceeded slowly, with great caution, his rifle at the ready. At
+any moment, he knew, the hush might be split by the cracks of
+waylaying guns. Warily he advanced along the narrow canyon wall above
+the huts. No lights were lit, and the place seemed unoccupied. He was
+debating what to do next when his attention was attracted to a large
+dark object lying in the canyon trail some twenty yards from the
+nearest hut. Straining his eyes in the inadequate moonlight, he saw
+that it was the outstretched figure of a man. His quarry--his
+ambusher!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Phil dropped flat, fearful of being seen. Keeping as best he could in
+the shadows, fearing every moment to hear the sharp bark of a gun, he
+crawled forward. It took him a long time to approach the sprawled
+figure, but he wasn't taking chances. When within twenty feet, he rose
+suddenly and darted forward to the man's side.
+
+His rapid glance showed him that the fellow was completely out: and
+another quick look around failed to show that anyone else was
+watching, so he returned to his examination of the man. It was the
+ambusher, all right: a Mexican. He was still breathing, though his
+face was drawn and white from the loss of blood from a wound under the
+blood-soaked clothing near his upper right arm. A hasty search showed
+that he no longer had his gun, so Phil, satisfied that he was
+powerless for some time to come, cautiously wormed his way towards the
+two shacks.
+
+There was something sinister in the strange silence that hung over
+them. One was of queer construction--a windowless, square, high box
+of galvanized iron. The other was obviously a dwelling place.
+Carefully Phil sneaked up to the latter. Then, rifle ready, he pushed
+its door open and sent a beam of light stabbing through the darkness
+of the interior.
+
+There was no one there. Only two bunks, a table, chair, a pail of
+water and some cooking utensils met his view. He crept out toward the
+other building.
+
+Come close, Phil found that a dun-colored canvas had been thrown over
+the top of it, making an adequate camouflage in daytime. The place was
+about twenty feet high. He prowled around the metal walls and
+discovered a rickety door. Again, gun ready, he flung it open. The
+beam from his flash speared a path through the blackness--and he
+gasped at sight of what stood revealed.
+
+There, inside, was a long, bullet-like tube of metal, the pointed end
+upper-most, and the bottom, which was flat, toward the ground. It was
+held in a wooden cradle, and was slanted at the floor. In the bottom
+were holes of two shapes--rocket tubes and disintegrating projectors.
+It was another earth-borer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Phil stood frozen with surprise before this totally unlooked-for
+machine. He could easily have been overcome, had the owner been in the
+building, for he had forgotten everything but what his eyes were
+staring at. He started slowly around the borer, found a long narrow
+door slightly ajar, and stepped inside.
+
+This borer, like Guinness's, had a double shell, and much the same
+instruments, though the whole job was simpler and cruder. A small
+instrument board contained inclination, temperature, depth and
+air-purity indicators, and narrow tubes led to the air rectifiers. But
+what kept Holmes' attention were the wires running from the magneto to
+the mixing chambers of the disintegrating tubes.
+
+"The fools!" he exclaimed, "--they didn't know how to wire the thing!
+Or else," he added after a moment, "didn't get around to doing it." He
+noticed that the projectile's interior contained no gyroscope: though,
+he thought, none would be needed, for the machine, being long and
+narrow, could not change keel while in the ground. Here he was
+reminded of something. Stepping outside, he estimated the angle the
+borer made with the dirt floor. Twenty degrees. "And pointed
+southwest!" he exclaimed aloud. "This borer would come close to
+meeting the professor's, four miles under our camp!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At once he knew what he would do. First he went back to the other
+shack and got the pail of water he had noticed, and took this out
+where the Mexican lay outstretched. He bathed the man's face and the
+still slightly bleeding bullet wound in his shoulder.
+
+Presently the wounded man came to. His eyes opened, and he stared up
+into a steel mask of a face, in which two level black eyes bored into
+his. He remembered that face--remembered it all too well. He trembled,
+cowered away.
+
+"No!" he gasped, as if he had seen a ghost. "No--no!"
+
+"Yes, I'm the man," Holmes told him firmly, menacingly. "The same one
+you tried to ambush." He paused a moment, then said: "Do you want to
+live?"
+
+It was a simple question, frightening in its simplicity.
+
+"Because if you don't answer my questions, I'm going to let you lie
+here," Phil went on coldly. "And that would probably mean your death.
+If you do answer, I'll fix you up so you can have a chance."
+
+The Mexican nodded eagerly. "I talk," he said.
+
+"Good," said Phil. "Then tell me who built that machine?"
+
+"Senor Quade. Senor James Quade."
+
+"Quade!" Phil had heard the name before. "Of course!" he said.
+"Guinness's old partner!"
+
+"I not know," the Mexican answered. "He hire me with much money. He
+buy thees machine inside, and we put him together. But he could no
+make him work--it take too long. We watch, hear old man go down
+to-night, and--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The greaser stopped. "And so he sent you to get me, while he kidnapped
+the old man and his daughter and forced them under the ground in their
+own borer," Holmes supplied, and the other nodded.
+
+"But I only mean to tie you!" he blurted, gesturing weakly. "I no mean
+shoot! No, no--"
+
+"All right--forget it," Phil interrupted. "And now tell me what Quade
+expects to do down there."
+
+"I not know, Senor," came the hesitant reply, "but...."
+
+"But what?" the young man jerked.
+
+Reluctantly the wounded Mexican continued. "Senor Quade--he--I think
+he don' like thees old man. I think he leave heem an' the girl down
+below. Then he come up an' say they keeled going down."
+
+Phil nodded grimly. "I see," he said, voicing his thoughts. "Then he
+would say that he and Professor Guinness are still partners--and the
+radium ore will belong to him. Very nice. Very nice...."
+
+He snapped back to action, and without another word hoisted the
+Mexican onto his back and carried him into the shack. There he
+cleansed the wound, rigged up a tight bandage for it, and tied the man
+to one of the cots. He tied him in such a fashion that he could reach
+some food and water he put by the cot.
+
+"You leave me like thees?" the Mexican asked.
+
+"Yes," Phil said, and started for the door.
+
+"But what you going to do?"
+
+Phil smiled grimly as he flung an answer back over his shoulder.
+
+"Me?--I'm going to fix the wiring on those disintegrators in your
+friend Quade's borer. Then I'm starting down after him." He stopped
+and turned before he closed the door. "And if I don't get back--well,
+it's just too bad for you!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so, a little later, once more the hushed desert night was cleft by
+a furious bellow of sound. It came, this time, from a narrow canyon.
+The steep sides threw the roar back and back again, and the echoes
+swelled to an earth-shaking blast of sound. The oblong hut from which
+it came rocked and almost fell; then, as the noise began to lessen,
+teetered on its foundations and half-slipped into the ragged hole that
+had been bored inside.
+
+The descent was a nightmare that Holmes would never forget. Quade's
+machine was much cruder and less efficient than the sphere David
+Guinness had designed. Its protecting insulation proved quite
+inadequate, and the heat rapidly grew terrific as the borer dug down.
+Phil became faint, stifled, and his body oozed streams of sweat. And
+the descent was also bumpy and uneven; often he was forced to leave
+the controls and work on the mechanism of the disintegrators when they
+faltered and threatened to stop. But in spite of everything the needle
+on the depth gauge gradually swung over to three thousand, and four,
+and five....
+
+After the first mile Holmes improvised a way to change the air more
+rapidly, and it grew a little cooler. He watched the story the depth
+gauge told with narrowed eyes, and, as it reached three miles,
+inspected his rifle. At three and a half miles he stopped the borer,
+thinking to try to hear the noise made by the other, but so paralyzed
+were his ear-drums from the terrific thunder beneath, it seemed hardly
+any quieter when it ceased.
+
+His plans were vague; they would have to be made according to the
+conditions he found. There was a coil of rope in the tube-like
+interior of the borer, and he hoped to find a cavern or cleft in the
+earth for lateral exploring. He would stop at a depth of four
+miles--where he should be very near the path of the professor's
+sphere.
+
+But Phil never saw the needle on the gauge rise to four miles. At
+three and three quarters came sudden catastrophe.
+
+He knew only that there was an awful moment of utter helplessness,
+when the borer swooped wildly downwards, and the floor was snatched
+sickeningly from under him. He was thrown violently against the
+instrument panel; then up toward the pointed top; and at the same
+instant came a rending crash that drove his senses from him....
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+"_You Haven't the Guts_"
+
+"Just as I thought," said James Quade in the silence that fell when
+the last echoes had died away, and the splinters of steel and rock had
+settled. "You see, Professor, this earth-borer belongs to me. Yes, I
+built one too. But I couldn't, unfortunately, get it working
+properly--that is, in time to get down here first. After all, I'm not
+a scientist, and remembered little enough of your borer's plans....
+It's probably young Holmes who's dropped in on us. Shall we see?"
+
+David Guinness and his daughter were speechless with dread. Quade had
+trained the searchlight on the borer, and by turning their heads they
+could see it plainly. It was all too clear that the machine was a
+total wreck. It had pitched over onto one side, its shell cracked and
+mangled irreparably. Grotesque pieces of crumpled metal lay all around
+it. Its slanting course had tumbled it within fifteen yards of the
+sphere.
+
+In silence the old man and the girl watched Quade walk deliberately
+over to it, his automatic steady in his right hand. He wrenched at the
+long, narrow door, but it was so badly bent that for a while he could
+not get it open. At last it swung out, however, and Quade peered
+inside.
+
+After a moment he reached in and drew out a rifle. He took it over to
+a nearby rock, smashed the gun's breech, then flung it, useless,
+aside. Returning to the borer, he again peered in.
+
+Sue was about to scream from the torturous suspense when he at last
+straightened up and looked around at the white-faced girl and her
+father.
+
+"Mr. Holmes is tougher than I'd thought possible," he said, with a
+thin smile; "he's still alive." And, as Sue gasped with relief, he
+added: "Would you like to see him?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He dragged the young man's unconscious body roughly out on the floor.
+There were several bad bruises on his face and head, but otherwise he
+was apparently uninjured. As Quade stood over him, playing idly with
+the automatic, he stirred, and blinked, and at last, with an effort,
+got up on one elbow and looked straight at the thin lips and narrowed
+eyes of the man standing above. He shook his head, trying to
+comprehend, then muttered hazily:
+
+"You--you're--Quade?"
+
+Quade did not have time to answer, for Sue Guinness cried out:
+
+"Phil! Are you all right?"
+
+Phil stared stupidly around, caught sight of the two who lay bound on
+the floor, and staggered to his feet. "Sue!" he cried, relief and
+understanding flooding his voice. He started towards her.
+
+"Stand where you are!" Quade snapped harshly, and the automatic in his
+hand came up. Holmes peered at it and stopped, but his blood-streaked
+face settled into tight lines, and his body tensed.
+
+"You'd better," continued Quade. "Now tell me what happened to Juan."
+
+Phil forced himself to be calm. "Your pal, the greaser?" he said
+cuttingly. "He's lying on a bunk in your shack. He shot himself,
+playing with a gun."
+
+Quade chose not to notice the way Phil said this, but a little of the
+suave self-confidence was gone from his face as he said: "Well, in
+that case I'll have to hurry back to the surface to attend to him. But
+don't be alarmed," he added, more brightly. "I'll be back for you all
+in an hour or so."
+
+At this, David Guinness struggled frantically with his bonds and
+yelled:
+
+"Don't believe him, Phil! He's going to leave us here, to starve and
+die! He told us so just before you came down!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Quade's face twitched perceptibly. His eyes were nervous.
+
+"Is that true, Quade?" Holmes asked. There was a steely note in his
+voice.
+
+"Why--no, of course not," the other said hastily, uncertain whether to
+lie or not. "Of course I didn't!"
+
+Phil Holmes looked square into his eyes. He bluffed.
+
+"You couldn't desert us, Quade. You haven't the guts. You haven't the
+guts."
+
+His face and eyes burned with the contempt that was in his words. It
+cut Quade to the raw. But he could not avoid Phil's eyes. He stared at
+them for a full moment, trembling slightly. Slowly, by inches, he
+started to back toward the sphere; then suddenly he ran for it with
+all his might, Holmes after him. Quade got to it first, and inside, as
+he yanked in the searchlight and slammed and locked the door, he
+yelled:
+
+"You'll see, you damned pup! You'll see!" And there was the smothered
+sound of half-maniacal laughter....
+
+Phil threw all his weight against the metal door, but it was hopeless
+and he knew it. He had gathered himself for another rush when he heard
+Guinness yell:
+
+"Back, Phil--back! He'll turn on the side disintegrators!"
+
+Mad with rage as the young man was, he at once saw the danger and
+leaped away--only to almost fall over the professor's prone body. With
+hurrying, trembling fingers he untied the pair's bonds, and they
+struggled to their feet, cramped and stiff. Then it was Phil who
+warned them.
+
+"Back as far as you can! Hurry!" He grabbed Sue's hand and plunged
+toward the uncertain protection of a huge rock far in the rear. At
+once he made them lie flat on the ground.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As yet the sphere had not stirred nor emitted a whisper of sound,
+though they knew the man inside was conning the controls in a fever of
+haste to leave the cavern. But they hadn't long to wait. There came a
+sputter, a starting cough from the rocket tubes beneath the sphere.
+Quickly they warmed into life, and the dully glimmering ball rocked in
+the hole it lay in. Then a cataract of noise unleashed itself; a
+devastating thunder roared through the echoing cavern as the rockets
+burst into full force. A wave of brilliant orange-red splashed out
+from under the sphere, licked back up its sides, and seemed literally
+to shove the great ball up towards the hole in the ceiling.
+
+Its ascent was very slow. As it gained height it looked--save for its
+speed--like a fantastic meteor flaming through the night, for the
+orange plumage that streamed from beneath lit the ball with dazzling
+color. A glowing sphere, it staggered midway between floor and
+ceiling, creeping jerkily upwards.
+
+"He's not going to hit the hole!" shouted Guinness.
+
+The borer had not risen in a perfectly straight line; it jarred
+against the rim of the hole, and wavered uncertainly. Every second the
+roar of its rockets, swollen by echoes, rose in a savage crescendo;
+the faces of the three who watched were painted orange in the glow.
+
+The sphere was blind. The man inside could judge his course only by
+the feel. As the three who were deserted watched, hoping ardently that
+Quade would not be able to find the opening, the left side-rockets
+spouted lances of fire, and they knew he had discovered the way to
+maneuver the borer laterally. The new flames welded with the exhaust
+of the main tubes into a great fan-shaped tail, so brilliant and shot
+through with other colors that their eyes could not stand the sight,
+except in winks. The borer jerked to the right, but still it could not
+find the hole. Then the flames lessened for a moment, and the borer
+sank down, to rise again a moment later. Its ascent was so labored
+that Phil shouted to Professor Guinness:
+
+"Why so slow?"
+
+And the inventor told him that which he had not seen for the
+intolerable light.
+
+"Only half his rockets are on!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This time the sphere was correctly aimed, however, and it roared
+straight into the hole. Immediately the fierce sound of the exhaust
+was muffled, and in a few seconds only the fiery plumage, shooting
+down from the ceiling, showed where the machine was. Then this
+disappeared, and the noise alone was left.
+
+Phil leaped forward, intending to stare up, but Guinness's yell halted
+him.
+
+"Not yet! He might still use the disintegrators!"
+
+For many minutes they waited, till the muffled exhaust had died to a
+drone. There was a puzzled expression on the professor's face as the
+three at last walked over and dared peer up into the hole. Far above,
+the splash of orange lit the walls of the tunnel.
+
+"That's funny!" the old man muttered. "He's only using half the
+rockets--about ten. I thought he'd turn them all on when he got into
+the hole, but he didn't. Either they were damaged in the fall, or
+Quade doesn't see fit to use them."
+
+"Half of them are enough," said Phil bitterly, and put his arm around
+the quiet girl standing next to him. Together, a silent little group,
+they watched the spot of orange die to a pin-point; watched it waver,
+twinkle, ever growing smaller.... And then it was gone.
+
+Gone! Back to the surface of the earth, to the normal world of
+reality. Only four miles above them--a small enough distance on the
+surface itself--and yet it might have been a million miles, so utterly
+were they barred from it....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The same thought was in their minds, though none of them dared express
+it. They were thinking of the serene desert, and the cool wind, and
+the buttes and the high hills, placid in the moonlight. Of the hushed
+rise of the dawn, the first flush of the sun that was so achingly
+lovely on the desert. The sun they would never see again, buried in a
+lifeless world of gloom four miles within.... And buried alive--and
+not alive for long....
+
+But that way lay madness. Phil Holmes drove the horrible thoughts from
+his brain and forced a smile to his face.
+
+"Well, that's that!" he said in a voice meant to be cheerful.
+
+The dim cavern echoed his words mockingly. With the earth-borer
+gone--the man-made machine that had dared break a solitude undisturbed
+since the earth first cooled--the great cavern seemed to return to its
+awful original mood. The three dwarfed humans became wholly conscious
+of it. They felt it almost a living thing, stretching vastly around
+them, tightening its unheard spell on them. Its smell, of mouldy earth
+and rocks down which water slowly dripped, filled their nostrils and
+somehow added to their fear.
+
+As they looked about, their eyes became accustomed to the dim, eery,
+phosphorescent illumination. They saw little worm-like creatures now
+and again appear from tiny holes between stalagmites in the jagged
+floor; and, as Phil wondered in his mind how long it would be before
+they would be reduced to using them for food, a strange mole-sized
+animal scraped from the darkness and pecked at one of them. As it
+slithered away, a writhing shape in its mouth, Holmes muttered
+bitterly: "A competitor!" Vague, flitting forms haunted the gloom
+among the stalactites of the distorted ceiling--hints of the things
+that lived in the terrible silence of this nether world. Here Time had
+paused, and life had halted in primate form.
+
+A little moan came from Sue Guinness's pale lips. She plucked at her
+arm; a sickly white worm, only an inch long, had fallen on it from the
+ceiling. "Oh!" she gasped. "Oh!"
+
+Phil drew her closer to him, and walked with her over to Quade's
+wrecked borer. "Let's see what we've got here," he suggested
+cheerfully.
+
+The machine was over on its side, the metal mangled and crushed beyond
+repair. Nevertheless, he squeezed into it. "Stand back!" he warned.
+"I'm going to try its rockets!" There was a click of broken machinery,
+and that was all. "Rockets gone," Phil muttered.
+
+He pulled another lever over. There was a sputter from within the
+borer, then a furious roar that sent great echoes beating through the
+cavern. A cloud of dust reared up before the bottom of the machine,
+whipped madly for a moment, and sank as the bellow of sound died down.
+Sue saw that a rocky rise in the floor directly in front of the
+disintegrators had been planed off levelly.
+
+Phil scrambled out. "The disintegrators work," he said, "but a lot of
+good they do us. The borer's hopelessly cracked." He shrugged his
+shoulders, and with a discouraged gesture cast to the ground a coil of
+rope he had found inside.
+
+Then suddenly he swung around. "Professor!" he called to the old
+figure standing bowed beneath the hole in the ceiling. "There's a
+draft blowing from somewhere! Do you feel it?"
+
+Guinness felt with his hands a moment and nodded slowly. "Yes," he
+said.
+
+"It's coming from this way!" Sue said excitedly, pointing into the
+darkness on one side of the cavern. "And it goes up the hole we made
+in the ceiling!"
+
+Phil turned eagerly to the old inventor. "It must come from
+somewhere," he said, "and that somewhere may take us toward the
+surface. Let's follow it!"
+
+"We might as well," the other agreed wearily. His was the tone of a
+man who has only a certain time to live.
+
+But Phil was more eager. "While there's life, there's hope," he said
+cheerfully. "Come on, Sue, Professor!" And he led the way forward
+toward the dim, distorted rock shapes in the distance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The roof and sides of the cavern angled down into a rough, tunnel-like
+opening, from which the draft swept. It was a heavy air, weighted with
+the smell of moist earth and lifeless water and a nameless, flat,
+stale gas. They slowly made their way through the impeding
+stalagmites, surrounded by a dark blur of shadows, the ghostly
+phosphorescent light illuminating well only the few rods around them.
+Utter silence brooded over the tunnel.
+
+Phil paused when they had gone about seventy-five feet. "I left that
+rope behind," he said, "and we may need it. I'll return and get it,
+and you both wait right here." With the words he turned and went back
+into the shadows.
+
+He went as fast as he could, not liking to leave the other two alone.
+But when he had retrieved the rope and tied it to his waist, he
+permitted himself a last look up as he passed under the hole in the
+ceiling--and what he saw there tensed every muscle in his body, and
+made his heart beat like mad. Again there was a tiny spot of orange in
+the blackness above!
+
+"Professor!" he yelled excitedly. "Sue! Come here! The sphere's
+coming back!"
+
+There was no doubt about it. The pin-point of light was growing each
+second, with the flame of the descending exhausts. Guinness and his
+daughter ran from the tunnel, and, guided by Phil's excited
+ejaculations, hurried to his side. Their eyes confirmed what his had
+seen. The earth-borer was coming down!
+
+"But," Guinness said bewilderedly, "those rockets were enough to lift
+him!"
+
+This was a mystery. Even though ten rockets were on--ten tiny spots of
+orange flame--the sphere came down swiftly. The same force which some
+time before had lifted it slowly up was now insufficient. The roar of
+the tubes rose rapidly. "Get back!" Phil ordered, remembering the
+danger, and they all retreated to the mouth of the tunnel, ready to
+peep cautiously around the edge. Holmes' jaws were locked tight with
+grim resolution. Quade was coming back! he told himself exultantly.
+This time he must not go up alone! This time--!
+
+But his half-formed resolutions were idle. He could not know what
+frightful thing was bringing Quade down--what frightful experience was
+in store for them all....
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_Spawn of the Cavern_
+
+In a crescendo of noise that stunned their ears, the earth-borer came
+down. Tongues of fire flared from the hole, speared to the ground and
+were deflected upward, cradling the metal ball in a wave of flame.
+Through this fiery curtain the machine slowly lowered to the floor,
+where a shower of sparks spattered out, blinding the eyes of the
+watchers with their brilliance. For a full minute the orange-glowing
+sphere lay there, quivering from the vibration; then the exhausts died
+and the wave of flame wavered and sank into nothingness. While their
+ear-drums continued the thunder, the three stared at the borer, not
+daring to approach, yet striving to solve the mystery of why it had
+sunk despite the up-thrust of ten rocket tubes.
+
+As their eyes again became accustomed to the familiar phosphorescent
+illumination, pallid and cold after the fierce orange flame, they saw
+why--and their eyes went wide with surprise and horror.
+
+A strange mass was covering the top of the earth-borer--something that
+looked like a heap of viscid, whitish jelly. It was sprawled
+shapelessly over the round upper part of the metal sphere, a
+half-transparent, loathsome stuff, several feet thick in places.
+
+And Phil Holmes, striving to understand what it could be, saw an awful
+thing. "It's moving!" he whispered, unconsciously drawing Sue closer.
+"There's--there's life in it!"
+
+Lazy quiverings were running through the mound of jelly, pulsings that
+gave evidence of its low organism. They saw little ripples of even
+beat run over it, and under them steady, sluggish convulsions that
+told of life; that showed, perhaps, that the thing was hungry and
+preparing to move its body in quest of food.
+
+It was alive, unquestionably. The borer lay still, but this thing
+moved internally, of itself. It was life in its lowest, most primate
+form. The mass was mind, stomach, muscle and body all in one, stark
+and raw before their startled eyes.
+
+"Oh, God!" Phil whispered through the long pause. "It can't be
+real!..."
+
+"Protoplasm--a monster amoeba," David Guinness's curiously cracked
+voice said. "Just as it exists on the surface, only microscopically.
+Primate life...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lock of the earth-borer clicked. Phil gasped. "Quade is coming
+out!" he said. A little cry of horror came from Sue. And the metal
+door opened.
+
+James Quade stepped through, automatic in hand. He was fresh from the
+light inside, and he could not see well. He was quite unconscious of
+what was oozing down on him from above, of the flabby heap that was
+carefully stretching down for him. He peered into the gloom, looking
+for the three he had deserted, and all the time an arm from the mass
+above crept nearer. Sue Guinness's nerves suddenly gave, and she
+shrieked; but Quade's ears were deaf from the borer's thunder, and he
+did not hear her.
+
+It was when he lifted one foot back into the sphere--probably to get
+out the searchlight--that he felt the thing's presence. He looked
+up--and a strange sound came from him. For seconds he apparently could
+not move, stark fear rooting him to the ground, the gun limp in his
+hand.
+
+Then a surge ran through the mound of flesh, and the arm, a pseudopod,
+reached more rapidly for him.
+
+It stung Quade into action. He leaped back, brought up his automatic,
+and fired at the thing once; then three times more. He, and each one
+of the others, saw four bullets thud into the heap of pallid matter
+and heard them clang on the metal of the sphere beneath. They had gone
+right through its flesh--but they showed no slightest effect!
+
+Quade was evidently unwilling to leave the sphere. Jerking his arm up
+he brought his trigger finger back again. A burst of three more shots
+barked through the cavern, echoing and re-echoing. The man screamed an
+inarticulate oath as he saw how useless his bullets were, and hurled
+the empty gun at the monster--which was down on the floor now, and
+bunching its sluggish body together.
+
+The automatic went right into it. They could all see it there, in the
+middle of the amorphous body, while the creature stopped, as if
+determining whether or not it was food. Quade screwed his courage
+together in the pause, and tried to dodge past to the door of the
+sphere; but the monster was alert: another pseudopod sprang out from
+its shapeless flesh, sending him back on his heels.
+
+The feeler had all but touched Quade, and with the closeness of his
+escape, the remnants of his courage gave. He yelled, and turned and
+ran.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He ran straight for the three who watched from the tunnel mouth, and
+the mound of shapeless jelly came fast on his trail. It came in
+surging rolls, like thick fluid oozing forward; it would have been
+hard to measure its size, for each moment it changed. The only
+impression the four humans had was that of a wave of half-transparent
+matter that one instant was a sticky ball of viscid flesh and the next
+a rapidly advancing crescent whose horns reached far out on each flank
+to cut off retreat.
+
+By instinct Phil jerked Sue around and yelled at the professor to run,
+for the old man seemed to be frozen into an attitude of fearful
+interest. Bullets would not stop the thing--could anything? Holmes
+wondered. He could visualize all too easily the death they would meet
+if that shapeless, naked protoplasmic mass overtook and flowed over
+them....
+
+But he wasted no time with such thoughts. They ran, all three, into
+the dark tunnel.
+
+Quade caught up with them quickly. Personal enmity was suspended
+before this common peril. They could not run at full speed, for a
+multitude of obstacles hindered them. Tortuous ridges of rock lay
+directly across their path, formations that had been whipped in some
+mad, eon-old convulsion and then, through the ages, remained frozen
+into their present distortion; black pits gaped suddenly before them;
+half-seen stalagmites, whose crystalline edges were razor-sharp, tore
+through to their flesh. Haste was perilous where every moment they
+might stumble into an unseen cleft and go pitching into awful depths
+below. They were staking everything on the draft that blew steadily
+in their faces; Phil told himself desperately that it must lead to
+some opening--it must!
+
+But what if the opening were a vertical, impassable tunnel? He would
+not think of that....
+
+Old David Guinness tired fast, and was already lagging in the rear
+when Quade gasped hoarsely:
+
+"Hurry! It's close behind!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Surging rapidly at a constant distance behind them, it came on. It was
+as fast as they were, and evidently untiring. It was in its own
+element; obstacles meant nothing to it. It oozed over the jagged
+ridges that took the humans precious moments to scramble past, and the
+speed of its weird progress seemed to increase as theirs faltered. It
+was a heartless mass driven inexorably by primal instinct towards the
+food that lay ahead. The dim phosphorescent illumination tinged its
+flabby tissues a weird white.
+
+The passage they stumbled through narrowed. Long irregular spears of
+stalactites hung from the unseen ceiling; others, the drippings of
+ages, pronged up from the floor, shredding their clothes as they
+jarred into them. One moment they were clambering up-hill, slipping on
+the damp rock; the next they were sliding down into unprobed darkness,
+reckless of where they would land. They were aware only that the
+water-odorous draft was still in their faces, and the hungry mound of
+flesh behind....
+
+"I can't last much longer!" old Guinness's winded voice gasped. "Best
+leave me behind. I--I might delay it!"
+
+For answer, Phil went back, grabbed him by the arm and dragged his
+tired body forward. He was snatching a glance behind to see how close
+the monster was, when Sue's frightened voice reached him from ahead.
+
+"There's a wall here, Phil--and no way through!"
+
+And then Holmes came to it. It barred the passage, and was apparently
+unbroken. Yet the draft still came!
+
+"Search for where the draft enters!" he yelled. "You take that side!"
+And he started feeling over the clammy, uneven surface, searching
+frantically for a cleft. It seemed to be hopeless. Quade stood staring
+back into the gloom, his eyes looking for what he knew was surging
+towards them. His face had gone sickly white, he was trembling as if
+with fever, and he sucked in air with long, racking gasps.
+
+"Here! I have it!" cried the girl suddenly at her end of the wall. The
+other three ran over, and saw, just above her head, a narrow rift in
+the rock, barely wide enough to squirm through. "Into it!" Phil
+ordered tersely. He grasped her, raised her high, and she wormed
+through. Quade scrambled to get in next, but Holmes shoved him aside
+and boosted the old man through. Then he helped the other.
+
+A second after he had swung himself up, a wave of whitish matter
+rolled up below, hungry pseudopods reaching for the food it knew was
+near. It began to trickle up the wall....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The crack was narrow and jagged; utterly black. Phil could hear Quade
+frantically worming himself ahead, and he wondered achingly if it
+would lead anywhere. Then a faint, clear voice from ahead rang out:
+
+"It's opening up!"
+
+Sue's voice! Phil breathed more easily. The next moment Quade
+scrambled through; dim light came; and they were in another vast,
+ghostly-lit cavern.
+
+The crack came out on its floor-level; Guinness was resting near, and
+his daughter had her hands on a large boulder of rock. "Let's shove it
+against the hole!" she suggested to Phil. "It might stop it!"
+
+"Good, Sue, good!" he exclaimed, and at once all four of them strained
+at the chunk, putting forth every bit of strength they had. The
+boulder stirred, rolled over, and thudded neatly in front of the
+crack, almost completely sealing it. There was only a cleft of five
+inches on one side.
+
+But their expression of relief died in their throats. A tiny trickle
+of white appeared through the niche. The amorphous monster was
+compressing itself to a single stream, thin enough to squeeze through
+even that narrow space.
+
+They could not block it. They had nothing to attack it with. There was
+nothing to do but run.... And hope for a chance to double back....
+
+As nearly as they could make out, this second cavern was as large as
+the first. They could dimly see the fantastic shapes of hundreds of
+stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Clumps of stalagmites made the
+floor a maze which they threaded painfully. The strong steady draft
+guided them like a radio beacon, leading them to their only faint hope
+of escape and life. Guinness, very tired, staggered along
+mechanically, a heavy weight on Phil's supporting arm; James Quade ran
+here and there in frantic spurts of speed. Sue was silent, but the
+hopelessness in her eyes tortured Phil like a wound. His shirt had
+long since been ripped to shreds; his face, bruised in the first place
+by the borer he had crashed in, now was scratched and bloody from
+contact with rough stalagmites.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then, without warning, they suddenly found among the rough walls on
+the far side of the cavern, the birthplace of the draft. It lay at the
+edge of the floor--a dark hole, very wide. Black, sinister and clammy
+from the draft that poured from it, it pierced vertically down into
+the very bowels of the earth. It was impassable.
+
+James Quade crumpled at the brink; "It's the end!" he moaned. "We
+can't go farther! It's the end of the draft!"
+
+The hole blocked their forward path completely. They could not go
+ahead.... In seconds, it seemed, the slithering that told of the
+monster's approach sounded from behind. Sue's eyes were already fixed
+on the awful, surging mass when a voice off to one side yelled:
+
+"Here! Quick!"
+
+It was Phil Holmes. He had been scouting through the gloom, and had
+found something.
+
+The other three ran to him. "There's another draft going through
+here," he explained rapidly, pointing to an angled crevice in the
+rocky wall. "There's a good chance it goes to the cavern where the
+sphere and the hole to the surface are. Anyway, we've got to take it.
+I'd better go first, after this--and you, Quade, last. I trust you
+less than the monster behind."
+
+He turned and edged into the crack, and the others followed as he had
+ordered. Quickly the passageway broadened, and they found the going
+much easier than it had been before. For perhaps ten minutes they
+scrambled along, with the draft always on their backs and the blessed,
+though faint, fire of hope kindling again. In all that time they did
+not see their pursuer once, and the hope that they had lost it brought
+a measure of much needed optimism to drive their tired bodies onward.
+They found but few time-wasting obstacles. If only the tunnel would
+continue right into the original cavern! If only their path would stay
+clear and unhindered!
+
+But it did not. The sound of Phil's footsteps ahead stopped, and when
+Sue and her father came up they saw why.
+
+"A river!" Phil said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were standing on a narrow ledge that overhung an underground
+river. A fetid smell of age-old, lifeless water rose from it. Dimly,
+at least fifty feet across, they could see the other side, shrouded in
+vague shadows. The inky stream beneath did not seem to move at all,
+but remained smooth and hard and thick-looking.
+
+They could not go around it. The ledge was only a few feet wide, and
+blocked at each side.
+
+"Got to cross!" Phil said tersely.
+
+Quade, sickly-faced, stared down. "There--there might be other things
+in that water!" he gasped. "Monsters!"
+
+"Sure," agreed Phil contemptuously. "You'd better stay here." He
+turned to the others. "I'll see how deep it is," he said, and without
+the faintest hesitation dove flatly in.
+
+Oily ripples washed back, and they saw his head poke through,
+sputtering. "Not deep," he said. "Chest-high. Come on."
+
+He reached for Sue, helped her down, and did the same for her father.
+Holding each by the hand, Sue's head barely above the water, he
+started across. They had not gone more than twenty feet when they
+heard Quade, left on the bank, give a hoarse yell of fear and dive
+into the water. Their dread pursuer had caught up with them.
+
+And it followed--on the water! Phil had hoped it would not be able to
+cross, but once more the thing's astounding adaptability dashed his
+hopes. Without hesitation, the whitish jelly sprawled out over the
+water, rolling after them with ghastly, snake-like ripples, its pallid
+body standing out gruesomely against the black, odorous tide.
+
+Quade came up thrashing madly, some feet to the side of the other
+three. He was swimming--and swimming with such strength that he
+quickly left them behind. He would be across before they; and that
+meant there was a good chance that the earth-borer would go up again
+with only one passenger....
+
+Phil fought against the water, pulling Sue and her father forward as
+best he could. From behind came the rippling sound of their shapeless
+pursuer. "Ten feet more--" Holmes began--then abruptly stopped.
+
+There had been a swish, a ripple upstream. And as their heads turned
+they saw the water part and a black head, long, evil, glistening,
+pointing coldly down to where they were struggling towards the shore.
+Phil Holmes felt his strength ooze out. He heard Professor Guinness
+gasp:
+
+"A water-snake!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Its head was reared above the surface, gliding down on them silently,
+leaving a wedge of long, sluggish ripples behind. When thirty feet
+away the glistening head dipped under, and a great half-circle of
+leg-thick body arched out. It was like an oily stream of curved cable;
+then it ended in a pointed tail--and the creature was entirely under
+water....
+
+With desperate strength Phil hauled the girl to the bank and, standing
+in several feet of water, pushed her up. Then he whirled and yanked
+old Guinness past him up into the hands of his daughter. With them
+safe, and Sue reaching out her hand for him, he began to scramble up
+himself.
+
+But he was too late. There was a swish in the water behind him, and
+toothless, hard-gummed jaws clamped tight over one leg and drew him
+back and under. And with the touch of the creature's mouth a stiff
+shock jolted him; his body went numb; his arms flopped limply down. He
+was paralyzed.
+
+Sue Guinness cried out. Her father stared helplessly at the spot where
+his young partner had disappeared with so little commotion.
+
+"It was an eel," he muttered dully. "Some kind of electric eel...."
+
+Phil dimly realized the same thing. A moment later his face broke the
+surface, but he could not cry out; he could not move his little
+finger. Only his involuntary muscles kept working--his heart and his
+lungs. He found he could control his breathing a little.... And then
+he was wondering why he was remaining motionless on the surface.
+Gradually he came to understand.
+
+He had not felt it, but the eel had let go its hold on his leg, and
+had disappeared. But only for a moment. Suddenly, from somewhere near,
+its gleaming body writhed crazily, and a terrific twist of its tail
+hit Phil a glancing blow on the chest. He was swept under, and the
+water around him became a maelstrom. When next he bobbed to the
+tumultuous surface, he managed to get a much-needed breath of
+air--and in the swirling currents glimpsed the long, snake-like head
+of the eel go shooting by, with thin trickles of stuff that looked
+like white jelly clinging to it.
+
+That explained what was happening. The eel had been challenged by the
+ameboid monster, and they were fighting for possession of him--the
+common prey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The water became an inferno of whipping and lashing movements, of
+whitish fibers and spearing thrusts of a glistening black electric
+body. Unquestionably the eel was using its numbing electric shock on
+its foe. Time and time again Phil felt the amoeba grasp him,
+searingly, only to be wrenched free by the force of the currents the
+combat stirred up. Once he thudded into the bottom of the river, and
+his lungs seemed about to burst before he was again shot to the top
+and managed to get a breath. At last the water quieted somewhat, and
+Phil, at the surface, saw the eel bury its head in a now apathetic
+mound of flesh.
+
+It tore a portion loose with savage jaws, a portion that still writhed
+after it was separated from the parent mass; and then the victor
+glided swiftly downstream, and disappeared under the surface....
+
+Holmes floated helplessly on the inky water. He could see the amoeba
+plainly; it was still partly paralyzed, for it was very still. But
+then a faint tremor ran through it; a wave ran over its surface--and
+it moved slowly towards him once again.
+
+Desperately Phil tried to retreat. The will was there, but the body
+would not work. Save for a feeble flutter of his hands and feet, he
+could not move. He could not even turn around to bid Sue and David
+Guinness good-by--with his eyes....
+
+Then a fresh, loved voice sounded just behind him, and he felt
+something tighten around his waist.
+
+"It's all right, dear!" the voice called. "Hang on; we'll get you
+out!"
+
+Sue had come in after him! She had grasped the rope tied to his belt,
+and she and her father were pulling him back to the bank!
+
+He wanted to tell her to go back--the amoeba was only feet away--but
+he could only manage a little croak. And then he was safe up on the
+ledge at the other side of the river.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A surge of strength filled his limbs, and he knew the shock was
+rapidly wearing off. But it was also wearing off of the monster in the
+water. Its speed increased; the ripplings of its amorphous
+body-substance became quicker, more excited. It came on steadily.
+
+While it came, the girl and her father worked desperately over Phil,
+massaging his body and pulling him further up the bank. It had all but
+reached the bank when Holmes gasped:
+
+"I think I can walk now. Where--where did Quade go to?"
+
+Guinness gestured over to the right, up a dim winding passage through
+the rocks.
+
+"Then we must follow--fast!" Phil said, staggering to his feet. "He
+may get to the sphere first; he'll go up by himself even yet! I'm all
+right!"
+
+Despite his words, he could not run, and could only command an awkward
+walk. Sue lifted one of his arms around her shoulder, and her father
+took the other, and without a backward glance they labored ahead. But
+Phil's strength quickly returned, and they raised the pace until they
+had broken once more into a stumbling run.
+
+How far ahead James Quade was, they did not know, but obviously they
+could follow where he had gone. Once again the draft was strong on
+their backs. They felt sure they were on the last stretch, headed for
+the earth-borer. But, unless they could overtake Quade, he would be
+there first. They had no illusions about what that would mean....
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_A Death More Hideous_
+
+Quade was there first.
+
+When they burst out of a narrow crevice, not far from the
+funnel-shaped opening they had originally entered, they saw him
+standing beside the open door of the sphere as if waiting. The
+searchlight inside was still on, and in its shaft of light they could
+see that he was smiling thinly, once more his old, confident self. It
+would only take him a second to jump in, slam the door and lock it. He
+could afford a last gesture....
+
+The three stopped short. They saw something he did not.
+
+"So!" he observed in his familiar, mocking voice. He paused, seeing
+that they did not come on. He had plenty of time.
+
+He said something else, but the two men and the girl did not hear what
+it was. As if by a magnet their eyes were held by what was hanging
+above him, clinging to the lip of the hole the sphere had made in the
+ceiling.
+
+It was an amoeba, another of those single-celled, protoplasmic mounds
+of flesh. It had evidently come down through the hole; and now it was
+stretching, rubber-like, lower and lower, a living, reaching
+stalactite of whitish hunger.
+
+Quade was all unconscious of it. His final words reached Phil's
+consciousness.
+
+"... And this time, of course, I will keep the top disintegrators on.
+No other monster will then be able to weigh me down!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and turned to the door. And that movement
+was the signal that brought his doom. Without a sound, the poised mass
+above dropped.
+
+James Quade never knew what hit him. The heap of whitish jelly fell
+squarely. There was a brief moment of frantic lashing, of tortured
+struggles--then only tiny ripples running through the monster as it
+fed.
+
+Sue Guinness turned her head. But the two men for some reason could
+not take their eyes away....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the girl's voice that jerked them back to reality. "The other!"
+she gasped. "It's coming, behind!"
+
+They had completely forgotten the mass in the tunnel. Turning, they
+saw that it was only fifteen feet away and approaching fast, and
+instinctively they ran out into the cavern, skirting the sphere
+widely. When they came to Quade's wrecked borer Phil, who had snatched
+a glance behind, dragged them down behind it. For he had seen their
+pursuer abandon the chase and go to share in the meal of its fellow.
+
+"We'd best not get too far away," he whispered. "When they leave the
+front of the borer, maybe we can make a dash for it."
+
+For minutes that went like hours the young man watched, waiting for
+the creatures to be done, hoping that they would go away. Fortunately
+the sphere lay between, and he was not forced to see too much. Only
+one portion of one of the monsters was visible, lapping out from
+behind the machine....
+
+At last his body tensed, and he gripped Sue and her father's arm in
+quick warning. The things were leaving the sphere. Or, rather, only
+one was. For Phil saw that they had agglutenated--merged into
+oneness--and now the monster that remained was the sum of the sizes of
+the original two. And more....
+
+They all watched. And they all saw the amoeba stop, hesitate for a
+moment--and come straight for the wrecked borer behind which they were
+hidden.
+
+"Damn!" Phil whispered hoarsely. "It's still hungry--and it's after
+us!"
+
+David Guinness sighed wearily. "It's heavy and sluggish, now," he
+said, "so maybe if we run again.... Though I don't know how I can last
+any longer...."
+
+Holmes did not answer. His eyes were narrowed; he was casting about
+desperately for a plan. He hardly felt Sue's light touch on his arm as
+she whispered:
+
+"In case, Phil--in case.... This must be good-by...."
+
+But the young man turned to her with gleaming eyes. "Good-by,
+nothing!" he cried. "We've still got a card to play!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She stared at him, wondering if he had cracked from the strain of what
+he had passed through. But his next words assured her he had not. "Go
+back, Sue," he said levelly. "Go far back. We'll win through this
+yet."
+
+She hesitated, then obeyed. She crept back from the wrecked borer,
+back into the dim rear, eyes on Phil and the sluggish mass that moved
+inexorably towards him. When she had gone fifteen or twenty yards she
+paused, and watched the two men anxiously.
+
+Phil was talking swiftly to Professor Guinness. His voice was low and
+level, and though she could not hear the words she could catch the
+tone of assurance that ran through them. She saw her father nod his
+head, and he seemed to make the gesture with vigor. "I will," she
+heard him say; and he slapped Phil on the back, adding: "But for God's
+sake, be careful!"
+
+And with these words the old man wormed inside Quade's wrecked borer
+and was gone from the girl's sight.
+
+She wanted desperately to run forward and learn what Phil intended to
+do, but she restrained herself and obeyed his order. She waited, and
+watched; and saw the young man stand up, look at the slowly advancing
+monster--and deliberately walk right into its path!
+
+Sue could not move from her fright. In a daze she saw Phil advance
+cautiously towards the amoeba and pause when within five feet of it.
+The thing stopped; remained absolutely motionless. She saw him take
+another short step forward. This time a pseudopod emerged, and reached
+slowly out for him. Phil avoided it easily, but by so narrow a margin
+that the girl's heart stopped beating. Then she saw him step back;
+and, snail-like, the creature followed, pausing twice, as if wary and
+suspicious. Slowly Phil Holmes drew it after him.
+
+To Sue, who did not know what was his plan, it seemed a deliberate
+invitation to death. She forgot about her father, lying inside the
+mangled borer, waiting. She did not see that Phil was leading the
+monster directly in front of it....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a grotesque, silent pursuit. The creature appeared to be
+unalert; its movements were sloth-like; yet the girl knew that if Phil
+once ventured an inch too close, or slipped, or tried to dodge past it
+to the sphere, its torpidness would vanish and it would have him. His
+maneuvering had to be delicate, judged to a matter of inches. Tense
+with the suspense, the strain of the slow-paced seconds, she
+watched--and yet hardly dared to watch, fearful of the awful thing she
+might see.
+
+It was a fantastic game of tag her lover was playing, with death the
+penalty for tardiness. The slow, enticing movements were repeated
+again and again, Phil advancing very close, and stepping back in the
+nick of time. Always he barely avoided the clutching white arms that
+were extended, and little by little he decoyed the thing onward....
+
+Then came the end. As Holmes was almost in front of the wrecked
+machine, Sue saw him glance quickly aside--and, as if waiting for that
+moment when he would be off guard, the monster whipped forward in a
+great, reaching surge.
+
+Sue's ragged nerves cracked: she shrieked. They had him! She started
+forward, then halted abruptly. With a tremendous leap, Phil Holmes had
+wrenched free and flung himself backwards. She heard his yell:
+
+"Now!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a sputter from the bottom of the outstretched borer; then,
+like the crack of a whip, came a bellow of awful sound.
+
+A thick cloud of dust reared up, and the ear-numbing thunder rolled
+through the cavern in great pulsing echoes. And then Sue Guinness
+understood what the young man had been about.
+
+The disintegrators of James Quade's borer had sent a broad beam of
+annihilation into the monster. His own machine had destroyed his
+destroyer--and given his intended victims their only chance to escape
+from the dread fate he had schemed for them.
+
+Sue could see no trace of the creature in its pyre of slow-swirling
+dust. Caught squarely, its annihilation had been utter. And then,
+through the thunder that still echoed in her ear-drums, she heard a
+joyful voice.
+
+"We got 'em!"
+
+Through the dusty haze Phil appeared at her side. He flung his arms up
+exultantly, swept her off the ground, hugged her close.
+
+"We got 'em!" he cried again. "We're free--free to go up!"
+
+Professor David Guinness crawled from the borer. His face, for the
+first time since the descent, wore a broad smile. Phil ran over to
+him, slapped him on the back; and the older man said:
+
+"You did it beautifully, Phil." He turned to Sue. "He had to decoy
+them right in front of the disintegrators. It was--well, it was
+magnificent!"
+
+"All credit to Sue: she was my inspiration!" Phil said, laughing. "But
+now," he added, "let's see if we can fix those dead rocket-tubes. I
+have a patient up above--and, anyway, I'm not over-fond of this
+place!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three had won through. They had blasted four miles down from the
+surface of the earth. The brain of an elderly scientist, the
+quick-witted courage of a young engineer, had achieved the seemingly
+impossible--and against obstacles that could not have been predicted.
+Death had attended that achievement, as death often does accompany
+great forward steps; James Quade had gone to a death more hideous than
+that he devised for the others. But, in spite of the justice of it, a
+moment of silence fell on the three survivors as they came to the spot
+where his fate at last had caught up to him.
+
+But it was only a moment. It was relieved by Professor Guinness's
+picking up the chunk of radium ore his former partner had hewn from
+the cavern's wall. He held it up for all to see, and smiled.
+
+"Here it is," he said simply.
+
+Then he led the way into his earth-borer, and the little door closed
+quietly and firmly into place.
+
+For a few minutes slight tappings came from within, as if a wrench or
+a screwdriver were being used. Then the tappings stopped, and all was
+silence.
+
+A choke, a starting cough, came from beneath the sphere. A torrent of
+rushing sound burst out, and spears of orange flame spurted from the
+bottom and splashed up its sides, bathing it in fierce, brilliant
+light. It stirred. Then, slowly and smoothly, the great ball of metal
+raised up.
+
+It hit the edge of the hole in the ceiling, and hung there,
+hesitating. Side-rockets flared, and the sphere angled over. Then it
+slid, roaring, through the hole.
+
+Swiftly the spots of orange from its rocket-tube exhausts died to
+pin-points. There were now almost twenty of them. And soon these
+pin-points wavered, and vanished utterly.
+
+Then there was only blackness in the hole that went up to the surface.
+Blackness in the hole, calm night on the desert above--and silence, as
+if the cavern were brooding on the puny figures and strange machines
+that had for the first time dared invade its solitude, in the realms
+four miles within the earth....
+
+
+
+
+The Lake of Light
+
+_By Jack Williamson_
+
+[Illustration: _The monster emanated power, sinister, malevolent
+power._]
+
+[Sidenote: In the frozen wastes at the bottom of the world two
+explorers find a strange pool of white fire--and have a strange
+adventure.]
+
+
+The roar of the motor rang loud in the frosty air above a desert of
+ice. The sky above us was a deep purple-blue; the red sun hung like a
+crimson eye low in the north. Three thousand feet below, through a
+hazy blue mist of wind-whipped, frozen vapor, was the rugged
+wilderness of black ice-peaks and blizzard-carved hummocks of snow--a
+grim, undulating waste, black and yellow, splotched with crystal
+white. The icy wind howled dismally through the struts. We were flying
+above the weird ice-mountains of the Enderby quadrant of Antarctica.
+
+That was a perilous flight, across the blizzard-whipped bottom of the
+world. In all the years of polar exploration by air, since Byrd's
+memorable flights, this area had never been crossed. The intrepid
+Britisher, Major Meriden, with the daring American aviatrix whom the
+world had known as Mildred Cross before she married him, had flown
+into it nineteen years before--and like many others they had never
+returned.
+
+Faintly, above the purring drone of the motor, I heard Ray Summers'
+shout. I drew my gaze from the desolate plateau of ice below and
+leaned forward. His lean, fur-hooded face was turned back toward me. A
+mittened hand was pointing, and thin lips moved in words that I did
+not hear above the roar of the engine and the scream of the wind.
+
+I turned and looked out to the right, past the shimmering silver disk
+of the propeller. Under the blue haze of ice-crystals in the air, the
+ice lay away in a vast undulating plain of black and yellow, broken
+with splotches of prismatic whiteness, lying away in frozen desolation
+to the rim of the cold violet sky. Rising against that sky I saw a
+curious thing.
+
+It was a mountain of fire!
+
+Beyond the desert of ice, a great conical peak pointed straight into
+the amethystine gloom of the polar heavens. It was brilliantly white,
+a finger of milky fire, a sharp cone of pure light. It shone with
+white radiance. It was brighter, far brighter, than is the sacred cone
+of Fujiyama in the vivid day of Japan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For many minutes I stared in wonder at it. Far away it was; it looked
+very small. It was like a little heap of light poured from the hand of
+a fire-god. What it might be, I could not imagine. At first sight, I
+imagined it might be a volcano with streams of incandescent lava
+flowing down the side. I knew that this continent of mystery boasted
+Mt. Erebus and other active craters. But there was none of the smoke
+or lurid yellow flame which accompanies volcanic eruptions.
+
+I was still watching it, and wondering, when the catastrophe took
+place--the catastrophe which hurled us into a mad extravaganza of
+amazing adventure.
+
+Our little two-place amphibian was flying smoothly, through air
+unusually good for this continent of storms. The twelve cylinders of
+the motor had been firing regularly since we took off from Byrd's old
+station at Little America fifteen hours before. We had crossed the
+pole in safety. It looked as if we might succeed in this attempt to
+penetrate the last white spot on the map. Then it Happened.
+
+A sudden crack of snapping metal rang out sharp as a pistol report. A
+bright blade of metal flashed past the wing-struts, to fall in a
+flashing arc. The motor broke abruptly into a mad, deep-voiced roar.
+Terrific vibration shook the ship, until I feared that it would go to
+pieces.
+
+Ray Summers, with his usual quick efficiency, cut the throttle.
+Quickly the motor slowed to idling speed; the vibration stopped. A
+last cough of the engine, and there was no sound save the shrill
+screaming of the wind in the gloomy twilight of this unknown land
+beyond the pole.
+
+"What in the devil!" I exclaimed.
+
+"The prop! See!" Ray pointed ahead.
+
+I looked, and the dreadful truth flashed upon me. The steel propeller
+was gone, or half of it at least. One blade was broken off at a jagged
+line just above the hub.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The propeller! What made it break? I've never heard--"
+
+"Search me!" Ray grinned. "The important thing is that it did. It was
+all-metal, of course, tested and guaranteed. The guarantee isn't worth
+much here. A flaw in the forging, perhaps, that escaped detection.
+And this low temperature. Makes metal as brittle as glass. And the
+thing may have been crystallized by the vibration."
+
+The plane was coming down in a shallow glide. I looked out at the grim
+expanse of black ice-crags and glistening snow below us, and it was
+far from a comforting prospect. But I had a huge amount of confidence
+in Ray Summers. I have known him since the day he appeared, from his
+father's great Arizona ranch, to be a freshman in the School of Mines
+at El Paso, where I was then an instructor in geology. We have knocked
+about queer corners of the world together for a good many years. But
+he is still but a great boy, with the bluff, simple manners of the
+West.
+
+"Do you think we can land?" I asked.
+
+"Looks like we've got to," he said, grimly.
+
+"And what after that?"
+
+"How should I know? We have the sledge, tent, furs. Food, and fuel for
+the primus to last a week. There's the rifle, but it must be a
+thousand miles to anything to shoot. We can do our best."
+
+"We should have had an extra prop."
+
+"Of course. But it was so many pounds, when every pound counted. And
+who knew the thing would break?"
+
+"We'll never get out on a week's provisions."
+
+"Not a shot! Too bad to disappoint Captain Harper." Ray grinned wanly.
+"He ought to have the _Albatross_ around there by this time, waiting
+for us." The _Albatross_ was the ship which had left us at Little
+America a few months before, to steam around and pick us up at our
+destination beyond Enderby Land. "We're in the same boat with Major
+Meriden and his wife--and all those others. Lost without a trace."
+
+"You've read Scott's diary--that he wrote after he visited the pole in
+1912--the one they found with the bodies?"
+
+"Yes. Not altogether cheerful. But we won't be trying to get out. No
+use of that." He looked at me suddenly, grinning again. "Say, Jim, why
+not try for that shining mountain we saw? It looks queer enough to be
+interesting. We ought to make it in a week."
+
+"I'm with you," I said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I did not speak again, for the jagged ice-peaks were coming rather
+near. I held my breath as the little plane veered around a slender
+black spire and dropped toward a tiny scrap of smooth snow among the
+ice-hummocks. I might have spared my anxiety. Under Ray's consumately
+skilful piloting, the skids struck the snow with hardly a shock. We
+glided swiftly over the ice and came to rest just short of a yawning
+crevasse.
+
+"Suppose," said Ray, "that we spend the first night in the plane. We
+are tired already. We can keep warm here, and sleep. We've plenty of
+ice to melt for water. Then we're off for the shining mountain."
+
+I agreed: Ray Summers is usually right. We got out the sledge, packed
+it, took our bearings, and made all preparations for a start to the
+luminous mountain, which was about a hundred miles away. The
+thermometer stood at twenty below, but we were comfortable enough in
+our furs as we ate a scanty supper and went to sleep in the cabin of
+the plane.
+
+We started promptly the next morning, after draining the last of the
+hot chocolate from our vacuum bottles, which we left behind. We had a
+light but powerful sporting rifle, with telescopic sights, and several
+hundred rounds of ammunition. Ray put them in the pack, though I
+insisted that we would never need them, unless a quick way out of our
+predicament.
+
+"No, Jim," he said. "We take 'em along. We don't know what we're going
+to find at the shining mountain."
+
+The air was bitterly cold as we set out: it was twenty-five below and
+a sharp wind was blowing. Only our toiling at the sledge kept us warm.
+We covered eighteen miles that day, and made a good camp in the lee
+of a bare stone ridge.
+
+That night there was a slight fall of snow. When we went on it was
+nearly thirty-five degrees below zero. The layer of fresh snow
+concealed irregularities in the ice, making our pulling very hard.
+After an exhausting day we had made hardly fifteen miles.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the following day the sky was covered with gray clouds, and a
+bitterly cold wind blew. We should have remained in the tent, but the
+shortage of food made it imperative that we keep moving. We felt
+immensely better after a reckless, generous fill of hot pemmican stew;
+but the next morning my feet were so painful from frost-bite that I
+could hardly get on my fur boots.
+
+Walking was very painful to me that day, but we made a good distance,
+having come to smoother ice. Ray was very kind in caring for me. I
+became discouraged about going on at all: it was very painful, and I
+knew there was no hope of getting out. I tried to get some of our
+morphine tablets, but Ray had them, and refused to be convinced that
+he ought to go on without me.
+
+On the next march we came in sight of the luminous mountain, which
+cheered me considerably. It was a curious thing, indeed. A
+straight-sided cone of light it was, rather steeper than the average
+volcano. Its point was sharp, its sides smooth as if cut with a
+mammoth plane. And it shone with a pure white light, with a steady and
+unchanging milky radiance. It rose out of the black and dull yellow of
+the ice wilderness like a white finger of hope.
+
+The next morning it was a little warmer. Ray had been caring for my
+feet very attentively, but it took me nearly two hours to get on my
+footgear. Again I tried to get him to leave me, but he refused.
+
+We arrived at the base of the shining mountain in three more marches.
+On the last night the fuel for the primus was all gone, having been
+used up during the very cold weather, and we were unable to melt water
+to drink. We munched the last of our pemmican dry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few minutes after we had started on the last morning, Ray stopped
+suddenly.
+
+"Look at that!" he cried.
+
+I saw what he had seen--the wreck of an airplane, the wings crumpled
+up and blackened with fire. We limped up to it.
+
+"A Harley biplane!" Ray exclaimed. "That is Major Meriden's ship! And
+look at that wing! It looks like it's been in an electric furnace!"
+
+I examined the metal wing; saw that it had been blackened with heat.
+The metal was fused and twisted.
+
+"I've seen a good many wrecks, Jim. I've seen planes that burned as
+they fell. But nothing like that. The fuselage and engines were not
+even afire. Jim, something struck out from that shining mountain and
+brought them down!"
+
+"Are they--" I began.
+
+Ray was poking about in the snow in the cockpits.
+
+"No. Not here. Probably would have been better for them if they had
+been killed in the plane. Quick and merciful."
+
+He examined the engines and propellers.
+
+"No. Seems to be nothing wrong. Something struck them down!"
+
+Soon we went on.
+
+The shining mountain rose before us like a great cone of fire. It must
+have been three thousand feet high, and about that in diameter at the
+bottom. Its walls were as smooth and straight as though turned from
+milky rock crystal in a gigantic lathe. It shone with a steady,
+brilliantly white radiance.
+
+"That's no natural hill!" Ray grunted beside me as we limped on.
+
+We were less than a mile from the foot of the cone of fire. Soon we
+observed another remarkable thing about it. It seemed that a straight
+band of silvery metal rose from the snow about its foot.
+
+"Has it a wall around it?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Evidently," said Ray. "Looks as if it's built on a round metal
+platform. But by whom? When? Why?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We approached the curious wall. It was of a white metal, apparently
+aluminum, or a silvery alloy of that metal. In places it was
+twenty-five feet high, but more usually the snow and ice was banked
+high against it. The smooth white wall of the gleaming mountain stood
+several hundred yards back from the wall.
+
+"Let's have a look over it." Ray suggested. "We can get up on that
+hummock, against it. You know, this place must have been built by
+men!"
+
+We clambered up over the ice, as he suggested, until our heads came
+above the top of the wall.
+
+"A lake of fire!" cried Ray.
+
+Indeed, a lake of liquid fire lay before us. The white aluminum wall
+was hardly a foot thick. It formed a great circular tank, nearly a
+mile across, with the cone of white fire rising in the center. And the
+tank was filled, to within a foot of the top, with shimmeringly
+brilliant white fluid, bright and luminous as the cone--liquid light!
+
+Ray dipped a hand into it. The hand came up with fingers of fire,
+radiant, gleaming, with shining drops falling from them. With a
+spasmodic effort, he flung off the luminous drops, rubbed his hand on
+his garments, and got it back into its fur mitten.
+
+"Gee, it's cold!" he muttered. "Freeze the horns off a brass
+billy-goat!"
+
+"Cold light!" I exclaimed. "What wouldn't a bottle of that stuff be
+worth to a chemist back in the States!"
+
+"That cone must be a factory to make the stuff." Ray suggested,
+hugging his hand. "They might pump the liquid up to the top, and then
+let it trickle down over the sides: that would explain why the cone is
+so bright. The stuff might absorb sunlight, like barium sulphide. And
+there could be chemical action with the air, under the actinic rays."
+
+"Well, if somebody's making cold light, where does he use it?"
+
+"I'd like to find out, and strike him for a hot meal," Ray said,
+grinning. "It's too cold to live on top of the ground around here.
+They must run it down in a cave."
+
+"Then let's find the hole."
+
+"You know it's possible we won't be welcome. This mountain of light
+may be connected with the vanishing of all the aviators. We'd better
+take along the rifle."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We set off around just outside the white metal wall. The snow and ice
+was irregularly banked against it, but the wall itself was smooth and
+unbroken. We had limped along for some two miles, or more than halfway
+around the amazing lake of light. I had begun to doubt that we would
+find anything.
+
+Then we came to a square metal tower, ten feet on a side, that rose
+just outside the silvery wall, to a level with its top. The ice was
+low here; the tower rose twenty feet above its unequal surface. We
+found metal flanges riveted to its side, like the steps of a ladder.
+They were most inconveniently placed, nearly four feet apart; but we
+were able to climb them, and to look down the shaft.
+
+It was a straight-sided pit, evidently some hundreds of feet deep. We
+could see a tiny square of light at the bottom, very far away. The
+flanges ran down the side forming the rungs of a ladder that gave
+access to whatever lay at the bottom.
+
+Without hesitation, Ray climbed over the side and started down. I
+followed him, feeling a great relief in getting out of the freezing
+wind. Ray had the rifle and ammunition strapped to his back, along
+with a few other articles; and I had a small pack. We had abandoned
+the sledge, with the useless stove and the most of our instruments.
+Our food was all gone.
+
+The metal flanges were fully four feet apart, and it was not easy to
+scramble down from one to another; certainly not easy for one who was
+cold, hungry, thirsty, worn out with a week of exhausting marches, and
+suffering the torture of frozen feet.
+
+"You know, this thing was not built by men," Ray observed.
+
+"Not built by men? What do you mean?"
+
+"Men would have put the steps closer together. Jim, I'm afraid we are
+up against something--well--that we aren't used to."
+
+"If men didn't build this, what did?" I was astounded.
+
+"Search me! This continent has been cut off from the rest of the world
+for geologic ages. Such life as has been found here is not common to
+the rest of the earth. It is not impossible that some form of life,
+isolated here, has developed intelligence and acquired the power to
+erect that cone of light--and to burn the wing off a metal airplane."
+
+My thoughts whirled madly as we clambered down the shaft.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It must have taken us an hour to reach the bottom. I did not count the
+steps, but it must have been at least a thousand feet. The air grew
+rapidly warmer as we descended. We both took off most of our heavy fur
+garments, and left them hanging on the rungs.
+
+I was rather nervous. I felt the nearness of an intelligent, hostile
+power. I had a great fear that the owners of those steps would use
+them to find us, and then crush us ruthlessly as they had brought down
+Meriden's plane.
+
+The little square of white light below grew larger. Finally I saw Ray
+swing off and stand on his feet in a flood of white radiance below me.
+The air was warm, moist, laden with a subtle unfamiliar fragrance that
+suggested growing things. Then I stood beside Ray.
+
+We stood on the bare stone floor of a huge cavern. It must have been
+of volcanic origin. The walls glistened with the sparkling smoothness
+of volcanic glass. It was a huge space. The black roof was a hundred
+feet high, or more; the cave was some hundreds of feet wide. And it
+sloped away from us into dim distance as though leading into huger
+cavities below.
+
+The light that shone upon us came from an amazing thing--a fall of
+liquid fire. From the roof plunged a sheer torrent of white
+brilliantly luminous fluid, falling a hundred feet into a shimmering
+pool of moon-flame. Shining opalescent mists swirled about it, and the
+ceaseless roar of it filled the cave with sound. It seemed that a
+stream of the phosphorescent stuff ran off down the cave from the
+pool, to light the lower caverns.
+
+"Very clever!" said Ray. "They make the stuff up there at the cone and
+run it in here to see by."
+
+"This warm air feels mighty good," I remarked, pulling off another
+garment.
+
+Ray sniffed the air. "A curious odor. Smells like something growing.
+Where anything is growing there ought to be something to eat. Let's
+see what we can find."
+
+Only black obsidian covered the floor about us. Cautiously we skirted
+the overflowing pool of white fire, and followed down the stream of it
+that flowed toward the inner cavern. We had gone but a few hundred
+yards when suddenly Ray stopped me with a hand on my arm.
+
+"Lie flat!" he hissed. "Quick!"
+
+He dived behind a huge mass of fire-born granite. I flung myself down
+beside him.
+
+"Something is coming up the trail by the shining river. And it isn't a
+man! It's between us and the light; we should be able to see it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon I heard a curious scraping sound, and a little tinkle of metal. I
+caught a whiff of a powerful odor--a strange, fishy odor--so strong
+that it almost knocked me down.
+
+The thing that made the scraping and the tinkle and the smell came
+into view. The sight of it sickened me with horror.
+
+It was far larger than a man; its body was heavy as a horse's, but
+nearer the ground. In form it suggested a huge crab, though it was not
+very much like any crustacean I had ever seen. It was mostly red in
+color, and covered with a huge scarlet shell. It had five pairs of
+limbs. The two forward pairs had pinchers, seemingly used as hands; it
+scraped along on the other three pairs. Yard-long antennae, slender
+and luminously green, wavered above a grotesque head. The many facets
+of compound eyes stood on the end of foot-long stalks.
+
+The amazing crab-thing wore a metal harness. Bands of silvery aluminum
+were fastened about its shell, with little cases of white metal
+dangling to them. In one of its uplifted claws it carried what seemed
+to be an aluminum bar, two feet long and an inch thick.
+
+It scraped lumberingly past, between us and the racing stream of white
+fire. It passed less than a dozen feet from us. The curious fishy
+smell of it was overpowering, disgusting.
+
+Sweat of horror chilled my limbs. The monster emanated power,
+sinister, malevolent power, power intelligent, alien and hostile to
+man.
+
+I trembled with the fear that it would see us, but it scrambled
+grotesquely on. When it was twenty yards past, Ray picked up a block
+of black lava that lay beneath his hand and hurled it silently and
+swiftly. It crashed splinteringly on the rocks far beyond the
+creature, on the other side of the stream of light.
+
+In fascination I watched the monster as it paused as if astonished.
+The glittering compound eyes twisted about on their stalks, and the
+long shining green tentacles wavered questioningly. Then the knobbed
+limbs snapped the white metal tube to a level position. A metallic
+click came from it.
+
+And a ray of red light, vivid and intense, burst from the tube. It
+flashed across the river of fire. With a dull, thudding burst it
+struck the rocks where the stone had fallen. It must have been a ray
+of concentrated heat. Rocks beneath it flashed into sudden
+incandescence, splintered and cracked, flowed in molten streams.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a moment the intensely brilliant ruby ray flashed off. The rocks in
+the circle where it had struck faded to a dull red and then to
+blackness, still cracking and crumbling.
+
+To my intense relief, the monstrous crab lumbered on.
+
+"That," Ray whispered, "is what got Major Meriden's airplane wing."
+
+When we could hear its scraping progress no longer, we climbed up from
+behind our boulder and continued cautiously down the cavern, beside
+the rushing luminous river. In half a mile we came to a bend. Rounding
+it, we gazed upon a remarkable sight.
+
+We looked into a huge cavity in the heart of the earth. A vast
+underground plain lay before us, with the black lava of the roof
+arching above it. It must have been miles across, though we had no way
+to measure it, and it stretched down into dim hazy distance. Its level
+was hundreds of feet below us.
+
+At our feet the glistening river of fire plunged down again in a
+magnificent flaming fall. Below, its luminous liquid was spread out in
+rivers and lakes and canals, over all the vast plain. The channels ran
+through an amazing jungle. It was a forest of fungus, of mushroom
+things with great fleshy stalks and spreading circular tops. But they
+were not the sickly white and yellow of ordinary mushrooms, but were
+of brilliant colors, bright green, flaming scarlet, gold and
+purple-blue. Huge brilliant yellow stalks, fringed with crimson and
+black, lifted mauve tops thirty feet or more. It was a veritable
+forest of flame-bright fungus.
+
+In the center of this weirdly forested subterranean plain was a great
+lake, filled, not with the flaming liquid, but with dark crystal
+water. And on the bottom of that lake, clearly visible from the
+elevation upon which we stood, was a city!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A city below the water! The buildings were upright cylinders in groups
+of two or three, of dozens, even of hundreds. For miles, the bottom of
+the great lake was covered with them. They were all of crystal,
+azure-blue, brilliant as cylinders turned from immense sapphires. They
+were vividly visible beneath the transparent water. Not one of them
+broke the surface.
+
+Through the clear black water we saw moving hundreds, thousands of the
+giant crabs. The crawled over the hard, pebbled bottom of the lake, or
+swam between the crystal cylinders of the city. They were huge as the
+one we had seen, with red shells, great ominous looking stalked eyes,
+luminous green tentacular antennae and knobbed claws on forelimbs.
+
+"Looks as if we've run on something to write home about," Ray muttered
+in amazement.
+
+"A whole city of them! A whole world! No wonder they could build that
+cone-mountain for a lighting plant!"
+
+"When they got to knocking down airplanes with that heat-ray," he
+speculated, "they were probably surprised to find that other animals
+had developed intelligence."
+
+"Do you suppose those mushroom things are good to eat?"
+
+"We can try and see--if the crabs don't get us first with a heat-ray.
+I'm hungry enough to try anything!"
+
+Again we cautiously advanced. The river of light fell over a sheer
+precipice, but we found a metal ladder spiked to the rock, with rungs
+as inconveniently far apart as those in the shaft. It was five hundred
+feet, I suppose, to the bottom; it took us many minutes to descend.
+
+At last we stepped off in a little rocky clearing. The forest of
+brilliant mushrooms rose about us, great fleshy stalks of gold and
+graceful fringes of black and scarlet about them, with flattened heads
+of purple.
+
+We started eagerly across toward the fungoid forest. I had visions of
+tearing off great pieces of soft, golden flesh and filling my aching
+stomach with it.
+
+We were stopped by a sharp, poignantly eager human cry.
+
+A human being, a girl, darted from among the mushroom stalks and ran
+across to us. Sobbing out great incoherent cries, she dropped at Ray's
+feet, wrapped her arms about his knees and clung to him, while her
+slender body was wracked with sobbing cries.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My first impression was that she was very beautiful--and that
+impression I was never called upon to revise. About her lithe young
+body she had the merest scrap of some curious green fabric--ample in
+the warm air of the great cavern. Luxuriant brown hair fell loose
+about her white shoulders. She was not quite twenty years old, I
+supposed; her body was superbly formed, with the graceful curves and
+the free, smooth movements of a wild thing.
+
+Ray stood motionless for a moment, thunder-struck as I was, while the
+sobbing girl clung to his knees. Then the astonishment on his face
+gave place to pity.
+
+"Poor kid!" he murmured.
+
+He bent, took her tenderly by the shoulder, helped her to her feet.
+
+Her beauty burst upon us like a great light. Smoothly white, her skin
+was, perfect. Wide blue eyes, now appealing, even piteous, looked
+from beneath a wealth of golden brown hair. White teeth, straight and
+even, flashed behind the natural crimson of her lips.
+
+She stood staring at Ray, in a sort of enchantment of wonder. An eager
+light of incredible joy flamed in her amazing eyes; red lips were
+parted in an unconscious smile of joy. She looked like the troubled
+princess in the fairy tale, when the prince of her dreams appeared in
+the flesh.
+
+"God, but you're beautiful!" Ray's words slipped out as if he were
+hardly conscious of them. He flushed quickly, stepped back a little.
+
+The girl's lips opened. She voiced a curious cry. It was deep toned,
+pealing with a wonderful timbre. A happy burst of sound, like a baby
+makes. But strong, ringing, musically golden. And pathetically eager,
+pitifully glad, so that it brought tears to my eyes, cynical old man
+that I am.
+
+I saw Ray wipe his eyes.
+
+"Can you talk?" Ray put the question in a clear, deliberate voice,
+with great kindness ringing in it.
+
+"Talk?" The chiming, golden voice was slow, uncertain. "Talk? Yes. I
+talked--with mother. But for long--I have had no need to talk."
+
+"Where is your mother?" Ray's voice was gentle.
+
+"She is gone. She was here when I was little." The clear, silvery
+voice was more certain now. "Once, when I was almost as big as
+she--she was still. She was cold. She did not move when I called her.
+The Things took her away. She was dead. She told me that sometime she
+would be dead."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bright tears came in the wide blue eyes, trickled down over the
+perfect face. A pathetic catch was in the deliberate, halting voice. I
+turned away, and Ray put a handkerchief to his face.
+
+"What is your name? Who are you?" Ray spoke kindly.
+
+"I am Mildred. Mildred Meriden."
+
+"Meriden!" Ray turned to me. "I bet this is a daughter of the major
+and his wife!"
+
+"Father was the major," the girl said slowly. "He and mother came in a
+machine that flew, from a far land. The Things burned the machine with
+the red fire. They came here and the Things kept them. They made
+mother sing over the water. They killed father. I never saw him."
+
+"I know," Ray, said gently. "We came from the same land. We saw your
+father's machine above."
+
+"You came from outside! And you are going back? Oh, take me with you!
+Take me!" Piteous pleading was in her voice. "It is so--lonely since
+the Things took Mother away. Mother told me that sometime men would
+come, and take me away to see the people and the outside that she told
+me of. Oh, please take me!"
+
+"Don't worry! You go along whenever we leave--if we can get out."
+
+"Oh, I am so glad! You are very good!"
+
+Impulsively, she threw her arms around Ray's neck. Gently, he
+disengaged himself, flushing a little. I noticed, however, that he did
+not seem particularly displeased.
+
+"But can we get out?"
+
+"Mother and I tried. We could never get out. The Things watch. They
+make me come to the water to sing, when the great bell rings."
+
+"Are these things goods to eat?" I motioned to the brilliant fungal
+forest. I had begun to fear that Ray would never get to this very
+important topic.
+
+Blue eyes regarded me. "Eat? Oh, you are hungry! Come! I have food."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Like a child, she grasped Ray's hand, pulled him toward the mushroom
+jungle. I followed, and we slipped in between the brilliantly golden,
+fleshy stalks. They rose to the tangle of bright feathery fringes
+above, huge and substantial as the trunks of trees.
+
+In a few minutes we came to a wide, shallow canal, metal-walled,
+through which a slow current of the opalescent, luminous liquid was
+flowing. We crossed this on a narrow metal foot-bridge, and went on
+through the brilliant forest.
+
+Suddenly we emerged into a little clearing, with the black waters of
+the great lake visible beyond it, across a quarter-mile of rocky
+beach. In the middle of the open space, rose three straight cylinders
+of azure crystal, side by side. Each must have been twenty feet in
+diameter, and forty high. They shone with a clear blue light, like the
+cylindrical buildings we had seen in the strange city of the
+crab-creatures below the great lake.
+
+Mildred Meriden, the strangely beautiful girl who had known no other
+world than this amazing cavern empire where giant crabs reigned,
+beckoned us with unconscious queenly grace to enter the arched door in
+the blue sapphire wall of her remarkable abode of clustered cylinders.
+
+The crystal of the walls seemed luminous, the lofty cylinders were
+filled with a liquid, azure radiance. The high round room we entered
+was strangely furnished. There was a silken couch, a bathing pool of
+blue crystal filled with sparkling water, a curious chest of drawers
+made of bright aluminum with a mirror of polished crystal, its top
+bearing odd combs and other articles. The furnishings must have been
+done by the giant crabs, under human direction.
+
+Mildred led us quickly across the room, through an arched opening into
+another. A round aluminum table stood in the center of the room, with
+two curious metal chairs beside it. Odd metal cabinets stood about the
+shining blue walls. The girl made us sit down, and put dishes before
+us.
+
+She gave us each a bowl of thick, sweetish soup, darkly red; placed
+before us a dish piled high with little circular cakes, crisp and
+brown, which had a tantalizing fragrance; poured for each of us a
+transparent crystal goblet full of clear amber drink.
+
+We fell to with enthusiasm and abandon.
+
+"The Things made this place for father," the girl told us, as she
+watched us eat, attentively replenishing the red soup in the great
+blue crystal bowl, or the little cakes, or the fragrant amber drink.
+"They would give him anything he wanted. But he tried to go away with
+mother, and they killed him."
+
+"We must get out of here," Ray declared when at last we had done. "We
+must get together a lot of food, and enough clothing for all of us. We
+ought to be able to make it to the edge of the ice-pack. We've got to
+give these crab-things the slip; we ought to get off before they know
+we're here--unless they already do."
+
+Mildred was eagerly attentive: she was so unused to human speech that
+it took the best of her efforts to understand us, though it seems that
+her mother had given her quite a wide education. She promised that
+there would be no difficulty about the food.
+
+"Mother taught me how to fix food," she said. "She always said that
+sometime men would come, with weapons of fire and great noise that
+would tear and kill the Things. I have food ready, in bags--more than
+we can carry. I have, too, the furs that mother and father wore."
+
+She ran into another room and returned with a great pile of fur
+garments, which we examined and found to be in good condition.
+
+"Now is the time," Ray said. "I'd like to know more about the big
+crabs, but there'll be a chance for that, later. Mildred is the
+important thing, now. We must get her out. Then we can tell the world
+about this place and come back with a bigger expedition."
+
+"You think we can reach the coast?"
+
+"I think so. It might be hard on Mildred. But we will have food; we
+can probably find fuel for the stove in Meriden's plane, if the tanks
+were well sealed. And Captain Harper should have a relief party landed
+and sent to meet us. We should have only three or four hundred miles
+to go alone."
+
+"Three or four hundred miles, over country like we've been crossing in
+the last week, with a girl! Ray, we'd never make it!"
+
+"It's the only chance."
+
+I said nothing more. I knew that I could stand no such march on my
+frozen feet, but I resolved to say nothing about it. I would help them
+as far as I could, and then walk out of camp some night. Men have done
+just that.
+
+Mildred brought out sacks of the little cakes, and of a red powder
+that seemed to be the dried and ground flesh of a crimson mushroom. We
+made a pack for each of us, as heavy as we could carry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just before we were ready to start Ray took off my footgear and
+treated my feet from his medicine kit. I had feared gangrene, but he
+assured me that there was no danger if they were well cared for.
+Walking was still exquisitely painful to me as we slipped out through
+the arched door and into the fungoid forest beyond the three blue
+cylinders.
+
+As rapidly and silently as possible we hastened through the brilliant
+fungous forest, across the river of opalescent liquid, to the foot of
+the fall of fire. A weird and splendid sight was that sheer arc of
+shimmering white flame, roaring into a pool of opal light, and
+surrounded with a mist of moon-flame.
+
+We reached the foot of the metal ladder spiked to the rocks beside the
+fall and started up immediately. The going was not easy. The packs of
+food, heavy enough when we were on level ground, were difficult indeed
+to lift when one was scrambling up over rungs four feet apart.
+
+Ray climbed ahead, with a piece of rope fastened from his waist to
+Mildred's, so that he could help her if she slipped. I was below the
+girl. We were halfway up the rock when suddenly a glare of red light
+shone upon me, casting my shadow sharply on the cliff. I looked up
+and saw the broad, intensely red beam of a heat-ray like that we had
+seen the giant crab use.
+
+The ray came, evidently, from the shore of the great lake with its
+submerged city of blue cylinders. It fell upon the face of the cliff
+just above us. Quickly the ladder was heated to cherry red. The face
+of the rock grew incandescent, cracked. Hot sparks rained down upon
+us.
+
+Slowly the ray moved down, toward us.
+
+"Guess we'd better call it off," said Ray. "They have the advantage
+right now. Better get to climbing down, Jim. This ladder is going to
+be burning my hands pretty soon."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I climbed down. Mildred and Ray scrambled down behind me.
+
+The ray followed us, keeping the metal at a cherry red just above
+Ray's hands.
+
+I looked down and saw a dozen of the giant crabs lumbering up out of
+the fungoid jungle from the direction of the great lake. Hideous
+things they were, with staring, stalked eyes, shining green antennae,
+polished red shells, claw-armed limbs. Like the one that had passed us
+in the upper cavern, they wore glistening white metal accoutrements.
+
+We clambered down, with the red ray following.
+
+I dropped to the ground among them, wet with the sweat of horror. I
+reeled in nausea from the intolerable odor of the crab-things; it was
+indescribable, overpowering.
+
+Curious rasping stridulations came from them, sounds which seemed to
+serve as means of communication, and which Mildred evidently
+understood.
+
+"They say that you will not be harmed, but that you must not go out,"
+she called down.
+
+I was seized by the pincher-like claws, held writhing in an
+unbreakable grasp, while the glittering eyes twisted about, looked at
+me, and the shining green tentacles wavered questioningly over me. My
+stomach revolted at the horrible odor.
+
+The crabs tore off my pack, even my clothing. Ray was similarly
+treated as soon as he reached the ground. Though they took Mildred's
+pack, they treated her with a curious respect.
+
+In a few minutes they released us. They had taken the packs, the rifle
+and ammunition, our medicine kit and the few instruments we had
+brought with us down the shaft, even our clothing. They turned us
+loose stark naked. Ray's face and neck went beet-red when he saw
+Mildred standing by him.
+
+The rasping sound came from one of them again.
+
+"It says you may stay with me," Mildred said. "They will not harm you
+unless you try again to get away. If you do, you die--as father did.
+They will keep what they took from you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Several of the creatures went scraping off, carrying the articles they
+had taken from us either in their claws or in the metal cases they
+wore. Several waited, staring at us with the stalked compound eyes,
+and waving the green antennae as if they were organs of some special
+sense.
+
+Two of the creatures waited at the foot of the metal ladder, holding
+the long slender white tubes of the heat-ray in their claws.
+
+"They say we can go now," Mildred said.
+
+She led the way toward the edge of the brilliant jungle. She seemed to
+be without false modesty, for I saw her glancing with evident
+admiration at Ray's lithe and powerful white-skinned figure. We
+followed her into the giant mushrooms, glad to escape the overpowering
+stench of the crabs.
+
+In a few minutes we arrived again at the strange building of the three
+blue cylinders. Mildred, noticing our discomfort, produced for each of
+us a piece of white silken fabric with which we draped ourselves.
+
+She had noticed my difficulty in walking on bare feet. She had me
+bathe them, then dressed them with a soothing yellow oil, and bandaged
+them skilfully.
+
+"Anyhow," she said later, "it is good to have both of you here with
+me. I am sorry indeed for you that you may never see your country
+again. But it is good fortune for me. I was so lonely."
+
+"These damned crabs don't know me!" Ray Summers muttered. "They think
+I'll play around like a pet kitten, for the rest of my life! They'll
+get their eyes opened. We'll spend the winter on Palm Beach yet!"
+
+"It seems to me that we're rather outnumbered." I said. "And it's
+rather more pleasant in here than outside."
+
+"I'm going to get that rifle," Ray declared, "and give these big crabs
+a little respect for humanity!"
+
+"Let's rest up a while first, anyhow," I urged.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently Mildred noticed how tired we were. She went into the third
+of the connected cylinders of blue crystal, was busy a few minutes and
+called us to the couches she had prepared there.
+
+"You may sleep," she told us. "The Things never come here. And they
+said they would not harm you, if you did not try to go out."
+
+We lay down on the silken beds. In a few minutes I was sleep. I awoke
+to feel a curious unease, a sense of impending catastrophe. Ray was
+bending over me, his face drawn with anxiety.
+
+"Something's happened!" he whispered. "She's gone!"
+
+I sat up, staring into the liquid blue vastness of the tall cylinder
+above us.
+
+"Listen! What's that?"
+
+A deep bell-note sounded out, brazen, clanging. Sonorous, throbbing,
+mighty, it rang through the cylindered rooms. Slowly it died; faded to
+silence with a last ringing pulse. Tense minutes of silence passed.
+Again it boomed out, throbbed, and died. After more long minutes there
+was yet a third.
+
+"Outside, somewhere!"
+
+Ray started; ran to the arched door. We looked out upon the dense
+forest of gold and crimson mushrooms that grew below the black cavern
+roof. Before us, across a few hundred yards of bare rocky beach, was
+the edge of the crystal lake with the city of blue cylinders upon its
+floor.
+
+"God! What's that?" Ray gripped my arm crushingly.
+
+A thin wailing scream came across the beach from the black lake. A
+piteous sound it was, plaintive, pleading. Higher and higher it rose,
+until it was a piercing silver note. Clear and sweet it was, but
+inexpressibly lonely, sorrowful, mournful. It sank slowly, died away.
+Again it rose and fell, and again.
+
+"It's Mildred!" I gasped. "Didn't she say something about singing to
+the crabs?"
+
+"Yes! I think she did. Well, if that's singing, it's wonderful! Had me
+feeling like I'd never see another human. But listen--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Liquid, trilling notes were rising, pealing out in a queer, swift
+rhythm. It was happy, joyous, carefree. The rippling golden tones made
+me think of the caroling of birds on a spring morning. Swiftly it rose
+and fell, pure and clear as the tinkle of a mountain brook.
+
+Mildred sang not words but notes of pure music.
+
+The gay song died.
+
+And the strong clear voice rose again with the force and challenge of
+bugle notes, with a swift marching time beating through it. It
+throbbed to a rhythm strange to me. It set my feet tingling to move;
+it set my heart to pulsing faster. It was a challenge to action, to
+battle.
+
+Unconsciously obeying the suggestion of the song, Ray whispered,
+"Let's get over and see what's going on."
+
+We leaped through the door and ran across four hundred yards of rocky
+beach to the edge of the lake. We stepped on a granite bluff a few
+yards above the water, to gaze upon as strange a sight as men ever
+saw.
+
+The black water lay before us, a transparent crystal sheet. On its
+rocky bottom we could see the innumerable clusters of upright azure
+cylinders that were the city of the crabs. The blue cylinders seemed
+to bend and waver in the water.
+
+A hundred yards away from us, over the dark water, was Mildred. She
+stood on a slender azure cylinder that came just to the surface. Tall,
+slender, superbly graceful, with only the scant bodice of green silken
+stuff about her, she looked like the statue of a goddess in white
+marble. Her head was thrown up, golden-brown hair fell behind her
+shoulders, and the pure notes of her song rang over the water.
+
+Beyond her, all about her, were thousands upon thousands of the giant
+crabs, swimming at the surface of the water. Their green antenna rose
+above the water, a curious forest of luminous tentacles, flexing,
+wavering. Green coils moved and swung in time to the strange rhythm of
+her song.
+
+The last note died. Her white arms fell in a gesture of finality. The
+thousands of twisting green antennae vanished below the water, and the
+giant red crabs swam swiftly back to the tall blue cylinders of their
+submerged city.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The white goddess turned and saw us.
+
+Her voice rang out in a golden shout of welcome. With a clean dive she
+slipped into the water and came swimming swiftly toward us. Her slim
+white body glided through the crystal water as smoothly as a fish.
+Reaching the shore she sprang to her feet and ran to meet Ray.
+
+"The Things come together when the giant bell rings, to listen to my
+song," she said. "They like my singing, as they liked mother's. But
+for that, they would not let us live. That is the reason they would
+not let us go."
+
+"I like your singing, too," Ray informed her. "Though at first you
+made me cry. It was so lonely."
+
+"The song was lonely because I have been lonely. Did you hear the glad
+song I sang because you have come?"
+
+"Sure! Great stuff! Made me feel like a kid at Christmas!"
+
+"Come," she said. "We will eat."
+
+Like a child, she took Ray's hand again, smiling naively up at him as
+she led the way toward the three sapphire cylinders.
+
+Back in the blue-vaulted dining room, Ray made Mildred sit with me at
+the little metal table while he served the little brown cakes and the
+dark-red soup and the fragrant amber drink. Mildred got up and brought
+a great metal bowl filled with tiny purple fruits that had a
+delicious, piquant tang.
+
+Ray was deeply thoughtful as he ate. Suddenly he sat back and cried
+out:
+
+"I've got it!"
+
+"Got what?" I demanded.
+
+"I want that rifle! Mildred can find out where it is. Then, when she
+sings, the crabs will all come. I'll get the gun, while she is
+singing, and hide it. Then when it comes time to get out, she will
+sing while you and I are getting our packs up the cliff. I can cover
+them with the rifle while she gets up to us."
+
+"Looks good enough," I agreed, "provided they all come to hear the
+singing."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He explained the plan at greater length to the girl. She assured him
+that the crabs all come when the bell-notes sound. She thought that
+she could make them return her furs, and find out where they had put
+the gun.
+
+My feet were much better than they had been, and Mildred dressed them
+again with the yellow oil. Ray examined them, said that I should be
+able to walk as well as ever in a few days.
+
+Considerable time went by. Since the crabs had taken our watches, we
+had no very accurate way of counting days; but I think we slept about
+a dozen times. Ray and Mildred spent a good deal of time together, and
+seemed not altogether to hate each other. By the end of the time my
+feet were quite well; I did not even lose a toe.
+
+We went over our plans for escape in great detail. The crabs had
+confiscated our clothing. Mildred managed to secure the return of her
+furs, and, incidentally, while she was about it, learned where the
+rifle was.
+
+Fortunately, perhaps realizing that it would be ruined by water, the
+crabs had not taken it to their submerged city. Being amphibious, they
+lived above water as easily as below, and much of their industrial
+equipment was above the surface. The great pumps which lifted the
+white phosphorescent liquid from the canals back to the cone above the
+ground were located beyond the great lake. I did not see the place,
+but Ray tells me that they had great engines and a wealth of strange
+and complex machinery there. It was at these pumps that they had left
+our rifle and instruments, as Mildred found when she was recovering
+her furs.
+
+They had taken our food, and we prepared as much more as we could
+carry, arranged sacks for it, and made quilted garments for ourselves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the three brazen notes clanged out, and Mildred ran across the
+beach and swam out to the blue cylinder to sing. Ray slipped hurriedly
+away, while the green forest of antennae was still growing up from the
+water about the girl.
+
+I waited above the beach, enchanted by the haunting, wordless melody
+of the gongs. It seemed that only a few minutes had passed, though it
+may have been an hour or more, when Ray was by my side again. He
+flourished the rifle.
+
+"I've got it! In good shape, too. Hasn't even been fired, though it
+looks like they have opened a box of cartridges, and cut open one or
+two. Maybe they didn't understand the outfit--or it may be such a
+primitive weapon that they aren't interested in it."
+
+We hurried up to the building of blue cylinders and carefully hid the
+gun and ammunition, as well as a sun compass, a pair of prism
+binoculars, and a few other articles Ray had recovered.
+
+In a few minutes Mildred, having seen Ray's return, finished her song
+and ran up to join us. We arranged our packs, and waited the next call
+of the throbbing brazen gong to make the attempt for freedom.
+
+We slept twice again before the clang of the great gong. Ray and
+Mildred were always together; I could not see that they were at all
+impatient.
+
+The bell note came, the awful brazen vibration of it ringing on the
+black cavern roof. It came when we were eating, in the liquid
+turquoise radiance of the lofty cylinder. We sprang out. Ray gave his
+last directions to Mildred.
+
+"Give us time to get to the top of the cliff by the shining fall. Then
+swim ashore and run. They may not notice. And if they do, we give 'em
+a taste of lead!"
+
+I was not very much surprised when he took the girl in his arms and
+put a burning kiss on her red lips. She gasped, but her struggles
+subsided very quickly; she clung to him as he freed her.
+
+She paused a moment in the door, before she ran down across the beach.
+A radiant light of joy was burning in her great blue eyes, even though
+tears were glistening there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ray and I waited, to give time for the giant crabs that guarded the
+ladder to get away. In about ten more minutes the second brazen gong
+sounded, and presently the third. We gathered up the heavy packs of
+food. Ray took the rifle and I the binoculars, and we slipped out into
+the brilliant mushroom forest.
+
+I stepped confidently out of the jungle into the clearing below the
+splendid opalescent fall of fire--and threw myself backward in
+trembling panic. A flaming crimson ray cut hissing into the towering
+mushrooms above my head.
+
+Mildred's confidence that the crabs would all gather at the ringing of
+the gong had been mistaken. The two guards had been waiting at the
+foot of the ladder, their flaming heat-rays ready for use.
+
+As I dived back into the jungle, I heard two quick reports of the
+rifle. I scrambled awkwardly to my feet, beneath the heavy pack. Ray
+stood alert beside me, the smoking rifle in his hand. The giant crabs
+had collapsed by the foot of the ladder, in grotesque and hideous
+metal-bound heaps of red shell and twisted limb. Blood was oozing from
+a ragged hole in the head of each.
+
+"Glad they were here," Ray muttered. "I wanted to try the gun out on
+'em. They're soft enough beneath the shell; the bullet tears 'em up
+inside. Let's get a move on!"
+
+He sprang past the revolting carcasses. I followed, holding my nose
+against their nauseating, charnel-house odor. We scrambled up the
+metal ladder.
+
+As we climbed, I could hear the haunting melody of Mildred's wordless
+song coming faint across the distance. Once I glanced back for a
+moment, and glimpsed her tiny white figure above the black water, with
+the thousands of green antennae rising in a luminous forest about her.
+
+We reached the top of the cliff, where the opalescent river plunged
+down in the flaming fall. Ray chose convenient boulders for shelter
+and quickly we flung ourselves flat. Ray replaced the fired cartridges
+in the rifle and leveled it across the rock before him. I unslung the
+binoculars and focussed them.
+
+"Watch 'em close," Ray muttered. "And tell me when to shoot."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The black lake lay below us, with the weird city of sapphire cylinders
+on its floor. I got the glasses upon Mildred's white form. Soon she
+dived from the turquoise pedestal, swam swiftly ashore and vanished in
+the vivid fungous jungle. The wavering green antennae vanished below
+the water; I watched the crabs swimming away. Some of them climbed out
+of the water and lumbered off in various directions.
+
+In fifteen minutes the slender white form of Mildred appeared at the
+foot of the ladder. She sprang over the dead crabs and scrambled
+nimbly up. Soon she was halfway up the face of the cliff, and there
+had been no sign of discovery. My hopes ran high.
+
+I was sweeping the whole plain with the binoculars, while Ray peered
+through the telescopic sights of the rifle. Suddenly I saw a giant
+crab pause as he lumbered along the edge of the black lake. He rose
+upright; his shining green antennae wavered. Then I saw him reaching
+with a knobbed claw for a slender silver tube slung to his harness.
+
+"Quick! The one by the lake! To the right of that canal!"
+
+I pointed quickly. Ray swung his gun about, aimed. A broad red beam
+flashed from the tube the thing carried, and fell upon the cliff. The
+report of Ray's rifle rang thunderously in my ears. The red ray was
+snapped off abruptly, and the giant crab rolled over into the black
+water of the lake. Half a dozen of the huge crabs were in sight. They
+all took alarm, probably having seen the flash of the red ray. They
+raised grotesque heads, twisted stalked eyes and waved green antennae.
+Some of them began to raise the metal tubes of the heat-ray.
+
+"Let's get all there are in sight!" Ray muttered.
+
+He began firing regularly, with deliberate precision. A few times he
+had to take two shots, but ordinarily one was enough to bring down a
+giant crab in a writhing red mass. Three times a red ray flashed out,
+once at the girl clambering up the ladder, twice at our position above
+the precipice. But the intense color of the ray announced its source,
+and Ray stopped each before it could be focussed to do damage.
+
+I looked over at Mildred and saw that she was still climbing bravely,
+a little over a hundred feet below.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the great red crabs began to climb out of the water, heat-ray
+tubes grasped in their claws. Ray fired as fast as he could load and
+aim. Still he shot with deliberate care, and almost every shot was
+effective.
+
+Intense, ruby-red rays flashed up from the lake shore. Twice, one of
+them beat scorchingly upon us for a moment. Once a rock beside us was
+fused and cracked with the heat. But Ray fired rapidly, and the rays
+winked out as fast as they were born.
+
+He was powder-stained, black and grimy. The heat-ray had singed his
+clothing. He was dripping perspiration. The gun was so hot that he
+could hardly handle it. But still the angry bark of the rifle rang
+out, almost with a deliberate rhythm. Ray was a fine shot in his youth
+on his father's Arizona ranch, but his best shooting, I think, was
+done from above that cascade of liquid fire, at the hordes of monster
+scarlet crabs.
+
+Mildred scrambled over the edge, unharmed. Her breast was heaving, but
+her face was bright with joy.
+
+"You are wonderful!" she gasped to Ray.
+
+We seized the packs and beat a hurried retreat. A crimson forest of
+the heat-rays flashed up behind us, and flamed upon the black walls
+and roof of the cavern until glistening lava became incandescent,
+cracked and fused.
+
+We were below the line of the rays. Quickly we made the bend in the
+cavern and followed at a halting run up the path beside the shimmering
+river of opalescent light. Before us the torrent of fire fell in a
+magnificent flaming arc from the roof.
+
+We rounded the pool of lambent milk of flame, passed the roaring
+torrent of coruscating liquid radiance and reached the ladder in the
+square, metal shaft. "If we can get to the top before they can get up
+here, we're safe," Ray said. "If we don't, this shaft will be a
+chimney of fire."
+
+In the haste of desperation, we attacked the thousand-foot climb. I
+went first, Mildred below me, and Ray, with the rifle, in the rear.
+Our heavy packs were a terrible impediment, but we dared not attempt
+to go on without them. The metal rungs were four feet apart; it was no
+easy task to scramble from one to the next, again and again, for
+hundreds of times.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It must have taken us an hour to make it. We should have been caught
+long before we reached the top, but the giant crabs were slow in their
+lumbering movements. Despite their evident intelligence, they seemed
+to lack anything like our railways and automobiles.
+
+The cold gray light of the polar sky came about us; a dull,
+purple-blue square grew larger above. I clambered over the last rung,
+flung myself across the top of the metal shaft. Looking down at the
+tiny fleck of white light so far below, I saw a bit of red move in it.
+
+"A crab!" I shouted. "Hurry!"
+
+Mildred was just below me. I took her pack and helped her over the
+edge.
+
+Red flame flared up the shaft.
+
+We reached over, seized Ray's arms and fairly jerked him out of the
+ruby ray.
+
+The bitterly cold wind struck our hot, perspiring bodies as we
+scrambled down the rungs outside the square metal shaft. Mildred
+shivered in her thin attire.
+
+"Out of the frying pan into the ice box!" Ray jested grimly as we
+dropped, to the frozen plain.
+
+Quickly we tore open our packs. Ray and I snatched out clothing and
+wrapped up the trembling girl. In a few minutes we had her snugly
+dressed in the fur garments that had been Major Meriden's. Then we got
+into the quilted garments we had made for ourselves.
+
+The intensely red heat-beam still flared up the shaft. Ray looked at
+it in satisfaction.
+
+"They'll have it so hot they can't get up it for some time yet," he
+remarked hopefully.
+
+We shouldered our packs and set out over the wilderness of snow,
+turning our backs upon the metal-bound lake of fire, with the tall
+cone of iridescent flame rising in its center.
+
+The deep, purple-blue sky was clear, and, for a rarity, there was not
+much wind. I doubt that the temperature was twenty below. But it was a
+violent change from the warm cavern. Mildred was blue and shivering.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In two hours the metal rim below the great white cone had vanished
+behind the black ice-crags. We passed near the wreck of Major
+Meriden's plane and reached our last camp, where we had left the tent
+sledge, primus stove, and most of our instruments. The tent was still
+stretched, though banked with snow. We got Mildred inside, chafed her
+hands, and soon had her comfortable.
+
+Then Ray went out and soon returned with a sealed tin of oil from the
+wrecked plane, with which he lit the primus stove. Soon the tent was
+warm. We melted snow and cooked thick red soup. After the girl had
+made a meal of the scalding soup, with the little golden cakes, she
+professed to be feeling as well as ever.
+
+"We can fix our plane!" Ray said. "There's a perfectly good prop on
+Meriden's plane!"
+
+We went back to the wreck, found the tools, and removed an undamaged
+propeller. This we packed on the sledge, with a good supply of fuel
+for the stove.
+
+"I'm sure we're safe now, so far as the crab-things go," he said. "I
+don't fancy they'd get around very well in the snow."
+
+In an hour we broke camp, and made ten miles of the distance back to
+the plane before we stopped. We were anxious about Mildred, but she
+seemed to stand the journey admirably; she is a marvelous physical
+specimen. She seemed running over with gay vivacity of spirit; she
+asked innumerable questions of the world which she had known only at
+second-hand from her mother's words.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The weather smiled on us during the march back to the plane as much as
+it had frowned on the terrible journey to the cone. We had an
+abundance of food and fuel, and we made it in eight easy stages. Once
+there was a light fall of snow, but the air was unusually warm and
+calm for the season.
+
+We found the plane safe. It was the work of but a short time to remove
+the broken propeller and replace it with the one we had brought from
+the wrecked ship. We warmed and started the engine, broke the skids
+loose from the ice, turned the plane around, and took off safely from
+the tiny scrap of smooth ice.
+
+Mildred seemed amazed and immensely delighted at the sensations of her
+first trip aloft.
+
+A few hours later we were landing beside the _Albatross_, in the
+leaden blue sea beyond the ice barrier. Bluff Captain Harper greeted
+us in amazed delight as we climbed to the deck.
+
+"You're just in time!" he said. "The relief expedition we landed came
+back a week ago. We had no idea you could still be alive, with only a
+week's provisions. We were sailing to-morrow. But tell us! What
+happened? Your passenger--"
+
+"We just stopped to pick up my fiancee," Ray grinned. "Captain, may I
+present Miss Mildred Meriden? We'll be wanting you to marry us right
+away."
+
+
+THE MENACE OF THE INSECT
+
+It is possible that future study may tell man enough about insects to
+enable him to eradicate them. This, however, is more than can be
+reasonably expected, for the more we cultivate the earth the better we
+make conditions for these enemies. The insect thrives on the work of
+man. And having made conditions ideal for the insect, with great
+expanses of cultivated food fitted to his needs, it is an optimist who
+can believe that at the same time we can make other conditions which
+will be so unfavorable as to cause him to disappear completely. The
+two things do not go together.
+
+The insect is much better fitted for life than is man. He can survive
+long periods of famine, he can survive extremes of heat and cold. The
+insect produces great numbers of young which have no long period of
+infancy requiring the attention of the parents over a large part of
+their life. Every function of the insect is directed toward the
+propagation of the race and the use of minimum effort in every other
+direction.
+
+It is even possible in some cases, the water flea, for example, for
+the female to produce young without the necessity of fertilization by
+the male. In order to perform the necessary work to insure food
+supplies for the winter other insects have developed highly
+specialized workers, especially fitted to do particular kinds of
+labor. Ants and termites are in this class.
+
+If we examine the organization of insects closely we shall find but
+one point at which they are vulnerable. This is in their lack of
+ability to reason. True, there is considerable evidence to support the
+belief that some insects are capable of simple reasoning, but the
+development in this direction is only of the most elementary nature.
+As compared to man it is safe to say that they do not reason. They are
+guided by instinct.
+
+This again is the most efficient way to organize their affairs. It
+requires no long period of training. They can begin performing all
+their useful functions as soon as their bodily development makes it
+possible. No one need teach them how to catch their prey, how to build
+their nests or shelters. Instinct takes care of this. But this,
+obviously the best system in a world wholly governed by instinct, is
+not so desirable when the instinctively actuated insect encounters
+another form of life, as man, which is capable of reason. The
+reasoning individual can play all kinds of tricks on the individual
+who is actuated by instinct.
+
+
+
+
+The Ghost World
+
+_By Sewell Peaslee Wright_
+
+[Illustration: _My whole attention was focused upon the strange
+beings._]
+
+[Sidenote: Commander John Hanson records another of his thrilling
+interplanetary adventures with the Special Patrol Service.]
+
+
+I was asleep when our danger was discovered, but I knew the instant
+the attention signal sounded that the situation was serious. Kincaide,
+my second officer, had a cool head, and he would not have called me
+except in a tremendous emergency.
+
+"Hanson speaking!" I snapped into the microphone. "What's up, Mr.
+Kincaide?"
+
+"A field of meteorites sweeping into our path, sir." Kincaide's voice
+was tense. "I have altered our course as much as I dared and am
+reducing speed at emergency rate, but this is the largest swarm of
+meteorites I have ever seen. I am afraid that we must pass through at
+least a section of it."
+
+"With you in a moment, Mr. Kincaide!" I dropped the microphone and
+snatched up my robe, knotting its cord about me as I hurried out of my
+stateroom. In those days, interplanetary ships did not have their
+auras of repulsion rays to protect them from meteorites, it must be
+remembered. Two skins of metal were all that lay between the _Ertak_
+and all the dangers of space.
+
+I took the companionway to the navigating room two steps at a time and
+fairly burst into the room.
+
+Kincaide was crouched over the two charts that pictured the space
+around us, microphone pressed to his lips. Through the plate glass
+partition I could see the men in the operating room tensed over their
+wheels and levers and dials. Kincaide glanced up as I entered, and
+motioned with his free hand towards the charts.
+
+One glance convinced me that he had not overestimated our danger. The
+space to right and left, and above and below, was fairly peppered with
+tiny pricks of greenish light that moved slowly across the milky faces
+of the charts.
+
+From the position of the ship, represented as a glowing red spark, and
+measuring the distances roughly by means of the fine black lines
+graved in both directions upon the surface of the chart, it was
+evident to any understanding observer that disaster of a most terrible
+kind was imminent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kincaide muttered into his microphone, and out of the tail of my eye I
+could see his orders obeyed on the instant by the men in the operating
+room. I could feel the peculiar, sickening surge that told of speed
+being reduced, and the course being altered, but the cold, brutally
+accurate charts before me assured me that no action we dared take
+would save us from the meteorites.
+
+"We're in for it, Mr. Kincaide. Continue to reduce speed as much as
+possible, and keep bearing away, as at present. I believe we can avoid
+the thickest portion of the field, but we shall have to take our
+chances with the fringe."
+
+"Yes, sir!" said Kincaide, without lifting his eyes from the chart.
+His voice was calm and businesslike, now; with the responsibility on
+my shoulders, as commander, he was the efficient, level-headed
+thinking machine that had endeared him to me as both fellow-officer
+and friend.
+
+Leaving the charts to Kincaide, I sounded the general emergency
+signal, calling every man and officer of the _Ertak's_ crew to his
+post, and began giving orders through the microphone.
+
+"Mr. Correy,"--Correy was my first officer--"please report at once to
+the navigating room. Mr. Hendricks, make the rounds of all duty posts,
+please, and give special attention to the disintegrator ray operators.
+The ray generators are to be started at once, full speed." Hendricks,
+I might say, was a junior officer, and a very good one, although
+quick-tempered and excitable--failings of youth. He had only recently
+shipped with us to replace Anderson Croy, who--but that has already
+been recorded.[2]
+
+[Footnote 2: "The Dark Side of Antri," in the January, 1931, issue of
+Astounding Stories.]
+
+These preparations made, I glanced at the twin charts again. The
+peppering of tiny green lights, each of which represented a meteoritic
+body, had definitely shifted in relation to the position of the
+strongly-glowing red spark that was the _Ertak_, but a quick
+comparison of the two charts showed that we would be certain to pass
+through--again I use land terms to make my meaning clear--the upper
+right fringe of the field.
+
+The great cluster of meteorites was moving in the same direction as
+ourselves now; Kincaide's change of course had settled that matter
+nicely. Naturally, this was the logical course, since should we come
+in contact with any of them, the impact would bear a relation to only
+the _difference_ in our speeds, instead of the _sum_, as would be the
+case if we struck at a wide angle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was difficult to stand without grasping a support of some kind, and
+walking was almost impossible, for the reduction of our tremendous
+speed, and even the slightest change of direction, placed terrific
+strains upon the ship and everything in it. Space ships, at space
+speeds, must travel like the old-fashioned bullets if those within are
+to feel at ease.
+
+"I believe, Mr. Kincaide, it might be well to slightly increase the
+power in the gravity pads," I suggested. Kincaide nodded and spoke
+briefly into his microphone; an instant later I felt my weight
+increase perhaps fifty per cent, and despite the inertia of my body,
+opposed to both the change in speed and direction of the _Ertak_, I
+could now stand without support, and could walk without too much
+difficulty.
+
+The door of the navigating room was flung open, and Correy entered,
+his face alight with curiosity and eagerness. An emergency meant
+danger, and few beings in the universe have loved danger more than
+Correy.
+
+"We're in for it, Mr. Correy," I said, with a nod towards the charts.
+"Swarm of meteorites, and we can't avoid them."
+
+"Well, we've dodged through them before, sir," smiled Correy. "We can
+do it again."
+
+"I hope so, but this is the largest field of them I have ever seen.
+Look at the charts: they're thicker than flies."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Correy glanced at the charts, slapped Kincaide across his bowed, tense
+shoulders, and laughed aloud.
+
+"Trust the old _Ertak_ to worm her way through, sir," he said. "The
+ray crews are on duty, I presume?"
+
+"Yes. But I doubt that the rays will be of much assistance to us.
+Particularly if these are stony meteorites--and as you know, the odds
+are about ten to one against their being of ferrous composition. The
+rays, deducting the losses due to the utter lack of a conducting
+medium, will be insufficient protection. They will help, of course.
+The iron meteorites they will take care of effectively, but the
+conglomerate nature of the stony meteorites does not make them
+particularly susceptible to the disintegrating rays.
+
+"We shall do what we can, but our success will depend largely upon
+good luck--or Divine Providence."
+
+"At any rate, sir," replied Correy, and his voice had lost some of its
+lightness, "we are upon routine patrol and not upon special mission.
+If we do crack up, there is no emergency call that will remain
+unanswered."
+
+"No," I said dryly. "There will be just another 'Lost in Space' report
+in the records of the Service, and the _Ertak's_ name will go up on
+the tablet of lost ships. In any case, we have done and shall do what
+we can. In ten minutes we shall know all there is to know. That about
+right, Mr. Kincaide?"
+
+"Ten minutes?" Kincaide studied the charts with narrowed eyes,
+mentally balancing distance and speed. "We should be within the danger
+area in about that length of time, sir," he answered. "And out of
+it--if we come out--three or four minutes later."
+
+"We'll come out of it," said Correy positively.
+
+I walked heavily across the room and studied the charts again. Space
+above and below, to the right and the left of us, was powdered with
+the green points of light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Correy joined me, his feet thumping with the unaccustomed weight given
+him by the increase in gravity. As he bent over the charts, I heard
+him draw in his breath sharply.
+
+Kincaide looked up. Correy looked up. I looked up. The glance of each
+man swept the faces, read the eyes, of the other two. Then, with one
+accord, we all three glanced up at the clocks--more properly, at the
+twelve-figured dial of the Earth clock, for none of us had any great
+love for the metric Universal system of time-keeping.
+
+Ten minutes.... Less than that, now.
+
+"Mr. Correy," I said, as calmly as I could, "you will relieve Mr.
+Kincaide as navigating officer. Mr. Kincaide, present my compliments
+to Mr. Hendricks, and ask him to explain the situation to the crew.
+You will instruct the disintegrator ray operators in their duties, and
+take charge of their activities. Start operation at your discretion;
+you understand the necessity."
+
+"Yes, sir!" Kincaide saluted sharply, and I returned his salute. We
+did not shake hands, the Earth gesture of--strangely enough--both
+greeting and farewell, but we both realized that this might well be a
+final parting. The door closed behind him, and Correy and I were left
+together to watch the creeping hands of the Earth clock, the twin
+charts with their thick spatter of green lights, and the two fiery red
+sparks, one on each chart, that represented the _Ertak_ sweeping
+recklessly towards the swarming danger ahead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In other accounts of my experiences in the Special Patrol Service I
+feel that I have written too much about myself. After all, I have run
+my race; a retired commander of the Service, and an old, old man, with
+the century mark well behind me, my only use is to record, in this
+fashion, some of those things the Service accomplished in the old days
+when the worlds of the Universe were strange to each other, and space
+travel was still an adventure to many.
+
+The Universe is not interested in old men; it is concerned only with
+youth and action. It forgets that once we were young men, strong,
+impetuous, daring. It forgets what we did; but that has always been
+so. It always will be so. John Hanson, retired Commander of the
+Special Patrol Service, is fit only to amuse the present generation
+with his tales of bygone days.
+
+Well, so be it. I am content. I have lived greatly; certainly I would
+not exchange my memories of those bold, daring days even for youth and
+strength again, had I to live that youth and waste that strength in
+this softened, gilded age.
+
+But no more of this; it is too easy for an old man to rumble on about
+himself. It is only the young John Hanson, Commander of the _Ertak_,
+who can interest those who may pick up and read what I am writing
+here.
+
+I did not waste the minutes measured by that clock, grouped with our
+other instruments in the navigating room of the _Ertak_. I wrote
+hastily in the ship's log, stating the facts briefly and without
+feeling. If we came through, the log would read better thus; if not,
+and by some strange chance it came to human eyes, then the Universe
+would know at least that the _Ertak's_ officers did not flinch from
+even such a danger.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As I finished the entry, Correy spoke:
+
+"Kincaide's estimate was not far off, sir," he said, with a swift
+glance at the clock. "Here we go!" It was less than half a minute
+short of the ten estimated by Kincaide.
+
+I nodded and bent over the television disc--one of the huge, hooded
+affairs we used in those days. Widening the field to the greatest
+angle, and with low power, I inspected the space before us on all
+sides.
+
+The charts, operated by super-radio reflexes, had not lied about the
+danger into which we were passing--had passed. We were in the midst of
+a veritable swarm of meteorites of all sizes.
+
+They were not large; I believe the largest I saw had a mass of not
+more than three or four times that of the _Ertak_ herself. Some of the
+smaller bodies were only fifty or sixty feet in diameter.
+
+They were jagged and irregular in shape, and they seemed to spin at
+varying speeds, like tiny worlds.
+
+As I watched, fixing my view now on the space directly in our path, I
+saw that our disintegrator ray men were at work. Deep in the bowels of
+the _Ertak_, the moan of the ray generators had deepened in note; I
+could even feel the slight vibration beneath my feet.
+
+One of the meteorites slowly crumbled on top, the dust of
+disintegration hovering in a compact mass about the body. More and
+more of it melted away. The spinning motion grew irregular, eccentric,
+as the center of gravity was changed by the action of the ray.
+
+Another ray, two more, centered on the wobbling mass. It was directly
+in our path, looming up larger and larger every second.
+
+Faster and faster it melted, the rays eating into it from four sides.
+But it was perilously near now; I had to reduce power in order to keep
+all of it within the field of my disc. If--
+
+The thing vanished before the very nose of the ship, not an instant
+too soon. I glanced up at the surface temperature indicator, and saw
+the big black hand move slowly for a degree or two, and stop. It was a
+very sensitive instrument, and registered even the slight friction of
+our passage through the disintegrated dust of the meteorite.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our rays were working desperately, but disintegrator rays are not
+nearly so effective in space as in an atmosphere of some kind. Half a
+dozen times it seemed that we must crash head on into one of the
+flying bodies, but our speed was reduced now to such an extent that we
+were going but little faster than the meteorites, and this fact was
+all that saved us. We had more time for utilizing our rays.
+
+We nosed upward through the trailing fringe of the swarm in safety.
+The great field of meteorites was now below and ahead of us. We had
+won through! The _Ertak_ was safe, and--
+
+"There seems to be another directly above us, sir," commented Correy
+quietly, speaking for the first time since we had entered the area of
+danger. "I believe your disc is not picking it up."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Correy," I said. While operating on an entirely
+different principle, his two charts had certain very definite
+advantages: they showed the entire space around us, instead of but a
+portion.
+
+I picked up the meteorite he had mentioned without difficulty. It was
+a large body, about three times the mass of the _Ertak_, and some
+distance above us--a laggard in the group we had just eluded.
+
+"Will it coincide with our path at any point, Mr. Correy?" I asked
+doubtfully. The television disc could not, of course, give me this
+information.
+
+"I believe so; yes," replied Correy, frowning over his charts. "Are
+the rays on it, sir?"
+
+"Yes. All of them, I judge, but they are making slow work of it." I
+fell silent, bending lower over the great hooded disc.
+
+There were a dozen, a score of rays playing upon the surface of the
+meteorite. A halo of dust hung around the rapidly diminishing body,
+but still the mass melted all too slowly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pressing the attention signal for Kincaide, I spoke sharply into the
+microphone:
+
+"Mr. Kincaide, is every ray on that large meteorite above us?"
+
+"Yes, sir," he replied instantly.
+
+"Full power?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Very well; carry on, Mr. Kincaide." I turned to Correy; he had just
+glanced from his charts to the clock, with its jerking second hand,
+and back to his charts.
+
+"They'll have to do it in the next ten seconds, sir," he said.
+"Otherwise--" Correy shrugged, and his eyes fixed with a peculiar,
+fascinated stare on the charts. He was looking death squarely in the
+eyes.
+
+Ten seconds! It was not enough. I had watched the rays working, and I
+knew their power to disintegrate this death-dealing stone that was
+hurtling along above us while we rose, helplessly, into its path.
+
+I did not ask Correy if it was possible to alter the course enough,
+and quickly enough, to avoid that fateful path. Had it been possible
+without tearing the _Ertak_ to pieces with the strain of it, Correy
+would have done it seconds ago.
+
+I glanced up swiftly at the relentless, jerking second hand. Seven
+seconds gone! Three seconds more.
+
+The rays were doing all that could be expected of them. There was only
+a tiny fragment of the meteorite left, and it was dwindling swiftly.
+But our time was passing even more rapidly.
+
+The bit of rock loomed up at me from the disc. It seemed to fly up
+into my face, to meet me.
+
+"Got us, Correy!" I said hoarsely. "Good-by, old-man!"
+
+I think he tried to reply. I saw his lips open; the flash of the
+bright light from the ethon tubes on his big white teeth.
+
+Then there was a crash that shook the whole ship. I shot into the air.
+I remember falling ... terribly.
+
+A blinding flash of light that emanated from the very center of my
+brain, a sickening sense of utter catastrophe, and ... blackness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think I was conscious several seconds before I finally opened my
+eyes. My mind was still wandering; my thoughts kept flying around in
+huge circles that kept closing in.
+
+We had hit the meteorite. I remembered the crash. I remembered
+falling. I remembered striking my head.
+
+But I was still alive. There was air to breathe and there was firm
+material under me. I opened my eyes.
+
+For the first instant, it seemed I was in an utterly strange room.
+Nothing was familiar. Everything was--was _inverted_. Then I glanced
+upward, and I saw what had happened.
+
+I was lying on the ceiling of the navigating room. Over my head were
+the charts, still glowing, the chronometers in their gimballed beds,
+and the television disc. Beside me, sprawled out limply, was Correy, a
+trickle of dried blood on his cheek. A litter of papers, chairs,
+framed licenses and other movable objects were strewn on and around
+us.
+
+My first instinctive, foolish thought was that the ship was upside
+down. Man has a ground-trained mind, no matter how many years he may
+travel space. Then, of course, I realized that in the open void there
+is not top nor bottom; the illusion is supplied, in space ships, by
+the gravity pads. Somehow, the shock of impact had reversed the
+polarity of the leads to the pads, and they had become repulsion pads.
+That was why I had dropped from the floor to the ceiling.
+
+All this flashed through my mind in an instant as I dragged myself
+toward Correy. Dragged myself because my head was throbbing so that I
+dared not stand up, and one shoulder, my left, was numb.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For an instant I thought that Correy was dead. Then, as I bent over
+him, I saw a pulse leaping just under the angle of his jaw.
+
+"Correy, old man!" I whispered. "Do you hear me?" All the formality of
+the Service was forgotten for the time. "Are you hurt badly?"
+
+His eyelids flickered, and he sighed; then, suddenly, he looked up at
+me--and smiled!
+
+"We're still here, sir?"
+
+"After a fashion. Look around; see what's happened?"
+
+He glanced about curiously, frowning. His wits were not all with him
+yet.
+
+"We're in a mess, aren't we?" he grinned. "What's the matter?"
+
+I told him what I thought, and he nodded slowly, feeling his head
+tenderly.
+
+"How long ago did it happen?" he asked. "The blooming clock's upside
+down; can you read it?"
+
+I could--with an effort.
+
+"Over twenty minutes," I said. "I wonder how the rest of the men are?"
+
+With an effort, I got to my feet and peered into the operating room.
+Several of the men were moving about, dazedly, and as I signalled to
+them, reassuringly, a voice hailed us from the doorway:
+
+"Any orders, sir?"
+
+It was Kincaide. He was peering over what had been the top of the
+doorway, and he was probably the most disreputable-looking officer who
+had ever worn the blue-and-silver uniform of the Service. His nose was
+bloody and swollen to twice its normal size. Both eyes were blackened,
+and his hair, matted with blood, was plastered in ragged swirls across
+his forehead.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Kincaide; plenty of them. Round up enough of the men to
+locate the trouble with the gravity pads; there's a reversed
+connection somewhere. But don't let them make the repairs until the
+signal is given. Otherwise, we'll all fall on our heads again. Mr.
+Correy and I will take care of the injured."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next half hour was a trying one. Two men had been killed outright,
+and another died before we could do anything to save him. Every man in
+the crew was shaken up and bruised, but by the time the check was
+completed, we had a good half of our personnel on duty.
+
+Returning at last to the navigating room, I pressed the attention
+signal for Kincaide, and got his answer immediately.
+
+"Located the trouble yet, Mr. Kincaide?" I asked anxiously.
+
+"Yes, sir! Mr. Hendricks has been working with a group of men and has
+just made his report. They are ready when you are."
+
+"Good!" I drew a sigh of relief. It had been easier than I thought.
+Pressing the general attention signal, I broadcasted the warning,
+giving particular instructions to the men in charge of the injured.
+Then I issued orders to Hendricks:
+
+"Reverse the current in five seconds, Mr. Hendricks, and stand by for
+further instructions."
+
+Hastily, then, Correy and I followed the orders we had given the men.
+Briefly we stood on our heads against the wall, feeling very foolish,
+and dreading the fall we knew was coming.
+
+It came. We slid down the wall and lit heavily on our feet, while the
+litter that had been on the ceiling with us fell all around us.
+Miraculously, the ship seemed to have righted herself. Correy and I
+picked ourselves up and looked around.
+
+"We're still operating smoothly," I commented with a sweeping glance
+at the instruments over the operating table. "Everything seems in
+order."
+
+"Did you notice the speed indicator, sir?" asked Correy grimly. "When
+he fell, one of the men in the operating room must have pulled the
+speed lever all the way over. We're at maximum space speed, sir, and
+have been for nearly an hour, with no one at the controls."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We stared at each other dully. Nearly an hour, at maximum space
+speed--a speed seldom used except in case of great emergency. With no
+one at the controls, and the ship set at maximum deflection from her
+course.
+
+That meant that for nearly an hour we had been sweeping into infinite
+space in a great arc, at a speed I disliked to think about.
+
+"I'll work out our position at once," I said, "and in the meantime,
+reduce speed to normal as quickly as possible. We must get back on our
+course at the earliest possible moment."
+
+We hurried across to the charts that were our most important aides in
+proper navigation. By comparing the groups of stars there with our
+space charts of the universe, the working out of our position was
+ordinarily, a simple matter.
+
+But now, instead of milky rectangles, ruled with fine black lines,
+with a fiery red speck in the center and the bodies of the universe
+grouped around in green points of light, there were only nearly blank
+rectangles, shot through with vague, flickering lights that revealed
+nothing except the presence of disaster.
+
+"The meteoric fragment wiped out some of our plates, I imagine," said
+Correy slowly. "The thing's useless."
+
+I nodded, staring down at the crawling lights on the charts.
+
+"We'll have to set down for repairs, Mr. Correy. If," I added, "we can
+find a place."
+
+Correy glanced up at the attraction meter.
+
+"I'll take a look in the big disc," he suggested. "There's a sizeable
+body off to port. Perhaps our luck's changed."
+
+He bent his head under the big hood, adjusting the controls until he
+located the source of the registered attraction.
+
+"Right!" he said, after a moment's careful scrutiny. "She's as big as
+Earth, I'd venture, and I believe I can detect clouds, so there should
+be atmosphere. Shall we try it, sir?"
+
+"Yes. We're helpless until we make repairs. As big as Earth, you said?
+Is she familiar?"
+
+Correy studied the image under the hood again, long and carefully.
+
+"No, sir," he said, looking up and shaking his head. "She's a new one
+on me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Conning the ship first by means of the television disc, and navigating
+visually as we neared the strange sphere, we were soon close enough to
+make out the physical characteristics of this unknown world.
+
+Our spectroscopic tests had revealed the presence of atmosphere
+suitable for breathing, although strongly laden with mineral fumes
+which, while possibly objectionable, would probably not be dangerous.
+
+So far as we could see, there was but one continent, somewhat north of
+the equator, roughly triangular in shape, with its northernmost point
+reaching nearly to the Pole.
+
+"It's an unexplored world, sir. I'm certain of that," said Correy. "I
+am sure I would have remembered that single, triangular continent had
+I seen it on any of our charts." In those days, of course, the
+Universe was by no means so well mapped as it is today.
+
+"If not unknown, it is at least uncharted," I replied. "Rough looking
+country, isn't it? No sign of life, either, that the disc will
+reveal."
+
+"That's as well, sir. Better no people than wild natives who might
+interfere with our work. Any choice in the matter of a spot on which
+to set her down?"
+
+I inspected the great, triangular continent carefully. Towards the
+north it was a mass of snow covered mountains, some of them, from
+their craters, dead volcanoes. Long spurs of these ranges reached
+southward, with green and apparently fertile valleys between. The
+southern edge was covered with dense tropical vegetation; a veritable
+jungle.
+
+"At the base of that central spur there seems to be a sort of
+plateau," I suggested. "I believe that would be a likely spot."
+
+"Very well, sir," replied Correy, and the old _Ertak_, reduced to
+atmospheric speed, swiftly swept toward the indicated position, while
+Correy kept a wary eye on the surface temperature gauge, and I swept
+the terrain for any sign of intelligent life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I found a number of trails, particularly around the base of the
+foothills, but they were evidently game trails, for there were no
+dwelling places of any kind; no cities, no villages, not even a single
+habitation of any kind that the searching eyes of the disc could
+detect.
+
+Correy set her down as neatly and as softly as a rose petal drifts to
+the ground. Roses, I may add, are a beautiful and delicate flower,
+with very soft petals, peculiar to my native Earth.
+
+We opened the main exit immediately. I watched the huge, circular door
+back slowly out of its threads, and finally swing aside, swiftly and
+silently, in the grip of its mighty gimbals, with the weird,
+unearthly feeling I have always had when about to step foot on some
+strange star where no man has trod before.
+
+The air was sweet, and delightfully fresh after being cooped up for
+weeks in the _Ertak_, with her machine-made air. A little thinner, I
+should judge, than the air to which we were accustomed, but strangely
+exhilarating, and laden with a faint scent of some unknown
+constituent--undoubtedly the mineral element our spectroscope had
+revealed but not identified. Gravity, I found upon passing through the
+exit, was normal. Altogether an extremely satisfactory repair station.
+
+Correy's guess as to what had happened proved absolutely accurate.
+Along the top of the _Ertak_, from amidships to within a few feet of
+her pointed stem, was a jagged groove that had destroyed hundreds of
+the bright, coppery discs, set into the outer skin of the ship, that
+operated our super-radio reflex charts. The groove was so deep, in
+places, that it must have bent the outer skin of the _Ertak_ down
+against the inner skin. A foot or more--it was best not to think of
+what would have happened then.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the time we completed our inspection dusk was upon us--a long,
+lingering dusk, due, no doubt, to the afterglow resulting from the
+mineral content of the air. I'm no white-skinned, stoop-shouldered
+laboratory man, so I'm not sure that was the real reason. It sounds
+logical, however.
+
+"Mr. Correy, I think we shall break out our field equipment and give
+all men not on watch an opportunity to sleep out in the fresh air," I
+said. "Will you give the orders, please?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Mr. Hendricks will stand the eight to twelve watch as
+usual?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Mr. Kincaide will relieve him at midnight, and you will take over at
+four."
+
+"Very well, sir." Correy turned to give the orders, and in a few
+minutes an orderly array of shelter tents made a single street in
+front of the fat, dully-gleaming side of the _Ertak_. Our tents were
+at the head of this short company street, three of them in a little
+row.
+
+After the evening meal, cooked over open fires, with the smoke of the
+very resinous wood we had collected hanging comfortably in the still
+air, the men gave themselves up to boisterous, noisy games, which, I
+confess, I should have liked very much to participate in. They raced
+and tumbled around the two big fires like schoolboys on a lark. Only
+those who have spent most of their days in the metal belly of a space
+ship know the sheer joy of utter physical freedom.
+
+Correy, Kincaide and I sat before our tents and watched them, chatting
+about this and that--I have long since forgotten what. But I shall
+never forget what occurred just before the watch changed that night.
+Nor will any man of the _Ertak's_ crew.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was just a few minutes before midnight. The men had quieted down
+and were preparing to turn in. I had given orders that this first
+night they could suit themselves about retiring; a good officer, and I
+tried to be one, is never afraid to give good men a little rein, now
+and then.
+
+The fires had died down to great heaps of red coals, filmed with
+ashes, and, aside from the brilliant galaxy of stars overhead, there
+was no light from above. Either this world had no moons, not even a
+single moon, like my native Earth, or it had not yet arisen.
+
+Kincaide rose lazily, stretched himself, and glanced at his watch.
+
+"Seven till twelve, sir," he said. "I believe I'll run along and
+relieve--"
+
+He never finished that sentence. From somewhere there came a rushing
+sound, and a damp, stringy net, a living, horrible, _something_,
+descended upon us out of the night.
+
+In an instant, what had been an orderly encampment became a bedlam. I
+tried to fight against the stringy, animated, nearly intangible mass,
+or masses, that held me, but my arms, my legs, my whole body, was
+bound as with strings and loops of elastic bands.
+
+Strange whispering sounds filled the air, audible above the shouting
+of the men. The net about me grew tighter; I felt myself being lifted
+from the ground. Others were being treated the same way; one of the
+_Ertak's_ crew shot straight up, not a dozen feet away, writhing and
+squirming. Then, at an elevation of perhaps twice my height, he was
+hurried away.
+
+Hendrick's voice called out my name from the _Ertak's_ exit, and I
+shouted a warning:
+
+"Hendrick! Go back! Close the emergency--" Then a gluey mass cut
+across my mouth, and, as though carried on huge soft springs, I was
+hurried away, with the sibilant, whispering sounds louder and closer
+than ever. With me, as nearly as I could judge, went every man who had
+not been on duty in the ship.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I ceased struggling, and immediately the rubbery network about me
+loosened. It seemed to me that the whisperings about me were suddenly
+approving. We were in the grip, then, of some sort of intelligent
+beings, ghost-like and invisible though they were.
+
+After a time, during which we were all, in a ragged group, being borne
+swiftly towards the mountains, all at a common level from the ground,
+I managed to turn my head so that I could see, against the star-lit
+sky, something of the nature of the things that had made us captive.
+
+As is not infrequently the case, in trying to describe things of an
+utterly different world, I find myself at a loss for words. I think of
+jellyfish, such as inhabit the seas of most of the inhabited planets,
+and yet this is not a good description.
+
+These creatures were pale, and almost completely transparent. What
+their forms might be, I could not even guess. I could make out
+writhing, tentacle-like arms, and wrinkled, flabby excrudescences and
+that was all. That these creatures were huge, was evident from the
+fact that they, apparently walking, from the irregular, undulating
+motion, held us easily ten or a dozen feet from the ground.
+
+With the release of the pressure about my body I was able to talk
+again, and I called out to Correy, who was fighting his way along,
+muttering, angrily, just ahead of me.
+
+"Correy! No use fighting them. Save your strength, man!"
+
+"Then? What are they, in God's name? What spawn of hell--"
+
+"The Commander is right, Correy," interrupted Kincaide, who was not
+far from my first officer. "Let's get our breaths and try to figure
+out what's happened. I'm winded!" His voice gave plentiful evidence of
+the struggle he had put up.
+
+"I want to know where I'm going, and why!" growled Correy, ceasing his
+struggling, nevertheless. "What have us? Are they fish or flesh or
+fowl?"
+
+"I think we shall know before very long, Correy," I replied. "Look
+ahead!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The bearers of the men in the fore part of the group had apparently
+stopped before a shadowy wall, like the face of a cliff. Rapidly, the
+rest of us were brought up, until we were in a compact group, some in
+sitting positions, some upside down, the majority reclining on back or
+side. The whispering sound now was intense and excited, as though our
+strange bearers awaited some momentous happening.
+
+I took advantage of the opportunity to speak very briefly to my
+companions.
+
+"Men, I'll admit frankly that I don't know what we're up against," I
+said. "But I do know this: we'll come out on top of the heap. Conserve
+your strength, keep your eyes open, and be prepared to obey,
+instantly, any orders that may be issued: I know that last remark is
+not needed. If any of you should see or learn something of interest or
+value, report at once to Mr. Correy, Mr. Kincaide or my--"
+
+A simultaneous, involuntary exclamation from the men interrupted me,
+and it was not surprising that this was so, for the wall before us had
+suddenly opened, and there was a great burst of yellow light in our
+faces. A strong odor, like the faint scent we had first noticed in the
+air, but infinitely more powerful, struck our nostrils, but I was not
+conscious of the fact for several seconds. My whole attention, my
+every startled thought, was focused upon the group of strange beings,
+silhouetted against the glowing light, that stood in the opening.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Imagine, if you can, a huge globe, perhaps eight feet in diameter,
+flattened slightly at the bottom, and supported on six short, huge
+stumps, like the feet of an elephant, and topped by an excrudescence
+like a rounded coning tower, merging into the globular body. From
+points slightly below this excrudescence, visualize six long, limp
+tentacles, so long that they drop from the equators of these animated
+spheres, and trail on the ground. Now you have some conception of the
+beings that stood before us.
+
+A sharp, sibilant whispering came from one of these figures, to be
+answered in an eager chorus from our bearers. There was a reply like a
+command, and the group in the doorway marched forward. One by one
+these visible tentacles wrapped themselves around a member of the
+_Ertak's_ crew, each one of the globular creatures bearing one of us.
+
+I heard a disappointed whisper go up from the outer darkness where,
+but a moment before, we had been. Then there was a grating sound, and
+a thud as the stone doorway was rolled back into place.
+
+The entrance was sealed. We were prisoners indeed!
+
+"All right, now what?" gritted Correy. "God! If I ever get a hand
+loose!"
+
+Swiftly, each of us held above the head-like excrudescence atop the
+globular body of the thing that held us, we were carried down a
+widening rocky corridor, towards the source of the yellow light that
+beat about us.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The passage led to a great cavern, irregular in shape, and apparently
+possessed of numerous other outlets which converged here.
+
+I am not certain as to the size of the cavern, save that it was great,
+and that the roof was so high in most sections that it was lost in
+shadow.
+
+The great cavern was nearly filled with creatures similar to those
+which were bearing us, and they fell back in orderly passage to permit
+our conductors to pass.
+
+I could see, now, that the hump atop each rounded body was a travesty
+of a head, hairless, and without a neck. Their features were
+particularly hideous, and I shall pass over a description as rapidly
+as possible.
+
+The eyes were round, and apparently lidless; a pale drab or bluff in
+color. Instead of a nose, as, we understand the term, they had a
+convoluted rosette in the center of the face, not unlike the olfactory
+organ of a bat. Their ears were placed as are ours, but were of thin,
+pale parchment, and hugged the side of the head tightly. Instead of a
+mouth, there was a slightly depressed oval of fluttering skin near the
+point where the head melted into the rounded body: the rapid
+fluttering or vibration of this skin produced the whispering sound I
+have already remarked.
+
+The cavern, as I have said, was flooded with yellow light, which came
+from a great column of fire near the center of the clear space. I had
+no opportunity to inspect the exact arrangements but from what I did
+see, I judged that this flame was fed by some sort of highly
+inflammable substance, not unlike crude oil, except that it burned
+clearly and without smoke. This substance was conducted to the font
+from which the flame leaped by means of a large pipe of hollow reed or
+wood.
+
+At the far end of the cavern a procession entered from one of the
+passages--nine figures similar to those which bore us, save that by
+the greater darkness of their skin, and the wrinkles upon both face
+and body, I judged these to be older than the rest. From the respect
+with which they were treated, and the dignity of their movements, I
+gathered that these were persons of authority, a surmise which quickly
+verified itself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These nine elders arranged themselves, standing, in the form of a
+semicircle, the center creature standing a pace or two in front of the
+others. At a whispered command, we were all dumped unceremoniously on
+the floor of the cavern before this august council of nine.
+
+Nine pairs of fish-like, unblinking eyes inspected us, whether with
+enmity or otherwise; I could not determine. One of the nine spoke
+briefly to one of our conductors, and received an even more brief
+reply.
+
+I felt the gaze of the creature in the center fix on me. I had taken
+my proper position in front of my men; he apparently recognized me as
+the leader of the group.
+
+In a sharp whisper, he addressed me; I gathered from the tone that he
+uttered a command, but I could only shake my head in response. No
+words could convey thought from his mind to mine--but we did have a
+means of communication at hand.
+
+"Mr. Correy," I said, "your menore, please!" I released my own from
+the belt which held it, along with the other expeditionary equipment
+which we always wore when outside our ship, and placed it in position
+upon my head, motioning for one of the nine to do likewise with
+Correy's menore.
+
+They watched me suspiciously, despite my attempt to convey, by gestures,
+that by means of these instruments we could convey thoughts to each other.
+The menores of those days were bulky, heavy things, and undoubtedly they
+looked dangerous to these creatures: thought-transference instruments at
+that time were complicated affairs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+However, I must have made myself partially understood, at least, for
+the chief of the nine uttered a whispered command to one of the beings
+who had borne us to the large cavern, and motioned with a writhing
+gesture of one tentacle that I was to place the menore upon this
+creature's head.
+
+"The old boy's playing it safe, sir," muttered Correy, chuckling.
+"Wants to try it out on the dog first."
+
+"Right!" I nodded, and, not without difficulty, placed the other
+menore upon the rounded dome of the individual selected for the trial.
+
+Both instruments were adjusted to full power, and I concentrated my
+mental energy upon the simple pictures that I thought I could convey
+to the limited mentality of which I suspected these creatures,
+watching his fishy eyes the while.
+
+It was several seconds before he realized what was happening; then he
+began talking excitedly to the waiting nine. The words fairly burned
+themselves in my consciousness, but of course were utterly
+unintelligible to me. Before the creature had finished, a lash-like
+tentacle shot out from the chief of the nine and removed the menore; a
+moment later it reposed, at a rather rakish slant, on the shining dome
+of its new possessor.
+
+"Get anything, sir?" asked Correy in a low voice.
+
+"Not yet. I'm trying to make him see how we came here, and that we're
+friends. Then I'll see what I can get out of him; he'll have to get
+the idea of coming back at me with pictures instead of words, and it
+may take a long time to make him understand."
+
+It did take a long time. I could feel the sweat trickling down my face
+as I strove to make him understand. His eyes revealed wonderment and a
+little fear, but an almost utter lack of understanding.
+
+I pictured for him the heavens, and our ship sailing along through
+space. Then I showed him the _Ertak_ coming to rest on the plateau,
+and he made little impatient noises as though to convey that he knew
+all about that.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a long time he got the idea. Crudely, dimly, he pictured the
+_Ertak_ leaving this strange world, and soaring off into vacant space.
+Then his scene faded out, and he pictured the same thing again, as one
+might repeat a question not understood. He wanted to know where we
+would go if we left this world of his.
+
+I pictured for him other worlds, peopled with men more or less like
+myself. I showed him the great cities, and the fleets of ships like
+the _Ertak_ that plied between them. Then, as best I could, I asked
+him about himself and his people.
+
+It came to me jerkily and poorly pictured, but I managed to piece out
+the story. Whether I guess correctly on all points, I am not sure, nor
+will I ever be sure. But this is the story as I got it.
+
+These people at one time lived in the open, and all the people of this
+world were like those in the cavern, possessed of opaque bodies and
+great strength. There were none of the ghost-like creatures who had
+captured us.
+
+But after a long time, a ruling class arose. They tried to dominate
+the masses, and the masses refused to be dominated. But the ruling
+classes were wise, and versed in certain sciences; the masses were
+ignorant. So the ruling classes devised a plan.
+
+These creatures did not eat. There was a tradition that at one time
+they had had mouths, as I had, but that was not known. Their strength,
+their vitality, came from the powerful mineral vapor which came forth
+from the bowels of the earth. The ruling classes decided that if they
+could control the supply of this vapor, they would have the whip hand,
+and they set about realizing this condition.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was quickly done. All the sources of supply, save one, were sealed.
+This one source of supply was the cavern in which we stood. These were
+members of the ruling class, and outside was the rabble, starved and
+unhappy, living on the faint seepage of the vital fumes, without which
+they became almost bodiless, and the helpless slaves of those within
+the cavern.
+
+These creatures, then, were boneless; as boneless as sponges, and,
+like sponges, capable of absorbing huge quantities of a foreign
+substance, which distended them and gave them weight. I could see,
+now, why the rotund bodies sagged and flattened at the base, and why
+six short, stubby legs were needed to support that body. There was
+only tissue, unsupported by bone, to bear the weight!
+
+This chief of the nine went on to show me how ruthlessly, how cruelly
+those within the cavern ruled those without. The substance that fed
+the flame had to be gathered and a great reservoir on the side of the
+mountain kept filled. Great masses of dry, sweet grass, often changed,
+must be harvested and brought to the entrance of the cavern, for
+bedding. A score of other tasks kept the outsiders busy always--and
+the driving force was that, did the slaves become disobedient, the
+slight supply of mineral vapor available in the outside world would be
+cut off utterly, and all outside would surely die, slowly and in
+agony.
+
+Those within the cavern were the rulers. They would always remain the
+rulers, and those outside would remain the slaves to wait upon them.
+And we--how strangely he pictured us, as he saw us!--were not to
+return to our queer worlds, that we might bring many other ships like
+the _Ertak_ back to interfere. No.
+
+The pupils of his eyes contracted, and the leafy structure of his nose
+fluttered as though with strong emotion.
+
+No, we would not go back. He would give a signal to those of his
+creatures who stood behind us--a sort of soldiery, I gathered--and our
+heads, our legs, our arms, would be torn from our bodies. Then we
+would not go back to bring--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That was enough for me.
+
+"Men!" I spoke softly, but with an intensity that gave me their
+instant attention, "it's going to be a fight for life. When I give the
+signal, make a rush for the entrance by which we came in. I'll lead
+the way. Use your pistols, and your bombs if necessary. All
+right--forward!"
+
+Correy's great shout rang out after mine, and I flung my menore in the
+face of the nearest guard. It bounced off as though it had struck a
+rubber ball. Behind me, one of the men called out sharply; I heard a
+sharp crunch of bone, and with a pang realized that the _Ertak's_ log
+would have at least one death to record.
+
+A dozen tentacles lashed out at me, and I sprayed their owners with
+pellets from my atomic pistol. The air was filled with the shouts of
+my men and the whispers of our enemies. All around me I could hear the
+screaming of ricochets from our pistols. Twice atomic bombs exploded
+not far away, and the solid rock shook beneath my feet. Something shot
+by close to my face; an instant later a limp bundle in the blue and
+silver uniform of our Service struck the rock wall of the cavern,
+thirty feet away. The strength in those rubbery tentacles was
+terrible.
+
+The pistols seemed to have but little effect. They wounded, but they
+did not kill unless the pellet struck the head. Then the victim
+rolled over, rocking idiotically on its middle.
+
+"In the head, men!" I shouted. "That downs them! And keep the bombs in
+action. Throw them against the walls of the cavern. Take a chance!"
+
+A ragged cheer went up, and I heard Correy's voice raised in angry
+conversation with the enemy:
+
+"You will, eh? There!... Now!... Ah!--right--through--the--eye.
+That's--the place!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A score of times I was grasped and held by the writhing arms of the
+angry horde whispering all around me. Each time I literally shot the
+tentacle away with my atomic pistol, leaving the severed end to unwrap
+itself and drop from my struggling body. The things had no blood in
+them.
+
+Steadily, we fought our way toward the doorway, out of the cavern,
+down the passageway, pressed into a compact, sweating mass by the
+pressure of the eager bodies around us. I have never heard any sound
+even remotely like the babel of angry, sibilant whispering that beat
+against the walls and roof of that cavern.
+
+I had saved my own bombs for a specific purpose, and now I unslung
+them and managed to work them up above my shoulders, one in either
+hand.
+
+"I'm going to try to blow the entrance clear, men," I shouted. "The
+instant I fling the bombs, drop! The fragments will be stopped by the
+enemy crowding around us. One ... two ... three ... _drop_!"
+
+The two bombs exploded almost simultaneously. The ground shook, and
+all over the cavern masses of stone came crashing to the floor. Bits
+of rock hummed and shrieked over our heads. And--yes! There was a
+draft of cooler, purer air on our faces. The bombs had done their
+work.
+
+"One more effort and we're outside, men," I called. "The passage is
+open, and there are only a few of the enemy before us. Ready?"
+
+"Ready!" went up the hoarse shout.
+
+"Then, forward!"
+
+It was easy to give the command, but hard to execute it. We were
+pressed so hard that only the men on the outside of the group could
+use their weapons. And our captors were making a terrible, desperate
+effort to hold us.
+
+Two more of our men were literally torn to pieces before my eyes, but
+I had the satisfaction of ripping holes in the heads of the creatures
+whose tentacles had done the beastly work. And in the meantime we were
+working our way slowly but surely to the entrance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I glanced up as I dodged out into the open. That soft humming sound
+was familiar, and properly so. There, at an elevation of less than
+fifty feet, was the _Ertak_, with Hendricks standing in the exit,
+leaning forward at a perilous angle.
+
+"Ahoy the _Ertak_!" I hailed. "Descend at once!"
+
+"Right, sir!" Hendricks turned to relay the order, and, as the rest of
+the men burst forth from the cavern, the ship struck the ground before
+us.
+
+"All hands board ship!" I ordered. "Lively, now." As many years as I
+have commanded men, I have never seen an order obeyed with more
+alacrity.
+
+I was the last man to enter, and as I did so, I turned for a last
+glance at the enemy.
+
+They could not come through the small opening my bombs had driven in
+the rock, although they were working desperately to enlarge it.
+Leaping back and forth between me and the entrance I could see the
+vague, shadowy figures of the outside slaves, eagerly seeping up the
+life-giving fumes that escaped from the cavern.
+
+"Your orders, sir?" asked Hendricks anxiously; he was a very young
+officer, and he had been through a very trying experience.
+
+"Ascend five hundred feet, Mr. Hendricks," I said thoughtfully.
+"Directly over this spot. Then I'll take over.
+
+"It isn't often," I added, "that the Service concerns itself with
+economic conditions. This, however, is one of the exceptions."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Hendricks, for the very good reason, I suppose, that
+that was about all a third officer could say to his commander, under
+the circumstances.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Five hundred feet, sir," said Hendricks.
+
+"Very well," I nodded, and pressed the attention signal of the
+non-commissioned officer in charge of the big forward ray projector.
+
+"Ott? Commander Hanson speaking. I have special orders for you."
+
+"Yes, sir!"
+
+"Direct your ray, narrowed to normal beam and at full intensity, on
+the spot directly below. Keep the ray motionless, and carry on until
+further orders. Is that clear?"
+
+"Perfectly, sir." The disintegrator ray generators deepened their purr
+as I turned away.
+
+"I trust, sir, that I did the right thing in following you with the
+_Ertak_?" asked Hendricks. "I was absolutely without precedent, and
+the circumstances were so mysterious--"
+
+"You handled the situation very well indeed," I told him. "Had you not
+been waiting when we fought our way into the open, the nearly
+invisible things on the outside might have--but you don't know about
+them yet."
+
+Picking up the microphone again, I ordered a pair of searchlights to
+follow the disintegrator ray, and made my way forward, where I could
+observe activities through a port.
+
+The ray was boring straight down into a shoulder of a rocky hill, and
+the bright beams of the searchlights glowed redly with the dust of
+disintegration. Here and there I could see the shadowy, transparent
+forms of the creatures that the self-constituted rulers of this world
+had doomed to a demi-existence, and I smiled grimly to myself. The
+tables would soon be turned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For perhaps an hour the ray melted its way into the solid rock, while
+I stood beside Ott and his crew, watching. Then, down below us, things
+began to happen.
+
+Little fragments of rock flew up from the shaft the ray had drilled.
+Jets of black mud leaped into the air. There was a sudden blast from
+below that rocked the _Ertak_, and the shaft became a miniature
+volcano, throwing rocky fragments and mud high into the air.
+
+"Very good, Ott," I said triumphantly. "Cease action." As I spoke, the
+first light of the dawn, unnoticed until now, spread itself over the
+scene, and we witnessed then one of the strangest scenes that the
+Universe has ever beheld.
+
+Up to the very edge of that life-giving blast of mineral-laden gas the
+tenuous creatures came crowding. There were hundreds of them,
+thousands of them. And they were still coming, crowding closer and
+closer and closer, a mass of crawling, yellowish shadows against the
+sombre earth.
+
+Slowly, they began to fill out and darken, as they drew in the fumes
+that were more than bread and meat and water to us. Where there had
+been formless shadows, rotund creatures such as we had met in the
+cavern stood and lashed their tentacles about in a sort of frenzied
+gladness, and fell back to make room for their brothers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It's a sight to make a man doubt his own eyes, sir," said Correy, who
+had come to stand beside me. "Look at them! Thousands of them pouring
+from every direction. How did it happen?"
+
+"It didn't happen. I used our disintegrator ray as a drill; we simply
+sunk a huge shaft down into the bowels of the earth until we struck
+the source of the vapor which the self-appointed 'ruling class' has
+bottled up. We have emancipated a whole people, Mr. Correy."
+
+"I hate to think of what will happen to those in the cavern," replied
+Correy, smiling grimly. "Or rather, since you've told me of the
+pleasant little death they had arranged for us. I'm mighty glad of it.
+They'll receive rough treatment, I'm afraid!"
+
+"They deserve it. It has been a great sight to watch, but I believe
+we've seen enough. It has been a good night's work, but it's daylight,
+now, and it will take hours to repair the damage to the _Ertak's_
+hull. Take over in the navigating room, if you will, and pick a likely
+spot where we will not be disturbed. We should be on our course by
+to-night, Mr. Correy."
+
+"Right, sir," said Correy, with a last wondering look at the strange
+miracle we had brought to pass on the earth below us. "It will seem
+good to be off in space again, away from the troubles of these little
+worlds."
+
+"There are troubles in space, too," I said dryly, thinking of the
+swarm of meteorites that had come so close to wiping the _Ertak_ off
+the records of the Service. "You can't escape trouble even in space."
+
+"No, sir," said Correy from the doorway. "But you can get your sleep
+regularly!"
+
+And sleep is, when one comes to think of it, a very precious thing.
+
+Particularly for an old man, whose eyelids are heavy with years.
+
+
+
+
+Readers' Corner
+
+[Illustration: Readers' Corner]
+
+
+     _Now In Book Form_
+
+     Readers of Astounding Stories will be interested to hear
+     that two of the continued novels which appeared in our pages
+     during last year are coming out in book form.
+
+     The first of these is "Murder Madness," by Murray Leinster.
+     It is due sometime in February, so by the time this issue is
+     on the newsstands it will no doubt be already out. The
+     publishers are Brewer and Warren, and the price is $2.00.
+     Here's your chance, collectors, and those who missed an
+     instalment or two.
+
+     The other book is "Brigands of the Moon," by--everyone
+     knows--Ray Cummings. It should be coming along in a month or
+     so. Watch out for it!
+
+
+_Mr. Cummings Sits In_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Thank you for the opportunity to address our Readers on
+     certain side-lights of my tale, "The Exile of Time." I
+     particularly welcome it, for the theme of Time-traveling is,
+     I think, the most interesting of any upon which I have
+     written.
+
+     Some of you will no doubt recall my stories "The Man Who
+     Mastered Time" and "The Shadow Girl." In "The Exile of
+     Time," I present the third of the trilogy. It has no
+     fictional connection with the others; it is in no sense a
+     sequel, but rather a companion story.
+
+     To write about Time-traveling is for me a difficult but
+     fascinating task. The opportunities are endless; and I hope
+     you may think I have taken advantage of them with a measure
+     of success.
+
+     I wrote those conceptions of Time and Space and the Great
+     Cosmos, which you will find in the text of the story,
+     because I feel them very deeply. Each occasion upon which
+     circumstances allow me to present my theories, I eagerly
+     welcome. How much of the conception is original with me, I
+     cannot say. It is the product of my groping interpretation
+     of the theories of many brilliant scientific minds of
+     today--humbly combined with perhaps some originality of my
+     own. The mind flings far afield when it starts to grope with
+     the Unknown. Try it! Read what I have written and then let
+     your mind roam a little further. Probe a little deeper.
+     Perhaps we may contribute something. It is only by that
+     process--each mind following some other's cleared path and
+     pushing forward a little on his own--that the Unknown can be
+     pierced.
+
+     When once you admit the basic idea of Time-traveling to be
+     plausible, what fascinating vistas are opened to the
+     imagination!
+
+     Space is so crowded! The room in which you are now sitting
+     as you read these words--just think what that Space around
+     you has held in the Past, and will hold in the Future! You
+     occupy it now, playing out your little part; but think what
+     has happened where you are now sitting so calmly reading!
+     What tumultuous, crowding events! Your room is quiet now,
+     but its space has rung with war-cries; the ground under you
+     has been drenched with blood; and further back it was lush
+     with primeval jungle; and in another age it was frozen
+     beneath a great ice-cap; and before that it blazed, molten
+     with fire. Back to the Beginning.
+
+     And your little Space in the Future? It will be in the heart
+     of a great mechanical city, perhaps. A mechanical servant
+     may murder his human master in the space which you now call
+     your room. The great revolt of the mechanisms may start in
+     your room....
+
+     I think that your room will some day again be shrouded under
+     a forest growth. The mechanical city will be neglected,
+     tumbled into ruins, buried beneath the silt of the passing
+     centuries. The sun will slowly rise--a giant dull red ball,
+     burning out, cooling. And the Earth will cool. Humans,
+     perhaps, will have passed decadence and reverted to
+     savagery. Perhaps the polar ice-caps will again come down,
+     and ice slowly cover the dying world. All nature will be
+     struggling and dying, with the sun a red ball turning dark
+     like a cooling ember.
+
+     Millions of centuries, with whatever events--who am I to
+     say?--but it will go on to the End. That's a long way from
+     the Beginning, isn't it? And yet ours is only a tiny planet
+     living briefly in the great cosmos of Time and Space!
+
+     A segment of Everything that ever was and ever will be
+     marches through the Space of your room. What an enormously
+     thronged little Space! There is only Time, to keep
+     consecutive and orderly the myriad events which in your room
+     are pushing and jostling one another! I say, then, "Time is
+     what keeps everything from happening at once." It seems a
+     good definition.
+
+     I do hope you like "The Exile of Time." The writing of it
+     made me realize how unimportant I am. A human lifetime is
+     really as brief as the flash of an electric spark. The whole
+     lifetime of our Earth is not much more than that. Stars,
+     worlds, are born, live and die, and the Great Cosmos goes
+     majestically on. Yet some people seem to feel that they and
+     the Space they occupy in this Time they call the Present are
+     the most important things that ever were or ever will be in
+     the whole Universe. It is a good thing to realize that that
+     isn't so.--Ray Cummings.
+
+
+_Likes_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Starting with the August issue, I am going to give my
+     opinion of the stories.
+
+     "The Planet of Dread," by R. F. Starzl, couldn't have been
+     better. Get more stories by him. "Murder Madness," by Murray
+     Leinster, was a good story, but it didn't belong in a
+     Science Fiction magazine. "The Terrible Tentacles of L-472,"
+     a good story; "The Invisible Death," a very good story;
+     "Prisoners on the Electron," very good; "The Ape-Men of
+     Xlotli," a good story, but it does not belong in a Science
+     Fiction magazine; "The Pirate Planet," very excellent--much
+     more so because it is an interplanetary story. "Vagabonds of
+     Space," "The Fifth Dimension Catapult," "The Gate of Xoran,"
+     "The Dark Side of Antri"--all good.
+
+     Well, I guess I will sign off and give somebody else a
+     chance to broadcast.--Wm. McCalvy, 1244 Beech St., St. Paul,
+     Minn.
+
+
+_I Do; I Don't_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     "I like the magazine the way it is," "I want a larger
+     magazine," "I want a magazine twice a month," "I want a
+     quarterly," and so do I, "There is a terrible flaw in one of
+     the stories," "All of the stories are flawless," "I want
+     reprints," "I don't," "I like Ray Cummings," "I don't," "I
+     want a better grade paper," "The paper's O. K. with me," "I
+     want smooth edges on the magazine," "So do I," "And so do
+     I!"--these seem to be the most often repeated sentences in
+     the letters from Readers.
+
+     However, I have a new one to add: I would like to see an
+     answer, by the Editor, to each letter that is printed in
+     "The Readers' Corner," like this: "I liked 'An Extra Man,'
+     etc.--Mr. Syence Ficshun" (I am very glad to hear that you
+     liked this little masterpiece, etc.--Editor). Why not?
+
+     The illustration on the cover of the January issue surely
+     shows that you're starting the new year out right by putting
+     on an extremely astounding cover. The story "The Gate to
+     Xoran" is simply amazing. Let's read many more of Mr. Wells
+     stories. It is far surpassed, however, by "The Fifth
+     Dimension Catapult," which is the best story (novelette)
+     that I have ever read in "our" magazine.
+
+     The Boys' Scientification Club is now a branch of the famous
+     Science Correspondence Club. Remember, boys between the ages
+     of 10 and 15, if you're interested in reading Science
+     Fiction, by all means join the B. S. C. We have many copies
+     of Astounding Stories in our library and members are welcome
+     to read them. For further details write to me.--Forrest J.
+     Ackerman, President-Librarian, B. S. C., 530 Staples Avenue,
+     San Francisco, Cal.
+
+
+_Souls and Integrations_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     You are starting your second year as Editor of Astounding
+     Stories. If your standard during 1931 is up to your standard
+     of 1930, we shall be satisfied. If possible, give us, the
+     Readers, the best in Science Fiction. I have no doubt but
+     that the Readers of Astounding Stories would not want
+     fantasy unless written by a master; and to my mind there is
+     only one whom I will forgive for not making his stories
+     Science Fiction, and that writer is A. Merritt. Every other
+     writer should and must put plausible science in his stories.
+     If he doesn't, he won't go far; not with Science Fiction
+     readers, anyway.
+
+     I do not agree to your answer, by letter, to my complaint
+     about the science in the story, "An Extra Man," by Jackson
+     Gee. You say that two men, each the size and half the weight
+     of the original man could have been formed from the
+     integrated particles of the original man. In the story, the
+     weight of the two men was exactly the same as that of the
+     original man. [?] Anyway, I do not believe that these two
+     men could have been formed. Most likely, when the
+     laboratories began the process of reintegration, the person
+     integrated would have been cut in half, provided of course,
+     that the laboratories began the process at the same time. If
+     not, one laboratory would produce a larger portion of an
+     integrated man than the other.
+
+     But to come back to the original question. Can a man be
+     disintegrated into his component atoms and then reintegrated
+     into two men each half the size, weight, ability and brains?
+     I say no. I believe that the component atoms of the man when
+     reintegrated would be in exactly the same place as they were
+     before the disintegration occurred. If a part and not the
+     whole of a man is reintegrated in one place, then the part
+     would be one part of that man and not a complete man in
+     itself.
+
+     It would be as preposterous and absurd for anything but a
+     part of that man to be reintegrated, as it would be for two
+     apes, pigs or hens to come from him. I leave out the
+     question of what would happen to the soul. Imagine a soul
+     divided in half. Mr. Gee might say that he doesn't believe
+     in souls. Neither do I, much. I notice that some Readers say
+     that they liked that story. One even says that it was
+     perfect. Every man to his taste. I've read worse, myself.
+
+     Anyway, Mr. Editor, Astounding Stories is the finest and
+     best Science Fiction magazine on the market.
+
+     Many Readers want to keep their magazines and bind them,
+     including myself. Why change the size? I'm certain that that
+     won't be done. Astounding Stories started small (in size
+     only) and it will remain small (also only in size). Let us
+     have reprints.--Nathan Greenfeld, 373 Whitlock Ave., New
+     York City.
+
+
+_The Defense Rests_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     I have just read the January issue for 1931 and noticed some
+     so-called helpful letters by Readers. Looking over Mr.
+     Waite's letter, would like to suggest that he stop to think,
+     if possible, that if he wants absolute bone-dry facts, that
+     he doesn't want fiction at all. And Mr. Johnson--he seems
+     to have the impression that everyone who can take things for
+     granted without having a detailed explanation of the facts
+     of the story is a moron or a small child. He should go find
+     a volume of scientific research if he enjoys that sort of
+     stuff. I read fiction stories for the enjoyment I get out of
+     them and not to criticize them for lack of explanation. I
+     would rather read some of his so-called nonsense than a lot
+     of far-flung, intricate, baseless scientific explanations.
+     Why doesn't Mr. Johnson use his imagination?--Donald Kahl,
+     360 Selby Ave., St. Paul, Minn.
+
+
+_"High Time"_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     I have been reading the magazine ever since it first came
+     out, a year ago, so it is high time for me to write. It
+     certainly grows better with every new issue.
+
+     I think that the ten best stories published during 1930 were
+     (not in order of merit): "Brigands of the Moon," "Vandals of
+     the Stars," "The Atom Smasher," "The Moon Master," "Earth,
+     the Marauder," "The Planet of Dread," "Silver Dome," "The
+     Second Satellite," "Jetta of the Lowlands" and "The Pirate
+     Planet."
+
+     Your ten best authors are: Harl Vincent, Ray Cummings,
+     Charles W. Diffin, Victor Rousseau, Capt. S. P. Meek, Murray
+     Leinster, Arthur J. Burks, R. F. Starzl, Sewell P. Wright
+     and Edmond Hamilton.
+
+     The Commander Hanson stories by S. P. Wright are great.
+     Let's have lots more of them.
+
+     And now about reprints. I cast my vote like many other
+     readers in favor of them. Many Readers, in fact over half,
+     are new Readers of Science Fiction. They, like myself, have
+     not read the great masterpieces such as "The Time Machine,"
+     "The Moon Pool" and countless other stories. Now, why not
+     reprint some of them and give us a chance to read them? A
+     few Readers who have read them before do not want them
+     reprinted because they do not want anybody else to read
+     them.
+
+     A brickbat: Why not cut the edges of the magazine smooth? It
+     would be much easier to handle.
+
+     A bouquet: You have a fine magazine. Keep up the good stuff.
+     My criticism is exhausted, so good-by until next
+     time.--Oswald Train, P. O. Box 94, Barnesboro, Pa.
+
+
+_Two Dimensions Off?_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     It was just by accident that I came across your magazine,
+     and I have read every issue since.
+
+     In the January number there is one story that I don't like,
+     "The Fifth Dimension Catapult." As far as the story is
+     concerned it is very good, but Professor Denham was not
+     marooned in the fifth dimension. If you read the story you
+     will find that Professor Denham was marooned on a three
+     dimensional world. That is all I can make out.
+
+     Astounding Stories is the best Science Fiction magazine I
+     have ever read, and I shall keep on reading it.
+
+     Keep up the good cover illustrations.--Richard Meindle, R.
+     1, Box 91, Butternut, Wisconsin.
+
+
+_To the Colors!_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Being a passionate admirer of Dr. Breuer and his writings, I
+     cannot permit the contumelious, unfounded aggression of one
+     George K. Addison to go on unconfuted.
+
+     Perceiving that Dr. Breuer cannot possibly vindicate himself
+     against this disparagement I feel obliged to extenuate Dr.
+     Breuer in the eyes of the Readers.
+
+     In the first place, Dr. Breuer writes rarely and sparingly
+     and does not grind out his stories month after month as do
+     some other authors. His stories are highly original and are
+     presented in a purely literary style. The story to which Mr.
+     Addison refers, "A Problem in Communication," is a fine
+     example of his work. Should his story be remonstrated
+     against because it is lacking in adventure, because it did
+     not delineate mushy love episodes, because it does not cause
+     chills to run down one's spine? Positively not! It lives up
+     to the standard of the highest Science Fiction. Here is a
+     story unbesmirched by the love element, exceedingly
+     plausible and interestingly narrated.
+
+     If all stories were thought out and written just half as
+     carefully as Dr. Breuer's, Astounding Stories would become a
+     periodical justified to be considered on a par with The
+     Golden Book.
+
+     In closing, I wish to express my desire that more stories of
+     the Breuer quality be bestowed upon the Readers.--Mortimer
+     Weisinger, 266 Van Cortland Ave., Bronx, New York.
+
+
+_And It Wasn't!_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Having read "The Readers' Corner" since its first appearance
+     in Astounding Stories and noted the various criticisms
+     offered, may I tell you about a story written by a Science
+     Fiction author?
+
+     The author, by the way, is the perfect author; he makes
+     absolutely no mistakes in his story, and is in no danger of
+     starving if his works aren't accepted and older stories are
+     reprinted instead. His science is correct and the story
+     contains nothing that cannot be understood.
+
+     The story is of interplanetary adventure. Strange to say,
+     there is no war in the story; there is no villain; there is
+     no hero to save a world from destruction or his sweetheart
+     from the monsters of another planet. Instead, there are
+     nothing but characters--if you get what I mean. The persons
+     involved in this interplanetary novel reach their goal due
+     to the tremendous strides of science in experimenting with
+     air and space vehicles.
+
+     When they arrive on the planet they do not meet hostile
+     nations. They do not meet monstrosities. They do, however,
+     meet people much like themselves who do not welcome the
+     travelers with open arms and show them about their city, but
+     regard them with curiosity and treat them with all due
+     respect for their achievement in conquering space.
+
+     As I said before, there is no hero who falls in love with
+     the beautiful girl from the planet visited, and saves her
+     and her country from other warring nations. To tell the
+     truth, the adventurers have their own loved ones at home.
+     They meet no intrigue. When they have learned all they
+     can--experiencing many difficulties in mastering the
+     language used, for the people of the planet have not
+     perfected a brain-copier or other like mechanism--they
+     arrange for commerce and travel between the two worlds and
+     return to Earth. On their return, they are not met with
+     world wide ovations and made heroes of, but receive credit
+     for their undertaking and are soon forgotten about.
+
+     To cap the climax, the story is acceptable to the Editors.
+     It is not in need of corrections and is published
+     immediately. The story is gratefully accepted by the public
+     and not one single soul writes a scathing letter to the
+     Editor telling why it was not good. In fact, I can hardly
+     believe that such a story was written. Possibly it
+     wasn't!--Robert R. Young, 86 Third Avenue, Kingston, Penn.
+
+
+_Ha-ha!_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Christmas day, and because I'm not acquainted in this city
+     I'm writing you a letter.
+
+     I have just finished reading your magazine. I came close to
+     not buying it, being not overly prosperous, but decided to
+     take a chance when I saw you had a dimensional story by
+     Murray Leinster. That story was up to expectations. The
+     others were down to expectations.
+
+     If you want me to choose your magazine to spend my reading
+     allowance on, have more stories by Leinster, Starzl, Breuer
+     and Wells. It may take a little more effort, but it's worth
+     it. Sax Rohmer is good on science stuff, too.
+
+     Before you print any more undersea stories have a diver look
+     at them. You tell about standing at the bottom of the ocean
+     and seeing the submarine "not more than a quarter of a mile
+     away." Ha-ha! [No fair, that ha-ha! For the story says,
+     quoted exactly: "... there gleamed the reassuring LIGHTS of
+     the Nereid, not a quarter of a mile away." Probably, intense
+     searchlight beams could be seen that far.--Ed.] You couldn't
+     see it if you stood more than ten feet away. I'm not trying
+     to be critical, but you should be more careful.--Myron
+     Higgins, 524 West 100th St., New York City.
+
+
+_We Never Will_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     I have been an enthusiastic reader of Astounding Stories
+     since it was founded, and I think it about time that I
+     voiced my opinion of your great magazine.
+
+     Taking all in all it's a vow, but of course it could be
+     made better by having a quarterly, which I am sure would go
+     over big.
+
+     Wesso is great, so why not have all the illustrations by
+     him?
+
+     Your authors are also great. Nearly every story I have read
+     was perfect, and whatever you do don't lose R. F. Starzl.
+     His ideas are very good, as illustrated in "The Planet of
+     Dread."
+
+     There is only one more thing I would like to ask of you, and
+     that is the reason why I write. Please don't spoil the
+     magazine by endeavoring to please a very small minority by
+     putting in unnecessary scientific explanations. The reason
+     why I like your magazine so much is because of the fact that
+     it is unique in that respect. I have read a few stories in
+     other scientific magazines and found that they contained too
+     much explanation. I hope for the benefit of other Readers
+     and myself that you will not change the stories by adding
+     too much explanation.
+
+     In the coming year I wish you all possible success.--John
+     Sheehan, 32 Elm St., Cambridge, Mass.
+
+
+_This and That_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     In the October issue of Astounding Stories Mr. Woodrow
+     Gelman cast vote number 1 for reprints. In the February,
+     1931, issue, Mr. Forgaris throws in number 2 and here goes
+     number 3. I really don't see why, even after the arguments
+     you printed, you don't print at least one a year. I have
+     been reading your magazine ever since it came out and have
+     found that at least one-half of your Readers want reprints.
+     Can't you print at least one for an experiment?
+
+     Ray Cummings, S. P. Meek, Dr. Miles J. Breuer, Sewell P.
+     Wright and Harl Vincent are your best authors. Wesso is your
+     best artist by far.
+
+     There were several stories I did not like. They are:
+     "Monsters of Moyen," "Earth, the Marauder," and I guess
+     those are all.
+
+     How about giving us some short short stories? And how about
+     cutting the edges of the paper smooth? And giving us a
+     quarterly? But all in all I think your magazine is one of
+     the best in the field.--Vernon H. Jones, 1603 Sixth Ave.,
+     Des Moines, Iowa.
+
+
+_It's Your Imagination_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Well, well! Astounding Stories was two days early this
+     month. See that this happens more often.
+
+     Of course, "The Pirate Planet" took first place in the
+     February number. The story was very well written and the
+     characters very realistic. It deserves to be put in book
+     form, also in the talkies. It would be much better than
+     "Just Imagine."
+
+     I welcome Anthony Gilmore, D. W. Hall and F. V. W. Mason to
+     Astounding Stories. Their stories proved to be very
+     interesting and I hope to read more.
+
+     Do you know how to write editorials? Yes? Then prove it. I
+     have to be shown. Write on some scientific subject each
+     month, and every so often write on Astounding Stories itself
+     and of its stories and authors.
+
+     Is it my imagination or have you been using a better grade
+     of paper in the past two issues? it seems to be much
+     smoother and a little thinner than that used previously.
+
+     I notice that you are giving more room to some of the
+     illustrations, as in "Werewolves of War" and "The Pirate
+     Planet." The larger the illustrations are the more there can
+     be put in them.--Jack Darrow, 4225 No. Spaulding Ave.,
+     Chicago, Illinois.
+
+
+_If He But Could!_
+
+     Dear Editor:
+
+     Astounding Stories is without doubt the most preeminent in
+     its field.
+
+     With such versatile authors as Burks (When does his next
+     story appear?), Starzl, Cummings, Leinster, Vincent and all
+     the rest, how can it help but to overshadow all periodicals!
+
+     The illustrations are superfine. Wesso is a marvel! If he
+     could only write his own stories and illustrate them!
+
+     Now, a suggestion. I am positive that every Reader of your
+     magazine wants you to start a department in which
+     biographies of the authors and their photographs are given.
+     Why not start one?--Julius Schwartz, 407 East 183rd St.,
+     Bronx, New York.
+
+
+_"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!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Astounding Stories,  April, 1931, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTOUNDING STORIES,  APRIL, 1931 ***
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