Dr. Creepen's Dungeon

S4 Ep180: Episode 180: Sci-Fi Horror Stories

‘We are drawn to sci-fi horror stories because they blend the familiar with the unknown, pushing the boundaries of our fears into realms that are both imaginative and unsettling. These stories allow us to confront our anxieties about technology, the future, and the vastness of the universe, all within the safety of fiction. The thrill comes from exploring "what if" scenarios where scientific advancements lead to unexpected horrors, forcing us to question our understanding of reality and the limits of human control. The combination of speculative science and primal fear taps into a deep curiosity and a love for the mysterious, making sci-fi horror a compelling genre that challenges and captivates us…’

Duration:: 5h 23m
Broadcast on:: 14 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Hey everyone, it is Ryan Seacrest here. Ready to heat up your summer vacation? Get ready, things are about to get sizzling at Chumba Casino. Your summer getting a whole lot hotter with a special daily login bonus waiting just for you. So sign up now for reals of fun and reals of prizes right here at Chumba Casino. With yours truly, join me at Chumba Casino.com and dive into a summer of social casino fun. Sponsored by Chumba Casino, no purchase necessary, VGW Group, forward we're prohibited by law, 18 plus terms and conditions apply. Welcome to Dr. Creeping's Dungeon. We're drawn to sci-fi horror stories because they blend the familiar with the unknown, pushing the boundaries of our fears into realms that are both imaginative and unsettling. These stories allow us to confront our anxieties about technology, the future, and the vastness of the universe, all within the safety of fiction. The thrill comes from exploring, what if scenarios where scientific advancements lead to unexpected horrors, forcing us to question our understanding of reality and the limits of human control, the combination of speculative science and primal fear taps into a deep curiosity and a love for the mysterious, making sci-fi horror a compelling genre that challenges and captivates us. As we shall see in tonight's collection of stories. Now as ever before we begin, a word of caution. Tonight's tale is making things strong language as well as descriptions of violence and horrific imagery. That sounds like your kind of thing. And let's begin. "Raiders of the Universities" by Donald Wondrecht was in the 34th century that the dark star began its famous conquest and paralleled in stellar animals. Fobile the astronomer discovered it. He was sweeping the heavens with one of the newly invented multi-powered Susan Dorff comet hundreds, and something called his eye. A new star of great brilliance in the foreground of the constellation Hercules. For the rest of the night he cast aside all his plans and concentrated on the one star. He witnessed an unprecedented event. Mercy's nullifier had just been invented, a curious and intricate device based on four-dimensional geometry that made it possible to see occurrences in the universe which had hitherto required the hundreds of years needed for light to cross the intervening space before they were visible on Earth. By a hasty calculation with the aid of this invention, Fobile found that the new star was about 3,000 light years distant and that it was hurtling backward into space at the rate of 1,200 miles per second. The remarkable feature of this discovery was this appearance of a fourth magnitude star where none had been known to exist. Perhaps it had come into existence this very night. On the succeeding nights he was given a greater surprise. In line with the first star of it, several hundred light years nearer was a second new star of even more brightness, and it too was hurtling backward into space at approximately 1,200 miles per second. Fobile was astonished. Two new stars discovered within 24 hours in the same part of the heavens, both from the fourth magnitude. But his surprise was as nothing went on the succeeding nights, even while he watched. The third new star appeared in line with these, but much closer. At mid-19 notices first the a pinpoint of faint light. By one o'clock the star was of 8 magnitude. At two it was a brilliant sun of the second magnitude, lasing away from Earth like the others at a rate of 1,200 miles per second. On the next evening and the next and to the next. Other new stars appeared until there was seven in all. Everyone on a line in the same constellation Hercules. Everyone with the same radiance and the same proper motion. They were varying signs. Fobile broadcast is discovery to the incredulous astronomers. To star after star appeared nightly, all the telescopes on Earth would turn toward one of the most spectacular cataclysms that history had recorded. Far out in the depth of space, with unheard of regularity and unheard of precision, new worlds were flaming up overnight, in a line that began at Hercules and extended toward the solar system. Fobile's announcement was immediately flashed to Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, the other members of the Five Ward Federation. Saturn reported no evidence of the phenomenon, because of the interfering rings and the lack of mercy is nullified. But Jupiter, with a similar device, witnessed the phenomena had announced furthermore that many stars in the neighbourhood of the novel had begun to deviate in singular and abrupt fashion from their normal position. There was not yet much popular interest in the phenomena. Without mercy is nullifier, the stars were not visible to ordinary eyes, since the light rays would take years to reach the Earth. But every astronomer who had access to mercy is nullifier, hastened to focus his telescope on the region where extraordinary events were taking place out in the unfathomable gulf of the night. Some terrific force was at work, creating worlds and disturbing the positions of stars within a radius already known to extend billions and trillions of miles from the path of the seven new stars. But of the nature of that force, astronomers could only get. Phobard took up his duties early on the eighth night. The last star had appeared about 500 light years distant. If an eighth new star was found, it should not be more than a few light years away. But nothing happened. Or might Phobard kept his telescope pointed at the probable spot. But searches he might, the heavens showed nothing new. In the morning he sought eagerly for news of any discovery made by fellow watchers, but they, too, found nothing unusual. Could it be that a mystery would now fade away, a new riddle of the skies? The next evening he took up his position once more, creating his telescope on the seven bright stars, and then on a region where an eighth, if they were one, should appear. For hours he searched the abyss in vain. He could find none. Apparently the phenomena were ended. At midnight he took a last glance before entering on some tedious calculations. He was there. In the center of the task of a faint, he's the object steadily growing in brightness. All his problems were forgotten as Phobard watched the eighth star increase outward. Closer than any other, closer even than Alpha Centauri, the news reappeared. There's scarcely three light years away across the void surrounding the solar system. Nor the while he watched. He witnessed a thing no man had ever seen before. The birth of a world. By one o'clock the new star was of fifth magnitude. By two it was of the first. As the faint flush of dawn began to come toward the close, that frosty, moonless November night. The new star was a great white-hot object more brilliant than any other star in the heavens. Phobard knew that when it's light finally reached Earth so that the ordinary eyes could see, it would be the most beautiful object in the night sky. What was the reason for these unparalleled births of worlds and the terrifying mathematical precision that characterized them? Whatever the cosmic force behind it, it was progressing toward the solar system. Perhaps it would even disturb the balance of the planets. The possible chance of such an event had already called the attention of some astronomers, but the whole phenomenon was too inexplicable to permit more than mere speculation. The next evening was cloud. Jupiter reported nothing new except that Neptune had deviated from its course and tended to pursue an erratic and puzzling new orbit. Phobard pondered long over this last news item and turned his attention to the outermost planet on the succeeding night. To his surprise, he had great difficulty in locating. The ephemeris was of absolutely no use. When it did locate Neptune after a brief search, he discovered it for an 80 million miles from its scheduled place. This was at 140. At 210 he was thunderstruck by a special announcement sent from the central bureau to every observatory and astronomer of note throughout the world, proclaiming the discovery of an ultra plutonium planet. Phobard was incredulous, the centuries that have improved that no planet beyond Pluto could possibly exist. With feverish haste, Phobard ran to the huge telescope and rapidly focused it where the new planet should be. 500 million miles beyond Neptune was a flaming path like the beam of a giant searchlight, but extended exactly to the eighth solar planet. Phobard gasped. He could hardly credit the testimony of his eyes. He then looked more close. The great streamer flame still crossed his line of vision. At this time he saw something else. At the precise father end of the flame path, around disk, the dark. The under doubt and new planet of our size now formed in addition to the solar group. That planet was almost impervious to the illuminating rays of the sun and was barely discernible. Neptune itself shone brighter than it ever had and was falling away from the sun at a rate of 1200 miles per second. All night Phobard watched the double mystery. My three o'clock was convinced as far as lightning calculation showed that the invader was hurtling toward the sun at a speed of more than 10 million miles an hour. By 315 he thought that vanishing Neptune seemed brighter even than the band of fire running to the invader. At four his belief was certain. With amazement and awe Phobard sat through the long cold nights watching a spectacular and terrible catastrophe in the sky. His dawn began to break and the stars grew pale. Phobard turned away from his telescope, his brain, a world, his heart filled with a great feeling. He'd witnessed the devastation of a world. The ruin of a member of his own planetary system by an invader from outer space. His dawn cut short his observations. He knew at last the cause of Neptune's brightness. Knew that it was now a white hot flaming sun that spared with increased rapidity away from the solar system. Somehow the terrible sway of the fire that flowed from the dark star to Neptune had runched it out of its orbit and made it a molten inferno. A dawn came another bulletin from the central bureau. Neptune now had a surface temperature of 3000 degrees centigrade and was defying all laws of celestial mechanics. Within three days would have left the solar system forever. The results of such a disaster were unpredictable and the entire solar system was likely to break up. Already Uranus and Jupiter had deviated from their orbit unless something speedily occurred to check the onrush of the dark star. It was prophesied that the laws governing the planetary system would run to a new balance and that in the ensuing chaos the whole group was spread apart and fall towards the gulfs beyond the great surrounding point. What was the nature of the great path of fire? What force did it represent? And was the dark star controlled by intelligence or was it a blind wanderer from space that had come by accident? The flame path alone implied that the dark star was guided by an intelligence that possessed the secret of inconceivable power. Menace hung in the sky now where all eyes could see in a great arc of fire. The world was on the brink of eternity and vast forces whose nature man could only guess were sweeping planets and suns out of its path. The following night was again cold and clear. High in the heavens where Neptune should have been on a disk of enormously greater size. Neptune itself was almost invisible hundreds of millions of miles beyond its scheduled position. As nearly as phobarchid estimates not one hundredth of the sun's rays were reflected from the surface of a dark star proportion of far below those of the other planets. Phobarch had a better view of the flame path and it was with growing awe that he watched that strange sway in the sky during the dead of night. It shot out from the dark star like a colossal beam or huge pillar of fire seeking a food of worlds. With a shiver of cold fear he saw that there were now three of the bands one toward Neptune one toward Saturn one toward the Sun. The first was fading a milky misty white. The second shone almost as bright as the first one previously had and the third toward the Sun was a dazzling stream of orange radiance burning with a steady terrible unbelievable intensity across two and a half billion miles of Spain. That gigantic flare was the most brilliant sight in the whole night sky, an awful and abysmally prophetic flame that made city streets black with staring people. A radiance whose grandeur and terrific implication of cosmic power brought beauty and the fear of doom into the heaven. Those paths could not be explained by all the physicists and all the astronomers in the Five World Federation. They possessed the properties of light but they were rigid bands like a tube or a solid pillar from which only the faintest of rays escaped and they completely shut off the heavens behind them. They had moreover singular properties which could not be described as if a new force were embodied in them. Hour after hour humanity watched the spectacular progress of the dark star watch those mysterious and threatening parts of light that flowed from the invader. When dawn came it brought only a great fear and the oppression of impending disaster. In the early morning phobars slept. When he awoke he felt refreshed and decided to take a short walk in the familiar and peaceful light of death. He never took that walk. He opened the door on a kind of dim and reddish twilight. Not a cloud hung in the sky but the sun shone feebly with a dull red glow and the skies were dull and somber as if the sun were dying as scientists had predicted it eventually would. Phobars stared at the dull heavens in the days and the foreboding atmosphere and the livid sun that burned faintly is through a smoke-catten. Then the truth flashed on him was the terrible path of fire from the dark star. By what means he could not guess by what a appalling control of immense and inconceivable forces he could not even imagine. The dark star was sucking light and perhaps more than light from the sun. Phobars turned and shut the door. The world had seen its last dawn. If the purpose of the dark star was destruction, none of the planets could offer much opposition but no weapon of theirs was effective beyond a few thousand miles range at most and the dark star could span millions. If the invader passed on its havoc would only be a trifle smaller for it already destroyed two members of the solar system was now striking at its most vital path. Without the sun life would die but even with the sun the planets must rearrange themselves because of the destruction of balance. Even he could hardly grasp the vast and abysmal catastrophe but without warning it swept from space. How could the dark star of traversed sweet thousand light is of space in a week's time? It was unthinkable so stupendous a control of power so gigantic a manipulation of cosmic forces so annihilating a possession of the greatest secrets of the universe was an unheard of concentration of energy and knowledge of stellar mechanics. But the evidence of his own eyes and the path of the dark star with flaming suns to mark its progress told him in language which could not be refuted but the dark star possessed all that immeasurable titanic knowledge. It was the lord of the universe. There was nothing which the dark star could not crush or conquer or change. The thought of that immense supreme power numbed his mind. The open vistas of a civilization and a progress and unparalleled mastery of all knowledge which was almost beyond conception. Already the news had raised across the world. On fur bars television screen fresh scenes of a nightmare. The radio spewed a gibberish of town. In one day panic had swept the earth. On the remaining members of the five world federation the same story was repeated. Writing mobs drowned out the chant of religious fanatics who hailed judgement day. Great fires turned the air murky and flame shunned. Machine guns spat regularly in city streets looting murder and fear crazed crimes were universal. Civilization completely vanished overnight. The tides wrought higher than they ever had before but every thousand people drowned on the American seaboard a hundred thousand perished in China and India. Dead volcanoes boomed into the worst eruptions known. Half of Japan sunk during the most violent earthquake in history. Land rocked. The seas boiled cyclones howled out of the sky. A billion eyes focused on Mecca the mad beating of Tom Tong's role to cross Africa. Women and children were trampled to death by the crowds that jammed into churches. As man lived in vain as a philosopher the world is doomed there is no escape except the scientists. But they are reckoning has come the wrath of God is upon us shouted the street preacher. In a days felt by switched off the badminton walking like a man asleep strode out. He didn't care where if only to get away. The ground and the sky were like a dying fire. The sun seemed a half dead cinder. Only the breaks swayed the radiance between the sun and the dark star had any brilliance sinister menacing and now larger even than the sun. The invader from beyond hung in the heavens. As phobia watched it. Yet around him prickled strangely. A sixth tense gave warning. He turned to race back into his house but his legs fell. A fantastic orange light bathed him. Countless needles of paint shot through his whole body and the world darkened. The earth had somehow been blotted down. There was a brief blackness the nausea of space and of a great fall that compressed eternity into a moment. Then a swimming confusion an outline which gradually came to rest. Furbar was too utterly amazed to cry out or run. He stood inside the most titanic edifice he could have imagined a single gigantic structure faster than all New York City. Bar overhead swept a black roof fading into the horizon. Beneath his feet was the same metal substance. In the midst of this giant work saw the base of a tower that pierced the roof thousands of feet above. Everywhere loom machines, enormous dynamos, cathode tubes a hundred feet long, masses and mountains of such fantastic apparatus that he'd never encountered before. The air was bluish, electric. From the black substance came a false fluorescent radio. The triumphant drone of motors and a terrific crackle of electricity were everywhere. After his right purple blue flame was the size of sequoietries flickered around a group of what looked like condenses as huge as Gibraltar. At the base of the central tower half a mile distant so I could see something that resembled a great switchboard studied with silver control. And there it was a series of mechanisms whose purpose he could not even get. All this is a standardized took in one confused glance. The thing that gave him unreasoning terror was the hundred foot high metal monster before him. It defied description. It was unlike any colour known on earth, a blinding colour sinister with power and evil. Its shape was equally ambiguous. It rippled like quicksilver, now compact, now spread out into a thousand limbs but what a pawed fur bar was its definite possession of rational life. Moreover his very thoughts were transmitted to him as clearly as slow written in his own native England. Follow me. Furbar's mind did not function but his legs moved regularly and the grasp of this mental, metal monster he was a mere automaton. Furbar noticed idly that he had to step down from a flat disc a dozen yards across. By some power some tremendous discovery that he could not understand. He'd been transported across millions of miles of space and doubtedly to the dark star itself. The colossal thing, indescribable, a blinding nameless colour, rippled down the hall and stooped before a disc of silvery black. In the centre of the disc was a metal seat with a control board nearby. Be seated. Furbar sat down, the titan flicked the controls and nothing happened. Furbar sensed that something was radically wrong. He felt the surprise of his gigantic companion. He didn't know it then but the fate of the solar system hung on that incident. "Come!" A abruptly the giant stooped, the furbar shrank back. But a flowing mass of cold in the sense that metal swept around him lifted him a fifty feet in the air. Dizzy, sick, horrified. He was hardly conscious of the whirlwind motion into which the giant had suddenly shot. He had a damn impression of machines racing by of countless other giants of a sudden opening in the walls of the immense building, and then a rush across the surface of metal land. Even his vertigo, he had enough curiosity to marvel that there was no vegetation, no water, only the dull black metal everywhere. Yet there was air, and then a city loomed before them. To Furbar it seemed the city of gods or giants. Fully five miles it soared towards space. Its fantastic angles and arcs and cubes and pyramids amazing in the dimensions of a totally alien geometry. Tear by tear, the stupendous city, hundreds of miles wide, mounted toward a central tower like the one in the building he'd left. Furbar never knew how they got there, but his numb mind was at last forced into clarity by a greater will. He stared about him. His captor had gone. He stood in a huge chamber circling to a dome far overhead. Before him, on a dais of four thousand feet in diameter, stood, sat, rested, whatever it might be called, another monster, far larger than any he'd yet seen, like a mountain of plant-thinking, living metal. Furbar knew that he stood in the presence of the ruler. The metal cyclops surveyed him, as Furbar might have surveyed an ant, gold, deadly. Dispassionate scrutiny came from something that might have been eyes or a seeing intelligence locked in a metal body. There was no sound but inwardly to Furbar's consciousness from the peak of the titan far above came a command. What are you called? Furbar opened his lips, but even before he spoke, he knew that the thing had understood his thought. Furbar, I am Gaboure, ruler of Slabarti, the lord of the university. Lord of the university, I am I welcome from one of the universities beyond the reach of your telescope. Furbar somehow felt that the thing was talking to him as he would to a newborn baby. What do you want of me? Tell your earth that I want the entire supply of your radium awes mind, and placed above ground according to the instructions I give, by seven of your days hence. A dozen questions sprang to Furbar's lips. He felt again that he was being treated like a child. Why do you want our radium awes? Because they are the rarest of the elements on your scale, they are absent on owls and supply us with some of the tremendous energy weaning. Why do you obtain the awes from other worlds? We do. We are taking them from all worlds where they exist, but we need yours also. No, raiders of the universe, looting young worlds of their precious radium awes, piracy on a cosmic scale. And if earth refuses your demand, for answer, Gaboréd, report to a wall of the room and pressed a button. The wall dissolved weirdly, mysteriously. A series of vast silver plates were revealed, and a battery of control leap. This will happen to all of your earth unless the awes are given to us. The titan then closed a switch, and the screen flashed the picture of a huge tower, such as Furbar, had seen in the metal city. Gaboréd adjusted a second control that was something like a rangefinder. He pressed a third lever, and from the tower leaped a huge surge of terrific energy, like a bolt of lightning a quarter of a mile broad. The giant closed another switch, and on the second plate flashed a picture of New York City. And then, wait. Seconds. Minutes drifted by. The atmosphere became tense, nerve-cracking. Furbar's eyes ached with the intensity of his stand. What would happen? And then, abruptly, it came. A monstrous bolt of energy streaked from the skies. Purple, blue, death, and a pillar, a fourth of a mile broad, crashed into the heart of New York City, swept up and down Manhattan, across some back, and suddenly vanished. Within 15 seconds, only a molten hell of fused structures and incinerated millions of human beings remained of the world's first city. Furbar was crushed, appalled, and then, but a loathing for this soulless thing poured through him. Oh, if only. It is useless. You can do nothing. Answer the ruler, as though it had grasped his thought. But why? If you could pick me off the earth, do you not draw the radium ores in the same way? Furbar demanded. The orange ray only picks up loose, portable objects. We can and will transport the radium ores here by means of the ray after they have been mined and placed on platforms or disks. Why did you select me from all the millions of people on earth? It's only because you were the first apparent scientist whom our cosmatel challenged upon. It will be up to you to notify your earth governments of our demand. But afterwards, Furbar burst out to loud. Quite then. We loved it. But it will mean death to us. The soulless system will be wrecked with neptune gun and satin following it. Garb, already, made no answer. To that impassive cold and human thing, it did not matter if a nation or a whole world perished. Furbar had already seen with what deliberate karma had destroyed a city and he needed to show him what the power lords of these Labati control. Besides, what guarantee was there that the invaders would not loot the earth of everything they wanted and then annihilate all life upon it before they did party. And yet Furbar knew he was helpless, knew that the man of earth would be forced to do whatever was asked of them and trust that the raiders would fulfill their promise. Two hours remained for your stay here, came the rulers dictum to interrupt his line of thought. For the first half of that period, you will tell me of your world and answer whatever questions I may ask. During the rest of the interval, I will explain some of the things you wish to learn about her. Again, Furbar felt Garborex disdain, knew that the metal giant regarded him as a kind of playing thing for an hour or two's amusement. And yet he had no choice. As we told Garborex of the life on earth, how it arose and along what lines it had developed. Inerated in brief the extent of man's knowledge, his scientific achievements, his mastery of weapons and forces and machines, his social organization, and when he finished he felt as a stern age man might feel in the presence of a brilliant scientist of the 34th century. If any sign of interest had shown on the peak of the metallic lord, Furbar fell to see it. But he sensed an intolerant sneer of ridicule in Garborex, as though the ruler considered these statements to be only the most elementary of facts. Then for three-quarters of an hour. In the manner of one lecturing an ignorant pupil, the giant crowded its thought pictures into Furbar's mind so that finally he understood a little of the raiders and of the sudden terror that had flamed from the abysses into the solar system. The universe of matter that you know is only one of the countless universes which comprise the cosmos. The gown Garborex. In your universe you have a scale of 92 elements. You have your color spectrum, your rays and waves of many kinds. You are subject to definite laws controlling matter and energy as you know. But we are of a different universe. On a different scale from your arms, a trillion light years away in space, the arms distant in time. The natural laws which govern us differ from those controlling you. In our universe you would be hopelessly lost, completely helpless, unless you possess the knowledge that your people will not attain even in millions of years. But we are so much older and greater than you and for so long study the nature of the other universes that we can enter and leave at will. Taking what we wish, doing as we wish, creating or destroying worlds whenever the need arises, coming and hurtling away when we choose. There is no vegetable life in our universe. There is only the scale of elements ranging from 842 to 966 on the extension of your own scale. With this high range, metals of complex kinds exist. There is none of what you call water, no vegetable world, no animal kingdom. Instead there are energies, forces, rays and waves which are food to us and which nourish our life stream just as pigs, potatoes and bread are food to you. Trillions of years ago in your time calculation, but only a few dozen centuries ago in hours. Life arose on the giant world of Krypton in our universe. It was life, our life. Life of my people and myself. Intelligence animating bodies of plied metal, existing almost endlessly on an almost inexhaustible source of energy. But all matter wears down. On Krypton there was a variety of useful metals, others that were valueless. It was comparatively little of the first and much of the second. Krypton itself was a world as large as your entire solar system with a diameter roughly of four billion miles. Our ancestors knew that Krypton was dying, that the store of our most precious element, Slower, was dwindling. But already our ancestors had mastered the forces of our universe and had made inventions that are beyond your understanding, had explored the limits of our universe in space cars that were propelled by the free energies in space and by the attracting repelling influences of stars. The metal inhabitants of Krypton employed every invention they knew to accomplish an engineering miracle that makes your bridges and mines seen by the puny efforts of a net. They blasted all the remaining oars of Slower from the surface and interior of Krypton. And refined them. Then they created a giant vacuum, a dead field in space, a hundred million miles away from that world. The dead field was controlled from Krypton by atomic projectors, energy absorbers, gravitation nullifiers, and cosmetals. Range regulators and a host of other inventions. As fast as it was mined and extracted, the Sareth metal was vaporized, shot into the dead field by interstellar rays and solidified air along an invisible framework which we projected. In a decade of our time, we had pillaged Krypton of every particle of Sare. Then in Aske ice hung an artificial world, a manufactured sphere, giant new planets, world you yourself and I want, Slowerth. We did not create a solid globe, we left chambers, tunnels, passageway store rooms, throughout piercing it from surface to surface. And thus, even as Labati was being created, we provided for everything that we needed or could need. Experimental laboratories, subsurface faults, chambers for the innumerable huge ray dynamites, energy storage batteries, and other apparatus which we needed. When all was ready, we transferred by space cars and by atomic individuation or land necessities from Krypton to the artificial world of Slowerth. And when everything was prepared, we destroyed the dead field by a jeep of the control from the Slowerth. Turned our repulsion power on full against the now useless and dying giant world of Krypton and swung upon our power. But our whole universe is incredibly old. It was mature before ever your young sons flamed out with the gaseous nebulae. It was decaying when your molten planets were flung from the central sun. It was dying before the boiling seas had given birth to land upon your sphere. While we had enough of our own particular electrical fruit elastics for a million of your years, and enough power to guide Labati to other universes, we had exhausted all the remaining energy of our entire universe. When we finally left it to dwindle behind us in the black abysses of space, we left it a dead cinder, devoid of life, vegetative of activity, and utterly lacking in cosmic forces, a universe finally run down. The universes, as you may know, are set off from each other by totally black and empty absence, expansive so vast that light rays have not yet crossed many. How did we accomplish the feat of traversing such a goal by the simplest of means? Acceleration? Why? Because to remain in our universe meant inevitable death. We gambled on the greatest adventure and all the cosmos. To begin with, we circled our universe to the remundest point opposite where we wanted to live. We then turned our attraction powers on partway so that the millions of stars before us drew us ahead, and then we gradually stepped other power to its full strength, thus ever increasing our speed. At the same time, stars passed to our rear in our flight, we turned our repulsion rays against them, stepping that power up also. Our initial speed was 24 miles per second. Midway into our universe, we'd reach the speed of your life, 186,000 miles per second. But the time we left our universe, we were hurtling at a speed which we estimated to be 1,600,000,000 miles per second. It even had that tremendous speed it took us years to cross from our universe to yours. If we had encountered even a planetoid at that enormous rate, we would have probably been annihilated in White Hot Death. But we had planned well. There are no superiors to our stellar mechanics or astronomers or our scientists. When we finally hurtled from the black void into your universe, we found what we'd only dare at hopeful. A young universe with many planets and cooling worlds rich in radian organs. The only element in your scale that can help to replenish our vanishing energy. Half your universe, we've already deprived of its odds. Your Earth has more than we want. Then we shall continue on our way, to loot the rest of the worlds before passing on to another universe. We are a planet without a universe. We will wander in pillision till we find a universe like the one we come from, or until it's the body itself disintegrates and we perish. We could easily wipe out all the dwellers on earth and mind the oars ourselves. But that will be a needless waste of our powers. But since you cannot defy us, and since the desire for life burns is higher than you as in us, and as it does in all sentient things in the universe, your people will save themselves from death and save us from wasting energy by minding the oars for us. What happens afterwards? We do not care. The seven new sun as you saw were dead worlds that we used as buffos to slow down celebrity. The full strength of our repulsion force directed against any single world necessarily turns it into a liquid or gaseous state depending on various factors. Your planet Neptune was pulled out of the solar system by the attraction of the party's mass. The flame paths, as you call them, are directed streams of energy for different purposes. The one to the sun supplies us, for instance, with heat, light, and electricity, which in turn are stored up for eventual use. The orange ray that you felt is one of our achievements. It's similar to the double-action pumps used in some of your sulfur mines, whereby a pipe is enclosed in a larger pipe and hot water forced down through the larger tubing, returning sulfur laden through the essential pipe. The orange ray instantaneously dissolves any portable object up to a certain size, propels it back to Zlebati through its center, which is the reverse ray, and here reforms the object, just as you were recreated on the disk that you stood on when you regained consciousness. But I do not have enough time to explain everything on Zlebati to you, nor would you comprehend it all if you did. Your stay is almost up. In that one control power lies all the power that we have mastered, boasted garbur egg with supreme egotism. It connects with the individual controls throughout Zlebati. What's the purpose of some of these leavers, asked Foba, with a desperate hope in his thoughts? A filament of metal whipped to the panel from the Lord of Zlebati. His first section duplicates the control panel that you saw in the laboratory, where you open your eyes. Do not think that you can make use of this information. In 10 minutes you will be back on your Earth to deliver how it comes out. Between now and that moment you will be so closely watched that you can do nothing and will have no opportunity to trust. Now this first lever controls the attraction rays. The second and the repulsion force. The third dial regulates the orange ray by which you will be returned to Earth. The fourth switch directs the electrical bolt that destroyed New York City. Next it is a device that we have never had occasion to use. It releases the crangle wave throughout Zlebati. Its effect is to make each atom of Zlebati, the swaleth metal and everything on it, become compact. To do away with the empty spaces that exist in every atom. Theoretically it would reduce Zlebati to a fraction of its present sonnets, diminishes mass while its weight and gravity remained as before. The next lever controls matter to be transported between here and the first laboratory. Somewhat like the orange ray it disintegrates the object and reassembles it here. So that was what Phobos Captain had been trying to do with him back there in the laboratory. Why was it not brought here by that means burst out Phobos? Because you belong to a different universe, an answer to Gaborra. Without experimentation we cannot tell what natural laws of ours you would not be subject to, but they see as one of them. A gesture of irritation seemed to come from him. Some laws hold good in all the universities we have thus far investigated. The orange ray for instance picked you up as it would have plugged one of us from the service of Gripton, but on a Zlebati which is composed entirely of slari. Your atomic nature and physical constitution are so different from ours that they were unaffected by the energy that ordinary transports objects here. And thus the metal night layer went rapidly over the control panel. That length Phobos Captain, or another thing like him, reentered when Gaborraig flicked a strange looking protuberance on the panel. You will now be returned to your world. Game of thought of Gaborra. Make sure to watch you through our cosmetail to see that you deliver our instruction. Unless the nations of earth obey us it will be obliterated at the end of seven a day. Wild impulse to smash that impassive metallic master passed from Phobos quickly as it came. He was helpless, sick and despairing he felt the cold baffling colour the metal closed around him again. Once more he was born aloft for the journey to the laboratory. From there to be propelled back to earth. Seven days of grace, but Phobos knew that less than ten minutes remained to him. Only here could he possibly accomplish anything. Once off the surface of the laboratory there was not the remotest chance that all the nations of earth could reach the invaders or even attempt to define them. What could he do alone in a week to say nothing of ten minutes? He sensed the amused, super silliest contempt of his captor. That was really the greatest obstacle, this ability of theirs to read thought pictures. And already he'd given them enough word pictures of English so they could understand. In the back of Phobos mind the ghost of a desperate thought suddenly came. What was it he'd learned years ago in college? Homer the Odyssey, a plutarch from rusty disused corners of memory cracked forth the huff forgotten words. He bent all his efforts to the task, not daring to think ahead or plan ahead or visualize anything but the Greek word. He felt the bewilderment of his captor. To throw it off the track Phobos suddenly let an ancient English nursery rhyme slip into his thumb. A disgust that emanated from his captor was laughable. Phobos could have shouted aloud, "But the Greek word." Already the parrot left the mountain high tight and city far behind, and they rippled across the smooth black surface of Zabarti and bore like rifle bullets down on the swiftly looming laboratory. In a few minutes it would be too late for ever. Now the lost Greek words burst into Phobos mind and hoping against hope he thought in Greek word pictures which his captor could not understand. He weighed chances long shots into his brain flashed an idea but they were now upon the laboratory and a stupendous door dissolved weirdly into shimmering haze and they sped through. Phobos hand clutched a bulge in his pocket. Would it work? How could it? They would now be on the door and racing across the great expanse of the floor past the central tower past the control panel which he'd first seen. Then, as if by magic, they leaped into Phobos mind a clear cut vivid picture of violet oceans of energy crack lingering and streaking from the heavens to crash through the laboratory roof and barely mistragging his captor behind. Even as Phobos created the image of that terrific death, his captor whirled around in a lightning movement along arm of metal flicking outward at the same instant to drop Phobos out of the ground. Like a flash Phobos eyes feet, his hand worked for his pocket with all his strength he flung a gleaming object straight toward the fifth lever on the control panel a dozen yards away. As a clumsy arrow would his oversized bunch of keys twisted to their mouth clanked and spread across the fifth control which was the size regulator. As rapidly as Phobos captor spun around it reversed again having guessed his trip. The tentacle of pliant metal snaked toward Phobos like a streak of flame but in those few seconds a terrific holocaust had taken place. As Phobos keys battered against the fifth lever they came an immediate growing strange high-pitched wine and a sickening collapse of the very surface beneath them. Everywhere outlines of objects wave had changed melted shrank with a steady and nauseatingly swift motion. The roof of the laboratory high overhead plunged downward the far distant walls swept inward contracted and the metal monsters themselves dwindled as though they were vast rubber figures from which the air was hissing. Phobos sprang back as the tentacle whipped after him. Only that jump and the suddenly dwarfing dimensions of the giant safety. And even in that instant of wild action Phobos shouted aloud for this whole world was collapsing together with everything on it except he himself became from a different universe and remained unaffected. It was the long shot he'd gambled on but one chance he'd had to strike a blow. All over the shrinking laboratory the monsters were rushing toward him. His dwindling counter flung another tentacle toward the control panel to replace the size regulating lever but Phobos had anticipated that possibility had already leapt to the switchboard sweeping a heavy bar from its place and crashing it down on the lever so hard that it could not be replaced without being repaired. Almost in the same move he bounded away again the former hundred foot giant now scarcely more than his own height. But throughout the laboratory the other metal things had halted in their tasks and were racing onward. Phobos always remembered that a battle in the laboratory is a scene from some horrible nightmare. The catastrophe came so rapidly that he could hardly follow the whirlwind events. The half-dozen great leaps he made from the lashing tentacles of his pursuer sufficed to give him a few seconds respite and then the weird howling sound of the tortured world swelled to a piercing wound. His lungs were laboring from the violence of his exertions again and again he barely escaped from the curling whips of the metal tentacles. And now the monster was hardly afoot hunt. The huge condensers and tubes and colossal machinery were like those of a pygmy laboratory and overhead a roof plunged ever down. But Phobos was cornered at last. He stood in the centre of a circle of the foot-high things. His captors suddenly shot forth a dozen rope-like arms toward him as the others closed him. He didn't even have a weapon but he dropped the bar in his first mad bound away from the control panel. He saw himself trapped in his own trip. For a minute at most the laboratory would be crushing him with fearful thought. Linley, Phobos reverted to a primitive defence in this moment of infinite danger and he kicked with all his strength at the squat monster before him. All the things tried to whirl aside but Phobos shoe squashed thickly through and in a disorder of quivering pieces the metal creature fell and subsided. Knowing at last the invaders were vulnerable and how they could be killed, Phobos went leaping and stamping on those nearest him and underfoot they disintegrated into little pulpy lumps of inert metal. And in a trace he broke beyond the circle and darted to the control panel. One quick light showed him that the roof was now scarcely a half-dozen yards above with the fingers that fumbled in haste at tiny levers and dials. He spun several of them, the repulsion ray full, the attraction ray full. When they were set he picked up the bar, he dropped and smashed the control so that they were helplessly jammed. You almost feel the planet catapult through the heavens. The laboratory roof was only a foot over his head now. He rolled around, squashed a dozen tiny creeping things, leapt to a disk that was now not more than a few inches broad, stooping low, balancing himself precariously, somehow managed to close the tiny sweep. The haze of orange light in a vacuum became a great vertigo in dizziness and pain. He felt himself falling through bottomless spacing. So exhausted that he could scarcely move. Phobos blinked his eyes open to brilliant daylight in the chill of a November Indian summoning. The sun shone radiant in the heavens. Off in the distance he heard a pandemonium of bells and whistles. Wierily he noticed that there were no flame parts in the sky. Staggering weakly, he made his way to the observatory, mounted the steps with tired limbs and wobbled to the eyepiece of his telescope, which he'd left focused on the dark star two hours before. Almost trembling. He peered through it. The dark star was gone. Somewhere far out in the abysses of the universe, a runaway world plunged headlong at ever-mounting speed to uncharted region as under its double acceleration of attraction and repulsion. A sigh of contentment came from his lips as he sank into a heavy, in profound sleep. Later he would learn of the readjustments in the solar system, and of the colder climate that came to earth, and of the vast changes permanently made by the invading planets, and of a blazing new star discovered in Orion that might signify the birth of his son or the death of a metallic dark world. But these were events to be, and he demanded his immediate reward of a day's dreamless slump. I'm Victoria Cash, and I want to invite you to a place called Lucky Land, where you can play over a hundred social casino-style games for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. So what are you waiting for? The best way to discover your luck is to spin! So go to luckylandslots.com, that's luckylandslots.com, and get lucky today! At Lucky Land. The man from 2071. Perhaps this story does not belong with my other tales of the special patrol service, and yet there is, or should be, a report somewhere in the musty archives of the service, covering the incident. Not accurately, not in detail. Among a great massive old records which I was browsing through the other day, I happened to cross that report. It occupied exactly three lines and a logbook of the air talk. Just before departure, discovered Stowaway, apparently demented, and ejected him. For the hard-headed higher ups of the service, that report was enough. On a day given the facts, they would have called me to the base for a long-winded investigation. Would have taken weeks and weeks filled with fussy questioning. Dozens of stooped-shouldered laboratory men would have prodded and sneaked and asked for long-ridden accounts. In those days, keeping the logbook was writing enough for leave, and being grounded at base for weeks would have been punishment. Nothing would have been gained by any detailed report. The service needed action rather than the report anyway. Well, now I'm an old man. On the retired list, I have time to run, and it will be a particular pleasure to write this account, for it will go to prove that these much-honored scientists about, with all their tremendous appropriations and long-winded discussions, are not nearly so wonderful as they think they are. They are, and always happy, too much interest in abstract formulas and not enough in their practical application. Never had a great deal of use for it. Well, I received orders to report to Earth, regarding a dull routine matter of reorganizing the emergency base, which had been established there. Well, Earth, I might add, for the benefit of those who have forgotten your geography of the universe. It's not a large body, but it's people first almost all of the office of personnel of the special patrol service. Having a native of Earth, I received the assignment with considerable pleasure despite its dry and uninteresting nature. It was a good sight to see older, bundled up in her cottony clouds, growing larger and larger in the television disc. No matter how much you wander around the universe, no matter how small and insignificant the world of your birth, there is a tie that cannot be denied. I have set my ships down on many strange and unknown worlds with danger and adventure at awaiting me. But there is, for me, a thrill which quite duplicates that of viewing again that particular ball of mud from whence I sprang. I've said that before, and I shall probably say it again. I'm proud to claim Earth is my birthplace, small and proud of the way as she is. Our base on Earth was adjacent to the city of Greater Denver, on the Pacific coast. Couldn't help wondering, as we settle swiftly over the city, whether our historians and geologists and other scientists were really right in saying that Denver had at one period been far from the Pacific. Well, it seemed impossible, as I gazed down on that blue tranquil sea that it had engulfed hundreds of years ago with such a vast portion of North America. But I suppose the men of science know that. Well, I need not go into the routine business that brought me to Earth. Suffice to say it was settled quickly by the afternoon of the second day. Well, I'm referring, of course, to Earth days, which are slightly less than half the length of an inarun of the universe time. A number of my friends had come to meet and visit me during my brief stay on Earth. Having finished my business with such dispatch, I decided to spend that evening with them and leave the following morning. It was very late when my friends departed. I strolled out with them to their monocar, returning the salute to the Airtach's lone sentry, who was pacing his post before the huge circular exit of the ship. The Airtach lay lightly upon the Earth, her polished size gleaming in the light of the crescent ring. In the sights toward me, the circular entrance gaped like a sleepy map. The sentry, in the eyes of his commander were upon him, strode back and forth at brisk, military precision. Slowly, still thinking of my friends, and made my way toward the ship. I'd taken only a few steps when the sentry's challenge rang out sharply. Ock, who goes there? My glanced up in surprise. Shiro, the man on guard, had seen me leave. He should have had no difficulty in recognising me, but, no, the challenge had not been meant for me. Now, between myself and the Airtach, they stood a strange figure. And instead before, I would have sworn that there was no human insight, say for myself and the sentry. Now this man stood not twenty feet away, swaying as though ill or terribly weary, then he able to lift his head and turn it toward the sentry. "Friend," he gasped, "friend." I think he would have fallen to the ground if I hadn't clapped an arm around his shoulders and supported him. "Just a moment," whispered the stranger. "I'm a bit fainter. I'll be all right." I stared down at the man, unable to reply. This was a nightmare, no less. I could feel the sentry staring to. The man was dressed in the style so ancient that I couldn't remember that period. Twenty-first century, at least, perhaps earlier. And while he spoke English, which is a language of earth, he spoke it with a harsh and unpleasant accent that made his words difficult, almost impossible to understand. Their meaning did not fully sink in until an instant after he'd finished speaking. "Sure, I said sharply. Help me take this man inside, he's ill." "Yes, sir." The guard leapt to a daily order, and together, we led him into the airtach, into my own state-look. There was some mystery here, and I was eager to get at the root of it. The man with the ancient costume and the strange accents had not come to the spot where we'd seen him by any means with which I was familiar. He materialised out of thin air. There was no other way to account for his present. We propped the stranger in my most comfortable chair. I turned to the sentry. I was staring at our weird visitor with wandering, fearful eyes, and when I spoke, he stuck it as though stung by an electric shot. "Very well," I said briskly. "That'll be all. "Resume your post immediately, and..." "Shiro?" "Yes, sir." "It won't be necessary for you to make a report of this incident." "I'll attend to that, understand." "Yes, sir." I think it's to the man's everlasting credit, and to the credit of the service which had trained him, he executed a snappy salute, didn't about face, left the room, but another glance at the man slumped down in my big, easy chin. With a feeling of cold, nervous apprehensions such as I've seldom experienced in a rather varied and active life, I then turned to my visit. He hadn't moved, saved to lift his hair. Who staring at me, his eyes fixed in his chalky, white face. They were dark, long as he sat normally on, and they glitted with a strange, uncanny light. "Are you feeling better?" I asked. His thin, bloodless lips moved, but for a moment no sound came from him. He tried again. "What?" he said. I drew a glass from the tank in the wall of my room. He downed it at a gold, passed the empty glass back to him. "More," he whispered. He drank the second glass more slowly, his eyes darting swiftly, curiously around the room, and his brilliant, piercing glance, fell upon my face. "Tell me," he commanded sharper. "What year is this?" I stared at him. It occurred to me that my friends might have conceived and executed an elaborate hoax, and then I dismissed the idea instantly. There were no scientists among them who could make a man materialize out of nothingness. "Are you in your right mind?" I asked slowly. "The question strikes me as damnably odd, sir." The man laughed wildly and slowly straightened up in the chair. His long bony fingers clasped and unclasped slowly, as though feeling were just returning to them. "Your question," he replied in his odd, unfamiliar accent. "He's not unnatural, under the circumstances. I assure you that I am of sound mind, of very sound mind." He smiled, rather a ghastly smile, "I made a vague, slight gesture with one hand." "Would you be good enough to answer my question?" "What year is this?" "Earthyear, you mean?" He stared at me then, his eyes flickering. "Yes," he said. "Earthyear, oh fuck. Are there other ways of figuring time now?" "Well, certainly. Each inhabited world has its own system. There's a master system for the universe. Why are you? What are you? You should ask me a question the smallest child should know." "First," he insisted, "tell me what year this is." "Earth reckoning." I told him, and the light flicked up in his eyes again. A cruel, triumphant light. "Thank you," he nodded and then slowly and softly, as though he spoke to himself. He added, "less than half a century off. Less than half a century." And he laughed at me. "Well, I shall laugh at them now." "You choose to be mysterious, sir," I asked, impatiently. "No, no. You understand, and then you'll forgive me, I know. I've come through and experience such as no man has ever known before. If I'm shaken weak, surprising to you, it's because of that experience." He paused for a moment, his long, powerful fingers gripping the arms of the chair. "You see," he added, "I've come out of the past and into the present, or from the present into the future, depends upon one's viewpoint. If I'm distraught, then forgive me. A few minutes ago, I was Jacob Hobower, a little laboratory on the edge of a mountain park near Denver. But now, my nameless being hurtled into the future, pausing here many centuries from my own ear. Do you wonder now that I'm so unnerved? "Do you mean," I said slowly, trying to understand what he babbled for. "But you have come out of the past, but you, bits, you, are those two monstrous to put into words." "I mean," he replied, "I was born in the year 2028. I'm 43 years old. I was a few minutes ago, but his eyes flicked again with that strange, mad light. I'm a scientist. I've left my age far behind me for a time. I've done what no other human being has ever done. I've gone centuries into the future. But I don't understand. Could he, after all, be a madman? Who can a man leave his own age and travel ahead to another? Even in this age of yours, have they not discovered that secret? How about we exalted it? You travel the universe, I gather, and you're a scientist, so not yet learned to move in time. Listen, let me explain to you how simple of theory is. A ticket that you're an intelligent man, your uniform in its insignia would seem to indicate a degree of rank, can I correct? I'm John Hanson, commander of the Ereta of the Special Patrol Service, then you will be capable of grasping, in part, at least, what I have to tell you. It's really not so complex. See, time is a river, flowing steadily, more powerful than the fixed rate of speed. It sweeps the whole universe along in its bosom at that same speed. That's my conception of it. Is that clear to you? Well, I should think, I'll recline it. But the universe is more like a great rock in the middle of your stream of time that stands motionless while the minutes, the hours, and the days roll by. No, the universe travels on the breast of the current of time. It leaves yesterday behind and sweeps on towards tomorrow. It's always been so until I challenge this so-called immutable law. I said to myself, "Why should a man be a helpless stick on the stream of time? Why need he be born on this slow current at the same speed? Why cannot he do, as a man in a boat? Pedal backwards or false?" Back to a point already passed, ahead, faster than the current, to a point that, drifting, he would not reach so soon. In other words, why can he not slip back through time to yesterday, or ahead to tomorrow? And after tomorrow, why not next year, next century? These are questions I ask myself. Other man have asked themselves the same questions, I know. They were not new, but Bob Howard drew himself far forward in his chair and leaned close to me, almost as though he prepared himself to sprint. No other man ever found the answer. Well, that remained for me. I was not entirely cracked, of course. I found that one could not go back in time. The current was against one. But to go ahead with the current at once back, it was different. It's been six years on the property, looking day and night. Handicapped by a lack of funds, ridiculed by the press. Look! Harbauer reached inside his antiquated costume, and drew forth a flat packet, which he passed to me, and folded it curiously. My fingers clumsy with excitement. I could hardly believe my eyes. The thing Harbauer had handed me was a folded fragment of firm newspaper, such as I'd often seen in museums. I recognised the old-fashioned type and the peculiar arrangement of the colonies. Instead of being yellow and brittle with age, preserved in fragments behind sealed glass, this paper was fresh and moist, and the ink was as black as the day it had imprinted. What this man said then, "Must be true. He must... I can understand your amazement," said Harbauer. It not occurred to me that a paper witch, to me, was printed only yesterday. It seemed so antique to you, but that must appear as remarkable to you as fresh papyrus. Newly inscribed with the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians would seem to, you know, people of my day in age. But you read it. You see how my world viewed my efforts. There was a sharpness of bitterness in his voice that made me vaguely uneasy, even though he'd solved the riddle of moving in time as men have always moved in space. My first conjecture that I had a madman to deal with might not be so far from the truth. Oh, ridicule and persecution have unseated the reason of forming too many men. The type was unfamiliar to me, and the spelling was archaic, but I managed to stumble through the article. It read it as nearly as I can recall it, like this. Harbauer says time is like great river. Jacob Harbauer, local inventor, an exclusive interview, prepares a theory that man can move about in time exactly as a boat moves about on the surface of a swift-flowing river, save that he and I'll go back in time, on account of the opposition of the current. Well, that is very fortunate, this right of view. There'll be a terrible thing, for example, if some good-looking scam from our present 21st century were to dive into the past and steal Cleopatra from Antony, or start an affair with Josephine and send Napoleon scurrying back from the front and let the Napoleonic Wars go to part. We'd have to have all our histories rewritten. Harbauer is well-known endeavor as the eccentric inventor who, for the last five or six years, has occupied a lonely shack in the mountains, guarded by a high fence of barbed wire, but he claims he's now perfected equipment which will enable him to project himself forward in time, expects to make the experiment in the very near future. Well, this writer was permitted to view the equipment which Harbauer says will shoot him into the future. The apparatus is housed in a low barn-like building in the rear of his shack. Along one side of the room is a veritable bank of electrical apparatus with innumerable controls, many huge tubes of unfamiliar shape and appearance, a mighty generator of some kind, an intricate maze of gleaming copper busbar. The center of the room is a circle of metal, about a foot in thickness, insulated from the flooring by four truncated cones of fluted glass. This disc is composed of two unfamiliar metals arranged in concentric circles. Above this disc, at the height of about eight feet, he's suspended a sort of grid, composed of extremely fine silvery wires, supported on the framework of black insulating material. As for a demonstration of his apparatus, Harbauer finally consented to perform an experiment with a dog, a wide short-haired mongrel that Harbauer informed us. He kept a warning of approaching strangely. Now he bound the dog's legs together securely, makes the struggling animal in the center of the heavy metal disc, and the inventor hurried to the central control panel and manipulated several switches, which caused a number of things to happen almost at once. The big generator started with a growl and unsettled immediately into a deep hub. The whole row of tubes glowed with a purplish brilliancy. It was a crackling sound in the air, and the grid above the disc seemed to become incandescent, although it gave forth no apparent heat. From the rim of the metal disc, then blue streamers of electric flames shut up toward the grid, and the little white dog began to whine nervously. "Now watch!" shouted the Harbauer. He closed another switch, in the space between the disc and the grid became a cylinder of livid light, for a period of perhaps two seconds. Then Harbauer pulled all the switches and pointed triumphantly to the disc. It was empty. We looked around the room for the dog, but he was not visible anywhere. "I have sent him nearly a century into the future," said Harbauer. "We'll let him stay there at a moment and bring him back." "What do you mean to say?" we asked. "That the pup is now roaming around somewhere in the 22nd century." Harbauer said he meant just that, and added that he would now bring the dog back to the present time. The switches were closed again, but this time it was the metal plate that seemed incandescent, from the grid above that shot out the streaks of thin blue flame. As he closed the last switch, the cylinder of light appeared again. When the switches were open, there was the dog in the center of the disc, howling and struggling against his bond. "Look!" cried Harbauer. "He's been attacked by another dog, or some other kind of animal, while in the future. You see the blood on his shoulder?" We ventured, the humble opinion that the dog had scratched or bit himself in struggling to free himself from the cause with which Harbauer had bound him, and the inventor flew into a terrible rage, cursing and waving his arms as though demented. Feeling that discretion was the better part of valor, we beat a hasty retreat, pausing at the barbed wire gate only long enough to ask Mr. Harbauer if he'd be good enough sometime when he had a few minutes to spare. The dash into next week can bring back some stock market reports to aid us in our financial investments. Under the circumstances, we did not wait for a response, but we presume we are persona non grata, the Harbauer establishment from this time on. In all in all, we are not sorry. I folded the paper, passed it back to him. Some of the illusions did not understand, but the general tone of the article was very clear indeed. "You see," said Harbauer, his voice grating at anger, "I try to be courteous to that man, to give him a simple, convincing demonstration of the greatest scientific achievement in centuries. And the fool returned to write this, to hold me up to ridicule, to bait me as a crack-brained wild-eyed fanatic. Well, it's hard for the laymen to conceive of a great scientific achievement. I sat soothingly. All great inventions and inventors have been laughed at by the populace at large. Ah, true, true. Harbauer nodded his head solemnly. But just the same. He broke off suddenly and forced a smile. I found myself wishing that he'd completed that broken sentence, though. I felt that he'd almost revealed something that would have been most enlightening. "Oh, that's enough of that fool and his babbling," he continued. "I'm here as living proof that my experiment is a success. I have a tremendous curiosity about the world in which I find myself. This, I take it, is a shift for navigating space." That's right. The air talk. With a special patrol service. Would you care to look around a bit? I would indeed. There was a tremendous eagerness in the man's voice. You're not too tight. No, I'm quite recovered from my experience. Harbauer leapt to his feet. Those abnormally longs that did eyes of his glowing. Well, I'm a scientist and I'm most curious to see what my fellows have created since—since my own year. I picked up my dressing gown and tossed it to him. "Slib this on, then, to cover your clothing. You've been object of too much curiosity to those men who are on duty," I suggested. I was much taller than he was, and the garment came within a few inches of the floor. He nodded the sincher and his middle and thrust his hands into the pockets, turning to me for approval. I nodded, a motion for him to proceed me through the door. As an officer of the special patrol service, it's often been my duty to show parties and individuals through my ship. Well, most of these parties are composed of females who have only exclamations to make instead of intelligent comments, and who possess an unbounded capacity for asking utterly asinine questions. It was, therefore, a real pleasure to show Harbauer through the ship. He was a keen, eager listener. When he asked the question, and he asked many of them, he showed an amazing grasp of the principles involved. My knowledge of our crew and was, of course, only practical, sinc for the rudimentary theoretical knowledge that everyone has of present day inventions and devices. The ethon shoes, which lit the ship, interested him only a little. The atomic generators, the gravity pads, their generators, and the disintegrate array, however, he delved into with that frenzied ardour of which only a scientist, I believe, is capable. Christians poured out of him, and I asked them as best I could, or sometimes completely, and satisfactorily, so that he nodded and said, "I see, I see." But sometimes so poorly that he frowned, and crossed question me insistently until he obtained the desired information. In the big, soundproof navigating room, I explained the operation of the numerous instruments, including the two three-dimensional charts, actuated by super radio reflexes, television disc, the attraction meter, the surface temperature gauge, and the complex control system. Forward, added, is the operating room. You can see it through these glass partitions. The navigating officer in command relays his orders to men in the operating room, who attend to the actual execution of those orders. Ah, just as a pilot, all the navigating officer of a ship of my day gives his orders to the quartermaster of the wheel, noted half-hour, and began firing questions at me again, going over the ground we'd already covered, to check up on his information. I was amazed at the uncanny accuracy of which he graphs such a great mass of technical detail. It had taken me years of study to pick up what he had taken from me, and apparently retained intact, something more than an hour of earth time. At last, at the earth-time clock on the wall of the navigating room, as he triumphantly finished his questioning. Less than an hour remained before the time was set for our return trip. "I'm sorry," I commented, "to be an ungracious host, but I'm wondering what your plans may be. You see, we're due to start in less than an hour end, and a passenger will be in your way." How about a smile as he uttered the words, but there was a gleam in his long eyes that rather startled me. I wondered if I only imagined the stupidness of his wife. "Well, don't let that worry you, sir." "It's not worryingly," I replied, watching him closely. "I have enjoyed a very remarkable, a very pleasant experience. If you should care to remain aboard the air-talk, I should like exceedingly to have you accompany us to our base. Or I could place you in touch with other laboratory, now, with whom you would have much in common. Hobber threw back his head and laughed, knocked pleasantly. "Thanks," he said. "I have no time for that. They could give me no knowledge that I need now. You've told me, and showed me enough. I understand how you've released atomic energy, as a matter so simple that a child should have guessed it. The man has wandered about it for centuries. None at the power was there, but lacking a key to unfatter it. But now I have that key." True, but perhaps our scientists would like in exchange the secret of moving forward in time. I suggested, reasonably enough. "What do I care about them?" snapped Hobber. He loosened the cord of the road with a quick impatient gesture, as though it confined him too tightly, and threw the garment from it. Then, suddenly, he took a quick stride toward me, thrust out his ugly hand. "I know enough now to give me power over all my world," he cried. "Having you guessed the reason for my interest in your engines of destruction, I came down the centuries ahead of my generation, so I might come back with power in my hands. Power to wipe out the fools who've made a mockery of me. And I have that power. Here." He tapped his forehead dramatically with his left hand. "I'll bring a new regime to my era," he continued, fairly shouting now. "I'll be what many have tried to be, and what no man has ever been, the master of the world." Absolute, unquestioned, supreme master. He paused, his eyes glaring into mine, and I knew from the light that shone behind those long narrow slits that I was dealing with a madman. "True, you will," I said gently, moving carelessly toward the microphone. With that in my hand, a slight pressure on the general attention signal, and I would have the whole crew of the air-tac here in a moment. But I'd explain the workings of the navigation room's equipment only too well. "Stop," snarled Halbauer, and his right hand flashed out. "See this? Perhaps you don't know what it is, so I'll tell you. It's an automatic pistol. Not so efficient as your disintegrator ray. Deadly enough. There's a sudden death for eight men in my hand." I understand. "Perfectly." "What an utter fool I'd been." I was not armed, and I knew that Halbauer spoke the truth. I'd often seen weapons similar to the one he held in the military museums. They're still there if you're curious, rusty, and broken, but not unlike our present atomic pistols in general appearance. They propelled the bullet by the explosion of a sort of powder. Inefficient, of course, but, as he'd said, deadly enough for the purpose. "Good. You are a good sore-handsome, don't take any chances. I'm not going to, I promise you. You see?" He laughed again, the light in his long eyes dancing with evil. "I'm not likely to be punished for a few killings committed to centuries after I'm dead. I've never killed a man, but I won't hesitate to do so now, if one or more should get in my way." "But what?" I asked, soothing. "Why should you wish to kill anyone? You have what you came for," he said. "We're not departing, peace." He smiled crookedly, and his eyes narrowed with cunning. "You approve of my little plan to dominate the world?" he asked softly, his eyes searching my face. "No," I said boldly, refusing to light him. "I do not, and you know it." "Very true," he brought out his watch with his left hand and held it before his hands so he could observe the time without losing sight of me for even an instant. "I doubted that I could secure your willing cooperation. Therefore I am commanding. You see, there are a few instruments and pieces of equipment, but I should like to take back to my laboratory with me. Perhaps I'd be able to reproduce them without models, but with the models my task would be much easier. The question remaining is a simple one. Will you give me the proper orders to have this equipment removed to the spot where you first saw me? Or shall I be obliged to return to my own area without this equipment, leaving behind me a dead commander of the special patrol service, and any other who may try to stop me?" I tried to keep cool under the lash of his mocking voice. I had never been adept at holding my temper when I should, but somehow I managed it this time. Frowning I kept him waiting for a reply, utilizing the time to do what was perhaps the hardest, fastest thinking of my life. There wasn't a particle of doubt in my mind regarding his ability to make good his threat, nor his readiness to do so. I caught the faint glimmering of an idea and fenced for the eagle. "How are you going back to your own period, your own era?" I asked him. "You told me that it was impossible to move backward in time." "That's not answering my question," he said, leering. "Don't think you're fooling me, but I'll tell you just the same. I can't go back to my own era. That is back to my own actual existence. I shall return just two hours after I leave. I couldn't go back further than madness, necessary that I do so. I can only go back because I came from that present. I'm not really out of this future at all, so I go back from whence I came. But I objected, thinking of something I'd read and met clipping each other. You're not going back to your own era. You can't. If you return, you put your project into execution. History doesn't recall that activity. I saw from the sudden narrowing of his abnormally long eyes that I'd caught his interest. I pressed my advantage hastily. Remember that all the history of your time is written, Harbauer. It's in the books of Earth's history with which every child of this age into which you have thrust yourself is familiar. And those histories do not recall the domination of the world by yourself. And so, you're confronted by an impossibility. You know, my reasoning now sounds specious. You know, it was a line of thought which could not be way of deciding. I saw Harbauer's black brows knit together, and mounting anger dark in his face. I don't know, but I believe I was never near a death than I was at that instant. "Fool," he cried. "Idiot, imbecile. You think you can confuse me? Turn me from my purpose with words. Do you? Do you believe me to be a child, weakly?" I tell you, I planned this thing to the last detail. But I hadn't found what I saw from this first trip. I would have taken another, a dozen, a score, and so I found the information I saw. In the last sixty years of my life, I have worked day and night to this end. Your history's not worth. My planet worked. The man was beside himself with insane anger, and in his rage he forgot, for an instant, that he was my captain. Taking a desperate chance, I launched myself at his legs. His weapon roared over my head, just as I struck. I felt the hot gas and the thing beat against my neck. I caught the reeking scent of the smoke. And then we were both on the floor, unlocked in a mad embrace. Arbau was a smaller man than myself, but he had the amazing strength of Azenia. He fought viciously, using every ounce of his strength against me, striving to bring his weapon into use, hammering my head upon the floor, racking my body mercilessly, grunting, cursing, mumbling constantly as he did so. But I was in better shape than half-hour, and I had never seen a laboratory man who could stand the strain of prolonged physical exertion, bending over test tubes and meters is not alive for a man. I gripped with him, and I was in my own element, and he was out of his. I let him wear himself out, exerting myself as little as possible, confining my efforts to keeping his weapon away couldn't use it. I felt him weakening at last. His breath was coming in great sobs, and his long eyes started from their sockets with the strained effort he was putting forth. And then, with a single mighty effort, I knocked the pistol from his hands so that it slid across the floor and brought up with a crash against a wall at the room. "Now," I said, and turned on him. He knew, at that moment when I put forth my strength, that I had been playing with him. I read the shock of sudden fear in his eyes. My right arm went about him in a deadly hole. I had him in a grip that paralyzed him, grimly I jerked into his feet, and he stood there trembling with weakness. His shoulders heaving as his breath came and went between his teeth. "You realize, of course, that you are not going back," I said quietly. "Back!" Half dazed. He stared at me through the quivering lids of his peculiar eyes. "What do you mean?" "I mean that you are not going back to your own ear. You've come to us, uninvited, and you're going to stay here." "No, no," he shouted, and struggled so desperate to free himself that I was high-put to hold him, without tightening my grips sufficiently to dislocate his shoulders. "You wouldn't do that. I must return. I must prove to them." "No. That's exactly what must not happen, and what shall not happen," I interrupted. "You're in a strange predicament, heart-balling. It's already written that you do not return. Can't you see that, man? If it were to be that you left this age and returned your own, you'd make no on your discovery. History would record it. History does not record it. You're struggling against me but against, well, against the fate that's been sealed all these centuries. When I'd finished, he stared at me with so hypnotized, motionless and limp in my grounds, and then suddenly he began to shake, and I saw such depths of terror and horror in his eyes as I never hoped to see again. Mechanically, he glanced down at his watch, lifting his wrist into his line of vision as slowly and ponderously as though it bore a great weight. "Two minutes," he whispered huskily. "Then the automatic switch will close, back in my laboratory. If I am not standing, well, where you found me between the disk and the grid of my time machine, where the reversed energy can reach me to, to take me back then." "Oh, God," he sagged in my arms and dropped to his knees, sobbing. And yet, what you say is true, it's already written that I did not return. His sob's cut harshly through the silence of the room. Pitying his despair, I reached down to give him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. And it is a terrible thing to see a man break down as Harbauer had done. As he felt my grip on him relax, he suddenly shot his fist into the pit of my stomach, and leapt to his feet. Growning, I doubled up, weak and nervous. From that instant, vicious, unexpected blow, shrieked Harbauer. He soft-hearted fool. He struck me then in the face, sending me crashing to the floor, and snatched up his pistol. "Well, I'm going now," shouted, "going. What do I care for your records and your histories?" "They're not yet written. If they were, I'd change them." He then bent over me and snatched from my hand the ring of keys, one of which I'd used to unlock the door of the navigating room. I tried to grip him around the legs, but he tore himself loose, laughing insanely in a high-pitched cackling sound that seemed hardly human. "Fare well," he caught mockingly from the doorway, and then the door slammed. As I staggered to my feet, I heard the lock click. I must have acted then by instinct or inspiration. There was no time to think. He'd take him not more than three or four seconds to make his way to the exit, straw by the guard to the spot where we'd found him, and then disappear. By the time I could arouse the crew and have my orders executed, his time would be up, and unless the whole affair were some terrible nightmare, he would go hurtling back through time to his own era, armed with a devastating knowledge. There was only one possible means of preventing his escaping time. I ran across the room to the emergency operating controls, cut in the atomic generators with one hand and poured the vertical ascent lever to full power. There was a sudden shriek of air, and my legs almost thrust themselves through my body. Quickly I pushed the lever back until, with my eye on the altimeter, I held the air-attack at her attained height, something over a mile as I recall it, and I pressed the general attention signal and snatched up my microphone. Less than a minute later, Corey and Hendrick's fellow officers were in the room and besieging me with solicitous questions. It had been my idea, of course, to keep harvour from leaving the ship, but it was not so destined. Shiro, the sentry on duty outside the air-attack, was the only witness to harvour's fate. "I was walking my posts, sir," he reported, watching the sun come up when suddenly I heard the sound of running feet inside the ship. Turned towards the entrance and drew my pistol, to be in readiness. I saw the stranger we had taken into the ship appeared, the exit which, as you know, was open. Just as I opened my mouth to command him to hold, the air-attack shut up from the ground at terrific speed. Its stranger had been about to leap upon me, indeed he had discharged some sort of weapon at me, for I heard a crash of sound and a missile of some kind. Now, as you know, he's passed through my left arm. As the ship left the ground, he tried to draw back, but he was off-balance, and the inertia of his body momentarily incapacitated him, I think. He slipped, caught to the gangway across the threads which seal the exit and then, at a height I estimate to be of around 500 feet, he fell. The air-attack shut on up until it was lost to sight, and the stranger crashed to the ground a few feet from where I was standing, almost exactly the spot where we first saw him, sir. And now, sir, comes apart, I guess, you'll find hard to believe it. When he struck the ground, he was smashed flat. He died instantly. Well, I started to run toward him, and then, I stopped. My eyes had not left the spot for a moment, sir, but he, his body, that is, suddenly disappeared. That's the truth, sir, for I saw it with my own eyes. There wasn't a sign of him left. I see, I replied. I believe that I did see. We'd gone straight up, and his body, by no great coincidence, had fallen upon the spot close to the exit of the air-attack, but we'd first found him. And his machine, in operation, had brought him, or, rather, his mangal body, back to his own aim. Dumb. You've not mentioned there's a fair to anyone, sir. No, sir, it wasn't anything you'd be likely to tell. Nobody would believe you. I went up once to have my arm attended to, and then reported here, according to orders. Very good, Cheryl. You, um, keep the entire affair to yourself. I'll make all the necessary reports. That's an order, understand? Yes, sir. And that'll be all. Take good care of your arm. He saluted me with his good hand, and then left. Well, later in the day, I wrote in the logbook of the air-attack, the report I mentioned at the beginning of this story, just before departure, discovered story, apparently demented, and ejected. And that, say, perfectly truthful statement, and it served its purpose. Now, I've given a whole story in detail just to prove what I've so often contended, that these owlish, laboratory men who at this age revere so much are not really so wise and omnipotent as they think they are. Well, I'm quite sure they would have discredited or attempted to discredit my story, had I told it at the time. They would have resented the idea that someone so much ahead of them had discovered a principle that still baffles this age of hours. I would have had no evidence to present. Well, perhaps even now, the story will be discredities. If so, I don't care. I'm much too old, and too near the portals of that impenetrable mystery, and the shadow of which I've stood so many times to concern myself with what others may think or so. Well, I know, but what I've related here is the truth, and in my mind, I have a vivid and rather pitiful picture of a mangled body, bloody and alone, in the barn-like structure that the ancient paper described, a body broken in motion, lying across that striated metal disk, like a sacrificial victim, a victim, and a sacrifice of science. I have been many such. Hello, it is Ryan, and I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spinslock games on Chumbakasino.com. I looked over the person sitting next to me, and you know what they were doing. They were also playing Chumbakasino. Everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumbakasino is home to hundreds of casino-style games that you can play for free anytime, anywhere. So sign up now at Chumbakasino.com to claim your free welcome bonus. That's Chumbakasino.com and live the Chumbalife. Sponsored by Chumbakasino, no purchase necessary, VGW Group, forward we're prohibited by law, 18-plus terms and conditions apply. The Soul Snatcher by Tom Curry. The shrill voice of all and broke the steady hum of the many machines in the great semi-darkened laboratory. It was the onslaught of weak femininity and it's the ebony shadow of Jared. The silent servant of Professor Ramsey Burr. Not many people were able to get to the famous man against his wishes, as Jared obeyed orders implicitly and was generally an efficient barrier. "I will see him. I will!" screamed the middle-aged woman. "I'm Mrs. Mary Baker and he... It's his fault my son's going to die. His fault. Professor... Professor Burr!" Jared was unable to keep her quiet. Coming in from the sunlight, eyes were not yet accustomed to the strange, subdued haze of the laboratory. An immense chain but crammed full of equipment. The vista of which seemed like an apartment in half. Bizarre shapes stood out from the mass of impedimentia. Great stills which rose two full stories and heights, dynamos, immense tubes of coloured liquids, a hundred puzzles to be in expert up. A small plant figure of Mrs. Baker was very out of place in this setting. Her voice was poignant, reading. A look at her made it evident that she was a conventional good woman. She had soft, cloudy golden eyes and a pathetic mouth, and she seemed on the point of tears. Madam... Madam, the daughter was busy, whispered Jared, endeavoring to shoe her out of the laboratory with his polite hands. He was respectful, but firm. She refused to her back. She stopped when she was within a few feet of the activity in the laboratory and stared with fear and horror at the centre of the room, and his occupant, Professor Burr, whom she had addressed during her flurried entrance. The professor's face, as he peered at her, seemed like a disembodied stare, as she could only see eyes behind a mask of lavender grey glass eye-holes, with its flapping ends of dirty grey-white cloth. She drew in a deep breath and gasped, for the pungent fumes, accurate and penetrating, of sulfuric and nitric acids, stabbed at her lungs. It was like the breath of hell, and atly Professor Burr seemed like the devil himself, manipulating these infernal machines. Acting swiftly, the tall figure stepped over and through two switches in a single, sweeping movement. The familiar light, which had lived in a long row of tubes in a nearby bench, had brought me cease to writhe like so many tongues of flame, and the embers of hell died out. Then the professor flooded the room in harsh grey green light, and stopped the high-pitched, humming wine of his dynamites. A shadow picture writhing on the wall, projected from a leg-glass barrel, disappeared suddenly. The great colour filters and other machines lost their semblance of horrible life, and a regretful sigh seemed to come from the metal creatures as they gave up the ghost. To the woman, it had been like entering the abode of fear. She couldn't restrain her shutters, but she bravely confronted the tall figure of Professor Burr as he came forth to greet her. He was extremely tall, with a red and bony mask of a face, pointed at the chin by a sharp little goateep. feathery blond hair, silvered in her eye, covering his great hand. "Madam," said Burr in a gentle, disarmingly quiet voice, "your manner of entrance might have cost you your life. Luckily I was able to deflect the rays from your person, or else you might not now be able to voice your complaint. Such seems to be your purpose in coming here." He turned to Jared, who was standing close by. "Very well, Jared, he may go. After this it will be as well to throw the bolts, although in this case I am quite willing to see the visitor." Jared slid away, then, leaving the plump little woman to confront the famous scientist. For a moment, Mrs. Baker stared into the pale grey eyes, the pupils of which seemed black as cold by contrast. Some, with his bitter enemies among them, claimed that Professor Ramsay Burr looked cold and bleak as an iceberg. Others say that he had a baleful glare, and his mouth was grim and determined. Yet, through her eyes, Mrs. Baker, looking at the professor's bony mask of a face, with that high bridged and trepied nose, those passionless grey eyes, thought that Ramsay Burr would be handsome if a little less cadaverous and more human. The experiment which she ruined by your untimely entrance, continued the professor, was not a safe one. With a long white hand waved toward the bunched apparatus, but to her the room seemed all glittering metal coils of snake-like wire, ruddy copper, dull lead, and tubes of all shapes. Hell cauldrons of unknown chemicals sewed and slowly bubbled, beetle-black Baker-like fixtures reflected the hideous light. Oh, she cried, clasping her hands as though she addressed him in print. Forget your science, Professor Burr, and be a man to help me. Three days from now, my boy, my son, whom I love above all else in the world, is going to die, and the three days is a long time, said the professor of Carlin. Do not lose hope. I have no intention of allowing your son, Helen Baker, to pay the price for a deed of mine, and I freely confess it was I who was responsible for the death of. What was the person's name? Smith, I believe. It was you who made Alan get poor Mr. Smith to agree to the experiments which killed him, in which the world blamed on my son, she said. They called it the deed of a scientific fiend, Professor Burr. Perhaps they're right, but Alan, Alan's innocent. Be a quiet, ordered Burr, raising his hand. Remember, madam, your son Alan is only a commonplace medical man. Why taught him a little from my vast store of knowledge? He was ignorant and of much less value to science and humanity than myself. Do you not understand? Can you not comprehend also that the man Smith was a martyr to science? He was no last a mankind, and only sentimentalists could have blamed anyone for his death. Well, I should have succeeded in the interchange of atoms which we were working on, and Smith would, at this moment, be hailed as the first man to travel through space in invisible form, projected on radio waves, and it not being for the fact that the alloy which conducts the three types of sinusoidal failed Burr down. Yes, it was an error in calculation, and Smith would now be called the Lindbergh of the atom, but for that. If Smith has not died in vain, for I have finally corrected this error. Science is but trial and correction of error, and all will be well. "Alan, Alan must not die at all," she cried. For weeks he's been in that death house. It's killing me. The governor refuses him a pardon, nor will he commute my son's sentence. In three days he's to die in the electric chair. For a crime which he would meet you alone are responsible for. You remain in your laboratory, your most in your experiments, and do nothing, but tears came now, and she sobbed hysterically. It seemed that she was making an appeal to someone in whom she'd only a forlorn hunt. "Nothing," repeated Burr, the person his thin lips. "Nothing. Madam, I have done everything I have, as I've told you, perfected the experiment. It's successful. Your son has not suffered in vain, and Smith's name will go down with the rest of Science's martyrs as one who died for the sake of humanity. But if you wish to save your son, you must become. Yes, listen to what I have to say, and you must not fail to carry up my instructions to the latter. I'm ready now. And with that light, the light of hope, sprang in the mother's eyes. She grasped his arm and stared at him with a shining face through tear-dipped eyelashes. "Do you mean it? Can you save him? Even after the governor has refused me. What can you do?" "No influence will snatch Alan from the jaws of the lawn. The public's greatly excited and very hostile toward him. A quiet smile, and played at the corners of Burr's thin lips." "Cal," he says, "place this coat about you. Alan wore it when he assisted me." The professor replaced his arm mask and conducted the woman into the interior, the laboratory. "I will show you," said Professor Burr. She saw before her now on long metal shelves which appeared to be delicately poised on fine scales whose balance was registered by hairline indicators, two small metal cages. Professor Burr stepped over to a row of common cages set along the wall. There was a small menagerie there, guinea pigs, the martyrs of the animal kingdom, rabbits, monkeys, and some cats. The amount of science reached in and dragged out a meowing cat, placing it in the right-hand cage on the strange table. He then obtained a small monkey and put this animal in the left-hand cage beside the cat. The cat, on the right, squatted on its haunches, meowing and looking up at its tormentor. The monkey, after a quick look around, began to investigate the upper reaches of its new cave. Over each of the animals was suspended a fine, curious, metallic island. Several minutes while the woman puzzled at how this demonstration was to affect the rescue of her condemned something, waited impatient. The professor deftly worked at the apparatus, connecting wires here and there. "I am ready now," said Burr. "Watch the two animals carefully." "Yes, yes," she replied faintly, for she was quite afraid. The great scientist was stooping over, looking at the balances of the indicators through microscopes. She saw him reach through his switches and then a brusque order caused her to turn her eyes back to the animals. The cat, in the right-hand cage, the monkey at the left. Both animals screamed in fear and a sympathetic chorus sounded from the menagerie, as a long purple spark danced from one grey metal pole to the other, over the cages on the table. At first Mrs Baker noticed no change. The spark had died. The professor's voice unhurried, "Grave, broke the silence." "Ah, the first part of the experiment is over," he said. "The ego." "Oh my god," cried the woman. "You've driven the poor creature's man," she indicated to the cat. That animal was clawing at the top bars of its cage, uttering a bizarre, chattering sound, somewhat like a monkey. The cat hung from the bars, swinging itself back and forth as if on a trapeze, and then reached up and hung by its high enclose. Well, as for the monkey, it was squatting on the floor of its cage. It made a strange sound in its throat, almost a meow, as it hissed several times at the professor. "Ah, they are not mad," said Berta. "As I was explaining to you, I finished the first portion of the experiment. The ego, the personality of one animal, has been taken out and put into the other. She was unable to speak." Well, he had mentioned madness. Was he, Professor Ramsey Berta, crazy? It was likely enough, and yet get the whole thing. The surroundings did seem plausible. She hesitated about speaking, watching with fascinated eyes the out of character behavior of the two beasts. Berta went on. "Ah, the second part falls at once. Now that the two egos have interchanged, I will shift the bodies. And when it's completed, the monkey will have taken the place of the cat, and vice versa. Now, what?" It was busy for some time with his levers, and the smell of ozone reached Mrs. Baker's nostrils, and she stared with horrified eyes at the animal. She then blinked. The sparks crackled madly. The monkey meowed, and the cat chatted. Were her eyes going back on her. She could now see neither animal distinctly. They seem to be shaking in some cosmic disturbance, and were merely blurs. Well, this illusion, for to her, it seemed it must be optical, as persisted or grew worse, until the quaking forms of the two unfortunate creatures were like so much ectoplasm in swift motion, ghosts whirling about in a dark room. She could see the cages quite distinctly, and the table and even the indicators of the scales. She closed her eyes for a moment. The accurate odors penetrated till her lungs, and she coughed, opening her eyes. Now, she could see clearly again. Yes, she could see a monkey, and it was climbing, quite naturally, about its cage. It was excited, but just a monkey. And the cat, while protesting mightily, did act like a cat, and then she gasped. Had her mind and the excitement betrayed her. She looked at Professor Bert. On his lean face, there was a smile of triumph, and he seemed to be awaiting her applause. She looked again at the two cages. Surely, at first the cats had been in the right-hand cage, and the monkey in the left. But now, the monkey was in the place where the cat had been, and the cat had been shifted to the left-hand cage. And so it was, with Smith, when the alloys burned out, said Bert. It is impossible to extract the ego or dissolve the atoms and translate them into radio waves, unless there is a connection with some other ego and body. For in such a case, the translated soul and body would have no place to go. Luckily for you, madam, it was the man Smith who was killed when the alloys failed me, might have been out. But he was the second part of the connection. But she began failing. How can this mad experiment have anything to do with saving my bond? He waved impatiently at her evident stupidity. But she not understand. It is so I will save Aaron, your son. I shall switch our egos or souls, as you say, and then switch the bodies. I must always take this sequence, why I have not ascertained, but it always works like that. And Mrs. Baker was terrified. What she had just seen is smack to the blackest magic. Yet a woman in her position must grasp at straws. The world was blaming her son for the murder of Smith. A man Professor Burr had made use of as he made a guinea pig, and Alan must be snatched from the death house. Do you mean you can bring Alan from the prison to hear? Just by throwing those switches, she asked. That's it. But there is more to it than that, for it is not magic, madam. It is science, you understand. There must be some physical connection, but with your help, that can easily be done. Professor Ramsey Burr, she knew, was the greatest electrical engineer the world had ever known, and he stood high as a physicist. Nothing hindered him in the pursuit of knowledge, they said. He knew no fear, and he lived on an intellectual mountain top. He was so great that he almost lost sight of himself. To such a man nothing was impossible. So hope, mild hope, sprang in Mary Baker's heart, and she grasped the bony hand of the professor and kissed him. "Oh, I believe, I believe you," she cried. "You can do it, you can save Alan. I'll do anything, anything you tell me to do." Very well. You visit your son daily at the Death House, do you not? She nodded, a shiver of remembrance of that dread spot passing through her. Then you will tell him the plan and let him agree to see me than my preceding the electrocution. I'll give him final instructions as to the exchange of bodies. Then my life spirit, or ego, is confined in your son's body in the Death House, and Alan will be able to perform the feat of change in the bodies. Your son's flesh will join his soul, which will have been temporarily inhabiting my own show. Do you see? When they find me in the cell where they suppose your son to be, they will be unable to explain the phenomenon. They can do nothing but release me. Your son will go here and can be whisked away to a safe place of concealment. Yes. Yes. What am I supposed to do besides this? Professor Burr opened a drawer nearby, and from it extracted a folded garment of thin, shiny material. "This is metal, cloth coated with the new animal," he said. The rummage further, saying as he did so, "I expected you'd be here to see me, and I've been getting ready for your visit." All is prepared. Save a few odds and ends, which I can easily clean up in the next two days. Here are four cups which Alan must place under each leg of his bed, and this delicate little director call must be especially careful with. It is to be slipped under your son's tongue at the time appointed. She was staring at him, still half in fear, half in wonder, yet she couldn't feel any doubt of the man's miraculous powers. Somehow, while he taught to her and rested those cold eyes upon her, she was under the spell of the great scientist. Her son, before the trouble into which he'd been dragged by the professor, had often hinted at the abilities of Ramsay Burr, giving her the idea that his employer was practically a necromancer. Yet, a magician whose advanced scientific knowledge was correct and explainable in the light of reason. Yes, Alan had talked to her often when he was at home, resting from his labors with Professor Burr. He'd spoken of the new electricity discovered by the famous man, and also told his mother that Burr had found a method of separating atoms and then transforming them into a form of radio electricity so they could be sent in radio waves to designated points. As she now remembered, the swift trial and conviction of Alan on the charge of murder had occupied her so deeply that she'd forgotten all else for the time being, that her son had informed her quite seriously that Professor Ramsay Burr would soon be able to transport human beings by radio. "Neither of us will be injured in any way by the change," said Burr, calmly. "It is possible for me now to break up human flesh, send the atoms by radio electricity, and reassemble them in their proper form by these special transformers and atom filters." Mrs. Baker took all the apparatus presented to her by the professor. She ventured the thought that it might be better to perform the experiment at once instead of waiting until the last minute. But this, Professor Burr waved aside as impossible. He needed the extra time, he said, and there was no hurry. She glanced around the room, and her eyes took in the giant switches of copper with their black handles. There were others of a grey-green metal she didn't recognize. Many dials and meters strange to her, all confronting the little woman. These things she felt were the rush of gratitude for the inanimate objects were those that would help to save her son. So they interested her, and she began to feel kindly towards these great issues. "Would Professor Burr really be able to save Alan?" Yes, she thought. He could. She would make Alan consent to the trial of it, even though her son had cursed a scientist and cried he would never speak to Ramsay Burr again. She was escorted from the home of the professor by Jared, and going out into the bright sunlit streets. She blinked her eyes as they adjusted themselves to the daylight after the strange light of the laboratory. In a bundle she had a strange suit in the cups. Her purse held the tiny coil, wrapped in cotton for safety. "How could she get the authorities to consent to her son having the suit?" The cups and the coil she slipped to him herself. "Well," she decided that her mother would be allowed to give her son new underwear. "Yes," she would say it was that. And so she started at once for the prisoner. Professor Burr's laboratory was about 20 miles from the cell where her son was incarcerated. As she rode on the train, seeing people in everyday clothing, commonplace occurrences going on about her. The spell of Professor Burr painted, and cold reason stared her in the face. Was it nonsense this idea of transporting bodies through the air in invisible waves? Yes, she was salt-fashioned. The age of miracles had not passed for her. Radio in which pictures and voices could be sent on wireless waves was unexplainable to her, but perhaps she sighed and shook her head. It was hard to believe. It was hard to believe that her son was in deadly peril, condemned to death as some scientific fiend. He was her station. Taxi took her to the prison, and after a talk with the warden, finally she stood there, before the screen through which she could talk to Alan, her son. "Mom," her heart lifted, melted within her. It was always last when he spoke. "Alan," she whispered softly, and they were about to talk undisturbed. "Come, Professor Burr wishes to help you," she said, in a lower voice. Her son, Alan Baker, MD, turned eyes of misery upon her. His hair was awry. This young man was imaginative, and could therefore suffer deeply. He had the gift of turning platitudes into puzzles, and his eyes were lit with an elfin quality which, if possible, indeed him even more to his mother. All his life had been the greatest thing in the world to this woman. To see him in such dire straights, or her very heart. When he'd been a little boy, she'd been able to make joy appear in those eyes, play a word in the pat on the head. Now that he was a man, the matter was more difficult. But she'd always done her best. "Cannot allow Professor Burr to do anything for me," he said, dullly. "It's his fault that I am here." But, Alan, you must listen carefully. Professor Burr can save you. He said it was all a mistake. The ally was wrong. He'd not come forward before, because when he knew he'd be able to iron out the trouble if he had time, and thus snatch you from this terrible plane. She'd put as much confidence into her voice as she could. She must, who, in heartened her son, anything to replace that look of suffering with one of hope. She would believe, she did believe, the bars, the masses of stone which enclosed her son would be, is nothing. He would pass through them, unseen and unheard. For a time, Alan spoke bitterly of Ramsay Burr, but his mother pleaded with him, telling him it was his only chance, and that the devil read that Alan suspected was in his imagination. "He killed Smith in such an experiment," said Alan. "I took the blame, as you know, though I only followed his instructions." "But, well," he said, he claims to have found the correct ally. "Yes, and this suit, you must put it on. Professor Burr himself will be here to see you the day after tomorrow, but they, preceding the, she bit her lip, and got out the dreaded words." "The electrocution." "But, well, there won't be any electrocution, Alan. No, there can be. You'll be safe. You'll be safe in my arms." She had to fight now to hold her belief in the miracle which Burr had promised. The solid steel and stone of this room dismayed her brain. Well, the new allies seemed to interest Alan Bacon. His mother told him of the exchange of the monkey in the cat. He nodded excitedly, growing more and more restive, and his eyes began to shine with hope and curiosity. "I've told the warden about the suit, saying it was something I made for you myself," she said in a low voice. "You must pretend the coil and the cups are things you desire for your own amusement. You know, they've allowed you a great deal of latitude since you are educators in need diversion." "Yeah, yeah, maybe some difficulty, but I'll overcome that." "Okay, tell Burr to come. I'll talk with him, and he can instruct me in the final details." "It's better than waiting in here, like a rat in a trap." "I've been afraid of going mad, mom, and this, this boys me up." He smiled at her then, and her heart sang in the joy of relief. "Well, how did the intervening days pass?" Mrs. Baker couldn't sleep, could scarcely eat. She could do nothing but wait, wait, and wait some more. She watched the meeting of her son at Ramsey Burr on the day preceding the day set for the execution. "Well, Baker," said Burr nonchalantly, nodding to his former assistant. "How are you?" "You see how I am," said Alan, coldly. "Yes, well, listen to what I have to say and note it carefully. There must be no mistakes. You have the suit, the cups, and the director coil. Now you must keep the suit on. The cups go under the legs of the cot you lie on, and the director under your tongue." The professor then spoke it further with Alan, instructing him in scientific terms which the woman could scarcely comprehend. "Okay, tonight, then, at 11.30," said Burr finally. "Be ready." Alan nodded. Mrs. Baker accompanied Burr from the prison. "You, you will let me be with you," she begged. "It's hardly necessary," replied the professor. "But I must, I must see Alan the moment he's free, to make sure he's all right. Then I want to be able to take him away. I have a place in which he can hide, and as soon as he's rescued, he must be taken out of sight." "Very well," said Burr, shrugging. "It's immaterial to me, so long as you do not interfere with the course of the experiment. He must sit perfectly still, and he must not speak until Alan stands before you and addresses you." "Yes, I'll obey you," she promised. Mrs. Baker then watched Professor Ramsey burr into supper. Burr himself was not in the least perturbed. It was wonderful, she thought, that he could be so calm. But to her it was the great moment, the moment when her son would be saved from the jaws of death. Jared carried a comfortable chair into the laboratory, and she sat in it, quiet as a mouse in one corner of the room. It was nine o'clock, and Professor Burr was busy with his preparations. She knew he'd been working steadily for the past few days. She grew at the arms of her chair, and her heart burned within her. But Professor was making sure of his apparatus. He tested this bulb and that, carefully inspected the curious oscillating platform over which was suspended a thickly bunched group of grey, green wire, which was seemingly in Antenna. The numerous indicators and implements seemed to be satisfactory. For, at a quarter after eleven, Burr gave an exclamation a pleasure and nodded to himself. Burr seemed to have completely forgotten about the woman. He spoke aloud occasionally, but not to her, as he brought forth a suit made at the same metal cloth as someone must have on at this moment. Another tension was terrific. Terrific for the mother who was awaiting the culmination of the experiment which would rescue her son from the electric chair. Or might it fail? She shuddered. What if Burr was mad? But then she looked at him. She was sure he was saying, when saying as she was. "He will succeed," she murmured, digging her nails into the palms of her hands. "I know you will." She pushed out of her mind the picture of what was going to happen tomorrow. And in a few hours from now, when Alan, her son, was due to be led to a legal death in the electric chair, Professor Burr placed the shiny suit upon his lank form. She saw him put a duplicate coil, the same sort of machine which Alan possessed under his tongue. The Mephistophalian figure then consulted a matter of fat watch. At that moment Mrs. Baker heard about the hum of the myriad machines in the laboratory, the slow chiling of a cloth. Now was the moment for the deed. And then she feared the professor was indeed insane, for he suddenly leaped to the high bench of the table on which stood at one of the oscillating platforms. Wires let out from this, and Burr sat gently upon it, a strange figure now in the subdued light. Professor Burr, however, she soon came to realise, was not insane. No, this was all part of it. He was reaching for switches near at hand, and bowls began to glow with unpleasant light. Needle was on indicator swung madly, and then, at last, Professor Burr kicked over a giant switch, which seemed to be the final movement. There's several seconds the professor did not move, and then his body grew rigid, and he twisted a few times. His face, though, drawn in pain, did switch galvanically, as though actuated by slight jabs of electricity. The many tubes, full rest, flared up in pulsing waves of violet and pink. There were grey bars of invisibility, or areas of air in which nothing visible showed. Then there came the things, crackling a hum of machinery, rather like a swarm of wasps in England. Blue and grey threads of fire spat across the antenna. The odour of ozone came to Mrs. Baker's nostrils, and the acrid odours burned her lungs. She was staring at him, staring at the professor's face. She half rose from her chair, and then uttered a little cry. The eyes had changed. No longer were they cold, impersonal, the eyes of a man who prided himself on the fact that he kept his archery soft in his heart heart. They were loving soft eyes. Alan, she cried. Yes, without doubt the eyes of her son were looking at her to the body of Professor Ramsey Burr. "Mom?" he said gently. "Don't be alarmed." It worked. "I'm here. I'm in Professor Burr's body." "Yes," she cried, hysterically. "Well, it was too weird to believe. It seemed, strangely to her, to be totally unearthly." "Why are you all right, darling?" she asked, timidly. "Yeah. I thought nothing beyond a momentary giddy speller. A bit of nausea and some mental stiffness. Well, it was strange and I have a slight headache, however, all is well." He grinned at her, laughed with a voice which was not quite his, yet which she recognized is coming from her son's spirit. The laugh was cracked, and unlike Alan's whole-hearted mirth, yet she smiled in sympathy. "Yes." "The first part is a success," said the man. "Our egos have interchanged, and soon our bodies will undergo the transformation, and then I must keep under cover." "Well, I dislike Burr, yet he is a great man, and he's saved me." "I suppose a slight headache which I feel is the one bequeathed me by Burr." "I hope he inherits my shivers and terrors and the neuralgia for the time being, so you'll get some idea of what I've undergone." "He got down now from the oscillating platform, the spirit of her son was in Ramsay's body." "What? What are you doing now?" "Yeah." "I must carry out the rest of it myself," he said. Burr directed me when we taught yesterday. "It's more difficult when one subject is out of the laboratory. Chews have to be checked." I went carefully about his work, and she saw him replacing four of the chews with others, new ones which were ready at hand. Though it was the body of Ramsay Burr, the movements were different from the slow, precise worker of the professor, and more and more she realized that her son now inhabited the shell before her. Well, for a moment, my thought of attempting to dissuade her son from making the final change. Was it not better like this than to chance the disintegration of the body? Suppose something went wrong, and the exchange didn't take place, and her son, that is his spirit, just went back to the death house. Midnight struck as he worked feverishly at the apparatus, the long face corrugated as he checked the dials and chews. He works with Lee, but evidently was following a procedure which he'd committed to memory, that he was forced to pause often to make sure of himself. "Everything's okay," said the strange voice at last. He then consulted his watch. "12.30," he said, while she bit her lip and terror as he cried. "Now!" and sprang to the table to take his place on the metallic platform, which oscillated to and fro under his weight. A delicate, greyish metal antenna which she knew would form a glittering halo of blue and grey threads of fire rested now above his hands. "This is the last thing," he said calmly, as he reached for the big ebony handled switch. "I'll be myself in a few minutes, ma'am." "Yes, son." "Yes," the switch connected, and Alan Barker, in the form of Ramsey Burr, suddenly cried out in great pain. His mother leaped up to run to his side, but he waved her away. She stood, ringing her hands, as he began to twist and turn, as though torn apart by some invisible forms. Near his screams came from the throat of the man on the platform, and Mrs. Baker's cries of sympathy mingled in with him. The mighty motor's hum did a high-pitched unnatural wine, and suddenly Mrs. Baker saw the tortured face before her groaned in. The countenance of the professor seemed to melt, and then there came a dull, muffled dog. The burst of white-blue flame, the odour of burning rubber, and the tinkle of broken glass. Then back to the face came a clarity of outline, and it was still Professor Ramsey Burr's body that she was staring at. Her son, in the professor's shape, climbed from the platform and looked about him as old days. An accurate smoke filled the room, and burning insulation assailed the nostrils. Desperately, without looking at her, his lips sat in a determined line. The man went hurriedly over to the apparatus again. "God, have I forgotten them? Did I do something wrong?" She heard his anguish cry. Two chews were burned out, and these he replaced as swiftly as possible. But he was forced to go over all the wiring again and cut out whatever had been short-circuited so that it could be hooked up anew with uninjured wire. Before he was ready to resume his seat on the platform, after half an hour of feverish haste, a knock came on the door. The person outside was impatient, and Mrs. Baker ran over and opened the portal. Jared, the wife of his eyes shining in the dim light, stood there. The professor told him that the warden wishes to speak with him. "It's very important, ma'am." The body of Burr, inhabited by Alan's soul, pushed by her, and she followed faltering, bringing her hands. She saw the tall figure snatch at the receiver, and listened, "Oh, God!" he cried. And then, at last, he put the receiver back on the hook, and sank down in a chair, his face and his hands. Mrs. Baker went quickly. "What is it, Alan?" she cried. "Ma'am," he said hoarsely. It was the warden of the prison. He told me that Alan Bach had temporarily gone insane, and claimed to be Professor Ramsey Burr in my body. "What's the matter?" she asked. "Can't you finish the experiment, Alan? Can't you change the two bodies now?" he shook his hand. "Ma'am," he electrocuted Ramsey Burr in my body at 1245. She screamed. She was faint, but she controlled herself with a great effort. "Yeah, but the electrocution wasn't to be until tomorrow morning," she said. Alan shook his hand. "Oh, they're allowed a certain latitude, about 12 hours," he said. Burr protested up to the last moment, begged for more time. "Oh God, they must have come and dragged him from his bed to die in that electric chair while you were attempting the second part of the chain," she said. "Yeah, that's why it failed. That's why the tubes and wires burned out and why we couldn't exchange bodies. It had begun to work. Then I could feel something terrible that happened. It was impossible to complete the beta circuit, which short circuited. Well, it took him from the cellar, you see. Well, I was studying the exchange of the atoms. For a time, the mother and her boy sat staring at one another. She saw the tall, eccentric figure of Ramsey Burr before her, and she also saw the soul of her son within that form. The eyes were Alan's. The voice was soft and loving, and his spirit was with her. "Come, Alan, my son," she said softly. Burr paid the price, said Alan, shaking his head. He became a martyr to science. The world has often wondered why Professor Ramsey Burr, so much in the headlines as a great scientist, suddenly gave up all his experiments and took up the practice of medicine. Well, now that the public furrow and indignation over the death of the man Smith has died down, sentimentalists believe that Ramsey Burr has reformed and changed his icy nature. He manifests the great affection and care for Mrs. Mary Baker, the mother of the electrocuted man who had been his assistant. Lucky Land Slots asking people what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky? Lucky? In line at the deli, I guess? Uh-huh, in my dentist's office. More than once, actually. Do I have to say? Yes, you do. In the car before my kids' PTA meeting? Really? Yes. Excuse me, what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky? I never win and tell. Well, there you have it. You can get lucky anywhere, playing at luckylandslots.com. Play for free right now. Are you feeling lucky? No purchase necessary. VGW Group would be operated by law 18+ terms and conditions apply. For lives lay helpless before the murder machine. The uncanny device by which hypnotic thought waves are filtered through men's minds to mold them into murdering tools. The murder machine by Hugh B. K. It was dusk on the evening of December 7th when I first encountered Sir John Harmon. At the moment of his entrance, I was standing over the table in my study, a lighted match in my cupped hands and a pipe beneath my teeth. That pipe was never lit. I heard the load or slam shut with a violent clatter. The stairs resounded to a series of unsteady footsteps, and the door of my study was flung back. In the opening, staring at me with quiet dignity, stood a young careless fellow. About five feet ten in height, decidedly dark of complexion. The swagger of his entrance branded him as an adventurer. The ghastly pallor of his face, which was almost callous, branded him as a man who has found something more than mere adventure. "Dr. Dale," he demanded. "I am Dr. Dale." Foes the door of the room and deliberately, advancing toward me with slow stance. "My name is John Harmon, Sir John Harmon. It is unusual, I suppose," he said quietly with a slight shrug. "Coming at this late hour, I won't keep you long." He faced me silently. A single glance at those strange features convinced me of the reason for his coming. Only one thing can bring such a furtive restless stare to a man's eyes. Only one thing. Fear. I've come to you, Dale, because, Sir John's fingers closed heavily over the edge of the table. Because I'm on the verge of going mad. From fear. Yes, I suppose it's easy to discover, I mean, a single look at me. A single look at you, I said simply. "We'll convince any man that you are deadly afraid of something." "Ah, did you mind telling me what it is?" He shook his head slowly, the swagger of the poise was gone. He stood up right now with a positive effort, as if the realisation of his position had suddenly surged over him. "I do not know," he said quietly. "It's a childish fear. The fear of the dark, you may call it." "Well, the cause does not matter, but if something doesn't take this unholy terror away, the effect will be madness." I watched him in silence for a moment, studying the shrunken outline of his face and the unsteady gleam of his narrowed eyes. I had seen this man before, all of London had seen him. His face was constantly appearing in the sporting pages, a swaggering member of the opposite, a man who had been engaged to nearly every beautiful woman in the country, who sought adventure in sport and in my life, merely for the sake of living at top speed. And here he stood before me, whitened by fear, the very thing he had so deliberately laughed at. "Dale," he said slowly. For the past week, I've been thinking things that I don't want to think, doing things completely against my will. Some outside power, God knows what it is, is controlling my very existence. He stared at me then, and leaned closer across the table. Last night, sometime before midnight, he told me, I was sitting alone in my dam. Alone, mind you, my soul was in the house with me. When I was reading a novel, suddenly, as if a living presence had stood in the room and commanded me, I was forced to put the book down. I fought against it, fought to remain in that room and go on reading. But, well, I failed. Fail. My reply was a single word of wonder. I left my home, because I couldn't help myself. Have you ever been under hypnotism now? Yeah, well, the thing that gripped me was something similar, except that no living person came near me in order to work is it not expound. I went along the whole way, through backstreets, alleys, filthy doyards, never once striking a main thoroughfare. Until I crossed the entire city, and reached the west side of the square. And there, before a big grey townhouse, I was allowed to stop my mad wandering. The power, whenever it was, had broken. And, well, I went home. So John got to his feet then, with an effort, and stood over me. "Dale," he whispered hoarsely. "What was it?" "You were conscious of every detail," I asked. "Conscious of the time, the locality you went through." "You're sure it was not just some fantastic dream?" "Dream?" "Is it a dream to have some damnable force and move me about like a mechanical rover?" "But you can think of no explanation." "I was a bit skeptical of his story." "Well," he turned on me savagely. "I have no explanation, doctor," he said curly. "I came to you for an explanation." "Why are you thinking of my case during the next few hours?" "Perhaps you can explain this." I stood before that grey mansion on after-street, alone in the dark. It was murder in my heart. I should have killed the man who lived in that house, had not been suddenly released from the force that was driving me forth. So John then turned from me in business. Without offering any word of departure, he pulled open the door and stepped across the sill. The door closed, and I was left alone. And that was my introduction to Sir John Harmon. I offer it in detail because it was the first of a startling series of events that led me to the most terrible case of my career. In my records, I've labeled the entire case "the affair of the death machine." Twelve hours after Sir John's departure, which will bring the time to the morning of December 8. The headlines of the Daily Mail stand up at me from the table. They were black and heavy. They were black and heavy, those headlines, and horribly significant. They were as fun. Franklin White Jr. found murder in it. Midnight Marauder strangles young society man in West End Mansion. I turned the paper hardly and ran. Between the hours of one and two o'clock this morning, an old murderer entered the home of Franklin White Jr., well-known West End sportsman, and escaped, leaving behind his strangle-vitting. Young White, who is a favorite in London Upper Circles, was discovered in his bed this morning, where he had evidently lay in dead for many hours. Police are seeking a motive for the crime, which may have its origin in the fact that White only recently announced his engagement to Margot-vernay, young and exceedingly pretty French debutante. Please say that the murder was evidently an amateur, and he made no attempt to cover his crime. Inspector Thomas Drake of Scotland Yard has the case. There was more, much more. Young White had evidently been a decided favorite, and the murder had been so unexpected, so deliberate that the mail reporter had made the most of his opportunity for a storm. But aside from what I've explained here, there's only a single-shot paragraph which claimed my attention, and it was this. The White Home is not a difficult one to enter. It is a huge great houndhouse, situated just of the square and after street. The murderer entered by a low French window, leaving it open. Well, I have said here the words exactly as they were printing. The item does not call for any comment. But I'd hardly drop the paper before she stood before me. I say she. It was Margot-vernay, of course, because for some particular reason I had expected her. She stood quietly before me, a cameo face set in the black of mourning, staring straight into mine. "You know why I have come?" she said quickly. I glanced at the paper on the table before me and nodded. Her eyes followed my glance. "That is only part of a doctor," she said. "I was in love with, frankly, very much, but I have come to you for something more, because you are a famous psychologist, and you can help me." She then sat down quietly, leaning forward so that her arms rested on the table. Her face was white, almost as white as the face of that young adventurer who had come to me on the previous evening. And when she spoke, the voice was hardly more than a whisper. "Doctor, for many days now I have been under some strange power, something frightful that compels me to think and act against my will." She glanced at me suddenly, as if to note the effect of her words. Then I was engaged, frankly, for more than a month, doctor. Yet for a week now I have been commanded, commanded by some awful force to return to a man who knew me more than two years ago. I can't explain it, but I did not love this man. I hated him bitterly. And how comes this mad desire, this hungering to go to him? And last night, Margover and I hesitated suddenly. She stared at me searchingly, and then, with renewed courage, she continued. "Last night, doctor, I was alone. I had retired for the night, and it was late, nearly three o'clock. And then I was strangely commanded by this awful power that had suddenly taken possession of my soul to go out. I tried to restrain myself, and in the end I found myself walking through the square. I went straight to Franklin White's home. When I reached there it was half past three. I could hear a big band. I went in through the wide French window at the side of the house. I went straight to Franklin's room, because I could not prevent myself from going. A sob came from Margover's lips. She'd half risen from her chair and was holding herself together with a brave effort. I went to her side and stood over her, and she, the half craze laugh, stared up at me. "He was dead when I saw him." She cried. "Dead, murdered." That infernal force, whatever it was, it made me go straight to my lover's side to see him lying there, with those cruel finger marks on his foot. "Dead, I tell you, it's horrible." She then turned, suddenly. "When I saw him," she said bitterly. The sight of him and the sight of those marks. They broke the spell that had helped me. I cried from the house as if I had killed him. Well, they will probably find out I was there, and they'll accuse me of the murder. It doesn't matter, but it's power this awful thing that's been controlling me. Is there no way to fight it? I nodded heavily. The memory of that unfortunate fellow who had come to me with the same complaint was still holding me. I was prepared to wash my hands of the whole horrible affair. It was clearly not a medical case, clearly out of my realm. "There is a way to fight it," I said quietly. "I am a doctor, not a master of hypnotism, or a man who can discover the reasons behind that hypnotism. But London has its Scotland Yard, and Scotland Yard has a man who is one of my greatest comrades." She nodded her surrender. As I stepped to the phone, I heard her mama in a weary troubled voice. Hypnotism, it is not that. God knows what it is, but it has always happened when I've been alone. One cannot hypnotize through distance. And yet, with Margot Verne's consent, I sought the aid at Inspector Thomas Drake to Scotland Yard. And half an hour Drake stood beside me, and acquired of my study. Waite heard Margot's story. He asked a single, significant question. It was this. "You say you have a desire to go back to a man who was once intimate with you. Who is he?" Margot looked at him, dulled him. "It is Michael Strong," she said slowly. "Michael Strong, of Paris, a student of science." Drake nodded. Without further questioning, he dismissed my patient. And when she'd gone, he'd turn to me. "She did not murder her sweetheart, Dale," he said. "That is evident." "Have you any idea who did?" And so I told him of that other young man, Sir John Harman, would come to me the night before. When I'd finished, Drake stared at me, stared through me, and suddenly turned on his heel. "I shall be back, Dale," he said Curly. "Wait for me." "Wait for him." Well, that was Drake's peculiar way of going about things. Impetuous, sudden, until he faced some crisis. Then, in the face of danger, he became a cold, indifferent officer of Scotland Yard. And so I waited. During the 24 hours that elapsed before Drake returned to my study, I did my best to diagnose the case before me. First, Sir John Harman, his visit to the home of Franklin White, and then the deliberate murder, and, finally, young Margot Vernet, and her confession. Looks like the revolving wall of a pinwheel, this series of events, continuous and mystifying, but without beginning or end, surely somewhere in the procession of horrors, there would be a loose end to cling to. Some loose end that would eventually unravel the pinwheat. It was plainly not a medical affair, at least, only remotely so. The thing was in proper hands, then, with Drake following it through, and I had only to wait for his return. I only came at last, and closed the door of the room behind him. He stood over me with something of a swagger. "Well, I've been looking into the records of this, Michael Strong," he said quietly. "They are interesting, these records. They go back some ten years, when this fellow Strong was beginning his study of science. And now Michael Strong is one of the greatest authorities in Paris, on the subject of mental telegraphy. He's gone into the study of human thought with the same thoroughness, but other scientists go into the subject of radio telegraphy. He's written several books on the subject." Drake called a tiny black volume from the pocket of his coat, and dropped it on the table before me. With one hand he opened it to a place which he previously marked in pencil. "I read it," he said, significantly. I looked at him in wonder, and then did as he ordered. "What I read was this. Mental telegraphy is a science, not a myth. It's a very real fact, a very real power which can be developed only by careful research. The most people it is merely a curiosity. They sit, for instance, in a crowded room at some uninteresting lecture, stare continually at the back of some unsuspecting companion. Until that companion, by the power of suggesting, turns suddenly around. While they think heavily of a certain person nearby, perhaps commanding him mentally to harm a certain popular tune, until evicted by the power of their will suddenly fulfills the old." To such persons, the science of mental telegraphy is merely an amusement. And so it will be, until science has brought it to such a perfection that these waves of thought can be broadcast, that they can be transmitted through at the ether precisely as radio waves are transmitted. In other words, mental telegraphy is a present merely a mild form of hypnotism, until it has been developed so that these hypnotic powers can be directed through space and directed accurately to those individuals to whom they're intended. This science would have no significance. It remains for the scientists of today to bring about that development. I close the book. When I looked up, Treak was watching me entent me, as if expecting me to say something. "Great," I said slowly, "what to myself and to him?" The pinwheel is beginning to unravel. We found the beginning of the thread. Perhaps, if we follow that thread, Treak smiled. "If you pick up your hat and coat, Dale," he interrupted. "I think we have an appointment." This Michael Strong, whose book you have just enjoyed so immensely, is now residing on a certain quiet little side street about three miles from the square in London. I followed Drake in silence, until we'd left Cheney Lane in the gloom behind us. At the entrance to the square, my companion caught a cab, and from there on we rode slowly, through a heavy darkness which was blanketed by a wet, penetrating fog. The cabby, evidently one who knew my companion by sight, and what London cabby does not know, his Scotland Yardman, chose a route that twisted through gloomy, uninhabited side streets, sewed and winding into the main route of traffic. As for Drake, he sank back into the uncomfortable seat and made no attempt at conversation. For the entire first part of our journey, he said nothing. Not until we'd reached a black, unlit section of the city did he turn to me. "Dale," he said at length, "have you ever hunted a tiger?" "I looked at him in love." "Why?" I replied. "You expect this hunter vows will be something of a blind chase?" "Oh, it will be a blind chase, no doubt of it," he said. And when we've followed the trail to his end, I imagine we'll find something very like a tiger to deal with. I've looked rather deeply into Michael Strong's life, and unearth a bit of the man's character. He's twice been accused of murder, murdered by hypnotism, and has twice cleared himself by throwing scientific explanations at the police. That is the nature of his entire history for the past ten years. I nodded without replying. As Drake turned away from me again, our cab poked his laboring nose into a narrowing, gloomy street. I had a glimpse of a single unsteady street lamp on the corner, and a dim sign made to lay. And then we were dragging along the curve. The cab stopped with a grove. I stepped down and was standing by the cab door when suddenly, from the darkness in front of me, a strange figure advanced to my side. He glanced at me intently, then, seeing that I was evidently not the man he sought. He turned to Drake. I heard a whispered greeting and an undertone of conversation. And then, quietly, Drake stepped toward me. "Dale," he said, "I thought it best that I should not show myself here tonight. Now, there's no time for explanation now. You will understand later, perhaps." And, significantly, sooner than you anticipate, Inspector Hartnett will go through the rest of his pantomime with you. I shook hands with Drake's man, still rather bewildered at this sudden substitution. Then, before I was aware of it, Drake had vanished and the cab was gone. We were alone, Hartnett and I, in May to lay. The home of Michael Strong, number seven, was hardly inviting. No light was in evidence. The big house stood like a huge, unadorned vault, set back from the street, some distance from its adjoining building. The heavy steps echoed to our feet as we mounted them in the darkness. And the sound of the bell, as Hartnett pressed it, came sharply to us from the silence of the interior. He stood there, waiting. In the short interval before the door opened, Hartnett glanced at his watch. It was nearly ten o'clock. And then said to me, "I imagine, daughter, we shall meet a black wall. Let me do the talking, please." And that was all. In another moment, the big door was pulled slowly open from the inside, and the entrance, blaring out at us, stood the man we had come to see. It was not hard to remember that first impression of Michael Strong. He was a huge man, gaunt and haggard, moulded with a hunched shoulders and heavy arms of a gorilla. His face seemed to be unconsciously twisted into a snow. His greeting, which came only after he'd stared at us intently for nearly a minute, was curtling rasping. "Well, gentlemen, what is it?" "I should like a word with daughter Michael Strong," said my companion quietly. "I am Michael Strong." "And I," replied Hartnett, with a suggestion of a smile, "and rowal Hartnett's from Scotland Yard. I didn't see any sign of emotional strongness fade. He stepped back in silence to allow us to enter, then closing the big door after us. He led the way along a carpeted hall to a small, poorly lit room just inside. Every motion to us to be seated. He himself standing upright beside the table facing." "From Scotland Yard," he said, and the tone was heavy with the dull sarcasm. "Well, I am natural service, Mr. Hartnett. And now, for the first time, I wonder just why Drake had insisted on my coming here to his gloomy house in Maitley. Why did he so deliberately arrange to substitute so that Michael Strong should not come face to face with him directly? Well, evidently Hartnett had been carefully instructed as to his cause of action. But why this seemingly unnecessary caution on Drake's path? And now, after we gained a mission, what its use would Hartnett offer for the intrusion?" "Sure, you would not follow the bull-headed role of a common policeman. Well, there was no anger, no attempt at dramatics in Hartnett's voice. He looked quietly up at our hopes." "Not as strange," he said at length. "I have come to you for your assistance. Last night sometime after midnight, Franklin White was frail to death. He was murdered, according to substantial evidence, by the girl he was going to marry, Margot Vanay. I come to you because you know the girl rather well, and perhaps you can help Scotland Yard in finding her motive for killing White." Michael Strong said nothing. He stood there, scaling down at my companion in silence. And I too, I must admit, turned upon Hartnett with a stare of bewildering. His accusation of Margot was brought a sense of horror to me. I'd expected almost anything from him, even to a mad accusation of Strong himself. I'd hardly foreseen this cold-blooded declaration. "You understand, Doctor," Hartnett went on in that same ironical drawing, "that we do not believe Margot Vanay did this thing herself. Well, she had a companion undoubtedly, one who accompanied her to the house on After Street, and assisted her in the crime. Though that companion was, we're not sure. But there's a decidedly a case of suspicion. It's a certain young London sportsman. Now, this fellow is known to be proud about the White Mansion both on the night of the murder and the night before. Hartnett glanced up casually. Stronger's face was a total mass. When he nodded, the nod was the most even and mechanical thing I'd ever seen. Certainly this man could control his emotions. "Ah, naturally, Doctor," Hartnett said. "We've gone rather deeply into the past life of the lady in question. Oh, your name appears, of course, in a rather unimportant interval when Margot Vanay resided in Paris. So we come to you in the hope that you can perhaps give us some slight bit of information, or something that seems insignificant, perhaps, to you, but which may put us on the right track." He was a careful speech. Even as Hartnett spoke it, that there was one that the words were drapes and had been memorized. But Michael Strong merely stepped back to the table and faced us without a word. He was probably, during that brief interlude, attempting to realize his position to discover just how much Raul Hartnett actually knew. And then, after his interim of silence, he came forward solemnly and spoke over my comrades. "I'll tell you this much, Mr. Hartnett of Scotland, yeah," he said bitterly. "My relation is with Margot Vanay, not an open book to be passed through the clumsy fingers of ignorant police officers. Now, to this murder, I know nothing. At the time of it, I was seated in this room in a company where a distinguished group of scientific friends. I will tell you, on authority, that Margot did not murder her lover. Why? Because she loved him." The last words were heavy with bitterness. Before they died into silence, Michael Strong should open the door of his study. "Now, if you please, gentlemen," he said quietly. Hartnett got to his feet. For an instant, he stood facing the gorilla-like form of our host. Then he stepped over the sill without a word. We passed down the unlit corridor in silence, while Strong stood in the door of his study, watching us. "I couldn't help but feel, as we left that gloomy house, that Strong should suddenly focus his entire attention upon me, and had ignored my companion. Oh, I could feel his eyes upon me, and feel the force of the will behind them. I decided feeling of uneasiness crept over me, and I shut it." A moment later, the big outer door had closed shut after us, and we were alone in a mate lane. Alone, that is, until a third figure joined us in the shadows, and Drake's hand closed over my arm. "Cat in Dale," he said triumphantly. "A half an hour, you entertained him, you and Hartnett. A half an hour, I've had the unlimited to freedom of his inner rooms, with the aid of an unlocked window on the lower floor. Those inner rooms, gentlemen, are significant, very." As we wore the length of mate lane, the gaunt, Mr. Home, with Michael Strong, became an indistinct outline in the pitch behind her. Drake said nothing more on the return trip. "Until we'd nearly reached my rooms," they turned to me with a smile. "We are one up on our friend, there," he said. "He does not know, just now, that she's the bigger fool, you or Hartnett here. However, I imagine Hartnett will be the victim of some very unusual events before many hours of balance." And that was all, at least, all of significance. I left the two Scotland Yardmen at the opening of Chaney Lane, and continued alone to my room. I opened the door and lit myself in quietly. And there, some few hours later, began to last, the most horrible phase of the case of the murder mission. It began, to be more accurate. I began to react to it, at three o'clock in the morning. I was alone, and the rooms were done. For hours, I'd sat quietly by the table, considering the significant events of the past few days. While sleep was impossible, with so many unanswered questions staring into me, and so I sat there, wandering. Did Drake actually believe that Margoverne's simple story had been a ruse, that she had, in truth, killed her lover on that midnight intrusion of his home? Did he believe that Michael Strong, she knew of that intrusion, that he had possibly planned it himself, and aided her, in order that Margoverne be free to return to him? And it's strong to know of that other intrusion, and of the uncanny power which had driven Sir John Harmon, supposedly driven Margoverne to that house or artistry. And those were questions that still remained without answers. It was over those questions that I pondered. While my surroundings became darker and more silent as the hour became more advanced. I heard the clock strike three, and heard the answering drone, a big ban from the square. And then, it began. But first, it was little more than a sense of nervousness. Before I'd been content to sit in my chair and nose, but now, in spite of myself, I found myself pacing the floor back and forth like a caged animal. I could have sworn at the time that some sinister presence had found entrance to my room, and yet the room was empty. I could have sworn too that some silent power of will was commanding me an undeniable force, to go out, out into the darkness of Cheney Lane. I thought it bitterly, and laughed at it, even through my laugh came the memory of Sir John Harmon and Margoverne, and what they had told me. And then, unable to resist that unspoken demand, I seized my hat and coat and went out. Cheney Lane was deserted, utterly still. At the end of it, a street lamp glowed dull, throwing a patch of ghastly light over the side of the adjoining building. I hurried through the shadows, and as I walked, a single idea had possession of me. I must hurry, I thought, with all possible speed to that grim house in Mait Lane. Number Seven. Where that deliberate desire came from, I did not know. I didn't stop the reason. Something had commanded me to go up once to Michael Strong's home, and though I stopped more than once, deliberately turning in my tracks, inevitably I was forced to retrace my steps and continue. I remember passing through the square and prowling through unlipped side streets that lay beyond. Three miles separated Cheney Lane from Mait Lane, and I had been over the route only once before in a cab. Yet I followed that route without a single false turn, followed it instinctively. At every intersecting street I was dragged in a certain direction, and not once was I allowed to hesitate. It was as though some unseen demon perched on my shoulders as the demon of the sea rode Sinbad and pointed out the way. Only one disturbing thing occurred on that night journey through London. I turned into a narrow street hardly more than a quarter mile from my destination, and before me, in the shadows, I laid out the form of a shuffling old man. And here as I watched him, I was conscious of a new, mad desire. I crept upon him stealthily without a sound. My hands were outstretched, clutching through his throat. At that moment, I could have killed him. I can't explain it. During that brief interval, I was a murderer at heart. I wanted to kill, and I don't remember it, the desire had been pregnant in me ever since the likes of Cheney Lane had died behind me. All the time that I prowled through those black streets murdered alert in my heart. I could have killed the first man who crossed my path, but I didn't kill him. Thank God. As my fingers twisted toward the back of his throat, that mad desire suddenly left me. I stood still, while the old fellow, still unsuspecting, shuffled away into the dark, then dropping my hands with a sob of helplessness. I went forward again. And so I reached mate Lane and the huge grey house that awaited me. Well, this time as I mounted the stone steps, the old house seemed even more repulsive and honorable. I dreaded to see that door open, but I could not retreat. I dropped the knock a heavily. A moment passed and then, precisely as before, the huge door swung inwards, and Michael Strange stood before me. He didn't speak. Perhaps if he had spoken, that fiendous spell would have been broken, and I should have returned even then to my own peaceful little rooms in Cheney Lane. No, he merely held the door for me to enter. As I passed him, he stood there, watching me with a significant smite. Straight to that familiar room at the end of the hall I went, with strong as behind me. When we'd entered, he'd close the door cautiously. For a moment he faced me without speaking. You came very close to committing a murder on your way here, did you not, Dale? I stared at him. How in God's name could this man read my thoughts so completely? He would have completed the murder, he said softly, had I wished it. I did not wish it. I didn't answer. There was no way to reply to such a mad declaration. As for my companion, he'd watch me for an instant, and then laugh. He wasn't mad, and I am doctor enough to know that. But the laugh was not long in duration. He stepped forward suddenly and took my arm in a steel grip, dragging me toward that half-hidden door at the farther end of the room. "I shall not keep you long, Dale," he said harshly. "I could have killed you. Could have made you kill yourself, and in fact, I intended to do so. But, after all, you're a merely a poor stumbling fool who has meddled in things too deep for you." He pulled open the door and pushed me for me. The room was dark, and not until he closed the door again and switched on a dim light could I see its contents. Even then I saw nothing, at least, nothing of importance to an unscientific mind. There was a low table against the wall, with a profusion of tiny wires emanating from it. I was aware that a cup-shaped microphone or something very similar hung over the table, bound on a level with my eyes, had I been sitting in a chair. Beyond that I saw nothing, until strong I should move forward and draw on a side of curtain that hung beside the table. "I made you come here tonight, Dale," he murmured, "because I was a bit afraid of you. Your comrade, Hartnett, was an ignorant police officer. He has not the intellect to connect the series of events of the past day or two, and so I did not trouble myself with him. But you, you're an educated man. You've made no demonstrations of your ability in the field of science, but—" He stopped speaking abruptly. From the room behind us came the sound of a warning bell. Strongest turned quickly and went to the door. "You were weighed here, Doctor," he said. "I have another call at a night. Another one who came the same way as you. And then he vanished. For a short interlude I was alone, with a peculiar, radio-like apparatus before me. It was, for all the world, like a miniature control room in some small broadcasting station. Except for the odd shape of the microphone, if it was such, I could detect no radical difference in the equipment. However, I had little time for conjecture. A patter of footsteps interrupted me from the next room, and a frightened, feminine voice broke the stillness of the outer study. Even before the owner of that voice stepped into my presence, I knew who it was. And when she came, with her white, fearful face and trembling body, I couldn't withhold a shudder of apprehension. It was the young woman who'd come to my office, Margot Verne. Evidently at last she had yielded to the horrible impulse that had drawn her back to Michael Strong. An impulse witch had now understood. I'd originated from the man himself. He pressed her forward. There was nothing tender in his touch. It was cruel and triumphant. "So, you succeeded at last," I said bitterly. He turned to me with a snare. "I have brought her here, yes," he replied. "And now that she has come, she shall hear what I have to tell you. You will perhaps give her a respect for me, and this time she will not have the power to turn me away." He pointed the table to the apparatus that lay there. "I'm telling you this, Dale," he said. "It gives me pleasure to do so. You are enough of a scientist to appreciate and understand it. And if, when I've finished, I've told you too much, there's a very easy way to keep your tongue silent. You have heard of hypnotism, Dale. You've also heard of radio. You ever thought of combining the two? You faced me directly, then. I made no effort to reply. "Radio," he said quietly. "It's broadcast by means of sound waves. Not much, you know. But hypnotism, too, can be transmitted through distance. If an instrument delicate enough to transmit, thought waves can be invented. For twenty-five years, I've worked on that instrument. And for twenty years, I have studied hypnotism. You understand, of course, that this instrument is worthless unless it's operated by a mastermind. Thought waves are useless. I'm not control the actions of even a cat. But hypnotic waves of concentrated thoughts, they will control the world. There was no denying him. He faced me with the savage triumph of the wild beasts. He was glorying in his power, and in my amazement. "Well, I wanted Franklin White to die," he cried. It was I who murdered him. Why? Because he was about to take the girl I designed. "Is I not reason enough for murder?" And so I killed him. He was not Margot Vanay, who strangled her lover. Which was a complete stranger. London Sportsman had no reason for committing the murder, except that I wished him to. So he died on the night of December 7, murdered by Sir John Harmon, the sportsman. Why? Because of all London, Sir John would be the last man to be suspected. I have a keen appreciation for the irony of fate. Why it would have died the night before, except that I lacked the courage to kill him. His murder was standing under my power, outside his very house, and then I suddenly thought it best that I should have an animal. Oh, your Scotland Yard is clever. It was best that I had protection, and so on the following night I sent Sir John to the house once again. This time, while I sat here and controlled the actions of my public, a group of men sitting here with me. They believed that I was experimenting with a new type of radio receipt. Michael Strong laughed, he laughed harshly in utter triumph, like a cat laughs at the antics of his mouse victim. "When the murder was done," he said. I set Margot to the scene so that she might see her lover strangled and dead. "Oh, I repeat that on it. I enjoy the irony of fate, especially when I can control it. As for you, I brought you here tonight merely so you would realize the intensity of the powers that control you. When you leave here you will be unharmed, but after the exhibition I shall give you, I'm sure that you will make no further attempt to interfere with things out of your realm of understanding." I heard a sob from Margot. She'd retreated to the door and clung there. "That's myself, I didn't move." Strong's recital had revealed to me the horrible lust that gripped him, and now I watched him in fascination. He wouldn't harm the girl that much I was sure of. In his distorted fashion, he really did love her. In his crazed, murderous way, he would attempt to win her love, even though she had once scorned it. I saw him step toward the table, saw him drop heavily into the chair, and stared directly into that microphonic thing that hung before his eyes. As he stared, he spoke to me. "Science, in its intricate forms, is probably above the mind of a common medical mountain," he said. "It'll be useless to explain to you how my thoughts and my will can be transmitted through Spain. Perhaps you've sat in a theatre instead of a certain person until that person turned to face you. You have? Well, then, you'll perhaps understand how I can control the minds of any human creature within the radius of my panel. Ah, you see, this intricate little machine gives me the power to transform London into a city of stark murder. I could bring about such a horrible wave of crime that Scotland Yard would be scorned from one end of the world to the other. I could make every man murder his neighbor until the streets of the city were running with the blow." Strange turned then quietly to look at me, and spoke deliberately. And now for the little exhibition of which I spoke down, he merlinned. Your detective friend, Hartnett, has been under my power for the past three hours. You see, it was safer to control his movements and be sure of him, and now to be doubly sure of him, and perhaps you'd like to see him kill himself. I step forward with a sudden cry. Strange said nothing. His eyes merely burned into mine. Once again I felt that strange, all powerful control forcing me back. I retreated, step by step, until the war stopped. But even as I retreated, a childish hope filled me. How could Strange, working his terrible murder machine, concentrate his power on any individual when the whole of London lay before him? Well, he answered my question. He must have read it as it came over me. Ah, have you ever been in a crowd-dale, and watched a certain individual intently, until that particular individual turned to look at you? Well, the rest of the crowd pays no attention, of course. Just that one man. Now we shall make that one man murder himself. Strange turned slowly. I saw his fingers creep along the rim of the table, touching certain wires that came together there. I had a dull, droning home fill a room, and over it storage his penetrating voice. When I am finished dale, I shall probably kill you. I brought you here merely to frighten you, but I believe I may have told you too much. With that new horror upon me, I saw my captor's lips move slow. And then, from the shadows at the other end of the small room, came a low, unemotional voice. Before you began strong, Michael Strange whipped about in his chair like a tiger. His hand dropped to his pocket so swiftly that my eyes did not follow it. And as it dropped a single staccato shot split the darkness of the room, and the scientist slumped forward in his chair. The dull, whirring sound of that hellish machine then stopped abruptly, cut short by the sudden weight of Strange's lunging body as he fell upon him. I saw the livid, fiery snake of white light twist suddenly upward through that coil of wires, and in another moment the entire apparatus shattered by a blinding crash of flame. After that, I turned away. Whether the bullet could kill Strange or not, I don't know. But the sight of his charred face hanging over that table of destruction told its own story. It was Inspector Drake who came across the room toward me and took my arm. The smoking revolver still in his hand, as he led me to the adjoining room, where I saw Margot had already found refuge. "You see now, Dale," Drake said quietly, "why I let Hartnett go with you before." If Strange had suspected me, I would merely be another victim. As for Hartnett, he has been under constant guard down at the headquarters, he's safe. They've kept him there, with my instructions, in spite of all his terrific efforts to leave him. I was listening to my companion in admiration, even though I didn't quite understand. I was wrong in just one thing, Dale, and left you alone without protection. I believe Strange would ignore you because, after all, I'm not a Scotland Yard man. Thank God I had the sense to follow Margot, trail her here, and get here soon enough. So ended the horrible series of events that began with Sir John Harmon's chance visit to my study. As for Harmon, he was later cleared of all guilt, upon the charred evidence in Michael Strong's house in May Lane. The girl, I believe, has left London, where she can be as far as possible from the memories that are all too terrible. 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When the moon turns green, his nearly midnight when Bruce Dixon finished his work and weirdly rose from before the workbench was lonely mountain laboratory, located in an abandoned mine working in southern Arizona. He looked like some weirdly garbed monk of the Middle Ages as he stretched his tall, live figure. His head was completely swathed in a hood of lead cloth, broken only by twin eye-haws of green glass. The hood merged into a long-sleeve tunic of the same fabric, while lead cloth gauntlets covered his hands. The lead cloth costume was demanded by Dixon's work with radium compound. The result of that work lay before him on the bench. A tiny lead capsule containing a pinhead lump of a substance which Dixon believed would utterly dwarf Earth's most powerful explosives in its cataclysmic power. So engrossed in Dixon being in the final stages of his work, but for the last 72 hours he'd literally lived there in his laboratory. It remained now only for him to step outside and test the effect of the little contact grenade, and at the same time get a badly needed taste of fresh air. He set the safety catch on the little bomb and slipped it into his pocket. As he started for the door, he threw back his hood, revealing the ruggedly good-looking face of a young man in his early 30s, with the lines of weariness now etched deeply into the clean-cut future. The moment that Dixon entered the short winding tunnel that led to the outer air, he was vaguely aware that something was wrong. There was a strange and intangibly sinister quality in the moonlight that streamed dimly into the winding passage. Even the cool night air itself seemed charged with a subtle aura of brooding evil. Dixon reached the entrance and stepped out into the full radiance of the moonlight. He stopped abruptly and stared around him in utter amazement. High in the eastern sky, they rode the disc on a full moon, but it was a moon weirdly different from any that Dixon had ever seen before. This moon was a deep and baleful green, was glowing with a stark malignant fire like that which lurks in the blazing heart of a giant emerald. Bathed in the glow of the intense green rays, the desolate mountain landscape shone with a new and eerie beauty. Dixon took a day step forward. His foot thudded softly into a small feathered body there in the sparse grass. He stooped to pick it up. It was a crested quail with every muscle as stonily rigid as though the bird had been dead for hours. Yet Dixon, to his surprise, got the slow faint beat of a pulse still in this tiny body. Then a dim group of unfamiliar objects down in the shadows of a small gully in front of him caught Dixon's heart. Tucking the body of the quail inside his tunic for later examination, he hurried down into the gully. A moment later, he was standing by what had been the night camp of a prospector. And the prospector was still there. Here's rigid figure wrapped in a blanket, and his wide open eyes staring sightlessly at the malignant green moon in the sky above. Dixon now to examine the stricken man's bond. He showed the same mysterious condition as that of the quail. Rigidly stiff in every muscle yet with a slow pulse and respiration of life still faintly present. Dixon found the prospector's horse and burrow, sprawled on the ground a dozen yards away. Both animals frozen in the same baffling condition of living death. Dixon's brain reeled as he tried to fathom the incredible calamity that had apparently overwhelmed the world while he had been hidden away in his subterranean laboratory. An unusual and terrible thought to sound him. If the grim effect of the bareful green rays was universal in his extent, what then of old Emile Crawford and his niece Ruth Lawton? Crawford, an inventor like Dixon, had his laboratory in a valley some five miles away. And a abrupt chill went over Dixon's heart, a thought of Ruth Lawton's beauty being forever stilled in the grip of that eerie living death. Well, he and Ruth had loved each other since they'd first met. And so Dixon broke into a run as he headed for a nearby ridge that looked out over the valley. His pulse hammered with unusual violence as he scrambled up the steep incline, and his muscles seemed to be tiring with strange rapidity. And he had a vague feeling that the rays of that malignant green moon were beating directly into his brain, clouding his thoughts and draining his physical strength. Again in the crest of the ridge, he stopped aghast as he looked down the valley toward Emile Crawford's place. Near the sight of Crawford's laboratory home was an unearthly pyrotechnic display such as Dixon had never seen before. An area several hundred yards in diameter seemed one vivid welter of pulsing colours, with flashing lances of every hue crisscrossing in through a great central cloud of ever-changing opalescence like a fiery aura borealis gone man. Dixon fought back the ever-increasing lethargy that was been numbing his brain and groped dazedly for a key to his new riddle. Was it some weird and colossal experiment of Emile Crawford's that was causing the green rays of death from a transform moon, an experiment the earthly base of which was amid the seething play of blazing colours down there in the valley? Very seemed hardly a plausible one. As far as Dixon knew, Crawford's work had been confined almost entirely to a form of radio-propelled projectile for use in more time against marauding planes. Dixon shook his head forcibly in a vain effort to clear the stupor that was sweeping over him. Strange how the vivid rays of that malevolent green moon seemed to seer insidiously into one's brain, stifling thought as a swamp fog stifles the sunlight. Then Dixon suddenly froze in stark immobility, staring with startled eyes at the base of a rocky crag 30 yards away. Something was lurking there in the green-black shadows, a great sprawling black shape of a bitimal horror, with a single flaming opalescent eye fixed unwinkingly upon Dixon. The next moment the vivid moon was suddenly obscured by drifting wisps of clown. As the green light blurred to an emerald haze, the creature under the crag came slithering out toward Dixon. He had a vague glimpse of a monster such as one should see only in nightmares. A huge, loathsome spider form with a bloated body as long as that of a man, and great sprawling legs that sent it half a dozen yards nearer Dixon in one effortless leap. The onslaught proved too much for Dixon's morale, half-days as he was by the green moon's paralyzing rays. With a low, inarticulate cry of terror, he turned and ran, straining every muscle in a futile effort to distance the frightful thing that inexorably kept pace in this shadowy, emerald gloom behind it. Dixon's strength faded rapidly after his first wild sprint. Fifty yards more and his faltering muscles failed him utterly. The red rays of that grim green moon sapped his last faint powers of resistance. He staggered on for a few more painful steps and sprawled helplessly to the ground. His brain hovered momentarily upon the verge of complete unconsciousness. Then he was suddenly aware of a fluttering struggle inside his tunic where he placed the body of the quayer. A moment later, the bird wriggled free. It promptly spread its wings and flew away, apparently as vibrantly alive as before the mysterious paralysis had stricken him. The incident brought a faint surge of hope to Dixon as he dimly realized the answer to at least part of the green moon's riddle. The bird had recovered after being shielded in the leg cloth of his tunic. That could mean only one thing. The menace of those green moon rays must in some unknown way be radioactive. If Dixon could only get the leg cloth hood over his own head again, he also might cheat the green dew. He fumbled at the garment with fingers that seemed as stiff as wooden blocks. It was a long moment of agony when he feared that his effort had come too late. Then the hood finally slipped over his head, just as utter oblivion claimed him. Dixon came abruptly back to life with a dimly remembered echo of a woman's scream still ringing in his ears. For a moment he thought that he was awakening on his cock back in the laboratory after an unusually vivid and weird nightmare. Then the garish green moonlight around him, of course, with realization that the incredible happenings of the night were a grim reality. The clouds were gone from the moon, leaving his surroundings again clearly outlined in the flood of green light. Dixon lifted his head and cautiously searched the scene. But he could see no trace of the great spider form that had pursued him. Wondering curiously why the creature had abandoned the chase at the moment when victory was within its grasp, Dixon rose lively to his feet. Protecting hood, the broader quick and complete recovery from the devastating effects of the green moon drains. His muscles were again supple and his brain once more functioned with clearness. Then abruptly Dixon's blood froze as the sound of a woman's scream came again. The cry was that of a woman in the last extremity of terror and Dixon knew with a terrible certainty that that woman was Ruth Lord. He raced toward the small ridge of rocks from behind which the sound had apparently come. A moment later he'd reached the scene and stopped, horror-stricken. Three figures were there in a small rock wall clearing. One was old Emil Crawford, sprawled unconscious on his side. The soft glow of a small white globe in a strange headpiece atop his grey hair shining eerily in the green moon. Near Crawford's body loomed the giant spider creature and clutched firmly in the grey claspers just under the monster's terrible fangmouth as a slender body of Ruth Lord. Mercy for long consciousness had apparently overwhelmed the girl now, for she lay supinely in the dread embrace with eyes closed and lips silent. As the monster dropped the girl's body to the ground and world took in front of Dixon, for the first time he had a clear view of the thing in all its horror. He shuddered in uncontrollable nausea. The incredible size of the creature was repellent enough, but it was the grisly head of the monstrosity that struck the primal murder of horror. That head was more than half human. The fangs and other mouth parts were those of a giant tarantula. These merged directly into the mutilated but unmistakable head of a man, with an aquiline nose staring eyes in a tussled mop of dirty brown hair. Resting on top of the head was a metallic headpiece similar to the one worn by Emil Crawford, but the small globe in this one blazed with a fiery opalescent. The creature crouched lower with his legs twitching an obvious preparation for a spring. Dixon had wildly about him for a possible weapon, but saw nothing. Then he suddenly remembered the little leg grenade in his pocket. The cataclysmic power of that little bomb should be more than a match for even this monster. His fingers closed over the grenade, just as the great spiders twitching leg straightened in a mighty effort that sent it hurtling through the air straight toward him. Dixon dodged to one side with a swiftness that caused the monster to miss by a good yard. Dixon raced a dozen paces further away, then whirled to face this great spider. The creature's legs began scuttling wearily forward. There was to be no wild leap through the air this time, but rather a swift rush over the ground that Dixon would be powerless to evade. Releasing the safety catch of the grenade, Dixon held a tiny missile straight at the rock floor just under the feet of that vast misshapen creature. There was a vivid flash of blinding blue flame and a terrific noise. Days by the concussion but unhurt, Dixon cautiously went over to investigate the result of the explosion. One brief glance was enough. The hideous mass of shattered flesh sprawling there in the rocks would never again be a menace. The only thing that had escaped the destruction in that shattering blast was a strange headpiece the thing had worn. Either the small shining globe was practically indestructible, or else it had been spared by some odd freak of the explosive, for it still blazed in baleful light atop the shattered head. Dixon hurried back to wear Emil Croft that improved Lord in the leg. The girl's body was so rigidly inert that Dixon threw back his encumbering hood and knelt over her for a swift examination. His fears were quickly realized. Ruth was already evicted with a green moon's dread parameter. Dixon bruised Dixon. Dixon turned to the core. Emil Croft, his face drawn with pain, had struggled up on one elbow. The old man was obviously fighting off complete collapse by sheer willpower. Dixon, the place Ruth's shining headpiece at once, Crawford gasped. That'll make her immune from the green death. Then we can... The old man's voice swiftly faded away into silence, as he again fainted. Dixon hurriedly searched the scene and found Ruth's headpiece on the ground, where it apparently fallen in her first struggle with a giant spider. With a tiny white globe in the device was shattered and dark. Despair gripped Dixon for a moment. Then he remembered the unbroken headpiece of the slain monster. Not truly, the glow of its globe was opalescent instead of white, but it seemed to offer its wear of the immunity to the green moon's wrath. He swiftly retrieved the headpiece from the spider creature's body and set the light metal framework in place on Ruth's open curl. Results came with incredible quickness. The rigidity left Ruth's body immediately. Her breath came in fast, quickening gasps, and her eyes farted open as Dixon knelt before her. "It's Bruce Ruth, Bruce Dixon," he said tenderly. "Do you know who I am, dear?" But there was no trace of recognition in those wide open blue eyes staring fixedly up at him. For a moment, Ruth lay there, with muscles strangely tense. Then, with a live strength that was amazing, she suddenly twisted free of the clasp of Dixon's arms and sprang to her feet. The next minute Dixon gave ground, and he found himself battling for his very life. This was not the Ruth Lawton whom he'd known and loved. This was a mad woman of savage menace, with soft lips writhing over white teeth in a jungle snail, and blue eyes that fairly glittered with unrestrained intense hate. He tried to close in on the maddened girl, but instantly regretted his ration. A slender body seemed imbued with the strength of a Tigris, as she sensed slim fingers clawing at his throat. He tore himself free just in time. Dazed and shaken he again gave ground before the fury of a girl's attempt. He couldn't bring himself to the point of actually fighting back, yet he knew that, in another moment, would either have to mercilessly batter his beautiful adversary into helplessness, or else be himself overcome. There was no middle core. There an old Emil Crawford's voice came again, as the old man rallied to consciousness for another brief moment. Bruce, the opal globe is a direct link to those devils themselves. "Break it, Bruce! Break it! The Ruth's sake, as well as your own!" Crawford had barely finished his gas warning, when Ruth again hurled herself forward upon Dickson with tapering fingers, curved like talons as they sought his throat. Dickson swept her, clutching hands aside with a desperate left-handed parry, then snatched wildly at the gleaming headpiece with his right hand. The thing came away in his grasp, and in the same swift movement he savagely smashed it against the rocky wall beside him. Whatever the opal lesson globe's eerie powers might be, it was not indestructible. It shattered like a bursting bubble, its fire dying in a tiny cloud of particles that shimmed faintly for a moment, and then was gone. And once again the effect upon Ruth was almost instantaneous. Every trace of her insane fury had vanished. She swayed dizzily and would have fallen had not dicks and caught her in his arms. For a moment she looked up into his face with eyes in which recognition now shone unmistakably. Then her eyelids slowly closed, and she again lapsed into unconsciousness. Dickson looked over at any old Crawford, and found that the old man had again collapsed. Dickson knew of but one thing to do with the stricken man and girl, and else to take them to his laboratory. The laboratory, apparently insulated by veins of lead ore in the mountain surrounding it, was the one sure spot of refuge in his weird nightmare world of paralyzing lunar rays and prowling monsters. Bartu flinging his tunic over Ruth's head to shield her as much as possible from the moonlight. He carried her to the laboratory and returned for Emmy or Crawford. Safe within the subterranean retreat with the old scientists, Dickson removed his encumbering leg costume and began doing what he could for the stricken pair. Ruth was still unconscious, but the catalytic rigidity was already nearly gone from her body, and her breathing was now the deep respiration of normal sleep. But Emmy or Crawford's condition was more serious. Not only was the old man's frail strength nearly exhausted, but he was also badly wounded. His thin chest was seared by two great livid areas of burn flesh, the nature of which puzzled Dickson as he began to dress the injury. They seemed to be of radioactive origin, but in many ways they were unlike any radium burns Dickson had ever seen. While Dickson was working over them, Crawford stirred weakly in open design. He sighed in relief as he recognized his surroundings. "Oh, good boy, Bruce," he commended, warned. "We're safe here among the insulating veins of lead ore in the mountain. This is where Ruth and I were trying to come after we escape from those devils tonight. But, oh, Bruce, how did you guess the radioactive nature of the green sickness in time to avoid falling a victim to it as soon as you left the shelter of your laboratory?" "My escape was entirely luck," Dickson admitted grimly. Tonight I left my laboratory for the first time in three days. I found a world-gone man with a strange green moon blazing down upon a land of living dead man, with marauding monsters hideous enough to have been spawned in the pit itself. "What in heaven's name does it all mean?" "I'm afraid that it means the end of the world, Bruce," Crawford answered quietly. It's a little over 48 hours ago that the incredible event first happened. Without a moment's warning, the moon turned green. Harley of the world's astronomers had time to speculate upon this amazing phenomenon before the green sickness struck. Pestolence of appalling deadliness that swept resistlessly in the path of those we had green rays. Wherever the green moon shone, every living creature succumbed with ghastly swiftness to the condition of living death that you've seen. Westward with a racing moon sped the green sickness, and nothing stopped its attack. The green rays pierced through buildings of wood, stone and iron, as though they didn't even exist. A doomed world had neither the time nor opportunity to guess that lead was the one armor against those dread rays. But tonight, Bruce, we are, in all probability, the only three human beings on this planet who are not slumbering in the parrotic stupor of the green sickness. Ruth and I were stricken with the rest of this world, Crawford continued. We recovered consciousness hours later to find ourselves captives in the Earth camp with the invaders themselves. We probably saw the display of lights that marks their camp down in the valley and will be on my place. We've learned since the ship of the invaders dropped silently down into the valley the night before the moon turned green, and established the camp as a sort of outpost and observatory. The left two of their number there is pioneers, and the rest of them departed in the spaceship for their present post up near the moon. Ruth and I were revived. Only saw the two invaders in the camp might question us regarding life on this planet. They have a science that's based upon principles as oddly strange and incomprehensible to us as ours probably is to them. They probe my brain with a thought machine. It was an apparatus that worked both ways. What knowledge they got from me, I don't know. But I do know that they unwittingly told me much in the bizarre and incredible mental pictures that the machine carried from their brains to mine. They're refugees, Bruce. From a planet that circled about the star we know is Alpha Centauri. A star that's the nearest of all of our stellar neighbors, being only four and a third light years distant. Their home planet was disrupted by a colossal engineering experiment of the centaurians themselves. The only survivor has been a group of 50 who escaped in a spaceship just before the catastrophe. Well, there are no other habitable planets in their own system, so in desperation these refugees sped out across the void to our solar system in the hope of finding a new home here. They did reconnaissance on our earth secretly. I found it ideal. The first they believed that they must conquer the life that already held this earth. And to do this, they struck with the green sickness. The rays of the turn in the moon green emanate from the spaceship hover out there some 50,000 miles from the moon itself. The centaurians rays, landing with the sunlight striking the disk of the full moon, are intensified in some unknown way, and reflected across the quarter of a million miles to the earth to flood this planet with villa and radiance. The green moonlight is radioactive in nature and overcomes animal life within a matter of 15 minutes or less. The rays are the most powerful when the moon is in the sky, but their effect continues even after it is set, because well, as long as the green moonlight strikes any part of the Earth's atmosphere, the entire atmospheric envelope with the planet remains charged with the paralyzing radioactive influence. Well, Earth's inhabitants are not dead. They're merely stupefy. If the green rays were to seize now, most of the victims of the green sickness would quickly recover with little permanent entry. Or Bruce. If that evil green moon blazes on for 24 hours more, the brain powers of Earth's millions will be forever shattered. So we can will they be by then that recover will be impossible, even with the ray shut off. The entire planet will be populated by only mindless imbeciles, readily available material for the myriad of monstrous hybrids that the invaders will create to serve them. Well, tonight, you saw the hybrid that the invaders sent to recapture Ruth and me. It was a fit specimen of the grizzly magic which those devils from outer space work with their uncanny surgery and their growth stimulating radioactive rays. The basic element of that master was an ordinary tarantula spider, with its growth incredibly increased in a few short hours of intensive ray treatment in the centaurians camp. The half head grafted to it was that of a human being. They always graft the brain cavity of a mammal to a hybrid. Half heads of burrows, horses, or even dogs, but preferably those of human beings. I think that they prefer to use as great a brain power as possible. The hybrids are controlled through the small or pleasant globes on their heads, globes that are in direct tune with a huge master globe of green fire in the invaders camp. When Ruth attacked you after you placed the opal headpiece upon her head, she was, for the moment, merely another of the invaders servants blindly obeying the broadcast command to kill. The white globes that Ruth and I wore when we escaped on the camp were identical with those worn by the invaders themselves, being nothing more than harmless insulators against the effect of the green moonlight. A sudden spasm of pain can divorce Crawford's fame. Dixon sprang forward to aid him, but the old man rallied with an effort and weakly waved Dixon back. "I'm all right, Bruce," he gasped. My strength is nearly exhausted, that's all. Like a garless old fool, I've worn myself out talking about everything, apart from the one important subject. Bruce, Bruce, have you developed that new and infinitely powerful explosive you were working on? "Yes," Dixon answered grimly. "I have an explosive right here in the laboratory that can easily blow the centaurians camp completely off the map." Crawford shook his head impatiently. "Ah, destroying the camp would do no good. We must shatter the spaceship itself, if we're to extinguish those green rays in time to save our world." "No." "That's impossible if the spaceship is hovering up there by the moon," Dixon protested. "No, it's not impossible," Crawford answered confidently. "I have a projectile in my laboratory that will not only hurdle across that great gap with incredible speed, but will also infallibly strike its target when it gets that. It's projectile that's irresistibly drawn by radio waves as steel is by a magnet, and it will speed us straight to the source of those waves as a bit of steelwell to the magnet." "Oh, centaurians in the spaceship," Crawford continued. Her in constant communication with a camp through radio apparatus, much like our own. "If you can pack a powerful contact charge of your explosive in my projectile, and I can guarantee that when the projectile is released, it'll flash out into space and score a direct hit against the walls of their spaceship." "Oh, I can pack the explosive in the projectile, all right," Dixon answered grimly. "We'll need only a lump the size of an egg, and a small container of the heavy gas that activates it." The explosive itself is a radium compound that, when allowed to come into contact with the activating gas, becomes so unstable that any sharp blow will set it off in an explosion that, in a matter of seconds, releases the infinite quantities of energy usually released by radium over a period of at least 1,200 years. The cataclysmic force of that explosion should be enough to wreck a small planet. "Good," Crawford commended weakly. "If you can only strike your blow the night, Bruce, that world still has a chance. If only you." The old man's voice suddenly failed. He sank back and utter collapse. His eyes closed, and his last vestige of strength spent. Knowing that the old man would probably remain in his sleep with complete exhaustion for hours, Dixon turned his attention to root. Or, to his surprise, he found us sitting up, apparently completely recovered. "Well, I'm quite alright again," she said reassuringly. "I've been listening to what uncle told you, and you go ahead and prepare your explosive, Bruce. I'll do what I can for uncle while you're working." Dixon donned his legcloth hood and tunic again and set to work. Ten minutes later, he turned to Ruth, with a slender foot-long cylinder of lead in his hand. "Will this fit your uncle's projector?" he asked. "Easily," she assured him. "But isn't it frightfully dangerous to carry it in that form?" "No, it's completely safe now. We safe until this start is turned, releasing the activating gas from one compartment to mingle with a radiant compound in the other section. Then the cylinder will become a bomb that any sharp jar will detonate." "Alright, let's go then," Ruth answered. "Have you any more of those lead clothes I can wear?" "I could wear the globe headpiece at Uncle War, but it would loom up in the dark like a searchlight." Dixon didn't protest Ruth's going with it. It was nothing further that could be done for Emil Crawford for hours, and in the hazardous-journey to Crawford's laboratory, he knew that Ruth's cool, courage, and quick wits would at least double their chances of success in their desperate mission. He provided her with a reserve hood and tunic of leg cloth, and handed her a tiny leaden pellet. "Keep this for a last resort," he told him. It's a contact bomb that becomes ready to throw when this safety catch is snapped over. I wish we had a dozen of them, but that's the last capsule I had, and there's no time to repair them all. He fished a rusty old revolver out of a drawer and placed it in his pocket. "I'll use this guard for a last resort weapon myself," he said. "The action only works about half the time, but it's the only firearm I have in the place." The green moon was still high in the sky as Ruth and Dixon emerged from the tunnel. But it was already beginning to drop gradually down toward the west. Dixon's world is disreputable fliver out of his nearby shed. With engines silently started coasting down the rough winding road into the valley. For nearly two miles they wound down a long grain. Then, just as they reached the valley floor they saw, far up among the rocks to the left of the road, the thing that they'd been dreading. The bobbing, green globe that marked the presence of one of the centaurians hid his hybrids. The shimmering globe pours from on it, then came racing down toward them. The need for secrecy was passed. Dixon threw the car in gear and savagely pulled down the gas lever. With rattle wide open they hurtled around the perilous curves of the narrow road, but always in the rocks beside and above them they had the scuttling progress of some huge, many-legged creature that constantly kept pace with them. They had occasional glimpses of the thing. Its pale, jointed body was some twenty-feeting man, and had apparently been developed from that of a centipede, with scores of racing legs that carried it with startling speed over the rocky terrain. The fliver raced madly on toward the blaze of kaleidoscopic colours that marked the centaurians can. Crawford's home loomed up now barely a hundred yards ahead. As though sensing that its quarry was about to escape, the hybrid flashed a burst of speed that sent it on by the car for a full fifty yards, and then down into the road directly in front, where it whirled to confront them. Dixon knew that he could never stop the car in the short gap separating them from that huge, up-reared figure, and to attempt swerving from the road upon either side was certain disaster. He took the only remaining chance. The throttle wide open, he sent the little car hurtling straight for the giant centipede. He threw his body in front of Ruth to shield her as much as possible, just as they smashed squarely into this hybrid. Well, the impact was too much for even that monstrous figure. It was hurled bodily from the road to crash upon the jagged rocks at the bottom of a thirty-foot gummy, and there it sprawled in a broken mass, too hopelessly shattered to ever rise again. The fliver skidded momentarily, then crumpled to a full stop against the rocks at the side of the road. Dixon and Ruth scrambled from the wreckage and raced for Crawford's home, scarcely fifty yards ahead. The end of the laboratory and Ruth went directly over to where the radio projectile rested in the war-round. Dixon took the gleaming cylinder down to examine it, tapering to a rounded point at the front end. It was nearly a yard long and about five inches in diameter. The mechanism inside the projectile is turned off now, of course, Ruth said. If it were turned on, the projectile would have been on its way to the spaceship long ago, but the radio waves for a strong hair is at the stream Torrion's camp. They were pointed to a small metal star in the nose of the projector. When that snapped over, it makes the contact that sets the magnetizing mechanism into action, she explained. Then the projectile will go hurtling directly from the source of any radio waves within range. I don't know the nature of its mechanism, uncle merely told me that it's the application of an entirely new principle of electricity. Dixon laid the long projectile down on the workbench and began packing his lead cylinder of explosives inside it. He had to release the lead cylinder's safety cache before closing the projectile, which made his work a thrillingly precarious one, and his sharp-blown hour would detonate the unstable mixture of gas and radium compound in one cataclysmic explosion. He sighed in relief as he finally straightened up with the completed projectile held carefully in both hands. "All we have to do now, Ruth," he said. He stepped out from under this roof and snapped that energizing star. Then this little package of destruction will be on its way to our centaurion friends up there by that pestilential green moon. Ruth stepped ahead to open the door for him. With the end of their task so near at hand, both forgot to be cautious. Ruth threw the door open and took one step outside, and suddenly screamed in terror as her shoulders were encircled by a long snake-like object that came whipping down from some vast something that had been lurking just outside. Dixon tried to dodge back but too late. Another great hairy tentacle came lashing around his shoulders, pinning his arms tightly and jerking him out of the doorway. He got a swift, vague glimpse of the hybrid looming there in the green moonlight. A tranchula hybrid that incised and horrid dwarfed any of the frightful products of centaurion science that you'd yet seen. Before Dixon had any time to note the details of his assailant and other tentacle curled around him, Terry and the projectile on his grass. Then he was irresistibly drawn up toward that grizzly head where Ruth's body was also suspended in one of those powerful tentacle. The next moment, bearing its burdens with amazing ease, the giant hybrid set up. Dixon tried with all his strengths to squirm free enough to get a hand upon the revolver in his pocket, but the constricting tentacle did not give for even an inch. The only result of his effort was to twist his hood to one side, leaving him as effectually blindfolded as though his head were in a sack. Long minutes of swaying, pinching motion followed as the hybrid spared over the rocky ridges and gullies. Finally came to a halt and for another minute or so Dixon was held there motionless in midair, dimly conscious of a subdued harm of activity all about him, and then he was gently lowered to the ground again. While one tentacle still held him securely, another tore away his hood and tuner. Almost immediately the hood was replaced by one of the protective white globe devices. Dixon then blinked for a moment in a half blinded bewilderment, as he got his first glimpse at the earth camp of the centurion. Part Three. The place located on the smooth rock floor of a large natural basin seemed a veritable cauldron of seething colors which rippled and blended in a dazzling maze of unearthly splendid. Dixon forgot everything else in that weird camp as his startled gaze fell upon the creature standing directly in front of him. He instinctively knew that the thing must be one of the alpha centaurians. For his alien grotesqueness, the figure was utterly dissimilar to anything ever seen upon earth before. Life upon the shattered planet of that far-distance sun had apparently sprung from sources both crustacean and reptilian. The centaurians stood barely five feet in height. This bulky box-like body was completely covered with a shittiness armor that gleaned pale yellowish green. Two short, powerful legs scaled like those of a lizard, ended in feet that resembled degenerated tongues. Two pairs of slender arms emanated from the creature's shoulders, with their many jointed, flexible length ending in delicate three-pronged hands. The scaly, hairless head beneath the centaurian's white globe device, or a face that was blankly hideous, to great leadless eyes, devoid of both pupils and whites. Stared unblinkingly at Dixon, like twingly globs of red-black jelly, a toothless, loose-lipped mouth slathered beneath. Dixon averted his gaze from the horror of that fearful alien face, and looked anxiously around for a root. He saw her almost at once, over at his right. She was tellered by a light metallic rope that ran from her waist, one of the metal beams supporting the great shimmering ball of opalescent fire which formed the central control of the hybrid. One of the white globe devices had been placed upon Ruth's head, and she was apparently unheard. She pluckily flashed a reassuring smile at Dixon. Directly in front of Dixon in some forty yards away, there was a large pen-like enclosure, with a very coloured shafts of radiance from banks of projectors constantly sweeping through it. Dixon drew in his breath sharply as he saw the frightful life lying dormant in that pen. It was a solid mass of hybrids, great loathsome creatures, fashion from a scholar of different worms, insects and spiders. The globes upon the gruesome mammalian half-heads were still dark and unfired with opalescent. The invaders had apparently raided most of the surrounding country in obtaining those grafted half-heads. In the way Dixon stood, there was a tragic little pile of articles taken from the centaurium's victims. Prospectors picks, shovels, axes and other tools. Over to the left, the dormant hybrid stood the second alpha centaurium, curiously examining Dixon's projector. The creature apparently suspected the deadly nature of a gleaming cylinder, for it soon laid it carefully down and packed cushions of soft fabric around it to shield it away from any possible shot. Then, as an unspoken command from the first centaurium, the great hybrid world Dixon around faced a small enclosure just behind him in which were located banks of control panels and other apparatus. One of the pieces of mechanism, with a regularly spaced stream of sparks snapping between two terminals, was apparently a radio receiver, automatically recording the broadcast from the spaceship. Dixon was unable to even guess the nature of the remaining apparatus. "Bruce, be careful," Ruth called in despairing warning. "He's gonna put the thought-reading machine on your brain. Then he'll learn what the projectiles for and everything will be lost." Dixon's mind raced with lightning speed in the face of this new danger. He stealthily slipped a hand over the revolver in his pocket. There was one vulnerable spot in the great hybrid holding him, and that was the opalescent globe on the creature's head. If he could only smash that globe with one well-directed shot, he might be able to elude the centaurions for the precious minute necessary to send the projectile on his deadly journey. The hybrid began maneuvering Dixon toward the instrument enclosure. For a fleeting second, the grip of the tentacles upon his shoulders loosened slightly, and Dixon took the instant advantage of it. Twisting himself free from the loosened tentacle in one mighty effort, he whirled and fired point blank at the opalescent globe on the head looming above him. The bullets smashed accurately home, shattering the globe like a bursting bundle. The great hybrid collapsed with startling suddenness. His life-force instantly extinguished as the globe burst. Dixon leapt to one side and swung the gun into line with the centaurions hideous face. He pulled the trigger, but there was no response. The rusty old firearm had hopelessly jammed. Dixon then savagely flung the revolver at the centaurion. The creature tried to dodge, but the heavy gun struck its body and glanced in blood. There was a slight spurt of bodily fluid as the chittiness armour was partly broken. Dixon's heart leapt exultantly. Now, one of these creatures had to create hybrids to fight for them. Their own bodies were as vulnerable as that of a soft-shelled crab. The centaurion quickly drew a slender tube of dark green from a scabbard in its burn. Dixon dodged back, looking wildly about him for a weapon. There was an axe in the pile only a few yards away. Dixon snatched it up, world ready to give battle. The other centaurion had come hurrying over now to aid its mate. Dixon was effectively barred from attempting any progress toward the projectile by the two grotesque creatures as they stood alertly there beside each other, with their green tubes menacing him. Dixon waited tensely at bay, remembering those searing radium burns upon Emil Crawford's body. Then the first centaurion abruptly levelled a second and smaller tube upon Dixon, a burst of yellow light flashed toward him, enveloping him in a cloud of pale radiance before he could dart. And there was a faint plop as the protecting white globe upon his head was shattered. The yellow radiance swiftly faded, leaving Dixon unhurt. But he realized that the first round in the battle had been won decisively by the centaurions. His only chance now was to end the battle before the paralyzing rays of the green moon sapped his strength. He wearily advanced upon the centaurions. Their green tubes swung into line and twin bolts of violent flame flashed toward him. He dodged and the bolts missed by inches. Then Dixon nearly fell as his foot struck a bundle of cloth on the ground. The next round he snatched the bundle up with a cry of triumph. It was his leg cloth tunic, torn and useless as a garment but invaluable as a shield against the searing effects of those bolts of radioactive flame. He hurriedly wrapped with a fabric in a rough bundle around his left forearm. The next time the tube's violet flames flashed toward him, he thrust his rude shield squarely into their path. It was a light tingling shock, but that was all. The bolts did not sear through. With newfound confidence, Dixon boldly charged the two centaurions. The weird battle ensued and the garishly lighted arena. The effective range of the violet flashes was only about 10 feet, and Dixon's muscular agility was far superior to that of his antagonists. By constant whirling and dodging, he was able to either catch the violet bolts upon his shield at all, or else dodged them entirely. And yet, in spite of the centaurions clumsy slowness, they maneuvered with a cool strategy that constantly kept the earthman's superior strength at bay. All ways, as Dixon tried to close with one of them, he was forced to retreat and a flanking attack from the other threatened his unprotected bat. At all ways, the centaurions maneuvered the bar Dixon from attempting any dash toward the projector. Minutes passed, and Dixon found his strength rapidly ebbing, both from his herculean exertions and from the paralyzing rays of the green moon beating down upon his unprotected head. As his speed of foot lessened, the centaurions began inexorably pressing their advantage. Dixon was no longer escaping unscathed. In spite of his frantic efforts to dodge, twice the violet bolts grazed his body in searing flashes of exquisite agony. His muscles stiffened, still more in the attack of the green sickness. Desperately dodging a centaurion bolt, he stumbled nearly fell. As he staggered to regain his balance, one of his antagonists scrambled to the coveted position behind him. Ah, it was only Ruth's scream of warning that Galvanized Dixon's numb brain into action and time to meet the imminent peril. In one mighty effort, he flung his axe at the centaurion in front of him. The heavy blade cut deep into the thinly armored body, mostly wounded, the creature collapsed. Dixon then whirled and flung up his shielded left arm, just in time to intercept the violet bolt of the other centurion. "Where are they backing away?" Dixon succeeded in retrieving his axe from beside the twitching body of the fallen invader. Then, with the heavy weapon again in his hand, he remorselessly charged his remaining foe. The centaurions chewed flash in a veritable hail of hurtling violet bolts, but Dixon caught the flashes upon his shield and closed in grimly. One final leap brought him to close quarters. The heavy axe whistled through the air in a single mighty stroke that cleft the centaurions for our body nearly into. Then, Ruth's excited scream came in. "Bruce! The other one! Get it quick!" Dixon turned. The wounded invader, taking advantage of their preoccupation in the final struggle with its mate, had dragged its crippled body over to the instrument enclosure. Dixon staggered toward it as fast as his half-paralysed muscles would permit. He was just too late. The centurion jerked to leave a home a fraction of a second before Dixon's smashing axe forever ended his activity. The lever's action upon the pen of inert hybrid spawns immediate. The sweeping lances of light vanished in a brief sheet of vivid flame which kindled the dark globes of the hybrid's gruesome heads to steady opalescence, and the dreaded horde came to life. Sprawling from the pen, they came scuttling toward Dixon in a surging flood, a scene straight out of a nightmare. Dixon faced the oncoming horde in numb despair, knowing that his nearly paralyzed body had no chance in a fight. Then, just as the hybrids were nearly upon him, you heard Ruth's encouraging voice again. "There's still one chance left, Bruce," she cried. "And I'll take it!" Dixon turned. Ruth had in her hand the tiny contact grenade he'd given her for a last emergency. She snapped the safety catch on Little Bomb, then hurled it squarely at the giant opalescent globe, looming close beside her. There was a terrific explosion, and the great globe shattered to atoms. Apparently stunned by the concussion, but otherwise unheard, Ruth was flung clear of the wreckage. With the shattering of the central globe, strange life-force of the hybrid horde vanished instantly and completely. Midway in their rush, they sprawled inert and dared. With their outstretched legs so close to Dixon, that he had to step over one or two to get clear. Dixon's brain reeled in the reaction of relief from the horde's hideous menace. Then he grimly thought to clear his fast-numbing senses long enough for one final task that he knew must still be done. The projectile, cushioned as it was, had escaped detonation in the blast. He had only to stagger across the twenty-yard separating him from it, and then released the stud that was sent it flashing out into display. But his last shred of reserve strength had nearly been sat now by the insidious rays of that malevolent green moon. Even as he started toward the projectile, he staggered and fell. Unable to drag himself to his feet again, he began grimly crawling with arms and legs as stiff and dead as that of stone. But he ten more yards to go now. Only five. Greenly, doggedly, with senses reeling and muscles nearly dead, the last survivor of a dying planet fought desperately on under the malignant rays of the vivid green moon. One last sprawling convulsive effort. Dixon had the projectile in his hands. His stiff fingers fumbled agonizingly with the activating start, and abruptly the start snapped home with a crescendo whistle of sundered air, the projectile flashed upward into the western sky. Dixon collapsed upon his back. His dimming eyes fixed upon the grim green moon, minutes that seemed like eternities dragged slowly by. Then his heart leapt in sudden hope. Had he really seen a glowing small blue spark up there beside the green moon, the spark marking the mighty explosion of the radiant bomb against the centaurian spaceship. The fraction of a second later, and that doubt became glorious certainty. The vivid green of the moonlight had vanished. The silvery white sheen of a normal moon again shone serenely up there in the western sky. With the extinguishing of the dreaded green rays, new strength surged swiftly through Dixon's tired body. He arose and hurried over to where Ruth lay limp and still near the wreckage of the great globe. He worked over her for many anxious minutes before the normal flash of hell returned to her white cheeks, and her eyes slowly opened. And then he took Ruth into his arms and for a long minute the two silently drank in the beauty of that radiant silver moon above them. While their hearts thrilled with the realisation of the glorious miracle of awakening life that they knew must already be beginning to rejuvenate and stricken wild. The moon we eat by how principle. Unwittingly the traitor of earth, Van pits himself against the inexorably tightening web of plant beasts that he is released from the moon. Hobart Madison pursed his lips in a whistle of incredulous surprise as he regarded the object that lay in the palm of his hand. An ordinary pebble seemed to be, a pebble in which a strange fire smouldered and showed itself here and there through the dull surface. "Would you mind repeating what you just said, Van?" he asked. "You heard me the first time." I said, "That's a diamond." And then it came from the moon. Carl Vanderventer, glad at his friend in resentment of his doubting tone. "You mean to tell me you've been to the moon?" Well, certainly not. I'm not a Jewell's vern adventurer, but I'm telling you that stone is a diamond of the first water, and it came from the moon. Well, he's over a hundred carats, too. You can have it appraise yourself if you think I'm kidding you. But, Madison just laughed. "Don't get sore, Van," he said. I'm not doubting your word, but, Lord, man, the thing is so incredible. It takes a little time to soak in. You say there are more. Sure, this one's the largest of five I've found so far, and there's other stuff, too. Until you see fossils, beetles, and things. I tell you about, the moon was inhabited at one time. I have the evidence, and I want you to be the first to see it. The eyes of the young scientist shone with excitement as he saw that his friend was aroused to intense interest. But that's what all your experimentin' has been aimed at. No wonder it caused so much. Yeah, and you've been a brick for financing me. Never asked a question, neither. But, but, it'll all come back to you now. You know how much that stone's worth. Oh, plenty, I guess, but forget about the financing and all that. Where is this labara tree, the old? Madison pushed his chair back from his desk and was reaching for his hands. Over in the Ramapo Mountains, not far from Pluxedo. I'll have you there in two hours. Sure, you can spare the time to go out there now, van de Venta, who's enthusiastically eager. Spare the time. Will you just try and keep me from going? Neither of them noticed the sinister figure that lurked outside the door which led into the adjoining office. They chatted excitedly as they passed into the outer hole and made for the elevator. Van de Venta's laboratory was a small dome structure, set in the clearing atop the mountain, and well hidden from the winding road, which was the only means of approach. Low Bart Madison, who had inherited his father's prosperous brokerage business, had financed his friend's research work ever since the two had left college, is what was his first visit to this included workshop, and its wealth of equipment was revealed to him as a complete surprise. He'd always thought of van's experiments as something beyond his can, something uncanny and mysterious. Well, now he was convinced. The most prominent single piece of apparatus in the laboratory was a 12-inch reflecting telescope which reared its lattice framework to a slit in the dome overhead. Paralleling its axis and secured to the same equatorial mounting was a shining tube of copper which bristled with hand wheels and levers, and was connected by heavy insulated cables to an amazing array of electrical machinery that occupied an entire side of the single room. A regular young observatory you got here, Van, Bart commented, when he'd taken all of this in, one sweeping glance of appraisal. Yeah, and then some, but another like it in the world. Van was busying himself with the controls of his electrical equipment, and a powerful motor generator started up with a click and a whirr as he closed a starting swift. Madison watched in silence as a swift finger scientist fasted with the complicated adjustments of the apparatus, and then turned to the massive concrete pedestal on which his telescope was mounted. At his touch of a button, the instrument swung over on its polar axis to a new position. The slit in the dome was open to the afternoon sky, revealing the lunar disk in its daytime faintness. Well, you can see it just as well in the daylight, Bart asked as his friend appeared through the eyepiece of the telescope and continued his adjustments. Sure, the surface is just as bright as at night. Doesn't seem so to your eye, but it's different through the telescope. Here, take a look. Bart squinted through the eyepiece and saw a huge crater with a shadowed spire on its center. Like a shell hole in soft earth, it appeared. A great splash that had congealed immediately as it was made. The crosshairs of the eyepiece were centered on a small circular shadow near its inner rim. That, Van was saying, is a prominent crater near the Mari Nubian. The spot under the crosshairs is that from which I have obtained the diamonds, and other things. Now, watch this, Bart. The young broker straightened up and saw that his friend was removing the cover from a crystal ball that was attached to the lower end of the copper tube that was pointed to the heavens at the same ascension and declination as the telescope. The air of the room vibrated to a strange energy when he closed a switch that lighted a dozen vacuum tubes in the apparatus that lined the wall. "You say you bring the stuff here with a light ray?" he asked. "No, set with a speed of light. But you projects a ray of vibrations, like directional radio, you know. And this ray has a component that disintegrates the object, it strikes and brings it back to us as dissociated protons and electrons which are reassembled in the original form and structure in this crystal ball. Yeah, watch." A misty brilliance filled the bowl's interior. Intangible shadowy forms seemed to be taking shape within a swirling maze of ethereal light that hummed and crackled with astounding vigor. Then, abruptly, the apparatus was silent in the light gone, revealing an odd object that had taken form in the bowl. "A starfish," Bart gasped. "Yeah, unfossilized." Van handed it to him, and he took it in his fingers gingerly as if expecting it to burn. The thing was undoubtedly a starfish, and of light spongy stone. His color was pale blue, and the umbilacral suckers were clearly discernible on all five rays. "Oh, Lord, you're sure this is from the moon?" Bart turned the starfish over in his hand, in case stupidly his friend. "Certainly it is. You think I had it up my sleeve? But here, watch again. There's something else." The crackling misty light again filled the bowl. Spose thought ventured, bringing something large. Big as a house, let's say. What do you do to your machine? "I can't. The rail only pick up stuff that'll end of the bowl. Oh, look, it's the next arrival." A mysterious light died down, and the scientist picked up the second object with trembling fingers. It was a knife of beautiful workmanship, fashioned from obsidian, and obviously the work of human hands. "There. Didn't I tell you?" land glowed it. "I guess that shows there were living beings on the moon." He made minute changes in the adjustment of his marvellous instrument, and Bart watched in days' astonishment his object after object materialized before their own. There were fragments of strange minerals, more fossils, marine life mostly, roughly beaten silver plates. Three diamonds, none of which was as large as what a van had taken to New York, but all of considerable value. "Wow, this will be something for the "bapers van." Bart Madison was visioning their fame that was to come to his friends. "Yeah, all but the diamonds. All but the diamonds is right." These words were spoken by a sarcastic voice. Chill as an icicle that came from the open door. They wheeled to look into the muzzles of two automatic pistols that were trained on them by a stock individual who faced them with a twisted, knowing grin. "Damn, Kelly," Bart gasped, raising his hands slowly to the level of his shoulders. He knew the ex-army captain was a dead shot with a service pistol, and a desperate man since his disgrace and forced resignation. "What's the big idea?" he demanded. "You don't need to ask." "Reviews me alone this morning, didn't you?" "Now I'm getting it this way." Kelly turned savagely on valent, prodding his ribs with a pistol. "Get him up, you snout." A van had been slow in raising his hands, gaping in stupefied amazement that the intruder. Now he reached for the ceiling without delight. "I all serve time for this, Danny," Bart shouted. "Shut up. I don't know what I'm doing." And back up to the other door, Kelly was forcing him toward the door of the sound at the point of one pistol as he got van covered with the other. Bart clenched his fist and brought it down in a sudden sweeping blow that Rake Kelly's cheek and ear with stunning bumps. But the gunman recovered in a flash, dropped the muzzle of his pistol and pulled the trigger. Grilled through the thigh, Bart staggered through the open door and fell the length of the stairs into the darkness of the summer. Kelly then laughed, evilly as he slammed the door and turned the key. "Hey, hold it you," he snarled as he swung on a van who dropped his hands and crouched for a spring. "If I drill you, it won't be through the leg." "I'll take those diamonds now." He pocketed one of his pistols and, keeping the other press to the pit of van's stomach, went through his pockets. And he added those on the tray by the crystal bolt to his collection, and he transferred the entire lot to his own pocket. "Now you clever engineer," he grinned. "We'll just operate this trick machine of yours for a while and clack some more. You get to it." He watched narrowly as van stretched his fingers to the controls. "There's no monkey business either," he grated. "We'll not change a single adjustment. Don't be listening to you and I know the clock of the telescope is keeping the ray trained on the same spot. You just operate that ray and nothing else, understand." Well, van didn't think it expedient to tell him of the drift caused by inaccuracies in the clock and perturbations of the moon's motion. He was playing for time, trying to plan a course of action. "But, um, they may not meet any more diamonds," he offered as he tripped the release of the ray. "Well, there'll be more. Don't try and kid me." An irregular block of quartz materialised in the bowl, and Kelly tossed it to the floor in savage disgust. Then a small diamond, a very small, birdie pocketed it nonetheless. The next object was a strange one, and tried to seed part about six inches in length, and a brilliant red colour. The ray had shifted to a new position on the lunar surface. Another, and another of these strange legumes followed. One of them bursting open and scattering its contents. Bright red, like the enclosing pod, to rattle over the floor like tiny glass beads. Kelly just snorted his disgust. "Oh, there's still some sort of vegetation out there," van muttered. "The eternal scientist in the man could not be downed by a mere holder." "Can the chatter?" Kelly snulled, as the crystal bowl gave up another of these useless pods, and yet another. He gathered up the evidence of lunar vegetation, a dozen of the pods, and threw them through the open doorway with a savage gesture. "Are you trying to put one over on me?" he bellowed. "Well, how can I?" van retaunted mildly. "Well, I haven't touched a hand with you." He was wandering vaguely whether this lunar seed would grow in the earthly soil. What sort of a plant it would produce under the new environment. Kelly was becoming nervous now, seeing that little was to be gained by hanging around his crazy man's laboratory. He had a sizable fortune in rough stones already, or a big one alone, and probably cut into smaller stones, would make him independently wealthy. Maybe there weren't any more anyway, and the longer he stayed, the greater chance there was of getting caught. The advent of another of the pods decided it for him. A quick blow with the butt of his pistol stretched van on the floor, and Kelly fled the scene. Bart was pounding furiously on the cellar door when van first took hazy note of his surrounding. Several uncertain minutes had passed before he was able to stagger across the room and release his friend. "Where is he?" Bart demanded, swaying on his feet and blinking in a sudden light. "Gang." "Suck me and beat it with a diamond." Van was mopping the blood from his eyes with a handkerchief. "You hit bad?" he inquired. "Oh, just a flesh wound. It hurts like the devil, though. How about you?" Bart limped to his side and sighed with relief when he examined his bleeding scalp. "Ah, not so bad yourself, old man. Where's your first aid kit?" Van was still somewhat dazed and merely pointed to the cabinet. "I find para we turned out to be," he grumbled, after his head had cleared a bit under Bart's vigorous cleansing of the cut of his temple. "Ah, here we stood, meek as a couple of lambs, and that guy get away with murder." "I have of those forty-fives made the difference. Oof," Bart winced as his friend poured fresh iodine of the wound in his leg. "God, have a heart, will you?" That was startled into silence by a horse, strangled scream that came from outside the laboratory. "Help, help," someone repeated in a panicky voice. The voice switched at once, ended on a girdle of murder despair. "Ah, it is Kelly," Bart whispered. "He's come back, and something's happened to him." He then started for the open door. "Hey, um, wait a minute. Might be a trick to get us outside where he can pop us up." "Oh, no. That isn't all for God's sake. Look at that." Bart had reached the door and was pointing at the ground with shaking forefinger. All the entire clearing seemed to be alive with wriggling things, long rubbery tentacles that crawled along the ground, reaching curling ends high in the air, and had even started climbing the trees at the edge of the clearing. The blood read they were, and partially transparent in the light of the setting sun. Growing things, attached by their thick hands to swelling mounds of red that seemed anchor to the ground. Translucent stalks rose from the mounds and sprouted huge bugs that burst and blotting into flaming flowers of foot in diameter, and withered and went to seed in a moment of time. But always the weaving tendrils shot forth with lightning speed, reaching and feeling their uncanny way along the ground and have a tree stumps into the woods. One of them emerged from a hollow stump with its slender end coiled around the tiny body of a chattering grey squirrel. "God, the moonflowers!" Bancried. "Well, what do you mean, moonflowers?" Gride seed pods that came over into the bowl and Kelly threw them out. "Now look at the damn things. They're alive!" Kelly's voice came to them once more from behind the barrier of rapidly growing vegetation. "Hell," he screamed. "I'll give back the diamonds anything. Just get me away from these things." "We ought to just let them get them," Vangrowned. "Bart shivered. Too horrible, Vang. They got an axe or anything." "Yeah, there's a hatchet around the back. Maybe we can..." "The young broker had already scuttled around the corner of the building, and Vang looked after him, anxiously. The vile red tendrils were reaching the east wall of the laboratory, and he saw that their inner surfaces were covered with tiny suckers like those of the arms of a devil fish. The carnivorous plants undoubtedly these awful half animal, half vegetable things whose seed had been transported across a quarter million miles of space. Man eat this, deadly, and growing with incredible speed. Even the short-lived flowers were fearsome, as they opened their scarlet pansy-like faces and stared a moment before they folded up and shriveled into the sea cases like those that had materialized in the crystal bowl. Then he noticed that the pods were opening and spreading more of the terrible seeds. Nothing could stop this weird growth now. He would cover the country like a sea of flaming horror, overcoming and devouring every living thing. Cold fear clutched at Vang as he realized the enormity of the calamity that had come to the earth. Vang was scuttling the edge of the clearing with a hatchet in his hand, and Vang tried to call out to him to warn him. But his voice caught in his throat, and instead he ran to his assistants, circling the spreading menace to get around behind where Kelly was still shouting. "Oh, damn, Kelly, anyway. This never would have happened if he hadn't come on the scene." Kelly was in the woods now, wedged into the crotch of a tree, striking wildly with clutching tendrils with his club pistol. They mashed easily, and were dripping red, but were not to be deterred from their ghastly purpose. Kelly's time would have indeed been short. Had not his erstwhile victims come for the rescue. One of the thickest of the twining things encircled his body, and had him pinned to the tree. His breath was coming in ghast, as its tightening coils increased their pressure. His coarse features were livid, and his eyes bulged from their sockets. Bart hacked, and hacked at the rubbery growth. Until he had him free, jacked him from his perch, blubbering and whining like a schoolboy. His shirt had been torn from his breast. They saw a great welt, where the blood had been drawn through the pores by those terrible suckers. "Look out, Bart!" Van shouted. Another of the creeping things had come through the underbrush, and was wrapping its coils around Bart's ankle. Another and another wiggle threw, and soon they were battling for their own freedom. Kelly staggered off into the woods and went crashing down the hill, leaving them to take care of themselves as best they might. The stench of the viscous liquid that oozed from the injured tendrils was nauseous. It had something of a "soparific" effect, and the two friends found themselves fighting the terror in a growing mist of red that blinded and confused them. Then, miraculously, they were free, and Van assisted Bart as they ran through the forest. When they reached the road, weak and out of breath. It was just in time to see Kelly's roaster vanish around the bend. "Yeah, he'd give back the diamonds." "What an ass!" Van muttered, vindictively. Van shrugging his shoulders. "Well, well, they're much good to him anyway. Won't be any good to us either, as far as that goes." "What do you mean? Aren't they real?" Van was raising himself painfully into the seat of Van's car, his wounded legs suddenly very much in the way. "Yeah, sure, they're real. But don't you realize what this thing means? This ungodly growth that started?" "Well, no, you mean it'll keep growing." "Yep, and how?" Those inner stalks drop a new batch of seeds every five minutes or so. "There you go. A flock of new plants spring up ten feet from the first. Dozens of them for every pod that drops." "Well, you know how geometrical progression works out? They'll cover the whole country. The whole world. God. Man alive. This is terrible. I hadn't thought of that before. What are we going to do?" "Yeah, that's the question. What can we do?" Van started his motor and jerked the car to the road. First off, we're going to get away from here. I'm fast. Bart gripped his arm as he shifted into second gear. "Oh, look, Van," he babbled, "and out of the woods already loose. The right snakes are loose from their stalks. Damn it, they're alive, I tell you." And it was true. Several of the slimy red things were wriggling their way over the tarmac like great earthworms, but moving with a speed of hurrying pedestrians. Free and untrammeled by the roots and stems of the mother plants, they set forth on their own his search for beings of flesh and blood to destroy. Millions with their kind were fallen. Billions. And sudden panic, Van stepped on their gas. 15 minutes later, with shrieking siren, a motor cycle drew alongside and forced them to the corner. "Hey, um, where is the fire?" His acoustic voice of a stern visage to officer demanded, when Van had brought his car to a screeching stop. 75, the speedometer had read, only a moment before. "Look, it's life and death, officer," Van started to explain. "We must get to the proper officials to want." "Ah, tell it to the judge. Come on now, you follow me." "But officer, there's death on its way from the hills, I tell you. Red, creeping things that will be here in a couple of hours." "Move away from the wheel. I'll drive you in myself." Bart had opened the door on the side and was limping his way around the back of the car. This was serious. They had to get away. I had to spread the word in a way that would be believed before it was too late. The officer was tugging at Van's arm. His tarnishment and black rage showing his weather-beaten countenance. Speeding. Drunk. Resisting an officer. I'd never get out of this mess. A swift uppercut interrupted the proceedings. Bart's leg was numb and stiff, but his good right arm was working smoothly and with all its old time precision. His second punch was a haymaker. With his full weight behind it, it drove straight to the chin and stretched the officer on the concrete. Thoughtfully, Bart removed his pistol from its holster before scrambling in Van's side. "Oh boy, we're in for it now," he gasped. "We might as well make a good job at it while we're at it." Van let in his clutch with a jerk, and soon again they were breaking all traffic regulations. It was dusk when they roared in through the gate at the Rockland County airport and pulled up at the hangar office. Van rushed in, shouting for Bill Peterson, and Bart followed it. "A slender fair had youth in rumpled flying togs greeted them." "Bill, it's my friend, Bart Madison," Van blurted without pausing for breath. "Listen, you gotta have a plane right away. Got one with a radio?" "Yeah, but what's all the rush? Where are you going?" Albany, right away. "Make it snappy, will you?" "Sure, but what's it all about?" Young Peterson was leading them to the field where a sleek monop plane was in waiting as if they'd ordered it. "Yeah, warmer of Joe," he called to the mechanic. "Listen, Bill, I never liked you, did I?" Van asked, when they were seated in the plane's cabin. "Ah, not that I know of, but sometimes I've thought you were a lion until I saw with my own eyes the things that you told me about. What is it this time?" "Death and destruction. I went down out of the remapples. We've got to warn the country. Plants, Bill, squirt me red plants with long feelers that can twist around and devour a man. Half animal they are, and the feelers break loose and crawl by themselves. I would apply in like nothing you ever saw. Millions of them in an hour." "What?" Peterson stared incredulously as his motor roared into life, and he gave his attention to the business of taking on. He jerked the thumb of his free hand toward the radio. The land's expert fingers manipulated the switches and dials of the portable apparatus, and its vacuum tubes glowed into life. "Bubie XX, calling to T.I.M., he droned into the microphone." "Who's that?" Bad asked. The drone of the motor was barely audible in the closed cabin and didn't interfere. At times, trying to get Johnny Forbes. If anyone can get this thing across, he can. "Wait a minute. Here they are." Close his eyes as he listened to the murmuring voice in the headphone. Man, he was talking rapidly, forcefully, and the young flyer gazed with childish solemnity at Bard as they listened to this conversation. And it was plain that Bill was only half inclined to believe, though impressed by the earnestness and evident apprehensions displayed by his two passengers. "Yes. To be XX," Van was saying. "Connect me with Johnny Forbes, please, or in a hurry." "Yep. Hello, Johnny. It's Van, Carl Vanderwender, you know?" "Yep. I've got a scoop for you, but first I want you to get it in the broadcast. It's got me. It's about a man-eating plant that's starting to overrun the country." "No. Listen, I'm not dreaming. I'm not making this up. Listen." The frantic scientist rambled on and on about the siege from the moon. The red death that was creeping down from the mountains, the horror of his calamity as he and Bard had envisioned it. Then, with a sudden load of despair, his voice trailed off into nothingness, and he turned a drawn white face to his two friends. "Laughter me. Hung up on me, he groaned." "Good god, we've got to do something quick." "I don't know. We'll be in Albany in an hour," the pilot suggested. "What are you going to do there?" "He believed now. His expression of horror showed it." "See the gardener, but man, it's an hour wasted. We must stir up the country, get the word to Washington everywhere. It might be possible to fight the things some way if we could mobilize state and national resources quickly enough." "Bill." "Bard, what can we do?" The plane sped on through the night under control of her gyro-pilot. As the three men racked their brains for a solution to the problem. If a hard-boiled newspaper man wouldn't believe the story, who would? "Oh, I've got it," Bach shouted suddenly. "How can any of you pound a coat, I mean?" "Sure I can." "Then what?" Peterson returned. "Fake and SOS, don't you see? All broadcasting has to stop, and every ship is sea, every airliner, and this part of the country will be listening. It's standing by." "Give him the story and code. I don't think we're in a ship from the moon. Catch it by Lunarians, who are here to destroy the world with this weed or that. It's anything. I'll make it as weird as possible. Almost everyone will think it's a hoax. Ten thousand kids, parameters, they'll be listening in. Somebody will believe it. And believe me, there'll be some investigating in the neighborhood of the growth in no time." "God, I believe that'll do it," Lun exclaimed, and the broadcast is listening for an SOS themselves. "I've got to, you know, so they know when to start up again. Some smart announcer will tell the story, maybe even believe it. The trick will work. Sure thing." The pilot glanced at his instruments and saw that the automatic gyro apparatus was functioning properly. Then he moved over to the radio and threw the switch that put a key in circuit instead of the microphone. Rapidly he ticked off the three dots, three dashes, and again three dots that spelled the dread-danger signal of the air. "Over and over," he repeated the signal, and then he listened for results. "It worked," he gloated after a moment. "They're all signing off, and the broadcast is." The Navy Yard in Brooklyn gives me the go-ahead. He then pounded out the absurd message with swift fingers, pausing occasionally to ask a pertinent question of van or van. At van's request, he added a warning to all residents of New York State, west of a Hudson River, and of northern New Jersey to flee their homes without delay. He even asked that the message be relayed to the governors of the two states, and the governor-perkins of New York be advised that they were on their way to Albany to discuss the situation. But he balked at the story of allunarians, telling instead the equally strange truth regarding the origin of the deadly growth, adding the names of van and bart lend authenticity to the town. Then he signed off and switched the radio receiver to the loudspeaker before returning to the pilots. Bart tuned in to the various broadcasters as they resumed their programs, finally settling on WOR New York, whose announcer was reading the strange message to his radio public with appropriate comment. A crime and an outrage he called it, an affront to the industry and to the public, and insult to the government to the United States. But wait, the telephone call had just been received at the station from the village of Sloatsburg. A reputable citizen at that time had reported the red growth at the edge of state road. Huge red earthworms wriggling across the concrete. Another call, and another. The announcer's voice was rising hysterically. "Oh, it did work, Bart," van exalted, and now the hell starts popping. Governor Perkins met an imperson when they arrived at the municipal airport in Albany. A great crowd had gathered in the shadows outside the brilliance of the floodlights. A police escort rushed them to the governor's private car. "Oh, here's where you go to the Bastille for soggin that cop," van observed, and his spirits had risen appreciably since that successful SOS cut. The governor was, nonetheless, in a serious mood, as they made their way to the executive mansion through the milling crowds that lined the hilly streets of the capital city of New York state. Proofs had not been lacking of the truth of Bill Peterson's radio warning. Although the spreading red death had covered a circle some eight miles in diameter, covering farmlands and destroying the crops, blocking the roads and trapping many on the streets and in their homes in nearby towns. More than a hundred had lost their lives, and thousands were fleeing the threatened area. The country was in uproar. "Gentlemen," the governor said, when they'd reached the privacy of his chambers. "This is a serious matter. No time must be lost in dealing with it. Nevertheless, I want you, Mr. Van de Van de Van de. To tell your story of the thing to me and to the radio system of the United States Secret Service, the president himself will be listening, as will the chief executives of most of the states. Hold nothing back, as the fate of our people is at stake." And so Van faced the microphone related the history of his work in the little laboratory in the Romapo Mountains. He told of his interest in the Earth's satellite and of his first unsuccessful experiments with ultra telescopes in the endeavor to explore its surface close at hand. Though the failure of a spaceship he built, of the final discovery of the ray, by means of which it was possible to transport solid objects from the one body to the other. He told of the discovery of man-made relics in the fossils. He told of the diamonds and of the attack by Dan Kelly, which had resulted in the spreading of the seed of a deadly moonweed. He even related the incidence of the traffic policeman at which the governor smiled. "Yeah, that has been reported," he said. "And you need have no fear on that score. My charges will be dropped." And I ask that you give us your opinion as to the best method of combating this new enemy. Have you any ideas? "I have not, sir," Van replied gloomily, "though I believe it can be done only from the air, but possibly bombing or gas of some sort. I don't know, but it will take time, Mr. Governor." "Yes, and meanwhile the thing is overwhelming us at what rate." "As nearly as I can estimate it, the growth is moving with a speed of four or five miles an hour." "So, by morning you expect it will have travelled 40 or 50 miles in all directions?" "Yeah, I'm afraid so." A sharp buzz from the instrument on the governor's desk interrupted them. "The President," he whispered. "That is enough, Governor," came the husky tones of President Alfred's voice. "I shall communicate with Secretary Markley at once. All available army bombing planes will be rushed to the scene. You, sir, will mobilise the militia, as will the governors of the other states. Meanwhile, this young scientist is to report the Bureau of Scientific Research in Washington tonight. Have him bring a supplier of those seeds with them. And that was all." Governor Perkins offered no comment, but merely rose from his seat to indicate that the discussion was ended. The solemn silence reed within the room. "Right, let's go," exclaimed Bill Peterson suddenly, unawed by the presence of the governor. "My ship's waiting, and we can stop off for a couple of those pods and still make Washington in two hours. Come on," Governor Perkins smiled. "Good luck, boy," he said, as they were ushered from the room. "My car will return you to the airport. I remember this. The country will be watching you now, and expecting much from you. Goodbye." While he was recalled his words in the dark days ahead. Before they'd reached Newborough, there saw a dull red glow in the skies that told them the news broadcast to which they'd been listening but not exaggerated. The red growth was luminous in the darkness. Off there to the southwest it was as if a vast forest fire were light in the heavens. No wonder the panics and rioting were getting out of control of the bleak. Coming up over Bear Mountain, they caught their first glimpse of the sea of fire that was the Red Death by night. With a vast bed of glowing embers it covered the countryside, extending eastward to Havastraw, where it was temporarily halted by the broad Hudson. It was a shimmering, undulating, massive living, luminous things, eating their horrible way through all organic matter that stood in their part. Rithing, squirming, all absorbing monsters sent out an advanced guard of independent snake-like tendrils to capture and hold for the lagging mother plants, whatever, livestock, and humanity they were able to find. "You are, I think they'll go over the river, man," thought asked. "Surely will. Every fugitive who had an hour escape after being in contact with the things is a potential carrier of the sea. Found several of them sticking to my clothing after we got away. I picked a couple off your coat, but I didn't tell you." "Lord, what'd you do with them? I put them in the ash receiver in my car, like a fool. I wouldn't have to go down for more if I kept them." "Ah, I can't be held now. I have a job getting some down there now, too." "Yeah, I'll say so." Then Van lapsed into gloomy silence. They were over the landing field above Tonkin's Cove. Bill turned on the siren, whose rock of shriek operated the mechanism of the floodlight switches by sound, vibrations. The field sprang into instant illumination, and they served what it once before swooping to a landing. They were but a mile now from the advancing town. The field was deserted, and three men started off immediately in the direction of the oncoming wheat. "Oh, we'll have to make it snappy," Van grunted. "We've got about 12 minutes to get the parts and get back to the ship. Those damn things will be here at that time." This scrambled over fences and pushed through thickets. The lighted windows of a deserted farmhouse were directly ahead, and they ran through the open gate and across the fields, ever, the glow of the weed and growing brighter. The terrified horse galloped wildy past them and crashed into the fence, winnying pitiously as it went down with a broken leg. They could see the red rim of the advising horror just beyond the road. One of the detached tendrils slithered past, each glowing coil distinctly visible. "Ah, lucky those things can't see," Bach shouted. "Yep," said Van. "After dodging them to getting close enough to one of the plants, keep your eyes peeled now, you fellas, in case one of us gets caught." A terrific explosion rocked the ground. They'd paid no heed to the roaring of motors overhead. The bombers were already on the job. Shooting skyward, a column of flame, not a hundred yards from them showed where the high explosive had landed in the red mans. Then, slimy, wriggling things rained all about them, fragments of the red weed that were squirmed and crawled and climbed. Bill Peterson yelled and clutched to his neck, where one of the things had taken hold. Another warning whistle of a falling bomb, crash, more of the horror raining down as splattering as it fell. A huge blob of quivering, luminous jelly fell before them, a portion of one of the mother plants. "Run," Van shouted. "Run for the plane. We'll never make it now. I'll damn those bombers." All along the advancing fronts, the bombs were bursting, shattering the air with their detonations and scattering the glowing red stems and tendrils in all directions. The dim was appalling, and the increasing brightness of the crimson glow added to the horror of the situation. Stumbling and cursing, they ran for the plane. "Fools! Fools!" Bill was shouting. "Can't they see the field in the plane?" "What in the devil are they dropping them so near?" Van Bart was down, clawing at a three-foot length of red tendril that had fallen and borne into the earth. "Bart, bart," Van turned back and was tearing at the thing with fingers that were slippery with the sap that oozed from its torn skin. Ah, monstrous earthworms. Cut them apart and each portion lived on, took on new vigor, and these vile things could sting like a jellyfish, where each sucker touched the skin, a burning saw in me. Bill helped them break away from the thing, and all three fought on toward the lights of the landing field. Only a short way off now, and it seemed that they would never reach it. The bombers would drop in their missiles with unceasing regularity, and the red death only spread that faster. When they scrambled into the cabin and the plane, the red wall of creeping horror was almost upon it. Advancing speedily out from the redlit darkness, it seemed to halt momentown, when it emerged into the brilliance of the great art bikes which illuminated the field. Then, more slowly and with seemingly purposeful deliberation, the wriggling feelers reached out from the mass and bore down upon them. Bill slammed the door and lashed it, and far more frantically with the stardust wind. Most welcome sound was the answering roar of the lotta. The pilot yanked his ship into the air, taking off with a wind rather than running the risk of remaining on the ground long enough to taxi around and head into it. The plane acted like a frightened bird, as Bill struggled with the controls, starting this way and that, once missing a crash by inches as the tail was lifted by the treacherous ground. And then, they were clear, a slowly gained altitude and a steep climb. "Ooh," then exclaimed, mopping his red-splattered forehead with his handkerchief. "That was a narrow escape, boys. We haven't got the seeds yet unless we can find a few on our clothing." "Oh, who said so?" Barr gloated. "Look at this." It then opened his clenched fists and disclosed one of the pods, unbroken and gleaming horribly scarlet in the dim light of the cabin. Bill heaved a sigh of relief as he banked the ship and swung around toward the south. He dreaded out of the landing near the sea of Moonweave. Van shortled over their good fortune as he examined the mysterious pond. One good thing the bombers had done, anyway, blow one of the things into his friend's hands. Bart and the young pilot found themselves very much out of the picture when they reported with van at the research building in Washington. The government had no use for them in this emergency, and it was a scientist they wanted, and he was immediately rushed into conference with the heads of the Bureau. His two friends were left to shift for themselves, and they joined the crowds in the street. The name of Carl van der Venter was on everyone's top, cursing and reviling him they were, for the hair-brained experiment which had been the cause of this terrible disaster. Ah, fools. Bart seethed with rage and nearly came to blows with a number of the vesiferous agitators who were advocating a necktie party. Why hadn't the officials published the entire story as Van had told it over the secret service radio? There was no mention of Dan Kelly in the broadcast news, nor of the fact that the police were searching for him in every city and town in the country. Another instance of the results of secrecy in government and mental activity. Wow, we'd better find ourselves a room and turn in. Bart ground. Let's get out of this mob before I slam some of it. Bill Peterson was only too willing. He was suddenly very tired. In the Willard Hotel they were assigned to an excellent room, and Bart insisted on switching on the broadcasts and listening to the news. Far into the '90s sat by the loudspeaker, or paced the floor as an exceptionally calamitous happening was reported. But Bill slept through it all. The Army bombers had been recalled. Their efforts had worked more harm than good. The invincible moonweed now had crossed the Hudson River at Niacan Piermont. Tarrytown was overrun, and many of the inhabitants had lost their lives either in the mores of the insatiable monsters, or in the panics and rioting under the company the evacuation of the town. New Jersey was covered as far south as New Brunswick, and west of Philipsburg and Belvedere. At Mousechunk the contents of 20 oil tanks had been diverted to the Delaware River, and the floating oil film was proving at least a temporary protection to a considerable portion of the state of Pennsylvania. In New York State the growth had buried hill and valley, town and village as far as Monticello, and along the Hudson extended as far north as Kingston. At Pongipsee on the opposite side of the river, frantic householders had armed themselves with rifles and shotguns, and were killing off all refugees who attempted to land from boats at that point. But the militia was on guard at the bridges, assuring safe crossing to the thousands who fled the Red Death over these routes, and it was now keeping the seed of the moonweed from finding its way east. At some points fire had been used with considerable success as a barrier, hundreds of acres of forestlands being destroyed in the endeavor to stem their crimson time. But after the ashes would cool, germination would recurve, and the weed would continue on its triumphant way. As its praise and poisonous gas of various kinds have been tried without its appreciable effect, the casualty estimates already ran into the tens of thousands. The rumor had it that nearly 100,000 had lost their lives in the city of New York alone. There was no way in which the figures could be checked while everything was in a state of confusion. Communication lines were broken, roads blocked, gas and electricity supply systems paralyzed, and the railroads were helpless. Trains could not be driven through the glutinous, wriggling mass that piled high on the tracks. Only the radio and the airlines were operative in the stricken area, and even these were of little value to the unfortunate who, in many cases, were surrounded and cut off from all hope of support. Four in the morning, with aching heart and reeling brain, barked for himself on the bed without undressing, and fell into the troubled sleep of exhaustion and despair. The next day brought no encouragement, though it was reported that growth developed with most rapidity after sunrise and it had during the night. Bart endeavoured to get van on the telephone, but was curtly informed by the operator at the research building that no incoming cause could be transferred to the laboratory where he was working. Knowing his friend, he pictured him as working feverishly with the government engineers and giving no thought to sleep or food. They'd kill himself for sure, but such a death even was preferable to the red one of the movie. The Canadians and Mexicans had been quick to protect their borders and forbid the landing of any American aircraft or the passage of trains and automobiles, but the seed had reached Europe. One of the 12-hour night airliners having carried a thousand refugees who had sufficient foresight and the means to engage passage. It was a world catastrophe that they found. By mid-afternoon, the streets of Washington were almost deserted. It was less than 24 hours since the first moon seed had taken root and already the crimson growth had progressed nearly 100 miles southward from the point of origin. Another 20 or 30 hours and it would reach the capital city. Most van and those engineers over in the research building discovered something, a miracle. Bart tried the phone once more and was overjoyed when the operator, all apologies now, informed him that van had been trying to reach him for several hours. "Listen, man," his friend's voice came over the wire. "I've been worried as a devil not knowing where you were. I want you and Bill to stick around where I can get you any time. I need you. Where are you staying?" "The well at home." "Have you doped out something?" Bart answered in quick excitement. "Maybe, can't let anything out yet until we've tested it thoroughly, but I can tell you that a hundred factories are already working on machines that we've devised." "By good luck, it only means minor changes to an apparatus that's already on the market in large quantity." "Great stuff. The city's nearly emptied itself, you know. And boy, how they've been razzing you over the radio and in the papers. Howling for your hide. The whole damn country." "Yeah, I know. Van's voice was calm, but Bart sensed in it something of a cold fury that was new to him and his friend. The young scientist was bitterly resentful of the attitude of the public." "Can we see you, Van?" "No, don't call me either. Better hang around the hotel and wait for the call from me." "Okay, so long for now, Bart. I've got to get busy." "So long." Bart then gazed solemnly at Bill Peterson, who'd been listening abstractedly to the one-sided conversation. Bill had given up hope and was resigned to the inevitable. "Ah, says he may need us, Bill," said Bart. "Yeah, well, we'll be ready for anything he wants us to do. There's no use, though. Not anything." "What do you mean, no use? You never saw Van late yet, did you?" "I'm sure I did. I used super telescopes in that rocket ship." "Yeah, this is different." Bart was a staunch defender of his friend. He glared at Bill for a moment and I switched on the news broadcast which he knew he detested. The progress of the moonweed continued elevated. In the city of New York, a million souls were reported as having lost their lives, and this in spite of the difficulty experienced by the uncanny moonweed and obtaining a foothold in Manhattan. It had been thought that the asphalt and concrete proved an effective barrier, and so they did, for a time. Bart, with a seed active in the parks and along the waterfronts, wasn't long before the powerful roots of the greedy plants worked their way underneath, ripping up pavements and wriggling into sellers as they progressed. The city was a massive wreckage in a maelstrom of fighting, fighting and dying humanity. Entire regiments of the National Guard were wiped out as they fought off the weed with axe and bayonet, in the effort to provide time for the refugees to clear from their homes in certain localities. All transportation facilities to the south and west were taxed to the utmost. There was fighting and killing for the possession of automobiles and planes, and for rooms in trains and buses. Airline terminals and railroad stations were the scenes of dreadful massacres as the police and military guards fought off the crazed and desperate creatures who attacked them on mass, and still the news announces prated of the responsibility of one Carl Van Daventon. The telephone bell rang, and Bart answered between relief. At last they were to see some action, but not it was merely the desk clerk, not defying him that all employees were leaving the hotel and they would be left to shift for themselves. Yes, there was plenty of food in the kitchens and they were welcomed to it, and a permanent telephone connection will be made to their room. The frightened clerk then wished them the best of luck. An endless monotone, the voice of the news announced had droned on. Binghampton and Elaira, Albany and Schenectady, New Haven, Philadelphia, All in town, all that succumbed. The casualty estimates now ran into the millions. Oh, the mist. The red mist that rose from the steaming weed was drifting westward and spreading the seed with ever increasing rapidity. For now the monstrous growth from out of the sky was adapting itself to its environment, providing the seed with feathery tufts that permitted the winds to carry them far and wide like the seed of a dandelion. "I'll turn off that damn thing," Bill shouted, and he jumped to his feet, his eyes glinting strangely in the twilight gloom of the room. Bill was close to the breaking point. "Ah, I guess you're right," Bart mumbled, "I'll go for either of us to listen to that stuff," he switched off the receiver, and they said in silence his darkness fell over the city. Bill shivered and felt for the button of the electric light which he pressed with a trembling finger. They blinked in the sudden illumination, but it cheered them somewhat. It wasn't good to sit in the darkness and think. Besides, they knew that the turbine generators of Potomac Edison were still running. Some brave souls were sticking to their jobs, for the time being at least. "God," Bill suddenly growned after an endless time of dead silence. "My sister, she lives in Pittsburgh, you know. I wonder if she and the kids got away. And it won't be long before the damn stuff gets there." Bart thanked his lucky star to the he had no family times. "Ah, that's okay, they've had plenty of warning," he tried to console Bill. "Our hours, you know, and the westbound lines are in good shape from there. I wouldn't worry about them too much if I were you." And then there was utter silence once more. Even the customary street noises were lacking. Both men jumped nervously when the shrill siren of a police motorcycle sounded in the distance. Bart thought grimly of his trucker, with a police officer who tried to arrest Van. "Oh, how long ago that seemed? And how inconsequential an instant?" Their windows faced north, and by midnight they could make out the red glow of the moonlight. That awful band of flickering crimson that painted the horizon the color of blood. Telephone climate for attention, Bill stifled a hysterical sob as the terrifying sound broke the eerie stillness. Van was on the way to get them. He had a government car, and they were going to go to Arlington for Bill's plane. "Well, then what?" He refused to commit himself. "They must follow him blindly." "Anything was better than this inactivity, though." Bart shouted with glee. "We're going not," Van replied shortly, in answer to Bart's question when they entered the official car in front of the hotel. After Dan Kelly. After Dan Kelly. "They got a line on him?" "Yeah, Secret Service reports him in Toronto. The canocs are after him now, but by God, I'm going to get him myself." Van was haggard and wan. His eyes gleaming with a fanatical line. The strain had done something to him. Something Bart didn't like at all. This was a different van from the man who had entered his office two days previously. Unshaven and unkempt. He looked and taught like a drunken man on the verge of delirium. "What's the idea of her?" he asked gently. "I'm going to get him, I tell you. That scumbag. It's his fault the whole world against me. I'll get him, Bart. I'll kill him with my bare hands." And so that was it. The combination of grueling labor and the effort to save mankind from the dread movie and bitter censure from the very people he was trying to save. It had been too much for that. He'd developed a fixation, unreasoning and murderous. He'd get even with the man who caused this trouble, and nothing could deter him from his purpose. But I could see that. That's all humor in that and help him. It made a little difference anyway, with the red doom spreading at its present rate. They'd all be victims within a few days. And they were speeding through the streets of Washington at a breakneck rate. Then bent over the wheel, and like a demented man glued his wildly staring eyes to the road. "Why not you work?" "But uh," stuffed for a while. "Has anything been accomplished?" "Yes and no. They'll be ready to shoot in a few hours. Don't know whether it'll be a complete success or not. But I staked away anyhow. These other things more important to me right now." "What is it? Can you tell us now?" "Sure. I've got one of the machines in the car and I'll explain when we're on our way to Canada." "Well this wasn't like that. Never secretive and always in good humor. He was treating his friends like annoying strangers." "But you can't land in Canada." Bill ventured as they pulled up at the gate of the airport. "Like hell you can't. You wash my smoke and let any bloody canic up there try and stop me." He was lifting a small black case from the luggage carrier of the car as he replied. Bart silenced the airman with a look. When they'd taken off and were well under way, Bart opened his black case and set a vacuum tube apparatus in operation. They were nearing the fringe of the glowing sea of red that was the past blanket of mood. It now extended to within a few miles of Baltimore and stretched northward as far as the eye could see. That was a cinch, van was explaining. When it first saw that the growth slowed up under the arc lights of Tompkins Cove gave me the glimmering of an idea. Then on the following day when we learned that the weeds spread more slowly in sunlight, I was convinced. The stuff is dormant on the moon, you know. "Why?" Bart asked breathlessly. "Because there's no atmosphere surrounding the moon, and the sun's rays are not filtered before they reach its surface as they are here. The invisible rays are not reviolent in such. A present in full proportion. And the moonweed cannot flourish when subjected to light of the higher frequencies. When it died out when the moon lost its atmosphere, it only revived on being brought to Earth. Probably a million more times prolific in our dancing damn atmosphere and rich soil. This thing's easy to wipe out. "Yeah?" Bart commented dryling. The van was now talking and he could have bitten off his tongue for interrupting him. His machine of vans was a generator of invisible light in the ultra-indigo range, Van explained. "You couldn't see its powerful beam, but they'd proved in the laboratory that it was certain doomed the moonlies. They'd grown the stuff from seed in steel cages and played with it until they were satisfied. And now would come the final text. Ten thousand planes were being equipped with this new generator, which was merely an adaptation of standard directional television transmetics. And tonight these would start out to fight the weed. It was as simple as that. Beneath them the red cauldron seared and tossed as they sped Northwood. The crimson blanket of death was steadily covering the country. Dropped with a thousand feet bill, the scientist called. Now watch below, but don't slow down. We've got to get to Toronto." The ship nose down and soon leveled off at the prescribed altitude. Van's vacuum tubes lighted to full brilliancy, and a black spot appeared on the glowing surface just beneath them. A black spot that extended into a streak is a plane continued on its way. They were cutting a swath of blackness fifty feet wide through the heart of the grub. "See that?" Van gloated. "It's killing them by millions. And the best of it is the effect it leaves behind. The soil is permeated to a depth of several inches and the stuff will not germinate in the spots where the ray is contracted." "Oh, it works perfection." Bill was exuberance. His hopes revived miraculously. He gave his moat of the gun and got out of it every last revolution that it could turn out. "We had to get Van to Canada." "Oh, not such a bad idea this going after Kelly." Bart was voluble in his praise, and then caught himself short as he remembered that he doubted Van only half an hour previously, doubted him and despair. Now Van, lapsing into gloomy silence after his triumph, was again thinking of nothing but revenge. The getting of Dan Kelly meant more to him than the extinction of the moonling. When they landed at the Toronto airport, they were welcomed with open arms instead of with rifle fire as Bill had anticipated. The news had gone ahead of them. Already a thousand planes flying over the United States were driving back the sea of destruction. The invisible ray was a success, and the name of Karl van der Venter was now a thing with which to conjure, rather than one on which to heap imprecation of insult. Van grimaced rightly his last bit of news. And of Danny Kelly, known at the airport had ever heard of him. Van telephoned into the city to please headquarters. Oh yes, they had apprehended the fugitive American at the request of Washington, but he was a slippery customer. He had escaped, so Van raged and few. Of what use were the congratulations of the night flyers who still loited in the hangar? Of what consolation are radio reports of the success of the ultra indigo ray in the States and in Europe? He had come after his man, they had failed, and defeat was a bitter pill. These broadcasts from the States were jubilant and became increasingly so during the night. The moonweed was being driven back on a wide front, and by mourning would be entirely surrounded. There would be no further loss of life and little more destruction of property. Karl van der Venter had saved the day. Van grunted his disgust whenever an announcer mentioned his name, and they like came they prepared to return. Little use there was of searching the highways and bioys of Canada for the fugitive. He'd simply have to wait until the Canadians were able to get a line on Dan Kelly again. Ah, it was a maddening. But Bart was glad. The light of reason was returning to his friend's eyes in the reaction. Then there was a telephone call from the city for Van. Police headquarters wanted him. The fanatical glint returned to his eyes when he ran for the hangar to answer the call. Perhaps they'd already captured Kelly, and he had an order in his pocket for the man's return to the states. He'd been made a deputy, and with Kelly released to him anything might happen. Something would surely happen. But the police were reporting the unexplainable reappearance of the moonweed just outside the city limits at a point near Cooksville. Would Mr. Van der Venter be so kind as to fly over there and destroy it before any lives were lost? Yes, he would. The growth had covered an acre of ground by the time they reached the spot designated. But it was the work of only a minute to blast it out of existence with the ultra-indigo rain. Van then surveyed the blackened and shriveled mass with satisfaction. "Let's land and take a look at it," he said. Bart thought he saw a look of exaltation flash over his care-worn features. Soon they were waiting deep in the blackened remains of the moonweed. The stems and tendrils snapped and crumbled into powders they passed through. The stuff was done for, no question of that. Bill Peterson yelled and pointed a shaking forefinger at an object that lay in the black and drew him. It was a human skeleton. The bones bear a flesh and gleaming white in the light of the early morning sun. Van was on his knee as quick as a flash, feeling around the gruesome thing, pouring at the shreds of clothing that remained. And then he was on his feet, his face shining with unholy gleam. In his hands were half-dozen small smooth objects which looked like pebbles. "The diamonds," he thought so, he exclaimed. "It's curly. The only way the sea could have gotten up here." He had someone his clothes and he didn't know it. "I couldn't get him myself, but anyway, I am satisfied." Well, he staggered and would have fallen but not bark caught him in his arms. Poor old van. Nearly killed him this thing had, but he'd be himself again after it was all over. I wonder if he'd gone out of his head with the horror of it and the blame that had been so cruelly laid on it. No wonder he'd become obsessed with this idea of getting square with Dan Kelly. But now he was content, sleeping like a babe in Bart's arms. Tenderly they carried him to the plane and laid him out on the cushions in the back. They'd let him sleep as long as he could, returning to Washington where he'd receive his just shoes in recognition for his services. Van would follow the work of reconstruction, rehabilitation. Van would glory in that. But regarded his sleeping friend, thoughtfully, as they winged their swift way toward the American border. The harsh lines that showed on his face during the past year hours were smoothed away, and in their place was an expression of deep contentment. He was at peace with the world once more. Good old van. What a difference there would be when he awakened to full realization of the changed order of things. What satisfaction and relief. And so once again we reach the end of tonight's podcast, where thanks as always to the authors of those wonderful stories and to you for taking the time to listen. Now, I'd ask one small favour of you. Wherever you get your podcast wrong, please write a few nice words and leave a five star review as it really helps the podcast. That's it for this week, but I'll be back again same time, same place, and I do so hope you'll join me once more. Until next time, sweet dreams and bye-bye. I'm Victoria Cash, and I want to invite you to a place called Lucky Land, where you can play over a hundred social casino-style games for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. So what are you waiting for? The best way to discover your luck is to spin, so go to luckylandslots.com, that's luckylandslots.com, and get lucky today at Lucky Land. No purchase necessary, VGW Group, void we're prohibited by law, 18-plus terms and conditions