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Or if you lived in 1840, and were told that some day men a thousand miles apart would be able to talk to each other through a little wire— or without any wire at all — that would have been another. Or if, in 1900, they predicted ocean-crossing air- planes and submarines, world-girdling Zeppelins, sixty-story buildings, radio, metal that can be made to resist gravity and float in the air— these would have been other "astounding" stories. To-day, time has gone by, and all these things are commonplace. That is the only real difference between the astounding and the commonplace— Time. To-morrow, more astounding things are going to happen. Your children— or their children — are going to take a trip to the moon. They will be able to render themselves invisible — a problem that has already been partly solved. They will be able to disintegrate their bodies in New York and re- integrate them in China — and in a matter of seconds. Astounding? Indeed, yes. Impossible? Well — television would have been impossible, almost unthinkable, ten years ago. Now you will see the kind of magazine that it is our pleasure to offer you beginning with this, the first number of Astounding Stories. It is a magazine whose stories will anticipate the super-scientific achievements of To-morrow — whose stories will not only be strictly accurate in their science but will be vividly, dramatically and thrillingly told. Already we have secured stories by some of the finest writers of fantasy in the world — men such as Ray Cum- mings, Murray Leinster, Captain S. P. Meek, Harl Vincent, R. F. Starzl and Victor Rousseau. So — order your next month's copy of Astound- rNG Stories in advance! — The Editor. 7 Dodd and Tommy realized that they were powerless against the monstrous beetles. A TWO-PART NOVEL By Victor Rousseau CHAPTER I Dodd's Discovery OUT of the south the biplane came winging back toward the camp, a black speck against the dazzling white of the vast ice-fields that extended un- broken to the ho- rizon on every side. It came out of Only two young explorers stand in the way of the mad Bram's horrible revenge — the releasing of his trillions of man-sized beetles upon an utterly defenseless world. the south, and yet, a hundred miles further back along the course on which it flew, it could not have proceeded in any direction except northward. For a hundred miles south lay the south pole, the goal toward which the Trav- ers Expedition had been pressing for the better part of that year. Not that they could not have reached it sooner. As a matter of fact, the pole had been crossed and re- crossed, according to the estimate of Tommy Travers, aviator, and nephew of the old millionaire who stood fairy uncle to the expedition. But one of the things that was being sought was the exact site of the pole. Not with- in a couple of miles or so, but within the fraction of an inch. It had something to do with Ein- stein, and something to do with ter- restrial magnetism, and the variations of the south magnetic pole, and the reason therefore, and something to do with parallaxes and the precession of the equinoxes and other things, this search for the pole's exact location. But all that was principally the affair of the astronomer of the party. Tommy Travers, who was now evidently on his way back, didn't give a whoop for Einstein, or any of the rest of the stuff. He had been enjoying himself after his fashion during a year of frostbites and hard rations, and he was beginning to anticipate the delights of the return to Broadway. Captain Storm, in charge of the ex- pedition, together with the five others of the advance camp, watched the plane maneuver up to the tents. She came down neatly on the smooth snow, skidded on her runners like an expert skater, and came to a stop almost im- mediately in front of the marquee. Tommy Travers leaped out of the enclosed cockpit, which, shut off by glass from the cabin, was something like the front seat of a limousine. "Well, Captain, we followed that break for a hundred miles, and there's no ground cleft, as you expected," he said. "But Jim Dodd and I picked up something, and Jim seems to have gone crazy." THROUGH the windows of the cabin, Jim Dodd, the young archaeologist of the party, could be seen apparently wrestling with some- thing that looked like a suit of armor. By the time Captain Storm, Jimmy, and the other members of the party had reached the cabin door, Dodd had got it open and flung himself out backward, still hugging what he had 10 ASTOUNDING STORIES found, and maneuvering so that he managed to fall on his back and sus- tain its weight. "Say, what the— what— what's that?" gasped Storm. Even the least scientific minded of the party gasped in amazement at what Dodd had. It resembled noth- ing so much as an enormous beetle. As a matter of fact, it was an insect, for it had the three sections that char- acterize this class, but it was merely the shell of one. Between four and five feet in height, when Dodd stood it on end, it could now be seen to con- sist of the hard exterior substance of some huge, unknown coleopter. This substance, which was fully three inches thick over the thorax, looked as hard as plate armor. "What is- it?" gasped Storm again. TOMMY TRAVERS made answer, for James Dodd was evidently incapable of speech, more from emo- tion than from the force with which he had landed backward in the snow, "We found it at the pole, Captain," he said. "At least, pretty near where the pole ought to be. We ran into a current of warm air or something. The snow had melted in places, and there were patches of bare rock. This thing was lying in a hollow among them." "If I didn't see it before my eyes, I'd think you crazy, Tommy," said Storm with some asperity. "What is it, a crab?" "Crab be damned!" shouted Jim Dodd, suddenly recovering his facul- ties. "My God, Captain Storm, don't you know the difference between an insect and a crustacean? This is a fossil beetle. Don't you see the dis- tinguishing mark of the coleoptera, those two elytra, or wing-covers, which meet in the median dorsal line? A beetle, but with the shell of a crustacean instead of mere chitin. That's what led you astray, I expect. God, what a tale we'll have to tell when we get back to New York! We'll drop everything else, and spend years, if need be, looking for other specimens." "Like fun you will!" shouted Higby, the astronomer of the party. "Lemme tell you right here, Dodd, no- body outside the Museum of Natural History is going to care a damn about your old fossils. What we're going to do is to march straight to the true pole, and spend a year taking observa- tions and parallaxes. If Einstein's brochure, in which he links up gravi- tation with magnetism, is correct — " "Fossil beetles!" Jim Dodd burst out, ignoring the astronomer. "That means that in the Tertiary Era, prob- ably, there existed forms of life in the antartic continent that have never been found elsewhere. Imagine a" world in which the insect reached a size pro- portionate to the great saurians, Cap- tain Storm! I'll wager poor Bram dis- covered this. That's why he stayed behind when the Greystoke Expedi- tion came within a hundred miles of the pole. I'll wager he's left a cairn somewhere with full details inside it. We've got to find it. We—" BUT Jim Dodd, suddenly realizing that the rest of the party could hardly be said to share his enthusiasm in any marked degree, broke off and looked sulky. "You say you found this thing pretty nearly upon the site of the true pole?" Captain Storm asked Tommy. "Within five miles, I'd say, Captain. The fog was so bad that we couldn't get our directions very well." "Well, then, there's going to be no difficulty," answered Storm. "If this fair weather lasts, we'll be at the pole in another week, and we'll start mak- ing our permanent camp. Plenty of opportunity for all you gentlemen. As for me, I'm merely a sailor, and I'm trying to be impartial. "And please remember, gentlemen, that we're well into March now, and likely to have the first storms of au- tumn on us any day. So let's drop the THE BEETLE HORDE 11 argument and remember that we've got to pull together!" TOMMY TRAVERS was the only skilled aviator of the expedition, which had brought two planes with it. It was a queer friendship that had sprung up between him and Jim Dodd. Tommy, the blase ex-Harvard man, who was known along Broadway, and had never been able to settle down, seemed as different as possible from the spectacled, scholarly Dodd, ten years his senior, red-haired, irascible, and living, as Tommy put it, in the Age of Old Red Sandstone, instead of in the year 1930 A. D. It was generally known — though the story had been officially denied — that there had been trouble in the Greystoke Expedition of three years before. Captain Greystoke had taken the brilliant, erratic Bram, of the Car- negie Archaeological Institute, with him, and Bram's history was a long record of trouble. It was Bram who had exploded the faked neolithic finds at Mannheim, thereby earning the undying enmity of certain European savants, but bril- liantly demolishing them when he smashed the so-called Mannheim stone pitcher (valued at a hundred thousand dollars) with a pocket-axe, and caus- tically inquired whether neolithic man used babbit metal rivets to fasten on his jug handles. BRAM'S brilliant work in. the in- vestigation of the origin of the negrito Asiatic races had been awarded one of the Nobel prizes, and Bram had declined it in an insulting letter be- cause he disapproved of the year's prize award for literature. He had been a storm center for years, embittered by long opposition, when he joined the Greystoke Expe- dition for the purpose of investigating the marine fauna of the antarctic con- tinent. And it was known that his presence bad nearly brought the Greystoke Ex- pedition to the point of civil war. Rumor said he had been deliberately abandoned. His enemies hoped he had. The facts seemed to be, how- ever, that in an outburst of temper he had walked out of camp in a furious snowstorm and perished. For days his body had been sought in vain. Jimmy Dodd had run foul of Bram some years before, when Bram had published a criticism of one of Dodd's addresses dealing with fossil mono- tremes, or egg-laying mammals. In his inimitable way, Bram had sug- gested that the problem which came first, the egg or the chicken, was now seen to be linked up with the Darwin- ian theory, and solved in the person of Dodd. Nevertheless, Jimmy Dodd enter- tained a devoted admiration for the memory of the dead scientist. He be- lieved that Bram must have left rec- ords of inestimable importance in a cairn before he died. He wanted to find that cairn. And he knew, what a number of Bram's enemies knew, that the dead scientist had been a morphine addict.* He believed that he had wandered out into the snow under the influence of the drug. DODD, who shared a tent with Tommy, had raved the greater part of the night about the find. "Well, but see here, Jimmy, suppose these beetles did inhabit the antarctic continent a few million years ago, why get excited?" Tommy had asked. "Excited?" bellowed Dodd. "It opens one of the biggest problems that science has to face. Why haven't they survived into historic times? Why didn't they cross into Australia, like the opossum, by the land bridge then existent between that continent and South America? Beetles five feet in length, and practically invulnerable! What killed them off? Why didn't they win the supremacy over man?" Jimmy Dodd had muttered till he went to sleep, and he had muttered 12 ASTOUNDING STORIES worse in his dreams. Tommy was glad that Captain Storm had given them permission to return to the same spot next morning and look for further fos- sils, though his own interest in them was of the slightest. The dogs were being harnessed next morning when the two men hopped into the plane. The thermometer was unusually high for the season, for in the south polar regions the short sum- mer is usually at an end by March. Tommy was sweating in his furs in a temperature well above the freezing point. The snow was crusted hard, the sky overcast with clouds, and a wind was blowing hard out of the south, and increasing in velocity hourly. "A bad day for starting," said Cap- tain Storm. "Looks like one of the au- tumn storms was blowing up. If I were you, I'd watch the weather, Tommy." TOMMY glanced at Dodd, who was huddled in the rear cockpit, fum- ing at the delay, and grinned whim- sically. "I guess I can handle her, Captain," he answered. "It's only an hour's flight to where he found that fossil." "Just as you please," said Storm curtly. He knew that Tommy's judg- ment as a pilot could always be re- lied upon. "You'll find us here when you return," he added. "I've counter- manded the order to march. I don't like the look of the weather at all." Tommy grinned again and pressed the starter. The engine caught and wanned up. One of the men kicked away the blocks of ice that had been placed under the skids to serve as chocks. The plane taxied over the crusted snow, and took off into the south. THE camp was situated in a hollow among the ice-mountains that rose to a height of two or three thou- sand feet all around. Tommy had not dreamed how strongly the gale was blowing until he was over the top of them. Then he realized that he was facing a tougher proposition than he had calculated on. The storm struck the biplane with full force. A snowstorm was driving up rapidly, blackening the sky. The sun, which only appeared for a brief interval every day, was practically touching the horizon as it rose to make its min- ute arc in the sky. A star was visible through a rift in the clouds overhead, and the pale daylight in which they had started had already become twi- light. Tommy was tempted to turn back, but it was only a hundred miles, and Jimmy Dodd would give him no peace if he did so. So he put the plane's nose resolutely into the wind, watching his speed indicator drop from a hundred miles per hour to eighty, sixty, forty — less. The storm was beating up furiously. Of a sudden the clouds broke into a deluge of whirling snow. In a moment the windshield was a frozen, opaque mass. Tommy opened it, and peered out into the biting air. He could see nothing. The plane, caught in the fearful cross-currents that swirl about the southern roof of the world, was fluttering like a leaf in the wind. The altimeter was dropping dangerously. Tommy opened the throttle to the limit, zooming, and, like a spurred horse, the biplane shot forward and upward. She touched five thousand, six, seven — and that, for her, was ceiling under those conditions, for a sudden tremendous shock of wind, coming in a fierce cross-current, swung her round, tossed her to and fro in the enveloping white cloud. And Tommy knew that he had the fight of his life upon his hands. THE compasses, which required considerable daily adjusting to be of use so near to the pole, had now gone out of use altogether. The air speed indicator had apparently gone west, for it was oscillating between THE BEETLE HORDE 13 zero and twenty. The turn and bank indicator was performing a kind of tango round the dial. Even the eight- day clock had ceased to function, but that might have been due to the fact that Tommy had neglected to wind it. And the oil pressure gauge presented a still more startling sight, for a glance showed that either there was a leak or else the oil had frozen. Tommy looked around at Dodd and pointed downward. Dodd responded with a vicious forward wave of his hand. Tommy shook his head, and Dodd started forward along the cabin, ap- parently with the intention of commit- ting assault and battery upon him. In- stead, the archaeologist collapsed upon the floor as the plane spun completely around under the impact of a blast that was like a giant's slap. The plane was no longer controlla- ble. True, she responded in some sort to the controls, but all Tommy was able to do was to keep her from go- ing into a crazy sideslip or nose dive as he fought with the elements. And those elements were like a devil un- chained. One moment he was drop- ping like a plummet, the next he was shooting up like a rocket as a vertical blast of air caught the plane and tossed her like a cork into the invisible heavens. Then she was revolving, as if in a maelstrom, and by degrees this rotary movement began to predomi- nate. Round and round went the plane, in circles that gradually narrowed, and it was all Tommy could do to swing the stick so as to keep her from skidding or sideslipping. And as he worked desperately at his task Tommy began to realize something that made him wonder if he was not dreaming. THE snow was no longer snow, but rain — mist, rather, warm mist that had already cleared the wind- shield and covered it with tiny drops. And that white, opaque world into which he was looking was no longer snow but fog — the densest fog that Tommy had ever encountered. Fog like white wool, drifting past him in fleecy flakes that looked as if they had solid substance. Warm fog that was like balm upon his frozen skin, but of a warmth that was impos- sible within a few miles of the frozen pole. Then there came a momentary break in it, and Tommy looked down and ut- tered a cry of fear. Fear, because he knew that he must be dreaming. Not more than a thousand feet be- neath him he saw patches of snow, and patches of — green grass, the brightest and most verdant green that he had ever seen in his life. He turned round at a touch on his shoulder. Dodd was leaning over him, one hand pointing menacingly upward and onward. "You fool," Tommy bellowed in his ear, "d'you think the south pole lies over there? It's herel Yeah, don't you get it, Jimmy? Look down! This valley — God,. Jimmy, the south pole's a hole in the ground !" And as he spoke he remembered vaguely some crank who had once in- sisted that the two poles were hollow because — what was the fellow's reason- ing? Tommy could not remember it. But there was no longer any doubt but that they were dropping into a hole. Not more than a mile around, which explained why neither Scott nor Amundsen had found it when they ap- proximated to the site of the pole. A hole — a warm hole, up which a current of warm air was rushing, forming the white mist that now gradually thinned as the plane descended. The plateau with its covering of eternal snows loomed in a white circle high overhead. Underneath was green grass now — grass and trees ! i THE fog was nearly gone. The plane responded to the controls again. Tommy pushed the stick for- ward and came round in a tighter cir- cle. 14 ASTOUNDING STORIES And then something happened that he had not in the least expected. One moment he seemed to be traveling in a complete calm, a sort of clear funnel with a ring of swirling fog outside it — the next he was dropping into a void! There was no air resistance — there seemed hardly any air, for he felt a choking in his throat, and a tearing at his lungs as he strove to breathe. He heard a strangled cry from Dodd, and saw that he was clutching with both hands at his throat, and his face was turning purple. The controls went limp in Tommy's hands. The plane, gyrating more slowly, suddenly nosed down, hung for a moment in that void, and then plunged toward the green earth, two hundred feet below, with appalling swiftness. Tommy realized that a crash was in- evitable. He threw his goggles up over his forehead, turned and waved to Dodd in ironic farewell. He saw the earth rush up at him — then came the shattering crash, and then obliv- ion! CHAPTER II Beetles and Humans HOW long he had remained uncon- scious, Tommy had no means of determining. Of a sudden he found himself lying on the ground beside the shattered plane, with his eyes wide open. He stared at it, and stared about him, without understanding where he was, or what had happened to him. His first idea was that he had crashed on the golf links near Mitchell Field, Long Island, for all about him were stretches of verdant grass and small shrubby plants. Then, when he remem- bered the expedition, he was convinced that he had been dreaming. What brought him to a saner view was the discovery that he was en- veloped in furs which were insuffer- ably hot. He half raised himself and succeeded in unfastening his fur coat, and thus discovered that apparently none of his bones was broken. But the plane must have fallen from a considerable height to have been smashed so badly. Then Tommy dis- covered that he was lying upon an ex- tensive mound of sand, thrown up as by some gigantic mole, for burrow tracks ran through it in every direc- tion. It was this that had saved his life. Something was moving at his side. It was half-submerged in the sand- pile, and it was moving parallel to him with great rapidity. A grayish body, half-covered with grains of sand emerged, waving two enormously long tentacles. It was a shrimp, but fully three feet in length, and Tommy had never before had any idea what an unpleasant object a shrimp is. Tommy staggered to his feet and dropped nearer the plane, eyeing the shrimp with horror. But he was soon relieved as he discovered that it was apparently harmless. It slithered away and once more buried itself in the pile of sand. Now Tommy was beginning to re- member. He looked into the wreckage of the plane. Jim Dodd was not there. He called his name repeatedly, and there was no response, except a dull echo from the ice-mountains behind the veil of fog. HE went to the other side of the plane, he scanned the ground all about him. Jimmy had disappeared. It was evident that he was nowhere near, for Tommy could see the whole of the lower scope of the bowl on every side of him. He had walked away — or he had been carried awayi Tommy thought of the shrimp, and shuddered. What other fearsome monsters might inhabit that extraordinary valley? He sat down, leaning against the wreck of the fuselage, and tried to ad- just his mind, tried to keep himself from going mad. He knew now that THE BEETLE HORDE 15 the flight had been no dream, that he was a member of his uncle's expedi- tion, that he had flown with Jim to- ward the pole, had crashed in a vacuum. But where was Jim? And how were they going to get out of the damn place? Something like a heap of stones not far away attracted Tommy's attention. Perhaps Jim Dodd was lying behind that. Once more Tommy got upon his feet and began walking toward it. On the way, he stumbled against the sharp edge of something that protruded from the ground. It cut his leg sharply, and, with a curse, he began rubbing his shin and looking at the thing. Then he saw that it was another of the fossil shells, half- buried in the marshy ooze on which he was treading. The ground in this lower part of the valley was a swamp, on account of the very fine mist fall- ing from the fog clouds that sur- rounded it impenetrably on every side. Then Tommy came upon another shell, and then another. And now he saw that there were piles of what he had taken to be rock everywhere, and that this was not rock but great heaps of the shells, all equally intact. Hundreds of thousands of the pre- historic beetles must have died in that valley, perhaps overcome by some cataclysm. TOMMY examined the heap near which he stood ; he yelled Dodd's name, but again no answer came. Instead, something began to stir among the heaps of shells. For a mo- ment Tommy hoped against hope that it was Dodd, but it wasn't Dodd. It was a living beetle! A beetle fully five feet high as it stood erect, a pair of enormous wings outspread. And the head, which was larger than a man's, was the most frightful object Tommy had ever seen. Jim Dodd would have said at once that this was* one of the Curculionidae, or snout beetles, for a prolongation of the head between the eyes formed a sort of beak a foot in length. The mouth, which opened downward, was armed with terrific mandibles, while the huge, compound eyes looked like enormous crystals of cut glass. Imme- diately in front of the eyes were two mandibles as long as a man's arms, with feathery processes at the ends. In addition to these there were three pairs of legs, the front pair as long as a man's, the hind pair almost as long as a horse's. PARALYZED with horror, Tommy watched the monster, which had apparently been disturbed by the vi- brations of his voice, extract itself from among the shells. Then, with a bound that covered fifteen feet, it had lessened the distance between them by half. And then a still more amazing thing happened. For of a sudden the hard shell slipped from the thorax, the wing-cases dropped off, the whole of the bony parts slipped to the ground with a clang, and a soft, defenseless thing went slithering away among the rocks. The beetle had moulted! Tommy dropped to the ground in the throes of violent nausea. Then, looking up again, he saw the girl! SHE was about a hundred yards away from him, very close to the fallen plane, and she must have emerged from a large hole in the ground which Tommy could now see under a ledge of overhanging rock. She seemed to be dressed in a single garment which fell to her knees, and appeared to fit tightly about her body, but as she came nearer, Tommy, watch- ing her, petrified by this latest appari- tion, discovered that it was woven of her own hair, which must have been of immense length, for it fell naturally to her shoulders, and thence was woven into this close-fitting material, a fringe an inch or two in length extending be- neath the selvage. 16 ASTOUNDING STORIES She was about six feet tall, and ap- parently made after the normal human pattern. She moved with a slow, ma- jestic swing, and if ever any female had seemed to Tommy to have the ap- pearance of an angel, this unknown woman did. She was so fair, in that flossy, flaxen covering, she moved with such easy grace, that Tommy, gaping, grad- ually crept nearer to her. She did not seem to see him. She was stooping over the very sand heap into which he had fallen. Suddenly, with lightning- like rapidity, her arms shot out, her hands began tunneling in the sand. With a cry of triumph she pulled out the shrimp Tommy had seen, or an- other like it, and, stripping it off the shell, began devouring it with evident relish. In the midst of her meal the girl raised her head and looked at Tommy. -He saw that her eyes were filmed, va- cant, dead. Then of a sudden a third membrane was drawn back across the pupils, and she saw him. She let the shrimp drop to the ground, uttered a cry, and moved to- ward him with a tottering gait. She groped toward him with outstretched arms. And then she was blind again, for the membrane once more covered her pupils. It was as if her eyes Were unable to endure even the dim light of the valley, through whose surround- ing mists the low sun, setting just above the horizon, was unable to dif- fuse itself save as a brightening of the fog curtain. TOMMY stepped toward the girl. His outstretched hand touched hers. It was unquestionably a woman's hand he held, delicately warm, with exquisitely moulded fingers, in whose touch there seemed to be, for the girl, some tactile impression of him. 4 Again that membrane was drawn back from the girl's pupils for a fleet- ing flash. Tommy saw two eyes of in- tense black, their color contrasting curiously with the flaxen color of her hair and her white skin, almost the tint of an albino's. Those eyes had surveyed him, and appeared satisfied that he was one of her kind. She could not have seen very much in that almost instantaneous flash of vision. Queer, that membrane — as if she had been used to living in the dark, as if the full light of the day was unbear- able! She drew her hand away. Soft vo- cals came from her lips. Suddenly she turned swiftly. She could not have seen, but before Tommy had seen, she had sensed the presence of the old man who was creeping out of the hole in the mountainside. He moved forward craftily, and then pounced upon the sand pile, and in a moment had pulled out another of the big shrimps, which he proceeded to de- vour with greedy relish. The girl, leaving Tommy's side, joined him in that unpleasant feast. And in the midst of it a flood came pouring from the hole — a flood of liv- ing beetles, covering the ground in fif- teen-foot leaps as they dashed at the two. To his horror, Tommy saw Jimmy Dodd among them, wrapped in his fur coat like a mummy, and being pushed and rolled forward like a football. For a moment Tommy hesitated, torn between his solicitude for Jim Dodd and that for the girl. Then, as the foremost of the monsters bounded to her side, he ran between them. The vicious jaws snapped within six inches of Tommy's face, with a force that would have carried away an ear, or shredded the cheek, if they had met. TOMMY struck out with all his might, and his fist clanged on the resounding shell so that the blood spurted from his bruised knuckles. He had struck the monster squarely upon the thorax, and he had not dis- commoded it in the least. It turned on him, its glassy, many-faceted eyes glaring with a cold, infernal light. Tommy struck out again with his left Ast. St. THE BEETLE HORDE 17 hand, this time upon the pulpy flesh of the downward-opening mouth. An inch higher, and he would have impaled his hand upon the beak, with a point like a needle, and evidently used for purposes of attack, since it was not connected with the mandibles. The blow appeared to fall in the only vulnerable place. The monster dropped upon its back and lay there, unable to reverse itself, its antenna and forelegs waving in the air, and the rear legs rasping together in a shrill, strident shriek. Instantly, as Tommy darted out of the way, the swarm fell upon the help- less monster and began devouring it, tearing strips of flesh from the lower shell, which in the space of a half- minute was reduced simply to bone. The most horrible feature of this act of cannibalism was the complete si- lence with which it was performed, ex- cept for the rasping of the dying mon- ster's legs. It was evident that the huge beetles had no vocal apparatus. For the moment left unguarded, Jim Dodd flung down the collar of his fur coat, stared about him, and recognized Tommy. "My God, it's you!" he yelled. "Well, can you—?" He had no time to finish his sen- tence. A pair of antenna went round his neck from behind. At the same in- stant Tommy, the old man, and the girl were gripped by the monsters, which, forming a solid phalanx about them, began hustling them in the direction of the hole. Resistance was utterly impossible. Tommy felt as if he was being pushed along by a moving wall of stone. Inside the opening it was completely dark. Tommy shouted to Dodd, but the strident sounds of the moving legs drowned his cries. He was being pushed forward into the unknown. SUDDENLY the ground seemed to fall away beneath his feet. He struggled, cried out, and felt himself descending through the air. AbU St. For a full half-minute he went downward at a speed that constricted his throat so that he could hardly draw breath. Then, just as he had nerved himself for the imminent crash, the speed of his descent was checked. In another moment he found that he was slowing to a standstill in mid-air. He was beginning to float backward — upward. But the wall of moving shells, pushing against him, forced him on, downward, and yet apparently against the force of gravitation. Then of a sudden Tommy was aware * of a dim light all about him. His feet touched earth and grass as softly as a thistledown alighting. He found himself seated in the same dim light upon red grass, and staring into Jimmy's face. CHAPTER III Ten Miles Underground W TX THAT I was going to say when V V we were interrupted, was, 'Can you beat it?'" Jimmy Dodd ob- served, with admirable sang-froid. They were still seated on the red grass, gazing about them at what looked like an illimitable plain, and upward into depths of darkness. It was warm, and the light, furnished by what appeared to be luminous vegeta- tion, was about that of twilight. On every side were clumps of trees and shrubs, which formed centers of phosphorescent illumination, but for the most part the land was open, and here and there human figures appeared, moving with head down and arms hanging earthward. "No, I'm damned if I can," said Tommy. "What happened to you after we crashed?" "Why, first thing I knew, I found v myself riding on the back of a fossil beetle, apparently one of the curculi- oniade," said Dodd. "Never mind being so precise, Jimmy. Let's call it a beetle. Go on." "They set me down inside the hole and seemed to be investigating me, the 18 ASTOUNDING STORIES whole swarm of them. Of course, I thought I was dead, and come to my just reward, especially when I saw those beaks. Then one of them began tickling my face with its antenna, and I drew up my fur collar. They didn't seem to like the feel of the fur, and after a while the whole gang started hustling me back again, like a nest of ants carrying something they don't want outside their hill. And then you bobbed up." "Well, my opinion is you saved your life by pulling up your collar," said Tommy. "Looks to me as if it's a case of the survival of the fittest, said fittest being the insect, and the human race taking second place. You know what the humans here live on, don't you?" "No, what?" "Shrimps as big as poodles. If you'd seen that girl and the old man getting outside them, you'd realize that there seems to be a food shortage in this part of the world. Say, where in thun- der are we, Jimmy?" "Haven't you guessed yet, Travers?" r asked Dodd, a spice of malice in his voice. "I suppose this is some sort of big hole on the site of the south pole, with warm vapors coming up. Maybe a great fissure in the earth, or some- thing." JIMMY DODD'S grin, seen in the half-light, was rather disconcert- ing. "How far do you think we dropped just now?" Dodd asked. "Why, I'd say several hundred yards," replied Tommy. "What's your estimate ?" "Just about ten miles," answered Dodd. "What? You're still crazy! Why, we slowed up !" "Yeah," grinned Dodd, "we slowed up. We're inside the crust of the world. That's the long and short of it. The earth we've known is just a shell over our heads." "Yeah? Walking head downward, are we? Then why don't we drop to the center of the earth, you damn fool?" "Because, my dear fellow, you can swing a pailful of water round your head without spilling any of it. In other words, our old friend, centrifu- gal force. The speed with which the earth is rotating, keeps us on our feet, head downward. To be precise, the center of the earth's gravity lies in the middle of the hollow sphere, of course, but the counteraction of centrifugal force throws it outward to the middle of the ten-mile crust. That's why we slowed down after we were halfway through. We were moving against gravity." "And what's up there, or down there, or whatever you call it?" asked Tommy, pointing to what ought to have been the sky. "Nothing. It's the center of the ten- nis ball, though I imagine it's pretty near a vacuum when you get up a mile or so, owing to the speed of the earth's rotation, which forces the heat into the shell." "You mean to say you actually be- lieve that stuff you've been handing me?" asked Tommy, after a pause. "Then how did human beings get here, and those damn beetles? And why's the grass red?" I A HE grass is red because there's JL no sunlight to produce chloro- phyl. The inhabitants of the deep sea are red or black, almost invariably. In the case of the humans, they've become bleached. My belief is that that man and woman we saw, and those" — he pointed to the vague forms of human beings, who moved across the grass, gathering something — "are survivors of the primitive race that still exists as the Australians. Undoubtedly one of the branches of the human stock orig- inated in antarctica at a time when it enjoyed a tropical temperature, and was the land bridge between Australia and South America." "And the — beetles?" asked Tommy. "Ah, they go back to the days when THE BEETLE HORDE 19 nature was in a more grandiose mood !" - replied the archaeologist enthusiastic- ally. "That's the most wonderful dis- covery of the ages. The world will go crazy over them when we bring back the first living specimens to the zoo- logical parks of the great cities. "But," Dodd went on, speaking with still more enthusiasm, "of course, this is only the beginning, Tommy. There are ten million species of insects, ac- cording to Riley, and it is inevitable that there must be hundreds of thou- sands of other survivals from the age of the great saurians, perhaps even some of the saurians themselves. Who knows but that we may discover the ancestor of the extinct monotremes, the rhynchocephalia, the pterodactyls, hatch a brood of aepyornis eggs — " "And," said Tommy tartly, "how are we going to get them back, apart from the little problem of getting out of here ourselves?" "Don't let's worry about that now," answered Dodd. "It will take ten years of the hardest kind of labor even to begin a classification of the inhabi- tants of this inner world. I could sit down for ever, and — " But Jimmy Dodd rose to his feet as a pair of antenna whipped round his neck and jerked him bodily upward. ONE of the monster beetles was standing upright behind them, and by its gestures it evidently meant that Dodd and Tommy were to join the crowd of humans in the offing. As Dodd turned upon it with an indignant show of fists, one of the antennae whipped off his fur coat and stung him painfully with the bristle-like attach- ment at the end. It was a painful moment when Dodd and Tommy realized that they were powerless against the monstrous bee- tles. Tommy tried the uppercut with which he had knocked out the deceased monster, but the quick jerks of the present beetle's head were infinitely faster than the movements of his fists, while the antenna had a whiplike quality about them that speedily con- vinced him that discretion was the card to play. Under the threat of the curling antenna, Tommy and Dodd moved in the direction of the slowly circulating humans. Numerous tiny rodents, which evidently kept the red grass short, scampered away under their feet. The beetles made no further ef- fort to force them on, but now they could see that a number of the mon- sters were stationed at intervals around a wide circle, keeping the hu- mans in a single body. "Good Lord!" ejaculated Tommy, stopping. "See what they're doing, Dodd? They're herding us, like cow- boys herd steers. Look at that !" ONE of the herd, a male with a long beard, suddenly broke from the herd, bawling, and flung himself upon a beetle guard. The antenna shot forth, coiled around his neck, and hurled him a dozen feet to the ground, where he lay stunned for a moment before arising and rejoining his com- panions. "But what are they looking for?" demanded Dodd. Tommy had not heard him. He had stopped in front of one of the lu- minous trees and was plucking a fruit from it. "Jimmy, ever see an apple before?" he asked. "If this isn't an apple, I'll eat my head." It certainly was an apple, and one of the largest and juiciest that Tommy had ever tasted. It was the reddest apple he had ever seen, and would have won the first prize at any agricultural fair. "And look at this!" shouted Tommy, plucking an enormous luminous peach from another tree. They began munching slowly, then, seeing one of the beetle guards ap- proaching them, they moved into the midst of the crowd. "Did you notice anything strange about those fruit trees?" inquired 20 ASTOUNDING STORIES Dodd, as he munched. "I'll swear they were monocotyledonous, which, after all, is what one would expect. Still, to think that the monocotyledons evolved the familiar drupes, or stone fruits, on a parallel line to the dico- tyledons is — amazing!" A box on the ear like the kick of a mule's hoof jerked the last word from his lips as he went sprawling. He got up, to see the girl standing before him, intense disgust and anger on her face. She snatched the fruits from the hands of the two Americans and hurled them away. It was evident from her manner that she considered such diet in the highest degree un- clean and disgusting; also that she considered herself charged with the duty of superintending Tommy's and Dodd's education, but especially Dodd's. TAKING him by the arm, she pro- . pelled him into the midst of the groping humans. She released him, stooped, and suddenly stood up, a shrimp about eighteen inches long in her hand. Towering over Dodd by six inches, she took his face in her hands and be- gan caressing him; then, seizing his jaws in her strong fingers, she pried them apart, and popped the tail end of the shrimp into his mouth. Dodd let out a yelp, and spat out the love-gift, to be rewarded with another box on the ear by the young Amazon, while Tommy stood by, convulsed with laughter, and yet in considerable trepi- dation, for fear of being forced to share Dodd's fate. For the girl was again holding out the tail end of the crustacean, and Jim Dodd's jaws were slowly and reluc- tantly approaching it: But suddenly there came an inter- vention as the strident rasping of beetle legs was heard in the distance. Panic seizea^the human herd, grovel- ling for shrimps in the sandy soil with its tufts of red grasses. Milling in an uneasy mob, they cowered under the lashes of the antenna of the beetle guards, which sacrificed their backs through their hair garments whenever any of them tried to bolt. Nearer and nearer came the beetles, louder and more penetrating the shriek of their rasping legs. Now the swarm came into sight, rank after rank of the shell-clad monsters, leaping fifteen feet at a bound with perfect precision, until they had formed a solid phalanx all around the humans. TOMMY heard sighs of despair, he heard muttering, and then he realized, with deep thankfulness, that these human beings, degraded though they were, had a speech of their own. In the middle of the front line ap- peared a beetle a foot taller than the rest. That it was either a king or queen was evident from the respect paid it by the rest of the swarm. At its every movement a bodyguard of beetles moved in unision, forming themselves in a group before it and on either side. There would have been something ludicrous about these movements, but for the impression of horror that the swarm made upon Tommy and Jim Dodd. Hitherto both had supposed that the hideous insects acted by blind instinct, but now there could no longer be any doubt that they were possessed of an organized intelligence. THE strident sounds grew louder. Already Tommy was beginning to discover certain variations in them. It was dawning upon him that they formed a language — and a perfectly in- telligible one. For, as the note changed about a half-semitone, two of the mon- sters left the side of their ruler and reached the two men with three suc- cessive leaps. Their movements left no doubt in either Tommy's or Dodd's mind what was required. The two strode hastily toward the assemblage, and stopped as the antenna of their guards came down in menacing fashion. THE BEETLE HORDE 21 It was light enough for Tommy to see the face of the ruler of the hellish swarm. And it required all his powers of will to keep from collapsing from sheer horror at what he saw. For, despite the close-fitting shell, the face of the beetle king was the face of a man — a white man! Jim Dodd's shriek rang out above the shrilling of the beetle-legs, "Bram! It's you, it's you! My God, it's you, Bram!" CHAPTER IV Brain's Story A SNEERING chuckle broke from Bram's lips. "Yes, it's me, James Dodd," he answered. "I'm a little sur- prised to see you here, Dodd, but I'm mighty glad. Still insane upon the subject of fossil monotremes, I sup- pose?" The words came haltingly from Bram's lips, as from those of a man who had lost the habit of easy speech. And Tommy, looking on, and trying to keep in possession of his faculties, had already come to the conclusion that the sounds were inaudible to the bee- tles. Probably their hearing appa- ratus was not attuned to such slow vi- brations of the human voice. Also he had discovered that Bram was wearing the discarded shell of one of the monsters : he had not grown the shell himself. It was fastened about his body by a band of the hair-cloth, fastened to the two protuberances of the elytra, or wing-cases, on either side of the dorsal surface. The discovery at least robbed the situation of one aspect of terror. Bram, however he had obtained con- trol of the swarm, was still only a man. "Yes, still insane," answered Dodd bitterly. "Insane enough to go on be- lieving that the polyprotodontia and the dasyuridae, which includes the peramelidae, or bandicoots, and the banded ant-eaters, or myrmecobidae, are not to be found in fossil form, for the excellent reason that they were not represented before the Upper Cretace- ous period." "You lie! You lie!" screamed Bram. "I have shown to all the world that phascalotherium, amphitherium, am- blotherium, spalacotherium, and many other orders are to be found in the Upper Jurassic rocks of England, Wyoming, and other places. You — you are the man who denied the ex- istence of the nototherium, of the marsupial lion, in pleistocene deposits ! You denied that the dasyuridae can be traced back beyond the pleistocene. And you stand there and lie to me, when you are at my mercy!" "For God's sake don't aggravate him," whispered Tommy to Dodd. "Don't you see that he's insane? Hu- mor him, or we'll be dead men. Think what the world will lose, if you are never able to go back with your speci- mens," he added craftily. BUT Dodd, whose eyes were glar- ing, said a sublime thing: "I have given my life to science, and I will never deny my master!" With a screech, which, however,, was evidently inaudible to the beetles, Bram leaped at Dodd and seized him by the throat. The two men fell to the ground, the ponderous beetle-shell completely covering them. Under- neath it they could be seen to be strug- gling desperately. All the while the beetle horde remained perfectly mo- tionless. Tommy thought afterward that in this fact lay their brightest chances of escape, if Bram's immediate vengeance did not fall on them. Either because Bram was not him- self a beetle, or because 'in some other way the swarm instinct was not stirred, the monsters watched the struggle with complete indifference. At the moment, however, Tommy was only concerned with saving Dodd from the madman. He got his foot be- neath the shell, then inserted his leg; using his whole body as a lever, he suc- ceeded in turning Bram over on his back. 22 ASTOUNDING STORIES Then, and only then, the swarm rushed in upon them. Then Tommy realized that he had touched one of the triggers that regulated the bee- tle's automatism. In another instant Bram would have been torn to pieces. The needle-beaks were darting through the air, the hideous jaws were snapping. Bram's yells rang through the cavern. DODGING beneath the avalanche of the monsters, Tommy got Bram upon his feet again. The beetles stopped, every movement ar- rested. Bram's hand went to the pocket of his tattered coat, there came a snap, a flash. Bram had ignited an automatic cigarette-lighter ! Instantly the monsters went scurry- ing away into the distance. And Tommy had another clue. The bee- tles, living in the dimness of the un- derworld, could not stand light or fire! He ran to where Jimmy was lying, face upward, on the ground. His face was badly scarred by Bram's nails, and the blood was spurting from a long gash in his throat, made by the sharp flint that was lying beside him. He had some time before discarded his fur coat. Now he pulled off his coat, and, tearing off the tail of his shirt, he made a pad and a bandage, with which he attempted to staunch the blood and bind the wound. It must have taken ten minutes before the fail- ing heart force enabled him to get the bleeding under control. Dodd had nearly bled to death, his face was drawn and waxen, but, because the pulsation was se feeble, the artery had ceased to spurt. Then only did Tommy take notice of Bram. He had been squatting near, and Tommy realized that he had un- consciously observed Bram put some sort of pellets into his mouth. Now he realized that Bram was a drug fiend. That was what had made him walk out of the Greystoke camp in the storm. Bram got up and came toward them. "Is he dead?" he whispered hoarsely. "I — I lost my temper. You two — I don't intend to kill you. There — there's room for the three of us. I've got — plans of the utmost importance to humanity." "I don't think much of the way you've started to carry them out," an- swered Tommy bitterly. "No, he's not dead yet, but I wouldn't give much for his chances, even in the best hospital. The best thing you can do now is to go to hell, and take your beetles with you," he added. BRAM, without replying, raised his ji head and emitted from his throat the shrillest whistle that Tommy had ever heard. The response was amaz- ing. Rasping out of the darkness came eight beetles in pairs. Instead of leap- ing from an upright position, they trotted in the manner of horses, on all fours, their shells, which touched at the edges, forming a solid surface, gently rounded in the center so that a man's body could lie there and fit snugly into the groove. "Help me get him up," said Bram. "Trust me! I'll do my best for him. If we leave him here they may kill and eat him I can't trust all those beetle guards." Tommy hesitated a moment, then de- cided to follow Bram's suggestion. Together they raised the unconscious man to the beetle-shell couch. Bram seated himself upon the boss of one of the beetle-shells in front, and Tommy jumped up behind. Next moment, to his amazement, the trained steeds were flying smoothly through the air, at a rate that could not have been less than seventy-five to eighty miles an hour. Tommy's shell seat was not a bed of roses, but he hardly noticed that. He was thinking that if Dodd lived they should be able to turn the tables. For, unknown to Bram, he was in possession of the cigarette-lighter which he had picked up, and which THE BEETLE HORDE 23 Bram, in his agitation, had forgotten. It was full of petrol, or some other fluid of a similar nature, which Bram must have obtained from some natural source within the earth. And, in an emergency, Tommy knew that he had the means of keeping the beetles at bay. THEY had traveled for perhaps an hour when a faint light began to glow in the distance. It grew brighter, and a roaring sound became audible. A turn of the track that they were traversing, and the light became a glare. A terrific sight met Tommy's eyes. Out of the bowels of the earth — ac- tually out of the crust beneath their feet — there shot a pillar of roaring flame, of intense white color, and radiating a heat that was perceptible even at a distance of several hundred yards. The beetle steeds dropped gently to the ground; they halted. Bram got down, grinning. "Nicely trained horses, what?" he asked. "By the way, you have the ad- vantage of me in nf»mes. Who and what are you?" Tommy told him. "Well, Travers, it looks as if we're going to be companions for some time to come, and I quite admit you saved my life back there. So we don't want to start with secrets. This is a natural petrol spring, which has probably been burning undiminished for ages. My trained beetles are blind — you didn't happen to notice I'd cut off their antenna? But the rest of the swarm daren't come near it. So that makes me their master. "Pretty trick, what, Travers? Fm the Lord of the Flame down here, and I'm using my advantage. But don't get the idea of supplanting me. There are lots of other tricks you don't know anything about, and I'll have to trust you better before — " He broke off and slipped another pellet into his mouth. "Help me get Dodd down, if this is our destination," answered Tommy. They lifted Dodd to the ground. He was conscious now, and moaning for water. The two men carried him into a sort of large cavern, at the farther end of which the fire was roaring. Bram went to a spring that trickled down one side, filled something that looked like a pertified lily calyx, and brought it to Dodd, who drained it. TOMMY looked about him. He was astonished to see that the place was, in a way, furnished. Bram had carved out a very creditable couch, and several low chairs, evidently with a stone ax, for by the light of the fire, which cast a fair illumination even at that distance, Tommy could see the marks of the implement, rough and ir- regular, in the wood. On the ground were thick rugs, woven of hair, and two or three more rugs of the same material lay on the couch. It was evident that the human herd was expected to furnish textile materials as well as meat. "Sit down, and make yourself com- fortable," said Bram, when they had raised Dodd to the couch. "We'll have dinner, and then we'll talk. I can give you a fine vegetarian meal. Those dirty shrimp-eating savages look on me as a cannibal because I eat the fruits of the trees." He grinned. "There's a bad shortage of food in Submundia, as I've named this part of the world," he went on, "for until I came the beetles simply devoured the humans wholesale, instead of breeding them, like I taught them. And there's another of the hundred-and-fifty year swarms due to hatch out soon. How- ever, we'll talk about that later. And all those fine fruits going to waste! Excuse me, Travers." HE disappeared, and returned in a minute or two with a small ta- ble, piled high with luscious fruits un- known to Tommy, though among them were some that looked like loaves of natural bread. 24 ASTOUNDING STORIES Tommy, whose appetite never failed him, even in the worst circumstances, fell to with a will. He was enjoying his meal when he happened to look up, and saw that the penumbra at the edge of the lighted zone was dense with beetles. Thousands — perhaps millions, for they stretched away as far as the eye could see, were packed together, their antenna waving in unison, their heads, beneath the shells, directed toward the fire. Bram saw Tommy's look of disgust, and laughed. "The fire seems to in- toxicate them, Travers," he said. "They always throng the entrance when I'm here. It's as far as they dare go. They're quite blind in the least light. Care to smoke? I've learned the art of making some quite decent cigars." He produced a handful. "Oh, by the way, you didn't see my lighter any- where, did you?" he went on, with a pretense of carelessness. "No," lied Tommy. "I was surprised you—" "Oh, there's a supply of petrol in the rocks. No matter," answered Bram carelessly. "Your friend looks bad," he added, glancing at Dodd, who had fallen asleep. "Travers, I'm sorry I lost my temper. The — the shock of meeting men from the upper world, you know." DODP opened his eyes and tried to whisper. Tommy bent over him and listened. "He wants to know whether he can have that girl to take care of him," he said. "What, the one I saw you with? Why, she's a cull, Travers." "What d'you mean?" asked Tommy. "Why — useless, you know. There's several of them running loose, and waiting to be rounded up. We raise two breeds, one for replenishing the stock, and one for meat. She's just a cull, a reversion, no use for either pur- pose. I'll have her brought by all means. I — I like Dodd. I want to get him to like me," Bram went on, with a sort of penitence that had a pathetic touch. "Our little differences — quite absurd, and I can prove he's wrong in his ideas. "Make yourself comfortable as long as you're here, Travers, and don't mind me. Only, don't try to escape. The beetles will get you if you do, and there's no way out of here — none that you'll find. And don't try to follow me. But you're a sensible man, and we'll all get along famously, I'm sure, as soon as Dodd recovers." CHAPTER V Doomed! THERE were no means known to Tommy of reckoning time in that strange place of twilight. His watch had been broken in the airplane fall, and Dodd never remembered to wind his, but they estimated that about two weeks had passed, judging from the number of times they had slept and eaten. In those two weeks they had gradu- ally begun to grow accustomed to their surroundings. Haidia, the girl, had arrived on beetle-back within an hour after Bram's departure, apparently into a cleft of the rocks — how he had communicated his order to the beetle steeds Tommy had no idea. And un- der the girl's ministrations Dodd was making good progress toward recov- ery. That Haidia was in love with Dodd in quite a human way was evident. To please the girl, both Dodd and Tommy had learned to eat the raw shrimps, which, being bloodless, were really no worse than oysters, and had a flavor half-way between shrimp and crawfish. To please the men, Haidia tried not to shudder when she saw them devour- ing the breadfruit and nectarines of which Bram always had a plentiful supply. Bram was solicitous in his in- quiries for Dodd's health. "Jim, I've been thinking about our chances of getting away," said Tommy THE BEETLE HORDE 25 one morning. "It's evident B ram's only waiting for your recovery to put some proposition up to us. Suppose you were to feign paralysis." "How d'you mean? What for?" de- manded Dodd. "If he thinks you're helpless, he'll be less on his guard. You haven't walked about in his presence." That was true, for the activities of the two had been nocturnal, when Bram had vanished. "Let him think a nerve's been severed in your neck, or some- thing of the sort. If it doesn't work, you can always get better." D ODD'S realistic portrayal of a man with a partly paralyzed right side brought cries of horror from Bram next morning. Solicitously he helped Dodd back to the couch. Bram, when not under the influence of his drug, had moments of human feeling. "Can't you move that arm and leg at all, Dodd?" he asked. "No feeling in them?" "There's plenty of feeling," growled Dodd, "but they don't seem to work, that's all." "You'll get better," said Bram eager- ly. "You must get better. I need you, Dodd, in spite of our differences. There's work for all of us, wonderful work. A new humanity, waiting to be born, Dodd, not of the miserable ape race, but of— of — " He checked himself, and a cunning look came over his face. He turned away abruptly. At the erid of two weeks or so, an amazing thing happened. One day Haidia, with a look of triumph in her eyes, addressed Dodd with a few En- glish words! Her brain, which had probably de- veloped certain faculties in different proportions from those of the upper human race, had registered every word that either of the two men had ever spoken, and remembered it. As soon as Dodd ascertained this, he began to instruct her, and, with her abnormal faculties of memory, it was not long before she could talk quite intelli- gently. The obstacle that had stood between them was swept away. She became one of themselves. In the days that followed the girl told them brokenly something of the history of her race, of the legend of the universal flood that had driven them down into the bowels of the earth, of the centuries-long struggle with the beetles, and of the insects' gradual conquest of humanity, and the final reduction of the human race to a miserable, helpless remnant. EVERYWHERE, Haidia told them, were beetle swarms, every- where humanity had been reduced to a few handfuls. Bram, by breeding mankind from prolific strains, and using the new-born progeny for food, had temporarily averted universal star- vation. But a new swarm of beetles was due to hatch out shortly, and then — The girl, with a shudder, put her hand to her bosom, and brought out a little bright-eyed lizard. "The old man you saw with me, who is one of our wise elders, has told our people that these things feed upon the beetle larvae," she said. "We are put- ting them secretly into the nests. But what can a few lizards do against mil- lions." She looked up. "In the earth* above us, the beetle larvae extend for miles, in a solid mass," she said. "When they come out as beetles, it will be the end of all of us." Bram had grown less suspicious as the time passed. His sudden visits to the cavern had ceased. Dodd and Tommy knew that he spent the nights — if they could be termed nights — lying in a drugged slumber somewhere among the rocks. They had asked Haidia whether there was any way of escape into the upper world. "There are two ways from here," an- swered the girl. "One is the way you came, but it is impossible to pass the beetle guards without being torn to pieces. The other — " 26 ASTOUNDING STORIES She shuddered, and for an instant drew back the film from across her pu- pils, then uttered a little cry of pain at the light, dim though it was. "There is a bridge across that ter- rible monster that devours all it touches," she said, shuddering, mean- ing the fire. Suddenly Dodd had an inspiration. He still had the fur coat that he had worn, and, reaching into a pocket he drew out a pair of snow goggles, which he adjusted over Haidia's nose. "Now look!" he said. Haidia looked, blinked and, with an effort kept her eyes open. She gazed at Dodd in amazement. Dodd laughed, and pulled her toward him. He kissed her, and Haidia's eyes closed. "What is this?" she murmured. "First you give me medicine that opens my eyes, and then you give me medicine that closes them" "That's nothing," grinned Dodd. "Wait till you understand me better." B RAM'S eyes were preternaturally bright. It was evident that he had been increasing his dose of late, and that he was fully under the influ- ence of it now. "Well, gentlemen, the time has come for us to be frank with one another," he said, as the three were gathered about the little table, while Haidia crouched in a far corner of the cave. "I want you to- work for me in my plans for the regeneration of humanity. The time for which I have long labored is almost at hand. Any day now the new swarm of beetles may emerge from the pupal stage. But before I speak further, come and see them, gen- tlemen r He rose, and Dodd and Tommy rose too, Tommy supporting Dodd, who let his arm and leg trail awkwardly as he moved. Bram led the way into the cleft among the rocks into which he had been in the habit of passing. Beyond this opening the two men saw another smaller cavern, with a beetle guard standing on either side, antenna wav- ing. Bram shrilled a sound, and the an- tenna dropped. The three passed through. Tommy saw a hair-cloth pal- let set against the rocks, a table, and a chair. Beyond was a sloping ramp of earth. Overhead was a rock ceiling. Bram led the way up the ramp, and the three stepped through a gap in the rocks and found themselves on an ex- tensive prairie. But in place of the red grass there was a vast sea of mud. By the light cast by the petrol fire, which roared up in the distance, a veri- table fiery fountain, the two Americans could see that the mud was filled with huge encysted forms, grubs three or four feet long, motionless in the soil. BRAM scooped up one of them and tossed it into the air. It thudded to their feet and remained motionless. "As far as you can see* and for miles beyond, these pupae of the beetles lie buried in the decaying vegetation in which the eggs were hatched," said Bram. "Every century and a half, so far as I have been able to judge from comparative anatomy, a fresh swarm emerges. See !" He pointed to the pupa he had un- earthed, which, as if stirred into ac- tivity by his handling, was now be- ginning to move. Or, rather, some- thing was moving inside the cocoon. The shell broke, and the hideous head and folded antenna of a beetle appeared. With a convulsive writhing, the monster threw off the covering and stepped out. It extended its wings, glistening with moisture, from the still soft and pliant carapace, or shell, and suddenly zoomed off into the distance. TOMMY shuddered as the boom of its flight grew softer and sub- sided. "Any day now the entire swarm will emerge," cried Bram. "How many moultings they undergo before they undergo the finished state, I do not know, but already, as you see, they arc THE BEETLE HORDE 27 prepared for the battle of life. They emerge ravenous. That beetle will fall upon the man-herds and devour a full grown man, unless the guards destroy it." He raised his arms with the gesture of an ancient prophet. "Woe to the human race," he cried, "the wretched ape spawn that has cast out its teach- ers and persecuted those who sought to raise it to higher things!" TOMMY knew that Bram was re- ferring to himself. Bram turned fiercely upon Dodd. "When I joined the Greystoke ex- pedition," he cried, "it was with the express intention of refuting your mis- erable theories as to the fossil mono- tremes. I could not sleep or eat, so deeply was I affronted by them. For, if they were true, the dasyuridae are an innovation in the great scheme of nature, and man, instead of being a mere afterthought, a jest of the Crea- tive Force, came to earth with a pur- pose. "That I deny," he yelled. "Man is a joke. Nature made him when she was tired, as the architect of a cathe- dral fashions a gargoyle in a sportive moment. It is the insect, not man, who is the predestined lord of the ages!" And for once in his life, perhaps be- cause at this point Tommy dug him violently in the ribs, Dodd had the sense to remain silent. Bram led the way swiftly back into the larger cave. "When this swarm hatches out," he said, "I calculate that there will be a trillion beetles seeking food. There is no food for a tithe of them here under- neath the earth. What then? Do you realize their stupendous power, their invincibility ? "No, you don't realize it, because your minds, through long habit, are" only attuned to think in terms of man. All man's long history of slaughter of the so-called lower creatures obsesses you, blinds your understanding. A beetle ? Something to be trodden under- foot, crushed in sport! But I tell you, gentlemen, that nature — God, if you will — has designed to supplant the man-ape by the beetle. "He has resolved to throw down the wretched so-called intelligence of your kind and mine, and supplant it by the divine instinct of the beetle, an instinct that is infinitely superior, because it arrives at results instantaneously. It knows where man infers. Attuned closely to nature, it alone is able to fulfil the divine plan of Creation." BRAM was certainly under the in- fluence of his drug; nevertheless, so violent were his gestures, so in- spired was his utterance, that Tommy and Dodd listened almost in awe. "They are invincible," Bram went on. "Their fecundity is such that when the new swarm is hatched out their numbers alone will make them irresistible. They do not know fear. They shrink from nothing. And they will follow me, their leader — I, who know the means of controlling them. How, then, can puny man hope to stand against them? "Join me, gentlemen," Bram went on. "And beware how you decide rashly. For this is the supreme mo- ment, not only of your own lives, but for all humanity and beetledom. Upon your decision hangs the future of the world. "For, irresistible as the beetles are, there is on thing they lack. That is the sense of historic continuity. If they destroy man, they will know nothing of man's achievements, poor though these are. My own work on the fossil monotremes — " "Which is a tissue of inaccuracies and half-baked deductions!" shouted Dodd. Bram started as if a whip had lashed him. "Liar!" he bawled. "Do you think that I, who left the Greystoke expedition in a howling blizzard be- cause I knew that here, in the inner earth, I could refute your miserable impostures — do you think that I am in 28 ASTOUNDING STORIES the mood to listen to your wretched farrago of impossibilities?" "Listen to me," bawled Dodd, ad- vancing with waving arms. "Once for all, let me tell you that your deduc- tions are all based upon fallacious premises. No, I will not shut up, Tom Travers! You want me to aid your damned beetles in the destruction of humanity 1 I tell you that your phas- calotherium, amphitherium, and all the rest of them, including the marsupial lion, are degenerate developments of the age following the pleistocene. I say the whole insect world was made to fertilize the plant world, so that it should bear fruit for human food. Man is the summit of the scale of evolu- tion, and I will never join in any infa- mous scheme for his destruction." Bram glared at Dodd like a madman. Three times he opened his mouth to speak, but only inarticulate sounds came from his throat. And when at last he did speak, he said something that neither Dodd nor Tommy had anticipated. "It looks as if you're not so para- lyzed as you made out," he sneered. "You'll change your mind within what used to be called a day, Dodd. You'll crawl to my feet and beg for pardon. And you'll recant your lying theories about the fossil monotremes, or you die — the pair of you — you die!" CHAPTER VI Escape! «T HEARD what he said. You shall JL not die. We shall go away to your place, where there are no beetles to eat us, even if" — Haidia shuddered — "even if we have to cross the bridge of fire, beyond which, they tell me, lies freedom." High over and a little to one side of the petrol flame Dodd and Tommy had seen the slender arch of rock lead- ing into another cleft in the rocks. They had investigated it several times, but always the fierce heat had driven them back. Both Dodd and Tommy had noticed, however, that at times the fire seemed to shrink in volume and intensity. Ob- servation had shown them that these times were periodical, recurring about every twelve hours. "I think I've got the clue, Tommy," said Dodd, as the three watched the fiery fountain and speculated on the possibility of escape. "That flow of petrol is controlled, like the tides on earth, by the pull of the moon. Just now it is at its height. I've noticed that it loses pretty nearly half its volume at its alternating phase. If I'm right, we'll make the attempt in about twelve hours." "Bram's given us twenty-four," said Tommy. "But how about getting Hai- dia across?" "I go where you go," said Haidia, sidling up to Dodd and looking down upon him lovingly. "I do not afraid of the fire. If it burn me up, I go to the good place." "Where's that, Haidia?" asked Dodd. "When we die, we go to a place where it is always dark and there are no beetles, and the ground is full of shrimps. We leave our bodies behind, like the beetles, and fly about happy for ever." "Not a bad sort of place," said Dodd, squeezing Haidia's arm. "If you think you're ready to try to cross the bridge, we'll start as soon as the fire gets lower." "I'll be on the job," answered Haidia, unconsciously reproducing a phrase of Tommy's. THE girl glided away, and disap- peared through the thick of the beetle crowd clustered about the en- trance to the cavern. Tommy and Dodd had already discovered that it was through her ability to reproduce a certain beetle sound meaning "not good to eat" that the girl could come and go. They had once tried it on their own account, and had narrowly escaped the lashing tentacles. After that there was nothing to do / / THE BEETLE HORDE 29 but wait. Three or four hours must have passed when Bram returned from his inner cave. "Well, Dodd, have you experienced a change of heart?" he sneered. "If you knew what's in store for you, maybe you'd come to the conclusion that you've been too cocksure about the monotremes. We're slaughtering in the morning." "That so?" asked Dodd. "That's so," shouted Bram. "The beetles are beginning to emerge from the pupae, and they'll need food if they're to be kept quiet. We're round- ing up about threescore of the culls — your friend Haidia will be among them. We've got some caged ichneumon flies, pretty little things only a foot long, which will sting them in certain nerve centers, rendering them powerless to move. Then we shall bury them, stand- ing up, in the vegetable mould, for the beetles to devour alive, as soon as they come out of the shells. You'll feel pretty, Dodd, standing there un- able to move, with the new born beetles biting chunks out of you." TOMMY shuddered, despite his hopes of their escaping. Bram, for a scientist, had a grim and pictur- esque imagination. "Dodd, there is no personal quarrel between us," Bram went on. Again that note of pathetic pleading came into his voice. "Give up your mad ideas. Admit that the banded ant-eater, at least, existed before the pleistocene epoch, and everything can be settled. When you see what my beetles are go- ing to do to humanity, you'll be proud to join us. Only make a beginning. You remember the point I made in my paper, about spalacotherium in the Upper Jurassic rocks. It would con- vince anybody but a hardened fanatic." "I read your paper, and I saw your so-called spalacotherium, reconstruct- ed from what you called a jaw-bone," shouted Dodd. "That so-called jaw- bone was a lump of chalk, made porous by water, and the rest was in your imagination. Do your worst, Bram, I'll never crucify truth to save my life. And I'll laugh at your spalacotherium when your beetles are eating me." Bram yelled and shrieked, he stamped up and down the cavern, shak- ing his fists at Dodd. At last, with a final torrent of objurgation, he disap- peared. "A pleasant customer," said Tommy. "We'll have to make that bridge, Jim, no question about it, even if it means death in the petrol fire." "Fire's dying down fast," answered Dodd. "Haidia ought to be here soon." - "If Bram hasn't got her." "Bram got — that girl? If Bram harms a hair of her head I'll kill him with worse tortures than he's ever dreamed of," answered Dodd, leaping up, white with rage. "You mean you — ?" Tommy began. "Love her? Yes, I love her," shouted Dodd. "She's a girl in a million. Just the sort of helpmate I need to assist me in my work when we get back. I tell you, Tommy, I didn't know what love meant before I saw Haidia. I laughed at it as a romantic notion. 'Oh lyric love, half angel and half bird!'" he quoted, beginning to stride up and down the cavern, while Tommy watched him in amazement. And at this moment a complete beetle enterqd the cave. Complete, be- cause it had a plastron, or breast-shell, as well as a back-shell, or carapace. A DOUBLE breast-shell! A new species of beetle? An execu- tioner beetle, sent by Bram to summon them to the torture? Tommy shud- dered, but Dodd, lost in his love ecstasy, was ignorant of the creature's advent. "'Oh lyric love—'" he shouted again, as he twirled on his heel, to run smack into the monster. The crack of Dodd's head against the beetle-shell re-echoed through the cave. The double plastron dropped, the carapace fell down: Haidia stood re- vealed. The lovers, folded in each 30 ASTOUNDING STORIES other's arms, passed momentarily into a trance. It was Tommy who separated them. "We'll have to make a move," he said. "I think the fire's as low as it ever gets. Why did you bring the shells, Haidia?" "To save us all from the beetles," answered the girl. "When they see us in the shells, they will not know we are human. That is what makes it so hard to have to be eaten by those beetles, when they are such dumb- bells," she added, reproducing another of Tommy's words. "Come," she continued bravely, "let us see if we can pass the fire." THE roaring fountain made the air a veritable inferno. Overhead the rocks were red-hot. A cascade of sparks tumbled in a fiery shower from the rock roof. Dodd, holding Haidia in his arms, to protect her, staggered ahead, with Tommy in the rear. Only the beetle-shells, which acted as non- conductors of the heat, made that fiery passage possible. There was one moment when it seemed to Tommy as if he must let go, and drop into that raging furnace underneath. He heard Dodd bawling hoarsely in front of him, he nerved himself to a last effort, beating fiercely at his blazing hair — and then the heat was past, and he had dropped uncon-' scious upon a bed of cool earth beside a rushing river. He was vaguely aware of being car- ried in Dodd's arms, but a long time seemed to have passed before he grew conscious again. He opened his eyes in utter darkness. Dodd was whisper- ing in his ear. , - "Tommy, old man, how are you feel- ing now?" Dodd asked. "All — right," Tommy muttered. "How's Haidia?" "Still unconscious, poor girl. We've got to get out of here. I heard Brara yelling in the distance. He's discov- ered our flight. There may be another way out of the cave, and, if so, he'll stop at nothing to get us. See if you can stand, but keep your head low. There's a low roof of rock above us." "There's water," said Tommy, listen- ing to the roar of a torrent that seemed to be rushing past them. "It's a stream, and I believe these shells will float and bear our weight. We've got to try. We've got to put everything to the touch now, Tommy. I'm going to lay Haidia on one of the shells, poor girl, and start her off. Then I'll follow, and you can bring up the rear." "I'm with you," said Tommy, get- ting upon his feet, and uttering an ex- clamation of pain as, forgetful of Dodd's injunction, he let his head strike the rock roof overhead. IN the darkness he felt the outlines of his beetle-shell lying beside the torrent. He could hear Dodd in front of him, grunting 4b he raised Haidia's unconscious form in his arms and de- posited her in her shell. Tommy got his own shell into the stream, and held it there as the waters swirled around it. "Ready?" he heard Dodd call. Before he could answer, there sounded from not far away, yet strangely muffled by the rocks, Bram's bellow of fury. Bram was evidently fully drugged and beside himself. In- articulate threats came floating through the rocky chamber. "Bram seems to have lost his head temporarily," called Dodd, laughing. "A madman, Tommy. He insists that the marsupial lion — " "Yes, I heard you telling him about it," answered Tommy. "You handed it to him straight. However, more about the marsupial lion later. I'm ready." "Then let 'er go," called Dodd, and his words were swallowed up by the sound of the hollow shell striking against the rocky bank as he launched his strange craft into the water. Tommy set one foot into the hollow of his shell, and let himself go. THE BEETLE HORDE 31 Instantly the shell shot forward with fearful velocity. It was all Tommy could do to balance himself, for it seemed more unstable than a canoe. Once or twice he thought he heard Dodd shouting ahead of him, but his cries were drowned in the rush of the torrent. SUDDENLY a light appeared in the distance. Tommy thought it was another of the petroleum fountains, and his heart seemed to stand still. But then he gave a gasp of relief. It was a cluster of luminous fungi, ten or twelve feet tall, emitting a glow equal to that of a dozen 40-watt elec- tric bulbs. By that infernal light Tommy could see that the stream curved sharply. It was about fifty feet in width, and the low rock roof had receded to some fif- teen feet overhead. Instead of a tun- nel, there was nothing on either side of them but a vast tract of marshy ground thinly coated with the red grass. As Tommy looked, he saw the shell that carried the unconscious body of Haidia strike the bank beside the phos- phorescent growth. He could see the girl lying in the hollow of the shell, as pale as death, her eyes closed. Dodd was close behind. As the swirl of the current caught his shell, he turned to shout a warning to Tommy. And Tommy noticed a singular thing, of which his sense of balance had already warned him, though he had hardly given conscious thought to the matter. The river was running up- hill! Of course it was, since the center of gravity was in the shell of the earth, and not in the center! But, again, the shell of the earth was under their feet! Then Tommy hit on the solution to the problem. If the river was run- ning up-hill, that meant that they must be near the exterior of the earth. In other words, they had passed the cen- ter of gravity: they must be within a mile or so of the exit from Submundia ! TOMMY was about to shout his discovery to Dodd when his shell grounded beside the two others, at the base of the clump of fungi. Huge, straight, hollow stems they were, with mushroom caps, and, like all fungi, fly-blown, for Tommy could see worms nearly a foot in length crawling in and out of the porous stalks. The stench from the growth was nauseating and overpowering, ut- terly sickening. "Push off and let's get out of here !" Tommy called to Dodd, who was bal- ancing his shell against the bank, and trying to peer into Haidia's face. At that moment he caught sight of something that made his blood turn cold! It was an insect fully fifteen feet in height, three times that of a beetle, lurking among the fungi. He saw a hugely elongated neck, a three-cor- nered head with a pair of tentacles, and two pairs of legs as long as a giraffe's. But what gave the added touch of horror was that the monster, balancing itself on its hind legs, had its forelegs extended in the attitude of one holding a prayer-book! That attitude of devotion was so ter- rible that Tommy uttered a wild cry of terror. At the same time another cry broke from Dodd's lips. "God, a praying mantis !" he shouted, struggling madly to push off his shell and Haidia's. The next moment, as if shot from a catapult, the hideous monster launched itself into the air straight toward them. (To be concluded in the February Number.) @ E3 0 Suddenly, for no apparent reason at all, one of the men on guard was jerked into the air feet upwards." The Cave of Horror D By Captain S. P. Meek R. BIRD looked up impatient- ly as the door of his private laboratory in the Bureau of Standards swung open, but the frown on his face changed to a smile as he saw the form of Oper- ative Carnes of the United States Secret Service framed in the doorway. "Hello, Carnes," he called cheerfully. "Take a seat and make yourself at home for a few minutes. I'll be with you as Screaming, the guardsman was jerked through the air. An unearthly screech rang through the cavern. The unseen horror of Mammoth Cave had struck again. soon as I finish getting this weight." Carnes sat on the edge of a bench and watched with admiration the long ner- vous hands and the slim tapering fin- gers of the fa- mous scientist. Dr. Bird stood well over six feet and weighed two hundred and six pounds stripped : his massive shoulders and heavy shock of unruly black hair combined to give him the appearance of a prize-fighter — until one looked at his hands. Acid 32 THE CAVE OF HORROR 33 stains and scars could not hide the beauty of those mobile hands, the hands of an artist and a dreamer. An artist Dr. Bird was, albeit his artis- try expressed itself in the most deli- cate and complicated experiments in the realms of pure and applied sci- ence that the world has ever seen, rather than in the commoner forms of art. The doctor finished his task of weighing a porcelain crucible, set it carefully into a desictator, and turned to his friend. 'What's on your mind, Carnes?" he asked. "You look worried. Is there another counterfeit on the market?" The operative shook his head. "Have you been reading those stories that the papers have been carrying about Mammoth Gave ?" he asked. Dr. Bird emitted a snort of disgust. "I read the first one of them part way through on the strength of its be- ing an Associated Press dispatch," he Teplied, "but that was enough. It didn't exactly impress me with its veracity, and, from a viewpoint of literature, the thing was impossible. I have no time to pore over the lucubrations of an in- spired press agent." "So you dismissed them as mere press agent work?" "Certainly. What else could they be? Things like that don't happen fortuit- ously just as the tourist season is about to open. I suppose that those yarns will bring flocks of the curious to Ken- tucky though: the public always re- sponds well to sea serpent yarns." "Mammoth Cave has been closed to visitors for the season," said Carnes quietly. "What ?" cried the doctor in surprise. "Was there really something to those wild yarns?" «rT"\ HERE was, and what is more to X. the point, there still is. At least there is enough to it that I am leaving for Kentucky this evening, and I came here for the express purpose of asking vou whether you wanted to come along. Bolton suggested that I ask you: he said that the whole thing sounded to him like magic and that magic was more in your line than in ours. He made out a request for your services and I have it in my pocket now. Are you interested?" "How does the secret service cut in on it?" asked the doctor. "It seems to me that it is a state matter. Mammoth Cave isn't a National Park." "Apparently you haven't followed the papers. It was a state matter until the Governor asked for federal troops. Whenever the regulars get into trouble, the federal government is rather apt to take a hand." **I didn't know that regulars had been sent there. Tell me about the case." "Will you come along?" Dr. Bird shook his head slowly. "I really don't see how I can spare the time, Carnes," he said. "I am in the midst of some work of the utmost importance and it hasn't reached the stage where I can turn it over to an assistant." "Then I won't bother you with the details," replied Carnes as he rose. "Sit down, confound you!" cried the doctor. "You know better than to try to pull that on me. Tell me your case, and then I'll tell you whether I'll go or not. I can't spare the time, but, on the other hand, if it sounds interest- ing enough. . . ." CARNES laughed. "All right, Doctor," he said, "I'll take enough time to tell you about it even if you can't go. Do you know anything about it?" "No. I read the first story half way through and then stopped. Start at the beginning and tell me the whole thing." "Have you ever been to Mammoth Cave?" "No." "It, or rather they, for while it is called Mammoth Cave it is really a series of caves, are located in Edmon- 34 ASTOUNDING STORIES son County in Central Kentucky, on a spur railroad from Glasgow Junction on the Louisville and Nashville Rail- road. They are natural limestone cav- erns with the customary stalactite and stalagmite formation, but are unusually large and very beautiful. The caves are quite extensive and they are on different levels, so that a guide is nec- essary if one wants to enter them and be at all sure of finding the way out. Visitors are taken over a regular route and are seldom allowed to visit por- tions of the cave off these routes. Large parts of the cave have never been thoroughly explored or mapped. So much for the scene. "About a month ago a party from Philadelphia who were motoring through Kentucky, entered the cave with a regular guide. The party con- sisted of a man and his wife and their two children, a boy of fourteen and a girl of twelve. They went quite a dis- tance back into the caves and then, as the mother was feeling tired, she and her husband sat down, intending to wait until the guide showed the chil- dren some sights which lay just ahead and then return to them. The guide and the children never returned." "What happened?" "No one knows. All that is known is the bare fact that they have not been seen since." "A kidnapping case?" "Apparently not, in the light of later happenings, although that was at first thought to be the explanation. The parents waited for some time. The mother says that she heard faint screams in the distance some ten min- utes after the guide and the children left, but they were very far away and she isn't sure that she heard them at all. At any rate, they didn't impress her at the time. « T X THEN half an hour had passed VV they began to feel anxious, and the father took a torch and started out to hunt for them. The usual thing happened; he got lost. When he failed to return, the mother, now thor- oughly alarmed, made her way, by some uncanny sense of direction, to the en- trance and gave the alarm. In half an hour a dozen search parties were on their way into the cave. The father was soon located, not far from the beaten trail, but despite three days of constant search, the children were not located. The only trace of them that was found was a bracelet which the mother identified. It was found in the cavern some distance from the beaten path and was broken, as though by vio- lence. There were ho other signs of a struggle. "When the bracelet was found, the kidnapping theory gained vogue, for John Harrel, the missing guide, knew the cave well and natives of the vicini- ty scouted the idea that he might be lost. Inspired by the large reward of- fered by the father, fresh parties be- gan to explore the unknown portions of the cave. And then came the second tragedy. Two of the searchers failed to return. This time there seemed to be little doubt of violence, for screams and a pistol shot were faintly heard by other searchers, together with a pecu- liar 'screaming howl,' as it was de- scribed by those who heard it. A search was at once made toward the spot where the bracelet had been picked up, and the gun of one of the missing men was found within fifty yards of the spot where the bracelet had been discovered. One cylinder of the revol- ver had been discharged." "Were there any signs on the floor?" "The searchers said that the floor ap- peared to be rather more moist and slimy than usual, but that was all. They also spoke of a very faint smell of musk, but this observation was not con- firmed by others who arrived a few moments later." "What happened next?" "fTNHE Governor was appealed to X. and a company of the National Guard was sent from Louisville to Mammoth Cave. They took up camp THE CAVE OF HORROR 35 at the mouth of the cave and prevented everyone from entering. Soldiers armed with service rifles penetrated the caverns, but found nothing. Visi- tors were excluded, and the guardsmen established regular patrols and sentry posts in the cave with the result that one night, when time came for a relief, the only trace that could be found of one of the guards was his rifle. It had not been fired. Double guards were then posted, and nothing happened for several days — and then another sentry disappeared. His companion came rush- ing out of the cave screaming. When he recovered, he admitted that both he and the missing man had gone to sleep and that he awoke to find his comrade gone. He called, and he says that the answer he received was a peculiar whistling noise which raised all the hair on the back of his neck. He flashed his elec- tric torch all around, but could see nothing. He swears, however, that he heard a slipping, sliding noise ap- proaching him, and he felt that some one was looking at him. He stood it as long as he could and then threw down his rifle and ran for his life." "Had he been drinking?" "No. It wasn't delirium either, as was shown by the fact that a patrol found his gun where he had thrown it, but no trace of the other sentry. After this second experience, the guardsmen weren't very eager to enter the cave, and the^ Governor asked for regulars. A company of infantry was ordered down from Fort Thomas to relieve the guardsmen, but they fared worse than their predecessors. They lost two men the first night of their guard. The regulars weren't caught napping, for the main guard heard five shots fired. They rushed a patrol to the scene and found both of the rifles which had been fired, but the men were gone. "The officer of the day made a thor- ough search of the vicinity and found, some two hundred yards from the spot where the sentries had been posted, a crack in the wall through which the body of a man could be forced. This bodycrack had fresh blood on each side of it. Several of his men volunteered to enter the hole and search, but the lieutenant would not allow it. Instead, he armed himself with a couple of hand-grenades and an electric torch and entered himself. That was last Tuesday, and he has not returned." "Was there any disturbance heard from the crack?" "None at all. A guard was posted with two machine-guns pointed at the crack in the wall, and a guard of eight men and a sergeant stationed there. Last night, about six o'clock, while the guard were sitting around their guns, a faint smell of musk became evident. No one paid a great deal of atention to it, but suddenly for no apparent reason at all one of the men on guard was jerked into the air feet upwards. He gave a scream of fear, and an unearthly screech answered him. The guard, with the exception of one man, turned tail and ran. One man stuck by his gun and poured a stream of bullets into the crack. The retreating men could hear the rattle of the gun for a few moments and then there was a choking scream, followed by silence. When the officer of the day got back with a pa- trol, there was a heavy smell of musk in the air, and a good deal of blood was splashed around. The machine-guns were both there, although one of them was twisted up until it looked like it had been through an explosion. "The Officer commanding the com- pany investigated the place, ordered all men out of the cave, and communicated with the War Department. The Secre- tary of War found it too tough a nut to crack and he asked for help, so Bol- ton is sending me down there. Do you think, in view of this yarn, that your experiments can wait?" THE creases on Dr. Bird's high forehead had grown deeper and deeper as Carnes had told his story, but now they suddenly disappeared, and he jumped to his feet with a boy- ish grin. 36 ASTOUNDING STORIES "How soon are we leaving?" he asked. "In two hours, Doctor. A car is waiting for us downstairs and I have reservations booked for both of us on the Southern to-night. I knew that you were coming; in fact, the request for your services had been approved before I came here to see you." Dr. Bird rapidly divested himself of his laboratory smock and took his coat and hat from a cupboard. "I hope you realize, Carnsey, old dear," he said as he followed the oper- ative out of the building, "that I have a real fondness for your worthless old carcass. I am leaving the results of two weeks of patient work alone and unattended in order to keep you out of trouble, and I know that it will be ruined when I get back. I wonder whether you are worth it?" "Bosh!" retorted Carnes. "I'm mighty glad to have you along, but you needn't rub it in by pretending that it is affection for me that is drag- ging you reluctantly into this mess. With an adventure like this ahead of you, leg-irons and handcuffs wouldn't keep you away from Mammoth Cave, whether I was going or not." It was late afternoon before Dr. Bird and Carnes dismounted from the special train which had carried them from Glasgow Junction to Mammoth Cave. They introduced themselves to the major commanding the guard bat- talion which had been ordered down to reinforce the single company which had borne the first brunt of the affair, and then interviewed the guards who had been routed by the unseen horror which was haunting the famous cave. Nothing was learned which differed in any great degree from the tale which Carnes had related to the doctor in Washington, except that the officer of the day who had investigated the last attack failed to entirely corroborate the smell of musk which had been re- ported by the other observers. "It might have been musk, but to me it smelled differently," he said. "Were you ever near a rattlesnake den in the west?" DR. BIRD nodded. "Then you know the peculiar reptilian odor which such a place gives off. Well, this smell was somewhat similar, although not the same by any manner of means. It was musky all right, but it was more snake than musk to me. I rather like musk, but this smell gave me the horrors." "Did you hear any noises?" "None at all. The men describe some rather peculiar noises and Ser- geant Jervis is an old file and pretty apt to get things straight, but they may have been made by the men who were in trouble. I saw a man caught by a boa in South America once, and the noises he made might very well have been described in almost the same words as Jervis used." "Thanks, Lieutenant," replied the Doctor. "I'll remember what you have told me. Now I think that we'll go into the cave." "My orders are to allow no one to enter, Doctor." "I beg your pardon. Carnes, where is that letter from the Secretary of War?" Carnes produced the document. The lieutenant examined it and excused himself. He returned in a few moments with the commanding officer. "In the face of that letter, Dr. Bird," said the major, "I have no alternative to allowing you to enter the cave, but I will warn you that it is at your own peril. I'll give you an escort, if you wish." "If Lieutenant Pearce will come with me as a guide, that will be all that I need." The lieutenant paled slightly, but threw back his shoulders. "Do you wish to start at once, sir?" he asked. "In a few moments. What is the floor of the cave like where we are go- ing?" "Quite wet and slimy, sir." "Very slippery?" THE CAVE OF HORROR 37 "Yes, sir." "In that case before we go in we want to put on baseball shoes with cleats on them, so that we can run if we have to. Can you get us anything like that?" "In a few moments, sir." "Good ! As soon as we can get them we'll start. In the meantime, may I look at that gun that was found?" THE Browning machine-gun was laid before the doctor. He looked it over critically and sniffed delicately at it. He took from his pocket a phial of liquid, moistened a portion of the water-jacket of the weapon, and then rubbed the moistened part briskly with his hand. He sniffed again. He looked disappointed, and again examined the gun closely. "Carnes," he said at length, "do you see anything on this gun that looks like tooth marks?" "Nothing, Doctor." "Neither do I. There are some marks here which might quite con- ceivably be finger-prints of a forty- foot giant, and those two parallel grooves look like the result of severe squeezing, but there are no tooth marks. Strange. There is no persis- tent odor on the gun, which is also strange. Well, there's no use in theo- rizing: we are confronted by a condi- tion and not a theory, as someone once said. Let's put on those baseball shoes and see what we can find out." Dr. Bird led the way into the cave, Carnes and the lieutenant following closely with electric torches. In each hand Dr. Bird carried a phosphorus hand-grenade. No other weapons were visible, although the doctor knew that Carnes carried a caliber .45 automatic pistol strapped under his left armpit. As they passed into the cave the lieu- tenant stepped forward to lead the way. "I'm going first," said the doctor. "Follow me and indicate the turns by pressure on my shoulder. Don't speak after we have started, and be ready for instant flight. Let's go." Forward into the interior of the cave they made their way. The iron cleats of the baseball shoes rang on the floor and the noise echoed back and forth between the walls, dying out in little eerie whispers of sound that made Carnes' hair rise. Ever forward they pressed, the lieutenant guiding the doc- tor by silent pressure on his shoulder and Carnes following closely. For half a mile they went on until a restrainable pressure brought the doctor to a halt. The lieutenant pointed silently toward a crack in the wall before them. Carnes started forward to examine it, but a warning gesture from the doctor stopped him. SLOWLY, an inch at a time, the doctor crept forward, hand-gre- nades in readiness. Presently he reached the crack and, shifting one of the grenades into his pocket, he drew forth an electric torch and sent a beam of light through the crack into the dark interior of the earth. For a moment he stood thus, and then suddenly snapped off his torch and straightened up in an attitude of listening. The straining ears of Carnes and Lieutenant Pearce could hear a faint slithering noise coming toward them, not from the direction of the crack, but from the interior of the cave. Simultaneously a faint, musky, reptilian odor became apparent. "Run!" shouted the doctor. "Run like hell ! It's loose in the cave f" The lieutenant turned and fled at top speed toward the distant entrance to the cave, Carnes at his heels. Dr. Bird paused for an instant, straining his ears, and then threw a grenade. A blinding flash came from the point where the missile struck and a white cloud rose in the air. The doctor turned and fled after his companions. Not for nothing had Dr. Bird been an athlete of note in his college days. De- spite the best efforts of his companions, who were literally running for their lives, he soon caught up with then). As he did so a weird, blood-curdling 38 ASTOUNDING STORIES screech rose from the darkness behind them. Higher and higher in pitch the note rose until it ended suddenly in a gurgling grunt, as though the breath which uttered it had been suddenly cut off. The slithering, rustling noise be- came louder on their trail. "Faster!" gasped the doctor, as he put his hand on Carries' shoulder and pushed him forward. THE noise of pursuit gained slight- ly on them, and a sound as of in- tense breathing became audible. Dr. Bird paused and turned and faced the oncoming horror. His electric torch revealed nothing, but he listened for a moment, and then threw his second gre- nade. Keenly he watched its flight. It flew through the air for thirty yards and then struck an invisible obstruc- tion and bounded toward the ground. Before it struck the downward motion ceased, and it rose in the air. As it rose it burst with a sharp report, and a wild scream of pain filled the cavern with a deafening roar. The doctor fled again after his companions. By the time he overtook them the entrance of the cave loomed before them. With sobs of relief they burst out into the open. The guards sprang forward with raised rifles, but Dr. Bird waved them back. "There's nothing after us, men," he panted. "We got chased a little way, but I tossed our pursuer a handful of phosphorus and it must have burned his fingers a little, judging from the racket he made. At any rate, it stopped the pursuit." The major hurried up. "Did you see it, Doctor?" he asked. "No, I didn't. No one has ever seen it or anything like it. I heard it and, from its voice, I think it has a bad cold. At least, it sounded hoarse, so I gave is a little white phosphorus to make a poultice for its throat, but I didn't get a glimpse of it." "For God's sake, Doctor, what is it?" "I can't tell you yet, Major. So far as I can tell, it is something new to science and I am not sure just what it looks like. However, I hope to be able to show it to you shortly. Is there a telegraph office here?" "No, but we have a Signal Corps de- tachment with us, and they have a por- table radio set which will put us in touch with the army net." "Good! Can you place a tent at my disposal?" "Certainly, Doctor." "All right, I'll go there, and I would appreciate it if you would send the radio operator to me. I want to send a message to the Bureau of Standards to forward me some apparatus which I need." "I'll attend to it, Doctor. Have you any special advice to give me about the guarding?" "Yes. Have you, or can you get, any live stock?" "Live stock?" "Yes. Cattle preferred, although hogs or sheep will do at a pinch. Sheep will do quite well." "I'll see what I can do, Doctor." "Get them by all means, if it is pos- sible to do so. Don't worry about pay- ing for them: secret service funds are not subject to the same audit that army funds get. If you can locate them, drive a couple of cattle or half a dozen sheep well into the cave and tether them there. If you don't get them, have your sentries posted well away from the cave mouth, and if any dis- turbance occurs during the night, tell them to break and run. I hope it won't come out, but I can't tell." A HERD of cattle was soon located and two of the beasts driven into the cave. Two hours later a series of horrible screams and bellowings were heard in the cave. Following their or- ders the sentries abandoned their posts and scattered, but the noise came no nearer the mouth, and in a few minutes silence again reigned. "I hope that will be all that will be needed for a couple of days," said the doctor to the commanding officer, "but THE CAVE OF HORROR 39 you had better have a couple more cat- tle driven in in the morning. We want to keep the brute well fed. Is there a tank stationed at Fort Thomas?" "No, there isn't." "Then radio Washington that I want the fastest three-man tank that the army has sent here at once. Don't bother with military channels, radio di- rect to the Adjutant General, quoting the Secretary of the Treasury as au- thority. Tell him that it's a rush mat- ter, and sign the message 'Bird' if you are afraid of getting your tail twisted." Twice more before the apparatus which the doctor had ordered from Washington arrived cattle were driven into the depths of the cave, and twice were the screams and bellowings from the cave repeated. Each time search- ing parties found the cattle gone in the morning. A week after the doc- tor's arrival, a special train came up, carrying four mechanics from the Bu- reau of Standards, together with a dozen huge packing cases. Under the direction of the doctor the cases were unpacked and the apparatus put togeth- er. Before the assembly had been com- pleted the tank which had been request- ed arrived from Camp Meade, and the Bureau mechanics began to install some of the assembled units in it. The first apparatus which was in- stalled in the tank consisted of an elec- tric generator of peculiar design which was geared to the tank motor. The electromotive force thus generated was led across a spark gap with points of a metallic substance. The light pro- duced was concentrated by a series of parabolic reflectors, directed against a large quartz prism, and thence through a lens which was designed to throw a slightly divergent beam. "This apparatus," Dr. Bird explained to the Signal Corps officer, who was an interested observer, "is one which was designed at the Bureau for the large Bcale production of ultra-violet light. There is nothing special about the gen- erator except that it is highly efficient and gives an almost constant electro- motive force. The current thus pro- duced is led across these points, which are composed of magnalloy, a develop- ment of the Bureau. We found on in- vestigation that a spark gave out a light which was peculiarly rich in ultra- violet rays when it was passed between magnesium points. However, such points could not be used for the han- dling of a steady current because of lack of durability and ease of fusion, so a mixture of graphite, alundum and metallic magnesium was pressed to- gether with a binder which will stand the heat. Thus we get the triple ad- vantages of ultra-violet light produc- tion, durability, and high resistance. * HE system of reflectors catches JL all of the light thus produced ex- cept the relatively small portion which goes initially in the right direction, and directs it on this quartz prism where, due to the refractive powers of the prism, the light is broken up into its component parts. The infra-red rays, and that portion of the spectrum which lies in the visible range, that is, from red to violet inclusive, are ab- sorbed by a black body, leaving only the ultra-violet portion free to send a beam through this quartz lens." "I thought that a lens would absorb ultra-violet light," objected the signal officer. "A lens made of glass will, but this lens is made of rock crystal, which is readily permeable to ultra-violet. The net result of this apparatus is that we can direct before us as we move in the tank a beam of light which is composed solely of the ultra-violet portion of the spectrum." "In other words, an invisible light?" "Yes. That is, invisible to the hu- man eye. The effect of this beam of ultra-violet light in the form of severe sunburn would be readily apparent if you exposed your skin to it for any length of time, and the effects on your eyesight of continued gazing would be apt to be disastrous. It would produce a severe opthalmia and temporary im- 40 ASTOUNDING STORIES pairment of the vision, somewhat the same symptoms as are observed in snow blindness." "I see. May I ask what is the object of the whole thing ?" "Surely. Before we can successfully combat this peculiar visitant from an- other world, it is necessary that we gain some idea of the size and appear- ance of it. Nothing of the sort has be- fore made its appearance, so far as the annals of science go, and so I am forced to make some rather wild guesses at the nature of the animal. You are probably aware of the fact that the property of penetration possessed by all waves is a function of their fre- quency, or, perhaps I should say, of their wave-length?" «f \ ERTAINLY." V»> "The longer rays of visible light will not penetrate as deeply into a given substance as the shorter ultra- violet rays. This visitor is evidently from some unexplored and, indeed, un- known cavern in the depths of the earth where visible light has never penetrated. Apparently in this cavern the color of the inhabitants is ultra- violet, and hence invisible to us." "You are beyond my depth, Doctor." "Pardon me. You understand, of course, what color is ? When sunlight, which is a mixture of all colors from infra-red to ultra-violet inclusive, falls on an object, certain rays are reflected and certain others are absorbed. If the red rays are reflected and all others ab- sorbed, the object appears red to our eyes. If all the rays are reflected, the object appears white, and if all are ab- sorbed, it appears black." "I understand that." "The human eye cannot detect ultra- violet. Suppose then, that we have an object, either animate or inanimate, the surface of which reflects only ultra- violet light, what will be the result? The object will be invisible." "I should think it would be black if all the rays except the ultra-violet were absorbed." "It would, but mark, I did not say the others were absorbed. Are you fa- miliar with fluorescein?" "No." "I think you are. It is the dye used in making changeable silk. If we fill a glass container with a fluorescein so- lution and look at it by reflected light it appears green. If we look at it by transmitted light, that is, light which has traversed the solution, it appears red. In other words, this is a substance which reflects green light, allows a free passage to red light, and absorbs all other light. This creature we are after, if my theory is correct, is composed of a substance which allows free passage to all of the visible light rays and at the same time reflects ultra-violet light. Do I make this clear?" "T3 ERFECTLY." XT "Very well, then. My appa- ratus will project forward a beam of ultra-violet light which will be in much greater concentration than exists in an incandescent electric light. It is my hope that this light will be reflected by the body of the creature to a sufficient to allow me to make a photograph of it." "But won't your lens prevent the ul- tra-violet light from reaching your plate?" "An ordinary lens made of optical glass would do so, but I have a camera here equipped with a rock crystal lens, which will allow ultra-violet light to pass through it practically unhindered, and with very slight distortion. When I add that I will have my camera charged with X-ray film, a film which is peculiarly sensitive to the shorted wave-lengths, you will see that I will have a fair chance of success." "It sounds logical. Would you allow me to accompany you when you make your attempt?" "I will be glad of your company, if you can drive a tank. I want to take Carnes with me, and the tank will only hold two besides the driver." "I can drive a tractor." THE CAVE OF HORROR 41 "In that case you should master the tricks of tank driving in short order. Get familiar with it and we'll appoint you as driver. We'll be ready to go in to-night, but I am going to wait a day. Our friend was fed last night, and there is less chance he'll be about." THE early part of the next evening was marked by howls and screams coming from the mouth of the cave. As the night wore on the noises were quite evidently coming nearer and the sentries watched the cave mouth nerv- ously, ready to bolt and scatter accord- ing to their orders at the first alarm. About two A. M. the doctor and Carnes climbed into the tank beside Lieuten- ant Leffingwell, and the machine moved slowly into the cave. A search-light on the front of the tank lighted the way for them and, attached to a frame which held it some distance ahead of them, was a luckless sheep. 'Keep your eye on the mutton, Carnes," cautioned the doctor. "As soon as anything happens to it, shut off the search-light and let me try to get a picture. As soon as I have made my exposures I'll tell you, and you can snap it on again. Lieutenant, when the picture is made, turn your tank and make for the entrance to the cave. If we are lucky, we'll get out." Forward the tank crawled, the sheep bleating and trying to break loose from the bonds which held it. It was impossible to hear much over the roar of the motor, but presently Dr. Bird leaned forward, his eyes shining. "I smell musk," he announced. "Get ready for action." Even as he spoke the sheep was sud- denly lifted into the air. It gave a final bleat of terror, and then its head was torn from its body. "Quick, Carnes !" shouted the doctor. The search-light went out, and Carnes and the lieutenant could hear the slide of the ultra-violet light which Dr. Bird was manipulating open. For two or three minutes the doctor worked with his apparatus. "All right!" he cried suddenly. "Lights on and get out of here 1" Carnes snapped on the search-light and Lieutenant Leffingwell swung the tank around and headed for the cave mouth. For a few feet their progress was unhindered and then the tank ceased its forward motion, although the motor still roared and the track slid on the cave floor. Carnes watched with horror as one side of the tank bent slowly in toward him. There was a rending sound, and a portion of the heavy steel fabric was torn away. Dr. Bird bent over something on the floor of the tank. Presently he straightened up and threw a small object into the dark- ness. There was a flash of light, and bits of flaming phosphorus flew in every direction. The anchor which held the tank was suddenly loosed and the machine crawled forward at full speed, while a roar as of escaping air mingled with a bellowing shriek bur- dened the smoke-laden air. "Faster !" cried the doctor, as he threw another grenade. LIEUTENANT LEFFINGWELL got the last bit of speed possible out of the tank and they reached the cave mouth without further molesta- tion. "I had an idea that our friend wouldn't care to pass through a phos- phorus screen," said Dr. Bird with a chuckle as he climbed out of the tank. "He must have been rather severely burned the other day, and once burned is usually twice shy. Where is Major" Brown?" The commanding officer stepped for- ward. "Drive a couple of cattle into the cave, Major," directed Dr. Bird. "I want to fill that brute up and keep him quiet for a while. I'm going to devel- ope my films." Lieutenant Leffingwell and Carnes peered over the doctor's shoulders as he manipulated his films in a develop- ing bath. Gradually vague lines and blotches made their appearance on one 42 ASTOUNDING STORIES of the films, but the form was indis- tinct. Or. Bird dropped the films in a fixing tank and straightened up. "We have something, gentlemen," he announced, "but I can't tell yet how clear it is. It will take those films fif- teen minutes to fix, and then we'll know." In a quarter of an hour he lifted the first film from the tank and held it to the light. The film showed a blank. With an exclamation of disappoint- ment he lifted a second and third film from the tank, with the same result. He raised the fourth one. "Good Lord!" gasped Carnes. IN the plate could be plainly seen the hind quarters of the sheep held in the grasp of such a monster as even the drug-laden brain of an opium smoker never pictured. Judg- ing from the sheep, the monster stood about twenty feet tall, and its frame was surmounted by a head resembling an overgrown frog. Enormous jaws were opened to seize the sheep but, to the amazement of the three observers, the jaws were entirely toothless. Where teeth were to be expected, long parallel ridges of what looked like bare bone, appeared, without even a rudi- mentary segregation into teeth. The body of the monster was long and snakelike, and was borne on long, heavy legs ending in feet with three long toes, armed with vicious claws. The crowning horror of the creature was its forelegs. There were of enormous length, thin and attenuated looking, and ended in huge misshapen hands, knobby and blotched, which grasped the sheep in the same manner as human hands. The eyes were as large as din- ner plates, and they were glaring at the camera with an expression of fiendish malevolence which made Carnes shud- der. "How does that huge thing ever get through that crack we examined?" de- manded the lieutenant. Dr. Bird rubbed his head thought- fully. "It's not an amphibian," he muttered, "as is plainly shown by the shape of the limbs and the lack of a tail, and yet it appears to have scales of the true fish type. It corresponds to no recov- ered fossil, and I am inclined to believe it is unique. The nervous organization must be very low, judging from the lack of forehead and the general con- formation. It has enormous strength, and yet the arms look feeble." "It can't get through that crack," in- sisted the lieutenant. "Apparently not," replied the doc- tor. "Wait a moment, though. Look at this!" He pointed to the great dispropor- tion between the length and diameter of the forelegs, and then to the hind legs. "Either this is grave distortion or there is something mighty queer about that ' conformation. No animal could be constructed like that." HE turned the film so that an oblique light fell on it. As he did so he gave a cry of astonishment. "Look here!" he said sharply. "It does get through that crack! Look at those arms and hands! There is the answer. This creature is tall and broad, but from front to rear it can measure only a few inches. The same must be true of the froglike head. That animal has been developed to live and move in a low roofed cavern, and to pass through openings only a few inches wide. It's bulk is all in two di- mensions !" "I believe you're right," said Carnes as he studied the film. "There is no doubt of it," answered the doctor. "Look at those paws, too, Carnes. That substance isn't bone, it's gum. The thing is so young and help- less that it hasn't cut its teeth yet. It must be a baby, and that is the reason why it made its way into the cave when no other of its kind ever has." "How large are full grown ones if this is a baby ?" asked the lieutenant. CAVE OF HORROR 43 "The Lord alone knows," replied Dr. Bird. "I hope that I never have to face one and find out. Well, now that we know what we are fighting, we ought to be able to settle its hash." "High explosive?" suggested the lieutenant. "I don't think so. With such a low nervous organization, we would have to tear it practically to pieces to kill it, and I am anxious to keep it from mutilation for scientific study. I have an idea, but I'll have to study a while before I am sure of the details. Send me the radio operator." The next day the Bureau mechanics began to dismount the apparatus from the tank and to assemble another elab- orate contrivance. Before they had made an end of the work additional equipment arrived from Washington, which was incorporated in the new set- up. At length Dr. Bird pronounced himself ready for the attempt. UNDER his direction, three cattle were driven into the cave and there tethered. They were there the next morning unharmed, but the second night the now familiar bellowing and howling came from the depths of the cave and in the morning two of the cattle were gone. "That will keep him quiet for a day or two," said the doctor, "and now to work!" The tank made its way into the cave, dragging after it two huge cables which led to an engine-driven genera- tor outside the cave. These cables were attached to the terminals of a large motor which was set up in the cave near the place where the cattle were customarily tethered. This motor was the actuating force which turned two generators, one large and one small. The smaller one was mounted on a platform on wheels, which also con- tained the spark gaps, the reflectors and other apparatus which produced the beam of ultra-violet light which had been used to photograph the mon- ster. From the larger generator led two copper bars. One of these was con- nected to a huge copper plate which was laid flat on the floor of the cave. The other led to a platform which was erected on huge porcelain insulators some fifteen feet above the floor. Huge condensers were set up on this plat- form, and Dr. Bird announced himself in readiness. A steer was dragged into the cave and up a temporary runway which led to the platform containing the conden- sers, and there tied with the copper bus bar from the larger generator fast- ened to three flexible copper straps which led around the animal's body. When this had been completed, every- one except the doctor, Carnes, and Lieutenant Leffingwell left the cave. These three crouched behind the search-light which sent a mild beam of ultra-violet onto the platform where the steer was held. The engine out- side the cave was started, and the three men waited with tense nerves. For several hours nothing happened. The steer tried from time to time to move and, finding it impossible, set up plaintive bellows for liberty. "I wish something would happen," muttered the lieutenant. "This is get- ting on my nerves. "Something is about to happen," re- plied Dr. Bird grimly. "Listen to that steer." THE bellowing of the steer had suddenly increased in volume and, added to the note of discontent, was a note of fright which had previously been absent. Dr. Bird bent over his ultra-violet search-light and made some adjustments. He handed a helmetlike arrangement to each of his companions and slipped one on over his head. "I can't see a thing, Doctor," said' Carnes in a muffled voice. "The objects at which you are look- ing absorb rather than reflect ultra- violet light," said the doctor. "This is a sort of a fluoroscope arrangement, and it isn't perfect at all. However, 44 ASTOUNDING STORIES when the monster comes along, I am pretty sure that you will be able to see it. You may see a little more as your eyes get accustomed to it." "I can see very dimly," announced the lieutenant in a moment. Dimly the walls of the cave and the platform before them began to take vague shape. The three stared intently down the beam of ultra-violet light which the doctor directed down the passageway leading deeper into the cave. "Good Lord !" ejaculated Carnes sud- denly. Slowly into the field of vision came the hideous figure they had seen on the film. As it moved forward a rus- tling, slithering sound could be heard, even over the bellowing of the steer and the hum of the apparatus. The odor of musk became evident. Along the floor toward them the thing slid. Presently it reared up on its hind legs and its enormous bulk became evident. It turned somewhat sideways and the correctness of Dr. Bird's hypothesis as to its peculiar shape was proved. All of the bulk of the creature was in two dimensions. Forward it moved, and the horrible human hands stretched forward, while the mouth split in a wide, toothless grin. Nearer the doomed steer the creature approached, and then the reaching hands closed on the animal. There was a blinding flash, and the monster was hurled backward as though struck by a thunderbolt, while a horrible smell of musk and burned flesh filled the air. "After it! Quick I" cried the doctor as he sprang forward. BEFORE he could reach the pros- trate creature it moved and then, slowly at first, but with rapidly gaining speed, it slithered over the floor in re- treat. Dr. Bird's hand swung through an arc, and there was a deafening crash as a hand-grenade exploded on the back of the fleeing monster An unearthly scream came from the creature, and its motion changed from a steady forward glide to a series of convulsive jerks. Leffingwell and Carnes threw grenades, but they went wide of their mark, and the monster began to again increase its speed. An- other volley of grenades was thrown and one hit scored, which slowed the monster somewhat but did not arrest the steady forward movement. "Any more bombs?" demanded the doctor. "Damn!" he cried as he received negative answers. "The current wasn't strong enough. It's going to get away." Carnes jerked his automatic from un- der his armpit and poured a stream of bullets into the fleeing monster. Slower and slower the motion of the creature became, and its movements again be- came jerky and convulsive.. "Keep it in sight!" cried the doctor. "We may get it yet !" Cautiously the three men followed the retreating horror, Leffingwell push- ing before him the platform holding the ultra-violet ray apparatus. The chase led them over familiar ground. "There is the crack!" cried the lieu- tenant. "Too late V replied the doctor. He rushed forward and seized the lower limb of the monster and tried with all his strength to arrest its flight, but despite all that he could do it slid sideways through the crack in the wall and disappeared. A final backward kick of its leg threw the doctor twenty feet against the far wall of the cave. "Are you hurt, Doctor?" cried Carnes. "No, I'm all right. Put on your masks and start the gas ( Quick ! That may stop it before it gets in far !" THE three adjusted gas masks and thrust the mouths of two gas cylinders which were on the light truck into the crack, and opened the valves. The hissing of the gas was accom- panied by thrashing, writhing sound from the bowels of the earth for a few minutes, but the sound retreated and THE CAVE OF HORROR 45 finally died away into an utter silence. "And that's that!" cried the doctor half an hour later as they took off their gas masks outside the cave. "It got away from us. Carnes, how soon can we get a train back to Washington ?" "What kind of a report are you go- ing to make to the Bureau, Doctor?" asked Carnes as they sat in the smoker of a southern train, headed for the capi- tal. "I'm not -going to put in any report, Carnes," replied the doctor. "I haven't got the creature or any part of it to show, and no one would believe me. I am going to maintain a discreet silence about the whole matter." "But you have your photograph to show, Doctor, and you have my evi- dence and Lieutenant Leffingwell's." "The photograph might have been faked and I might have doped both of you. In any case, your words are no better than mine. No, indeed, Carnes, when I failed to make the current strong enough to kill it outright I made the first of the moves which bind me to silence, although I thought that two hundred thousand volts would be enough. "The second failure I made was when I missed him with my second grenade, although I doubt if all six would have stopped him. My third failure was when we failed to get a sufficient con- centration of cyanide gas into that hole in a hurry. The thing is so badly crip- pled that it will die, but it may take hours, or even days, for it to do so. It has already made its way so far into the earth that we couldn't reach it by blasting without danger of bringing the whole place down on our heads. Even if we could blast our way into the place it came from I wouldn't dare open a path which would allow Lord only knows what terrible monsters to invade the earth. When the soldiers have finished stopping that crack with ten feet of solid masonry, I think the barrier will hold, even against that crit- ter's papa and mamma and all its rela- tives. Then Mammoth Cave will be safe for visitors again. That latter fact is the only report which I will make." "It is a dandy story to go to waste," said Carnes soberly. "Tell it then, if you wish, and get laughed at for your pains. No, Carnes, you must learn one thing. A man like Bolton, for instance, will implicitly be- lieve that a four leaf clover in his watch-charm will bring him good luck, and that carrying a buckeye keeps rheumatism away from him; but tell him a bit of sober fact like this, attest- ed by three reliable witnesses and a good photograph, and you'll just get laughed at for your pains. I'm going to keep my mouth shut." "So be it, then !" replied Carnes with a sigh. ASTOUNDING STORIES Appears on Newsstands THE FIRST THURSDAY OF EACH MONTH Phantoms of Reality A COMPLETE NOVEL By Ray Cummings CHAPTER I im- Wall Street— or the Open Road? WHEN I was some fifteen years old, I once made the remark, "Why, that's possible." The man to whom I spoke was a scientist. He replied gen- tly, "My boy, when you are grown older and Red Sensua's knife came up dripping — and the two adventurers knew that chaos and bloody revolution had been unleashed in that shadowy kindom of the fourth dimension. wiser you will realize that nothing is impossible." Somehow, that statement stayed with me. In our swift-moving wonderful world I have seen it proven many times. They once thought it impossi- ble to tell what lay across the broad, unknown Atlan- tic Ocean. They thought the vault of the heavens re- volved around the earth. It was im- possible for it to 46 The office room faded. ... / was lying on another floor. . . . New walls sprang around me. do anything else, because they could see it revolve. It was impossible, too, for anything to be alive and yet be so small that one might not see it. But the microscope proved the con- trary. Or again, to talk beyond the normal range of the human voice was impossible, until the telephone came to show how simply and easily it might be done. I never forgot that physician's re- mark. And it was repeated to me some ten years later by my friend, Captain 47 Derek Mason, on that memorable June night of 1929. My name is Charles Wilson. I was twenty-five that June of 1929. Although I had lived all of my adult life in New York City, I had no relatives there and few friends. I HAD known Captain Mason for sev- eral years. Like myself, he seemed one who walked alone in life. He was an English gentleman, perhaps thirty years old. He had been stationed in 48 ASTOUNDING STORIES the Bermudas, I understood, though he seldom spoke of it. I always felt that I had never seen so attractive a figure of a man as this Derek Mason. An English aristocrat, he was, straight and tall and dark, and rather rakish, with a military swagger. He affected a small, black mustache. A handsome, debonair fellow, with an easy grace of manner: a modern d'Artagnan. In an earlier, less civilized age, he would have been expert with sword and stick, I could not doubt. A man who could capture the hearts of women with a look. He had always been to me a romantic figure, and a mystery that seemed to shroud him made him no less so. A friendship had sprung up between Derek Mason and me, perhaps because we were such opposite types. I am an American, of medium height, and medium build. Ruddy, with sandy hair. Derek Mason was as meticulous of his clothes, his swagger uniforms, as the most perfect Beau Brummel. Not so myself. I am careless of dress and speech. I had not seen Derek Mason for at least a month when, one June after- noon, a note came from him. I went to his apartment at eight o'clock the same evening. Even about his home there seemed a mystery. He lived alone with one man servant. He had taken quarters in a high-class bachelor apart- ment building near lower Fifth Ave- nue, at the edge of Greenwich Village. All of which no doubt was rational enough, but in this building he had chosen the lower apartment at the ground-floor level. It adjoined the cellar. It was built for the janitor, but Derek had taken it and fixed it up in luxurious fashion. Near it, in a corner of the cellar, he had boarded off a square space into a room. I understood vaguely that it was a chemical labora- tory. He had never discussed it, nor had I ever been shown inside it. Un- usual, mysterious enough, and that a captain of the British military should be an experimental scientist was even more unusual. Yet I had always be- lieved that for a year or two Derek had been engaged in some sort of chemical or physical experiment. With all his military swagger he had the precise, careful mode of thought characteristic of the man of scientific mind. I RECALL that when I got his note With its few sentences bidding me come to see him, I had a premonition that it marked the beginning of some- thing strange. As though the portals of h mystery were opening to me ! Nothing is impossible ! Nevertheless I record these events into which I was plunged that June evening with a very natural reluctance. I expect no credi- bility. If this were the year 2000, my. narrative doubtless would be tame enough. Yet in 1929 it can only be called a fantasy. Let it go at that. The fantasy of to-day is the sober truth of to-morrow. And by the day after, it is a mere platitude. Our world moves swiftly. Derek received me in his living-room. He admitted me himself. He told me that his man servant was out. It was a small room, with leather-covered easy chairs, rugs on its hardwood floor, and sober brown portieres at its door and windows. A brown parchment shade j shrouded the electrolier on the table. It was the only light in the room. It cast its mellow sheen upon Derek's lean graceful figure as he flung himself down and produced cigarettes. He said, "Charlie, I want a little talk with you. I've something to tell you — something to offer you." He held his lighter out to me, with its tiny blue alcohol name under my cigarette. And I saw lhat his hand was trembling. «TQ UT I don't understand what you P> mean," I protested. He retorted, "I'm suggesting that you might be tired of being a clerk in a brokerage office. Tired of this humdrum world that we call civiliza- tion. Tired of Wall Street." PHANTOMS "I am, Derek. Heavens, that's true enough." His eyes held me. He was smiling half whimsically: his voice was only half serious. Yet I could see, in the smoldering depths of those luminous dark eyes, a deadly seriousness that be- lied his smiling lips and his gay tone. He interrupted me with, "And I of- fer you a chance for deeds of high ad- venturing. The romance of danger, of pitting your wits against villainy to make right triumph over wrong, and to win for yourself power and riches — and perhaps a fair lady. . . ." "Derek, you talk like a swashbuckler of the middle ages." I thought he would grin, but he turned suddenly solemn. "I'm offering to make you henchman to a king, Charlie." "King of what? Where?" He spread his lean brown hands with a gesture. He shrugged. "What mat- ter? If you seek adventure, you can find it — somewhere. If you feel the lure of romance — it will come to you." I said, "Henchman to a king?" But still he would not smile. "Yes. If I were king. I'm serious. Abso- lutely. In all this world there is no one who cares a damn about me. Not in this world, but. . . ." He checked himself. He went on, ^'You are the same. You have no rela- tives?" "No. None that ever think of me." "Nor a sweetheart. Or have you ?" "No," I smiled. "Not yet. Maybe never." "But you are too interested in Wall Street to leave it for the open road?" He was sarcastic now. "Or do you fear deeds of daring? Do you want to right a great wrong? Rescue an oppressed people, overturn the tyranny of an evil monarch, and put your friend and the girl he loves upon the throne? Or do you want to go down to work as usual in the subwav tomorrow morning ? Are you afraid that in this process of be- coming henchman to a king you may perchance get killed?" Art. St. OF REALITY 49 I matched his caustic tone. "Let's hear it, Derek." CHAPTER II The Challenge of the Unknown INCREDIBLE! Impossible! I did not say it, though my thoughts were written on my face, no doubt. Derek said quietly, "Difficult to be- lieve, Charlie? Yes! But it happens to be true. The girl I love is not of this world, but she lives nevertheless. I have seen her, talked with her. A slim little thing — beautiful. ..." He sat staring. "This is nothing supernatural, Charlie. Only the ignor- ant savages of our past called the un- known — the unusual — supernatural. We know better now." I said, "This girl—" He gestured. "As I told you, I have for years been working on the theory that there is another world, existing here in this same- space with us. The Fourth Dimension ! Call it that if you like. I have found it, proved its exist- ence ! And this girl — her name is Hope — lives in it. Let me tell you about her and her people. Shall I?" My heart was pounding so that it al- most smothered me. "Yes, Derek." "She lives here, in this Space we call New York City. She and her people use this same Space at the same time that we use it. A different world from ours, existing here now with us! Un- seen by us. And we are unseen by them! "A different form of matter, Charlie. As tangible to the people of the other realm as we are to our own world. Humans like ourselves." He paused, but I could find no words to fill the gap. And presently he went on: "Hope's world, co-existing here with us, is dependent upon us. They speak what we call English. They shadow us." I murmured, "Phantoms of reality." "Yes. A world very like ours. But primitive, where ours is civilized." 50 ASTOUNDING STORIES HE paused again. His eyes were staring past me as though he could see through the walls of the cellar room into great reaches of the unknown. What a strange mixture was this Derek Mason! What a strange compound of the cold reality of the scientist and the fancy of the romantic dreamer! Yet I wonder if that is not what science is. There is no ro- mantic lover gawping at the moon who could have more romance in his soul, or see in the moonlit eyes of his loved one more romance than the scientist finds in the wonders of his laboratory. Derek went on slowly : "A primitive world, primitive nation, primitive passions! As I see it now, Charlie — as I know it to be — it seems as though perhaps Hope's world is merely a replica of ours, stripped to the primitive. As though it might be the naked soul of our modern New York, ourselves as we really are, not as we pretend to be." He roused himself from his reverie. "Hope's nation is ruled by a king. An emperor, if you like. A monarch, beset with the evils of luxury and ease, and wine and women. He is surrounded by his nobles, the idle aristocracy, by virtue of their birth proclaiming themselves of too fine a clay to work. The crimson nobles, they are called. Because they affect crimson cloaks, and their beautiful women, voluptuous, sex- mad, are wont to bedeck themselves in veils and robes of crimson. "And there are workers, toilers they call them. Oppressed, down-trodden toilers, with hate for the nobles and the king smoldering within them. In France there was such a condition, and the bloody revolution came of it. It exists here now. Hope was born in the ranks of these toilers, but has risen by her grace and beauty to a position in the court of this graceless monarch." HE leaped from his chair and began pacing the room. I sat silent, staring at him. So strange a thing! Impossible? I could not say that. I could only say, incredible to me. And as I framed the thought I knew its in- credibility was the very measure of my, limited intelligence, my lack of knowl- edge. The vast unknown of nature, so vast that everything which was real to me, understandable to me, was a mere drop in the ocean of the existing un- known. "Don't you understand me now?" Derek added vehemently. "I'm not talking fantasy. Cold reality! I've found a way to transport myself — and you — into this different state of mat- ter, into this other world ! I've already made a test. I went there and stayed, just for a few moments, a night or so ago. It made my heart leap wildly. He went on: "There is chaos there. Smoldering revolution which at any time — to-night, perhaps — may burst into conflagration and destroy this wanton ruling class." He laughed harshly. "In Hope's world the workers are a primitive, ignorant people. Superstitious. Like the peons of Mexico, they're all primed and. ready to shout for any leader who sets him- self up. My chance — our chance — " He suddenly stopped his pacing and stood before me. "Don't you feel the lure of it? The open road? 'The road is straight before me and the Red Gods call for me!' I'm going, Charlie. Go- ing to-night — and I want you to go with me! Will you?" Would I go? The thing leaped like a menacing shadow risen solidly to con- front me. Would I go? Suddenly there was before me the face of a girl. White. Apprehensive. It seemed almost pleading. A face beauti- ful, with a mouth of parted red lips. A face framed in long, pale-golden hair, with big staring blue eyes. Wistful eyes, wan with starlight — eyes that seemed to plead. I thought, "Why, this is madness!" I was not seeing this face with my eyes. There was nothing, no one here in the room with me but Derek. I knev? it. The shadows about us were empty. PHANTOMS I was conjuring the face only from Derek's words, making real that which existed only in my imagination. Yet I knew that in another realm, with my thoughts now bridging the gap, the girl was real. Would I go into the unknown? The quest of the unknown. The gauntlet of the unknown flung down now before me, as it was flung down before the ancient explorers who picked up its challenge and mounted the swaying decks of their little gal- leons and said, "We'll go and see what lies off there in the unknown." That same lure was on me now. I heard my voice saying, "Why yes, I guess I'll go, Derek." CHAPTER III Into the Unknown WE stood in the boarded room which was Derek's laboratory. Our preparations had been simple: Derek had made them all in advance. There was little left to do. The labora- tory was a small room of board walls, board ceiling and floor. Windowless, with a single door opening into the cellar of the apartment house. Derek had locked the door after us as we entered. He said, "I have sent my man servant away for a week. The people in the house here think I have gone away on a vacation. No one will miss us, Charlie — not for a time, any- way." No one would miss me, save my em- ployers, and to them I would no doubt be small loss. We had put out the light in Derek's apartment and locked it carefully after us. This journey! I own that I was trembling, and frightened. Yet a strange eagerness was on me. The cellar room was comfortably furnished. Rugs were on its floor. Whatever apparatus of a research laboratory had been here was removed now. But the evidence of it remained — Derek's long search for this secret which now he was about to use. A OF REALITY 51 - r., ' ! > . ^&fr^Ttf^^9SS^^l^P^^ l ^&^^B^3E. row of board shelves at one side of the room showed where bottles and chem- ical apparatus had stood. A box of electrical tools and odds and ends of wire still lay discarded in a corner of the room. There was a tank of run- ning water, and gas connections, where no doubt bunsen burners had been. DEREK produced his apparatus. I sat on a small low couch against the wall and watched him as he stripped himself of his clothes. Around his waist he adjusted a wide, flat, wire- woven belt. A small box was fastened to it in the middle of the back — a wide, flat thing of metal, a quarter of an inch thick, and curved to fit his body. It was a storage battery of the vibratory cur- rent he was using. From the battery, tiny threads of wire ran up his back to a wire necklace flat against his throat. Other wires extended down his arms to the wrists. Still others down his legs to the ankles. A flat electrode was con- nected to the top of his head like a hel- met. I was reminded as he stood there, of medical charts of the human body with the arterial system outlined. But when he dressed again and put on his jaunty captain's uniform, only the electrode clamped to his head and the thin wires dangling from it in the back were visible to disclose that there was anything unusual about him. He said smilingly, "Don't stare at me like that" I took a grip on myself. This thing was frightening, now that I actually was embarked on it. Derek had ex- plained to me briefly the workings of his apparatus. A vibratory electronic current, for which as yet he had no name, was stored in the small battery. He had said : "There's nothing incomprehensible about this, Charlie. It's merely a chang- ing of the vibration rate of the basic substance out of which our bodies are made. Vibration is the governing factor of all states of matter. In its essence what we call substance is wholly intangible. That is already 52 ASTOUNDING STORIES proven. A vortex! A whirlpool of nothingness! It creates a pseudo-sub- stance which is the only material in the universe. And from this, by vibration, is built the complicated structure of things as we see and feel them to be, all dependent upon vibration. Every- thing is altered, directly as the vibra- tory rate is changed. From the most tenuous gas, to fluids to solids — throughout all the different states of matter the only fundamental difference is the rate of vibration." I UNDERSTOOD the basic principle of this that he was explaining — that now when this electronic current which he had captured and controlled was ap- plied to our physical body, the vibra- tion rate of every smallest and most minute particle of our physical being was altered. There is so little in the vast scale of natural phenomena of which our human senses are cognisant ! Our eyes see the colors of the spec- trum, from red to violet. But a vast invisible world of color lies below the red of the rainbow! Physicists call it the infra-red. And beyond the violet, another realm — the ultra-violet. With sound it is the same. Our audible range of sound is very small. There are sounds with too slow a vibratory rate for us to hear, and others too rapid. The differing vibratory rate from most tenuous gas to most substantial solid is all that we can perceive in this phy- sical world of ours. Yet of the whole, it is so very little! This other realm to which we were now going lay in the higher, more rapid vibratory scale.. To us, by comparison, a more tenuous world, a shadow realm. I listened to Derek's words, but my mind was on the practicality of what lay ahead. An explorer, standing upon his ship, may watch his men bending the sails, raising the anchor, but his mind flings out to the journey's end. . . . E were soon ready. Derek wore his jaunty uniform, I wore my ordinary business suit. A magnetic field would be about us, so that in the transition anything in fairly close con- tact with our bodies was affected by the current. Derek said, "I will go first, Charlie." "But, Derek — " A fear, greater than the trembling I had felt before, leaped at me. Left here alone, with no one on whom to depend! He spoke with careful casualness, but his eyes were burning me. "Just sit there, and watch. When I am gone, turn on the current as I showed you and come after me. I'll wait for you." "Where?" I stammered. He smiled faintly. "Here. Right here. I'm not going away! Not going to move. I'll be here on the couch waiting for you." Terrifying words! He had lowered the couch, bending out its short legs until the frame of it rested on the board floor. He drew a chair up before it and seated me. He sat down on the couch. He said, "Oh, one other thing. Just before you start, put out the light. We can't tell how long it will be before we return." Terrifying words ! His right hand was on his left wrist where the tiny switch was placed. He smiled again. "Good luck to us, Charlie!" Good luck to us ! The open road, the unknown ! I sat there staring. He was partly in shadow. The room was very silent. Derek lay propped up on one elbow. His hand threw the tiny switch. There was a breathless moment. Derek's face was set and white, but no whiter than my own, I was sure. His eyes were fixed on me. I saw him sud- denly quiver and twitch a little. I murmured, "Derek — " At once he spoke, to reassure me. "I'm all right, Charlie. That was just the first feel of it." THERE was a faint quivering throb in the room, like a tiny distant dynamo throbbing. The current was surging over Derek; his legs twitched. w PHANTOMS OF REALITY 53 A moment. The faint throbbing in- tensified. No louder, but rapid, in- finitely more rapid. A tiny throb, an aerial whine, faint as the whirring wings of a humming bird. It went up the scale, ascending in pitch, until presently it was screaming with an aerial microscopic voice. But there seemed no change in Derek. His uniform was glowing a trifle, that was all. His face was com- posed now; he smiled, but did not speak. His eyes roved away from me, as though now he were seeing things that I could not see. Another moment. No change. Why, what was this? I blinked, gasped. There was a change ! My gaze was fastened upon Derek's white face. White ? It was more than white now ! A silver sheen seemed to be coming to his skin! I think no more than a minute had passed. His face was glowing, shim- mering. A transparent look was com- ing to it, a thinness, a sudden unsub- stantiality f He dropped his elbow and lay on the- couch, stretched at full length at my feet. His eyes were star- ing. And suddenly I realized that the face that held those staring eyes was erased ! A shimmering apparition of Derek was stretched here before me. I could see through it now! Beneath the shim- mering, blurred outlines of his body I could see the solid folds of the couch cover. A ghost of Derek here. An ap- parition — fading — dissipating ! A gossamer outlined of him, impon- derable, intangible. I leaped to my feet, staring down over him. "Derek!" The shape of him did not move. Every instant it was more vaporous, more unreal. I thought, "He's gone !" No! He was still there. A white mist of his form on the couch. Melting, dissipating in the light like a fog be- fore sunshine. A wisp of it left, like a breath, and then there was nothing. I SAT on the couch. I had put out the light. Around me the room was black. My fingers found the small switch at my wrist. I pressed it across its tiny arc. The first shock was slight, but in- finitely strange. A shuddering, twitch- ing sensation ran all over me. It made my head reel, swept a wave of nausea over me, a giddiness, a feeling that I was falling through darkness. I lay on the couch, bracing myself. The cur- rent was whining up its tiny scale. I could feel it now. A tiny throbbing, communicating itself to my physical being. And then in a moment I realized that my body was throbbing. The vibration of the current was communicating it- self to the most minute cells of my body. An indescribable tiny quivering within me. Strange, frightening, sick- ening at first. But the sickness passed, and in a moment I found it almost pleasant. I could see nothing. The room was wholly dark. I lay on my side on the couch, my eyes staring into the black- ness around me. I could hear the hum- ming of the current, and then it seemed to fade. Abruptly I felt a sense of lightness. My body, lying on the couch, pressed less heavily. I gripped my arm. I was solid, sub- stantial as before. I touched the couch. It was the couch which was changing, not I ! The couch cover queerly seemed to melt under my hand ! The sense of my own lightness grew upon me. A lightness, a freedom, pressed me, as though chains and shackles which all my life had encom- passed me were falling away. A wild, queer freedom. I wondered where Derek was. Had I arrived in the other realm? Was he here? I had no idea how much time had passed : a minute or two, perhaps. Or was I still in Derek's laboratory? The darkness was as solid, impenetra- ble as ever. No, not quite dark ! I saw something now. A glowing, misty out- line around me. Then I saw that it was 54 ASTOUNDING STORIES not the new, unknown realm, but still Derek's room. A shadowy, spectral room, and the light, which dimly il- lumined it, was from outside. I LAY puzzling, my own situation forgotten for the moment. The light came from overhead, in another room of the apartment house. I stared. Around me now was a dim vista of distance, and vague, blurred, misty out- lines of the apartment building above me. The shadowy world I had left now lay bare. There was a moment when I thought I could see far away across a spectral city street. The shadows of the great city were around me. They glowed, and then were gone. A hand gripped my arm in a solid grip. Derek's voice sounded. "Are you all right?" "Yes," I murmured. The couch had faded. I was conscious that I had floated or drifted down a few inches, to a new level. The level of the cellar floor beneath the couch. Cellar floor! It was not that now. Yet there was something solid here, a solid ground, and I was lying upon it, with Derek sitting beside me. • I murmured again, "Yes, I'm all right." My groping hand felt the ground. It was soil, with a growth of vegetation like a grass sward on it. Were we out- doors? It suddenly seemed so. I could feel soft, warm air on my face and had a sense of open distance around me. A light was growing, a vague, diffused light, as though day were swiftly com- ing upon us. I felt Derek fumbling at my wrist. "That's all, Charlie." There was a slight shock. Derek was pulling me up beside him. I found my- self on my feet, with light around me. I stood wavering, gripping Derek. It was as though I had closed my eyes, and now they were suddenly open. I was aware of daylight, color, and move- ment. A world of normality here, normal to me now because I was part of it. The realm of the unknown! CHAPTER IV "Hope, I Came. . . ." I THINK I was first conscious of a queer calmness which had settled upon me, as though now I had with- drawn contact with the turmoil of our world. Something was gone, and in its place came a calmness. But that was a mere transition. It had passed in a moment. I stood trembling with eager- ness, as I know Derek was trembling. A radiant effulgence of light was around us, clarifying, growing. There was ground beneath our feet, and sky overhead. A rational landscape, strangely familiar. A physical world like my own, but, it seemed, with a new glory "upon it. Nature, calmly serene. I had thought we were standing in daylight. I saw now it was bright star- light. An evening, such as the evening we had just left in our own world. The starlight showed everything clearly. I could see a fair distance. We stood at the top of a slight rise. I saw gentle, slightly undulating coun- try. A brook nearby wound through a grove of trees and lost itself. Sudden- ly, with a shock, I realized how familiar this was! We stood facing what in New York City we call West. The contour of this land was familiar enough for me to identify it. A mile or so ahead lay a river; it shimmered in its valley, with cliffs on its further side. Near at hand the open country was dotted with trees and checkered with round patches of cultivated fields. And there were occasional habitations, low, oval houses of green thatch. The faint flush of a recent sunset lay upon the landscape, mingled with the starlight. A road — a white ribbon in the starlight — wound over the country- side toward the river. Animals, strange of aspect, were slowly dragging carts. There were distant figures working in the fields. A city lay ahead of us, set along this nearer bank of the river. A city! It seemed a primitive village. All was primitive, as though here might be PHANTOMS OF REALITY 55 some lost Indian tribe of our early ages. The people were picturesque, the field workers garbed in vivid colors. The flat little carts, slow moving, with broad-horned oxen. THIS quiet village, drowsing beside the calm-flowing river, seemed all very normal. I could fancy that it was just after sundown of a quiet workday. There was a faint flush of pink upon everything: the glory of the sun just set. And as though to further my fancy, in the village by the river, like an angelus, a faint-toned bell was chim- ing. We stood for a moment gazing silently. I felt wholly normal. A warm, pleasant wind fanned my hot face. The sense of lightness was gone. This was normality to me. Derek murmured, "Hope was to meet me here." And then we both saw her. She was coming toward us along the road. A slight, girlish figure, clothed in queerly vivid garments : a short jacket of blue cloth with wide-flowing sleeves, knee- length pantaloons of red, with tassels dangling from them, and a wide red sash about her waist. Pale golden hair was piled in a coil upon her head. . . . She was coming toward us along the edge of the road, from the direction of the city. She was only a few hun- dred feet from us when we first saw her, coming swiftly, furtively it seemed. A low pike fence bordered the road. She seemed to be shielding herself in the shadows beside it. We stood waiting in the starlight. The nearest figures in the field and on the road were too far away to notice us. The girl advanced. Her white arm went up in a gesture, and Derek an- swered. She left the road, crossing the field toward us. As she came closer, I saw how very beautiful she was. A girl of eighteen, perhaps, a fantastic little figure with her vivid garments. The starlight illumined her white face, anxious, apprehensive, but eager. "Derek!" He said, "Hope, I came. . . ." I stood silently watching. Derek's arms went out, and the girl, with a little cry, came running forward and threw herself into them. CHAPTER V Intrigue ** A M I in time, Hope?" Jl\ "Yes, but the festival is to- night. In an hour or two now. Oh Derek, if the king holds this festival, the toilers will revolt. They won't stand it—" "To-night! It mustn't be held to- night! It doesn't give me time, time to plan." I stood listening to their vehement, half-whispered words. For a moment or two, absorbed, they ignored me. "The king will make his choice to- night, Derek. He has announced it. Blanca or Sensua for his queen. And if he chooses the Crimson Sensua — " She stammered, then she went on: "If he does — there will be bloodshed. The toilers are waiting, just to learn his choice." Derek exclaimed, "But to-night is too soon! I've got to plan. Hope, where does Rohbar stand in this?" Strange intrigue! I pieced it to- gether now, from their words, and from what presently they briefly told me. A festival was about to be held, an orgy of feasting and merrymaking, of music and dancing. And during it. this young King Leonto was to chooso his queen. There were two possibili- ties. The Crimson Sensua, a profligate, debauched woman who, as queen, would further oppress the workers. And Blanca, a white beauty, risen from the toilers to be a favorite at the Court. Hope was her handmaiden. If Blanca were chosen, the toilers? would be appeased. She was one of them. She would lead this king from his profligate ways, would win from him justice for the workers. But Derek and Hope both knew that the pure and gentle Blanca would never 56 ASTOUNDING STORIES be the king's choice. And to-night the toilers would definitely know it, and the smoldering revolt would burst in& to flame. AND there was this Rohbar. Derek said, "He is the king's henchman, Charlie." I stood here in the starlight, listen- ing to them. This strange primitive realm. There were no modern wea- pons here. We had brought none. The current used in our transition would have exploded the cartridges of a re- volver. I had a dirk which Hope now gave me, and that was all. Primitive intrigue. I envisaged this chaotic nation, with its toilers ignorant as the oppressed Mexican peons at their worst. Striving to better them- selves, yet, not knowing how. Ready to shout for any leader who might With vainglorious words set himself up as a patriot. This Rohbar, perhaps, was planning to do just that. And so was Derek ! He said, "Hope, if you could persuade the king to post- pone the festival — if Blanca would help persuade him — just until to-morrow night " "I can try, Derek. But the festival is planned for an hour or two from now." "Where is the king?" "In his palace, near the festival gardens." She gestured to the south. My mind went back to New York City. This hillock, wmere we were standing in the starlight beside a tree, was in my world about Fifth Avenue and Six- teenth Street. The king's palace — the festival gardens — stood down at the Battery, where the rivers met in the broad water of the harbor. DEREK was saying, "We haven't much time : can you get us to the palace?" "Yes. I have a cart down there on the road." "And the cloaks for Charlie and me ?" "Yes." "Good!" said Derek. "We'll go with you. It's a long chance; he probably won't postpone it. If he does not, we'll be among the audience. And when he chooses the Red Sensua — " She shuddered, "Oh, Derek—" And I thought I heard her whisper, "Oh, Alexandre — " and I saw his finger go to his lips. His arm went around her. She hud- dled, small as a child against his tall, muscular body. He said gently, "Don't be afraid, little Hope." His face was grim, his eyes were gleaming. I saw him suddenly as an instinctive military adventurer. An anachronism in our modern New York City. Born in a wrong age. But here in this primitive realm he was at home. I plucked at him. "How can you — how can we dare plunge into this thing? Hidden with cloaks, yes. But you talk of leading these toilers." He cast Hope away and confronted me. "I can do it ! You'll see, Charlie." He was very strangely smiling. "You'll see. But I don't want to come into the open right away. Not to-night. But if we can only postpone this ac- cursed festival." We had been talking perhaps five minutes. We were ready now to start away. Derek said:- "Whatever comes, Charlie, I want you to take care of Hope. Guard her for me, will you?" I said, "Yes, I will try to." Hope smiled as she held out her hand to me. "I will not be afraid, with Derek's friend." HER English was of different in* tonation from our own, but it was her native language, I could not doubt. I took her cold, slightly trembling hand. "Thank you, Hope." Her eyes were misty with starlight. Tender eyes, but the tenderness was not for me. "Yes," I repeated. "You can depend upon me, Derek." PHANTOMS We left the hillock. A food-laden cart came along the road. The driver, a boy vivid in jacket and wide trousers of red and blue, bravely worn but tat- tered, ran alongside guiding the oxen. When they had passed we followed, and presently we came to the cloaks Hope had hidden. Derek and I donned them. They were long crimson cloaks with hoods. Hope said, "Many are gathering for the festival shrouded like that. You will not be noticed now." Further along the road we reached a little eminence. I saw the river ahead of us, and a river behind us. And a few miles to the south, an open spread of water where the rivers joined. Familiar contours ! The Hudson River ! The East River. And down at the end of the island, New York Harbor. Hope gestured that way. "The king's palace is there." We were soon passing occasional houses, primitive thatched dwellings. I saw inside one. Workers, were seated over their frugal evening meal. Always the same vivid garments, jaunty but tattered. We passed one old fellow in a Held, working late in the starlight. A man bent with age, but still a tiller of the soil. Hope waved to him and he responded, but the look he gave us as we hurried by shrouded in our crim- son cloaks was sullenly hostile. We came to an open cart. It stood by the roadside. An ox with shaggy coat and spreading horns was fastened to the fence. It was a small cart with small rollers like wheels. Seats were in it and a vivid canopy over it. We climbed in and rumbled away. AND this starlit road in our own world was Broadway! We were presently passing close to the river's edge. This quiet, peaceful, starlit river! Why, in our world it was massed with docks ! Great ocean liners, huge funneled, with storied decks lay here! Under this river, tunnels with endless passing vehicles! Tubes, with speeding trains crowded with people ! OF REALITY 57 The reality here was so different! Behind us what seemed an upper city was strung along the river. Ahead of us also there were streets and houses, the city of the workers. A bell was toiling. Along all the roads now we could see the moving yellow spots of lights on the holiday carts headed for the festival. And there were spots of yellow torchlight from boats on the river. We soon were entering the city streets. Narrow dirt streets they were, with primitive shacks to the sides. Women came to the doorways to stare at our little cart rumbling hastily past. I was conscious of my crimson cloak, and conscious of the sullen glances of hate which were flung at it from every side, here in this squalid, forlorn sec- tion where the workers lived. Along every street now the carts were passing, converging to the south. They were filled, most of them, with young men and girls, all in gaudy, cos- tumes. Some of them, like ourselves, were shrouded in crimson cloaks. The carts occasionally were piled with flowers. As one larger than us, and moving faster rumbled by, a girl in it stood up and pelted me with blossoms. She wore a crimson robe, but it had fallen from her shoulders. I caught a glimpse of her face, framed in flowing dark hair, and of eyes with laughter in them, mocking me, alluring. We came at last to the end of the island. There seemed to be a thousand or more people arriving, or here al- ready. The tip of the island had an esplanade with a broad canopy behind it. Burning torches of wood gave .flames of yellow, red and blue fire. A throng of gay young people promen- aded the walk, watching the arriving boats. AND here, behind the walk at the water's edge, was a garden of trees and lawn, shrubs and beds of tall vivid flowers. Nooks were here to shelter lovers, pools of water glinted red and green with the reflected torch- 58 ASTOUNDING STORIES light. In one of the pools I saw a group of girls bathing, sportive as dolphins. To one side at a little distance up the river, banked against the water, was a broad, low building: the palace of the king. About it were broad gar- dens, with shrubs and flowers. The whole was surrounded by a high metal fence, spiked on top. The main gate was near at hand; we left our cart. Close to the gate was a guard standing alert, a jaunty fellow in leather pantaloons and leather jacket, with a spiked helmet, and in his hand a huge, sharp-pointed lance. The gardens of the palace, what we could see of them, seemed empty — none but the favored few might enter here. But as I climbed from the cart, I got the impression that just inside the fence a figure was lurking. It started away as we approached the gate. The guard had not seen it — the drab figure of a man in what seemed to be dripping garments, as' though perhaps he had swum in from the water. And Derek saw him. He muttered, "They are everywhere." Hope led us to the gate. The guard recognized her. At her imperious ges- ture he stood aside. We passed within. I saw the palace now as a long winged structure of timber and stone, with a high tower at the end of one wing. The building fronted the river, but here on the garden side there was a broad door- way up an incline, twenty feet up and over a small bridge, spanning what seemed a dry moat. Beyond, it a small platform, then an oval archway, the main entrance to the building. Derek and I, shrouded in our crim- son cloaks with hoods covering us to the eyes, followed Hope into the palace. CHAPTER VI The King's Henchman THE long room was bathed in col- ored lights. There was an ornate tiled floor. Barbaric draperies of heavy fabric shrouded the archways and win- dows. It was a totally barbaric apart- ment. It might have been the audience chamber of some fabled Eastern Prince of our early ages. Yet not quite that either. There was a primitive modern- ity here. I could not define it, could not tell why I felt this strangeness. Perhaps it was the aspect of the people. The room was crowded with men and gay laughing girls in fancy dress cos- tumes. Half of them at least were shrouded in crimson cloaks, but most of the hoods were back. They moved about, laughing and talking, evidently waiting for the time to come for them to go to the festival. We pushed our way through them. Derek murmured, "Keep your hood up, Charlie." A girl plucked at me. "Handsome man, let me see." She thrust her painted lips up to mine as though dar- ing me to kiss them. Hope shoved her away. Her parted cloak showed her white, beautiful body with the dark tresses of her hair shrouding it. Ex- otically lovely she was, with primitive, unrestrained passions — typical of the land in which she lived. "This way," whispered Hope. "Keep close together. Do not speak!" We moved forward and stood quietly against the wall of thj£ room, where great curtains hid us partly from view. Under a canopy, at a table on a raised platform near one end of the apart- ment, sat the youthful monarch. I saw him as a man of perhaps thirty. He was in holiday garb, robed in silken hose of red and white, a strangely fashioned doublet, and a close-fitting shirt. Bare- headed, with thick black hair, long to the base of his neck. He sat at the table with a calm dig- nity. But he relaxed here in the pres- ence of his favored courtiers. He was evidently in a high good humor this night, giving directions for the stag- ing of the spectacle, despatching mes- sengers. I stood gazing at him. A very kingly fellow this. There was about him, that strange mingled look of bar- barism and modernity. PHANTOMS OF REALITY 59 HOPE approached him and knelt. Derek and I could hear their voices, although the babble of the crowd went on. "My little Hope, what is it? Stand up, child." She said, "Your Highness, a message from Blanca." He laughed. "Say no more ! I know it already! She does not want this festival. The workers," — what a world of sardonic contempt he put into that one word! — "the workers will be of- fended because we take pleasure to- night. Bah!" But he was still laugh- ing. "Say no more, little Hope. Tell Blanca to dance and sing her best this night. I am making my choice. Did you know that ?" Hope was silent. He repeated, "Did you know that?" "Yes, Your Highness," she mur- mured. "I choose our queen to-night, child. Blanca or Sensua." He sighed. "Both are very beautiful. Do y° u know which one I am going to choose?" "No," she said. "Nor do I, little Hope. Nor do I." He dismissed her. "Go now. Don't bother me." She parted her lips as though to make another protest, but his eyes suddenly flashed. "I would not have you annoy me again. Do you understand?" She turned away, back toward where Derek and I were lurking. The chat- tering crowd in the room had paid no attention to Hope, but before she could reach us a man detached himself from a nearby group and accosted her. A commanding figure, he was, I think, quite the largest man in the room. An inch or two taller than Derek, at the least. He wore his red cloak with the hood thrown back upon his wide heavy shoulders. A bullet-head with close-- clipped black hair. A man of about the king's age, he had a face of heavy features, and flashing dark eyes. A scoundrel adventurer, this king's henchman. Hope said, "What is it, Rohbar?" "You will join our party, little Hope?" He laid a heavy hand on her white arm. His face was turned toward me. I could not miss the gleaming look in his eyes as he regarded her. "No," she said. IT seemed that he twitched at her, but she broke away from him. Anger crossed his face, but the desir- ous look in his eyes remained. "You are very bold, Hope, to spurn me like this." He had lowered his voice as though fearful that the king might hear him. "Let me alone!" she said. She darted away from him, but be- fore she joined us she stood waiting until he turned away. "No use," Hope whispered. "There is nothing we can do here. You heard what the king said — and the festival is already' begun." Derek stood a moment, lost in thought. He was gazing across the room to where Rohbar was .standing with a group of girls. He said at last : "Come on, Charlie. We'll watch this festival. This damn fool king will choose the Red Sensua." He shrugged. "There will be chaos. . . ." We shoved our way from the room, went out of the main doorway and hurried through the gardens of the palace. The red-cloaked figures were leaving the building now for the festi- val grounds. We waited for a group of them to pass so that we might walk alone. As we neared the gate, passing through the shadows of high flowered shrubs, a vague feeling that we were being followed shot through me. In a moment there was so much to see that I forgot it, but I held my hand on my dirk and moved closer to Hope. We reached the entrance to the can- opy. A group of girls, red-cloaked, were just coming out. They rushed past us. They ran, discarding their cloaks. Their white bodies gleamed under the colored lights as they rushed to the pool and dove. 60 ASTOUNDING STORIES We were just in time. Hope whis- pered, "The king will be here any moment." BENEATH the canopy was a broad arena of seats. A platform, like a stage, was at one end. It was bril- liantly illuminated with colored torches held aloft by girls in flowing robes, each standing like a statue with her light held high. The place was crowded. In the gloom of the darkened audi- torium we found seats off to one side, near the open edge of the canopy. We sat, with Hope between us. Derek whispered, "Shakespeare might have staged a play in a fashion like this." A primitive theatrical performance. There was no curtain for interlude be- tween what might have been the acts of a vaudeville. The torch girls, like pages, ranged themselves in a line across the front of the stage. They were standing there as we took our seats. The vivid glare of their torches concealed the stage behind them. There was a few moments wait, then, amid hushed silence, the king with his retinue came in. He sat in a canopied box off to one side. • When he was seated, he raised his arm and the buzz of conversation in the audience began again. Presently the page girls moved aside from the stage. The buzz of the audi- ence was stilled. The performance, destined to end so soon in tragedy, now began. CHAPTER VII The Crimson Murderess HOPE murmured, "The three-part music comes first. There will first be the spiritual." An orchestra was seated on the stage in a semi-circle. It was composed of men and women musicians, and there seemed to be over a hundred of them. They sat in three groups; the center group was about to play. In a solemn hush the leaderless choirs, with all its players garbed in white, began its first faint note. I craned to get a clear view of the stage. This white choir seemed almost all wood-wind. There were tiny pipes in little series such as Pan might have used. Flutes, and flageolets; and round-bellied little in- struments of clay, like ocarinas. And pitch-pipes, long and slender as a marsh reed. In a moment I was lost in the music. It began softly, with single muted notes from a single instrument, echoed by the others, running about the choir like a will-o'-the-wisp. It was faint, as though very far away, made more sweet by distance. And then it swelled, came nearer. I had never heard such music as this. Primitive! It was not that. Nor bar- baric! Nothing like the music of our ancient world. Nor was it what I might conceive to be the music of our future. A thing apart, unworldly, ethereal. It swept me, carried me off; it was an exaltation of the spirit lift- ing me. It was triumphant now. It surged, but there was in its rhythm, the beat of its every instrument, nothing but the soul of purity. And then it shimmered into distance again, faint and exquisite music of a dream. Croon- ing, pleading, the speech of whispering angels. It ceased. There was a storm of ap- plause. I breathed again. Why, this was what music might be in our world but was not. I thought of our blaring jazz. Hope said, "Now they play the physi- cal music v Then Sensua will dance with Blanca. We will see then which one the king chooses." ON the stage all the torches were extinguished save those which were red. The arena was darker than before. The stage was bathed with a deep crimson. Music of the physical senses! It was, indeed, no more like the other choir than is the body to the spirit. PHANTOMS OF REALITY 61 There were stringed instruments playing now; deep-toned, singing zithers, and instruments of rounded, swelling bodies, like great viols with sensuous, throbbing voices. Music with a swift rhythm, marked by the thump of hollow gourds. It rose with its voluptuous swell into a paean of abandonment, and upon the tide of it, the crimson Sensua flung herself upon the stage. She stood motionless for a moment that all might regard her. The crimson torchlight bathed her, stained crimson the white flush of her limbs, her heavy shoulders, her full, rounded throat. A woman in her late twenties. Vo- luptuous of figure, with crimson veils half-hiding, half-revealing it. A face of coarse, sensuous beauty. A face wholly evil, and it seemed to me wholly debauched. Dark eyes with beaded lashes. Heavy lips painted scarlet. A pagan woman of the streets. One might have encountered such a woman swaggering in some ancient street of some ancient city, flaunting the finery given her by a rich and profligate eastern prince. She stood a moment with smolder- ing, passion-filled eyes, gazing from be- neath her lowered lids. Her glance went to the king's canopy, and flashed a look of confidence, of triumph. The king answered it with a smile. He leaned forward over his railing, watch- ing her intently. With the surge of the music she moved into her dance. Slowly she be- gan, quite slowly. A posturing and swaying of hips like a nautch girl. She made the rounds of the musicians, leer- ing at them. She stood in the whirl of the music, almost ignoring it, stood at the front of the stage with a gaze of slumbrous, insolent passion flung at the king. A knife was in her hand now. She held it aloft. The red torchlight caught its naked blade. With shudder- ing fancy I seemed to see it dripping crimson. She frowned, and struck it .at a phantom lover. She backed away. She stooped and knelt. She knelt and seemed with her empty arms to be caressing a murdered lover's head. She kissed him, rained upon his dead lips her macabre kisses. And then she was up on her bare feet, again circling the stage. Her anklets clanked as she moved with the tread of. a tigress. The musicians shrank from her waving blade. A GIRL in white veils was sud- denly disclosed standing at the back of the stage. Derek whispered, "Is that Blanca?" "Yes," whispered Hope. Blanca stood watching her rival. The crimson Sensua passed her, took her suddenly by the wrist, drew her for- ward. For an instant I thought it might have been rehearsed. I saw Blanca as a slim, gentle girl in white, with a white head-dress. A dancer who could symbolize purity, now in the grip of red passion. An instant, and then horror struck us. And I could feel it surge over the audience. A gasp of horror. The frightened girl in white tried to escape. The musicians wavered and broke. I stared, stricken, with freezing blood. Upon the stage the knife went swiftly up ; it came down ; then up again. The read Sensua stood gloating. The knife she waved aloft was truly dripping crimson now. With a choked, gasping scream the white girl of the toilers crumpled and fell. . . . She lay motionless, at the feet of the crimson murderess. CHAPTER VIII "Why, This Is Treason!" THERE was a gasp. The audience sat frozen. On the stage, with no one lifting a hand to stop her, the crimson murderess made a leap and vanished. A moment, and then the spell broke. A girl in the audience screamed. Some one moved to stand up and overturned a seat with a crash. The amphitheater under the canopy broke into a pandemonium. Screams 62 ASTOUNDING STORIES and shouts, crashing of seats, scream- ing, frightened people struggling to get out of the darkness. The torches on the stage were dropped and extin- guished. The, darkness leaped upon us. Derek and I were gripping Hope. We were struck by a bench flung back- ward from in front. People were rush- ing at us. We were swept along in the panic of the crowd. I heard Derek shout, "We must keep together!" We fought, but we were swept back- ward. We found ourselves outside the canopy. Torchlight was here. It glim- mered on the pool of water. People were everywhere rushing past us, some one way, some another. Aimless, with the shock of terror upon them. Under the canopy they were still screaming. I was momentarily separated from Derek and Hope. I very nearly * stumbled into the pool. A girl was here, crouched on the stone bank. Her wet crimson veils clung to her white body. Her long, wet hair lay on her. I stumbled against her. She raised her face. Eyes, wide with terror. Mute, painted red lips. . . . I heard Derek calling again, "Charlie!" I shoved my way back to him. The crowd was thinning out around us. Girls were climbing from the pool, rushing off in terror, to min- gle with the milling throng. Among the crowd now, down by the edge of the bay, I saw the sinister figures of men come running. The toilers, miracu- lously appearing everywhere! I saw, across the pool, a terrified girl crouch- ing. A huge man in a black cloak came leaping. The colored lights in the trees glittered on his upraised knife blade as it descended. The girl fell with a shuddering scream. The mur- derer turned and whirled away, into the crowd. "Charlie!" I was back with Derek and Hope. Hope stood trembling, with her hand pressed against her mouth. Derek gripped me. "That cloak, get it off!" He ripped his crimson cloak from him and tossed it away. He jerked mine off. "Too dangerous! That's the crimson badge of death to-night." We stood revealed in the clothes of our own world. My business suit, in which that day I had worked in Wall Street. Derek in his swagger uniform. He stood drawn to his full height, a powerful figure. The wires of our mechanism showed at his wrists. They dangled at the back of his neck, mount- ing to that strangely fashioned elec- trode clamped to his head. Strange, awe-inspiring figure of a -man ! We were momentarily alone under the colored lights of the trees. Hope murmured, "But they will see us — see you. . . ." Derek's face was grim, but at her words he laughed harshly. "See us! What matter?" He swung on me. "It forces our hand ; we've got to come out in the open now! This murder — this king ! My God, what a fool to let him- self get into such a condition as this! His people — this chaos — what a fool!" He had drawn his dirk. I realized that I was holding mine. Near us the body of a crimson noble was lying under a tree. A sword was there on the ground. Derek sprang for it, waved it aloft. I think that no more than a minute or two had passed since the murder. Down by the water the boats were hastily loading and leaving the dock. One of them overturned. There were screams everywhere. Red forms lay inert upon the ground where they had been tramped, or stabbed. But the prowling figures of the toilers now seemed to have vanished. Derek gestured. "Look at the pal- ace! The garden!" Beyond the canopy I could see the dim gardens surrounding the palace. I glimpsed the high fence, and the gateway in front. A mob of toilers was there. The guard at the gate had fled. The mob was surging through. Men and women in the vivid garments PHANTOMS OF REALITY 63 of the fields, armed with sticks and clubs and stones and the implements of agriculture. They milled at the gate; rushed through; scattered over the garden. Their shouts floated back to us in a blended murmur. We were standing only a dozen feet from the edge of the pavilion. No one seemed yet to have noticed us. A few straggling lights had come on under the canopy. I could see the dead lying there in the wreckage of overturned seats. Derek sa,id, "We can't help it — it's done. Look at them! They're attack- ing the palaceT' This mob springing miraculously in- to existence ! I realized that the toilers had planned that if Sensua were chosen they would attack the festival. The murder of Blanca had come as big a surprise to them as to us. ... " "Come on! Can you get into the palace, Hope? The king must have gotten back there. Get your wits, girl !" Derek stood gripping her, shaking her. "Yes, there's an underground passage. He probably went that way." From the palace gardens the shouts of the mob sounded, louder now. And from within the building there was an alarm bell tumultuously clanging. Hope gasped, "This way." She led us back into the pavilion. We clambered over its broken seats, past its grewsome huddled figures. Some were still moving We went to a small door under the platform. A dim room was here, deserted now. Against the wall was a large wardrobe closet ; stage costumes were hanging in it. The closet was fully twenty feet deep. We pushed our way through the hanging garments. Hope fumbled at the blank board wall in the rear. Her groping fingers found a secret panel. A door swung aside and a rush of dank cool air camef at us. The dark out- lines of a tunnel stretched ahead. "In, Charlie!" I crouched and stepped through the door. Hope closed it behind us. The tunnel passage was black, but soon we began to see its vague outlines. Derek, sword in hand, led us. I clutched my dirk, We went perhaps five hundred feet. Down at first, then up again. I figured we were under the palace gar- dens now, as the tunnel was winding to the left. There were occasional small lights. Derek whispered to Hope, "The toilers don't know of this?" "No." "Where does it bring us out?" I whispered. "Into the lower floor of the castle. The king must have gone this way. There might be a guard, Derek. What will you do?" He laughed. "I can handle this mob. Disperse it! You'll see! And handle the king." He laughed again grimly. "There is no Blanca to choose now." The tunnel went round a sharp angle and began steeply ascending. Derek stopped. "How much further, Hope?" "Not far," she whispered. We crept forward. The tunnel was more like a small corridor now. Be- yond Derek's crouching figure,- in the dimness I could see a doorway. Derek turned and gestured to us to keep back. A palace guard was standing there. His pike went up. "Who are you?" "A friend." But the man lunged with his pike. Derek leaped aside. His sword flashed ; the flat of it struck the fellow in the face. Derek, with incredible swiftness, was upon him. They went down to- gether, and before the man could shout, Derek had struck him on the head with the sword hilt. The guard lay motion- less. Derek climbed up as we ran for- ward to join him. I noticed now, for the first time, that in his left hand Derek held a small metal cylinder. A weapon, strange to me, which he had brought with him. He had not mentioned it. He had pro- duced it, when menaced by this guard. Then he evidently decided not to use it. 54 ASTOUNDING STORIES He shoved it back in his pocket. He whirled on us, panting. "Hurry ! Close that door!" We closed the door of the tunnel. "Charlie, help me move him!" We dragged the prostrate figure of the unconscious guard aside into a shadow of the wall. We were in a lower room of the palace. It seemed momentarily unoccupied. Overhead we could hear the footsteps of running people. A confusion in the palace, and outside in the garden the shouts of the menacing throng of toilers. And above it all, the wild clanging of the alarm bell from the palace tower. Derek said swiftly, "Get us to the king!" Hope led us through the castle cor- ridors, and up a flight of steps to the main floor. The rooms here were thronged with terrified people — crim- son nobles in their bedraggled finery of the festival. In all the chaos no one seemed to notice us. We mounted another staircase. We found a vacant room; through its win- dows we looked a moment, gazing in- to the garden. It was jammed with a menacing mob, which milled about, leaderless, waving crude weapons, shouting imprecations at the palace. At the foot of the main steps the throng stood packed, but none dared to mount. A group of the palace guards stood on the platform over the moat. Derek turned away impatiently. "Let's get to the king." We mounted to the upper story. The castle occupants stared at Derek and me as we passed them. A group of girls at the head of the staircase fled before us. "The king," Derek demanded. "Which is his apartment? Hurry, Hope, we've no time now!" We found the frightened king seated on a couch with his counsellors around him. It was a small room in this top story of the castle, with long windows to the floor. I saw that they gave onto a balcony which overlooked the gardens. There were perhaps twenty or thirty people huddled in the room. A confusion existed here as everywhere else — no one knowing what to do in this crisis. And that cursed alarm bell wildly adding to the turmoil. We paused at the doorway. "Nov/," whispered Derek. He drew himself to his full height. His eyes were flashing. It was a Derek I had not seen before ; he wore an air of mas- tery. As though he, and not the frightened, trembling monarch on the couch, were master here. And as I stared at him that instant in this primi- tive chaotic environment, the power of him swept me. A conqueror. The strange electrode clamped to his head gave him an aspect miraculous, awe inspiring. He strode forward across the apart- ment. The king was just giving some futile, vague command to be trans- mitted to his guards down below. A hush fell over the room at our appear- ance. The king half stood up, then sank back. - "Why— why— who— " I saw Rohbar here. His long crimson cloak hung from his shoulders, with its hood thrown back. Beneath it, as it parted in front, his leather uniform was visible. A sword was strapped to his waist. He was striding back and forth with folded arms, frowning, but his gaze was very keen. Rohbar was not frightened. He seemed rather to be gauging the situation, pondering how he might turn it to his own ends. He stopped short and swung about to face us. His jaw dropped with sur- prise, amazement, at our strangeness. Derek confronted him. His bulk, and huge weight towered even over Derek. The king gasped and sat help- lessly staring. Rohbar spoke first. "Who are you?" "This mob must be dispersed. Don't stand looking at me like that, man !" Derek spoke in friendly fashion, but vehemently. "This is no time for ex- planations." They were menacing each other. Rohbar's heavy hand fell to his sword, PHANTOMS OF REALITY 65 but Derek boldly pushed him away. He faced the king. "Your Majesty. . . ." The king stared blankly at him. The title was no doubt strange to this realm, but no stranger than Derek's aspect. "Your Majesty. . . But the noise from the garden, the confusion which now broke out in the room, and that damnable clattering bell, drowned his words. The king found his voice. "Be quiet, all of you!" He was on his feet. He demanded of Derek again, "Who are you?" Derek said swiftly, "I'll show you. I can disperse this mob! Charlie, come." It seemed as though the gaze of everyone in the room went to me. I drew myself up and flashed defiance back at them. And I followed Derek to one of the balcony windows. He went through it, with me after him. I stood at the threshold, watchful of the room behind us. Rohbar was standing aside, and I saw now the woman Sensua with him. They were whispering, staring at me and Derek. I had been wondering why, when Sensua must have known that the king would choose her — why she had dared to murder her rival. I thought now — as I saw her with Rohbar — that I could guess the reason. She loved Rohbar, not the king. Rohbar was plotting to put himself on the throne, using Sen- sua as a lover to that end. He had doubtless persuaded her to this murder, knowing it would arouse the toilers, precipitate this chaos which was what he wanted. Scheming scoundrel ! I could not forget the look of desire on his face as he had accosted Hope. . . . And now Derek appeared, to add an unknown element to Rohbar's plans. There was no way he could guess who or what we were. I saw that he was puzzled, was whispering to Sensua about us, doubtless wondering how to handle us. I saw too, that there were half a dozen crimson cloaked men here who Ast. St. were not frightened. They had gath- ered in a group. They stood with hands upon their swords, eyeing me, and watching Rohbar — as though at a sign from him they would rush me. On the balcony Derek stood with the light from the room upon him. The crowd saw him. The main gateway of the palace was just under his bal- cony. The crowd had now started up the steps to where the guards were standing at the top. At the sight of Derek the mob let out a roar, and those on the steps retreated down again. Derek stood at the balcony rail, silent, with upraised arms, gazing down upon the menacing throng. There was a moment of startled silence as he appeared. Then the shout broke out louder than before. The crowd was milling and pushing, but still leader- less. An aimless activity. Someone threw a stone. It came hurtling up. It missed Derek and struck the castle wall, falling. almost at my feet. Derek did not move. He stood calmly gazing down; stood like an orator waiting for the confusion to die before he would speak. From the platform, just beneath Derek, the guards were staring won- deringly up, awed, startled. To the right a wing of the building turned an angle. The castle tower was there : it rose perhaps a hundred feet higher - than our balcony. On the railed plat- form-balcony girding its top I saw the figures of other guards standing, gaz- ing down at Derek. The clanging bell up there was suddenly stilled. I became aware of the king close be- hind me. His voice rang out: "What are you doing? How dare you?" Derek whirled, "You fool! To what a pass you have come! Your people in arms against you. . . ." His violent words brought the king's anger. "How dare you! This is treason !" I stood alert, with my hand upon my dirk. There would be conflict here. I felt that we could not hold it off more than 66 ASTOUNDING STORIES a moment longer. My mind leaped to that metal cylinder Derek had con- cealed. A weapon? Then why did he not have it out now? His eyes were flashing. The aspect of power, of con- fidence, upon him Was unmistakable. It heartened me. I took a step toward him He smiled faintly. "Wait, Charlie." The king gasped again. "How dare you? Why, this is treason! Rohbar, seize him!" Hope was beside me, her eyes watch- ing the room. Rohbar came striding forward. Derek rasped, "You perhaps have some sense! Lead His Majesty away. Take care of him until this is over." They stood with crossing glances. And upon Rohbar's face a look, queerly sinister, had come. A smile, sardonic. He said abruptly to the king, "I think we should let him have his way. What harm?" He gestured artd Sensua came for- ward. The crimson murderess! Her voluptuous figure was shrouded in a crimson cloak. Her heavy painted lips smiled at the King. Her rounded white arms went over his shoulders. "Leonto, do as Rohbar says. Let this stranger try. It can do no harm." The king yielded to her; I watched as she and Rohbar urged him through an archway that gave into the adjoin- ing apartment. No wonder Rohbar was sardoni- cally smiling! Derek had played into his hand. We did not know it then, but we were soon to find it out. CHAPTER IX "Alexandre—" DEREK turned back to the balcony. It had been a brief interlude. The mob in the garden, the soldiers at the top of the stairway, and the other guards high on the bridge of the tower were all standing gazing. Shouts again arose as Derek appeared. Again he raised his arms. This time his voice rang out. "Silence all of you! I am a friend! Silence!" At first they did not heed him; then someone shouted: "Quiet! Listen to himl Let him talk!" The crowd was bellowing, and then they ceased. The bell was still. In the hush came Derek's voice: "I am a friend. I come from foreign lands, from distant lands of strange people and strange magic." For answer the crowd shouted and milled in confusion. A stone came up and then another. Derek stood im- movable, like a statue gazing down at them. "I command you to disperse. You will not? Then look at me! Look at me, all of you. My will is law be- yond this king — beyond these palace soldiers — beyond any power you have ever known." Then I knew a part of Derek's pur- pose! He had pressed the mechanism at his wrist. He stood imperious with upraised arms. The garden was in a tumult, but in a moment it died. A wave of horror swept the crowd. A freezing, incredulous horror. They stood staring, incredulous, silent, swept with a widening wave of horror. The figure of Derek on the balcony was fading, turning luminous. A wraith, a ghost of his menacing shape standing there. It faded until it was almost gone, and then, as he reversed the mechanism, it materialized again. A moment passed, then he stood again solid before them. His voice rang out, "Will you obey me now? I am a friend of the toilers !" They were prostrate before him. There is no fear more terrible than the fear of the supernatural. In all of his- tory there has been in our world no worship more abject than the worship and fear of a primitive people for its supernatural God. On the platform beneath the balcony, the palace soldiers stared up, horrified. Then they two were prostrate before Derek's threat- ening gestures and commanding voice. PHANTOMS OF REALITY 67 I stood watching, listening. And suddenly, from the prostrate crowd, a man leaped up. In the silence his amazed voice carried over the garden. "Alexandre! It is our Prince Alex- andre! Our lost prince!" He stood staring at Derek, his arms gesturing to his comrade around him. He shouted it again : "Our rightful king, come back to us! Don't you recognize him? J saw him go! He went like that — fading into a ghost. Ten years ago, when Leonto killed his father and would have killed him had he not escaped!" The crowd was standing up now. They recognized Derek! There was no doubt of it. The garden was ring- ing with the tumultuous shouts, "Alexandre! Our lost prince has come back to us!" My head was whirling with it. Derek, prince of this realm? I could see that it was true. Escaped from here as a young lad when his throne was usurped. Returning now, a man, to claim his own. And suddenly he turned and flashed me his smile. The din from the garden drowned his words. The crowd was shouting: "Alexandre! Our lost prince!" The king's guards on the lower plat- form stood sullen, confused. I heard footsteps behind me. I whirled around. From the room, the group of Roh- bar's crimson nobles were rushing to- ward me! Their swords were out. One of them shouted, "Kill them now! We must kill them and have done!" , There were five or six men in the group. They were no more than ten feet away from me. They came leap- ing. I stood in the window opening, with only my dirk to oppose them. I shouted, "Derek! Derek!" I think I took a step backward. I was out on the balcony. It flashed over me — Derek and I were caught out here ! The first of the red cloaked figures Came hurtling through the doorway. I leaped to avoid his sword. I saw the others crowding behind him. Then I felt Derek shove me violent- ly aside. I half fell, but recovered my- self at the balcony rail. Five of the crimson nobles were on the balcony. Derek confronted them. His aspect made them pause. They stood, with outstretched swords. The garden was silent; the crowd stared up. And in the silence Derek roared, "Get back! All of you, go back in- side! Back, or I'll kill you!" In Derek's right hand he held the cylinder outstretched, leveled at the menacing nobles. "Back, I say!" But instead they rushed him. There was a flash. From the cylinder it seemed that a ray spat out, a flash of silver light. It caught the three men who were in advance of the others. Their swords dropped with a clatter to the balcony floor. They stood, transfixed. An instant. Derek's silver ray played upon them. Their red cloaks were painted with its silver sheen. . They were shimmering! I gasped, staring. The other nobles, beyond the ray, had fallen back. And they too stood staring in horror. Another instant. The three figures wavered. I saw the face of one of them, with the shock of incredulous horror still upon it. A face turning luminous! A face, erased, with only the staring eyes to mark where it had been! There was a moment when the three stricken men stood like shimmering ghosts, with Derek's deadly ray upon them. Then they were gone! It seemed, just as they vanished, that they were falling through the balcony floor. . . . Derek snapped off his ray. He rasped, "Back into that room, I tell you!" The remaining nobles fled before him. He turned again to the balcony rail. "My people — yes, I am Alexandre—*, 0 63 ASTOUNDING STORIES I had not thought you would recognize me so soon. But you are right — the time has come for me to claim my in- heritance. And I will rule you justly." His cylinder was still in his hand; he swept a watchful glance behind him. I thought of Rohbar. He was in the next room, with the king. Had they seen this attack upon Derek? They must have heard the crowd shouting, "Alexandre!" It seemed strange they did not appear. I recall now, as I look back to this moment on the balcony, that I sudden- ly thought of Hope. She had been be- iside me just before the nobles at- tacked. I did not see her now. I was startled, but thought of her was driven from my mind. From within the palace a scream sounded. A girl screaming. But it was not Hope's voice. A girl, screaming, and then shouting: "The king is dead!" Derek came rushing at me. "Charlie, that—" We heard it again. "The king is dead!" We hurried into the adjoining room. There was no one to stop us — no x>ne up here now who dared oppose Derek. IThe terrified nobles in the room fell i cringing before him. "Alexandre — spare us ! We are loyal l to you!" He strode past them. In the ad- 1 jacent apartment we found the king ; lying upon the floor. A wound in his throat welled crimson. He had evi- dently been lying here alone, and had just now been found by a girl who had entered. He was not quite dead. Derek bent over him. He opened his eyes. He gasped faintly: "Rohbar — killed me. Rohbar and that — accursed crim- son Sensua. . . ." His voice trailed away. The light went out of his staring eyes. Derek ilaid him gently back on the floor. And as though already the news of !his death had miraculously spread, the j bell in the castle tower began tolling. |Not clanging now. Tolling, with slow, solemn accent. The crowd evidently recognized it. We could hear the shouts: "Death! Death has come!" Derek's eyes were blazing as he stood up. 'The end, Charlie ! I would not have planned this, and yet. . . ." He did not finish. He whirled, rushed back to the other room and to the balcony. The scene was again in con- fusion, the crowd milling, voices shout- ing: "The king is dead!" At the edge of the garden a woman's shrill, hysterical laughter rose over the din. Derek called, "Yes, the king is dead!" He paused. Then he added, "If you want me — if I have your loy- alty — I will claim my throne." A tumult interrupted him. "Alex- andre! King Alexandre!" He spread his arms, but he could not silence them. "The king is dead. Long live King Alexandre !" A wave of it swept over the garden, engulfing the castle. At the main en- trance Leonto's soldiers stood sullen, listening to it. Derek stood triumphant. His hands were outstretched, palms down. But up on the circular bridge at the top of the tower there was a sudden commo- tion. The soldiers up there had van- ished, moved back within the tower to make room for other figures. I stared amazed, transfixed. A huge man in leather garments was there, with a sword stuck in his wide belt. A man with a bullet head, a heavy face, gazing down. ... Rohbar! And held in front of him the slender figure of a girl. Hope! He clutched her, his thick arm encircling her breast. With sinking heart I realized what had happened. Hope had moved away from me. Every one in the room had been intent upon Derek. Rohbar had come quietly in, after murdering the king, had seized Hope, stifled her outcry, and had taken her up into the tower. PHANTOMS OF REALITY 69 And I had promised Derek that I would shield this girl from harm! The horror of it — the self-condemnation of it — swept me, froze me to numbness. I could not think ; I could only stand and stare. Rohbar held Hope like a shield before him. The low railing hardly reached her knees. A sheer drop to the garden beneath. He held her tightly, and in his free hand I saw his dirk come up menacingly against her white throat His voice called : "Silent, down there ! Alexandre, you traitor ! Silence I" Derek stared up. The triumph faded from him. He stared, stricken. The crowd stared. The soldiers on the lower platform ceased their shouting and gazed up at these new actors, come so unexpectedly upon the stage. Again Rohbar called, to the guards this time : "I represent your King Leonto. This Alexandre is a traitor to us all. And he cannot harm me ! I defy him. Look at him! I defy him to use his evil weapon upon me!" Derek was silent. A single adverse move and Rohbar's knife would stab into Hope's throat. Derek's ray was powerless. A flash from it would have killed Hope, not Rohbar. The king's soldiers saw Derek's in- decision. One of them shouted, "He cannot harm us! Look, he is fright- ened!" The crowd recognized Hope. They began calling her name. And calling, "Master Rohbar, do not harm our Hope!" "I will not harm her ! Not if you do what I tell you! Leave the garden — go quietly! I will deal with this traitor!" He added to the guards, "Go up and seize him! He cannot hurt you! Traitor 1 Seize him! If he does not yield — if any of this crowd attacks you —then I will kill Hope," Derek stood clinging to the balcony rail. With Rohbar's watchful gaze up- on him he did not dare turn or move. I was standing back from the balcony, behind Derek and partly in the room. No one thought of me. No one from outside could see me. And I, who had played no part in this, save that one I had neglected, suddenly saw my role. My cue was sounding. My role to play, here upon this tumultuous stage. I turned back into the dim room. A few frightened men and girls were here. They were all crowding forward, gazing through the windows at the scene outside. No one noticed me, but I saw, with sudden realization, my role to play. I darted across the room, out into the dim, deserted corridor of the castle. CHAPTER X My Role to Play I SLIPPED like a shadow through the almost empty corridors. Down on the lower floor I found that many of the soldiers were on the inside, stand- ing about the corridors in groups, wait- ing for word from their comrades on the platform to indicate what action they should take. My time was short ; I knew that within a few minutes they would be rushing up to overpower Derek. I stood unseen against the wall near the main entrance. I could not get outside. There were too many soldiers there. I tried to keep my sense of direc- tion. The wing upon which the tower stood was about two hundred feet from me here. If I could not get outside I would have to try the inside, along this corridor. I prayed that I might not make an error. I tried to gauge exactly where the tower would be. The hallway was almost dark, and in this wing there chanced to be no one at the moment. I came to the angle and turned it to the left. I was unarmed save my dirk. I drew it. But I en- countered no one. I passed the doors of many empty rooms. The windows were all barred on this lower floor. I could hear the shouts of the crowd out- side. I came at last to the end of the wing,. 70 ASTOUNDING STORIES A staircase here led upward. I guessed that I was directly under the tower now, and that this staircase undoubt- edly led upward into it. I mounted a few steps to verify what I was sure would be the condition. It was as I thought. Rohbar had won over the soldiers who were here. He had sent them down from the tower bridge. They were guarding this staircase. I crept up another few steps, very cautiously. I could hear their voices on the stairs. A light was up there. I could see the legs of some of them as they crowded the stairs. I softly re- treated. There was no way of getting up into the tower here. Alone and armed only with my dirk, I could not mount these stairs and assail a dozen armed men standing above me ; especially when, if I raised an alarm, Rohbar overhead might be startled into killing Hope. I -stood another moment, thinking, planning my actions. I was trembling. Everything depended upon me now. I must get up into the tower. And, above everything, haste was necessary. I retreated back to the lower floor. I was still some twenty feet above the ground, I judged. That was too far. A dozen paces along the hall I saw a stairway leading downward into the ground level cellar of the castle. I marked in my mind exactly in which direction I turned, and how far. I went down the stairs. There was an empty lower room. It was pitch black. I lay down on its earthen floor. Above me, a few paces off to one side I could visualize the tower. A hundred and fifty feet above me, at least, up to that bridge balcony, where Rohbar stood with Hope. I kept my mind on it and prayed that I might not be making an error, a miscalcula- tion. I prayed, too, that luck would be with me. A desperate chance, yet I thought I knew what was here, or about here, in New York City. I lay on my side, alone in the blackness, and pressed the switch at my wrist. . . . The familiar sensation of the transi- tion began. The darkness grew lumi- ous. Around me shadows were taking form. My body was humming, thrill- ing with the vibrations within it. I could feel the ground under me seem- ing to melt. My head was reeling. Nausea swept me, but with it all I tried to keep my wits. I must watch this new Space into which I was going. Space? I prayed that here on this spot in New York City there would be empty space ! If not, at the first warn- ing, I was prepared to stop my me- chanism. The shadows grew around me. There was a moment or two when I felt as though I were floating. Weightless. The sense of my body hovering in a void, intangible, imponderable, with only my struggling mentality holding it together. . . . And then I felt myself materializ- ing. Around me walls were taking form. I floated down a foot or two and came to rest upon a new floor. My hand brushed it. My physical senses were returning. I could feel a floor of concrete. A vague, shimmering light was near me. It seemed to outline the rectangle of a window. All around was darkness. Empty darkness. Soundless, with only the throbbing hum of the mechanism. . . . I was indoors, in a room. I felt sud- denly almost normal, except for the whirring vibration. I flung the switch again. There was a shock. A whirling of my senses. Then I sat up ; my head steadied. The nausea passed. I was back in my own world, in New York City. This was night: I tried to calculate the time. Derek and I had departed about midnight. This would be, then some time before dawn. I was in a cellar room, lying on its, cement floor. There was a window, with a faint light outside it. A window up near the ceiling. A straggling illumi- nation showed me a bin, a few barrels, a door leading into another room which looked as though it might be a machine shop. PHANTOMS OF REALITY 71 I sat up, calculating. I was a thou- sand feet perhaps from the Battery wall, two hundred feet from the Hud- son River. This was an office build- ing, and I was in one of its cellar rooms, at the ground level. Near dawn? I tried to calculate what might be overhead. A deserted office building. Too early yet for the scrub- women. The elevator would not be running. I laughed to myself. Of what use to me an elevator, if it had been running? How could I, a midnight prowler, appear from the cellar of this building, and demand to be taken up- stairs I There would be no elevator, but there would be watchmen. I would avoid them. I found a door. My heart leaped with a sudden fear that it would be locked, but it was not. I went through it into a passage and found the stair- case. I made two turns. I tried again to keep my mind on this Space here. I stood, carefully thinking. I had it clear. I had made no move without careful thought. The tower with Roh- bar was still to my left, and about di- rectly above me. I went up the short stone staircase, opened another door carefully. I was in the dim lower hall of the office building. I found myself beside the deserted elevator shaft. A light was burning on the night attendant's tabic ' in an alcove on the other side of the shaft. He sat there with his back to me. I closed the door soundlessly. The stairway upward beside the elevator was here. I watched my chance. I darted around the angle and went up. I met no one. The concrete staircase had a light at each floor. Four floors up. No, not enough! I opened the fourth floor door. The marble hall of the office building was empty and silent. Rows of locked office doors with their gold-leaf names and num- bers. A single dim light to illumine the silent emptiness. . . . I retreated into the staircase shaft and mounted higher. My dirk was in my hand. Charlie Wilson, the Wall Street brokerage clerk, prowling here! And upon what a strange adventure ! I came to what I thought was the proper floor. In the hall I selected a room. The door was securely locked. I had no way of breaking the lock, but the panel was of opaque glass. I would have to chance the noise. I rushed the length of the hall, to where a red fire- ax hung in a bracket. I came back with it. I smashed the glass panel of the door. Would a watchman hear me? I did not wait to find ouf. With the ax I scraped away the splinters of glass. I climbed through the opening. My hand was cut, but I did not heed it. I was in a dim, silent office, with rugs on the floor, desks standing about, filing cases, a water-cooler, and a safe in the corner. I rushed to one of the windows. It looked over Battery Park and the upper bay. The stars were shining, but to the east over Brooklyn I could see them paling with the com- ing dawn. I gazed down to try and calculate my height. Yes, this would be about right. And my position. I could see the outline of the shore, the trees of Battery Park, the busy harbor, even at this hour before dawn, thronged with the moving lights of its boats. I saw all this with my eyes, but with my mind I saw the wrecked, deserted pavilion, and the gardens of Leonto's castle. The threatening mob would be below me. The palace entrance would be here to my left, down in the street where those taxis were parked. There was a commotion down there by the office building entrance. I know now what caused it, but at the time I did not notice. The wing of the castle was under me. This would be the tower. Its upper room, or the balcony, just about where I was standing. I prayed that it might be so. I seemed with my mind to see it all. I lay down on the floor by the window. Out in the office building hallway I heard heavy footsteps come running. One of the night watchmen. 72 ASTOUNDING STORIES had evidently heard the glass crashed. I laughed. I pressed the switch at my wrist. . . . CHAPTER XI The Fight on the Tower Balcony THE sensations swept me again. The room faded. Whether the watchmen came in to see a ghost of me lying there on the floor I did not know, nor did I care. I whirled into the shadows. And came in a moment out of the black silence. The office room was gone. I seemed to have fallen or floated down — how far I do not know. A triumph swept me. I was lying on another floor. I could see a doorway materializing. I was not upon the balcony as I had calculated, but with- in the tower room. New walls sprang around me. I did not heed it, this time, the sensa- tion of the transition. I was too alert to what new situation might come upon me. The tower room. I could see it. I could see its oval windows close at hand. The doorway to its balcony. Sounds flooded me, mingled- with the humming within me. Familiar sounds. The crowd shouting. And a single voice — the voice of Rohbar. Vague and blurred, but as I materialized it became clearer. I was suddenly aware that there was a man beside me. One of the palace soldiers. He saw me materialize. He leaped backward in horror. I flung my switch. I was on my feet, swaying, and then I leaped upon him. My dirk plunged downward into his chest. The thing made me shudder. I reeled with the sickness of it, but as he fell I clung to the dirk and ripped it out of him. It was dripping with his blood. I stood trembling. The small tower room had no other occupants. I turned toward the door. I could see a patch of stars, paling with the coming dawn. I crouched in the small doorway which gave onto the balcony, staring, swiftly calculating. The scene had scarcely changed. But some of the soldiers had left the entrance platform, gone, no doubt, into the castle on their way upstairs to seize Derek. On this upper balcony, no more than ten feet before me, Rohbar still stood gripping Hope. She was in front of him. His back was to me. A sudden jump, and I could plunge my dagger into his back. Rohbar was shouting, "King Leonto is dead. If you should want me to suc- ceed him, I will take this girl Hope for my queen. You all love her. . . ." I was tense to spring. Then out in the balcony, to one side, I saw Sensua crouching. Her crimson robe fell away to bare her white limbs. Her hand fumbled in her robe. She had been Rohbar's dupe, and now she knew it. Her knife was in her hand. Frenzied with jealousy and rage she sprang upon Rohbar's back, trying to stab at Hope. Perhaps he sensed her coming, heard her ; or perhaps she was unskilful. Her knife only grazed Hope's shoulder. He released Hope. He roared. He turned and gripped his murderous assailant. A second or two while I stood watch- ing. He caught Sensua's wrist, twisted the knife from it and plunged the knife into her breast. She sank with a scream at his feet, and as he straight- ened he saw me. But I had leaped. I was upon him. His own knife had remained in Sensua's breast. As I raised mine in my leap, he caught at my wrist; twisted it, but I flung the knife away before he could get it. The knife fell over the balcony rail. The weight of my hurtling body flung him backward, but the rail caught him. His arms went around me. Powerful arms, crushing me. I gripped at his throat. There was an instant when I thought that we would both topple over the railing. I felt Hope beside us. I heard her scream. We did not go over the rail, for Rohbar lurched and flung us back. We dropped to the balcony floor, rolling, locked together. He was far PHANTOMS OF REALITY 73 stronger and heavier than I. He came uppermost. He lunged and broke my hold upon his throat, but I was agile : I squirmed from under him. I almost re- gained my feet. He got up on one knee. He was trying to draw his sword. Then again I bore into him, kicking and tearing. He roared like a bull. And ignoring my plucking fingers, my flail- ing fists, he lunged to his feet with me gripping again at his throat. His huge height swung me off the ground. I was aware that he had drawn his sword, but I was too close for him to use it. He swayed drunkenly with my weight ; he was confused. I felt the rail behind us. We lunged again into it. Again I heard Hope scream in terror, and saw her leap at us. Rohbar stooped, trying to clutch the low rail. His bending down brought my feet to the balcony floor. With a last despair- ing effort I shoved him backward. And as he toppled at the rail, I fought to break his hold upon me. I felt us go- ing and then I felt Hope reach me. Her arms flung about my waist. Her hold tore me loose. Robbar's huge body fell away. . . . For an instant Rohbar seemed bal- anced upon the rail ; then he went over. He gave a last long, agonized scream as he fell. I did not look down. I crouched by the rail. The crowd in the garden; Derek standing on the other balcony ; the soldiers who now had ap- peared behind him — all were silent, and in the silence I heard the horrible thud of Rohbar's body as it struck. . . . I clung to Hope for an instant, and she shuddered against me. The scene broke again into chaos. I cast Hope away and leaped up. I stood at the balcony rail. My arms went up and gestured to Derek. Amazement was on his face, but he answered my ges- ture. Behind him the soldiers who had come to seize him were standing in a group, stricken at this new tragedy. Derek swung on them. He was not powerless now! "Away with you!" His cylinder menaced them, and they fell back in terror before him. He darted past them and disappeared into the castle. I felt Hope plucking at me. "I want to talk to the people." She stood beside me, leaning over the rail. Gentle little figure. Familiar figure to them all. Their beloved Hope. Her voice rang out clearly through the hush. "My people, we all want our beloved Alexandre — he has come back to us. He is our rightful king." "King Alexandre! Long live King Alexandre!" Derek in a moment appeared behind us. "My God, Charlie, I can't under- stand—" I told him how I had done it. He gripped me. "I'll never be able to re- pay you for this!" I pushed him forward and he joined Hope at the rail. Held her, and her arms went around his neck as she re- turned his kisses. The crowd gaped, then cheered. I shouted, "Hope will be your queen — The reign of the crimson nobles is at an endh" The wild cheering of the people, in which now the castle guards were join- ing, surged up to mingle with my words. CHAPTER XII One Tumultuous Night I COME now with very little more to record. I returned to my own world. And Derek stayed in his. Each to his own ; one may rail at this allotted portion — but he does not lightly give it up. The scientists who have examined the mechanism with which I returned very naturally are skeptical of me. Derek feared a further communication between his world, and mine. He smiled his quiet smile. "Your modern world is vei;y aggres- sive, Charlie. I would not want to chance having my mechanism dupli- cated — a conquering army coming in here." 74 ASTOUNDING STORIES And so he adjusted the apparatus to carry me back and then go dead. I have wires and electrodes to show in support of my narrative. But since they will not operate I cannot blame my hearers for smiling in derision. Yet there is some contributing evi- dence. Derek Mason has vanished. A watchman in an office building near Battery Park reports that at dawn of that June morning he heard splinter- ing glass. He found the office door with its broken panel, and the ax lying on the hall floor. He even thinks he saw a ghost stretched out by the window. But he is laughed at for say- ing it. And there is still another circum- stance. If you will trouble t& examine the newspaper files of that time, you will find an occurence headed "Inex- plicable Tragedy at Battery Park." You will read that near dawn that morning, the bodies of three men in crimson cloaks came hurtling down through the air and fell in the street near where several taxis were parked. Strange, unidentified men. Of extra- ordinary aspect. The flesh burned, per- haps. All three were dead; the bodies were mangled by falling some consid- erable height. An inexplicable tragedy. Why should anyone believe that they were the three crimson nobles whom Derek attacked with his strange ray? I am only Charles Wilson, clerk in a Wall Street brokerage office. If you met me, you would find me a very aver- age, prosaic sort of fellow. You would never think that deeds of daring were in my line at all. Yet I have lived this one strange tumultuous night, and I shall always cherish the memory. A Letter to ASTOUNDING STORIES is free pleasure-insurance WRITE IN and tell us the kind of stories you like, and we will get them for you. And tell us what you think of ASTOUNDING STORIES — your new magazine! —THE EDITOR The structure, pivoting downward, plunged Quest to his waist in the osmotic solution. The Stolen Mind By M. L. Staley W HAT caused you to answer our advertise- ment?" Owen Quest felt the steel of the quick gray eyes that jabbed like gimlets across the office table. "Why does any man apply for a job?" he bristled. Keane Clason gave an impatient smile. "Come !" he said. "I'm not trying to snare you. But there were unusual features to my ad, and they were put there to attract an unusual type of man. To judge your Qualifications, I must What would you do, if, like Quest, you were tricked, and your very Mind and Will stolen from your body? 75 know just why this proposition appeals to you." "I can tell you that," nodded Quest, "but there's nothing unusual about it. In the first place, I knew that the Clas- on Research Cor- poration is the leading concern of its kind in the country. In the second place, this seemed to offer a way to obtain a sub- stantial sum of money quickly." "Good," said Clason. "And you feel that you have all the necessary qualifi- cations ?" "Decidedly. I am 24 years old, ath- 76 ASTOUNDING STORIES letic, and of an earnest and determined nature. Moreover, I have no family ties, and I'm willing to run any reason- able risk in order to improve the con- dition of my fellow men." Clason smiled his approval. "You say you need money. How much immediately?" Quest was unprepared for the ques- tion. "A thousand dollars," he ventured. Without hesitation Clason counted out ten one-hundred-dollar notes from his wallet and laid them on the table. "There's your advance fee. You're ready to go to work immediately, I hope?" "Certainly," stammered Quest. Stunned by the swiftness of the tran- saction, he sat staring at the money that lay untouched before him. To accept it would be like signing an unread contract. But he had asked for it; to refuse it was impossible. Even to delay about picking it up might arouse Clason's suspicion. Al- ready the latter had turned away and was opening the door of a steel cabinet. Quest had one second in which to reach a decision. . . . He crammed the cur- rency into his pocket. » ITH delicate care Clason set two objects on the table. One looked to Quest like a miniature broad- casting tower or a mooring mast for lighter than air craft. The other was a circular vat of some black material, probably carbon. Within it a series of concentric tissues were suspended from metal rings, and in a trough outside ranged four stoppered flasks contain- ing liquids of as many different colors. "Look at these models carefully," said Clason. "They represent two of the most remarkable discoveries of all time. The one on your left is the most destructive weapon known to man. The other I consider the most con- structive discovery in the history of science. It may even lead to an under- standing of the nature of life, and of the future of the spirit after death. "Both of these were developed by my brother Philip and me together — but we have disagreed about the use to which they shall be put. "Philip" — the inventor dropped his voice to a whisper — "wants to sell the secret of the Death Projector — the tower, there — as an instrument of war. If I should permit him to do that, it might lead to the destruction of whole nations !" "How?" demanded Quest. "I've heard of a device called the Death Ray. Is this it?" "No, no," said Clason contemptuous- ly. "Even in a perfected state the Ray would be a child's toy compared to the Projector. This is based on our dis- covery that invisible light rays of a certain wave-length, if highly concen- trated, destroy life — and our additional discovery that if these are synchron- ized with short radio waves the effect is absolutely devastating. "We obtain the desired concentra- tion of invisible light by using a tel- lurium current-filter under the influ- ence of alternate flashes of red and blue light. The projector can literally blan- ket vast areas with death, up to a top range of at least five hundred miles. "Just picture to yourself what this means ! In a space of ten minutes two men can lay down a circle of destruc- tion a thousand miles in diameter; or they can cut a swath five hundred miles long in any desired direction." "T T AVE you ever proved it?" de- JlJL manded Quest skeptically. "Yes, young man, we have," snapped Clason. "Right here in the laboratory — but on a minute scale, of course. However, there's no time to demon- strate now. The point is that my brother is determined to sell if he can obtain his price for the invention. He argues that instead of bringing disas- ter upon the world, this machine will forever discourage war by .making it too terrible for any civilized nation to consider. In spite of my opposition he has opened negotiations with an am- THE STOLEN MIND 77 bitious Balkan power. He may actu- ally close the sale at any moment! "However," Clason drew a deep breath, "you see this other device? Simple as it appears, it is the key to the whole situation. We can use it — you and I — to overcome Philip's will and prevent this unthinkable transaction. The two of us can do it. Alone I would be virtually helpless." "Why not have the Projector con- fiscated or destroyed by our own Gov- ernment?" suggested Quest. "That seems to me the only safe and sure way out of the difficulty." "You simply do not understand," frowned Clason impatiently. "Philip is selling the plans and descriptions of the machine, not the machine itself. Even if this model and the larger test machine that we have built were de- stroyed — -even if I were willing to have Philip sent to Leavenworth for life — he could still sell the Projector. "But this other invention, our Os- motic Liberator, makes it possible for me to gain control of Philip and actu- ally change his mind, through the me- dium of an agent. I have hired you to act as my Agent, Quest, because I can see that you are a young man of un- usual character and vitality. And by way of reward I can promise you both money and a brilliant future." THE inventor poised in a tense at- titude on the edge of his chair as though his body were charged with electricity. His eyes seemed to dart out emanations that set Quest's blood to tingling. Then for a moment the latter lost consciousness of his physical self. It was as though he had opened a door and found himself suddenly on the brink of a new and totally strange world. He dispelled this fancy by a quick effort of the will, for he knew that he had a delicate problem on his hands and that it must be solved within a very few minutes. However, he pro- ceeded, he must act without disloyal- ty to his Government, and at the same time without injustice to Keane Clason. "Tell me," he said in a husky voice, "how do you intend to use me? I do not belive in Spiritualism. I would be a poor medium." Clason gave a short laugh. • "You are not to be a medium in that sense at all. Spiritualism as practiced is just a blind sort of groping and hop- ing. Osmotic Liberation, on the other hand, is an exact and opposite physico- chemical science. Here — I will show you." Into the outer cell of the Liberator he emptied the purple vial, and so on to the innermost, which he filled with a golden-green liquid like old Chartre- use. "The separating membranes, you un- derstand, are permeable by these com- plicated solutions. Each liquid has a different osmotic pressure and there- fore should, under normal conditions, interchange with the others through the membranes until all pressures are equalized. I prevent such interchange, however, by maintaining an anti-elec- trolysis which retards ionization and thus builds up what might be called osmotic potential. *'TVTOW if an Agent — yourself, for AN instance — submerges himself in the central cell, at the same time main- taining a physical contact with his Control at the surface of the liquid, and if then the osmotic potential is suddenly released by throwing the electrolytic switch, the host of ions thus turned loose in the outer com- partments make one grand rush for the center solution, which contains the cathode. "Under these conditions your body becomes a sort of sixth cell, and your skin another membrane in the series. Properly speaking, however, you are not a part of the electrolytic circuit but are merely present in the action. Your body acts as a catalyser, hasten- ing the chemical action without itself being affected in any way. Physically you undergo no change whatever; but in some strange way which is, like 78 ASTOUNDING STORIES life, beyond analysis, your mind flows out into the solution, while your un- altered body remains at the bottom of the tank in a state of suspended ani- mation. "If no Control is present, all that is needed to return your mind into your body is a throw of the electrolytic switch back to negative, whereupon you emerge from the tank exactly as you entered it. But with your Control present and in contact with your sub- merged body, your mind, instead of re- maining suspended in the solution, flows instantly into his body and re- sides there subject to his will. "This can not be done, however, un- less the wills of Control and Agent have first been brought into accord. To accomplish that, we clasp hands" — Quest grasped Clason's extended hand — "and look steadily into each other's eyes. "Now, it is well known that the vi- brations of an individual's will are as distinctive as the sworls of his finger- prints. What is not so well known is that the frequency of vibration in one person can be brought into accord with that in another. "X70U consciously retract your will X by concentrating your mind upon the thing which you know I wish to accomplish. Gradually while we con- tinue in this position your vibrations speed up or slow down until they ac- quire exactly the same frequency as my own. We are then in accord, and when your mind is liberated in the tank it is in a state which admits absorption into my body. And it is subject to my will because you have purposely at- tuned it to my peculiar frequency. Im- mediately after the transfer there will be a brief conflict, due to the instinc- tive desire of your will to obtain the ascendancy. But of course mine will gain the upper hand at once, since both wills will be in my frequency." Quest felt, rather than saw, a wall of alarm closing in on him. He tried to avert his eyes, to withdraw his hand from Clason's grasp. With a nostal- gic pang in the pit of his stomach he suddenly realized that he could not do so. He had gone too far — farther than any man in his position had a right to go. Having deliberately weakened his will, it seemed now to have deserted him entirely. A prickling sensation coursed up his spine, his extended arm went numb, his hand trembled violent- "Splendid!" said Clason, suddenly releasing both eye and hand. "Just as I foresaw, you will be able to attune yourself to my vibration-frequency with hardly an effort. Now please re- main seated ; I'll be back in a moment." FOR a second after the door closed, Quest remained slumped in his chair. Then he was on his feet, shak- ing himself like a wet dog to free him- self from the spell under which he had fallen. Something about Clason at- tracted and at the same time repelled him, fraying his nerves like an irritant drug and confusing his mind at the moment when he needed the full alert- ness of every faculty. Invisible light — disembodied minds — will vibrations! Nothing there to get hold of. Were these things real or imaginary ? Was Keane Clason a great inventor, or a madman ? Would Philip prove to be a real or an imaginary scoundrel? Should he summon help, or go on alone? , Professional pride said: wait, don't be an alarmist! With his knuckles Quest tapped the table, half expecting it to melt under his fingers. The feel- ing and sound of the contact gave him a peculiar start. On the farther end of the table stood a letter-box — an in- vitation. From his pocket Quest snatched a slip of paper, and wrote: 6 stroke A — 9:45A — Hired. If no report in 48 hours, clamp down hard. To address a stamped envelope and slip it in with the outgoing mail was THE STOLEN MIND 79 * the work of seconds. But he was none too quick. He had just dropped back into a lounging attitude when the door burst open and Clason flew into the room. "We roust act instantly," hissed the inventor. "Philip plans to close the transaction within a day." In spite of himself, Quest jumped upright in his chair. Clason tapped him on the shoulder reassuringly. "It's all right," he smiled, "I'm ready for him. We'll make our move this afternoon and beat him by eighteen hours. "Let's see." He paused. "Oh ! yes. I I was about to explain to you that as soon as the will of the Agent enters the body of his Control, the latter can again transfer it into the body of still another person. "Now you understand why I adver- tised for a man of exceptional charac- ter? As my Agent, I want you to en- ter the body of Philip, and your will must be strong enough to conquer his in the battle for mastery which will be- gin the instant you intrude into his body. You will still be under my con- trol, but your will must be strong enough on its own merits to overcome his. I can direct you, but your strength must be your own. That's clear, isn't it?" "T THINK so," said Quest slowly. JL "But what becomes of me after you have frustrated Philip's plot?" "That's the easy part of the process," smiled Clason; "but naturally you feel some anxiety about it. I simply with- draw your will from Philip, return it to your own body, and pay you a re- ward of ten thousand dollars." "You're sure you can?" "Perfectly. I have merely to touch Philip's hand to recapture your will. Then I immerse myself in the tank with the switch at plus. The osmotic action will extract both wills moment- arily from my body. But the presence of two bodies and two wills in the so- lution together forces a balance, and each will seeks out and enters its own body. Then you and I climb out of the tank exactly as we are this minute." "If it weren't for my belief that any- thing is possible," Quest shook his head, "I'd say that your claims for this invention were ridiculous." "And you couldn't be blamed," ad- mitted Clason readily. "This toy of a model is hardly convincing. But come along with me and I'll show you how the Liberator looks in actual opera- tion." THE office rug concealed a trap door which gave upon a spiral stair. Below, Clason unlocked another door and led the way through a nar- row and tremendously long passage lighted at intervals by small electric bulbs. Presently another door yielded to the inventor's deft touch and closed behind them with a portentous chug. Here the darkness was so utter and in- tense that Quest imagined he could feel the weight of it on his shoulders. From the slope of the passageway and the muffled beat of machinery that had come to his ears on the way along, he guessed that he was below ground in some chamber at the rear of the fac- tory. He gave a low exclamation as Clason switched on the toplight. No wonder the darkness had seemed of almost su- pernatural quality! Even the hard white glare of the daylight arc was grisly. Its rays rebounded from the liquids of the great circular tank in a blinding dazzle of color, while the dull black walls and ceiling were so per- fectly absorptive that beyond arm's length they became to all effects in- visible. Even the ledge on which he stood — the shoulder of the vat — gave Quest the feeling that to move would be to step off into a bottomless pit. But Clason took his attention at once, pointing here and there in his quick, nervous way to indicate how faithfully the Liberator had been reproduced from the model. In all respects the arrangements were the same, with the 80 ASTOUNDING STORIES addition that here a long plank like a spring-board extended out from a wall- mount as far as the central compart- ment of the tank, and that from its end a narrow ladder hung down to the sur- face of the Chartreuse liquid. A dou- ble-throw switch fixed to the wall above the base of the plank was evidently the source of electrolytic control. "When you throw the switch to plus," said Clason, pointing to the chalk-marked sign above, "you produce the violent electrolytic action needed to bring about a liberation. All the rest of the time it should be closed at minus, in order to maintain the anti- action which I explained to you. "Now let's rehearse, so that when the time for the real performance arrives we can be sure of running it off with- out a hitch." "All right, sir," nodded Quest , so dazed by the glittering light that he was hardly conscious of what he said. "THIRST," said Clason, running MP lightly up the steps to the plank, "you walk out to the end, like this, and start down the ladder. Then you lower yourself into the tank. The liquid is at body temperature; it's neither strongly acid nor caustic; it will cause you no injury or discom- fort whatever. "Meanwhile I keep in contact with your hand until the instant that you become submerged. Now your mind is in me, see? — ready for transfer into Philip, where it will act as my Agent. That's how simple it is! Come on up and we'll go through the motions." Quest experienced a shiver as he mounted the bridge. Annoyed with himself, he shrugged the feeling off. There was no risk here. Moreover, it was a part of his daily work to take chances; he had done so a hundred times without hesitation. Now he moved all the more quickly, as if to belie the squeamishness that possessed him in spite of himself. Swinging past Clason on the plank, he lowered himself without a pause to the bottom rung of .the ladder, while the inventor, hanging head down, main- tained contact with him. "No need to stay here," he said in sudden irritation. "I understand per- fectly what I am to do." "I'm testing my own acrobatic abili- ty," grunted Clason amiably. "Just a minute now." He wriggled as if trying to adjust himself to a better balance, but in reali- ty to mask the motion of his free hand, with which he reached up and pressed a button in the side of the plank. In- stantly the structure, pivoting down- ward on its wall-socket, plunged Quest to his waist in the osmotic solution. "For God's sake get out of the way !" he shouted, trying to wrench his hand out of Clason's sinewy grip. "Let go, I tell you!" But Clason clung like a leech, his teeth gritted under the strain. Again the plank lurched downward, and with a violent splash Quest vanished below the surface. Quick as a cat, Clason scrambled up the ladder and back to the base of the plank, where he erased and inter- changed the chalk-marked signs with which he had misled Quest. Then with a sinister twist of a smile he threw the switch to minus, and turned to watch as the plank slowly righted it- self and the vacant ladder came clear of the liquid. For some time he stood staring at the gleaming colored rings of his dis- sociation-vat like some witch over her cauldron, his lips working, his hands clasping and unclasping like the tenta- cles of some sub-sea monster. Then, as if the spell had suddenly broken, he turned on his heel and switched off the light. As he hastened down the passageway toward his office, the air- lock sucked the door against its jamb with an ominous whistle. / IN a twinkling, as Quest's shackled spirit writhed in its new housing, he knew that he was in bondage to a scoundrel. Formless and voiceless, he THE STOLEN MIND 81 still fought madly for the freedom which the instinct of ten thousand gen- erations made necessary to him. At the same time he was furious at himself for having been tricked like an innocent schoolboy. The plank socket, the button which had tripped the sup- porting spring, the fake rehearsal, the tuning of his will to that of Clason — step by step the whole cunning scheme unfolded itself to him now. But what could be the purpose be- hind this villainy? Only one answer seemed possible. Keane must be the one bent on selling the Death Projec- tor, Philip the one who wished to frus- trate the fiendish transaction! And Quest of the Secret Service — he was to be the tool to force the sale. With the soundless scream of rage Quest's will hurled itself against Keane's. The two met like infuriated bulls, and for an instant too brief to be pictured as a lapse of time they poised immovable. But two wills can not exist on equal terms in a single body, and in this case the vibration of both was that of Clason. Quest had challenged the Master Will. He could do no more. It hurled him back, crushed him like foam, compressed him to the propor- tions of an atom in the background of his consciousness. So brief and un- equal was the conflict that in the next breath Clason had all but forgotten the presence of the stolen will within him. When he was ready to use his Agent, that would be time enough to summon him! Despite this suppression, Quest be- gan to see dimly through strange eyes, and to hear vaguely with ears that were not his own. Feelers, tentacles, some intangible kind of conduits carried thought impulses to him from the Mas- ter Will. He received these impres- sions vividly, but those which he gave off in return were so weak, due to the subjection of his will, that Clason was entirely unconscious of any response. Quest was not enough of a scientist to be astonished at the ability of a disem- bodied mind to experience sense im- pressions in the body of another. He was only glad that the darkness and silence were growing less. Very, very slowly he was awakening to a new kind of consciousness — the consciousness of another person's Self. He hated and loathed that Self, yet it was better than the awful blankness that had gone be- fore. SUDDENLY, as light grew brighter and sound more clear and defin- ite, a new element entered — the ele- ment of hope. At first it was feeble: its only suggestion was that sometime, somehow, he might escape this prison. But it was like water to a parched plant. It caused his will to expand, to extend its feelers, to press up a little more bravely against the crushing pile of the Master Will. Now another surprise sprang upon him. • He was moving ! That is, Cla- son's body was moving in some kind of a conveyance, which was threading its way through crowded streets. Stores, buildings, buses, people — Quest remem- bered them all distantly as things he had known thousands of years ago. The driver turned his head, and his profile seemed vaguely familiar. Now a rush of foreign thoughts drowned out his own. They were a sort of overflow from the mind of Cla- son. They thronged along the con- duits that bound the two wills together, but only Quest was conscious of the movement. Keane's mind was on his brother Philip: that much was particularly clear. And there was something about a telephone call. Yes, Keane had tele- phoned to the police, disguising his voice, refusing to divulge his name. He had said that a man by the name of Philip Clason was in trouble and had told them where to find him. Then the police had telephoned the factory, and Keane had pretended astonishment and alarm at the news. That's why he was here now— he was on the way to confer with the police. And he was chuckling— chuckling because he had 82 ASTOUNDING STORIES fooled Quest and the police, and be- cause now the hundred million dollars was almost in his grasp. Cutting in close, the car turned a corner and drew up before one of a row of loft buildings in a section of the city which Quest failed to recognize. As Clason stepped to the sidewalk, Quest was more painfully aware than ever of his powerlessness to influence by so much as the twitch of a muscle the be- havior of this hostile body in which he had permitted himself to be trapped. In his weakness he felt himself shrink- ing, contracting almost to nothingness under the careless pressure of the Mas- ter Will. rLASON glanced casually at his „> watch, and three men converged toward him from as many directions. There was nothing to distinguish them from anyone else in the street, but along the conduits it came to Quest that they were detectives and that they were there by appointment with Keane Clason. - "What floor?" asked the latter, with an excitement which Quest felt in- stantly was pure pretense. "Are you sure they haven't spirited him away?" "Don't worry," replied the leader of the detectives. "The alley and roof are covered. We'll take care of the rest ourselves." On tiptoe they climbed three long flights of stairs in the half-light. Cla- son held back as if in fear. He was a good actor, and Quest felt the shrink- ing and hesitation of his body as he crouched and 6lunk along in the wake of the detectives, pretending terror at what was about to happen, though he knew — and Quest knew he knew — that there would be no resistance up there — that Philip would be found alone ex- actly as he had been left by Keane's hired thugs. On the top landing Burke, the leader, paused to count the doors from front to rear. "This is it," he whispered to the bull- necked fellow just behind him. The other nodded, and crouched back against the opposite wall while his com- panions placed themselves in position to cross-fire into the room the moment the door gave way. QUEST longed for the power to kick his hypocrite of a master as he still held back, cowering on the stairs, playing his fake to the limit. Then the door flew in with a splinter- ing shriek under the charge of the hu- man battering ram, and across it hurtled the other two detectives in a cloud of ancient dust. "Here he is!" someone shouted. "Phil! Phil!" Keane Clason's voice fairly quavered with sham emotion as he ran into the room and threw himself at a man tightly bound to an uphol- stered chair, which in turn was wedged in among other articles of stored furni- ture. But Philip was too securely gagged to reply, and as Burke slashed the ropes from across his chest he dropped for- ward in a state of collapse. Stretched on a couch, he soon gave signs of re- sponse as a brisk massage began to re- store the circulation to his cramped limbs. Suddenly he sat up and thrust his rescuers aside. "What time is it ?" he demanded with an air of alarm. "One o'clock," replied Keane before anyone else could answer, patting his brother affectionately on the shoulder while within him Quest writhed with indignation. "By Jove ! Phil, it's won- derful that we got to you in time. Really, how — you're not injured?" "No," grunted Philip, "just lamed up. I'll be as fit as ever by to-morrow." "If you feel equal to it," suggested Burke, "I wish you'd tell me briefly how you arrived here. Do you know the motive behind this affair ? Did you recognize any of the body-snatchers?" PHILIP frowned and shook his head. "Yesterday noon," he said slowly, "I took the eight-passenger Airline Ex- THE STOLEN MIND 83 press to Cleveland on business. There were three other passengers in the cabin — two men and a woman. Right away I got out a correspondence file and was running over some letters. The next thing I knew I was approaching the ground in the strangest state of mind I ever experienced. My head was splitting, and everything looked unreal to me. Seemed as if I was coming down on some new planet." "You mean the ship was gliding down to land?" "No, no. I was dangling from a para- chute. . . . By the way, where am I now?" "In a Munson Avenue loft." "In Chicago?" Burke nodded. "I guessed as much," frowned Philip. "You see, I came down in a field, and then before I could free myself from my trappings I was pounced on — trussed up and blindfolded — by a gang of men. I knew they had taken me a long distance by automobile, but I saw nothing more until they tore the blind- fold from my eyes when they left me here." "And they were all strangers to you ?" "Yes— those that I saw." "Isn't this enough for just now, Burke?" interrupted Keane, and Quest received an impression of uneasiness that was not apparent in the inventor's tone. "After a good rest he's sure to recall things that escape him now." "Just one minute," nodded the de- tective, turning back to Philip. "Can you think of no plausible reason for this attack? Is there no one who might possibly benefit by putting you tem- porarily out of the way?" Philip gave a frightened start. Then he was on his feet, clutching at his brother's arm. "Keane!" he pleaded, "Keane ! What's happened? I know, I know! It's the Projector." "Water!" roared Keane, and Quest felt the panic that coursed through him as he tried to drown out his brother. "Somebody bring water ! He needs it !" At the same time he snatched up Philip's hand in a grip of steel. In- stantly the latter's wild eyes became calm, the flush passed from his relax- ing face, and he slumped down weak- ly on the couch. IN that fleeting moment Quest surged into the body of Philip and con- fronted his will with a fierce and tri- umphant ardor. For now his will would have command of a body with which to fight his fiend of a Control. With a sensation of contempt he met Philip's resistance and buffeted him ruthlessly backward, crushed down and compressed his feebly struggling will. And as Philip yielded, Quest felt his own will expanding to normal, taking possession of the borrowed body with hungry greed, and flashing from its faded eyes the spark of youth. Burke stared in amazement at the ka- leidoscopic rapidity of the changes in the rescued man's expression. Strange lights and shadows continued to flit across Philip's face as Quest's invasion of him proceeded, but with a diminish- ing frequency which soon assured Keane that his Agent was tightening his command. The younger of Burke's aides stood* fascinated, his mouth agape. The other spoke guardedly to his superior : "Dope, eh!" "Nah!" replied Burke, shrugging himself out of his trance. "Shock." The actual duration of the conflict in Philip was something less than three seconds. It would have been more brief if Quest had exerted himself to the utmost. But his sensations as he first surged into this new habitat un- der Keane's propulsion were so weird and unearthly that for the moment he was lost in the wonder of the experi- ence. For that short time, therefore, Philip was able to fight back against the onrush of the invading will. In the next second Quest became con- scious of the resistance. Urged on by his Control, he must push Philip back 84 ASTOUNDING STORIES and quell him; but his sympathy for his opponent and his hatred of Keane roused him to sudden revolt. He wanted to disobey the Master Will, re- treat, leave Philip in command of him- self. But he could only go on, unwill- ingly thrusting back Philip's will de- spite the indescribable torment and confusion in his own. Then, with the feeling that he was ten times worse than the most inhuman ghoul, he took full possession of his borrowed body. "I'll take him home now," said Keane composedly to Burke. "As you see, he needs a little extra sleep. Mean- while, if you have any occasion to call me, I will be at the factory." TO the youthful mind of the Agent, used to the lightness of an athetic physique, the body in which it moved down the stairs to the limousine seemed strangely heavy and awkward. "I'm badly done up, Keane," he said with Philip's lips as the car got under way. "Bah!" snorted Keane, "you've had a scare, that's all. Go to bed when you get home and sleep till nine this eve- ning. At ten a man named Dr. Nuk- harin will call for you. He will drive you to a garage, leave the car, and transfer to another one a few blocks away. "Out near Marbleton you will find an airplane staked in an open field. Nukharin is a capable pilot. He will fly back southeast along the lakeshore to the meeting place. You should ar- rive about twelve-thirty. The test is set for one o'clock." Quest listened in a state of abject rage. Lacking the power to resist his Control, he could only boil away in Philip's body like a wild creature hem- med in by bars of steel. "Bring with you," continued Keane venomously, "the set of papers that you took from the safe in my office. Hold the other set in readiness to de- liver to Nukharin tomorrow, after he has studied the results of the test and has notified Paris to release a hundred million dollars in cash for delivery at your Loop office at 3 p. m." The murderous greed of the man maddened Quest. He tried to revolt, his will squirming like a physical thing, threshing the ether like a wounded shark in the sea. For a mo- ment he felt that he was about to burst the bonds that his demon of a Control had woven around him. So violently did he resist that the immured and sporelike will of Philip forged up fit- fully out of the blackness and joined his in the hopeless struggle. But along the attenuated conduits that still chained Quest to the Master Will Keane caught the impulse of the mutiny, and his eyes darted flame as he countered with a will-shock that paralyzed his unruly Agent. "Listen! you whimpering dog," he snarled. "Think as I tell you — and nothing more! You are going to apologize to Dr. Nukharin for your previous unwillingness to sell the Pro- jector. You are going to tell him that I am at fault — that I held out — but that you found a way to force my com- pliance. You understand?" Quest could find no words. With Philip's head he nodded meekly. Just then the car stopped and the chauffeur threw open the door. DR. NUKHARIN flew high despite the masses of cumulus cloud which frequently reduced visibility to zero. He had merely to follow the rim of the lake to his destination, and an occasional glimpse of the water was sufficient to hold him on his course. In the back seat hunched Philip, his body crumbling under the weight of Quest's despair. For hours the latter had gone on vaguely hoping somehow to thwart this horrible transaction that was rushing the world to its doom, thinking he might grow strong enough to wrench himself free and so liberate Philip from the dominance of his con- scienceless brother. Even though such a move should leave his own will for- ever separate from his body, he was THE STOLEN MIND 85 ready and anxious to make the sacri- fice. Suddenly the crash of the motor ceased and Nukharin banked' the ship up in a spiral glide. Quest had never been in the air before, and the long whirl down into the darkness on this devil's errand was to him as eery as a ride to perdition in a white-hot pro- jectile. His mind seemed to trail out in a great nebular helix behind the de- scending ship. He felt that he had sud- denly crossed some cosmic meridian into a new plane of existence, where he was changed to a gas, yet continued capable of thought. But even here his obsession remained the same. Keane Clason — trickster, traitor, arch-crim- > inal — must be destroyed! "I'll get him!" vowed Quest in words that were no less real for being sound- less. "I'll trail him to the end of space and bring him to account !" THEN wheels touched earth and the cold, bare facts of his destiny rushed in on him with redoubled force. He felt the nearness of his Control seconds before he perceived him through the eyes of Philip. With a sensation like a stab he realized that now he mvzt speak, play his part, be any bloodless hypocrite that Keane Clason chose to make him. The silent order surged down the conduits promptly enough; he responded as an automaton obeys the pressure of a but- ton. "Well, Doctor," chuckled Philip with a cunning leer, "here's the magic tower, just as I" promised you. We'll run it up in a jiffy. This test is going to be so vivid and conclusive that not even a hard-headed skeptic like you can raise a question." "You misunderstand me," returned Nukharin in an injured tone. "So far as I am concerned this procedure is only a formality, but it is none the less necessary. Suppose that I should spend a hundred million of my government's money and the purchase prove worth- less? You may guess that my folly would cost me dear." Keane Clason was waiting on the platform of a giant truck, the motor of which was idling. All the apparatus was in readiness except that the three demountable sections of the tower had yet to be run up into position. "One of the beauties of the D. P." said Philip gleefully to the Doctor, while Keane smiled slyly to himself, "is that this pint-size dynamo provides all the current needed for the test. We pick the power for our radio right out of the air by means of a wave trap and mensurator invented by this bright little brother of mine," and he clapped Keane patronizingly on the back. "Yes, ah — Dr. Nukharin," ventured Keane timidly, and at that moment Quest experienced the raging red hatred that causes men to murder. "Philip has promised me that you will employ this device only as a threat to hold the ambitions of the larger powers in check." "Of course, of course!" replied the Doctor heartily. "But now let's have the test. Even at night I'm not too fond of these open-air performances." THE height of the tower as thej* ran the upper sections into place was forty feet. When all connections had -been inspected, first by Keane, then by Philip, the former led Nukharin aloft. As the climax of his plot approached, Keane's excitement bordered on a cataleptic state, hints of which came confusedly through the conduits to Quest. With a peculiar satisfaction he felt that Keane was suffering. The in- ventor's jaws became rigid, as though his blood had changed to liquid air and frozen him, and he had difficulty in controlling the movements of his arms. Now he was afraid! Genuinely afraid, this time. Quest caught the im- pulse too clearly to doubt its meaning. This was no sham! Keane was doubt- ing his own machine, fearing that in; the crisis some element in the finely; 86 ASTOUNDING STORIES calculated mechanism might fail to operate, thus cheating him of the blood-money on which his heart was set. Then he was speaking, and even Nukharin noticed the tremor in his voice: "These nine tubes, which look like a row of gun barrels, are molded from silicon paste. Each shoots a beam of invisible light and a radio dart of pre- cisely the same wave length. The de- structive effect depends chiefly upon this exactness of synchronization." "A question occurs to me," said the Doctor : "will others be able to manipu- late the machine as successfully as you can?" "It's fool-proof," chattered Keane, almost losing control of his voice, "ab- solutely fool-proof. Surely you have scientists in your country who can fol- low written directions ! Nothing more is necessary." "Very well," shrugged Nukharin. "I only want to be sure that no unfore- seen difficulties may arise in an emergency." "See this range-setter?" continued Keane. "The thread on the vertical shaft enables us not only to limit the range by angling the beams into the ground, but it can also be disengaged and the Projector revolved in a flat circle for maximum ranges." "And is there no danger of the ma- chine going wrong — of destroying it- self and us?" suggested Nukharin. "None whatever, Doctor. There is no explosive force and no great electrical voltage involved. As long as we stand back of the muzzles we have nothing to fear. "Now look. I have set the micro- meter at three hundred yards, which will just about cover the stretch be- tween ourselves and the lake. I will cut a swath for you — and every bush, every blade of grass, every insect in this swath will be withered to ash in the twinkling of an eye. The destruc- tion will be absolute." "Please proceed," said Nukharin grimly. KEANE pulled a lever in its slot, then pressed it down into its lock as his projection battery swung lake- ward at the desired angle. Then with one hand poised on another lever, he pressed an electric button. At the controls below, a bulb flashed on and off. The signal was super- fluous, for already Quest had received his silent command from the Master Will. An icy dread fastened on him. He must obey the unspoken command ; he had no will of his own with which to resist. The test would be a success ; the Projector would be sold ; the world would be turned into a shambles. And he, Owen Quest, would be the de- stroyer, the murderer, the weak fool who made this horror possible. All this flashed through the Agent's mind in the fraction of a second that it took him to extend Philip's hand, close the switch of the. dynamo, and snap on the alternating lights in the housing over the tellurium fiilter. For an interminable five seconds he waited, in a ferment of revolt which the paralysis of his will made it im- possible to put into action. Then again the command pulsed within him, the signal bulb flashed, and he reversed his motions of the moment before. Cold sweat cascaded down Philip's face as Quest felt the ladder vibrating under descending feet. He longed for the power to hurl Keane Clason to the ground and turn the Projector upon him. But with an awful irony the Master Will forced him to his feet, and to speak in a tone that withered the manhood within him. "Come," said Philip in a triumphant tone to Nukharin, "and I will show you that Clason inventions perform as well as they sound." Flashlight in hand, he started toward the lake with Nukharin and his brother close behind him. Twenty paces, and the long meadow grass suddenly van- ished from beneath their feet. "See that!" whispered Philip ex- citedly, waving the light from side to side to show the forty-foot swath that THE STOLEN MIND 87 stretched away before them. "Not a trace of life left, not a blade of grass — nothing but dust!" The only response was a gurgling sound that issued from Nukharin's throat. "Look !" Quest formed the word with Philip's lips under the urge of the Master Will. "Here was a tall bush. What do you see now? Just a tea- spoonful of ash. When you examine the remains by daylight, you will find that even the root has disintegrated to a depth of two feet." "Enough of this," croaked Nukharin in horror. "The deal is closed." His face was convulsed with fear. Without another word he whirled about and fled toward his airplane. Philip gave a start as if to follow. "Halt ! you slob," growled Keane, whose composure had returned with the successful outcome of the test. "I have use for your company, even though you are as great a coward as our Slavic friend." Coward! The epithet stung Quest like a flaming goad. One of the fine, intangible lines that bound him under the will of Keane Clason severed, and his own will exploded into action like a thunderbolt. With startling agility he whirled Philip about, the flashlight clubbed in his hand. But Keane was quicker still. A clip on the wrist sent the weapon flying. Then Philip reeled backward from a kick in the stomach, and his clutching hands beat the air as he sank unconscious in the dust. ITH a violent tug, Quest lifted Philip's body to a sitting pos- ture. The phone was ringing, and by the pull on the will-fibers he knew that Keane was at the other end of the wire. Philip's body was failing under the strain of the part it was forced to play, and the blow of the night before had further weakened it. Now he sat rocking his head painfully between his hands. * But Quest lifted him to his feet by sheer will, and he staggered across the room. "Hello!" he said in a hoarse voice. "Get the hell out here to the fac- tory!" rasped Keane, and the crash of the receiver emphasized the command. It was one o'clock as Philip whirled his sedan into Olmstead Avenue. At three, reflected Quest as the car scorched over the pavements, he must be at the downtown office to deliver the papers and receive the money. Then he was face to face with Keane, reeling dizzily at the hatred that blazed from the latter's accusing eyes. "Double-crossed me, eh!" The voice was a low snarl, and as he spoke Keane thumped the e^xtra outspread on his desk. "But you're not going to get away with it — neither of you!" Dismay, hope, dread, wonder robbed Quest of the power to speak. But he whirled around behind the desk with such unexpected violence that Keane staggered back in alarm. Then he was devouring the screaming headlines of the newspaper. Three seconds, like a slow exposure, and every word of the Record's great scoop was etched upon his mind as if with caustic : DOOM LAUNCH ADRIFT ON LAKE Physician Baffled by Condition of , Five Bodies Found in Craft Blighted Area on Shore Said to Have Bearing on Tragedy THAW HARBOR, IND., June 6. — Five Chicago sportsmen, most of them prominent in business and society, perished in the early hours this morning while returning in the launch of A. Gaston Andrews from a weekend camping party near Hook Spit on the Michigan shore. The boat was towed into this port at daybreak by the Interlake Tug Mordecai after being found adrift less than a mile off shore. According to Captain Goff of the Mordecai the death craft carried no lights and he barely avoided running her down. The weather along the Indiana shore was per- i w 88 ASTOUNDING STORIES feet throughout the night and there is nothing to indicate that the launch was in trouble at any time. The bodies are unmarked, and this little community is agog with ru- mors ranging all the way from mur- der and suicide to the supernatur- al. Dr. J. M. Addis of Thaw Harbor, the first physician to examine the bodies, says that they appear to have suffered some violent electro- chemical action the nature of which cannot be determined at the mo- ment. This statement is consid- ered significant in view of the re- ported discovery ashore of a large blighted area almost directly oppo- site the point where the launch was found. Joseph Sleichert, a farmer who lives in that vicinity, reports that this patch of ground extending back from the lakeshore was completely stripped of vegeta- tion overnight. He ascribes the damage to some unknown insect pest. Others say that the condi- tion of the ground indicates that it has been burned at incinerator temperatures. Nothing is le,ft, of the soil but a blue powder. Philip faced his brother with eyes that were dull with agony. "You have made me a murderer!" Quest forced out the words in painful gasps. But Keane snapped back at him like a rabid dog. "You did it — you did it yourself! You tampered with the Projector. You tried to spoil the test. You changed the range. You tried to kill me, and instead you killed these others. And you're going to pay — both of you. You hear me ? — you're going to pay !" His voice mounted the scale to a scream. It was a wail of unreasoning terror, of the dread of exposure, of the fear that he would fail to collect the fortune now so nearly in his grasp. The accident that had jarred his well- laid plans had unnerved him. FRANTICALLY Quest strove to answer him, to explain his utter subjection as Agent, to say that if he had possessed the will to oppose or trick him he would have turned him over to the police, or might even have killed him, at the very outset. But in his frenzy, Keane had so tightened his control that Quest was speechless. Now he tried to substitute gesture for words, but Philip was rooted to the spot like a statue; even his hands were immov- able. He might have remained in this state indefinitely had not Keane's fears with- drawn his mind from his immediate surroundings. Momentarily he forgot Quest, Philip — everything but himself and his predicament. And in the in- stant that his vigilance relaxed, Quest's enslaved will experienced a sudden lease of strength and hope. Indepen- dently of his Control, he found that he could move Philip's hand, could take a faltering step. But now, what to do ? How might he fan this feeble spark of volition to suf- ficient strength for decisive resistance ? The idea came to him : if only he could place distance between himself and Keane, perhaps with one titanic effort he might launch himself against the Master Will, take him by surprise, crush him down, and reverse him to the status of Agent instead of Control. With infinite effort Quest forced Philip's body step by step across the room. He must reach that window, get a signal of distress to someone in the street. But Keane began to sense a mutiny. He followed. He crossed the floor with slinking, tigerish steps and snak- ing body. His wet lips writhed back over his teeth, and his contorted fea- tures wove the leer of the abyss. Now as his Control drew physically near, Quest felt his mite of strength ebbing fast. Slowly Keane reached up with his clawed fingers and grasped his Agent by the arm. "Remember!" he hissed, "if these deaths are traced to us, you break down THE STOLEN MIND 89 — you confess — you take the blame — you paint me lily white — you describe the cowardly means by which you moulded me to your will — you plead only for a quick trial and the full pen- alty of the law. You understand?" Quest made no reply, but he under- stood all too well the hideous intention of his betrayer. What a fool he had been to imagine that Keane Clason would ever restore him to his body! Philip to the chair, Quest a homeless spirit wandering in space, and for the body at the bottom of the tank, the brief regrets of the Department! A SUDDEN rushing sound filled the air with a sense of action and alarm. Two— three — four speeding automo- biles swung in recklessly to the curb and shrieked to a standstill under smoking brakes. Men leaped out and deployed on the run to surround the factory. Keane darted to the door and twisted the key. "Come on!" he spat at Philip as he snatched back the rug and threw open the trap door. The command galvanized Quest to action. In two bounds he had Philip on the stairs. A heavy impact rattled the office door just as he dropped the trap into place over his head. Then, infected with Keane's panic, he was running down the passageway like mad. Inside the tank chamber the brilli- antly colored rings of liquid flashed back the rays of the arclight. Half crazed with anxiety, Keane danced on the black ledge like a monkey on a griddle. His face was ashen, drool ran from his twisted mouth, his eyes were two black pools of terror. Again Quest experienced the pecu- liar sensation which came with the slackening of control. New hope sprang up in his agonized being as heavy blows boomed against the air- locked door. Great waves of fear poured along the conduits, betraying to the Agent the state of mind of his Control. Now what would Keane do? What could he do ? Why, of all places, had he fled down into this blind bur- row? Thud, thud! Then came a series of sharp reports. Outside, they were try- ing to shoot away the deep-sunk disk hinges. Still the door stood fast, but the fury of the assault on it whipped the fal- tering Keane to action. In a bound he was on the platform. With a lightning hand he threw the switch to plus, start- ing electrolytic action in the tank. Then he pressed a button concealed un- der the edge of the switch-mount and a panel slid silently aside in the wall, revealing a narrow outlet. TO Quest everything went a flam- ing red. He might have known that this fox would have something in reserve — a way of escape when danger threatened ! But his Control gave him no time for independent thought. He forced Quest te turn Philip's eyes, up to his own. Without disconnecting that grip of his glittering eyes, Keane leaped back to the ledge. Quest felt the si- lent ordef : "Get up on that plank! Dive into the tank! Get back into your own body, let Philip have his! Then come up — the two of you — and face the mu- sic. For I'll be gone, and your story will sound like the ravings of a mani- ac." Quest took an obedient step toward the platform. But at the same instant a tremendous crash shivered the door. It seemed to unnerve Keane Clason. With a gasp he sank down upon the steps, his body doubled in pain, his hand clutching at his heart. Another crash followed, and he shuddered and cried out. Instantly Quest felt an expansion of the will. Keane's sudden physical weakness had loosened his control. Philip's lips worked painfully as Quest forced him to pause, to disobey the command of the Master Will. In a 90 ASTOUNDING STORIES spasm of will he fought to wrench him- self free from the countless clinging tentacles of his Control. In great surges, Quest's reviving volition pounded against the walls of his bor- rowed body. Now he sought to force this sluggish body back to the wall, so that he might release the airlock and spring the door. But Philip seemed to ossify, every cord and muscle of his body frozen to stone by the conflict that raged within him. Braced against the wall, Keane was rising slowly to his feet. His seizure was easing, and so he was able to exert - a better pressure upon his rebellious Agent. "Come!" he gasped, realizing that he lacked the strength to escape alone and must therefore change his plan. "Lift me — quick! Carry me out! Slide the panel back into place. We will escape together!" THE" spoken command turned the balance against Quest. His will yielded to the master. At the same in- stant Phillip's body relaxed like an ob- ject relieved of a great excess of elec- trical potential. Suddenly strong and supple, he lifted the trembling Keane and tossed him across his shoulder. For a moment there had been a lull in the assault on the door. Now the battering resumed with a fury that jarred the whole chamber and sent ripples dancing across the varicolored liquids in the osmotic tank. "Quick!" gasped Keane. "Move! I say. Carry me out." But he was in a fainting condition. Crash after crash rocked the chamber, and with every blow Quest's will felt a stimulation that enabled him to stand off the commands of his Control. Then a wave of nausea swept over him and left him reeling. It seemed that Phi- lip's blood had turned to boiling oil. A dazzling mist swallowed him up, and with a weird sense of inflation he felt full strength returning to his will. A booming blow that bulged the door inward acted upon him like a stage player's cue. He leaped to the plat- form. The gurgling sound of remon- strance rattled from Keane's throat. But Quest paid no heed. Philip was walking the plank — away from the open panel — out over the tank. Rapidly he dropped down the ladder to the bottom rung, snatched Keane's wrist in a gorillalike grip, and hurled him down into the vat. Then Philip was clinging desperately to the ladder, his strength gone, his body shivering as if with ague. "Go on up!" came a strange, im- patient voice from below him. "For heaven's sake let me out of here!" A DOWNWARD glance, and with a shout of alarm Philip was scrambling up the ladder, for there was a head down there, and a pair of naked shoulders, and the face of a man he had never seen before. Hand over hand Quest followed. Philip had collapsed and lay prone on the plank. Quest lifted him to his feet and shook him anxiously. "Philip!" he urged. "Philip! Can you walk?" The tattoo on the battered door helped to revive the older man. "Quick !" whispered Quest, kneading Philip's arms. "There's barely an hour left. Get to your office. Burn the pa- pers. Refuse the money. Do you hear me?" Philip nodded dazedly. "Hurry!" puffed Quest, thrusting him through the opening that Keane had reserved for his own escape, and sliding the panel back into place. Quest was himself now — young, strong, free. Instantly he threw the electrolytic switch to minus. For Keane had failed to emerge from the tank, and since he was submerged alone, he could not escape until electro- lysis was halted. Just as Quest leaped from the plat- form to release the airlock, the door burst in and three men with drawn guns rushed into the chamber. The leader stopped with a startled THE STOLEN MIND 91 oath and stood blinking his unbelieving eyes. Quest was poised like a statue, his naked body gleaming an unearthly white against the lusterless black of the wall. "Quest," came from the three in chorus. Then a rush of questions: "What's the matter? What's happened to you? Where are the Clasons?" Quest turned toward the platform, expecting to see Keane. "Something's wrong!" he shouted. "Quick! Somebody get Philip. He's gone to his Loop office. Keane Cla- son's at the bottom of this tank. I'm not sure how this thing works, but Philip can get him out ! I'm sure of it !" DESPITE the confident predictions of both Quest and Philip Clason, osmotic association failed to restore Keane to life, and at last the coroner ordered the removal of the body. The autopsy revealed heart disease as the cause of his death. For reasons best understood at Washington, the cause of the five launch deaths was withheld from the public. Quest's punishment for his part in the crime consisted of a promo- tion and a warm personal letter from the President of the United States. IN THE NEXT ISSUE Spawn of the Stars The Story of an Amazing Invasion of the Earth By CHARLES W. DIFFIN Creatures of the Light An Extraordinary Tale of Super 'perfect Humanity By SOPHIE WENZEL ELLIS The Beetle Horde The Conclusion of the Thrilling Two-part Story Begun in This Issue By VICTOR ROUSSEAU Good God! Was I going mad? Surely this was some awful nightmare! Compensation By C. V. Tench W HY, John !*' Involuntarily I halted at the entrance to my snug bachelor quarters as the flood of light my turning of the switch produced reveal- ed a huddled fig- ure slumped in an easy chair. "Aye, sir, 'tis me." The man got to his feet, gnarled hands rub- bing at his eyes. "An' 'tis all day that I've been waiting for you, sir. The caretaker said you'd be back soon so let me in. I must have fell asleep, an' no wonder, what with the strain 92 Professor Wroxton had disappeared — but in the bottom of the mysterious crystal cage lay the diamond from his ring. an' no sleep or rest all last night." "Strain? No rest?" I stared my be- wilderment, trying at the same time to conceal the vague apprehensions oc- casioned by the fact that the trusted servitor of my friend, Professor Wroxton, should wait all day for me. Hastily shed- ding my outer things, I bade him again be seated, sat down facing him, and asked him to explain. "Tis the professor, sir." The old chap peered at me with anxious, wrinkled eyes. " 'Tis common enough COMPENSATION 93 for him to send me here on messages, sir, but to-day I've come on my own, because, sir," answering the question in my eyes, "I haven't seen sight of him since last night." "Why—" I began. "That's just it, sir." John took the words out of my mouth. "For twenty years my wife an' me have looked af- ter the professor at The Grange. In all that time he's never been away at night. Whenever he had to come to town he'd tell us. Most times I'd drive him myself in the old car. But that was very seldom, sir, for Professor Wroxton had few interests outside." "TD UT, John," I protested, "is there JE3 no other reason for your agita- tion? He might have had an urgent call, or gone out for a walk or drive by himself." "No, sir. If you'll pardon me, sir, you're wrong. The professor was fixed in his habits. He would not go away without tellin' me. Think back, sir, you know the professor as well as me. Better, because you are his friend and I am only a servant. Although, sir," this proudly, "he always treated me as a friend." "Go on," I urged, seeing he was not finished. "Well, sir, a few minutes back you asked me if there was no other reason for my being upset like. There is, sir. You know, sir, that for more'n twenty years the professor has led a retired sort of life; the life of a — a — " "Recluse," I suggested. "That's it, sir. He only left The Grange when he had to. He was all wrapped up in some weird-like thing he was inventing. In all those years, sir, you were the only visitor who ever went into his laboratory, or stayed at The Grange for a night or more. That is, sir, until three days ago." "Go on," I again urged, some of his perturbation communicating itself to me. "The Grange, sir, lying as it does, fifteen miles from town an' back in its own grounds away from the road, isn't noted by many. When strangers do get into the grounds I usually gets 'em out again in short order. Three days ago, sir, a stranger drove up to the door in a fine car. He told me he was wantin' to purchase a country home. I told him The Grange was not for sale an' turned 'im away. He was turn- ing his car to leave when my master came out. To my surprise, sir, he in- vited the stranger in. An' I'm sure, sir, because he looked so taken aback like, that the stranger had never seen the professor before." "And after that?" I asked, now feel- ing decidedly uneasy. "The stranger, sir — a Mr. Lathom he called himself— stayed on. He was in the study with the master last night. This morning there was no trace of either of them." "But— good God, John!" I jerked to my feet, a fresh dread clutching at my heart. "What are you trying to get at ? The professor and Mr. Lathom might possibly have driven away somewhere last night." "Both cars, sir," the servant an- swered, "are in the garage. I bolt all the doors in the house myself every night. They were still fastened this morning. My wife an' me searched the house from cellar to garret an' hunted all over the grounds. We couldn't find a trace of the master or his guest." "You mean to suggest then,** I shot at him, "that two full grown men have completely vanished? It's absurd, John, absurd." I PACED the floor thinking des- perately fpr a few minutes, con- scious of the ancient's anxious eyes. I half smiled. The thing was too ridiculous for anything. Old John had grown morbid from living away frdm the outer world. Also, I had to admit that the atmosphere of The Grange, impregnated as it was with the lethal scientific dabblings of my friend, was exactly suited to the conjuring up of unhealthy forebodings in uneducated 94 ASTOUNDING STORIES minds. I'd drive out to the home of my friend at once. No doubt I'd find him fit and well. He had refused to install a phone, so drive it had to be. "John." I stopped my pacing and patted him on the shpulder. "I'm com- ing out to The Grange at once." His face showed his thankfulness. "I am sure," I went on as I struggled into my coat, "that we shall find the pro- fessor and his guest awaiting us. Any- way, it's time you got back to your wife and had some food." "I hope to Heaven, sir, that you're right." With that we left the building and entered my car. v Although I had tried to dispel my fears, although I had tried to banter John out of his dread, I drove that evening as I had never driven before or since. Barely fifteen minutes later I halted my roadster at the short flight of steps leading to the main door of The Grange. Even as we stepped from the machine the door flung open and an agitated woman hurried towards us. She was Mary, John's wife. "Sir !" She gripped my arm and stared anxiously into my face. " 'Tis glad I am that you've come. The Grange is a house of death." In spite of myself a chill shook my whole body. Gently handing her to John, I strode up the steps. At the open doorway I halted, the aged couple crowding on my heels, the woman still babbling about death. I couldn't blame her. All day she had been alone in that gloomy, rambling old building, wondering, no doubt, why John and I had not returned sooner. AND gloomy the house was. Al- ways, even when staying there at the professor's request, I had found it to be somber and depressing, as . if there lurked within its walls the shadowy wings of the years-old tragedy that had caused my friend to retire to such a God-forsaken place, and there become absorbed in his scientific ex- periments. . Even now, as I gazed into the dimly- lighted hallway, the air seemed charged with that same malignant something I cannot describe. Pulling myself together I strode quickly along the corridor, and flung open the study door. The lights being full on, one glance sufficed to show me that my friend was not there. Swing- ing on my heel, the horror I saw in the eyes of the servants, honest, healthy folks not easily frightened, conveyed itself to me. Somehow, the sight of that room, lights on, chairs drawn up to the burnt-out fire, brought home to me the fact that something serious was amiss. I chided myself for thinking John had been unduly agitated. For a moment I stood, trying to con- ceal the chill coursing through my veins, puzzling what to do next. I de- cided to search the house thoroughly. If I found no sign of the professor or his guest, I would call in the police. Fearfully yet willingly the aged couple led me from room to room, from attic to basement, until but one place remained — the laboratory. I hesi- tated for several seconds at the closed door of my friend's workroom. Not that I had never entered the — to a layman's eyes — weirdly - appointed place. I had been in many times with the professor. But this time I dreaded what I might find. PULLING myself together, I gently tried the door. To my horror it yielded to my touch. Alive, the pro- fessor always kept it locked. A new dread assailed me, as, flinging the door wide open, I blinked in the sudden glare of powerful globes. Someone had left the lights full on! Horrified I stood and stared, know- ing by their heavy breathing that the aged couple were also staring with fright-widened eyes. Afraid of what? I did not know, I only knew that the atmosphere had become even more sinister. I knew that something dread- ful had taken place in that room. Trembling with consternation I forced myself to take a few steps for- COMPENSATION 95 ward, then I again stared about me. At one end of the large room some- thing shone brightly in the glow of the lights. Slowly I walked across to examine it: it appeared to be a glass case, almost like a show-case, about eight feet square and seven feet in height. With the mechanical actions of the mentally distraught I walked all around it. Not the slightest sign of an entrance could I see. The fact intrigued me. I tapped lightly on the highly polished surface with my fin- gers. It rang to my touch like cot glass. Through the transparent surface I could see John and his wife. They were watching me furtively, wonder- ing, no doubt, why I lingered. As I looked at them John suddenly lum- bered up to the case on the opposite side. Dropping to his knees, he stared. Turning an imploring gaze to me, he pointed. His lips moved soundlessly. I followed the pointing finger with my eyes; gasped at what I saw. Near the center of the cage, on the floor constructed of the same crystal- line substance, something glittered, its brilliance almost dazzling as the light rays struck it. My face pressed close to the cold outer surface of the struc- ture, my shocked intelligence gradual- ly realized what that small sparkling object was. It was a magnificent dia- mond — and the professor had always worn a diamond ring I IN a sudden frenzy of horror I pawed my way around the cage to where John still knelt. As I reached him he jerked his head in a numb way as he croaked, "It's a diamond, sir! The professor's 1" "But how?" I implored. "How can it be? There's no way into this thing. Perhaps he was working here, and the stone came loose from its setting. He couldn't have dropped it after the cage was completed." "It's his diamond, sir," intoned the old man, dully. "1 know it is." Then a sudden unreasoning terror filled me. I shrank away from that shining box. It seemed to be mocking me, gloatingly, malevolently. "Quickly!" I threw at the aged couple. "Let us get out of here ! Now I At once!" They needed no second urging. I knew that they felt as I felt : the laboratory was a sepulcher! Five minutes later I was guiding my car over the narrow road to town. I did not pause until I drew up at police headquarters. I suppose my appearance was distraught, for I was ushered into the presence of the chief without de- lay. In a few moments I had poured out my story. He listened with a polite calmness I found almost maddening. Leaning back in bis chair, he reviewed, audibly, the facts. "Some twenty-odd years ago your friend, Professor Wroxton, married. He was so absorbed in the pursuit of some weird invention that he neglected his bride. She ran away with another man. This man deserted her, and dis- appeared. The professor found her many months later, in desperate health. Shortly afterwards she died. Your friend tried to trail the man, but failed. Shocked and saddened beyond measure, he retired to a place known as The Grange." HE suddenly straightened up in his seat, and pointed at me a thick forefinger. "How long have you known Pro- fessor Wroxton?" "About ten years," I answered. "What was he trying to invent?" "I don't know," I replied. "And yet you had his confidence in other matters ?" "But what has all this to do with finding out what has become of my friend?" I blurted out. "Perhaps every moment counts." "A lot." The chief eyed me in a way I did not like. "Solely because your friend has not been seen by his servants for nearly twenty-four hours, merely because you saw what you be- lieve to be his diamond in some kind 95 ASTOUNDING STORIES of a glass compartment in his labora- tory, you come here as distraught as a man who has something terrible on his mind. Why?" "I can't say." I shifted uneasily un- der that direct stare. "Somehow I feel that something dreadful has happened to my friend." "We do not go by feelings." The chief got to his feet. "But you have told me enough to warrant action. I want you to guide me and a couple of men to this house. Please wait here until I return." He left the room. Sitting there awaiting his return, I tried to ponder the matter reasonably. After all, perhaps the chief was right. Merely because the professor had been absent for a few hours and I had seen what I thought to be his diamond in the laboratory, I had worked myself into a perfect fever of anxiety. I al- most smiled to myself. In that busi- nesslike office the whole affair did seem absurd. After all, the professor did not have to answer to his servants for his actions. » Heavy footsteps, announcing the chief's return, caused me to rise to my feet. A few minutes later, in company with the three officers, I. was driving again towards The Grange. E made the return journey in almost complete silence. Oc- casionally the chief would shoot a question at me ; but, the night air cool- ing my fevered brain, my replies were guarded. He realized that fact, for I felt his eyes upon me all the way. What was going on behind that broad forehead, I wondered. Then we reached The Grange. As we mounted the steps, John, his wife herding behind him, flung wide the door. He answered the question in my eyes with a negative shake of his head, and the words, "Nothing fresh, sir." The chief eyed him keenly, then curtly bade him lead the way to the laboratory. John hung back, his face blanched. "I can't, sir," he faltered. The chief turned to me, and, although ■ I wanted to follow John's example, al- though the atmosphere of the house had again filled me with an unshakable dread, I led the way, standing back at the door to allow the officers to enter first. With calculating gaze the chief slowly took in every detail of the stone apartment. He turned to me. "What is there here to be afraid of?" I pointed hesitatingly towards the crystalline cage. The chief and his men strode across to it. "You don't know how to open this?" the chief shot at me after a brief ex- amination. "No," I replied. "It was not here on my last visit." "When was that?" "Some two or three months ago," I answered. "My work occasions much traveling on my part." THE chief and his men turned again to the cage, talking in un- dertones. He turned again to me. "You notice that this thing is built in sections. One of them must be mov- able. Perhaps — " He paused as his eyes fell upon some wires and tubes that trailed across the floor from un- derneath the cage to a switchboard fastened to the wall. "Perhaps," he repeated, "it is worked from that board." He crossed over, stared thoughtfully at the shining levers for some seconds, and moved one slfghtly. The result was astound- ing. All four of us stared with un- believing eyes as slowly, without the faintest sound, a section of one wall slid inwards, as if guided by invisible tracks on floor and ceiling. "Guess that's enough for now." With the words the chief backed away, al- most timidly, I thought, from the switchboard, and walked to the cage. For a moment he hesitated, but he en- tered, and emerged with the sparkling object in his hand. "It's the professor's," I choked, ^crowding close to him. "How'd you know?" he shot back. > COMPENSATION 97 "All unset stones look pretty much alike." "I just know," was all I could fal- ter. "You 'just know*." The chief sat down on a stool and regarded me searchingly. "Mr. Thornton, when I started out with you, I thought I was on a wild goose chase or the trail of a confession. You looked exactly like a man who had either committed a seri- ous crime, or was getting over a bad drunk. I feel sure now" — he again re- garded the diamond — "that your story was not the product of an alcohol- crazed brain. Come on!" He lurched to his feet, and grasped me by the shoulder. "Come through!" ITHOUT answering, I wrenched myself free. Over my shoulder I saw one of the police- men at the door. In the hand of the other a revolver suddenly appeared. Good God! I glared in bewilderment from one to another. Was I going mad? Surely this was some awful nightmare ! What had I said to make them suspect me of having committed a revolting crime? "Sit down!" The command came from the chief. Mechanically I found a stool, and obeyed him. "Hold your stations, boys, and listen carefully," he ordered his men. Then he turned to me. "Professor Wroxton was a wealthy man without kith or kin?" "Yes." "Do you know the nature of his will?" "Yes." Chilled, to the heart, I felt the circumstantial net tightening. "What is its nature?" "This house and an annuity to John and his wife," I explained. "The resi- due of his wealth to me." "Humph!" The chief stared at me piercingly. "And how has business been with you lately?" Damn the man! What right had he to put me through the third degree? I felt my state of dazed horror slowly Art. St. giving way to anger. I glanced around. The pistol still menaced; the man at the door had not moved. It was use- less to try and evade the questions. "For the past year," I replied, "busi- ness has been very poor. In fact, the professor advanced me some money." "Humph!" Again that irritating, non-committal grunt. THE chief turned in his seat and stared thoughtfully at the crystal- line cage. "And you don't know what the pro- fessor was trying to invent?" "Only its nature," I began. "Ah! That's better. Why didn't you tell me that before?" The chief leaned forward. "Well," I explained, "the whole thing seems so absurd. When the pro- fessor told me how his married life had been broken up", he told me that at that time he reached the utmost depths of human suffering. Absolute zero, he called it." "Ah!" "The experiments he indulged in," I continued, trying to hide the shiver pimpling my flesh, "were to produce an actual state of absolute zero. It is years since he told me this. I had almost for- gotten it." "And exactly what is an absolute zero?" The chief's eyes never left mine. "Well," I protested, "please under- stand that I also am a layman in these matters. According to my friend, an absolute zero has been the dream of scientists for ages. Once upon a time it was attained, but the secret became lost." "And exactly what is an absolute zero?" Curse the man ! I could have struck him down for the chilling level of his tone. I forced myself to go on, realiz- ing that I was damning myself at every step. "An absolute zero is a cold so in- tense it wirl destroy flesh, bone and tissue. Remove them," my voice rose ?8 ASTOUNDING STORIES in spite of myself, "leaving absolutely no trace." NO trace f Something attracted my eyes. The chief had opened his hand. The diamond there flashed and sparkled as if mocking me. I pulled myself together, and went on. "It all comes back to me now. One day I came out here and found the professor terribly distraught. He told me that, with the aid of electric cur- rents he had been able to invent the absolute zero, but he could not invent a container." "Why?" Those eyes continued to bore into mine. "Because — remember it is years since he told me this — there was difficulty in controlling the power. Besides de- stroying living things, it would destroy bricks and mortar, stone and iron. Only one substance it could not wipe out — crystalline of diamond hardness. "I know, now!" I jumped to my feet and grabbed the chief's arm. "I know now what he meant. Fool, fool ! Why did I not think of it before? This—" I swung towards the cage — "is compen- sation." Almost panting in my eager- ness I went on: "My friend told me that the law of compensation would atone to him for the tragedy of his youth. Absolute zero in suffering would be atoned for by a real state of absolute zero. Chief !" I whirled on him. "Don't you under- stand? This is the perfected dream of my friend. It is the absolute zero." "Humph! Plausible but not con- vincing." I slumped back at the of- ficer's words. "That does not explain the professor's disappearance. Even if it did, what about Mr. Lathom? And don't forget this contrivance is worked from outside. We found the diamond inside. Of course, he might have placed it there himself to test the ma- chine," he concluded. "Of course, that's it," I commenced. But I regretted the words when I saw suspicion flicker again in the chief's eyes. Lamely I finished, "And he has probably ' rushed off, in an ecstasy of triumph, to acquaint professional col- leagues." "Without unlocking any doors or taking a car, eh? "Mr. Thornton." The chief stood up and regarded me sternly. "As a sens- ible man, don't you think yourself that your story is a bit thin? The pro- fessor has disappeared. Here is a strange-looking case which you say is an absolute zero container. Whether you know, or are just jumping at con- clusions, remains to be proved. But even if it is, do you think that, after perfecting such a tremendous inven- tion, the professor would commit sui- cide?" "On the contrary," I gasped, "my friend was a man of gentle, kindly dis- position, but strong purpose. I should think his first action on attaining his life's ambition would be to notify me, his closest friend." "And he didn't." Every word con- demned me, and roused me to retaliate. "Chief, I know enough of the law to know that, before you can try a man for murder, you must prove that mur- der has been committed." I grinned savagely. "You must have the corpus delicti. Go ahead ! Find my friend or his remains, or else withdraw your charges." I grinned again, with shocked mirthlessness. THEN I buried my head in my hands. I had called in the police to help find the professor, and they had only blundered around and asked a lot of stupid questions. The chief had practically accused me of murder — something I knew he could not prove, yet feared he might. Because I had told the chief of the locked doors and unused cars, he had confined his inves- tigations to the house itself. He interrupted my thoughts. "Mr. Thornton, I am going back to town. You will remain here with my men. I advise you to get some sleep, as I shall not be able to carry out cer- tain investigations until the morning. COMPENSATION 99 One of my men will spend his time searching the house and patrolling the grounds, the other one will stay here with you." He turned away, whispered some in- structions to his men, and, followed by one of them, silently left the labora- tory. I started to protest, tried to fol- low him; the man at the door stopped me. Silently, almost grimly, he indi- cated a narrow cot at one end of the room. For a moment I hesitated, feel- ing the man's eyes upon me. Sleep on my dead — I felt sure he was dead — friend'6 cot! Sleep in that fearful place! My whole being crawled with horror. I turned again to the man. His features were unyield- ing. Perhaps this was more third de- gree. Limp with weakness and weari- ness, I dragged my lagging feet to- wards the cot. AS long as I live I shall never for- get my awakening. A uniformed figure, the chief, shaking me by the shoulder. Two other uniformed men silently watching. I sat up and gazed about me, dazedly. Bright sunlight streamed through the windows. A stray gleam struck the cage. I shrank back, trembling. And yet I had slept soundly. "Mr. Thornton," the chief said, "I have serious news for you. I have positive proof your friend is dead." "Dear God!" The exclamation was wrung from me as recollection re- turned with a rush. "Where? You can't have!" "Here." He thrust a bundle of let- ters into my hands. "You acted so strangely last night you caused me to suspect you of a serious crime. Also, you overlooked several important points. You got back from a trip only last night." Last night ! Surely it was years. "You had left instructions to have your mail forwarded," the level voice went on. "These letters were evident- ly one day behind you. I picked them up at your rooms this morning. I took the liberty of opening them. Read this one." He selected it. ITH trembling fingers I ex- racted from the envelope a sin- gle written page. I recognized the handwriting as the professor's. I read with feverish intensity, each single word burning itself into my conscious- ness: Dear Thornton: I am writing this in anticipation. I will see that it is mailed when my plans are completed. To late, dear friend, for you to attempt, * with the best intentions in the world, to frustrate them. Y6u will, perhaps, recall that many years ago, when I gave you my full confidence, I told you that I felt sure that the law of com- pensation would atone in some measure for my loss. Thornton, old friend, I believe that, in more ways than one, my hour has ar- rived. Two days ago I completed the absolute zero. But even bet- ter! A man called here to-day. Al- though he did not recognize me, I saw through the veneer of added years with ease. Fate, call it what you will, my visitor is the man who wrecked my happiness. Under pretext I shall detain him. I shall induce him to enter the crystalline cage. I have already arranged a dual control which the power will destroy when I apply it from the inside of the cage. Please destroy the cage. It will have brought compensation to me before you read this. Good-by, dear friend! Wroxton. "I apologize, Mr. Thornton." The chief offered a hand which I clutched in mingled sorrow and relief. The world had lost a genius. I had lost a dear friend. But he was right. It was compensation. Tanks By Murray Leinster . . . The deciding battle of the War of 1932 was the first in which the use of infantry was practically discontinued. . . . — History of the U. S., 1920-1945 (Gregg-Hurley). THE persistent, oily smell of fog-gas was everywhere, even in the little pill-box. Outside, all the world was blotted out by the thick gray mist that went rolling slowly across country with the breeze. The noises that came through it were curiously muted — fog-gas mutes all noises somewhat — but somewhere to the right artillery was pounding something with H E shell, and there 100 Two miles of American front had gone dead. And on two lone infantrymen, lost in the menace of the fog-gas and the tanks, depended the outcome of the war of 1932. were those little spitting under-current explosions that told of tanks in action. To the right there was a distant roll- ing of machine-gun fire. In between was an utter, solemn silence. Sergeant Coffee, disreputable to look at and disre- spectful of mien, was sprawling over one of the gunners' seats and talking into a field telephone while mud dripped from him. Cor- poral Wallis, equally muddy and still Row after row of the monsters roared by, going greedily with hungry guns into battle- more disreputable, was painstakingly manufacturing one complete cigarette from the pinched-out butts of four others. Both were rifle-infantry. Neither had any rights or reason to be occupying a definitely machine-gun- section post. The fact that the ma- chine-gun crew was all dead did not seem to make much difference to sec- tor H.Q. at the other end of the tele- phone wire, judging from the questions that were being asked. "I tell you," drawled Sergeant Cof- fee, "they' dead. . . . Yeah, all dead. Just as dead as when I told you the firs' time, maybe even deader. . . . Gas, o'course. I don't know what kind. . . . Yeh. They got their masks on." He waited, looking speculatively at the cigarette Corporal Wallis had in manufacture. It began to look impos- ing. Corporal Wallis regarded it af- fectionately. Sergeant Coffee put his hand over the mouthpiece, and looked intently at his companion. "Gimme a drag o' that, Pete," he sug- gested. "I'll slip y' some butts in a minute." 102 ASTOUNDING STORIES CORPORAL WALLIS nodded, and proceeded to light the cigarette with infinite artistry. He puffed deli- cately upon it, inhaled it with the care a man learns when he has just so much tobacco and never expects to get any more, and reluctantly handed it to Sergeant Coffee. Sergeant Coffee emptied his lungs in a sigh of anticipation. He put the cigarette to his lips. It burned bright- ly as he drew upon it. Its tip became brighter and brighter until it was white-hot, and the paper crackled as the line of fire crept up the tube. "Hey!" said Corporal Wallis in alarm. Sergeant Coffee waved him aside, and his chest expanded to the fullest limit of his blouse. When his lungs could hold no more he ceased to draw, grandly returned about one-fourth of the cigarette to Corporal Wallis, and blew out a cloud of smoke in small driblets until he had to gasp for breath. "When y' ain't got much time," said Sergeant Coffee amiably, . "that's a quick smoke." Corporal Wallis regarded the ruins of his cigarette with a woeful air. "Hell !" said Corporal Wallis gloomi- ly. But he smoked what was left. "Yeah," said Sergeant Coffee sud- denly, into the field telephone. "I'm still here, an' they're still dead. . . . Listen, Mr. Officer, I got me a black eye an' numerous contusions. Also my gas-mask is busted. I called y'up to do y' a favor. I aim to head for dis- tant parts. . . . Hell's bells ! Ain't there anybody else in the army — " He stopped, and resentment died out in wide-eyed amazement. "Yeh. . . . Yeh. . . . Yeh. ... I gotcha, Loot. A'right, I'll see what I c'n do. Yeh. . . . Wish y'd see my insurance gets paid. Yeh." He hung up, gloomily, and turned to Corporal Wallis. "We' got to be heroes," he announced bitterly. "Sit out here in th' stinkin' fog an' wait for a tank t' come along an* wipe us out. We' the only listenin' post in two miles of front. That new gas o' theirs wiped out all the rest without report." He surveyed the crumpled figures which had been the original occupants of the pill-box. They wore the same uniform as himself and when he took the gas-mask off of one of them the man's face was strangely peaceful. "Hell of a war," said Sergeant Cof fee bitterly. "Here our gang gets wiped out by a helicopter. I ain't seen sun- light in a week, an' I got just four butts left. Lucky I started savin' 'em." He rummaged shrewdly. "This guy's got half a sack o' makin's. Say, that was Loot'n't Madison on the line, then. Transferred from our gang a coupla months back. They cut him in the line to listen in on me an' make sure I was who I said I was. He recognized my voice." CORPORAL WALLIS, after smok- ing to the last and ultimate puff, pinched out his cigarette and put the fragments of a butt back in his pocket. "What we got to do?" he asked, watching as Sergeant Coffee divided the treasure-trove into two scrupulous- ly exact portions. "Nothin'," said Coffee bitterly, "ex- cept find out how this gang got wiped out, an' a few little things like that. Half th' front line is in th' air, the planes can't see anything, o'course, an' nobody dares cut th' fog-gas to look. He didn't say much, but he said for Gawd's sake find out somethin'." Corporal Wallis gloated over one- fourth of a sack of tobacco and stowed it away. "Th* infantry always gets th' dirty end of the stick," he said gloomly. "I'm goin' to roll me a whole one, pre-war, an' smoke it, presently." "Hell yes," said Coffee. He exam- ined his gas-mask from force of habit before stepping out into the fog once more, then contemptuously threw it aside. "Gas-masks, hell! Ain't worth havin'. Come on." Corporal Wallis followed as he TANKS 103 emerged from the little round cone of the pill-box. The gray mist that was fog-gas hung over everything. There was a definite breeze blowing, but the mist was so dense that it did not seem to move. It was far enough from the fog-flares for the last least trace of striation to have vanished. Fifteen miles to the north the fog-flares were placed, ranged by hundreds and by thousands, burning one after another as the fog service set them off, and sending out their incredible masses of thick gray vapor in long threads that spread out before the wind, coalesced, and made a smoke-screen to which the puny ef- forts of the last war — the war that was to make the world safe for democracy — were as nothing. Here, fifteen miles down wind from the flares, it was possible to see clearly in a circle approximately five feet in diameter. At the edge of that circle outlines began to blur. At ten feet all shapes were the faintest of bulks, the dimmest of outlines. At fifteen feet all was invisible, hidden behind a screen of mist. "Cast around," said Coffee gloomily. "Maybe we'll find a shell, or tracks of a tank or somethin' that chucked the gas here." IT was rather ludicrous to go search- ing for anything in that mass of vapor. At three yards distance they could make each other out as dim out- lines, no more. But it did not even oc- cur to them to deplore the mist. The war which had already been christened, by the politicians at home, the last war, was always fought in a mist. Infantry could not stand against tanks, tanks could not live under aircraft-directed artillery fire — not when forty guns fired salvos for the aircraft to spot — and neither artillery nor aircraft could take any advantage of a victory which either, under special conditions, might win. The general staffs of both the United States and the prominent na- tion — let us say the Yellow Empire — at war with it had coine to a single con- clusion. Tanks or infantry were needed for the use of victories. Infantry could be destroyed by tanks. But tanks could be hidden from aerial spotters by smoke-screens. The result was fog-gas, which was being used by both sides in the most modern fashion when, their own unit wiped out and themselves wandering aimlessly in the general direction of the American rear, Sergeant Coffee and Corporal Wallis stumbled upon ah American pill-box with its small garri- son lying dead. For forty miles in one direction and perhaps thirty in the other, the vapor lay upon the earth. It was being blown by the wind, of course, but it was sufficiently heavier than air to cling to the ground level, and the industries of two nations were strain- ing every nerve to supply the demands of their respective armies for its ma- terial. The fog-bank was nowhere less than a hundred feet thick — a cloud of im- palpable particles impenetrable to any eye or any camera, however shrewdly filtered. And under that mattress of pale opacity the tanks crawled heavily. They lurched and rumbled upon their deadly errands, uncouth and barbarous, listening for each other by a myriad of devices, locked in desperate, short- range conflict when they came upon each other, and emitting clouds of deadly vapor, against which gas-masks were no protection, when they came upon opposing infantry. THE infantrymen, though, were few. Their principal purpose was the reporting of the approach or pas- sage of tanks, and trenches were of no service to them. They occupied un- armed little listening-posts with field telephones, small wireless or ground buzzer sets for reporting the enemy before he overwhelmed them. They held small pill-boxes, fitted with anti- tank guns which sometimes — if rarely —managed to get home a shell, aimed largely by sound, before the tank 104 ASTOUNDING STORIES rolled over gun and gunners alike. And now Sergeant Coffee and Cor- poral Wallis groped about in that blinding mist. There had been two systems of listening-posts hidden in it, each of admittedly little fighting value, but each one deep and composed of an infinity of little pin-point posts where two or three men were stationed. The American posts, by their reports, had assured the command that all enemy tanks were on the other side of a cer- tain definite line. Their own tanks, receiving recognition signals, passed and repassed among them, prowling in quest of invaders. The enemy tanks crawled upon the same grisly patrol on their own side. But two miles of the American front had suddenly gone silent. A hundred telephones had ceased to make reports along the line nearest the enemy. As Coffee and Wallis stumbled about the little pillbox, looking for some inkling of the way in which the original occu- pants of the small strong-point had been wiped out, the second line of ob- servation-posts began to go dead. Now one, now another abruptly ceased to communicate. Half a dozen were in actual conversation with their sector headquarters, and broke off be- tween words. The wires remained in- tact. But in fifteen nerve-racking min- utes a second hundred posts ceased to make reports and ceased to answer the inquiry-signal. G.H.Q. was demanding explanations in crisp accents that told the matter was being taken very seri- ously indeed. And then, as the officer in command of the second-line sector headquarters was explaining frenzied- ly that he was doing all any man could do, he stopped short between two words and thereafter he, also, ceased to communicate. Front-line sector headquarters seemed inexplicably to have escaped whatever fate had overtaken all its posts, but it could only report that they had apparently gone out of existence without warning. American tanks, prowling in the area that had gone dead, announced that no enemy tanks had been seen. G-81, stumbling on a pill-box no more than ten minutes after it had gone silent, offered to investi- gate. A member of her crew, in a gas- mask, stepped out of the port doorway. Immediately thereafter G-81's wireless reports stopped coming in. THE situation was clearly shown in the huge tank that had been built to serve as G.H.Q. That tank was seventy feet long, and lay hidden in the mist with a brood of other, smaller tanks clustered near it, from each of which a cable ran to the telephones and instruments of the greater monster. Farther off in the fog, of course, were other tanks, hundreds of them, fighting machines all, silent and motionless now, but infinitely ready to protect the brain of the army. The G.H.Q. maneuver-board showed the battle as no single observer could ever have seen it. A map lay spread out on a monster board, under a piti- less white light. It was a map of the whole battlefield. Tiny sparks crawled here and there under the map, and there were hundreds of little pins with dif- ferent-colored heads to mark the posi- tion of this thing and that. The crawl- ing sparks were the reported positions of American tanks, made visible as positions of moving trains had been made visible for years on the electric charts of railroads in dispatcher's of- fices. Where the tiny bulbs glowed under the map, there a tank crawled under the fog. As the tank moved, the first bulb went out and another flashed into light. The general watched broodingly as the crawling sparks moved from this place to that place, as varicolored lights flashed up and vanished, as a steady hand reached down to shift tiny pins and place new ones. The general moved rarely, and spoke hardly at all. His whole air was that of a man ab- sorbed in a game of chess — a game on which the fate of a nation depended. He was thus absorbed. The great TANKS 105 board, illuminated from above by the glaring bulb, and speckled with little white sparks from below by the tiny bulbs beneath, showed the situation clearly at every instant. The crawling white sparks were his own tanks, each in its present position. Flashing blue sparks noted the last report of enemy tanks. Two staff officers stood behind the general, and each spoke from time to time into a strapped-on telephone transmitter. They were giving routine orders, heading the nearest American patrol-tanks toward the location of the latest reported enemies. THE general reached out his hand suddenly and marked off an area with his fingers. They were long fingers, and slender ones: an artist's fingers. "Our outposts are dead in this space," he observed meditatively. The use of the word "outposts" dated him many years back as a soldier, back to the old days of open warfare, which had only now come about again. "Pene- tration of two miles — " "Tank, sir," said the man of the steady fingers, putting a black pin in position within that area, "let a man out in a gas-mask to examine a pill- box. The tank does not report or re- ply, sir." "Gas," said the general, noting the spot. "Their new gas, of course. It must go through masks or sag-paste, or both." He looked up to one of a row of of- ficers seated opposite him, each man with headphones strapped to his ears and a transmitter before his lips, and each man with a map-pad on his knees, on which from time to time he made notations and shifted pins absorbedly. "Captain Harvey," said the general, "you are sure that dead spot has not been bombarded with gas-shells?" "Yes, General. There has been no artillery fire heavy enough to put more than a fraction of those posts out of action, and all that fire, sir, has been accounted for elsewhere." The officer looked up, saw the gen- eral's eyes shift, and bent to his map again, on which he was marking areas from which spotting aircraft reported flashes as of heavy guns beneath the mist. "Their aircraft have not been drop- ping bombs, positively?" A second officer glanced up from his own map. "Our planes cover all that space, sir, and have for some time." "They either have a noiseless tank," observed the general meditatively, "or " The steady fingers placed a red pin at a certain spot. "One observation-post, sir, has re- opened communication. Two infantry- men, separated from their command, came upon it and found the machine- gun crew dead, with gas-masks ad- justed. No tanks or tracks. They are identified, sir, and are now looking for tank tracks or shells." The general nodded emotionlessly. "Let me know immediately." HE fell back to the ceaseless study of the board with its crawling sparks and sudden flashes of light. Over at the left, there were four white sparks crawling toward a spot where a blue flash had showed a little while since. A red light glowed suddenly where one of the white sparks crawled. One of the two officers behind the gen- eral spoke crisply. Instantly, it seemed, the other three white sparks changed their direction of movement. They swung toward the red flash — the point where a wireless from the tank represented by the first white flash had reported contact with the enemy. "Enemy tank destroyed here, sir," said the voice above the steady fin- gers." "Wiped out three of our observation posts," murmured the general. "His side knows it. That's an opportunity. Have those posts reoccupied." "Orders given, sir," said a staff of- ficer from behind. "No reports as yet." 106 ASTOUNDING STORIES The general's eyes went back to the space two miles wide and two miles deep in which there was only a single observation-post functioning, and that in charge of two strayed infantrymen. The battle in the fog was in a forma- tive stage, now, and the general him- self had to watch the whole, because it was by small and trivial indications that the enemy's plans would be dis- closed. The dead area was no trivi- ality, however. Half a dozen tanks were crawling through it, reporting monotonously that no sign of the enemy could be found. One of the little sparks representing those tanks abruptly went out. "Tank here, sir, no longer reports." The general watched with lack-lus- ter eyes, his mind withdrawn in thought. "Send four helicopters," he said slowly, "to sweep that space. We'll see what the enemy does." One of. the seated officers opposite him spoke swiftly. Far away a roaring set up and was stilled. The helicopters were taking off. THEY would rush across the blanket of fog, their vertical pro- pellers sending blasts of air straight downward. For most of their sweep they would keep a good height, but above the questionable ground they would swoop down to barely above the fog-blanket. There their monstrous screws would blow holes in the fog un- til the ground below was visible. If any tanks crawled there, in the spaces the helicopters swept clear, they would be visible at once and would be shelled by batteries miles away, batteries in- visible under the artificial cloud-bank. No other noises came through the walls of the monster tank. There was a faint, monotonous murmur of the electric generator. There were the quiet, crisp orders of the officers be- hind the general, giving the routine commands that kept the fighting a stalemate. The aircraft officer lifted his head, pressing his headphones tightly against his ears, as if to hear more clearly. "The enemy, sir, has sent sixty fight- ing machines to attack our helicopters. We sent forty single-seaters as escort." "Let them fight enough," said the general absently, "to cause the enemy to think us desperate for information. Then draw them off." There was silence again. The steady fingers put pins here and there. An enemy tank destroyed here. An Amer- ican tank encountered an enemy and ceased to report further. The enemy sent four helicopters in a wide sweep behind the American lines, escorted by fifty fighting planes. They uncovered a squadron of four tanks, which scat- tered like insects disturbed by the over- turning of a stone. Instantly after their disclosure a hundred and fifty guns, four miles away, were pouring shells about the place where they had been seen. Two of the tanks ceased to report. The general's attention was called to a telephone instrument with its call- light glowing. "Ah," said the general absently. "They want publicity matter." The telephone was connected to the rear, and from there to the Capital. A much-worried cabinet waited for news, and arrangements were made and had been used, to broadcast suitably ar- ranged reports from the front, the voice of the commander-in-chief in the field going to every workshop, every gathering-place, and even being bel- lowed by loud-speakers in the city streets. THE general took the phone. The President of the United States was at the other end of the wire, this time. "General?" "Still in a preliminary stage, sir," said the general, without haste. "The enemy is preparing a break-through ef- fort, possibly aimed at our machine- shops and supplies. Of course, if he gets them we will have to retreat. An hour ago he paralyzed our vadios, not TANKS 107 being aware, I suppose, of our tuned earth-induction wireless sets. I dare- say he is puzzled that our communica- tions have not fallen to pieces." "But what are our chances?" The voice of the President was steady, but it was strained. "His tanks outnumber ours two to one, of course, sir," said the general calmly. "Unless we can divide his fleet and destroy a part of it, of course we will be crushed in a general combat. But we are naturally trying to make sure that any such action will take place within point-blank range of our artillery, which may help a little. We will cut the fog to secure that help, risking everything, if a general engage- ment occurs." There was silence. The President's voice, when it came, was more strained still. "Will you speak to the public, Gen- eral?" "Three sentences. I have no time for more." There were little clickings on the line, while the general's eyes returned to the board that was the battlefield in miniature. He indicated a spot with his finger. "Concentrate our reserve-tanks here," he said meditatively. "Our fighting air- craft here. At once." The two spots were at nearly oppo- site ends of the battle field. The chief of staff, checking the general's judg- ment with the alert suspicion that was the latest addition to his duties, pro- tested sharply. "But sir, our tanks will have no pro- tection against helicopters!" "I am quite aware of it," said the general mildly. He turned to the transmitter. A thin voice had just announced at the other end of the wire, "The commander-in- chief of the army in the field will make a statement." THE general spoke unhurriedly. "We are in contact with the enemy, have been for some hours. We have lost forty tanks and the enemy, we think, sixty or more. No general engagement has yet taken place, but we think decisive action on the enemy's part will be attempted within two hours. The tanks in the field need now, as always, ammunition, spare tanks, and the special supplies for modern warfare. In particular, we re- quire ever-increasing quantities of fog- gas. I appeal to your patriotism for reinforcements of material and men." He hung up the receiver and re- turned to his survey of the board. "Those three listening-posts," he said abruptly, indicating a place near where an enemy tank had been destroyed. "Have they been reoccupied?" "Yes, sir. Just reported. The tank they reported rolled over them, de- stroying the placement. They are dig- ging in." "Tell me," said the general, "when they cease to report again. They will." He watched the board again and without lifting his eyes from it, spoke again. "That listening-post in the dead sec- tor, with the two strayed infantrymen in it. Was it reported?" "Not yet, sir." "Tell me immediately it does." The general leaned back in his chair and deliberately relaxed. He lighted a cigar and puffed at it, his hands quite steady. Other officers, scenting the smoke, glanced up enviously. But the general was the only man who might smoke. The enemy's gases, like the American ones, could go through any gas-mask if in sufficient concentration. The tanks were sealed like so many submarines, and opened their interiors to the outer air only after that air had been thoroughly tested and proven safe. Only the general might use up more than a man's allowance for breath- ing. THE general gazed about him, let- ting his mind rest from its intense strain against the greater strain that would come on it in a few minutes. He 108 ASTOUNDING STORIES looked at a tall blond man who was surveying the board intently, moving away, and returning again, his forehead creased in thought. The general smiled quizzically. That man was the officer appointed to I. I. duty — interpretative intelligence — chosen from a thousand officers be- cause the most exhaustive psychologi- cal tests had proven that his brain worked as nearly as possible like that of the enemy commander. His task was to take the place of the enemy com- mander, to reconstruct from the enemy movements reported and the enemy movements known as nearly as possible the enemy plans. "Well, Harlin," said the general. "Where will he strike?" "He's tricky, sir," said Harlin. "That gap in our listening-posts looks, of course, like preparation for a massing of his tafiks inside our lines. And it would be logical that he fought off our helicopters to keep them from discov- ering his tanks massing in that area." The general nodded. "Quite true," he admitted. "Quite true." "But," said Harlin eagerly. "He'd know we could figure that out. And he may have wiped out listening posts to make us think he was planning just so. He may have fought off our heli- copters, not to keep them from discov- ering his tanks in there, but to keep them from discovering that there were no tanks in there!" "My own idea exactly," said the gen- eral meditatively. "But again, it looks so much like a feint that it may be a serious blow. I dare not risk assuming it to be a feint only." He turned back to the board. "Have those two strayed infantry- men reported yet ?" he asked sharply. "Not yet, sir." THE general drummed on the table. There were four red flashes glow- ing at different points of the board — four points where American tanks or groups of tanks were locked in conflict with the enemy. Somewhere off in the enveloping fog that made all the world a gray chaos, lumbering, crawling mon- sters rammed and battered at each other at infinitely short range. They fought blindly, their guns swinging menacingly and belching lurid flames into the semi-darkness, while from all about them dropped the liquids that meant death to any man who breathed their vapor. Those gases penetrated any gas-mask, and would even strike through the sag-pastes that had made the vesicatory gases of 1918 futile. With tanks by thousands hidden in the fog, four small combats were kept up, four only. Battles fought with tanks as the main arm are necessarily battles of movement, more nearly akin to cavalry battles than any other unless it be fleet actions. When the main bodies come into contact, the issue is decided quickly. There can be no long drawn-out stalemates such as infantry trenches produced in years past. The fighting that had taken place so far, both under the fog and aloft in the air, was outpost skirmishing only. When the main body of the enemy came into action it would be like a whirlwind, and the battle would be won or lost in a matter of minutes only. The general paid no attention to those four conflicts, or their possible meaning. "I want to hear from those two strayed infantrymen," he said quietly. "I must base my orders on what they report. The whole battle, I believe, hinges on what they have to say." He fell silent, watching the board without the tense preoccupation he had shown before. He knew the moves he had to make in any of three eventuali- ties. He watched the board to make sure he would not have to make those moves before he was ready. His whole air was that of waiting: the com- mander-in-chief of the army of the United States, waiting to hear what he would be told by two strayed infantry- men, lost in the fog that covered a bat- tlefield. TANKS 109 THE fog was neither more dense nor any lighter where Corporal Wallis paused to roll his pre-war cig- arette. The tobacco came from the gassed machine-gunner in the pill-box a few yards off. Sergeant Coffee, three yards distant, was a blurred figure. Corporal Wallis put his cigarette into his mouth, struck his match, and puffed delicately. "Ah!" said Corporal Wallis, and cheered considerably. He thought he saw Sergeant Coffee moving toward him and ungenerously hid his ciga- rette's glow. Overhead, a machine-gun suddenly burst into a rattling roar, the sound sweeping above them with incredible speed. Another gun answered it. Ab- ruptly, the whole sky above them was an inferno of such tearing noises and immediately after they began a multi- tudinous bellowing set up. Airplanes on patrol ordinarily kept their engines muffled, in hopes of locating a tank be- low them by its noise. But in actual fighting there was too much power to be gained by cutting out the muffler for any minor motive to take effect. A hundred aircraft above the heads of the two strayed infantrymen were fighting madly about five helicopters. Two hundred yards away, one fell to the earth with a crash, and immediately afterward there was a hollow boom. For an instant even the mist was tinged with yellow from the exploded gaso- line tank. But the roaring above con- tinued — not mounting, as in a battle be- tween opposing patrols of fighting planes, when each side finds height a decisive advantage, but keeping nearly to the same level, little above the bank of cloud. Something came down, roaring, and struck the earth no more than fifty yards away. The impact was terrific, but after it there was dead silence while the thunder above kept on. Sergeant Coffee came leaping to Cor- ' poral Wallis' side. "Helicopters!" he barked. "HunthV tanks an' pill-boxes! Lay down!" He flung himself down to the earth. Wind beat on them suddenly, then an outrageous blast of icy air from above. For an instant the sky light- ened. They saw a hole in the mist, saw the little pill-box clearly, saw a huge framework of supporting screws sweeping swiftly overhead with figures in it watching the ground through wind-angle glasses, and machine-gun- ners firing madly at dancing things in the air. Then it was gone. "One o' ours," shouted Coffee in Wallis' ear. "They' tryin' to find th' Yellows' tanks!" THE center of the roaring seemed to shift, perhaps to the north. Then a roaring drowned out all the other roarings. This ■ one was lower down and approaching in a rush. Something swooped from the south, a dark blotch in the lighter mist above. It was an airplane flying in the mist, a plane that had dived into the fog as into oblivion. It appeared, was gone — and there was a terrific crash. A shat- tering roar drowned out even the dron- ing tumult of a hundred aircraft en- gines. A sheet of flame flashed up, and a thunderous detonation. "Hit a tree," panted Coffee, scram- bling to his feet again. "Suicide club, aimin' for our helicopter." Corporal Wallis was pointing, his lips drawn back in a snarl. "Shut up!" he whispered. "I saw a shadow against that flash! Yeller in- fantryman! Le's get 'im!" "Y'crazy," said Sergeant Coffee, but he strained his eyes and more espe- cially his ears. It was Coffee who clutched Corporal Wallis' wrist and pointed. Wallis could see nothing, but he followed as Coffee moved silently through the gray mist. Presently he too, straining his eyes, saw an indistinct movement. Tb? roaring of motors died away suddenly. The fighting had stopped, a long way off, apparently because the helicopters had been withdrawn. Ex- cept for the booming of artillery a very 110 ASTOUNDING STORIES long distance away, firing unseen at an unseen target, there was no noise at all. "Aimin' for our pill-box," whispered Coffee. They saw ■'the dim shape, moving noiselessly, halt. The dim figure seemed to be casting about for some- thing. It went down on hands and knees and crawled forward. The two infantrymen crept after it. It stopped, and turned around. The two dodged to one side in haste. The enemy in- fantryman crawled off in another di- rection, the two Americans following him as closely as they dared. He halted once more, a dim and grotesque figure in the fog. They saw him fumbling in his belt. He threw something, suddenly. There was a lit- tle tap as of a^ fountain pen dropped upon concrete. Then a hissing sound. That was all, but the enemy infantry- man waited, as if listening. . . . THE two Americans fell upon him as one individual. They bore him to the earth and Coffee dragged at his gas-mask, good tactics in a battle where every man carries gas-grenades. He gasped and fought desperately, in a seeming frenzy of terror. They squatted over him, finally, hav- ing taken away his automatics, and Coffee worked painstakingly to get off his gas-mask while Wallis went poking about in quest of tobacco. "Dawggonef" said Coffee. "This mask is intricate." "He ain't got any pockets," mourned Wallis. Then they examined him more closely.' "It's a whole suit," explained Coffee. "H-m. ... He don't have to bother with sag-paste. He's got him on a land diving-suit." "S-s-say," gasped the prisoner, his language utterly colloquial in spite of the beady eyes and coarse black hair that marked him racially as of the en- emy, "say, don't take off my mask! Don't take off my mask!" "He talks an' everything," observed Coffee in mild amazement. He in- spected the mask again and painstak- ingly smashed the goggles. "Now, big boy, you take your chance with th' rest of us. What' you doin' around here?" The prisoner set his teeth, though deathly pale, and did not reply. "H'm-m. . . ." said Coffee medita- tively. "Let's take him in the pill-box an* let Loot'n't Madison tell us what to do with him." They picked him up. "No! No! For Gawd's sake, no!" cried the prisoner shrilly. "I just gassed it!" THE two halted. Coffee scratched his nose. "Reckon he's lyin', Pete?" he asked. Corporal Wallis shrugged gloomily. "He ain't got any tobacco," he said morosely. "Let's chuck him in first an' see. The prisoner wriggled until Coffee put his own automatic in the small of his back. "How long does that gas last?" he asked, frowning. "Loot'n't Madison wants us to report. There's some fel- lers in there, all gassed up, but we were in there a while back an' it didn't hurt us. How long does it last?" "Fur-fifteen minutes, maybe twenty," chattered the prisoner. "Don't put me in there!" Coffee scratched his nose again and looked at his wrist-watch. "A'right," he conceded, "we give you twenty minutes. Then we chuck you down inside. That is, if you act real agreeable until then. Got anything to smoke?" The prisoner agonizedly opened a zipper slip in his costume and brought out tobacco, even tailor-made ciga- rettes. Coffee pounced on them one second before Wallis. Then he divided them with absorbed and scrupulous fairness. "Right," said Sergeant Coffee com- fortably. He lighted up. "Say, you, if y' want to smoke, here's one o' your TANKS 111 pills. Let's see the gas stuff. How' y' use it?" Wallis had stripped off a heavy belt about the prisoner's waist and it was trailing over his arm. He inspected it now. There were twenty or thirty lit- tle sticks in it, each one barely larger than a lead pencil, of dirty gray color, and each one securely nested in a tube of flannel-lined papier-mache. "These things?" asked Wallis con- tentedly. He was inhaling deeply with that luxurious enjoyment a tailor-made cigarette can give a man who had been remaking butts into smokes for days past. "Don't touch 'em," warned the pris- oner nervously. "You broke my gog- gles. You throw "'em, and they light and catch fire, and that scatters the gas." COFFEE touched the prisoner, in- dicating the ground, and sat down, comfortably smoking one of the prisoner's cigarettes. By his air, he began to approve of his captive. "Say, you," he said curiously, "you talk English pretty good. How'd you learn it?" "I was a waiter," the prisoner ex- plained. "New York. Corner Forty- eighth and Sixth." "My Gawd!" said Coffee. "Me, I used to be a movie operator along there. Forty-ninth. Projection room stuff, you know. Say, you know Heine's place?" "Sure," said the prisoner. "I used to buy Scotch from that blond feller in the back room. With a benzine label for a prescription?" Coffee lay back and slapped his knee. "Ain't it a small world?" he de- manded. "Pete, here, he ain't never been in any town bigger than Chicago. Ever in Chicago?" "Hell," said Wallis, morose yet com- fortable with a tailor-made cigarette. "If you guys want to start a extra war, go to knockin' Chicago. That's all." Coffee looked at his wrist-watch again. "Got ten minutes yet," he observed. "Say, you must know Pete Hanfry — " "Sure I know him," said the enemy prisoner, scornfully. "I waited on him. One day, just before us reserves were called back home. . . ." In the monster tank that was head- quarters the general tapped his fingers on his knees. The pale white light flickered a little as it shone on the board where the bright sparks crawled. White sparks were American tanks. Blue flashes were for enemy tanks sighted and reported, usually in the three-second interval between their identification and the annihilation of the observation-post that had reported them. Red glows showed encounter 3 between American and enemy tanks. There were a dozen red glows visible, with from one to a dozen white sparks hovering about them. It seemed as if the whole front line were about to burst into a glare of red, were about to become one long lane of conflicts in impenetrable obscurity, where metal monsters roared and rumbled and clanked one against the other, bel- lowing and belching flame and ram- ming each other savagely, while from them dripped the liquids that made their breath mean death. There were nightmarish conflicts in progress under the blanket of fo*g, unparalleled save perhaps in the undersea battles between submarines in the previous European war. THE chief of staff looked up, his face drawn. "General," he said harshly, "it looks like a frontal attack all along our line." The general's cigar had gone out. He was pale, but calm with an iron composure. "Yes," he conceded. "But you for- get that blank spot in our line. We do not know what is happening there." "I am not forgetting it. But the en- emy outnumbers us two to one — " "I am waiting," said the general, "to hear from those two infantrymen who 112 ASTOUNDING STORIES reported some time ago from a listen- post in the dead area." The chief of staff pointed to the out- line formed by the red glows where tanks were battling. "Those fights are keeping up too long!" he said sharply. "General, don't you see, they're driving back our line, but they aren't driving it back as fast as if they were throwing their whole weight on it! If they were making a frontal attack there, they'd wipe out the tanks we have facing them; they'd roll right over them! That's a feint! They're concentrating in the dead space — " "I am waiting," said the general softly, "to hear from those two infan- trymen." He looked at the board again and said quietly, "Have the call-signal sent them. They may answer." He struck a match to relight his dead cigar. His fingers barely quivered as they held the match. It might have been excitement — but it might have been foreboding, too. "By the way," he said, holding the match clear, "have our machine-shops and supply-tanks read to move. Every plane is, of course, ready to take the air on signal. But get the aircraft ground personnel in their traveling tanks immediately." Voices began to murmur orders as the general puffed. He watched the board steadily. "Let me know if anything is heard from these infantrymen. . . ." THERE was a definite air of strain within the tank that was head- quarters. It was a sort of tensity that seemed to emanate from the general himself. Where Coffee and Wallis and the prisoner squatted on the ground, how- ever, there was no sign of strain at all. There was a steady gabble of voices. "What kinda rations they give you?" asked Coffee interestedly. The enemy prisoner listed them, with profane side-comments. "Hell," said Wallis gloomily. "Y'ought to see what we get! Las' week they fed us worse'n dogs. An' th' canteen stuff—" "Your tank men, they get treated fancy?" asked the prisoner. Coffee made a reply consisting al- most exclusively of high powered ex- pletives. " — and the infantry gets it in the neck every time," he finished savagely. "We do the work—" Guns began to boom, far away. Wal- lis cocked his ears. "Tanks gettin' together," he judged, gloomily. "If they'd all blow each other to hell an' let us infantry fight this battle — " "Damn the tanks!" said the enemy prisoner viciously. "Look here, you fellers. Look at me. They sent a bat- talion of us out, in two waves. We hike along by compass through the fog, supposed to be five paces apart. We come on a pill-box or listenin' post, we gas it an' go on. We try not to make a noise. We try not to get seen before we use our gas. We go on, deep in your lines as we can. We hear one of your tanks, we dodge it if we can, so we don't get seen at all. O'course we give it a dose of gas in passing, just in case. But we don't get any orders about how far to go or how to come back. We ask for recognition signals for our own tanks, an' they grin an' say we won't see none of our tanks till the battle's over. They say 'Re-form an' march back when the fog is out.' Ain't that pretty for you ?" "You second wave?" asked Coffee, with interest. ' The prisoner nodded. / "Mopping up," he said bitterly, "what the first wave left. No fun in that! We go along gassin' dead men, an' all the time your tanks is ravin' around to find out what's happenin' to their listenin'-posts. They run into us—" Coffee nodded sympathetically. "The infantry always gets the dirty end of the stick," said Wallis mo- rosely. TANKS 113 SOMEWHERE, something blew up with a violent explosion. The noise of battle in the distance became heavier and heavier. "Goin' it strong," said the prisoner, listening. "Yeh," said Coffee. He looked at his wrist-watch. "Say, that twenty min- utes is up. You go down in there first, big boy." They stood beside the little pill-box. The prisoner's knees shook. "Say, fellers," he said pleadingly, "they told us that stuff would scatter in twenty minutes, but you busted my mask. Yours ain't any good against this gas. I'll have to go down in there if you fellers make me, but — " Coffee lighted another of the pris- oner's tailor-made cigarettes. "Give you five minutes more," he said graciously. "I don't suppose it'll ruin the war." They sat down relievedly again, while the fog-gas made all the earth invisible behind a pall of grayness, a grayness from which the noises of bat- tle came. In the tank that was headquarters, the air of strain was pronounced. The maneuver-board showed the situation as close to desperation, now. The re- serve-tank positions had been switched on the board, dim orange glows, massed in curiously precise blocks. And little squares of green showed there that the supply and machine-shop tanks were massed. They were moving slowly across the maneuver-board. But the principal change lay in the front-line indications. The red glows that showed where tank battles were in progress formed an irregularly curved line, now. There were twenty or more such isolated bat- tles in progress, varying from sin- gle combats between single tanks to greater conflicts where twenty to thirty tanks to a side were engaged. And the positions of those conflicts were changing constantly, and invariably the American tanks were being pushed back. A.st. St. THE two staff officers behind the general were nearly silent. There were few sparks crawling within the American lines now. Nearly every one had been diverted into the front- line battles. The two men watched the board with ferverish intensity, watch- ing the red glows moving back, and back. . . . The chief of staff was shaking like a leaf, watching the American line stretched, and stretched. . . . The general looked at him with a twisted smile. "I know my opponent," he said sud- denly. "I had lunch with him once in Vienna. We were attending a disarm- ament conference." He seemed to be amused at the ironic statement. "We talked war and battles, of course. And he showed me, drawing on the table- cloth, the tactical scheme that should have been used at Cambrai, back in 1917. It was a singularly perfect plan. It was a beautiful one." "General," burst out one of the two staff officers behind him. "I need twenty tanks from the reserves." "Take them," said the general. He went on, addressing his chief of staff. "It was an utterly flawless plan. I talked to other men. We were all pretty busy estimating each other there, we soldiers. We discussed each other with some freedom, I may say. And I formed the opinion that the man who is in command of the enemy is an artist: a soldier with the spirit of an amateur. He's a very skilful fencer, by the way. Doesn't that suggest any- thing?" The chief of staff had his eyes glued to the board. "That is a feint, sir. A strong feint, yes, but he has his force concentrated in the dead area." "You are not listening, sir," said the general, reprovingly. "I am saying that my opponent is an artist, an ama- teur, the sort of person who delights in the delicate work of fencing. I, sir, would thank God for the chance to de- feat my enemy. He has twice my force, 114 ASTOUNDING STORIES but he will not be content merely to defeat me. He will want to defeat me by a plan of consummate artistry, which will arouse admiration among soldiers for years to come." "But General, every minute, every second — " "We are losing men, of whom we have plenty, and tanks, of which we have not enough. True, very true," conceded the general. "But I am wait- ing to hear from two strayed infantry- men. When they report, I will speak to them myself." "But, sir," cried the chief of staff, withheld only by the iron habit of dis- cipline from violent action and the tak- ing over of command himself, "they may be dead! You can't risk this bat- tle waiting for them! You can't risk it, sir! You can't!" "They are not dead," said the gen- eral coolly. "They cannot be dead. Sometimes, sir, we must obey the motto on our coins. Our country needs this battle to be won. We have -got to win it, sir! And the only way to win it — " THE signal-light at his telephone glowed. The general snatched it up, his hands quivering. But his voice, was steady and deliberate as he spoke. "Hello, Sergeant — Sergeant Coffee, is it? . . . Very well, Sergeant. Tell me what you've found out. . . . Your prisoner objects to his rations, eh? Very well, go on. . . . How did he gas our listening-posts? . . . He did, eh? He got turned around and you caught him wandering about? . . . Oh, he was second wave ! They weren't taking any chances on any of our listening-posts reporting their tanks, eh? . . . Say that again, Sergeant Coffee!" The general's tone had changed indescriba- bly. "Your prisoner has no recogni- tion signals for his own tanks? They told him he wouldn't see any of them until the battle was over? . . . Thank you, Sergeant. One of our tanks will stop for you. This is the commanding general speaking." He rang off, his eyes blazing. Re- laxation was gone. He was a dynamo, snapping orders. "Supply tanks, machine-shop tanks, ground forces of the air service, con- centrate here!" His finger rested on a spot in the middle of the dead area. "Reserve tanks take position behind them. Draw off every tank we've got — take 'em out of action ! — and mass them in front, on a line with our former first line of outposts. Every airplane and helicopter take the air and engage in general combat with the enemy, where- ever the enemy may be found and in whatever force. And our tanks move straight through here!" Orders were snapping into telephone transmitters. The commands had been relayed before their import was fully realized. Then there was a gasp. "General!" cried the chief of staff. "If the enemy is massed there, he'll de- stroy our forces in detail as they take position !" "He isn't massed there," said the general, his eyes blazing. "The infan- trymen who were gassing our listen- ing-posts were given no recognition signals for their tanks. Sergeant Cof- fee's prisoner has his gas-mask broken and is in deadly fear. The enemy com- mander is foolish in many ways, per- haps, but not foolish enough to break down morale by refusing recognition signals to his own men who will need them. And look at the beautiful plan he's got." HE sketched half a dozen lines with his fingers, moving them in lightning gestures as his orders took effect. "His main force is here, behind those skirmishes that look like a feint. As fast as we reinforce our skirmishing- line, he reinforces his — just enough to drive our tanks back slowly. It looks like a strong feint, but it's a trap ! This dead space is empty. He thinks we are concentrating to face it. When he is sure of it — his helicopters will sweep across any minute, now, to see — he'll TANKS 115 throw his whole force on our front line. It'll crumple up. His whole fighting force will smash through to take us, facing the dead space, in the rear! With twice our numbers, he'll drive us before him." "But general! You're ordering a concentration there ! You're falling in with his plans!" The general laughed. "I had lunch with the general in command over there, once upon a time. He is an artist. He won't be content with a defeat like that! He'll want to make his battle a masterpiece, a work of art! There's just one touch he can add. He has to have reserves to pro- tect his supply-tanks and machine- shops. They're fixed. The ideal touch, the perfect tactical fillip, will be — Here! Look. He expects to smash in our rear, here. The heaviest blow will fall here. He will swing around our right wing, drive us out of the dead area into his own lines — and drive us on his reserves ! Do you see it? He'll use every tank he's got in one beauti- ful final blow. We'll be outwitted, out- numbered, out-flanked and finally caught between his main body and his reserves and pounded to bits. It is a perfect, a masterly bit of work!" He watched the board, hawklike. "We'll concentrate, but our machine- shops and supplies will concentrate with us. Before he has time to take us in rear we'll drive ahead, in just the line he plans for us ! We don't wait to be driven into his reserves. We roll into them and over them! We smash his supplies! We destroy his shops! And then we can advance along his line of communication and destroy it, our own depots being blown up— give the orders when necessary — and leaving him stranded with motor-driven tanks, motorized artilery, and nothing to run his motors with! He'll be marooned beyond help in the middle of our coun- try, and we will have him at our mercy when his tanks run out of fuel. As a matter of fact, I shall expect him to surrender in three days." THE little blocks of green and yel- low that had showed the position of the reserve and supply-tanks, changed abruptly to white, and began to crawl across the maneuver-board. Other little white sparks turned about. Every white spark upon the maneuver- board suddenly took to itself a new di- rection. "Disconnect cables," said the gen- eral, crisply. "We move with our tanks, in the lead!" The monotonous humming of the electric generator was drowned out in a thunderous uproar that was muffled as an air-tight door was shut abruptly. Fifteen seconds later there was a vio- lent lurch, and the colossal tank was on the move in the midst of a crawling, thundering horde of metal monsters whose lumbering progress shook the earth. Sergeant Coffee, still blinking his amazement, absent-mindedly lighted the last of his share of the cigarettes looted from the prisoner. "The big guy himself!" he said, still stunned. "My Gawd! The big guy himself!" A distant thunder began, a deep- toned rumbling that seemed to come from the rear. It came nearer and grew louder. A peculiar quivering seemed to set up in the earth. The noise was tanks moving through the fog, not one tank or two tanks, or twenty tanks, but all the tanks in creation rumbling and lurching at their topmost speed in ser- ried array. Corporal Wallis heard, and turned pale. The prisoner heard, and his knees caved in. "Hell," said Corporal Wallis dis- pairingly. "They can't see us, an' they couldn't dodge us if they did!" The prisoner wailed, and slumped to the floor. Coffee picked him up by the collar and jerked him out of the pill-box. "C'mon Pete," he ordered briefly. "They ain't givin' us a infantryman's chance, but maybe we can do some dodgin'!" 116 ASTOUNDING STORIES THEN the roar of engines, of metal treads crushing upon earth and clanking upon their joints, drowned out all possible other sounds. Before the three men beside the pill-box could have moved a muscle, monster shapes loomed up, rushing, rolling, lurching, squeaking. They thundered past, and the hot fumes of their exhausts envel- oped the trio. Coffee growled and put himself in a position of defiance, his feet braced against the concrete of the pill-box dome. His expression was snarling and angry but, surreptitiously, he crossed himself. He heard the fellows of the two tanks that had roared by him, thundering along in alignment to right and left. A twenty-yard space, and a second row of the monsters came hurt- ling on, gun muzzles gaping, gas-tubes elevated, spitting smoke from their ex- hausts that was even thicker than the fog. A third row, a fourth, a fifth. . . . The universe was a monster uproar. One could not think in this volume of sound. It seemed that there was fight- ing overhead. Crackling noises came feebly through the reverberating up- roar that was the army of the United States in full charge. Something came whirling down through the overhang- ing mist and exploded in a lurid flare that for a second or two cast the gro- tesque shadows of a row of tanks clearly before the trio of shaken in- fantrymen. Still the tanks came on and roared past. Twenty tanks, twenty-one . . . twenty-two. . . . Coffee lost count, dazed and almost stunned by the sheer noise. It rose from the earth and seemed to be echoed back from the top- most limit of the skies. It was a colos- sal din, an incredible uproar, a sus- tained thunder that beat at the ear- drums like the reiterated concussions of a thousand guns that fired without ceasing. There was no intermission, no cessation of the tumult. Row after row after row of the monsters roared by, beaked and armed, going greedily with hungry guns into battle. AND then, for a space of seconds, no tanks passed. Through the pandemonium of their going, however, the sound of firing somehow seemed to creep. It was gunfire of incredible in- tensity, and it came from the direction in which the front-rank tanks were heading. "Forty-eight, forty-nine, forty-ten, forty-'leven," muttered Coffee dazedly, his senses beaten down almost to un- consciousness by the ordeal of sound. "Gawd! The whole army went by!" The roaring of the fighting-tanks was less, but it was still a monstrous din. Through it, however, came now a series of concussions that were so close together that they were inseparable, and so violent that they were like slaps upon the chest. Then came other noises, louder only because nearer. These were different noises, too, from those the fighting- tanks had made. Lighter noises. The curious, misshapen service tanks began to rush by, of all sizes and all shapes. Fuel-carrier tanks. Machine-shop tanks, huge ones, these. Commissary tanks. . . . Something enormous and glistening stopped short. A door opened. A voice roared an order. The three men, beaten and whipped by noise, stared dumbly. "Sergeant Coffee!" roared the voice. "Bring your men! Quick!" Coffee dragged himself back to a semblance of life. Corporal Wallis moved forward, sagging. The two of them loaded their prisoner into the door and tumbled in. They were in- stantly sent into a heap as the tank took up its progress again with a sud- den sharp leap. "Good man," grinned a sooty-faced officer, clinging to a handhold. "The general sent special orders you were to be picked up. Said you'd won the bat- tle. It isn't finished yet, but when the general says that — " "Battle?" said Coffee dully. "This ain't my battle. It's a parade of a lot of damn tanks!" TANKS 117 THERE was a howl of joy from somewhere above. Discipline in the machine-shop tanks was strict enough, but vastly different in kind from the formality of the fighting-ma- chines. "Contact!" roared the voice again. "General wireless is going again ! Our fellows have rolled over their reserves and are smashing their machine-shops and supplies!" Yells reverberated deafeningly inside the steel walls, already filled with tu- mult from the running motors and rumbling treads. "Smashed 'em up!" shrieked the voice above, insane with joy. "Smashed 'em! Smashed 'em! Smashed 'em! We've wiped out their whole reserve and — " A series of detonations came through even the steel shell of the lurching tank. Detonations so violent, so monstrous, that even through the springs and treads of the tank the earth-concussion could be felt. "There goes their ammunition! We set off all their dumps!" There was sheer pandemonium in- side the service-tank, speeding behind the fighting force with only a thin skin of reserve-tanks between it and a panic- stricken, mechanically pursuing enemy. "Yell, you birds!" screamed the voice. "The general says we've won the battle ! Thanks to the fighting force! We're to go on and wipe out the enemy line of communications, let- ting him chase us till his gas gives out ! Then we come back and pound him to bits! Our tanks have wiped him out!" COFFEE managed to find some- thing to hold on to. He struggled to his feet. Corporal Wallrs, recov- ing from the certainty of death and the torture of sound, was being very sea- sick from the tank's motion. The pris- oner moved away from him on the steel floor. He looked gloomily up at Cof- fee. "Listen to 'em," said Coffee bitterly. "Tanks! Tanks! Tanks! Hell! If they'd given us infantry a chance — " "You said it," said the prisoner sav- agely. "This is a hell of a way to fight a war." Corporal Wallis turned a greenish face to them. "The infantry always gets the dirty end of the stick," he gasped. "Now they — now they' makin' infantry ride in tanks! Hell!" WRITE IIS and tell us just what kind of stories you want us to print in Astounding Stories It is your magazine and we want you to help run it to your satisfaction! — THE EDITOR Wildly racing through the night, missing other cars by a breath, the visible car continued its pursuit of — what? Invisible Death By Anthony Pelcher THE inquest into the mysterious death of Darius Darrow, savant, inventor, recluse and eccentric, resembled a scientific conven- tion. Men and women of high scientific attain- ment, and, in some instances, world fame, at- tended to hear first hand the strange, uncanny, unbelievable circumstances as hinted by the newspapers. Mrs. Susan Darrow, the widow, was the paramount witness. She appeared a quaint figure as she took the stand. Tearful, yet alert, this little woman betrayed the in- telligence that had made her one of the world's foremost chem- ists. She gave her age as fifty-eight, but if it had not been for her snowy hair she would have looked much younger. She was 118 On Lees' quick and clever action de- pended the life of "Old Perk" Ferguson, the millionaire manufacturer threatened by the uncanny, invisible killer. INVISIBLE DEATH 119 small but not frail, and had expressive blue eyes. She had a firm little nose and chin, and was garbed in black silk garments of a fashion evidently dat- ing back a decade. Although not modern in dress, her answers to questions regarding scien- tific and business affairs involved in the mysterious case, proved she was thoroughly abreast of the times in all other particulars. "You believe your husband was mur- dered?" bluntly asked the examiner at one stage. "That is my opinion," she said, then added : "It might have been some scien- tific accident, the nature of which I cannot fathom We were confidential in all matters except my husband's work. He reserved the right to be se- cretive about the scientific problems on which he was working." "Can you throw any light on a mo- tive for such a crime?" "The motive seems self-evident. He was working on an invention that he said would do away with war and would make the owner of the device a practical world dictator, should he choose to exercise such power. The device was completed. The murderer killed him to secure his device. That all seems plain enough." "Was anything else of value taken?" "We had nothing else of value about the place. I was never given to jew- elry. The furnishings and equipment were undisturbed. It is quite evident, I think, that the thief was no ordinary petty burglar." THE attorney interposed: "I be- lieve we had better let Mrs. Dar- row tell this story from the beginning in her own way. There are only two really important witnesses. Whatever she can remember to recite might be of value to the authorities. Now, Mrs. Darrow, how long had you lived at Brooknook? Begin there and just let your story unfold. Try to control your nerves and emotions." "I am not emotional. I am not nervous," said the quaint little woman, bravely. "My heart hurts, that is all. "The place was named by my father. We inherited it at his death, thirty years ago, and moved in. My two children were born and died there. At first we kept the servants and main- tained all of the thirty-two rooms. But after the children were gone, we both gave ourselves over to study and we began to close one room after another, releasing the servants one by one." "How many rooms do you occupy now?" "We lived in three, a living-room, kitchen and bedroom. The two big parlors were turned into a laboratory. We both worked there. It was there my husband met his death at his work. Sometimes we worked together, some- times independently. I did all my own housework, except the laundry, which I sent out. We had no visitors. We lived for each other and our work." "Tell us about the rooms that were not occupied." "We left ^bem just as they always had been. I have not been in any of these rooms for twenty years. Once I looked into the little girl's room — my daughter's room. It was dusty and cobwebby, but undisturbed by human hand. My husband peered in over my shoulder. I closed the door. We turned away in each other's arms." HERE the little old woman fell to weeping softly into her lace handkerchief. Minutes lapsed as the court waited, respecting her grief. "Were these rooms locked?" asked the attorney finally. "No," said the widow, recovering, as she dabbed at her eyes. "We feared no one. All the rooms were closed, but not locked. The outside doors were seldom locked. We lived in our own world. For appearance' sake we kept up the grounds. Peck, the gardener, kept the grounds, as you know. He called in outside help when necessary. This was his affair. We never both- ered him. He lived probably a half 120 ASTOUNDING STORIES mile up the road. The first of each month he would come for his pay. He was practically our only visitor. "When it was necessary to see our attorney or other connections, Peck would drive us. At first he used to drive our horses. Ten years ago we pastured the horses for life and bought the small car. We seldom went out. We have no close friends and no rela- tives nearer than the Pacific coast. They are distant cousins. You see, we were rather alone in the world since the children went away — we never spoke of them as being dead." Again the court was hushed. The coroner and the attorney took occasion to blow their noses rather violently. "On May 27th, the day your hus- hand died, what happened, as you re- remember it?" asked the attorney. "We arose and had breakfast as usual. I was puttering about the rooms. My husband kissed me and started for the laboratory. I was in the kitchen. It was about ten o'clock when I finished in the kitchen and went into the living room which adjoins the laboratory. I had been rather fretted, something unusual for me. It seemed I dimly sensed the presence of someone near me, someone I did not know, an outsider. I thought it was foolish of me and buckled up. "But when I went into the living room, it seemed as if some invisible presence were following me. I could hear the low hum of my husband's de- vice. The door of the laboratory was open. He called to me and said: " 'Sue dear, it seems strange, but I made two models of this set and now I can find only one. You could not have misplaced the other by any chance, could you?' "I assured him I knew nothing of it and he said, 'Hum-m, that's funny.' Then he went back into the library and closed the door. The humming con- tinued. I was more annoyed than ever, but I did not want to bother my hus- band. Then a queer thing happened. I saw the door of the laboratory open and close, but I did not see anyone. The next instant, I heard my hus- band's outcry. It was more a groan than a scream. "T RUSHED into the laboratory. X My husband was lying by his slate-topped table. The device, I no- ticed, was gone. It was no bigger than a coffee-mill, I thought, as I bent over my husband. Strange how such a thought could have crowded in at such a time. "My husband's head was bleeding. It was cut, a long gash over the ear, just below the bald spot. It must have been a frightful blow. I looked in his eyes. My nurse's and pharmaceutical course gave me knowledge which sent a chill to my heart. He was dead. I must have fainted. "When I recovered I ran for Peck. I found him near the house, coming my way and holding his right eye. " 'Something struck me,' he said. Then, seeing me so pale, he said, 'My God! Mrs. Darrow, what has hap- pened ?' " 'Run for the doctor,' I said. When the doctor came he called the police and coroner. They told me not to dis- turb the body. Later they took it away, and the gardener told me — " "Never mind what Peck told you," interrupted the attorney. "We will let him tell it. Is that all you can tell us about the death itself?" But the widow was weeping now, so violently that the court ordered her excused. THE gardener was called and took the stand displaying a big, black eye, which offered comedy relief to a pathetic situation. "On the main road to the east," he began after preliminary questioning, "was a small car which had been parked there all morning. I noticed it because it had no license plates. It was visible from the inside of the grounds, but was hidden from the road by a hedge. It made me wonder be- INVISIBLE DEATH 121 cause it was just inside our grounds. "X had some very special red flags which I planted as a border back of pink geraniums. They were doing fine. I got them from the Fabrish seed house. There are no plants like Fab- rish's — I wouldn't give a snap of my finger for all the other — " "Just a minute," interrupted the at- torney. He told the gardener to never mind the geraniums and flags, but to tell just what happened. "Well, I was bending over the bor- der bed when I heard sounds like some- one running along the gravel path to- wards me. I heard a humming like a bumble bee and I jumped to my feet. Just then something hit me in the eye and knocked me down. Yes sir, knocked me plumb down, and — " "Then what happened ? Never mind the asides, the extras — tell us just the simple facts," instructed the attorney. "Well, you won't believe it, but I heard the footsteps leave the road. The geraniums were badly trampled. I looked at the parked automobile and could hear the hum coming from there. "The machine started and turned into the road — " "Did you notice anyone at the wheel?" "That's what you're not going to be- lieve. There wasn't anybody in that auto at all. I didn't see anyone at any time. The auto started itself, and what is more, that auto only went about a hundred yards when it disappeared altogether — like that — like a flash." "Did it turn off the road?" "I didn't turn anywhere. It was in the middle of the road. It just dis- appeared right in the middle of the road. It started without a driver, it turned north without a driver, and went on by itself for about a hundred yards. Then it vanished in the middle of the road. Just dropped out of sight." The court-room was hushed. The audience and court attaches were awe stricken and looked their incredulity. "Do you mean to tell us that auto drove itself?" asked the court sternly. THE witness was completely con- fused. The attorney came to his rescue, looked at the court, and said: "He has told that same story a hun- dred times, and he will stick to it. It seems impossible, but has not Mrs. Darrow told us she heard this hum- ming and saw nothing? With the purely perfunctory recitals of the doc- tor and the constabulary this court and the jury have heard all there is to hear. We have no more witnesses. That is all there is. "The jury will have to decide from the evidence whether this case is acci- dent or murder. The doctor and two experts have reported that the wound appeared to have been made by some blunt instrument, swung powerfully. The skull under the wound and back of the ear was simply crushed. Death was instantaneous. It all happened in broad daylight." After an hour's deliberation the jury decided the savant came to his death in his laboratory from a blow on the skull received in some manner un- known. The crowd filed out, spiritedly dis- cussing the unusual crime. In the crowd was Perkins Ferguson, known as "Old Perk," head of the Schefert Engineering Corporation, who paid royalty on some of the Darrow patents. With him was Damon Farnsworth, his first vice-president. "Well, what do you think of it?" asked Farnsworth, biting into a black cigar. "Damned weird, isn't it?" replied "Old Perk." "I have my own theory, however," he added, "but I am going to know a whole lot more about this case before I venture it." The pair climbed into Ferguson's car discussing the Darrow death case with furrowed brows. HAT might be termed an extra- ordinary meeting of the direc- tors of the Schefert Engineering Cor- poration, was held a few days later in a big building in the financial district. 122 ASTOUNDING STORIES The rich furnishings of the direc- tors' room indicated, better than Brad- street's, the great wealth of the cor- poration. Uniformed pages stood at attention at each end of the long, ma- hogany table at which were seated the fourteen directors of the company. All were men of wealth, standing and engineering knowledge. The departed Darrow often had been summoned to such meetings, and at this one there was a hush because of his recent de- mise. After a batch of preliminary busi- ness had been transacted, Ferguson arose and cleared his throat. The di- rectors leaned forward in their chairs expectantly. The page boys lost their mechanical attitude for the instant and fairly craned their necks around the bulks of the forms in front of them. "The Darrow case has taken a sud- den and sinister turn," said the presi- dent. "I have a letter. I will read it: Old Perk : Get wise to yourself. We are in a position to destroy you and all the pot-bellies in the Wall Street crowd. If you want to die of old age, remember what happened to Darrow and begin de- claring us in on Wall Street divi- dends. If you do not you will fol- low Darrow in the same way. "Our first demand is for $100,- 000. Leave this amount in hun- dreds and fifties in the rubbish can at the corner of 50th Street and Broadway at 10 A. M. next Thursday. If you fail we will break your damned neck. Bring the police with you if you like. Invisible Death. FERGUSON passed the letter around for inspection. It was painstakingly printed, evidently from the type in a rubber stamp set such as is sold in toy stores. "I have decided," said Perkins at length, "to give this case to Walter Lees. He has never failed us in me- chanical, chemical, or any form of scientific problem. I hope he will not fail in this. He will work indepen- dently of the police, who have re- quested that we keep the appointment at 50th Street and Broadway at the hour named. We will deposit a roll of newspapers, around which has been wrapped a fifty dollar bill, and then we will stand by while the awaiting detectives do their duty." "You do not think anyone is going to call for any supposed package of money at one of the most congested corners in the world in broad day- light?" asked a director at the end of the table. "Why not?" asked Ferguson. "A seedy individual could pick a package from a rubbish can at that corner with- out attracting the least attention." "I guess you're right," agreed the doubting one. "I know I'm right," said the presi- dent. And he usually was. "I have already arranged to have Lees instructed in his work," Ferguson volunteered as a pause came in the buzz of conversation about the table. "Lees is young, but he is capable." There was general discussion of the strange case of Darius Darrow; the room filled with the blue haze of many cigars. Suddenly a low, humming sound was heard in the room. Papers on the directors' table were bunched as if by unseen hands, and thrown to the ceiling, from which they descended like flakes of snow and scattered about the room. A book of minutes was torn from the hands of a secretary. It was raised and brought down on vice-president Farnsworth's head. A chair was pulled out from under another director and he was deposited in an undignified heap on the floor. Another director acted as though he had been tripped, and he fell on top of Farnsworth. Two big vases crashed to the floor in bits. Other decorative objects were scattered about. The directors who had been hurtled INVISIBLE DEATH 123 to the floor stood up with expressions of comical surprise on their features. Their chairs catapulted into a far cor- ner of the room, one after the other. Startled expressions resounded from the group. A small bookcase fell on its front with a crash of glass. Ferguson's cane jumped in the air and crashed a win- dow pane. The humming ceased suddenly. THE room was a wreck. The assem- bled men stood aghast. They were simply nonplused. Finally they phoned for the police. After hearing the strange recital from so many highly reputable wit- nesses, a detective sergeant, who had responded to the call with others, re- ported to headquarters. A uniformed police guard was sent to the place with instructions to re- main on duty until relieved. Ferguson sent for Walter Lees, the young engineer of whom he had spoken to the directorate. Assigned to the task of unraveling the Darrow death mystery, Lees ran true to form by getting busy at once. This was at midnight of the day of the surprising directors' meeting. Lees owned a big car; he piled into it and started for the scene of the crime. Daybreak found him examining every inch of the road around the Darrow estate. Then he searched the hedge along the east road, where the phan- tom auto had disappeared after the crime. The brush along the opposite side of the thoroughfare was also gone over. Passing autos had stopped to ask the meaning of his flashlight. Lees ex- plained he had lost a pocketbook. It was as good an excuse as any and served to keep him from drawing a crowd. He found nothing to reward his long and painstaking efforts. At seven A. M. he decided to inter- view the Darrow widow, and found her already up and about her kitchen, weeping softly as she worked. She bade him be seated in the living room. "No, I am not afraid to stay here alone," she said in reply to Lees' first question. "Whoever killed my hus- band did so to get possession of his second model. They had already stolen the first. I have thought since that they were afraid that the finding of the second model after his death would aid in their detection. For some rea- son they had to have both models." She agreed to tell all she knew of the case. Lees listened to the long re- cital as already recorded at the cor- oner's inquest. By adroit questioning Lees gained just one new fact. Mrs. Darrow remembered that she had called her husband, just before he re- tired to his laboratory, to fix a towel hanger in the kitchen. "He found the pivot needed oiling," explained the widow. "That was all. He oiled it and went into the laboratory." THE idea of one of the world's greatest mechanical engineers stopping his work to oil a towel han- ger caused Lees to smile, but Mrs. Darrow did not smile. "My husband was a genius at re- pairing about the house," she said, in all seriousness. "I can imagine so," agreed Lees. The conversation ceased. Lees sat for a few minutes with his head in his hands, thinking deeply. Finally he said: "I am convinced that someone who was well aware of your husband's hab- its committed this crime. Do you be- lieve, positively, that the gardener is above suspicion?" "Oh, it couldn't have been Peck," insisted Mrs. Darrow. "I had seen him down near the gate from the window. He was too far from the house, and besides, he was devoted to us both." "Then it was somebody from the neighborhood," said Lees. "Maybe so," replied Mrs. Darrow, noncommittally. "Who lives in the next house south?" 124 ASTOUNDING STORIES "That is towards the city," mused the widow. "There are no houses south on either side of the road for a little further than a mile, when you reach the town limits of Farsdale. The town line is about half-way between, and marks the southern end of this estate." "Who lives in the first house to the north?" "That is the cottage of Peck, the gardener." "How near is the next house ?" "That was the parcel my father sold. It is about three acres, and in the cen- ter, or about the center, is the house built by Adolph Jouret, who bought the land. He lives there with his daughter. They built a magnificent place. The brook that traverses our grounds rises at a spring back of his house. Save for two West Indian ser- vants, they are alone. The servants live in Farsdale and motor back and forth." "T X THAT do you know of this— VV what's his name?" queried Lees, who had assumed the role of ex- aminer. "Jouret? Very little. He is some sort of a circus man or showman, or was before he retired. He once had wealth, but my husband, some weeks ago, said that because of ill-advised investments he was not so well rated as formerly. I had the feeling that he might be forced to give up the place. I just felt that. I never heard it. I am so sorry because of the daugh- ter. She is beautiful girl, and seemed kindly, the one time I saw her. She was about twelve then. I do not like to say it, but she seemed a little dazed or slow witted, but really beautiful." Mrs. Darrow fell to smoothing out the folds in her house apron as Lees asked : "When was the only time you saw her?" "Ten years ago, about. Just after my father's death. They called on us. I We did not care to cotinue the friend- ship, as Jouret seemed a little flam- boyant — his circus nature, I suppose. Anyway, we were quiet folks, and there was no need of close association with neighbors. "I remember," continued the widow, after a pause, "that Jouret, when he heard my husband was a scientist, sim- ulated an interest in science. He did have a smattering knowledge of sci- ence, but he was plainly affected, so we decided to just let him drop. No ill-feeling. We just — well, we were not interested." "You do not approve of circus peo- ple?" "It is not that. Any honest work is honorable. It seems commendable to furnish amusement for the public. I know little about people of his profes- sion but I am sure they are perfectly all right. It was Jouret, personally. He seemed noisy and insincere. The girl was nice. I loved her." "That is all you know of the Jourets?" "That is all." "Mrs. Darrow, I wish to go through this house from attic to basement. Have you any objections?" "None whatever. Make yourself free, but do not attach any significance to what appears to be a secret passage- way and cave. My father was a bio- logical chemist. He used to experi- ment much with small animals. He had a cave where he stored chemicals, and I believe you will find old chemicals stored down there now. I disturbed nothing." The widow forced a smile to her lips. "Will you excuse me?" she con- cluded. "I am trying to carry on." LEES, carrying a flashlight, began a systematic search of the prem- ises. He made his way up a winding staircase, through dust and cobwebs to the attic. He found the top story filled . with trunks and bits of furniture of a previous generation. All was in order, but dust-covered and cobwebby. "Someone has been here before me," INVISIBLE DEATH 125 he said to himself, brushing a mist of cobwebs from his coat sleeves. "There is a path brushed through the spider- webs." Turning his flashlight on the floor, he exclaimed : "And here are footprints in the dust. Well HI be—!" Then, after some study, he mused : "Of course there has been someone here. The killer of Darrow probably has been here to see what he could see. It was no great task. The doors were never locked. The footprints are of no value except to give me the size of his shoes." He measured the footprints careful- ly. Then he went downstairs and phoned the measurements to a local shoe dealer, asking him to give him the trade size of shoes which would make such prints. "They are number nines," decided the shoe dealer. Lees then returned to resume his search in the rooms and corridors. "Wonder if Jouret wears nines," he questioned himself. "But what if he does? I couldn't convict him on that score. However, it might help." Then he fell to searching through the old trunks. He found old photo- graphs, articles of apparel, knicknacks — grandmother's and grandfather's be- longings all of them, and some chil- dren's clothes of the days when little boys wore ruffles about their necks and little girls' pantalettes reached to their ankles. Carefully each article was replaced. He made his way down to the third and then the second floor. Through cobwebby corridors and bedchambers he searched, but found nothing further to aid his case. In the unused rooms on the first floor he found an old spinning-wheel, candle moulds and utensils used in cooking in the days when housewives cooked over an open fire. HE did not find the "secret" pas- sageway until Mrs. Darrow came to his aid. Leading from the basement was a coal chute. This shoot was formed in a triangle with the point under a trap. It was man-high at the cellar opening and its floor was a slide for fuel. It had been in use, evidently, quite recently. At the cellar wall of this chute, Mrs. Darrow pressed what appeared to be a knot in the old timber and pushed open a door. A dank odor issued forth as the door was opened. Lees entered the passage and Mrs. Darrow returned upstairs. Following the underground passage- way, Lees came onto a cave about 14 by 14 feet in size with a ceiling and walls of arched brick. It had evidently been built before the days of cement con- struction. A long bench and shelves with car- boys and jars of chemicals were the only furnishings. Lees sounded all the walls, but found nothing further to interest him. Lees returned to town at the- urgent call of "Old Perk," who had arranged with great care to keep the appoint- ment at 50th street and Broadway, where the decoy package was to be left. He had snipers in nearby win- dows. He had detectives, dressed in the gay garb of the habitues of the neighborhood, patrolling the corner, and he and his own guard parked an automobile, against all traffic rules, at the curb near the rubbish can. An office boy sauntered up to the rubbish can, threw in the decoy package, and sauntered away. A second later there was a low hum- ming sound. The decoy package fairly jumped out of the rubbish can and dis- appeared in thin air. The humming sound seemed to round the corner into 50th Street. De- tectives followed on the jump. The humming approached an auto at the curb and the auto's self starter began to function. As the police stood near by, enough to have jumped into the auto, the whole machine, a big touring car, actually disappeared before their eyes. 126 ASTOUNDING STORIES Consternation is a mild word when used to describe the result. ALL forces -set to trap the extor- tionists gathered in a group, and in their surprise and disappointment began discussing the queer case in loud tones. A crowd was gathering which was blocking traffic. "Old Perk" was the first to recover from his surprise. "Get the hell out of this neighbor- hood," he yelled to his working forces. "All of you get down to my office !" The working force dissolved and "Old Perk" drove away. At "Old Perk's" office shortly after- ward a conference of the defeated forces of the law and of science was held. "Old Perk" stormed and raged and the detective captain in charge funned and fussed, but nothing came of it all. One was as powerless as another. Fi- nally the conference adjourned. The next morning in the mail, Per- kins Ferguson, president of Schefert Engineering Corporation, received a letter carefully printed in rubber type. It read: Thanks for the $50 bill. You cheated us by $99,950. This will never do. Don't be like that. You poor fools, you make us increase our demand. We double it. Leave $200,000 for us on your desk and leave the desk unlocked. We will get it. Every time you ignore one of our demands, one of your num- ber will die. Better take this mat- ter seriously. Last warning. Invisible Death. "Not another dime will they get^>ut of me," mused Ferguson. He started opening the rest of his mail. A clerk entered and handed him a telegram. It read : "Damon Farnsworth struck down at breakfast table. Family heard humming sound as he fell from his chair. Removed to Medi- cal Center. Skull reported frac- tured. May die. William Devins, Chief of Police, • Larchmont." Ferguson wildly seized the tele- phone. "Get me Farnsworth's house at Larchmont!" he shouted to his oper- ator. THE phone was answered by Jonea, the butler. "This is Ferguson." An agitated voice replied : " 'Ow sir, yes sir. It's true, sir. 'E was bleeding at the 'ead, sir. Some- thing 'it 'im." "Let me talk to Mrs. Farnsworth." "They are at the 'ospital, sir." "One of the boys." "Both are at the 'ospital, sir." "Do you think he will live?" "An' 'ow could I say, sir?" Ferguson called the Medical Center. They permitted him to talk to a doctor and a nurse. The nurse referred him to the doctor, who said: "He is unconscious. There is a wicked fracture at the base of the brain. He was struck from the back — a club, I believe. He may die without regaining consciousness. I am hoping he will rally and that he will be all right- Ferguson ordered his car and, with Lees at his heels, jumped in the ton- neau. He heard a humming sound back of him. He looked back and saw noth- ing. Both he and Lees were too im- pressed for words. 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Name Address 59 at once, your FREE Book, "JaK-Whw* 1 Tnininir ar\A nf Occupation. ,_00 a week op selling our fine made- to-measure all-wool Baits at $23-60— $29.60 and $36.60 retail, direct to wearer. Biggest values— positively Bell on eight. Biggest commissions paidin ad- vance. We attend to delivery and Collec- tions. New style oatfit of large eloth samples— 100 stylee - furnished FREE. Write at once. SPENCER MEAD COMPANY, Chicago Harrison and Throop Sts. Dept. N-804 [ • DIRECT FROM MO VIE LAND • « ™™ THRILLING LOVE LETTERS LOVE'S PSYCHOLOGY BEAUTY PSYCHOLOGY LOVE DROPS PERFUME " SECRET EXTRACT A New Creation, an Enchanting, powerful aroma, with that alluring blend that stirs the ■onl or rich and poor, old and young to sur- render to ita charms. $2.50 value. $1.00 post paid or $1.27 C.O.D. with i rj h true tic ue for use. Also Free our 2 new books totaling 120 Dageei including THRILLING LOVE LETTERS burning lore epistles of many of history's fa- mous characters, also secrete of Love's Psychology and Art of win- ning the One Yoa Love with the original 7 Psychological and Suc- cessful plane for winning and holding the love of the one you love. Wons Co., Dept. N-14 Box 1250, Holhwooi, Calif. MOULDS For Making Toy Soldiers, Indians. CowboysAnimals,e[c With one Mould you"can make many HUNDREDS OF CAST- INGS. Whole Armies. Outfits , including material for easting, enamel paints and everything complete. (4.60. Easy enough for any boy to make and great fun for grown-ups. Sport for the whole family. Write for illustrations of dozens of patterns yon can make. MAKE-A-TOY COMPANY 1698 Boston Road Dept. H Now York Clfy He Left His Calling Card "-Telltale Finger Prints! FREE! Three bloody finger prints on the cash register ! Re might as well have left his call- ing card— his doom was already written ! Get this grip- ping story FREE, with 12 others just as exciting 1 13 True Detective Stories Gripping Mysteries! Gruesome Tragedies! Hair-Raising Climaxes! Every story a thrill! Think of it! Real Secret Service Operators give you "inside dope" on real crime cases. Mail coupon quick!— and get these st ories FREE! l $ 2500- $ 10 r 000 vH Finger Print Experts solved every one of these weird, blood-curdling crimes-^-and got the big rewards! Every day more and more trained men are needed. Opportu- nities are unlimited! The knock of opportunity is the knock of the postman as he brings you this book, "Finger Prints." It brings you fascinating true detective stories— it tells you how YOU can become a Finger Print Expert quickly and easily in your spare time at home I YOU can make $2500 to $10,000 a year in this thrilling profession ! Institute of Applied Science 1920 Sunnyside Ave., Dept. 15-61 Chicago, III. MailThisA^rFreeBook Institute of Applied Science, Dept. 15-61 1920 Sunnyside Ave-, Chicago, III. Without any obligation whatever. Bend me your new folly IHui- trated, FREE book of authentic detective tales/'Finger Prints"; also foil particulars about your Low Prices and Easy Terms. Nam* — ..... Addrera . ....... City and Stat* Aoa Please mention Newsstand Group — Men's List, when answering advertisements Who Wants an Auto FREE? STUDEBARER- BUICR— NASH! Yotir choice! OR $2000.00 CASH Thousands of dollars in new autoa and grand prize* will positively be given free to advertise and make new friends for my firm. Choice of Studebaker or Buick or Nash new 4-door sedan delivered free, or $2000.00 cash. Also Olds- mobile Pontiac, Chevrolet, Fords, diamonds, other fine prizes and cash will be given free. No problems to do. No fine writing required. No words to make. No figures to add. Bank guarantees all prizes. Pick Your Lucky Star! All the start In the circle are exactly alike except on*. That star la different to afl the I ethm and it may be a lucky star for you. Oan yon pick rt ontt If you can. mark the different etar and aend the circle to me at once alone; with yonr name and addreae. A ] prompt anewer can start yon on the war to win the treat 12000.00 free prize. BE PROMPT— WIN $650.00 EXTRA Someone like yon who will write me at once can get I6B0.00 cash Juet for being prompt, so you may thank your lucky stars if you send your answer right off. No nak. Nothing to bay Nothing hard to do. Over J70O0.0P (n valuable prizes will be given free of cost. Send today and I wfll show you juat how you can get your free choice of these splendid new sedans or $2000.00 cash, without cost or obligation of any kind. AO win planl A reward for everybody! SEND NO MONEY. Answer AT ONCK. Addraea GEO. WILSON, DEPT. 10. AUGUSTA, MAINE MARK TOUR STAR MAIL THE CIRCLE Too Fat? you Can Reduce iP5 '7 reduced from 48 inches to 3 .inches in 35 days," says R. Johnson, of Akron, O., "just by wearing a Director Belt. Stom- ach now firm, doesn't sag and 1 feel fine." ffhe Director Belt gets at the cause of fat and quickly re- mores it by its gentle, kneading, .massaging action on the abdo- men, which causes the fat to bo dissolved and absorbed. Thou- sands have proved it and doctors recommend it as the natural wajj to reduce. Stop drugs, exercisi and dieting. Try this easy wa. Sent on Trial' Let us prove our claims. TTe'll send a Director for trial. If you don't get results you owa nothing. You don't rink a penny. Write for trial offer, doctors' en- dorsements and letters from ■users. Mail the coupon NOW I pLANDON &~ WARNER I Dept. C-32, 332 8. La Salle St., Chicago Gentlemen : Without cost or obligation on my I part please send me details of your trial offer. I Varxai = 1 Pocket $15 to $20 every day showing Gibson's famous all-wool tailored-to- measure Suits and Overcoats. Orders come easy! Gibson values at $23.50 and 931.50 positively uneaualed. Union -made. Experience unnecessary. We teach you. Pay you daily in advance and you get big monthly bonus. Gibson Tailoring guaranteed for value, quality and fit. Pleased customer* assure you steady business, ncr AIITriT Shows nearly 200 all-wool rntt UU Mf mm fabrics.Writeatonee, tfrinsr mge and details about yourself. W.2. GIBSON. lnc..SOOThroopSt.Pept. N-SO*. Chicago ^' NEW AND SIMPLK DISCOVKRY CLEARS-THE-SKIN We prove It to you FREE. SEND MO MONEY. Write today for PROOF and full details of our liberal prepaid FULL SIZE TRIAL PACKAGE. GUARANTEED FOB ALL SKIN TROUBLES Quickly ends Pimples, Blackheads. Whiteheads. Coarse Pores. Wrinkles. Oily Sblny Skin. Freckles. Chronic Eczema, Stubborn Psoriasis, Scales, Crusts, Pustules Barbers Itcb. Itcblue Skin. Scabbies. softens and whitens (he skin,. J net Mad u yonr name and add re. a. ANDRE & CO, 751 B. 42nd St., Suite 76, Chicago Here's New Life^ South America! Try JOYZ Mate— The Harmless Mental and Physical Stimulant "JOYZ Yerba Mate" puts drinker In happy frame of mind, banishes fatigue, revives spirits. Makes you feel wonderful 1 From first sip you note a tingle in your blood and a feeling of new life, rigor and strength. Gives you that springy step and feeling of youthful health and energy. It is a true blessing for all nervous and ailing. "JOYZ Yerba Mate" is the stimulating drink used in Argentina. Millions there drink it daily. It has marvelous healing qualities, particularly beneficial in cases of TJric-Acid, Faulty Digestion and Nerves — yet it is not a medicine. The Great Darwin said: "Mate — the ideal stimulant." Pasteur Institute Paris, says: — "Yerba Mats answers the greatest needs of modern society, it permits unbelievable activity both mental and physical." The Rev. J. A. Zahn, C. S. C. Ph.D. (The Late President Roosevelt's companion on his exploration trip to Brazil) says*. — "It is best substitute known for alcoholic drinks." "Mate" is simply the dried leaf of the Ilex Mate tree from which a brew is instantly made by only adding water. Special equipment should be used for brewing and drinking "Yerba Mate." This equipment beautifully made by the natives in Argen- tina will last a lifetime — offered FREE to introduce this great Argentine drink in the TJ. S. A. Mail coupon below at once. International Mate Co., Inc., Dept. 35-A, S3 Washington St., New York I Please mail me at once a large tin of "JOYZ Yerba Mate" (to try in a teapot) for which I enclose I only $1.00 (add 15c for postage and packing) Check— Money Order— Cash. Send ma with this order ! your FREE offer for special equipment. Money back if not satisfied. Name_ Address- FREE Beautiful "Joyz Mate" eet (imported from Ar- gentina) offered FREE If you order AT ONCE. Please mention Newsstand Group — Men's List, when answering advertisements Only 4 Motions used in playing this fascinating instmw ment. Our native Hawaiian instructors teach / you to master them quickly. Pictures show how. Every^ thing explained clearly. Easy Lessons Even if jou don't know one nnte from another, the 62 printed lessons and clear pictures make ft easy to learn quicks*. Pay as yoa ptay. Play In Half Hour After you Ret the four easy motions you plair harmonious chords with very little practice. No previous musical knowl- edge needed. ar k T^/l?a*f when you enroll W ▼ *5»re — » sweet toned HAWAIIAN GUITAR, C arrying Case and Playing OntHt- WRITE AT ONCE for attractive offer and easy terms. You have everything to gain. A postcar'i will do. ACT1 Value Sis to $2« No tttrae-tveryihing inelvdtd Tlple, Tenor Guitar, Ukulele, ell known instructnra. FIRST HAWAIIAN CONSERVATORY of MUSIC, Inc. New York. N.V. 9th Floor, Woolworth Bldg. Dept. 269 A Fight Against Rupture ATTENTION vs. NEGLECT Everyone should realize the serious- ness of Rupture, even where the pro- trusion is small. The Brooks Appli- ance is the finest kind of mechanical support for reducible rupture that it is possible to build. Hard pads and stiff springs are entirely eliminated. Our Automatic Air Cushion, light, cool and absolutely sanitary, is protected by patents in the Tnited States and all important foreign countrias. Your name and address pinned to this advertisement will bring complete details of our free trial plan in plain sealed envelope, No need to write a letter. BROOKS APPLIANCE CO. 173-D Stats St.. MARSHALL. MICH. - Size 16x20 Inches fc JaJIk Same Price for full length or bORt ■ V _ form croup*, landscapes, orpet am- Hlwf* main, etc. . enlargements of any part ^■ B #U - ,P of group picture. Bafe return of a H at your ownoritfinal pboto guaranteed. ^aW^aaW' SEND NO MONEY K ^SlT^ThK * week yoowitl receive your beaotiful life-like enlargement aim 16x20 In, guaranteed fadeless. Pay postman SSc plua postage or send $1.00 with order and we pay postage. SPECIAL With each enlargement we will rnrcnEPFR eond FReEahand-tintedminiature rntCUrrCJl reprodoction of photo sent. Takft advantage now at thia amazing offer -- send your photo today. UNITED PORTRAIT COMPANY 1082 OgdanAvs. Pept.A.S90,Chlc«o,ffl. MONEY FOR YOU Men or women can earn $15 to *25 weekly in spare time at home making display cards. Light, pleasant work. No canvassing. We instruct you and supply you with work. Write to-day (or full particulars. The MENHENITT COMPANY Limited 245 Dominion BIdg..Toronto, Can. on ■ ■ ■ nn ORRECT Your NOSE Thousands have used the Anita Nose Adjuster to improve their appearance. Shapes flesh and cartilage of the nose — Quickly, safely, painlessly, while you sleep. Results are lasting. Doctors praise It. Money back guarantee. Gold Medal winner. Write for 30-Day TRIAL OFFER and FREE BOOKLET. INSTITUTE, 142 Anita Building, Newark, N. J. Get Groceries at Wholesale -ana Make as a Day Besides! YES, right now, I'll give you groceries at rock-bottom wholesale prices and a chance to pocket $10 to $15 cash profits in a day. I'll give you the same proposition I gave L. C. Van Allen, of Illinois, who re- ports profits of more than $100 a week. You don't need any experience. Gustave Karnath, a farm laborer in Minnesota, writes, "Made $20.35 the first 5 hours." Mrs. B. F. Bagmell, of Louisiana, says she makes $10 to $15 a day in spare time. And I now offer you the chance to make money and save money on groceries that I gave these people. BIG PROFITS FOR EASY WORK I am President of a million-dollar Company. I dis- tribute high-quality Groceries and other Household Neces- sities direct from factory to user through Authorized Local Representatives. Last year my Representatives made nearly two million dollars ! Now I invite you to share in these profits. I'll help you make money from the very start. And I will give you Groceries and other Household Supplies at savings of nearly one-half! You have a won- derful chance to make and save big money. NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED You don't need capital, training or experience. All you do is call on your friends and my established customers and take care of their orders. I never sell to stores. You alone get the profit on all orders from ijour territory. Keep your present job and start with me in spare time if you want to. Oscar Stuart, of W. Virginia, reports $18 profit in 2% hours* spare time. SEND NO MONEY FREE! New Ford Tudor Sedan NOT a contest. I offer a brand - new car free to produc- ers as an extra re- ward or bonus — in addition to their large cash profits. Mail coupon for par- ticulars. If you want to get groceries at our rock-bottom, wholesale prices — and $10 to $15 in a day besides — send me your name at once. Don't miss this wonderful opportunity. You have everything to gain. I will give you full details of my amaz- ing new plan without cost or obligation. I'll give you the big opportunity you've long been waiting for. So don't J, lose a moment. Mail the coupon NOW I Mail This NOW ALBERT MILLS, Pres., American Products Co., 5411 Monmouth Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio. Send me, without cost or obligation, all the facts about (I your new proposition that offers Groceries at Wholesale u and a chance to make $10 to $15 in a day besides. Also [I explain your new Kord Offer. Name . _(cl A. P; Co. _(Print_or Writo Plainly) .^1 Please mention Newsstand Group — Men's List, when answering advertisements The Old Reliable Original Credit Jeweler* Largest in the World Genuine Diamonds Guaranteed— CASH or CREDIT Gire" Her" theDiMnand Now! Buy from Lof ti«, the Direct Importer, and Bn f? or ""Khest quality and most value /or your money. Our ring mountings are the latest creations in solid 18-k white gold, elaborately carved and pierced. Set with sparkling blue white Diamonds, radiantly beautiful. Satisfaction guaranteed, or money back. Goods sent for your free anamination on request. CRE R.'7 Te, ""S! Pay one-tenth down; balance weekly, semi- monthly, or monthly at your convenience. All goods delivered on first payment. Send for Free Catalog! HOW TO ORDER: Send first payment- state article desired— name of employer- Kind of work you do - —how long in posi- tion— age— married — where live — how long t here. STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL. Standard Railroad Watches on Credit at Cash Prices. Guaranteed to stand inspection. NO CARRYING CHARGE. Wrist Watch No. 866-H-k whitefrold.High trade IB-Jewel movement. Fancy come 915. $1.500 while takiiyr •sane,'* Write for complete information. DETROIT SCHOOL OF LETTERING ISO Stlmson Ave. Est. IMBii DETROIT, MICH. Clear-Tone Clears the Skin Clear-Tone is a penetrating, purifying lotion, used at night with astounding success to clear the skin of pimples, blotches, black-heads and Other annoying, unsightly skin irritations due to ex- ternal causes. More than one-half million per* sons have cleared their skins with Clear-Tone in the last 12 years. "Complexion Tragedies with Happy Endings", filled with facts supplied by Clear-Tone users sent Free on request. Clear- Tone can be had at your druggist — or direct from us. GIVENS CHEMICAL CO., 2408 Southwest Boulevard, Kansas City, Mo. MEN ARE WANTED IN RAILWAY TRAFFIC INSPECTION u I* .. Active men— 19 to 56- -needed i CIO II anting* manent profession. Travel or For A Position with expenses paid. Excellent opportunities-- pro- notion rspid. Meet hitfh railway officials. W« assist yon to a position payins $120 to *13& per month plus expenses upon completion of few weeks spare time home instruction or refund your tuition. Advance with experience to $176, $200, $260 per month plus expenses. Our free booklet shows how to make your future a certainty. Write for it today. STANDARD BUSINESS TRAINING INSTITUTE D'v. is Buffalo, N. Y. EARN UPT0*250m p o c nthSAi.ARY Learn How toBQX brines you the famous boxing coarse by'mail «f*«s w o{ 7j mmy DeForest. World's Greatest Trainer, the system that trained Dempnar and err eat champions. Covers everything in scientific boxing from fundamentals to ring generalship. Twenty weeks makes yon a finished DeForest trained boxer. Hundreds of De- Forest trained man are making good in the ring today. Complete course Bent in one mailing. Send $2.98 or C.O.D order paying postman $2.98 plus actual postage. Jimmy DeForest Boxing Course 347 Madison Ave., Box 41, New York City MONEYJGV POULTRY!,. If you want a real Job— at real pay or if you want to start profitable business of your own — become a trained Poultryman. It's interesting, healthful, profitable. Our famous home study Course gives short cuts to success. Write for Free Book, "How to Haise Poultry for Profit." National Poultry Institute, Dept. 415-E, Washington, 1). C Please mention Newsstand Group — Men's List, when answering advertisements PROTRUDING O EARS f PRIMtSET, a simple and mar- velous new method, will make them lay back to head at once and improve your appearance 100 per cent. No mechanical appliance! IN- VI S Hi L.E. COMFORTABLE, HARMLESS. Worn day or night. Use corrects deformity quickly with children, eventu- ally with adults. Endorsed by physicians as best known method for straightening ears. Thousands of enthusiastic users, in Europe and America. Complete Outfit, guaranteed to do as claimed, sent for $3.00 Dost* paid, or pay postman, plus postage. THE PRIM SET SALES CO.« Dopt. 12, 2935 Ocean Parkway. Brooklyn, N. V. yjER & Price World's bait makes— Underwood, Reming-ton. Koyal--atso portables-pm-aa emaibod to below half. (Easy terms.) SEND NO MONEY! Alt tate models completely rebuilt and refinished brand new, Guaram- teed tor ten years. Send no money Free Trial china* in fall colors. Get oar direct-to* you easy payment plan and 10 day free trial offer. Amazing values—send at once w u nnvA - International Typewriter Exch., lilt. iTzTcfficw AcCufflfiHT Executive Accountants end C. P. A. 'a earn 18,000 io f 10.000 a year. andsof firms i need them'. Only 3,000 Certified Public Account .1 ■ A.'a.^nelv Write for free book ri the United States. We train you thoroly at home in spare time for C.P.A. examinations or executive accounting positions. Previous experience unnecessary. Training under the personal supervision of William B. Cb * . 's, includin . B. Castenholt, A. M , C. P. A., and a large staff of O. P. r members of the American Institute of Accountants, book, "Accountancy, the Profession that Paye." - LaSalle Extension University* Dept, 175-H Chicago The World's Largest Business Training ItuUtUtlOB MEN WANTED FOR RAILROADS Nearest their homes — everywhere — to train for Firemen, Erakemon; Average wages $150-$20Q monthly. Promoted to Conductor or Engineer— highest wages on railroads. Also clerks. Railway Educational Association. Dept. D-30. Brooklyn, New York. SONG WRITERS.' SUBSTANTIAL ADVANCE ROYALTIES are paid on work found acceptable for publica- tion. Anyone wishing to write either the words or Music for songs may submit work for free ex- amination and advice. Past experience unnecessary. New demand created by "Talking Pictures" fully described in our free book. Write for it Today. NEWCOMER ASSOCIATES 723 Earle Building, New York DEAFNESS IS MISERY Multitudes of persons with defective bearing ( and Head Noises enjoy conversation, go to Theatre and Church because they _ Vit Leonard Invisible Ear Drums which M resemble Tiny Megaphones fitting in the Ear entirely out of sight. No wires, batteries or head piece* , They are inexpensive. Write for booklet and sworn statement of the inventor who was himielf deaf. 0. LEONARD, Inc., Suite 683. 70 5th Ave., New York* Dgnf son's < lays 54 Years ifHtfis We supply all entertainment needs for dramatic clubs, schools, lodges, etc., and for every occasion. T. S. Oen.aon & Co. . 623 S. Wabash, Dept. 1 3Q Chicago Dei P free Th»u Monty' Making Tool* furnished by met Books Jutt Sand the Coupon Below! Jobs for Draftsmen In Great Industries -Learn at Home Automobiles— Electricity—Motor Busses —Aviation- Building Construction. There are jobs for Draftsmen In all of these industries and to hundreds of others. Aviation Is expanding to enormous proportions. Electricity is getting bigger every day. Motor Bus Building Is becoming a leading world Industry. Building of stores, comes, factories and office buildings It going on ail the time. No structure can be erected without plans drawn Mnn*v.Rai>ir by a draftsman. . No machinery can bo built ™« u *J**»*s* without plans drawn by a draftsman. I train you at home. In Drafting. Keep the job you have now while learning drafting. I will train you In drafting right where yon are in your spare time, I have trained men who are making from £8,600.00 to $9,000.00 a year. There Is a big future for draftsmen because you plan and supervise the work of others, or you go into business for yourself. Get started now toward a better position, paying a good, straight sal- ary, the year around. Comfortable surround" logs. Inside work. Earn As Yon Learn I tett you how to start earning extra money Q few weeks after beginning my training Employment Service After training you I help you get a job without charging you a cent for this service. Employers of Draftsmen come to me for men because they hare learned drafting by actually doing the work themselves, in a practical way. Employers know they are not taking chances on men trained by me. K You Earn Less Than $70.00 a Week Ask lor My 2 FREE Books Agreement I train yon at home under a pos- itive Money-Hack Afrreeroent. If my trainine does out satisfy you after you have finlsbed, yon pet every Danny back* Age cr lack of Education No Drawback Previous experi- ence is not neces- sary- You do not need to be a col- lege man or bisb school graduate. Help As Long AiYouNeedlt As my student you can write to ma any time yon want to and as of- ten as you like nd I will nive you elo od any sab- nftsmanship. will advise yon about jobs, extra work, fees and bow to make ex. tra money. Mai] this coupon at onee. Get "My Pay-Raising Plan" and "Successful Draftsmanship." You owe ft to yourself to find out what a big opportunity there is In practically all Industries, for Draftsmen. These two books are Free. They come to you post paid. Mall the Coupon TODAY. ENGINEER DOBE, Dlv* ts«6t at borne. — * Engineer Dobs 1951 Lawrence Ave. Chicago PAY-RAISING PLAN ENGINEER DOBS If SI Lawrence Ave., DSv. if .61 Chicago Send me free of all cost yoar book "Successful Draftsmanship," also plan to earn money while learning and proof of big money paying positions. Also sour sew book My Pay- Raising Plan." Act Addreaa Pott Offie* Stat* Please , mention Newsstand Group— Men's List, when answering advertisements Steady Work Paid Vacations i- FRANKUN INSTITUTE Dept. D-264 ROCHESTER, N. Y. Common Education Sufficient Mail coupon today— SURE * Rash to me, entirely free of charge 32- ' page book with : (1) A full description * of the position checked below; (2) A list of U. S. Government Jobs Obtainable. CT Railway Postal Clerk (JI90O "o *2700) O Postofflce Clerk ($1700 to $2300) J> City Mail Carrier ($1700 to $2100) / Inspector of Customs ($2100 up) I General Clerk-File Clerk ($1260 to $2500) / Name — . Radium Is Restoring Health to Thousands No medicine, drags or dieting. Just a light, small, comfortable inexpensive Radio-Active Pad, worn on the back by day and over the stomach at night. Sold on trial. You can be sure it is helping you before you buy it. Over 150,000 sold on this plan. Thousands have written us that it healed them of Neuritis, Rheumatism, High Blood Pressure, Constipation. Nervous Prostration, Heart, Lungs, Liver, Kidney and Bladder trouble, etc. No matter what you have tried, or what your trouble may be. try Degnen's Radio-Active Solar Pad at our risk. Write today for Trial offer and descriptive litera- ture. Radium Appliance Co.. 27*1 Bradbury Bldg.. Lo» Angeles, Cal. FRENCH LOVE DROPS An enchanting exotic perfume of irre- sistible charm, clinging for hours like lorers loath to part. Just a few drops are enough. Full size bottle 98c. prepaid or $1.39 C. O. D, plus postage. Directions with every order. FREE: I full size bottle if you order 2 vials. D'ORO CO. Box 90, Varlck Station, New York Dept. NSG 1 Send for my Book STRONG ARMS and BROAD SHOULDERS for Sfe coin or 30c stamps IHustrat.d with 20 fulNpss. h. that will quickly d.v.lop. baau roar shoulders, arm* had haods. without mar separata*. Equal to ■ sio.oo Course PROF. ANTHONY BARKER 1X35 6th Ave.. Studio A-2, Mew York City STUDY AT HOME Botoiu) ». lawyer. Legally txtuu< d Man win high positions and big suc- " ceaa in business and public life. Bo (rule pendent. Greater op port ut.it iea , now thai) eTer before. Big corpora- tions are headed by men with legal trainina. Earn v 5S.OOO to £10,000 Annually . . e .ruide you step by atop. You can train at home during spare time. Decree of LL.B. conferred. _i student* found araone* practicing attorneys of every state. We furnish all text material, including fourteen -volume Law Library. Low cost, easy terms. Get onr valuable G4-page "Law Guide" and ''Evidence" books FREE. Send for them NOW LaSalle Extension University, Dept. 175-L, Chicago The world's Largest Business T rs frii n inBtiution POST YOURSELF! It pays! I paid J. D. Martin, Virginia, $200 for a single copper cent. Mr. Manning, New York, 12,500 for one silver dollar, Mrs. C F. Adams $740 for a few old coins. I want all kinds of old coins, medals, bills and. stamps. I pay big cash premiums. WILL PAY $100 FOR DIME 1894 S.Mint;$50 for 1913 Liberty Head Nickel (npt buffalo) and hundreds of other amazing prices for coins. Get in touch with me. Send 4c for Large Illustrated Coin Folder. It may mean much profit to you. Write today to NUMISMATIC COMPANY OF TEXAS Dept. lo» .... FORT WORTH TEXAS [Lima Rare Coin Bafefafcwsw in U. &} MAKE BIG MONEY QUICK MEN AND WOMEN Experience not necessary. Easy, dignified work which will bring you in touch with the leading men in your community. Write at onee. Terri- tory being assigned every day. Slate age, prevlou*. line of work. Give two business men as references. This is a legitimate proposition, so we want only responsible representatives. Address E. P. FRENZ, 799 Broadway, New York, N. Y. BIRD MANNA Makes Canaries Sing- restores their health and feathers. 'Tis the great oe* cret of the Andreasberg. Sold by all druggists. Mailed for 15c in coin or stamps. A BOOK ON CAGE BIRDS 120 pages, 150 illustrations, ft plate of fancy canaries in their natural colors. Full information as to song* and rare canaries. How to breed them for profit, Hints on their dis- eases and how to treat them. AH about Parrots. Mailed for 25c or book and Manna for 35c. PHILA. BIRD FOOD CO. 400 N. 3rd St. Philadelphia. Pa. obtVn° A BETTER LOOKING NOSE! Improve your personal appearance Mr new Model 25 Nose Shaper la de- signed to improve the -shape of the nose by remoulding the cartilage and fleshy parts, safely, and painlessly. This is accomplished through the very fine and precise adjustments which only my pat- ented Model 25 possesses. Results are lasting. Can be worn at night, or dur- ing the day. Money refunded if not sat- isfied after thirty days' trial. Write for free booklet to M. TRILETY Pioneer Note ShapinO Specialist Dept. 51. Bingham ton, H. V. Wonderful, new device, guides your hand ; corrects your writing in a few days. Big improvement in three hours. No failures. Complete outline FREE. Write C. J. Ozmer.t, Dept. 87, St. Louis, Mo. I'LL PAT YOU $20 A DAT— To show my Mystery Lighter to men. What makes it lishtf AU guaranteed. Sample with sales plan 25c. Sample gold or silver plated, $1.00. Agents write for proposition. NEW METHOD MFG. CO. Box GN-I Bradford. Pa. Please mention Newsstand Group — Men's List, when answering advertisements Ooes YOU* Job toy *50«9 Every Week? Railway Postal Clerk you can average $53 a week the year 'round. I help you get the Job if you are a citizen— 18 to 50. Steady work, pleas- ant travel, vacation and sick leave with pay, regular advancement. Send for my FREE BOOK Telia how I help you get this and other Civil Service Jobs: Post Office, Customs House, Internal Revenue, or 1'anama Canal Clerk; City or Rural Carrier; Forest Ranger; etc., etc. For 8 years 1 was Secretary -Examiner of Civil Service Commission; have helped thousands. SEND TODAT for my FREE 32-page book. ARTHUR R. PATTERSON, Civil Service Expert Patterson School 1081 Wisner Bids. HOW TO«QMip@iS eVEBKHEKT position; SSSjMBl Rochester, N. V. Charm Ing — Captivating — Irresistible DESIR D' AMOUR [Love's Desire] This exotic perfume eoes straight to the heart like Cupid's arrows. Its strength and mystic aroma thrills and delights young and old. Triple strength full size vial 98 cents prepaid or $1.32 C. O. D. plus shipping charges. Directions free. One bottle GRATIS If you order three vials. MAGNUS WOItKS. Box 12, Variek Sta., New York, N. T., Dept. NSG-1. MEN— BIG PROFIT! Direct from Paris. 400% to 8007c Profit. Exquisite pictures. Lifelike, lovely colors. Ready to frame. Also postcards. Great Mas- ters, Artistic Models, Religious, etc., 2,500 different subjects. No talking — Just show the samples I Homes, stores, offices, factories, farms — prospects everywhere ! Order 15c. to $20. No competition. Pockets hold day's needs. Beautiful samples $1. (stamps, cash or money order.) None free. EDUCATOR PRESS (Exclusive Importers) 19 Park Row, New York, Dept. L-4J Bnchstein's Fibre Limb Is soothing" to your stump — strong, cool, neat, light. Guaranteed 5 years. Easy payments. SEND FOR CATALOG TODAY Also fibre arms, and braces for all deformities. H. S. BDCHSTEIN CO., 610 3rd AVE., SO., MINNEAPOLIS, MINN . STOP Tobacco No human being can escape the harmful effects of tobacco Don't try to quit without assistance. Let our simple inexpensive remedy help you. A complete treatment costs but $?.00. Every penny promptly refunded if you do not get desired results. Ours is a harmless preparation, carefully compounded to over- come the condition, that will make Quitting of tobacco pleasant, and easy. It comes with a money back guarantee. Anti-Tobacco League oS&n&l Be A Detective Make Secret Investigations Earn Big Money. Work home or travel. Fascinating work. Experience unnecessary. L DETECTIVE Particulars FREE, Write NOW to HfeGEO. N. WAGNER, 2190 Broadway, New York AVIATION IT 'lJ -jr? 1 !? Information JT M\ JCj JCi gjfcmd ■tviatl 01 your name and addreis for full Information regarding the ion and Airplane buiiness. Find out about the many great portunities now open and how we prepare you at home, during time, to qualify. Our new book Opportunities In the rplane indumtry alio sent free It you answer at once. AMERICAN SCHOOL OF AVIATION it. 1181 3601 Michigan Ave. CHICAGO Own Your omf^ Business A NEW BUSINESS IN YOUR TOWN A delightful, dignified and fascinating business. Make and sell Crispettes. Delicious confection. Youn<_ and old like them. Comeagain and againfor more. Easy to make. I supply everything. Raw material plentiful and cheap. Profits big. No town too small. Start now. QUICK SUCCESS POSSIBLE gSRS^ crowded streets; surging throngs at parks, carnivals, fairs, etc.; opei* a little retail store;or, begin at home; wholesale to stores, grocers bakers, druggists, parks, baseball games, picnics, wayside stands. EXCEPTIONAL (, v -\.) PROFITS S^J'U California man. New Jersey $4,000 profits in less than 2 months. Revel of Michigan wrote: "Made $25 on my first day". A. Leib of Montreal wrote: "My sales averaged $400 per week". WE START YOU IN BUSINESS ^^.S^X! and raw material. Little capital starts you. No experience needed. WRITE FOR "BOOK OF FACTS" — If s free, contains success letters from others — shows their places of business, tells how to start EAKINS CO., 193 High St., Springfield, Ohio Mall at once, your Book of Facts Name... Address- i&SSfW According to a recent article by tha president of the world's largest motor research corporation, there is enough energy In a gallon of gasoline if con- verted 100% in mechanical energy to run a four cylinder oar 450 mile#. NEW GAS SAVING INVENTION ASTONISHES CAR OWNERS A marvelous device, already Installed on thousands of ears, has accomplish- ed wonders in utilizing a portion of this waste energy and is producing mileage tests that seem unbelievable. Not only does It save gasoline, but it also creates more power, gives — Instant starting. Quick pick-up, and eliminates carbon* FREE SAMPLE and $100 a Week To obtain national distribution quickly, men are being appointed everywhere to help supply the tremendoua de- rnajid. Free samples furnished to workers. Write todasl to E. Oliver, Pres., for lila free sample and Ma mosey making offer. jw WHIRLWIND MFG. CO. 899-56-A Third St., Milwaukee, Wiee. Please mention Newsstand Group — Men's List, when answering advertisements WDYING10 MIGHT and I offered something that would give you ten years more to live, would you take it? You d grab it. Well, fellows, I've got it but don t wait till you're dying or it won't do you a bit of good. It will then be too late. Right now is the time. To- morrow or any day, some disease will get you and if you have not equipped yourself to fight it oft, you're gone. I- don't claim to cure disease. I am not a medical doctor, but I'll put you in such con- dition that the doctor will starve to death waiting for yr.u to take sick. Can you imagine a mosquito trying to bite a brick wall? A fine chance. A RE-BUILT MAN I like to get the weak ones. I delight in get- ting hold of a man who has been turned down as hopeless by others. It's easy enough to finish a task that's more than half done. But give me the weak, sickly chap and watch him grow stronger. That's what I like. It's fun to me because I know I can do it and I like to give the other fellow the laugh. I don't just give you a veneer of muscle that looks good to others. I work on you both inside and out. I not only put big, massive arms and legs on you, but I build up those inner mus- cles that surround your vital organs. The kind that give you real pep and energy, the kind that fire you with ambition and the courage to tackle anything set before you. ALL I ASK IS 90 DAYS Who says it takes years to get in shape? Show me the man who makes any such claims and I'll make him eat his words. I'll put one full inch on your arm in just 30 days. Yes, and two full inches on your chest in the same length of time. Mean- while I'm putting life and pep into your old back- bone. And from then on, just watch 'em grow. At the end of thirty days you won'* know yourself. Your whole body will take on an entirely different appearance. But you've only started. Now comes the real works. I've only built my foundation. I want just 60 days more (90 in all) and you'll make those friends of yours who think they're strong look like something the cat dragged in. A REAL MAN When I'm through with you you're a real man. The kind that can prove it. You will be able to do things you had thought impossible. And the beauty of it is you keep on going. Your deep, full chest breathes in rich, pure air, stimulating your blood and making you just bubble over with Tim and vitality. Your huge square shoulders and your masssive muscular arms have that craving for the exercise of a regular he-man. You have the flash B to your eye and the pep to your step that will make you admired and sought after in both the business and social world. This is no idle prattle, fellows. If you doubt me, make me prove it. Go ahead, I like it. I have already EARLE UEDERMAN, The Muacle Builder Author of "Science of Wrestling," "Muscle Building,' "Secrets of Strength," "Here's Health," "Endurance," Etc. done this for thousands of others and my records are unchallenged. What I have done for them, I will ilo for you. Come then, for time flies and every day counts. Let this very day be the beginning of new life for you. Send for my ^ new 64-page book IT IS FREE EARLE LIEDERMAN, Dept. 1701, 306 Broadway, New York City. Dear Sir: Please send me, without any obligation on my part whatever, a copy of your latest book, "Muscular Development" (Please write or print plainly.) Name AGE....... v Street , City State It contains over four dozen full-page photographs of myself and some of the many prize-winning pupils I '■■■> ■■ tra'ned. Some of these came to me as pitiful weaklings, imploring me to help them. Look them over now and you will mai.-I at tnttr present physiques. This book will prove to be an impetus and a real in- spiration to you. It will thrill you thrown! and through, and it's all yours. I don't ask a cent. This, will not oKieste you at all, but for the sake of your future health and happiness to not put it off. Send today — right now before you torn ihis page. Earle Llederman Dept. 1701, 305 Broadway, Mew York City Please mention Newsstand Group — Men's List, when answering advertisement Cold Weather is OLD GOLD WEATHER If EM ■ I IK n THE SMOKE SCREEN THAT TAKE CARE OF YOUR THROAT with *S OUT THROAT DANGERS 11 11 II II THIS SMOOTHER CIGARETTE Right around the corner, Big Chief Sniffie-In-The-Nose is waiting with "cold" germs. Don't punish your nose or throat with the slightest irritation. Be careful, in ANY season. But NOW be doubly careful . . . smoke old golds . . . They're smooth, old gold's clean, ripe tobacco has no "throat-scratch." No roughness. Sam- ple their honey-smoothness. Taste the wonderful flavor, winner in 100,000 taste- tests. Change to old golds! Play safe with your throat. t l m*rd Co. Bit. j Ten ott> r tobaccos make them smoother and better . . . with "not a cough In a carload" "W hen the table talk turns to cigarettes — the men smile quietly and say: "To smoke Camels is to know the real pleasure of smoking." The preference of experienced smokers has made Camels by far the most popular cigarette in the United States. © 1930, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Winston -Salem, N. C. CIGARETTES